Best Books of 2021 ·NPR ALA/The Reading List Best Horror 2021 Pick Longlisted for the Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement in a Novel, 2021 From the Bram Stoker-nominated author of The Luminous Dead comes a gothic fantasy horror—The Death of Jane Lawrence.
"Narrator Mandy Weston's cool narration is the perfect match to this tale, making the twists and turns in the plot especially surprising ...This tale mixes gothic horror, ghosts, and a love story to create a potent listen." - AudioFile Magazine
"A jewel box of a Gothic novel." —New York Times Book Review
“Delicious.... By the time the book reached that point of no return, I was so invested that I would have followed Jane into the very depths of hell.” —NPR.org
“Intense and amazing! It’s like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell meets Mexican Gothic meets Crimson Peak.” —BookRiot
Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations, and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town.
Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed. Gone is the bold, courageous surgeon, and in his place is a terrified, paranoid man—one who cannot tell reality from nightmare, and fears Jane is an apparition, come to haunt him. By morning, Augustine is himself again, but Jane knows something is deeply wrong at Lindridge Hall, and with the man she has so hastily bound her safety to.
Set in a dark-mirror version of post-war England, Caitlin Starling crafts a new kind of gothic horror from the bones of the beloved canon. This Crimson Peak-inspired story assembles, then upends, every expectation set in place by Shirley Jackson and Rebecca, and will leave readers shaken, desperate to begin again as soon as they are finished.
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press
Release date:
October 5, 2021
Publisher:
St. Martin's Publishing Group
Print pages:
352
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DR. AUGUSTINE LAWRENCE’S cuffs were stained with blood and his mackintosh had failed against the persistent drizzle. He looked damp, miserable, and scared.
Of her.
Jane Shoringfield couldn’t take her eyes off him, even though her attention was clearly overwhelming. This was the man she intended to marry, if he’d have her. If she could convince him.
He was frozen in the doorway to her guardian’s study, and she was similarly still just behind the desk. Even from here, she could see that she had several inches on him in height, that his dark hair was full, slightly waved, and going silver already at his left temple, and that his wide eyes were a murky green, and gentle, but almost sad in the wrong light.
She hadn’t expected him to be handsome.
“Doctor!”
Her guardian’s voice boomed down the hallway, and the man startled, turning to face it. “Mr. Cunningham,” he greeted in turn. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I lost track of your maid, and—”
“No matter, no matter. How good of you to join us! I was afraid you might change your mind.”
Jane couldn’t see Mr. Cunningham, but she could picture him perfectly: white hair carefully combed back, a fine but comfortable suit, bright brown eyes. Short and narrow, almost too narrow for his orator’s voice and charisma.
“I’m afraid I may not be the best or most decorous company,” the doctor said, hazarding a furtive glance back at her that lasted only one appraising second. “One too many house calls. I wasn’t able to stop back at the surgery.”
That explained the state of his cuffs, at least; but that meant he wasn’t early. Jane looked at the clock and winced. An hour had passed while she wasn’t looking. She wasn’t ready. She was still wearing her reading glasses, and she could feel a smudge of ink on her temple. Mr. Cunningham’s account books lay spread out before her.
She was not making the best first impression to aid her suit.
“Don’t worry,” Mr. Cunningham said, closer now but still out of sight. “You will find that this isn’t a peacocking courtship.”
The doctor’s cheeks pinked. “I understand, but I have given it some thought, and I must—”
“Before you continue,” her guardian said, cutting him off, “I want to remind you that you have not heard her logic yet. I think you should.”
It had been Mr. Cunningham who had presented the match to Dr. Lawrence last week on her behalf, when the doctor had come round to evaluate his lungs in preparation for the Cunninghams’ great move to Camhurst, capital of Great Breltain and a full day’s ride away from Larrenton. However her guardian had framed the proposition, it had been enough to get the doctor here, now, today.
Looking very pale and very nervous. Looking like he was about to flee.
“Please do let me explain,” Jane said, grateful that her voice came out more than a whisper. The doctor turned to her again, lips slightly parted in surprise, whatever protest he’d been about to voice—whatever demurring—silenced.
Mr. Cunningham laughed and appeared in the doorway at last. “Ah, that explains what waylaid you.”
“I apologize, I hadn’t meant to … spy,” Dr. Lawrence said, weakly. “Miss Shoringfield.”
“Dr. Lawrence,” she said, inclining her head in greeting. “Will you allow me at least to make my argument in full?”
The doctor looked between her and Mr. Cunningham and recoiled, the reflex of a cornered animal.
She was coming at this all wrong; she should have paid better mind to the time, met him in the sitting room as Mrs. Cunningham had planned out the night before. But they were here, now.
Save me, she thought at Mr. Cunningham.
“The brandy,” he said, not hearing her desperate thought, “is in the sideboard.”
And then, chuckling, he was gone.
Jane and the doctor regarded each other again across the space between door and desk, and Jane gestured, as gently as she could, to a chair. The doctor hesitated, but at last took a few tentative steps into the study. He didn’t sit. Jane turned from him and busied herself pouring two glasses.
As her hands moved, she summoned up the steps of her argument, and selected, for her opening, the strongest and least specific to her situation. “Marriage is, at heart, a business arrangement, not one of hearts or souls,” she said, without turning. “It is best to discuss it plainly from the first.”
She could hear his startled exhale.
Still too much. And yet she didn’t know how else to approach this. She had already botched whatever chance at a gentle introduction they might have had.
Keeping her back to him as she stoppered the decanter, she continued: “I have evaluated our options thoroughly, Dr. Lawrence. Leaving aside dances, which I suspect you have no time for, and childhood acquaintances, whom I haven’t seen in many years, there are few opportunities for courtship for us.
“So I start from a premise of shared goals.”
She listened for his fleeing footsteps.
They didn’t come.
“Shared goals,” he said instead. “And what shared goals do we have? We have never met.”
There was no derision in his tone, no mockery. He sounded wary, but curious. She seized on it and turned back to him. She came around the desk, holding out his glass from a respectable distance. He did not retreat; instead, he took it from her, careful to avoid brushing fingers.
“We are both unmarried, and at an age where that is beginning to raise questions,” she said. “A man of your standing and appearance could choose whichever woman he wanted. You haven’t. For whatever reason, you do not wish for a normal marriage. I’m not asking for one.”
She watched him, trying to measure his response. At first, there was something very much like want in his eyes, but then it was replaced by the fear again.
Why?
She took a small sip of her brandy to keep herself from fidgeting.
“I cannot marry you,” he said.
The brandy burned in her throat.
“I don’t mean it as a slight against you, Miss Shoringfield,” he added. “But while your logic is—impressive, it is not appropriate for me to take a wife. Any wife.”
“You are unmarried,” Jane repeated, confused.
“I am not married,” he agreed. His jaw tensed as he considered his next words. The fear in his eyes had been replaced with something else. Something more distant, more pained. “Please, Miss Shoringfield. I understand that you have thought through your proposal at length, but I do not wish to cause you more pointless effort. I cannot accept.”
The polite, proper thing to do was to apologize, accept his refusal, and subside. Approach the next man on the list she had drafted, another who met her criteria, who might be more amenable. She needed to sit, and to smile, and yet she found she could do neither.
“Dr. Lawrence,” she said, gripping her glass tightly, “please.”
He ducked his head.
“My parents died when I was very young, when Ruzka began gassing Camhurst during the war,” she started, then stopped, hands shaking. She hadn’t meant to say it; she never spoke of her parents. But her honesty worked a change in him; he lifted his chin, brows drawing together in concern. She pushed forward. “They left me in Mr. Cunningham’s care, along with an annuity to support me. Here in Larrenton, it has been more than enough to cover my costs, even as I’ve grown into marriageable age. There is, however, no dowry, and now the Cunninghams leave for Camhurst within the month.”
She fought to keep her voice even as she spoke.
“Were I to accompany them—and they have requested that I do just that—my expenses would outstrip my annuity even if I were to largely avoid society, which would be impossible given Mr. Cunningham’s new judgeship.” And she would be surrounded by shell-scarred buildings and new construction that tried to replace what had been destroyed, none of which she could stomach even the thought of. But that was too personal to share, by far. “They are willing to pay the difference, but I am not willing to let them.”
The doctor’s mind worked. “But as you can’t remain here unmarried…”
“Exactly. If I’m to stay, I have to find a husband, or things will be quite a bit more difficult than even the capital would be.”
He shook his head, finally looking at her again. “I understand your plight, and I feel for you, Miss Shoringfield, but you do have other options. Surely there are other options. You are…” His cheeks colored, and she remembered again how he’d looked at her from the doorway. Fear, fear that had been caused by her proposal hanging above his head like a sword, knowing he would have to decline. But perhaps it wasn’t just fear—or if it had been fear, it had been fear of a different sort than she’d first thought.
His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “I can’t imagine you will have much difficulty finding a more suitable husband.”
“You are a perfectly suitable husband,” she said, steeling herself and stepping forward again. She could hear his breathing, they were so close. The wariness in his eyes was entirely gone now, replaced by fascination. “And I am not asking you for charity, Dr. Lawrence. I have skills that would be useful to you.”
“Skills?”
“I attended Sharpton School for Girls until I was fifteen,” she said. “And I have kept Mr. Cunningham’s books for the last six years. I maintain the ledger, I work with the banks, I help him set his fees and collect on them. I can only imagine work of the same sort must be done at a surgery.”
He sucked in a surprised breath. “You weren’t speaking in metaphors when you said this was a business arrangement.”
“My remaining annuity funds are not so large as to directly benefit you, I suspect,” she said. “But I do bring mathematical skill, and a methodical nature. I can run the business of being a doctor, and you can focus on the medicine.”
“You know nothing about a doctor’s life, about the business or the medicine.”
“I can learn. I want to learn.”
He hesitated, stunned, then fumbled out, “There is blood, and great sadness, and terror. Being part of it—it won’t be easy.” But it sounded less like a warning and more like a test. An invitation. “It is a calling, not a skill.”
“Ledgers and sums are my calling, just as medicine is yours. The rest I can learn, when the most important element is fulfilled.”
“It is thankless, and I often won’t be home. Night calls, and—”
“But if this is a business arrangement,” she interrupted, “then it is more employment than marriage. I won’t mind your absence. You are suitable.”
She had brought him to social concerns, down from professional; she was making progress. She held her breath.
He took a hasty swallow of brandy. He glanced toward the ceiling. Then he looked back at her, and said, “You would be alone. I spend my nights at my family home, several miles out of town. It would be an inviolable condition, that you never join me there.”
She nearly fell to her knees in relief. He had begun to consider. He hadn’t rejected her, not outright, not this time. She remained standing, but only barely, and managed to smile. “As I said—you are perfectly suitable.”
From the way his brow creased, she’d surprised him again. “You knew?”
“I have heard rumors,” she said. He had only been in practice in Larrenton for a little over two months, and Jane was no gossipmonger, but the Cunninghams always knew something about everybody in town. “Everybody knows you employ a runner at the surgery to fetch you, though most still think it’s because you’re often out on house calls at night. Only a few have noticed the extent of the waiting time, and how it’s consistently necessary to wait.”
“You are observant,” he said.
She laughed.
The sound prompted a final transformation in him. The fear left him entirely, and he regarded her, shoulders straight.
“I should not marry you,” he protested once more, but it was perfunctory.
“A chance,” she said. “Give me a chance. Let me prove to you my worth. I will meet your conditions, if you will meet mine.”
He thought a moment, then nodded. “Very well. Come by the surgery. See what it is like in the particulars, instead of the abstract, before we make any binding decisions. There will likely be blood, and certainly hard work.”
“When shall I come by?”
“Tomorrow, midmorning. Wear clothing you don’t mind getting soiled. I’ll have you take a look at it all, the patient files, the finances, and you can sit in on any calls that come in. While sums may be your calling, you will still need to become something of a nurse, in case anybody arrives at the surgery in my absence.”
“Of course,” she said. “Tomorrow, then, Dr. Lawrence. I shall attempt to prove myself. And you can do your best to scare me off.”
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