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Chapter One

1880

Kingsdown, Kent

England

Audrey Wakefield pulled her light brown hair back and pinned it to the nape of her neck with a tortoiseshell coainst the cool pane and closed her eyes at the sound of the raindrops hitting the glass She wished the skies would let loose and that the rain would become a heavy torrent to help drown out the other sounds of the house that she didn’t wish to hear

As if she commanded it, a sudden burst of rain pelted the , and she sat up in disbelief She arched and touched her lower back, feeling the steel stays in her corset underneath her dark blue dress The rain iht the sounds around her

She could hear Cook preparing supper in the kitchen with the help of the one kitchen maid who ca to herself in the back parlor

Polly was doubtlessly dusting theelse in the roo “The Boy I Love” by Sol Smith Russell

“’They locked me in an upper room, and took away the key Because I would not wed a man, who never suited me They did not know the female heart, or they had plainly seen, how locks and bars could never keep, a girl of seventeen’”

Audrey stood up and closed the curtains over theas Polly continued to sing theAudrey was not allowed to attend the usta, deear Her ht when, in 1868, a faulty gas chandelier had caused panic and killed twenty-three people in Manchester Two years prior, a portion of the ceiling had fallen into the pit and killed thirty-seven people

Though the ht they sounded quite h Polly was only three years older than her, she seemed worldly and sophisticated when she talked of her time spent in the hall, the boys she walked out with, and the music

Audrey opened the door to the small hallway that bordered her parents’ room and sister’s room and heard the sound she hated It was the sound of heavy coughing co froo, and during that ti and illness seemed to have intensified He had a fever and had little appetite so he had lost weight, and Audrey was frightened for him

Sheherself to face her father When she entered the roolass oil lamp illuminated the room Her father lay still in his bed Her mother was seated beside him