Page 1 of Atone, Adonis

Prologue

Dorset, 1850

A gale ripped across the downs, drowning the stars right out of the sky and dragging the night into chaos. The rain fell in sheets and the wind was relentless, howling as if it were alive and utterly incensed to be out in this weather.

Frederick Sedgewick, the man known in parlors and drawing rooms across England as the Local Adonis, a name he loathed as much as he loathed the way his greatcoat was currently plastered to his frame and the brim of his hat was bowing with collected rain, urged his horse forward down the mud-slicked country road.

He’d dined tonight at neighboring Hawthorne Hall. It was a tedious affair made bearable only by the Hawthornes’ chef, a truly unmatched talent; wine aplenty; and the attention of a certain widowed Baroness he’d known would be in attendance. She had been and she’d attended, one jeweled hand slipped up his thigh during dinner and then down his trousers after dessert.

Fred stayed later than he meant to, waiting until the rain began to come down in earnest before excusing himself to make his way home. He knew from the scent on the air that the storm brewing would be a bad one. But with only eighteen years to his name and a devil-may-care streak to his nature, he delayed his departure until the very last moment.

As soon as the storm erupted over his head he knew he’d made the wrong choice. He should have left earlier. He shouldn’t have gone at all. But he had, of course he had.

He’d made it almost all the way home to Sedgewick Manor before a flash of lightning made his mare’s nostrils flare. She nearly reared, but he pulled her up short with those same thighs the Baroness had been earlier caressing—thick and hard from his daily horsework—and brought her to a stop. (The mare, obviously. There had been no stopping the Baroness.)

“Be calm now, my girl,” he murmured to his horseflesh, stroking his hand down the side of her neck for a moment.

The tension in her body eased for a few minutes. But when the lightning struck again, fast and hard and followed by the rolling boom of thunder, he found he could not control her.

Fred picked himself back up from where the horse had thrown him. He was shaken and sore, but not grievously injured. His head hurt like the devil though, and he didn’t know if he’d been knocked out at all or for how long. He checked himself for broken bones, the noise from the thunder and his own screams still ringing in his ears. The rain fell hard and fast and another peal of lightning lit the sky. He squinted through it only to see….Christ. Splintered wood and twisted iron strewn across the road. Carnage all around him.

He shook his head to clear it before moving forward. His heart pounded and his boots squelched through the mud as he made for the wreckage. What he saw when he reached it would be seared into his mind for the rest of his days.

His eyes fell first on the overturned carriage of the Farrows. Thomas Farrow, twenty years of age, was his best friend. Thomas, along with his parents, Ignatius and Eliza, and his younger sister, Julianna, had lived next door to Fred for the entirety of his life.

And then Fred truly took in the state of the Farrows’ carriage, which he had ridden in with Thomas so many times before. It now lay crumpled on the embankment, one entire side caved in as if it had been made from spun sugar and not wood and metal and leather.

And, Christ help him, Mr. Farrow’s dark, lifeless hand extended from the wreckage.

Fred closed his eyes and opened them again, hoping he’d imagined this scene. Dreamed it up, perhaps, from the stormy evening and too much wine. Or the hard knock he’d taken to the head. But no. Reality clawed its way back into his mind at the sight of Ignatius Farrow’s lifeless hand on the ground before him. Fred turned his head to the side and vomited.

This was his fault. All his fault.

“Mr. Farrow?” he called, wiping his hand across his mouth and crouching down to the ground, trying to see anything at all through the deluge and the shadows.

But he couldn’t. It was too dark. He turned back, finally remembering the small lantern he kept tied to his pommel.

Julianna Farrow could not understand what was happening. One moment she’d been jolting along in the carriage with her parents and her brother, Thomas, all of them rushing home to get out of the sudden onslaught of rain, and the next moment the world had come apart into fragments: shattered planks, bent iron, everything dark and turned upside down.

Rain lashed through the broken side of the carriage and the wind drove it against her face so sharply it stung. She tasted blood and thought it might be hers. She didn’t know what to do. She was only twelve.

“Tom?” she whispered when she heard the sound of movement next to her. “Hello?”

Neither her parents nor her brother answered her. And the carriage listed at a dreadful angle, pressing her sideways against the seat. Something heavy pinned her leg and when she tried to move a bolt of pain shot up through her hip. She sucked in a breath and immediately regretted it; it hurt to breathe and even more so to move.

“Mother?” she called, though her voice came out small and ragged. More like a whimper than any actual words. “Father?”

The storm swallowed the sound. Lightning split the sky and for an instant the road beyond the carriage blazed white. In that flash she saw the fallen oak sprawled across the lane, its roots torn out of the ground like enormous claws. The carriage must have struck it. Or the tree had struck them. Julianna could not tell which had happened first or at all.

“Mama?” she whispered as her eyes adjusted to the dark that fell again and she saw her mother’s body, slumped against the opposite wall of the carriage.

She was lying very still, the rain coming in through the smashed window and soaking her face. Julianna squinted through the gloom, desperately looking for the rise and fall of her breath. For any movement at all.

But there were none.

“Mama?” she tried again, louder now. “Mama, please—”

A groan answered from somewhere beneath her.