Cover

BRONTË SISTERS MYSTERIES

The Vanished Bride

The Diabolical Bones

Dedication

Dedicated to my dear friend Julie Akhurst

Epigraph

The night is darkening round me,

The wild winds coldly blow;

But a tyrant spell has bound me,

And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending

Their bare boughs weighed with snow;

The storm is fast descending

And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,

Wastes beyond wastes below;

But nothing drear can move me;

I will not, cannot go.

—Emily Brontë

Haworth Parsonage, April 1852

Charlotte could not conceive of a place more beautiful than Haworth and the surrounding countryside in the spring.

The trees were heavy with blossom, the moors green and fecund with new heather, still tender and soft underfoot, dotted with the little white clouds of cotton grass that danced in the brisk breeze. And yet, as much as Charlotte was glad to be at home, recovering after a long illness and with nothing but time and the freedom to write, it could not be denied that even now, all these long months later, months filled with travel and acclaim, she felt trapped: a prisoner of isolation.

Still, even with the trips to London, the company of Thackeray, Mrs. Gaskell and, yes, dearest George Smith, she felt always as if a part of her heart were missing. No, that wasn’t quite right: as if three-quarters of her heart were missing, each one taken on to heaven before her by her late brother and sisters. If only some miracle could return them home to her, then perhaps she could laugh more, perhaps she could love more and, most important, perhaps she could write more. Indeed, there were some long, stormy days and nights when she felt such a craving for support and companionship as she could not truly express. It was as if her loneliness were whittling away a little bit of her, day by day. When the prospect of marriage, of being loved, had come to her, in the form of Mr. James Taylor, all she had felt was ice in her veins.

With the playful wind cooling her cheeks, Charlotte walked on, her mind wandering so far from her route that it was with some surprise she stopped outside the highest dwelling on the moor, Top Withens Hall. She paused for a while, even now a little reluctant to draw nearer to the cold grey edifice that looked more like a haunted ruin than a busy home and farmhouse.

Top Withens’s gargoyle sentinels looked down on her just as fiercely now as they had on that dark afternoon. Was it really six years since the bitter Christmas when Charlotte, Emily and Anne had trudged through the snow to this very gate, unaware of the hidden horror that lay beyond? Despite the mild sunny afternoon, Charlotte shuddered at the memory; she had never forgotten what it felt like to stand in the presence of unadulterated evil.