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Chapter 1

Dartmoor, Devon

Early May, 1828

DORIAN STOOD IN the library of Rad put theIn the distance, the moors stretched out in all their bleak beauty They beckoned to hily now as they’d called to his sickly fancy erously ill, too weak even to hold his pen

In August, Hoskins, a solicitor’s clerk, had found him barely conscious, slumped over an ink-splotched document

I’ll fetch a doctor

No No doctors, for God’s sake Dartmoor Take me to Dartmoor There’s moneysavedunder the floor-board

Hoskins ht have absconded with the little hoard, and heaven knew he neededon a clerk’s pittance Instead, he’d not only done as Dorian asked but stayed on to look after him He’d remained even after Dorian recovered—or seemed to

That apparent recovery had not deluded Dorian He’d suspected, early on, that the illness, like hisof the end

In January, when the headaches began, his suspicions were confirly vicious, as hers had done

The night before last, he’d wanted to bash his head against the wall

paintearing at htcouldn’t think

He understood now, fully, what his mother had meant Even so, he would have borne the pain, would not have sent for Kneebones yesterdaywraith he’d seen Then Dorian had realized so must be done—before the faint visual illusions blossomed into full-blown phantasms, as they had for his mother, and drove him to violence, as they had done her

“I knohat it is,” Dorian had told the doctor when he came yesterday “I know it’s the same brain disease and incurable But I had rather finish ed I had rather notendprecisely as my mother did, if it can possibly be helped”

Naturally, Kneebones must satisfy himself and arrive at his own conclusions But there was only one possible conclusion, as Dorian well knew His ht hosts” she’d begun seeing while awake, not simply in dreams, as she’d said

Six eneration was progressing ly insalubrious ”

Still, Kneebones had assured him that the violent fits could be e doses

“Your father was too sparing of the laudanurandfather ca that unhappy woman into an opiu it ‘poison’ and saying it caused the hallucinations—when it was the onlyher”

Dorian s that conversation Opiate addiction was the least of his anxieties, and an overdose, in tiht offer a welcome release

In time, but not yet

Outwardly, he was healthy and strong, and in Dart that had haunted him since his last year at Eton, when temptation, in the shape of a woman, had first beckoned, and he’d found he was no match for it Here, as his mother had said, there was no terew restless, he rode through theand hard, until he was exhausted

Here he’d found a refuge Heas he could

Hearing footsteps in the hall, Dorian turned away from theand thrust his hair back fro, but fashion had ceased signifying to Dorian years ago, and it certainly wouldn’t matter when he lay in his coffin

The coffin didn’t trouble hiet used to the idea of dying Now, thanks to the pro would stupefy hi he would become, while those who looked after him needn’t fear for their lives