How did I become so superstitious? I was sensible once, was I not? Now my dreams are incensed with asphodel and my nights imbued by haunting strangeness. The gargoyles stir at dusk and the moors howl and gnaw against the battlements. But my every wakeful thought is for the master who reigns o’er this exquisite darkness.

Also by Jeanine Croft

Thorne Bay

Winterly is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 by Jeanine Croft

Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

First published in the United States of America in August 2020 by Jeanine Croft.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact the author at [email protected]

Names: Croft, Jeanine, author.

Title: Winterly / Jeanine Croft

Summary: “In 19th century Whitby, Emma Rose finds herself making a deal with a vampyre—her life in exchange for her sister’s safety, a contract that defies all laws of heaven. When she surrenders to the call of her blood, she finds where she belonged all along—in the arms of the devil himself.”

ISBN 9798670043687 (paperback)

Cover design by Jeanine Croft

Photo by Alisa Ustyuzhanina

Contents

Prologue

Also by Jeanine Croft

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

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Acknowledgments

About the Author

For William.

It is my life’s privilege to be your mother.

Part One

The Master of Winterthurse

“Stars, hide your fires;

Let not light see my black and deep desires.”

William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Chapter One

Littérature Étrange

My dear Mary,—I am consigned to London for the season to chaperone Milli. Would you believe, I alighted from the coach in Lad Lane only to plant my boot and petticoats five inches deep in a feculent mass of horse leavings upon taking my inaugural steps. Thus has my London adventure begun. Your loving and muck-stained cousin,

Emma.

“The great dragon and his dark angels were cast down to earth from heaven; cast into eternal darkness.” The rector’s hair was ruffled with excitement as he sermonized.

Emma Rose smothered an errant yawn, her thoughts straying from angels and dragons to lustful monks and magic mirrors. She lowered her gaze, sure that her cheeks were flushed with wicked scarlet. It had occurred to her last Sunday that reading romances into the small hours was likely better avoided on the night before the Sabbath.

Her second yawn, however, would not be so easily suppressed, and though she tried to disguise it with an inconspicuous hand, her uncle marked the offense with a flattening of his mouth. His brief side glance nudged her like a reproving elbow.

“From that darkness, the dragon corrupts God’s flock…”

Emma’s lip twitched as she observed one of God’s flock surreptitiously picking his nose in the second row pew.

“…Wander not from the light; stray not from the path of righteousness…”

Emma tried to attend the sermon, but was too distracted. She glanced at her sister. Millicent was perched beside her in the pew, unaffected by the dolorous mood that overshadowed every face, her chin tucked demurely into her neck as though in devotional repose beneath her bonnet. Her lashes were lowered to her cheeks in a semblance of prayer, to all observers a most faithful and devout paragon. Fortunately, it was only Emma who appeared to notice her sister’s quiet snoring, overpowered as it was by the fiery homily.

The prospect of the sun becoming black and the moon like blood ought to have been the enemy to slumber, but Milli was an uncomplicated creature and when she put her mind to something—or turned it off, for that matter—she was more often successful than not. She was of that blessed race of people that seemed always to land in muck and walk out unsoiled, reeking of roses. Emma was decidedly not one among that lucky race.

In the course of the service, as the first strident key of the piano was sounding a hymn, Emma felt it incumbent on her to drop Milli’s psalm book, none too gently, in her younger sister’s lap. Accordingly, Milli’s lids flew wide and she shot up directly from her seat to stand beside Emma with a muffled giggle.

Milli glanced at the page number of Emma’s hymnal before flicking hastily through her own. “What have I missed?” she whispered under her breath.

“The stars falling to the earth,” Emma replied. But she quickly suppressed the smirk that was nudging at the corner of her mouth, aware that her uncle’s beetled brow had swung towards her yet again.

He acknowledged with a nod the penitent flush that mottled her cheeks and continued singing. It was devilish unfair of him to have noticed Emma’s misbehavior so readily yet remain oblivious to her sister’s. Milli, God bless her, would only have to flash a smile at the surliest judge and be acquitted of murder despite bloodied hands. But then beauty always would enjoy an unfair advantage over the rest of God’s plainer creatures.

Her earlier good humor now much subdued, Emma lent her voice to the hymn and absently studied the faces of the parishioners. There was an ominous tension in the room that had little to do with the dour young rector’s apocalyptic sermon. The whole of London, in fact, seemed invested