Chapter One

      April 1811

      Eyes streaming, coughing and choking, she tugged at the window, but it refused to budge. The floorboards scorched her feet and she could hear the ominous roar of the fire below. Dragging the pungent air deep into her lungs, she screamed.

      ‘Ellie. Ellie. Wake up!’

      ‘What?’

      Eleanor, Baroness Ashby, roused to the gently rocking rhythm of her carriage. She stared groggily into the anxious eyes of Lucy, Dowager Marchioness of Rothley. Eleanor levered herself upright on the squabs, her nightmare still vividly real.

      ‘You screamed. Was it the nightmare again?’

      Eleanor drew in a deep breath—fresh, clean, untainted. ‘Yes. I’m sorry if I frightened you, Aunt.’ Her heart slowed from a gallop to a fast trot. ‘Everything seems so real in the dream. And I can never get out.’

      ‘Well, we must be thankful you escaped the real fire, my pet. It doesn’t bear thinking about, what might have happened.’

      ‘Milady?’ Lucy’s maid, sitting on the backward-facing seat, opposite Eleanor, leant forward.

      ‘Yes, Matilda?’

      ‘Is