The carriage wheels rattled against the uneven cobblestones as Eleanor Whitmore drew her shawl tighter around her shoulders. The mist hung heavy across the countryside, blurring the rolling hills and skeletal trees into gray shadows. She had never traveled this far north, and certainly never alone, but her aunt's letter had been insistent.
"Come to Ashford Manor at once," the letter had read, ink blotched as though written in haste. "There are matters you must know before winter deepens. You are the rightful heir to more than you understand."
Those words had echoed in Eleanor's mind through each long mile.
When at last the manor rose from the fog, it was every inch the haunting vision whispered about in London drawing rooms. Towering spires clawed upward, blackened with centuries of rain. A stone façade loomed, scarred by ivy and time. The windows glowed faintly, but whether from firelight or some illusion of the fog, she could not tell.
