The Wolf of Haskell Hall Read online

  As if she tasted delicious….Had he not said something similar to the last Haskell heiress in the heat of his passion only an hour ago? Lil’s hands tightened on the reins. With a strength she didn’t know she possessed, she backed the stallion away from the tall enigma standing silent under her accusatory gaze.

  Make excuses. Give me a reasonable explanation. Do something but stand there in silence while you let me think the worst. But he didn’t react except to release the stallion’s bridle so she could back the animal another, safer, step.

  Maybe a glint of desolation flashed amber caution from his eyes for a bare instant, but then his cursed Griffith pride descended between them like a steel bulkhead. Think what you like. I warned you to stay away.

  Why had she not listened? Lil wondered dully. She knew why, but the truth made this bitter fruition to her burgeoning passion no sweeter. She’d gambled everything she had because of her powerful need for this man. Her friends. Her good name. Her body. Her heart….

  ….and her life. Gambled on a steadfast faith that went beyond reason or propriety: even as a wolf, he was not capable of killing except in self-defense.

  Something far more tangible than faith mocked her: an obscene bundle of bones and rotted flesh. The stench from the body overlay everything, and the smell made her stomach queasy.

  She backed the stallion another step. Only when she was certain she could wheel the animal about and get away if this ruthless stranger lunged at her did she stop and say steadily, “If you tell me you only found the body, that you didn’t bury her, that you don’t know how she got there, that you didn’t kill her, I’ll….try to believe you.”

  “I buried her.”

  No hesitation. No regret. He might have been discussing the weather, or the price of corn.

  Biting back a moan of pain, Lil reined the stallion about and kicked him. He bolted, and she had to hang on to his neck. Tears streamed from her eyes, trailing into her temples from the force of the wind as she seemed to be flying. She had no thought of guiding Brutus, no fear they might stumble into a bog, and little care if they did. And no fear of riding any longer. Such foibles seemed foolish now in the face of this terror that wore her lover’s face.

  For Ian had made good on his promise. Symbolically, he’d held her heart in his hands and crushed it.

  Perhaps he would do so in reality, next.

  When, thirty minutes later, Lil found herself on the road, she looked around in vague surprise. Her hands ached from holding the reins, her thighs were bruised, but the stallion seemed to know where he was going without guidance from her. Ian rode on the moors every day, and Lil realized, with the small portion of her brain that seemed to be functioning, that she only had to give the animal its head to get home.

  Home….A sudden poignant longing for Colorado almost overcame her. There were no bogs in her beloved mountains. No desolate, lonely brown spaces marked with spontaneous clusters of vibrant life.

  No tall, taciturn, tempestuous man with a spirit as proud and free as the land he loved…..

  As Brutus began plodding toward home, Lil realized she was still crying. Odd that joy could so quickly turn to fear. But she had no one to blame but herself. Lil sat up straight in the saddle. This would not do. If anyone saw her like this….With a last hiccup, Lil swallowed back a month’s worth of memories, trading them for a lifetime of regret.

  But this time, she’d face the truth, and not dress it up in silly romantic notions.

  Her lover was a werewolf..

  He was capable of killing.

  And his lupine being hated no one so much as the last heiress of Haskell Hall. How could she have been so foolish as to think the man loved her? His human half turned the blood lust of the wolf into sexual lust for her body.

  Just as she lusted for him, she tried to tell herself. But if her feelings derived only from carnality, why did she feel as if she were dying inside, where his claws struck deepest?

  Tears came to her eyes again. A faint glimmer of hope couldn’t be snuffed even by this dark denial. Her own feelings, at least, went beyond lust. She’d not been able to admit it before, but stripped of the veneer of pride and romanticism, she knew now that Ian Griffith, in both his personas, was more precious to her than any pile of moldy stone or pretentious prudishness.

  Which is why she’d risked everything she had on the gamble of his decency.

  And lost….

  Leaving her with the grimmest reality of all. She doubled over in the saddle while she clutched her abdomen.

  Dear heaven, what if she carried even now the seeds of his madness within her?

  Inside the parsonage’s tiny salon, Shelly shared a solemn stare with her cousin. “So you think she went off with Ian?”

  “I know she did. More than one villager saw them ride off together. But why does it matter? We’re weeks away from a full moon, and it’s daylight to boot. I’m sure Miss Haskell is in no danger. At the moment, anyway.”

  How could she voice her suspicions when they were only half-formed? The sudden urge to tell him of her own likely condition almost overcame Shelly, but she bit back the strange compulsion. He was family, true, but he was also the vicar here. His first loyalty was to his villagers, as it should be. And he was already worried enough about Ian. So she only stood, smoothed her glove over her burning hand and smiled. “Very well, I’ll make my way back on the road, look for a spot where a horse enters the moors.”

  Her cousin cocked his head. “Is it really so easy as that to track them?”

  “I learned much when I lived with the native Americans. How to skin a buffalo. How to make moccasins. And a horse on a soft surface, especially one carrying two people, is very easy to track.”

  But when Shelly turned for the door, Vicar Holmes said, “Please, my dear cousin, before you forge boldly on your newest mission, I need you to translate something for me.”

  Mystified, Shelly followed him as he walked toward the far edge of the village. And tried not to notice the worried way he kept eyeing her gloved hands. Almost as if he knew.

  When she arrived back at the Hall, Lil found it in a commotion. Horses, wagons, even a few work carts, anything that could move, were being marshaled by Jeremy into some sort of massive hunt. But for what?

  Riding up quietly behind the barn on Brutus, Lil dismounted and led him into the empty stable. She led the tired animal straight into a stall, unsaddled him, and gave him a ration of oats. Then she walked into the front yard, where half the male servants were lined up, listening grimly to Jeremy.

  “We don’t come back until we find her. God willing, she only fell out o’ the curricle somehow, and is even now walkin’ home. And if ye see one o’ them fiends of hell,” Jeremy brandished his shotgun, “call fer me and I’ll dispatch him back where he belongs, as I should have the last time instead of listenin’ to such drivel as to bring him home.”

  With a jolt, Lil realized Jeremy had organized a search party. For her. The carriage horse obviously brought the curricle home, and they thought the worst. But where was Shelly?

  Ashamed that she hadn’t thought of the reaction at the hall in the midst of her own emotional turmoil, Lil hurried forward. “No need, Jeremy.”

  As one, every eye turned on her. A few of the men cursed in anger, a few smiled in relief. Jeremy reacted in typical fashion. First he hugged her fiercely, protectively, then he set her away and shook her slightly. “Ye madcap hoyden, ye added another ten years I cannot spare to me age. Where ye been?”

  Lil looked at the attentive servants and back at Jeremy. “I’ll explain later. But please, everyone, accept my apologies for causing needless worry. I’m….fine.” Maybe in another hundred years or so. She walked off, and she knew from the look on Jeremy’s face that she’d not heard the last of this.

  As Lil entered her chambers, Safira was even more distraught, pacing up and down, muttering to herself in voluble Haitian while she cupped a strange amulet in her hands. Lil realized the mutterings were more
of an incantation, and she wondered what spell Safira cast now.

  When she saw Lil, Safira swayed in place with such relief Lil had to rush over to support her. Steadying herself, Safira immediately put the amulet, a handmade combination of bird feathers, tiny bones and a glowing moonstone, over Lil’s neck. Lil’s nose quivered, and it didn’t take her long to realize the feathers had come from dead birds. A werewolf will probably be drawn to a moonstone, she thought to herself, but for the moment. But when she tried to take the amulet off, Safira covered her hands with her own.

  “No, mistress. It will glow when a shapeshifter nears. And it will glow brightest, as blue as a sapphire, when the one who seeks your blood takes his true form to kill you.”

  Since the other werewolf had died in the bog, Lil didn’t need such a warning device. She knew who the only werewolf was. In both forms. And no moonstone could ward off his power over her….

  But Safira continued, “Since you will not leave, at least you will be warned.”

  The words were on the tip of Lil’s tongue: Yes, you’re right, let us leave this cursed place. But she couldn’t force them out. For the first time since arriving here, she was well and truly scared, but she refused to desert these taciturn people she’d grown to love because she was a coward.

  Besides, a stubborn spark of faith danced, a firefly in the darkest reaches of her soul. Maybe Ian had killed the girl when the blood lust was upon him, but that didn’t mean he’d strike again. And if she ran away, he’d haunt her ever after, waking or sleeping, four-legged, two-legged, until she, too, went mad.

  My fate is your fate.

  She had to know if he cared for her enough to take a vestige of her into the moon madness with him, even as she could now be carrying a vestige of him. “Thank you, Safira.”

  “Promise me you will not go about without it,” Safira said sternly.

  Lil grimaced. “How do you always read my mind?”

  “Because, for a Christian woman, your thoughts are so clear. Your mind is as pure as your heart, mistress. Why else do I stay in this cold place where demons walk the night?”

  Safira’s faith in her did what neither betrayal, fear, nor scandal could effect: they made Lil collapse in tears. Smelly amulet and all, Lil ducked her head against Safira’s comforting bosom and wailed uncertainly, “Oh Safira, what will I do?”

  And out came the whole sordid story.

  That night over dinner, composed but pale, Lil took one look at the long table swallowed by shadows and had the servants light more candles. She sent for both Shelly and Jeremy. And tried not to listen for steps too quiet to hear anyway. Surely even her arrogant estate manager wasn’t bold enough to set foot in her household again. But where would he go? What would he do? What a fool she was to still care. But she did. However, before she had the right to ask about Ian, she had another duty to perform. To the girl who died…..

  When Shelly and Jeremy arrived, Lil waited until they’d been served their first course before she said bleakly, “Shelly, I would appreciate it if you’d send someone for the sheriff. I….know what happened to the serving maid. Her family has a right to give her a decent burial.”

  Instead of gasping in shock, Shelly calmly wiped her mouth and looked at her employer across the table. Lil had seated Jeremy and Shelly both to her right, a whim Jeremy obviously appreciated and Shelly did not.

  “Ian brought the body into town while I was still there,” Shelly said mildly, as if she discussed nothing untoward. “That is one reason why I was late returning. I examined it, aided by my cousin.”

  “And?” Lil took a sip of wine to steady her voice. Please, oh please, a knock on the head, she was trampled, she was–

  “Like the others, I’m afraid. Scavengers had started on her, but not enough to hide the evidence. The tooth and claw marks match the other markings exactly.”

  Lil’s glass tipped over and she watched, thinking how like the port was to blood, as it dripped over the table to the floor.

  Mouthing a salty oath under his breath, Jeremy used his own napkin to swipe up the wine. “Steady there, missy. It’s a rare storm that don’t allow no port.” His eyes twinkled at the bottle as he poured himself a hefty second serving.

  Shelly even lost herself so much as to smile in surprise at his play on words.

  Lil stared blindly at the crimson stain. Like the stain on the girl’s flesh–what remained of it. Like her vermillion skirt.

  Like Lil’s own sin. “And where is Ian now?” she whispered huskily.

  Shelly held her own port up to the light, admired its clarity, and took a sip, before she said baldly, “In gaol. You see, when he brought the body in, he confessed to killing her, too.”

  The room became a whirl of crimson drapes, wine carpets and lamb far too bloody on Lil’s plate to be appetizing. A roaring in her ears, Lil had to clutch the table edge, but the solid mahogany was rubber to her touch.

  Jeremy’s voice swam at her through a sea of red, “Mistress? Mistress!”

  The next thing she knew, Lil awoke on the divan in the salon, Shelly fanning her, Jeremy bathing her brow with a clean, wet towel. Lil tossed the towel off and sat up, the fogginess in her mind dissipated to crystal clarity: she had to get Ian out. If need be, they could lock him in the stall again, but he didn’t deserve to be imprisoned in that dank, rat-infested cellar beneath the town hall. She’d had to pay a fine once to get a drunken servant released, and she’d been horrified at the conditions of the town’s only jail.

  If the lycanthropy didn’t kill him, ague from that terrible place would. But when she swung her legs to the floor, her head still swam and she had to lean back. “Jeremy, you must drive me to town. I want to pay the fine so we can bring Ian home.”

  Jeremy looked at her as if she had moon madness, too. “Aye, let’s empty all the gaols ‘twixt here and Bristol, too.”

  Shelly said gently, “There is no fine for murder. He must stay in jail until his trial.”

  “Did he admit to his…condition? How else could he explain the state of the body? No man could….do that.”

  “From what I was told, no, not exactly. He said only that he awoke next to the body, blood all over him, and that he thinks he killed her in a fit of madness.”

  Lil’s heart lurched with hope. Maybe he’d deliberately let her believe the worst, and he honestly didn’t know if he’d killed the girl or not. If so, why would he implicate himself like that?

  Lil stood, one hand to her forehead, and said through her teeth, “I want to see the sheriff. I’ll promise to keep him locked up, but I want him out of that awful place.”

  “The sheriff will not be disposed favorably toward your request if you awaken him at such an ungodly hour.”

  Lil glanced at her lapel watch. Almost eleven. How had it gotten so late?

  “We let you sleep a couple of hours,” Shelly explained gently. “My suggestion is that you eat, sleep, and arise strong enough to be an advocate for your employee. If that’s what you truly want to do. If you think it’s…safe.”

  A pregnant pause grew as Jeremy and Shelly exchanged a glance, and then looked back at Lil expectantly.

  Lil knew they wanted to hear details of where she’d been that day, and what had happened to send her home so distraught, riding the brute of a stallion she’d once feared. But Lil couldn’t tell them the truth. Not that she was sure she knew it any more, any way. “Very well. First thing in the morning. Good night, Shelly. Good night, Jeremy.” As she turned to the stairs, Lil noted that Shelly still wore her gloves, had not, in fact, taken them off even during dinner.

  Something else to worry about, she decided as she wearily climbed the stairs. Oh, and she still needed to get Shelly to translate the Romany on the gypsy girl’s tombstone.

  Tomorrow should be an interesting day, Lil decided wryly. She had a grave to clean, a potential killer-lover to release from jail, a curse to cure, and a ball to attend.

  She’d missed having challenges to conquer when she c
ame here. Another of her Pa’s old saws came back to her, “Be careful what you wish for….”

  But she’d apparently heeded that little homily no better than his other admonishments. She spent most of the rest of the night looking out the window at the mocking crescent moon.

  Wishing….

  As soon as Lil exited, Shelly tried to duck out, but the door was blocked by a scrawny but very determined Jeremy. “Let me see yer hand, ducky.”

  She tried to ease around him, but he only stepped in that direction, too. He was wiry and nimble for his age, so she used her best weapon to ward him off: her wits. “I didn’t know you numbered a medical degree among your many accomplishments, my good little man.” There, that should do it. Prick a man’s pride and he’d stomp off in high dudgeon every time.

  Instead, the little twerp smiled. Her calculated condescension bounced right off the steely demeanor of the only man she’d ever met with a confidence and independence equal to her own. “I got a good many accomplishments ye go not ideer about, me good big woman. But I can fix that, too.” And with that calm retort, Jeremy shoved her against a wall, stepped between her legs, hauled her head down to his level, and kissed her.

  She caught his shoulders to push him away, but his mouth was surprisingly soft and adept, the lump in his breeches surprisingly hard and eager. She’d half believed his determined pursuit of her since their last venture on the moors was his version of the “me, big man, you little woman,” game. But no man could fake this urgency of lips, hands and sexual desire. Curious, she let him deepen the kiss, his lips slanting with both experience and gentle persuasion over her own.

  Part of her brain, as always, remained detached. She tried to remember the last time….the Indian shaman who’d wanted to bind their spirits with the night, so that by the dawn, they’d each retain some of the strength and knowledge of the other. At least his approach had been unique.

  And then there was the steel industrialist. But no one in the past few years. That must account for her slipping grip on composure, her sudden intense interest to see if Jeremy proved to be as unexpected in his lower quarters as he was in his upper. A small, simple man, with a big–