About this story
At Thorpe Ambrose you court Eleanor Milroy among her father's clocks while Lydia Gwilt's forged letters draw blood from the engagement. At midnight she boards your yacht with the doctor's key and stops the clockwork works under the cabin lining. Fifty chapters carry you from a Somerset inn to a Norfolk wedding, with Midwinter for best man.
How it opens
November rain blurred the inn windows, and mud from the farm track dried in ridges across the floor.
Two men held a fevered stranger in a chair while his bare foot clenched the rail beneath him.
Village SurgeonMove him farther than the back room tonight, and the journey may finish him.
Decimus BrockThe inn cannot be made a hospital merely because charity has found no better door.
Choose
Then I will pay for the room until he can safely leave it.
First let the surgeon quiet him; accounts can survive the night.