The Monster of Montvale Hall

“Stop running so fast. I can’t keep up.”

Robert Forsythe ignored the cries of his little sister, choosing instead to increase his pace as he ran toward the river.

“Ignore her,” he yelled to his fellow escapees, his three best friends from Eton, each of them the son and heir of a powerful Peer. Each of them determined to enjoy this precious time outside where they didn’t have to be students, didn’t have to be heirs to powerful titles, and didn’t have to learn anything of their future responsibilities.

While staying at Robert’s home for the Easter break from school, they all wanted to just be children. Just for a little while. Even though they were on the unsteady cusp of manhood.

And Robert didn’t want Gina ruining it for them, slowing them down. It was irritating in the extreme to have his stubborn little sister following them around. James’s brother, Thomas, was only a year or two older than Gina and he hadn’t come after them. He’d stayed behind, like he’d been told to do. Gina would never do as she was told!

It had been storming for days, wind and rain lashing against the windowpanes of Montvale Hall, making it impossible for the boys to get outside.

The young marquess had never been one for sitting still and had been driven mad being cooped up inside. Though nobody could ever say that the Hall, the seat of his father, the Duke of Montvale, was small enough to feel cooped up in.

Still, there was only so much sport to be had in the cavernous halls filled with irreplaceable family heirlooms.

Even today, the winds were still a force to be reckoned with. But since it was dry, the duchess had agreed to let the boys out for a little while.

“Stay away from the river,” she had warned, her tone brooking no argument.

The river current was, according to Mama, dangerously strong after inclement weather and so, of course, that was the first place a group of fourteen-year-old boys would head.

Growing up rarely hearing the word “no” lent them all a false sense of confidence in their own sensibilities.

“Bobby, please.”

Robert swung back to face his sister, his grey eyes flashing with the frustration that only an older brother could feel.

“Gina, get back to the house,” he yelled over the howling of the wind.

The sky had darkened ominously even as they’d tramped across the grounds of the estate.

“Robert, perhaps we should go back.”

Robert turned to face his closest friend, the future Marquess of Avondale, with a grimace.

“Don’t be silly, James. We’ve been stuck indoors for days.”

“The weather is turning quite badly, and Gina shouldn’t be out in this.”

Robert’s temper flared. No, Gina shouldn’t be out in this. But Gina wasn’t supposed to be out in this.

“The others are gone ahead,” Robert said mutinously, pointing to where his two other close friends, Simon and Nicholas, could be seen headed toward the brook.

James looked hesitantly from Gina to their friends.

“You go ahead,” he said finally. “I’ll walk Gina back to the Hall and come back to you.”

Robert felt an immediate swell of anger. It was so typical of James, the golden boy. Always doing what he should. Always doing what was right.

Robert hated that James made him feel lacking or not good enough.

“No, she’s my baby sister,” he bit out, resentful of the duty that fell to him.

“I’m not a baby,” Gina shouted defiantly, and Robert had to smile in spite of himself.

In truth, even though he felt like he could happily ring her neck at times, he doted on Gina, and had his mood not been so foul from being stuck inside for days at a time, he likely would have indulged her from the start.

“Gina, if I let you come, you must stay by my side. Do you understand?”

His sister’s light grey eyes, so like his own, lit up at once, and he allowed himself a brief smile.

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” James insisted.

Robert’s stomach flip-flopped with uneasiness. Mama would have his head if she found out he’d allowed Gina to accompany them to the river—they weren’t supposed to be headed there, either.

Nonetheless, he had always looked after her, and he would do so now.

“Come, James, by the time we get her back to the Hall the others will be wanting to return. We can watch her well enough.”

James hesitated again, annoying Robert once more.

In truth, he and James were the best of friends with only months between them in age. But James was just so good all the time. Mama often joked that Robert was the anti-James, though Robert wasn’t sure how much she was actually joking.

Robert’s mother was James’s godmother. And when James’s mother had died in childbirth whilst the boys were toddlers, the Duchess of Montvale had become a sort of surrogate aunt to James, and he spent more time at Montvale than at his own future seat, Avondale Abbey.

Fathers, the boys had been informed, were not cut out to look after children.

Finally, after what seemed an age, James relented.

“Fine, come along then Gina.” James smiled indulgently at his little honorary cousin. “If you get soaked to the bone or catch a chill, we shall just blame Robert.”

Gina clapped her hands excitedly and then dashed off after Simon and Nicholas.

“She will be a handful when she’s older,” Robert said, not entirely sure what that meant, but he’d heard his father say so enough times to think it must be true.

“Yes, and she will also be your problem,” James said with a laugh.

The two boys raced off after Gina, pushing, shoving, and jostling each other as they went.

They reached the bridge over the river just as the first, fat raindrops began to fall.

“Blast it all,” Robert said.

“We must go back,” Simon called from where he sat on the bridge with Nicholas, their legs dangling carelessly over the river.

The water was rushing furiously under the bridge, as high as Robert had ever seen it, and that feeling of uneasiness grew tenfold.

All of a sudden, it really didn’t feel like a good idea to have Gina here.

“Yes,” he agreed swiftly. “We must. Come, Gina.”

Robert darted his glance around but couldn’t see his sister.

The uneasiness grew instantly to foreboding.

“Gina!” he called, and James, Nicholas, and Simon began looking around, too.

“Gina, where are you?” he called.

“I’m here, you goose.”

Robert whipped around, and an immediate fear clawed at him.

Gina was sitting atop a low branch of one of the many trees that bordered the river.

Robert had often stood on the same branch and jumped into the cool water of the river on hot summer days.

But it was far too dangerous for seven-year-old Gina to be on it, especially alone. And especially in the middle of a storm.

“Gina, come down here at once,” he shouted, dashing over to the tree. “It isn’t safe.”

His impertinent little sister merely rolled her eyes.

“You always do it,” she argued stubbornly.

“I am older,” Robert said. “And the river is dangerous today.”

“You sound just like Mama,” Gina laughed.

“If you don’t come down this instant, I will come up there and fetch you myself,” Robert warned.

“Oh, Bobby—” How could a little girl sound so long-suffering? “You are so—”

It was a second, a split second. But long enough for Robert to know that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

There was a distinctive snap, and Gina’s eyes widened with fear.

In the next moment, Robert watched the branch give, and though it took mere seconds, it felt like a lifetime.

There was only a short, terrified scream before the branch and his little sister crashed into the river below.

“Gina!”

One of the boys roared. It could have been him. It could have been James.

And Robert, God help him, hesitated.

Fear had him frozen in shock.

Only James brushing past brought him out of it.

His eyes couldn’t look away. The branch bobbed to the surface and then seconds later, his sister’s blonde curls appeared.

Finally, his brain kicked into action, and he darted forward.

“What do we do?” Nicholas called in panic.

He heard James shout something, but he didn’t pay any attention.

Without conscious thought, Robert ran to the bank and dove into the river.

Somewhere outside his bubble of terror, he knew the others were shouting his name.

The moment he hit the icy, tumultuous water, all the air left his body with the shock, and immediately the current gripped him.

It was so strong. Too strong.

Frantically, he looked around, even as the current tried to drag him under, to pull him away.

All he needed was just a glimpse of her.

There!

A flash of blonde against the greys and blacks surrounding him caught his eye.

Using all his strength, Robert swam toward that flash of colour.

He prayed to God with all his might that he got there in time.

As though the Lord Himself had answered Robert’s prayers, when he reached out, he managed to grab a handful of cotton from Gina’s dress.

“I’ve got you,” he shouted.

Gina was caught, her dress tangled in some reeds on the riverbed.

Robert pulled her tiny body against his chest, terrified of the shivers wracking her body, oblivious to his own.

The rain lashed in earnest now, making it almost impossible to see, and the wind howled as though bemoaning the fate of the children by the riverside.

Gina was turning blue and gasping for breath.

“It’s alright, Gina. I have you.”

Robert repeated the litany over and over again even as he inwardly panicked.

How would he get her out of the water? How would he make sure she survived this waking nightmare?

“Robert!”

Robert looked up and saw James and Nicholas at the banks, mere feet above him.

Thank God.

Both boys lay down, their hands stretching toward Robert and Gina.

“Simon is gone for help,” James shouted.

“We need to get her out of the water,” Robert called back, not caring about anything else.

The others nodded their understanding.

Robert, with Herculean effort, tried to lift Gina toward James, but his little sister gripped desperately to his shoulders, her eyes wide with panic.

“Gina, you must let go,” Robert shouted above the wind, terror making his voice harsh.

“I-I c-can’t!” She shivered, and Robert felt his eyes fill with tears.

This was beyond any horror he could ever imagine.

“You must,” he insisted. “We need to get out of the water.”

Gina stared at him for a moment, tears or rainwater streaming down her little face.

Finally, eons later, she nodded her head.

“Good girl,” Robert said with relief as he felt her grip loosen.

But his fleeting relief was short lived.

The second Gina’s hands left his person, the unforgiving current snatched her body, and she shot away from him, as though pulled by an invisible whipcord.

“No!” Robert screamed, his hand darting out after her.

He managed to grip her fingertips, though both his and hers were icy with cold, and the merciless water rushed over their clasped hands, desperately trying to drag them apart.

“Pull me up,” he yelled desperately.

He felt two pairs of hands on his jacket, as his cousin and his friend began the laborious task of pulling his drenched body from the water.

“Gina,” he called, “hold on.”

But he saw it then—the look that would haunt him for the rest of his miserable life. The look that no innocent child’s eyes should hold. The look of someone who knew her life was about to end.

“Please,” he sobbed. He couldn’t even try to grab her tighter, could gain no more purchase on the bank or with her hand.

“Please, Gina. Hold on.”

Though it should have been impossible with the cacophony of angry sounds the storm and river produced, Robert heard her whisper as clear as a bell. As clear as if she said it inside his very soul.

“Bobby, I’m scared.”

Robert’s heart clenched painfully. When Gina had been younger, she hadn’t been able to pronounce the letter R properly and had taken to calling him Bobby. The name had stuck and became Gina’s special name for him. She was the only one who used it and hearing it now from her blue, trembling lips was more painful than he could handle.

He couldn’t speak. Could offer no word of comfort.

He began to pull against the hands dragging him to safety.

If Gina was going to let go, he would follow her. He wasn’t going to watch her float away.

“Let go of me, James. She’s slipping.”

Perhaps they didn’t hear. Perhaps they thought it better to save him, even though it was the worst thing they could do.

But they held on.

And Gina’s grip loosened.

Within seconds, it was over.

Her tiny fingers slipped inevitably from his grasp.

Robert heard his own screams as though they came from someone else.

It was all so sudden.

One minute her tiny body floated, like a rag doll.

The next, it was gone, the river finally victorious in claiming a life.

Robert, on the bank now, fought with all his might to get away from the hands holding him back.

“Robert, she’s gone. She’s gone.”

James’ tearful voice sobbed in his ear as he clung furiously to his friend. But Robert wouldn’t believe it. He couldn’t.

Robert felt bile rise in his throat, and he turned toward the sodden ground, casting up his accounts.

Seconds or hours later, voices sounded all around him. Shouts of despair, screams of agony, yells of concern.

Someone threw a blanket around his shoulders and lifted him bodily into a cart.

Please, please, please don’t let it be real. Please. Don’t let it be real.

As the chills battered his body, Robert’s head swam, and he prayed for the darkness that threatened on the edge of his consciousness. Welcomed it like an old friend.

He wanted it to come. And he wanted to remain in it forever.

Robert awoke with a start, jerking up in his bed, his skin glistening with sweat.

It took longer than usual for the blind panic to subside.

His heart pounded with remembered fear, and his mind replayed the expression on her face, the fear in her eyes, her fingers slipping through his over, and over, and over.

It had always been thus when the anniversary of Gina’s death was approaching.

A death that he was responsible for.

That day had affected them all, he knew.

His father had taken to alcohol and become steadily more reliant on it as the years went on.

Robert had no doubt that was what had killed his sire eight years ago. That was the reason he was now the Duke of Montvale.

His mother was still alive, though existing might be a better description.

Her spirit had died the day Gina was swept away from them all, and she was nothing more than a shell of the person she’d once been.

Even his friends had been affected by Gina’s death.

But then, Robert supposed, nobody could escape such a thing unscathed. Tragedies have a way of imprinting on one’s soul. Something shifts inside you when you’ve lived through something awful. You go on with your life, but you’re a different person than the one you once were.

And while James, Simon, and Nicholas had managed to recover from the drowning tolerably well, Robert couldn’t go a day without the guilt and grief of that day gnawing at him.

Gina had been his sister, of course. But more than that—he’d been to blame.

Nobody had ever said so, but they didn’t have to. He could see the indictment in the bottom of his father’s empty brandy bottles, and in the sad vagueness of his mother’s eyes, eyes that never quite focused on a person anymore.

Over the years, Robert had withdrawn more and more from his friends and loved ones.

He was fortunate, he supposed, in that Montvale Hall was situated in the stark, rugged isolation of Northumberland. Though the farmlands were hugely profitable and the village that owed its success to the estate was thriving, the Hall itself was set apart from everyone and everything, and Robert liked it that way.

He and his mother could stay here, haunted by the things he didn’t do to save Gina. Safe from pity and gossip.

Neither of them had ever been inclined to live at one of the other many houses he owned.

He kept only a skeletal staff. After all, there was only himself and his mother to take care of.

Montvale Hall had once hosted house parties, balls, and dinners to rival London in the height of the Season.

But no more.

It was now a haven for solitude and isolation. Dark, unforgiving. Like its master.

Robert wasn’t deaf to the things that were said about him.

Servants talked. And townsfolk talked to servants.

He knew, for example, that people greatly pitied his mother for the hard life she had endured.

He knew also they had dubbed him the Monster of Montvale Hall.

A derisive grin, fleeting and unwelcome, crossed his face.

They weren’t wrong, either. He was a monster of the worst kind. A monster responsible for the death of a child.

Robert scrubbed a hand over his face then jumped from the bed, filled with a restless agitation.

He knew that sleep would elude him for the remainder of the night. After a bad nightmare, sleep never again came. Or Robert never let it, in any case. Too terrified of what lurked behind his closed lids.

No, he would get no more rest this night.

Although, he acknowledged, as his storm-grey eyes took in the carriage clock on the mantle, it was already morning.

The household was still abed at this time, but in mere hours they would be up and bustling about, preparing a breakfast that would go largely untouched.

He moved to the window, pulling back the drapes to peer at the familiar landscape outside, gaining a sort of peace in the familiar view.

His rooms were at the back of the Hall. He’d relocated the master chamber as soon as he’d become the duke.

As far away from the view of the river as he could manage.

Now, all he saw were the acres and acres of his land. On a clear day, he’d be able to spy the rugged coastline in the distance.

How many times had he thought of running out there, toward the inevitable drop of the cliffs? Towards freedom from his torment?

Alas, he didn’t have it in him. Whether that made him brave or cowardly, he had no idea. Perhaps just stupid.

Robert pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. Usually after a nightmare, his head began to pound.

He’d be tempted to drown himself in whiskey, but he actually needed his wits about him today.

For today, James would arrive, seeking a favour.

His note had been mysterious. James had written to say he was coming to stay, and he was bringing along something that needed looking after. Shamelessly begging favours.

Robert had felt a twinge of curiosity.

As the influential Marquess of Avondale, James’s power was only a step below Robert’s own. And he was rich as Croesus, having inherited all of his family’s old money and then expanding on it with business interests here and in the Americas.

What on earth could he need from Robert?

The gentlemen had remained close over the intervening years. Along with Simon and Nicholas. Or as close as Robert would allow, in any case.

Contrary to Robert’s desperate attempts to distance himself from his three friends, the tragedy that had befallen Gina had sealed their fates. Simply put, living through such an ordeal had created a bond that even Robert’s best attempts could not break.

After Gina’s death, Robert had barely spoken to any of them. Yet when he’d returned to Eton, every day they were at his door, dragging him into life again. At Oxford, they had done the same. And when they’d each ascended to their titles—two dukes, a marquess, and an earl—they’d reached an unspoken agreement not to speak of the tragedy.

It was the only reason Robert remained friends with them. And though he rarely, if ever, admitted it, their friendship had been the only thing that had kept him alive all those years ago. And he was grateful for it. Then and now.

Though the young men didn’t see each other often, he knew that James had continued to be quite sickeningly good throughout his life. A paragon the matrons of the ton flung their daughters at with abandon and debutantes simpered and swooned about.

Nicholas, too, had grown to become a favourite of Society. Though the main seat of his duchy was in Ireland, he spent almost all of his time in London, even during the summer months when most people disappeared to enjoy the sunshine in their country homes or in Bath or Brighton by the sea.

Simon was, by all accounts, as debauched and rakish as he had always claimed he would be. And Robert was secretly pleased that of the four of them, he wasn’t the only one with a blackened soul.

The first rays of brilliant orange began to rise over the clifftops, signalling the start of another interminable day.

Robert negated to summon his valet, preferring to dress himself.

He would ring for a pot of strong coffee and then go for an early morning ride, careful to avoid the river as he always was.

Then he could return and wonder what on earth James could want from him.

James, he knew, was only just returning from the Americas after a prolonged stay.

He had written that he was going to break his journey with Simon in Liverpool before travelling on to visit Robert.

A swift smile once again lit Robert’s face. James and Simon were a study in opposites.

If Robert was a monster, then Simon, Earl of Dashford, was certainly the Devil he’d been labelled as.

Without doubt, James and Nicholas were veritable saints compared to the sinners that were Robert and Simon.

Still, Robert was the one James wanted the favour from.

Perhaps it was a sort of familial connection, though they weren’t blood relatives. Perhaps it was yet another ruse of James’s to surreptitiously check on him, an attempt to convince him yet again to join the land of the living.

The Season was approaching, Robert knew. Another that he ignored, willfully abandoning his duties at Parliament.

Robert donned his charcoal grey superfine, tying his cravat haphazardly. No doubt his valet would hunt him down and fix it at some point, but for now, Robert just wanted to escape the confines of the house, which was larger than most but somehow felt oppressively small.

Making his way toward the stables, Robert acknowledged the various greetings from stable hands and grooms with a silent nod.

Nobody would ever accuse him of being friendly and chatty, but neither would he ignore hardworking members of his household.

Arriving at the stables and calling for his mount, Storm, Robert inhaled the tangy air that always held the salty reminder that he lived close to the sea.

Strangely, the unforgiving sea didn’t scare him. In fact, he loved the rugged, dangerous coastline that bordered his estate. It often mirrored his mood and was a comforting reminder that he was just one, insignificant person surrounded by a huge, if unforgiving world.

The unmistakable whinny of his black stallion snapped Robert out of his musings, and he mounted the steed before turning toward the wide expanse of fields where he could give the horse his head.

It would be some hours before James arrived, begging his favour. And with Robert’s mood blacker than usual, he was inclined to refuse before he even knew what the favour was.