The Wolf of Haskell Hall Read online

  It was her turn to gasp. His face was not conventionally handsome. His cheekbones were too high and exotically slanted, his blade of a nose too long, his lips too full and wide. And his eyes…she tried to delve into them and make the true measure of this man as she’d had to do so often since her father died, but the amber depths were too opaque and secretive to allow her in. They were fringed with long, dark lashes that would have looked feminine on a less primal face.

  Curly midnight hair cascaded over his tanned brow, and long sideburns pointed like accusatory fingers down the sides of his strong, square jaw. As if to emphasize the obvious: I grant favors, if I will it, but I never ask for them. Cross me at your peril.

  Every hackle on her body stood on end, and it was all she could do not to leap up and fire him on the spot just to avoid feeling so intimidated. Instead, she managed cooly, “Do you have the books ready for me to examine?”

  “Yes, I do.” He stalked to a cabinet against the wall and took out two black ledgers.

  Lil rose and walked over to the Louis IV desk in pride of place in the middle of the room. The furnishings in the house were as eclectic as the facade, but there were a few priceless pieces, of which this was one. She sat down, expecting him to deposit the ledgers and move away.

  Instead, he pulled up a chair. His nostrils flared as he obviously caught the subtle whiff of her perfume, and her own senses went on full alert. He didn’t touch her anywhere as he leaned over her shoulder, but she felt his body heat and smelled a faint scent of something indefinable emanating from him, something earthy and primitive that raised her hackles again…

  …and made her long for his touch to soothe them.

  The neat columns, written in a bold dark hand, wavered before her gaze. She took a deep breath and tried to concentrate. But she felt the expanse of his shoulders so close that all she had to do was turn and she could investigate their width with her own tingling hands.

  She leaped up, knocking over the gilded, spindle-legged chair. “Leave them with me. I will study them later, at my leisure.”

  An insolent smile tugged at the corners of those full lips as she fled back to her safe seat. She was too off balance to get up and slap it away, as her instincts urged.

  “And the rest–mistress?” asked that deep, soft voice. “What of the new pump for the mine? The schoolroom in the village that needs a new roof, and–”

  “Not today. I am…fatigued.” Oh no. Next she’d make the age-old lady’s excuse of the headache. Warily, she watched him rise, pick up the books and head her way. She almost leaped up to run, but he only veered around her to put the ledgers back.

  To her intense relief, he put his hat back on and shielded her from those steady, unnerving amber eyes. “A true Haskell,” he said with mild contempt. “I had hoped that somehow, you might be different. Good afternoon.” Turning on his heel, he stalked out, steps soundless even on the wood floors. The soles of his boots must be as soft as the shank.

  Still…She had never met such an unsettling man. She pressed her hand to her hammering heart, vaguely aware that this strange pounding she’d never felt so strongly before in any male presence was not just arousal, or fear, or even excitement.

  It was a combination of all three. She stood to pour herself a brandy with a shaking hand, thinking the spirits would soothe her agitated nerves. But the smooth burn of the liquor warmed her in unexpected places instead, reminding her of the way Ian Griffith walked, and talked.

  And stared at her with secretive, burning eyes.

  She tossed her glass into the fire, furious at her own weakness. She strode out of the room, vowing not to think of him again.

  She broke her vow before she crossed the floor.

  In the ensuing days, to Lil’s relief, she didn’t have to see Ian Griffith again. For over a week, she had her hands full with the household itself. The former owners had lavished money on the outbuildings, the stables, the greenhouse, even the old chapel on the grounds, but they’d been parsimonious with the interior. Every piece of furniture needed a good stripping and repolishing, every brass fixture needed shining, and the rugs and draperies…Lil sneezed just looking at them. Lil had been unofficial chatelaine of her father’s three Colorado homes since she was in her teens, and she knew much of running a household, even one almost as complicated as this. But a mine….the enormous stables that held everything from broodmares to carriage horses to thoroughbreds….the village school, even some of the shops, were Haskell owned. For these, she needed her estate manager. But she refused to fetch him, and he seemed equally content not to come calling.

  She wondered where he lived. She wondered if he was married. She wondered why he seemed to dislike the Haskells. And then she wondered, to her own fury, why she bothered wondering.

  When the house is ready, she told herself staunchly. It’s only that I’m busy. He doesn’t intimidate me at all. But she wasn’t facing a mirror when she thought it.

  Finally, almost two weeks after her arrival, she pulled off her apron and crossed the last item off her list. “Downstairs finished,” she said with a weary sigh of satisfaction, blowing a curl off her forehead as she smiled at Mrs. McCavity, the housekeeper. “Now the upstairs. We’ll start with the towers–” She broke off at the look on Mrs. McCavity’s face. “Yes?”

  “Well, milady, that is–”

  “I bear no title, Mrs. McCavity. You may call me Delilah.”

  A horrified look crossed the woman’s face. “Sure, and the Saints themselves strike me down afore I so disrespect me betters. What was your Da a thinkin’ to name ye after a heathen woman?” She blushed as her Irish brogue got the best of her.

  Lil laughed. She was always tickled to find the clue to a person’s humanity. In her servants. In her friends. Even, on occasion, in her enemies. Everyone had some mannerism, or way of speaking that betrayed their strengths and weaknesses. The more emotional Jeremy was, the more colorfully he cursed. The more frightened Safira became, the more she retreated into her magic. When Mrs. McCavity was shocked or moved, she reverted to the brogue of her childhood.

  And Ian Griffith? How vividly she could visualize that dark, enigmatic face. But she saw no weakness there. And little humanity.

  Lil collected her scattered thoughts. The housekeeper looked puzzled, and she’d been so hard-working and kind that Lil felt she had to give the poor woman some explanation as to why her new mistress was so different to the former ladies of the Hall. “If you’d known my Pa, you’d understand that he challenged me from the time I was born to be better than a name, a title, an inheritance. ‘Delilah,’ he would say, ‘a name has no more bearing on who we are than money defines what we are. Ye have three scourges to overcome–me trade, your name, and the filthy lucre that will be either the bane o’ yer existence or yer deliverance. Take yer weaknesses and make them strengths.’” Lil’s smile grew misty as she stared at Mrs. McCavity’s attentive face. “I’ve always done my best to follow his advice. With the result that I fear I am not much welcomed in Denver drawing rooms, and doubtless will not be here, either.”

  “There you are wrong, mil–ma’am. Money in these parts hides an enormous amount of sins.” Mrs. McCavity ducked her head as if she was sorry she’d spoken so frankly, and she reached for the huge ring of keys at her waist. “Now where do you want to start upstairs?”

  “The towers.” Lil led the way, but she turned back when she realized the housekeeper had not followed.

  “We…are not supposed to go into the north tower. The south tower was set up as a governesses’ suite, but since we currently have no children in the house, it is vacant.”

  Frowning, Lil scarcely listened to the second half of the explanation. “You are telling me I own this estate and am not allowed to enter my own ancestral home?”

  “‘Tis an agreement made many years ago with the Griffith family by the first mistress. So long as a Griffith runs this estate, he may live where he pleases in the house, as he pleases, with no interference from t
he owners. Griffiths have lived unmolested in that tower for almost a hundred years.”

  Lil was appalled. “Such an agreement could not possibly be legally binding. Why, if the house were sold–”

  “And morally?”

  Lil clamped her mouth shut. No wonder Ian Griffith strode around like he owned the place! In a way, he did.

  Without another word, she turned on her heel and led the way upstairs–to the south tower. But as they traversed the connecting hallway, she couldn’t help looking in the opposite direction and wondering. Her steps slowed.

  Each tower had its own entrance and exit. What guests did Ian Griffith invite? How many women had succumbed to his animal magnetism? What did his bed look like? Were his arms and long legs as muscular as they looked? She didn’t have to close her eyes to visualize him sprawled on white sheets, all wild dark power and wild dark urges that made a woman–

  . She caught Mrs. McCavity’s gaze. Blushing, she turned sharply in the opposite direction. Would she could turn her thoughts so easily.

  That night, even after a soothing soak in the hip-deep copper tub, Lil was still restless. She tossed aside the weighty tome she was trying to read on the biology of Bodmin moor, which lapped at the very foundation of this house. But improving her mind would have to wait for a less stressful day.

  She’d worked herself to the point of exhaustion, and had two glasses of sherry that night instead of one, but still she couldn’t quiet her over-active imagination. She simply would not be able to sleep until she saw the north tower for herself. Ian Griffith had left word with the butler that he had gone into Bodmin for supplies and would not return until the next day, so she was safe invading his abode.

  Wrapping the tie of her sweeping cashmere negligee tightly about her trim waist, shaking back the deep ruffles at her sleeves, she collected the enormous ring of keys the housekeeper had given her. Most were marked, but two, larger and more ornate than the others, were not. One of them had to open the north tower.

  She had the right, she told herself, to be sure that illegal activities were not being conducted in her home. If she found an opium water pipe, or smuggled goods, or…or scandalous pictures or novels, …well, she’d have every reason to fire the arrogant blackguard.

  On the long trek to the opposite wing of the house, her slippers made little sound in the thick carpets, but the lantern she carried threw her shadow upon the wall. Strange the way she danced, in a joyous way quite opposite to the sick, anticipatory pounding in her stomach.

  She looked down. Her hand was shaking.

  She stopped. What was wrong with her? She was a woman grown, an experienced woman in every way since she’d made the mistake of letting her former fiancé talk her into his bed. She’d broken off the engagement when she found out that he, despite his greater guile than the rest, also only wanted her money. He had not been a kind lover, and she’d had no interest in the act, illicit or sanctified, since.

  Which is why her current obsession troubled her so. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and visualized her father’s bright green eyes smiling at her. “Face yer fears, me darlin’, and ye’ll be the stronger for it.”

  “Yes, Pa.” Hitching her skirts above her ankles so she could walk faster, she quelled her own foolish fears and hurried into the north wing. Sure enough, the stout oak door that met her, banded with steel bands like a Norman baron’s of old, yielded to one of the ornate keys. She shoved the door inward and listened.

  The round stairwell was pitch black, and she heard no sounds above. The entire household was asleep, as she should be at this ungodly hour, so she entered the gloom and shut the door quietly behind her, but left it unlocked.

  In the feeble lantern light, the curving stairs and stone tower seemed to stretch to infinity. Finally she reached another door, this one glossy black and even heavier than the other. She tried the door handle, but it didn’t open. She fumbled with the key chain again, and to her relief, the same key that opened the lower door unlocked this one.

  Taking a deep breath, she shoved the heavy portal open. The octagonal space inside was commodious and very dark. She quickly lit the gas sconces beside the door, and then the lamp next to the sofa before the fire place.

  She looked around, and some of her suspicions about her manager began to fade. No den of iniquity here. Only a tiny kitchen and dining area in one corner, and a living area across, plus a long table set up before shelves packed with books to make a rudimentary library.

  A small but comfortable suite of rooms, a gentleman’s retreat, all dark paneling, lush green velvet and tasteful but spare decor. None of the heavy empire and rococo style so in vogue in this era when Queen Victoria ruled with a small but indomitable hand. Simple Sheraton writing armoire, marble-topped tables, monkish straight-backed chairs. The only nod to decadence was a plush emerald green silk divan that looked as if it should have a Turkish pasha reclining upon it.

  Or an houri.

  Wishing she could rid her head of the repeated sensual images, Lil carried the lantern to illuminate the painting above the fireplace mantel. It was a picture of the moors. Because the walls of the tower curved slightly as the angles of the octagon met, it did not rest flat. Perhaps that accounted for the picture’s odd depth and radiance.

  The moors she’d seen on the train coming here had never looked like this. Yes, they stretched beyond sight as this one did, and yes, they were filled with intriguing patches of green, where moss or plants relieved the unrelenting brown. And yes, when the sun went down and night ruled the march of days, she’d even seen the same luminous, low-lying mist. But that moor had been intimidating, bleak, offering more peril than pleasure.

  The same moor depicted in this painting was sensual, glowing with jewel tones of green and sapphire, where lichen-covered rocks dotted the muddy wastes, and pools of blue water reflected back the cloudless sky above. Even the mountains, hazy in the distance, had been added with bold, loving strokes. Here, they were not jagged teeth consuming the sky as they’d seemed to Lil, but hands offering a bounty of life and joy found nowhere else on earth.

  Lil stumbled back a step. She wasn’t sure why the image was so disquieting and riveting at the same time. Whoever painted this loved the moors. Loved them as a man loved a woman, or a mother a son.

  But there was something else…something troubling. She couldn’t quite put her finger upon it, but the brush strokes were deep, the dollops of paint standing up from the canvas in a style she’d never seen before. As if the painter used violent, passionate strokes to exorcise demons along with his emotions.

  Had he painted it?

  She visualized that primal male face, tried to picture him wearing a beret, daubing paint upon this canvas….Her mind balked. No, a man who looked as he did doubtless sported with guns, or horses, or women. He had the soul of a conqueror, not an artist.

  Rubbing at her tingling nape, Lil forced herself to turn away. She looked at the armoire. She should search it, set her mind at ease for once and all that her manager had none of the strange tastes or motivations she suspected. But she couldn’t. She already felt interloper enough. Blowing out the lamps she’d lit, she walked toward the door. But something drew her gaze above. A small circular stair led to another level of the tower, and she knew that must be the bedroom. She blew out the last lantern, but even when the lamp she held was all the light remaining and the spiral stairs were but an impression upon her unconscious, she still found herself walking toward them.

  She had to see where he slept. Only then could she get these visions out of her head. She’d set one foot upon the first rung when the voice came, rough and low, right over her shoulder.

  “If you wanted a tour, all you had to do was ask. And by all means, I agree with your priorities–bedroom first.”

  Gasping with fright at the sound of that deep, melodious voice, Lil whirled. Her slipper caught and she would have fallen if Ian hadn’t reached out and grabbed her. For an instant, every nerve in her body came
alive to the touch of his hard warmth pressed so scandalously close. Through the thin layers of her lawn nightgown and fine cashmere robe, she could feel every expansion and contraction of that powerful rib cage.

  His breathing had quickened, too. Despite the hard, even stare of those impenetrable amber eyes, he was affected by her as well.

  Lil stumbled back and fell to her rump upon the third step. The lantern slipped in her nerveless hand, and she would have dropped it if he hadn’t taken it and set it on an adjacent table.

  The light from below threw his strong face into sharp relief as he drawled, “Would you care to bounce on my bed?”

  Cursing her fair skin, hoping he couldn’t see her blush in the half light, Lil retorted, “You mean my bed?”

  “Oh, you may own the mortar and stone, mistress, but I own the furnishings.” His gaze raked over her, lighting upon her bosom like a touch. He might as well have said it, With time, I will own you, too.

  Hoping her throbbing heartbeat wasn’t visible beneath her thin robe, Lil stood and waved him back so she could exit the narrow spiral stair that had her imprisoned. He stood so close that his long legs almost brushed her feet, and….

  ….He didn’t move. “I am not a dog to obey hand signals. I suggest you put your tongue to good use, or I will give it a better one.” And for the first time, a smile stretched that dark face. His white teeth gleamed and he actually leaned closer, running his own tongue against the edge of his teeth in a way that made her mouth tingle.

  Strange, how his canines were slightly more pointed than his incisors….

  And then she was dumbfounded at his insolence, torn equally between outrage and temptation. She turned away in the only direction open to her–up. If, deep inside, she wasn’t quite sure whether she escaped him or herself, well, of that, no one had to know. Least of all Ian Griffith.

  Her former manager. She’d give him his walking papers first thing in the morning.

  When she was halfway up the stairs, she stopped and scowled down at him, feeling secure in the distance between them. “I will examine your room for myself. And if I find nothing untoward, I may reconsider my decision to discharge you.” She expected him to explode in wrath, or maybe even show a bit of remorse.