Page 2 of Atone, Adonis

“Julie-bug?”

Relief crashed through her so violently that for a moment she forgot the pain in her leg. “Tom!” she cried. “Tom, I’m here!”

“Are you hurt?” His voice sounded thick, as if he was unfamiliar with his own tongue.

“Only a little.” Her hands trembled as she tried again to tug her leg free but it was stuck under the carriage seat. “The carriage is—something is on me. But Tom, Mother. She’s not—”

“I know. Father too. He’s—”

Neither finished their sentences. Mother is dead or Father is dead were not words they could bring themselves to utter.

Outside the carriage, the storm roared on, rain drumming too loud against the roof.

Then, faintly through the howl of the wind, another voice. “Hello? Is someone there?”

Julianna froze as the lantern glow appeared a moment later, swinging through the darkness beyond the wreckage. A tall shape moved toward them through the rain.

“Fred?” Tom’s voice lifted weakly.

Relief rippled through her. Frederick Sedgewick had always seemed impossibly grown-up—her brother’s bosom friend. Tall, laughing, untouchable in the way of older boys.

Now his face appeared in the broken window of the carriage, pale and strained in the lantern light. “Tom?” And then, “Tom, I hear you. Hold on a moment and I’ll get you out.”

Julianna watched him blink at the wreckage as if he could scarcely believe it. Rain streamed off the brim of his hat and down his face.

“Fred?” Tom repeated.

“It’s me. I’m here.”

The words sounded steady enough, but something in his expression frightened her more than the storm. His features were twisted, stricken as if he’d just seen a ghost.

It was the last expression she saw on his face. That look of horror never wavered, even after he got first Tom and then her out from underneath that carriage. And then before she could understand what was happening, Tom was lifting her onto the back of a horse and Fred had turned his back on them.

“Fred?” Tom called after his friend. “Where are you going?”

Julianna clutched at her brother’s coat with numb fingers as the horse shifted beneath them. Rain streamed into her eyes and Fred was…Fred was running away, his lantern swinging wildly at his side.

“Tom, why is he leaving? What’s happening?”

Her brother made a strangled sound that she didn’t understand. “He’ll come back,” he said after a moment. “Of course he will.”

But even at twelve she heard the uncertainty in his voice and she held onto him all the more tightly for it. Lightning flashed again, bleaching the road in a harsh white blanket, and for an instant they saw Fred stop and look around. She thought he might turn back, but he didn’t. In the dark torrent of rain, he just kept running.

Chapter

1

Dorset

March, 1860

Ten Years Later

The last of the winter frost still clung to the edges of the hedgerow, shimmering like glass in the weak morning sun. Although it was already March, the wind still had a bite sharp enough to cut through the wool of Julianna Farrow’s cloak and into the bones and flesh underneath. She tucked her chin into the shawl around her neck, the wool scratchy against her skin.

The small kitchen garden she had coaxed out of the Dorset soil lay in neat winter beds outside the cottage—bare rows of dark earth still edged with frost. Only the hardiest things had survived the ridiculously cold spring: a stubborn patch of rosemary, a few crimson-veined shoots of sorrel, and the pale green spears of early garlic pushing bravely through the soil. Julianna made a mental note to check the peas she had over-wintered against the cottage wall. If the frost had spared them, they might yet take hold.

The hens weren’t so lucky. The blasted fox was back, a red-furred blur darting around the chicken coop. He’d already stolen one hen and maimed another and they simply couldn’t afford any further losses. Julianna’s upper lip curled into what could only be termed a snarl. Her breath hung, frozen and visible in the cold air, as she crept around the coop. She held her skirts gathered in one hand, and in the other was a smooth, palm-sized stone from among the pile she kept just outside Farrow Cottage for this very purpose.