Authors: Rebecca Hamilton
HER SWEETEST DOWNFALL (Paranormal Romance / Fantasy Novella) (Forever Girl Series - a Journal)
A Novel by Rebecca Hamilton
The Forever Girl Series | Ophelia’s Journal
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without the permission of the publisher. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
Copyright © 2012 by Rebecca Hamilton
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-938750-99-1
I’ve written this novella as thank you to my readers for supporting the Forever Girl Series, and to give new readers a glimpse at my writing and what the Forever Girl world is all about. I hope this light read will be an enjoyable way for some of you to pass a few hours on a rainy day. I promise to return to a more in-depth read with the next formal, full length book in the series: Come, the Dark, due out in 2013.
Great Paxton, 1808
Ophelia knew two things for certain: First, the mark where her neck met her shoulder was not there yesterday, and second, if Lady Karina caught sight of it, she would hand her over to the church.
Initially, the marking seemed to be nothing more than a dark outline of a circle. But as Ophelia leaned closer to the mirror, her hand balanced gently against the frame, she realized the mark formed an ouroboros—a serpent eating its own tail.
Her heart sunk to her stomach. The town would make no exception of her; she would suffer the same fate as Alice Russel, declared a witch and murdered in a fury of violent outcry. No matter that no one could possibly know what such a marking meant—that it came from nowhere was enough to declare it evil.
The brass doorknob rattled, and she startled.
“Ophelia!” came the edge of Lady Karina’s voice. “Open this door.”
“One moment, please, Miss.”
She quickly started buttoning the front of her copper gown, but Lady Karina continued rattling the door.
“I’m coming in,” she said.
The tinker of keys echoed through the thin wooden door, and Ophelia’s fingers stumbled with the buttons on her collar, her heart racing faster with each passing moment.
The key slid into the lock, then the knob turned. She finished the final buttons of her gown and spun toward the door, pulling the two muslin flaps of her apron over her shoulders and starting to pin them together behind her neck.
Lady Karina stepped into the room, an envelope clutched in her hand. “You are
never
to lock your door,” she said, her irritation visible in the tremble of her long blonde curls. Her gaze trailed down to Ophelia’s neck. “Your collar is a mess and your buttons are one off. We can’t have that, can we?”
Ophelia tried to steady her hands enough to smooth the collar of her apron. “No, Miss.”
Lady Karina let out a crisp sigh and impatiently tapped the envelope against her arm. “Well? Are you going to straighten up? Surely you don’t expect me to do it for you.”
If she undid the buttons to fix her collar, she would expose the serpent—the devil’s symbol. Women in this town had been killed for less, and each execution delighted Lady Karina more than the last.
Stepping back, Ophelia covered the buttons with her hand, lowering her gaze to the floor and away from Lady Karina. Ophelia never much liked to make eye contact with Lady Karina anyway. The first time they’d met, Lady Karina had told Ophelia that her large, ice-blue eyes gave her the willies.
“I’ll take care of it right away, Miss.”
“Very well,” said Lady Karina. She handed over a small envelope with large script on the front. “Deliver this to Lord Isaac. He’ll need it by tomorrow morning, so you must make haste.”
Ophelia offered a polite nod, taking the envelope and tucking it away in the deep folds of her apron. “I’ll set out immediately.”
“After you make yourself a bit more presentable, of course,” Lady Karina corrected. “Percy is preparing one of the horses.”
Lady Karina stepped out without so much as a glance back. Once alone in the room, Ophelia spun back toward the mirror with a sigh.
“What ‘ave ye gotten into?” she muttered to her reflection. “Father would go mad.”
But Father wasn’t there. He’d never know his daughter had turned herself over to the same life as her mother, the same life that Father had worked so hard to put behind them. He had hoped for a proper education for her, as the poor lagged behind the upper class in education. Ophelia was reminded of this every time she spoke, and her accent had become so ingrained over the years that she soon tired of trying to speak properly. Her wisdom would show in other ways, she hoped.
Father had wanted more. He hadn’t known the way things would change following his death, the way their estate would dwindle, his daughter forced to start anew. A proper education was out of the question now.
Ophelia, however, had not taken this work for the pay. No, she’d done so because she was certain Lady Karina’s brother knew something of the disappearance of her mother, who had worked for him two years prior. Gone to work for him, and then disappeared. Ophelia found her way here just six months later.
This job—it was all a lie, a masquerade designed to find her mother. Wherever she had gone, Ophelia knew she would not have gone willingly—not without telling her daughter why she was leaving. Ophelia would not stop this hunt until they were reunited, until her mother could once again hold her in an embrace and make the world feel right again.
After checking the marking once more—it had darkened and the skin had raised slightly—Ophelia did her buttons up properly, pinned the flaps of her apron collar up in a more acceptable fashion, and covered her hair—black as sin, as Lady Karina said when they’d first met—beneath a cream bonnet. She wrapped her mother’s old knit shawl around her shoulders and set out into the chill of autumn.
Atticus waited, saddled and bridled, stomping his foot against the cold earth and shaking his mane as he sneezed the early evening air.
“Many thanks, Percy,” Ophelia said to the young man holding the horse’s reins. “I’ll take it from ‘ere.”
As she rode into the woods, the horse’s canter thudded the ground like the beating of tribal drums, and the sap-scented wind shushed between the leaves above. In the distance, between the oaks and maples, a violin played.
She dug her heels into her horse’s sides and set him into a gallop. “Come on, old boy. We don’t want to be ‘ere when night falls.”
Already the autumnal sun was low, its sharp light slicing through the breaks of the forest canopy and glinting off the crystallized stones embedded along the forest path. Night would fall too soon.
Damn her
. Lady Karina would never travel these woods at night, nor would anyone sane send their maid unattended for such a task. Not with the highwaymen known to pass through, not knowing the things those men would do to a woman alone in the woods.
When darkness encroached, there were still a good few miles left to Lord Isaac’s estate on the other side of Blackwood Forest. Thunder rumbled, but the heavy air did not yet spit down rain. She’d need to make haste. At least word had it that Lord Isaac often permitted late night visitors to stay the night in his servants’ quarters.
Atticus slowed to a trot. Up ahead, white feathers scattered the forest path.
“Come on,” Ophelia said. “
Come on
.”
Wolves howled from somewhere deeper in the forest, and the horse stopped.
“Atticus,” she hissed. She dug her heels in. “Go, boy.”
The horse whinnied and took three steps back, shaking his head. She stroked his neck and lifted her gaze to scan the forest. The moon glinted through the lattice of leaves only enough to reveal the dark trunks of the thicket on either side of the path. Above, charcoal clouds streaked against the patches of night sky, moving shadows over her forest path each time they rolled past the moon.
With the night came a chill nearly as cold as a winter morning, her breath puffing from her lips in a cloud of smoke. The violin tune grew louder; it cried mournfully between the oaks and maples like the wind in the tree boughs. Her chest tightened. How could that be? She’d covered too much ground to still hear this same violin.
