A/N: This story is inspired by a mix of the events in both the miniseries and the book, so things are mixed with both mediums...just so you know (:
Jamaica, 1805
Mr. Edward Savage, formerly of Newcastle, had resided in Spanish Town, Jamaica for many years before his gruesome and untimely death. An accidental flame, unintentional as proven by a following inquest, rose up in the small hours of morning and had engulfed most of the grand plantation where the gentleman lived with his only daughter. He was the single casualty of the disaster. His daughter, the servants and even the animals of the house were all brought to safety. And strangely enough, his beloved library had escaped destruction as well. All his books, every single volume, suffered not a singe.
Lawyers in midnight robes were dispatched following a funeral that buried a nearly empty coffin (nothing was found of Mr. Savage following the fire but his hands). They hemmed and hawed over crinkling, yellowed papers, the Caribbean heat making their starched collars chafe against their pasty necks. It was announced that Miss Mercy Savage was to inherit a sizable one thousand pounds a year. The young woman would also come into the possession of every book, scrap of paper and pot of ink that had been kept in her father's library.
An awkward pause followed as the two men squinted at a hastily scratched note scrawled at the bottom of the will. One of the lawyers pushed the edge of the powdered wig from his sweaty forehead and cleared his throat.
"Though...it seems there is a...stipulation..."
Miss Savage glanced at Mrs. Waters, a respectable neighbor of advanced years who had taken her in after the fire. Mrs. Waters sniffed and lifted her sharp chin. "Well then? What is it?"
"Miss Savage will inherit everything... under the condition that she returns to England."
"But she has no family remaining there. Where will she reside? You cannot be suggesting she live alone? Unchaperoned?" Mrs. Waters babbled, grasping her charge's hands where they lay clenched in her lap.
The younger lawyer with a nervous blink in his right eye shook his head. "N-no, of course not. She is to live as a ward at the estate of her late father's particular friend."
Miss Savage wet her dry lips. "My father had no friends."
"Seems he had one." The lawyer with the wig held the will to the dying light of sunset. Mrs. Waters motioned for one of her servants to light the candles. "A Mr. Gilbert Norrell of Hurtfew Abbey in Yorkshire."
"Well? Do you recognize the name?" Mrs. Waters insisted of her young friend.
Miss Savage shook her head wearily, wishing she could slip back into the chair in a most unbecoming manner and press her hands to her raw face. In all her nineteen years, her father had never mentioned this Gilbert Norrell or Hurtfew Abbey. She had never even seen England, her mother having given birth to her on passage to Jamaica. Mrs. Waters and the two lawyers were just as ignorant of the name Norrell.
Mr. Norrell wasn't a man known by many at the time, in England or beyond the Sargasso Sea. Yet the few in certain circles who had heard mention of him knew one thing. Mr. Norrell possessed the richest and most extensive library of books of English magic in or outside the country.
An even lesser known fact, something only Gilbert Norrell and Edward Savage knew, was that Savage's library was nearly as copious in books of magic. They had been rivals in life, in many ways. But now that death had taken Savage, Norrell was left the sudden victor in a life long contention. Savage's beloved books would now go to Norrell along with the second thing the dead man treasured most in life; his daughter.
Mercy Savage sat at the bone white vanity in Mrs. Waters' guest room. It had the best view overlooking the sea beyond a field of sugar cane. Her hostess said she hoped the vista would be refreshing. The crimson light of dawn burst like a tropical bloom along the horizon, fiery petals slipping along the silvery, calm waters. In the reflection of the vanity mirror, Mercy studied the purple shadows under her blood shot eyes. Her cheeks were sunken and gray. Sleep had been hard to come by since the fire. Every sound in the night, creak of wood in the house, the chime of the clock, set her heart pounding.
Her insomnia had grown worse since the inquest. The authorities had asked if she had witnessed anything strange the night of the fire. In her stunned state, Mercy only blinked back at them and said no. Later, she recalled not seeing but hearing something odd while passing her father's library. The double doors were closed as usual, they always were whether Mr. Savage was working inside or not. She had rarely entered the dusty room, he had always provided her with her own books and sitting room so there was never any need. Though it had never been spoken, Mercy was certain she wouldn't have been welcomed despite her father's affection for her.
The shadows in the windowless hall outside the library had closed in around Mercy as though they threatened to snuff the glow of her single candle. The wood creaked with invisible footfalls and the faint toll of a bell echoed around her. She paused. Her father's voice murmured behind the door, the muted words asking a question she couldn't hear. But she was certain there was no one else inside to reply.
Mercy reached out for the door handle, her fingers hovering over it, when a dizzying fog numbed her mind. She pulled away without hesitation then she marched back to her bedroom. She was roused from a deep sleep by tendrils of smoke leeching under her door. Her chambermaid rushed in with wide eyes and loose hair, her nightgown smudged with soot. By the time they made it outside, the grand house was a loss, heat shattering the windows and the east wing of the house collapsing into ash. But the west wing, where Mr. Savage had built his stone mausoleum of a library, remaining untouched. When venturing through the ruins in the early morning, she found the door knobs to the room still gleaming, untarnished by smoke or fire.
She ran a hand through her loose hair and pulled a swath of it across her face, still smelling the smoke in it despite it being weeks since the fire. She glanced into the mirror and her stomach dropped. Something was missing. She frantically brushed out her light brown curls. Since childhood, a single lock of white hair had grown above her left ear. Inexplicably, now it was gone, the strands matching the rest of her head. The brush clattered to the floor as Mercy gaped at her reflection. Her father had possessed the same strange curl of pure white.
Bleary eyed, Mercy's gaze drifted towards the window. A speck of a ship was growing closer on the horizon, perhaps the one to take her back to England. In a week's time, Mercy Savage would be leaving Spanish Town and all she'd ever known with nothing left of her father, not even the curious strand of white hair they had shared. All that remained was his money. And the books.