John Eyre Read online

  Gentleman Jim

  “Tartly elegant…A vigorous, sparkling, and entertaining love story with plenty of Austen-ite wit.”

  -Kirkus Reviews, starred review

  “Matthews ups the ante with a wildly suspenseful romance…”

  -Library Journal, starred review

  “Exhilarating, complete with mystery, adventure, and plenty of shocking reveals. This page-turner shouldn’t be missed.”

  -Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “Readers who love lots of intrigue and historicals that sound properly historical will savor this one.”

  -NPR

  Fair as a Star

  “A kindhearted love story that will delight anyone who longs to be loved without limits. Highly recommended.”

  -Library Journal, starred review

  “A moving friends-to-lovers Victorian romance… Historical romance fans won’t want to miss this.”

  -Publishers Weekly, starred review

  The Winter Companion

  “Fans of the ‘Parish Orphans of Devon’ series will adore this final installment, reuniting the orphans and their loves.”

  -Library Journal, starred review

  The Work of Art

  “Matthews weaves suspense and mystery within an absorbing love story. Readers will be hard put to set this one down before the end.”

  -Library Journal, starred review

  “If all Regency Romances were written as well as ‘The Work of Art,’ I would read them all…[Matthews] has a true gift for storytelling.”

  -The Herald-Dispatch

  The Matrimonial Advertisement

  “For this impressive Victorian romance, Matthews crafts a tale that sparkles with chemistry and impresses with strong character development…an excellent series launch…”

  -Publishers Weekly

  “Matthews has a knack for creating slow-building chemistry and an intriguing plot with a social history twist.”

  -Library Journal

  “Mimi Matthews writing style could almost trick one into believing her a contemporary of Austen, Brontë or Gaskell.”

  -The Silver Petticoat Review

  A Holiday By Gaslight

  “Matthews pays homage to Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South with her admirable portrayal of the Victorian era’s historic advancements…Readers will easily fall for Sophie and Ned in their gaslit surroundings.”

  -Library Journal, starred review

  “A graceful love story…and an authentic presentation of the 1860s that reads with the simplicity and visual gusto of a period movie.”

  -Readers’ Favorite, 2019 Gold Medal for Holiday Fiction

  The Lost Letter

  “Lost love letters, lies, and betrayals separate a soldier from the woman he loves in this gripping, emotional Victorian romance…Historical romance fans should snap this one up.”

  -Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “A fast and emotionally satisfying read, with two characters finding the happily-ever-after they had understandably given up on. A promising debut.”

  -Library Journal

  JOHN EYRE

  A Tale of Darkness and Shadow

  Copyright © 2021 by Mimi Matthews

  Edited by Deborah Nemeth

  Cover Design by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design

  Interior Design & Typsetting by Ampersand Book Interiors

  Ebook: 978-1-7360802-1-4

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part, by any means, is forbidden without written permission from the author/publisher.

  “The Star” by Ann and Jane Taylor originally appeared in Rhymes for the Nursery, published by Harvey and Darton, London, 1806. It is used in this work by right of public domain.

  Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë was originally published by Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1847. Excerpts, quotations, and references are used in this work by right of public domain.

  Dracula by Bram Stoker was originally published by Archibald Constable & Co., London, 1897. Excerpts, quotations, and references are used in this work by right of public domain.

  Table of Contents

  Praise For the Novels of Mimi Matthews

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Titles by Mimi Matthews

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  The Penny Not So Dreadful

  For my mother, Vickie.

  This story was written entirely for you.

  Lowton, England

  October 1843

  John Eyre stood over the freshly turned heap of earth, his head bent and his gloved hands clasped behind his back. The sun was breaking over the bleak Surrey Hills, a slowly rising rim of molten gold. It burned at the edges of the morning fog that blanketed the valley, pushing back the darkness, but doing nothing at all to alleviate the bone-numbing chill that had settled into his limbs.

  Lady Helen Burns’s newly dug grave was located behind the church in a section reserved for those poor souls who had died outside of the grace of God. Unconsecrated ground. The final resting place of the village’s suicides and unbaptized infants. None had been blessed with so much as a simple marker. No cross, headstone, or marble angel to commemorate their passing.

  Until now.

  Helen’s humble plot was adorned with a tablet of gray marble. John had commissioned it himself. It didn’t state her name, or the date of her untimely death. Had it done so, Sir William would have no doubt demanded it be removed. Helen was still his wife, and therefore his property, even in death.

  In lieu of Helen’s name, the stonemason had recommended a quote from the Bible. Something dire, from the book of Lamentations. “The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!”

  John would have none of it.

  Instead, he’d ordered the stone to be chiseled with a solitary word of Latin: Resurgam. It was the promise of resurrection. Eternal life in the hereafter, free of earthly woe—whether the church believed she merited it or not.

  It had been an act of defiance. Yet how pathetic it looked in the early morning light, that small stone with its single word, propped over a hastily dug grave.

  She had deserved better.

  “I thought you would come.” The Reverend Mr. Brocklehurst approached, the tread of his footsteps nearly s
ilent on the frost-covered grass.

  John’s muscles stiffened. The beginnings of another headache throbbed at his temples. Megrims, the village doctor called them. Symptoms of a highly strung individual with far too much on his mind—and on his conscience.

  Whatever they were, they were coming with more frequency of late. Even during those hours when the pain was at an ebb, the shadow of it still lurked behind John’s eyes.

  “A sad end for an unhappy soul.” Mr. Brocklehurst came to stand beside him. He looked down at Helen’s grave with an expression of pious regret. “Though I cannot but think it mightn’t have come to this had you never offered her your…sympathies.”

  John failed to conceal a flinch at the thinly veiled accusation. “I was kind to her, and she to me. There was nothing more to it than that.”

  There hadn’t been. Not on John’s part.

  But Helen had come to view their friendship in a different light. She’d seen him as a savior. A man who might help her to escape the prison of her life.

  He hadn’t helped her in the end. He’d been too concerned about his own future. Too respectful of the bonds of matrimony.

  “In these cases,” Mr. Brocklehurst said, “kindness can often be a cruelty.”

  John gritted his teeth. He had no patience for the man’s homilies. Even less for his insinuations that John’s friendship with Helen had hastened her demise. He had enough to reproach himself with on that score without being lectured to by a clergyman.

  “You’re young yet,” Mr. Brocklehurst went on. “You’ll soon learn.”

  Young? At seven and twenty? John felt as old as creation. Weary in body and soul. After Helen’s death, he’d been quite ready to lie down and die himself. But that was all over now. It had to be. Guilt was a bog—a mire. He wouldn’t permit it to suck him under.

  “Where will you go?” Mr. Brocklehurst asked.

  “Far away from here.” John inwardly winced to hear the lingering bitterness in his words. In the preceding weeks, he’d thought the last ounces of emotion had been leached from his soul. Nothing remained, save a firm resolve to start again somewhere else. To move forward, safe in the knowledge that he would never make the same mistakes again.

  And yet that trace of bitterness remained.

  It was a result of being here. Of seeing her small, ignominious grave.

  “To another school?” Mr. Brocklehurst coughed. “I think that unwise.”

  John’s fingers curled into an unconscious fist. He had the sudden urge to strike Mr. Brocklehurst right in his smugly sanctimonious face.

  An uncivilized impulse.

  It was restrained by the same shackles of propriety that had prevented John from saving Helen. They bound him up tight, suffocating his baser instincts into inaction.

  As if he would ever strike a man of God. Or anyone, come to that.

  He wasn’t a man of violence. He was a man of letters and learning.

  “I’ve taken a position as tutor in a private household,” he said.

  He’d placed the advertisement over a month ago. And then he’d waited.

  And waited.

  He’d begun to despair of ever receiving a response when the letter of enquiry had arrived from Mr. Fairfax of Thornfield Hall in Yorkshire. It was a brief missive, penned in spidery handwriting, offering a situation with two pupils, at a salary of forty pounds per annum.

  It was precisely what John required. A remote locale, far away from Lowton. A place where he could focus anew on his teaching. It was more than work to him. It was his vocation. Given time and space, he hoped he could rekindle his passion for it.

  “And Sir William has seen fit to give you a reference?”

  “Not he,” John said. “It was her ladyship.”

  “She knew you were leaving, then.”

  John made no reply.

  Of course Helen had known he wished to go. She’d known he found the situation untenable. He’d told himself it was for the best. That in his absence, she might resume the normal course of her life. Not in happiness—for John was aware that such an emotion was impossible when married to the likes of Sir William—but with a spirit resigned to doing her duty as a wife. The same spirit with which she’d endured her situation before John had come to the village and taken up his post as schoolmaster.

  He hadn’t reckoned she would find it too much to bear.

  “She has gone to God now,” Mr. Brocklehurst said.

  John’s head jerked up. Anger flared in his breast. “You can say that? Yet you have consigned her here, to this piece of land, where God does not exist.”

  “God exists everywhere.”

  “I no longer believe that.”

  Mr. Brocklehurst murmured a rebuke. “You are grieving, sir. But you mustn’t question God’s plan. You mustn’t lose your faith.”

  John bent to retrieve the portmanteau that sat at his feet, his hand gripping tight around the leather handle. His trunk had already been corded and sent on ahead. All that remained was to get himself on the stage.

  His gaze raked over Helen’s grave one last time before he turned away. “I already have.”

  Three days later, John arrived in the village of Millcote at half past seven in the evening, his headache in full force. The George Inn was but a ramshackle building near the Yorkshire coast. Nothing much to speak of. A mere stop on the stage. John removed his hat and gloves as he entered. The door slammed behind him, shutting out the rain that had followed him all the way from Lowton.

  “Evening, sir.” A grizzled gentleman in his shirtsleeves approached, hastily donning his coat. The innkeeper, John presumed.

  “Good evening.” John glanced around the common area. A pendant oil lamp hung from the ceiling. It cast a shifting pattern of shadows on the empty tables and chairs. “Is there no one else here?”

  “No, sir. None save the wife and me, and yon coachman. Will you be wanting a room?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. That is, I was expecting to be met by someone from Thornfield Hall.”

  The innkeeper gave him a blank look.

  “Do you know of the place?” John asked.

  “Aye. I know of it.”

  John waited for the innkeeper to elaborate, but the man said nothing more. John suppressed a flicker of impatience. “Has no one been here today from Thornfield?”

  “No, sir. We’ve not had anyone here today excepting the stage. Not with the storm coming.”

  John’s new employer, Mr. Fairfax, might be reluctant to send a carriage out in such miserable weather. If that was the case, John had little choice but to remain here awhile.

  He requested to be taken to a private room. Once there, he removed his frock coat and cravat, and bathed his face with cool water from the pitcher at the washstand.

  There was no mirror available. He didn’t require one. He knew the limits of what could be achieved with his appearance.

  He’d never been considered handsome. Not in the traditional sense. Though tall enough, he was too slight of frame and too plain of feature. His black hair, high forehead, and dark eyes spoke of book learning and quiet contemplation. A man who was all interior thought and emotion. Not a man of action. Not a hero who could have ridden to Helen’s rescue and saved her, damn the consequences.

  A breath shuddered out of him.

  It was this blasted headache. How was a man to think straight?

  The innkeeper had placed John’s portmanteau on a bench at the end of the bed. John opened it, withdrawing a small, rigid leather case. Inside, arrayed in three neat rows, were more than two dozen glass phials of laudanum.

  The village doctor had prescribed it for the worst of John’s headaches, but in the aftermath of Helen’s suicide, John found himself relying on the drug more and more.

  On a good day, a single phial could be made to stretch to several do
ses.

  Today was not a good day.

  Relief wouldn’t be enough. He wanted—needed—oblivion, if only for a few brief moments.

  Uncorking a phial, he swallowed the entirety of the contents in one grimacing gulp. It was sickly sweet. Increasingly familiar—as was the muzzy-headedness that followed.

  He lay down upon the bed and closed his eyes.

  And he must have fallen asleep, for when next he opened them, the candle at his bedside had guttered, and his room was swathed in darkness.

  A knock sounded at the door.

  John sat up, running a hand through his disheveled hair. His mouth was dry as cotton wool. “Yes? What is it?”

  “Coachman’s come from Thornfield, sir. Looking for a Mr. Eyre.”

  “I won’t be a moment.” John swiftly put himself in order, gathered his things, and hastened downstairs.

  The coachman stood at the open door, droplets of rain clinging to his oilskin coat. He eyed John’s trunk, which the innkeeper had left in the passage. “Is this all of your luggage?”

  “Only that and my portmanteau.” John followed the coachman outside. A one-horse conveyance awaited. The coachman hoisted John’s trunk onto the roof and secured it with a length of rope.

  The rain had slowed to a drizzle, the air redolent with the fragrance of wet earth. John saw no evidence of stars in the night sky nor any sign of a moon to light their way. A lamp hung at the front of the carriage, on the right of the coachman’s box, but all else lay in darkness.

  “How far is it to Thornfield?” he asked.

  “Ten miles.” The coachman opened the door of the carriage and waited while John climbed inside. When he was settled, the coachman fastened the door. Seconds later, the carriage shook as he took his place on the box and gave the horse the office to start.

  John leaned back into his seat as the carriage lurched into motion. Their progress, over the course of the next hour, was leisurely. Necessarily so given the darkness, and the evident age of the carriage. The vehicle was neither dashing nor well-sprung. Which suited John very well. He had no desire to be employed by a person of fashion. A simple country life, that was what he required. Someplace quiet and orderly where he could teach his new pupils in peace.