Sarah Miller, aged eleven and increasingly dubious about the merits of proper behavior, stepped from the train three hours and fourteen minutes late. Her least favorite dress—a crimson monstrosity with puffed sleeves that her mother insisted made her look “darling”—had evolved during the journey from merely objectionable to actively mutinous. The collar refused to lie flat, jutting out at odd angles like a defiant chin, while the ribbon had, as if possessed by a mischievous spirit, untied itself for the fourth time despite Sarah’s best efforts.
The station platform at Little Thornbury was like a forgotten stage set, complete with a single guttering lamp that cast more shadow than light. A strange mist had settled in. Sarah gathered her small suitcase and stepped down from the carriage, trying to decide if looking sorry was worth the effort. The platform was empty save for an ancient porter who appeared to be dozing against his trolley—though one might reasonably wonder if he had simply been forgotten there.
She checked her watch—the one Father had given her before departing on “important business” (grown-ups have a peculiar habit of making their absences sound grander than they are)—and winced. Eight forty-seven. Aunt Margaret would be furious. There were few things in England more formidable than an aunt who had been kept waiting.
Beyond the platform, her aunt’s Rolls-Royce waited like a glossy black beetle, its headlamps cutting twin beams through the thickening fog. Mr. Hawthorne, the chauffeur, had evidently been waiting those extra three hours and fourteen minutes without moving a single facial muscle. He had the remarkable ability to look disappointed without changing his expression at all—a talent Sarah suspected was taught at some secret school for servants.
“Miss Sarah,” he said as Sarah climbed in, managing to make her name sound like a minor criminal offense. The leather seats creaked ominously, as if joining in his disapproval.
“Your aunt has been most concerned.” The way he said it suggested that “concerned” was a particularly serious condition, possibly requiring medical attention. “She had to cancel her evening engagement with Lady Weatherby.” He paused meaningfully. “And the Bishop.”
“The train was late,” Sarah offered, though she knew perfectly well that in her aunt’s world, trains were never late—it was passengers who failed to arrive on time. She clutched her small suitcase, which contained, among other contraband, three penny dreadfuls and a bag of sherbet lemons that had already melted into a sticky rebellion against proper luggage etiquette.
The car wound through lanes that seemed determined to be as circuitous as possible, past hedgerows that had clearly been threatened into perfect geometry. Sarah watched a rabbit dart into the undergrowth and envied its freedom. She counted the minutes until her aunt’s inevitable lecture on punctuality, propriety, and the proper deportment of young ladies—though not necessarily in that order. The summer stretched ahead of her like a sentence, and she was already plotting her escape, even if she hadn’t yet figured out from what, or to where.
As they approached the manor’s gates, Sarah could have sworn she saw a white stag watching from between the trees. But when she blinked, it was gone. And thus begins our tale, for white stags do not merely wander into stories by accident, and the paths they lead us down are never straight, never safe, and never quite what they seem.
* * *
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Thornbury Manor’s entrance hall stretched upward into shadows, its oak-paneled walls wearing centuries of polish like armor against change. Portraits of severe-looking ancestors gazed down, each painted as if they’d just caught someone tracking mud across the carpet.
There exists, in certain English country houses, a peculiar sort of silence that feeds on proper behavior and grows fat on the expectations of elderly aunts. Thornbury Manor had perfected this silence over centuries, and it hung in the entrance hall like an invisible fog, broken only by the methodical ticking of a grandfather clock that had likely been judging visitors since the War of the Roses.
Into this carefully cultivated quiet stumbled Sarah Miller, her least favorite dress now looking as if it had been sacrificed in a ritual—though in truth, it had merely endured a three-hour train journey and an unfortunate encounter with a jam sandwich.
“Sarah Elizabeth Miller.” Aunt Margaret’s voice could have frozen time itself. She stood beneath the grand staircase, a monument to propriety in pewter silk, her silver hair arranged in the sort of architectural achievement that seemed as much a feat of engineering as hairstyling—almost certainly reinforced with steel pins and sheer willpower.
“The train—” Sarah began, but explanations, like proper young ladies, should never run, and this one tripped over itself before it could properly begin.
“Your collar appears to have staged a rebellion,” Aunt Margaret observed, her gaze dropping to Sarah’s neck where the offensive white fabric drooped in abject surrender. “And I see your ribbon has deserted entirely. Most irrrr-regulahr.” She rolled the word with a theatrical trill, delivering it with the kind of affected grandeur that only the irredeemably posh could wield without a shred of irony.
Sarah’s fingers found the empty space where the ribbon had been. Perhaps it had made a break for freedom somewhere between the car and the front door. She rather hoped it had succeeded.
“I trust you have an explanation for—” Aunt Margaret’s eyes flicked to the grandfather clock, an imposing sentinel of mahogany that measured out each second like a miser counting coins. You’re late, you’re late, you’re spectacularly late, each tick accused. “—three hours of delay?” The clock chose that moment to strike nine, each resonant dong falling like a judge’s gavel.
“The Bishop’s wife—” but whatever catastrophe had befallen the Bishop’s wife would remain forever a mystery, for at that precise moment, Sarah’s salvation arrived in the form of a tremendous crash from the butler’s pantry.
In the momentary distraction—during which Aunt Margaret’s head turned with the sort of deliberate slowness that suggested someone would shortly be seeking new employment—Sarah accomplished what generations of children had dreamed of but few had achieved: a perfect escape. Sarah fled up the stairs, taking them two at a time—a scandalous act that would have earned another lecture had her aunt not already turned to interrogate the poor butler. (The butler, who had served through two wars, three generations of the family’s eccentricities, and exactly seventeen arguments over the “proper” way to serve clotted cream, would later reflect on the pantry catastrophe with an odd sense of relief. It was, he later recounted to his fellow passengers on the 3:15 to Brighton, without question, infinitely preferable to remaining anywhere near the vicinity of the Bishop’s wife after what she’d done.)
Behind her, she could hear the rising tide of her aunt’s voice, but the upper landing beckoned like a friendly shore, and Sarah made for it with the determination of a shipwrecked sailor sighting land. The heavy carpeting muffled her footsteps, making her feel, just for a moment, like she might actually be getting away with something.