The Wolf of Haskell Hall Page 6

  “So one would think.” He hesitated, and then he stood and sat beside her. He moved as if he’d catch her shoulders, but he apparently thought better of that and made do with one of her hands instead. “Miss Haskell, a vicar has to become a good judge of character if he is to perform his duties admirably. I sense that you are an unusual young woman, made of sterner stuff than the other unfortunate young woman who inherited this grim place. If so, perhaps you are ready to listen to a story told to me long ago, by a very old woman in this village, on her deathbed. She was a Romany. It is not a pleasant story, but if you are brave enough to thumb your nose at such danger, then you surely have the right to hear it.”

  Nodding, Lil squeezed his hand. Then she leaned back and braced herself, but her eyes held his steadily.

  An admiring gleam in his pale, perspicacious eyes, he said, “It is a very old, sordid tale. One those of my gender unfortunately perpetuate from generation to generation.”

  “Lust? Murder? War?”

  “All those things, alas. In 1752, the last male heir to the Haskell estates married to produce heirs. But his wife was a sickly creature, and to appease his appetites, he preyed on destitute young women. However, when his eye fell upon the only child of one of his own servants, at first he tried, by all accounts, to resist her charms.”

  “How noble of him.”

  “Quite so. Nobility had little to do with it. Like all good peers of the realm, he wanted no scandal attached to his name, especially so close to home. But the passion he felt for this maiden became so virulent that one night during a full moon, when she was bathing in a pool on the moors near the Druid stones and he came upon her….” He cleared his throat. “But, as is often the way of such things, passion only bred more passion. On her side as well as his, for ultimately, she grew to love him. But when she was found to be with child….”

  Lil closed her eyes, sick at her stomach. It was indeed a very old story. “He sent her away.”

  “He tried. She refused to go. They argued violently one night, and her father tracked them to their trysting place at the stones. He’d become suspicious, you see, and when he listened and found his guess of who her lover was confirmed….well, his loyalties settled quite naturally on his daughter over his employer. When he threatened to unmask the liaison if Haskell didn’t acknowledge the child….” He trailed off and looked away.

  The scene Lil saw so vividly in her mind’s eye brought a tear to her eye in sympathy for the girl who’d visited such a terrible wrath upon Lil’s own kind. “Was the girl’s father killed?”

  “Yes. Accidentally, by all accounts, but Haskell panicked and fled, unaware that his lover’s labor had started.”

  “He left her there? By herself? On the moors?”

  Her outrage was shared in his face. “Indeed. Her babe was born prematurely. She almost died herself during the birth, and when travelers came upon her and took her to the village, she survived only long enough to give the boy to her maternal grandmother to raise.”

  Lil frowned. “She was a foundling child, then? Why did the grandmother not rear her?”

  “She was a beggar woman, and she knew she was no fit parent. But the Haskell servants had been kind to her, and she knew they longed for a child, so it was she who arranged the adoption. She saw the girl often, during her frequent stops in the area, and taught the girl the gypsy ways, the gypsy superstitions–”

  “And the power of the gypsy curse.” They exchanged a grim stare.

  The vicar’s tone grew rushed, as if he wanted to get the unpleasant telling over with. “That night, when the moon was full, the old woman used every medicine she knew in an attempt to save her granddaughter, cursing Haskell as she worked. As life faded from the poor girl, she cradled the child her pain and suffering had birthed, and I suppose that it is not so strange that her love for Haskell turned to hatred. With her last breath, it is said, she looked out at the orange harvest moon and cursed the Haskell lineage. She wanted no Griffith blood to ever again be mingled with the Haskells. With her father dead, she signed her inheritance over to her grandmother and begged her to raise the boy in the Gypsy ways, to keep him far away from the other half of his relatives. The grandmother disappeared into the moors, taking the boy with her.”

  “And…what was the curse?”

  “That every Haskell heiress should bear the weight of her torment. Lust turned to love, a burning obsession so fierce that it felt as if her heart was being ripped from her breast. And the moment the words left her lips and her spirit departed this earth, or so it is said, Haskell himself was ripped apart by wolves on his way back to his estate. Since he died without issue, and there were no remaining male relatives, the estate passed to a distant female cousin.”

  Umbrage and fear made a bilious bromide, but Lil managed through her teeth, “I might have known this curse upon the females of our line was begun by a man.”

  Vicar Holmes laughed. “Indeed, as with many things of unpleasant consequence, you can blame the male of our species.”

  “And the first heiress?”

  “Survived to a hale and hearty age, but her daughter was the first to die upon the moors. Alone, as the unfortunate Gypsy lass was.”

  “And what became of the boy?”

  “No one ever knew. But a few years later, a tradesman set up shop in the village, and his son showed uncommon intellect and an uncommon flair for organization, plus a certain resemblance to Haskell himself. He soon became the heiress’s estate manager.”

  Lil braced herself, her heart thrumming unpleasantly. “Why have you not told me his surname?”

  “Because I suspect you already know.”

  “Griffith,” Lil whispered.

  He nodded. “No one has ever openly acknowledged that this first estate manager was the Gypsy’s son, but so I was told by the old Romany woman, and so it must be, or the first heiress never would have made the agreement that allowed Griffith estate managers to live in the tower. They have Haskell blood, too. Much diluted, many times removed, but surely a moral right, if not a legal one, to some small share of the bounty they have toiled so long to harvest.”

  The memory of Ian’s rough words echoed in Lil’s ear like her own heartbeat: “The Haskell women and the Griffith men have been linked for centuries, Delilah. Your blood is as hot with the bond between us as my own.”

  Her hands icy, Lil rubbed her elbows, but she still felt numb from head to foot, even with the warmth of the blazing fire in the small fireplace. Neither her Calvinist upbringing nor her practical nature had ever allowed for such foolishness as curses, blood bonds, or ungodly urges so strong that….

  “But I don’t understand….Why would the gypsy girl wish such a terrible fate upon those of her own sex? Would it not be more horrid for the Haskell males to die terribly?”

  “Remember, she wanted no further mingling of the two lineages, and what better way to keep the heiresses away from Griffith males than to make them fear them? She died because of the terrible power of…of….”

  Sexual obsession. Lil blushed and looked away. She’d had a taste of that power, too, and her sympathy for the girl who’d died so long ago grew. “And no doubt she didn’t want her blood drawn to the power of money and property. If there were no more unions, legal or not, of Griffith and Haskell, her blood would not be further diluted and the gypsy ways she’d almost lost herself would be her best legacy to her kin.”

  “Quite so.”

  There was a terrible logic and poetic justice to the girl’s curse that, in another time and place, when she didn’t feel so terribly trapped into a silken web partly of her own construction, Lil might have appreciated.

  Power for the powerless over the powerful.

  The Griffiths might be servants to the Haskells, but in the end, if they truly had a strange dominion over the moors and its wild creatures, could even induce wolves to attack, they had a strength more terrible than any granted by privilege or blue blood. It was the Haskell women who risked everyt
hing to tresspass upon their territory….But there was one last question she had to ask. “But if the curse is known, why do the heiresses always ride alone upon the moors even when they know what could happen?”

  “Not all heiresses have known what I just told you. As to why? That I cannot say. Willfulness. Foolishness. Mayhap even destiny.”

  “I have never put much credence in curses. Or things that go bump in the night,” Lil said, her voice stronger. Really, now that she knew the truth, unpalatable as it was, she felt better. No matter how grim the situation, there was always a remedy. And since she didn’t like to ride anyway, and the moors rather frightened her, well, sensible might as well be her middle name.

  A flashing memory of her bare bosom lifted to Ian’s mouth as he bent her like a bow over his arm made her cheeks redden. Sensible?

  She rushed into speech, aware that Vicar Holmes looked at her oddly. “If there are wolves hereabout, we merely need to send huntsmen out to find them. And I assure you I shall not venture out alone into the moors after dark. This ‘curse’ ends with me.” She rose decisively and offered her hand. “But I vastly appreciate your honesty.”

  He shook her hand gently. “And I your courage. I see why my cousin thinks so highly of you.”

  “She has said so?”

  “In her way.” He escorted her to the door. “Please, do visit again, and I promise this time we shall keep the conversation light. I have even been known to play cribbage from time to time.”

  “I happily reciprocate that enthusiasm. And I hope you and your wife will come to tea at the Hall very soon.” At the door, she looked up at him and confessed, “At least now I understand why my current estate manager tends to be so arrogant.”

  “He is an unusual man, only lately returned from his travels.”

  Lil frowned. “But…he’s so much in command, so respected, that I thought he’d lived here all his life.”

  He walked her outside and helped her into her carriage. “Oh, he did. Until he was twenty. Then he wandered the world for about ten years until he returned home about six months ago. Come see us again soon, my dear, and I shall hope to see you in the front pew this Sunday.”

  Waving, he went back into the parsonage.

  As Lil drove toward the tavern to collect Jeremy, she reflected that, whatever her inner conflict at the tale she’d just heard, she could still count on one phlegmatic verity that never wavered under any temptation: subtraction.

  If Ian Griffith returned six months ago, he arrived home three months before the last heiress died.

  Had there been a strange blood bond between them, too? Had he sketched her nakedness, tried to seduce her as well?

  Who was Ian Griffith, really?

  A simple Cornishman of overly lusty appetites?

  Or a cosmopolitan wanderer, artist, engineer, lover of beauty with a tormented soul?

  And what–or who–did he remind her of? Those strange eyes, that soundless walk, that magnetism….Something tickled at the back of her mind, a childhood memory she hadn’t recalled in years. Another myth she’d heard back during a girlhood friend’s sleeping party. Her friend’s French grandfather had teased the little girls about…Blast it all, what was it?

  But when the tavern came in sight–and she saw, with great relief, that Ian was gone–she let the memory go.

  It was, after all, the sensible thing to do. She didn’t need to beg for trouble. As Jeremy had said with more prescience than she’d realized at the time, “Trouble follows bold like, right through the door with us.”

  Trouble hadn’t just followed, it seemed in the ensuing days; it had taken up permanent residence. The mine had a cave-in, so a new pump had to be purchased. Luckily the miners had not been working that section so no one was hurt.

  The prize stallion, Brutus, jumped out of his pasture and rutted with a tenant farmer’s plow mare. He trotted back with a satisfied air in his arched tail and tossing neck. But as Lil watched Shelly halter the great black beast and scold him, she heard one stable boy whisper to another, “No airs about that one, don’t matter none how blue his blood be. One quim’s good as another, and I ain’t sure what but he’s not right.”

  Blushing, Lil moved out of the shade of the barn, and when he finally noticed her, he went beet red, tugged his forelock and ran. Lil decided she’d better have a talk with Jeremy. She knew the sounds of that philosophy, and she didn’t want his ribald sense of humor spoiling these innocent country boys.

  Next, the French cook fought with the butler, even threw a knife at the dignified fellow. It took Lil and Mrs. McCavity two days to restore calm.

  And it took the carpenter even longer to fix the gash in the wall.

  However, as Lil was forced to deal with one domestic crisis after another, she had little time to wonder any further about Ian Griffith, for he was busy, too. And if, every noontide, she’d sneak a glance at her lapel watch and wonder if he’d sought out the tavern and all its delights, not just the liquid variety, well, of that, no one save her needed to know.

  The last trouble literally walked right through her door. Though, at the time, the visitors seemed a pleasure.

  Trouble commenced as it usually did–during a calm, boring day. Lil had a kerchief tied about her neck and an apron over her midriff, helping Mrs. McCavity sort and cull old staples out of the pantry, when a twittering house maid found them. “It’s the Harbaugh brothers themselves, returned from the Continent! Here to pay their compliments. Mistress.” She dropped a belated curtsy on this last.

  Even Mrs. McCavity showed a glimmer of excitement. “Have they opened Somerset again?”

  “So Mrs. Farquar’s maid told Mrs. Thomas’s maid who–”

  “Yes, yes, more efficient than the post, I know,” Lil interrupted. “But who are these men?”

  “The handsomest young bucks in Cornwall,” Mrs. McCavity said, pulling Lil’s kerchief off. “Quick, make yourself respectable.”

  Lil glared at her. “I am not on the marriage mart, thank you very much.”

  “But they’re rich, and handsome, and Thomas is heir to an earldom.” There was a sudden tension in the housekeeper’s attitude as she muttered, “And lord knows, those of this household should share in that wealth.” She colored under Lil’s arrested gaze.

  “And why is that?”

  “I’m not one to perpetuate gossip,” was the prim reply. When Lil still blocked the exit, the housekeeper sighed and admitted, “It’s an old story, never verified, of Ian’s much older sister.”

  “Sister? I didn’t know he had one.”

  “She died when he was a boy. And that’s all I’ll say upon the matter. But Thomas Harbaugh wouldn’t be who he is today without her.”

  Lil had tired of the mysterious scandals roiling beneath the serene surface of these moors, and now was not the time to delve further into the latest one, either. More to the point, she’d seldom met a buck of blue blood she could tolerate, much less be attracted to. “I don’t need money, and I have no interest in titles. But if they’ve come to pay their respects, I should meet them, I suppose.”

  In the kitchen, Lil paused at a small mirror to straighten her disarranged coif, but it was too badly mangled by the kerchief. And there was a stain of jam upon her sleeve. She’s also worn an old gaberdine gray dress she’d been meaning to give to a home for widows and orphans, but she’d just have to do.

  However, when she set foot inside the drawing room and saw the Harbaugh brothers, she almost backed out again. But they rose immediately, smiling, so she was caught. Preston had the sloe black eyes, perfect features and curly hair of her favorite poet, Lord Byron. Thomas was as blond as his brother was dark, with dark brows and mahogany-kissed brown eyes that crinkled at the corners with his obviously frequent laughter.

  And no one needed to tell Lil that they were also both rakes. The efficient way they sized her up in one sweeping glance came only with practice. They bowed gracefully.

  Thomas said, “I am pleased to meet you at l
ast, Miss Haskell. I fear we have been deleterious in our neighborly duties, but we’ve only just returned from the Grand Tour.”

  Preston bowed over her hand. “Charmed, mademoiselle.”

  Before he could kiss her hand, Lil withdrew it and gave them a polite curtsy, wondering why she was irritated that they didn’t address her as “Lady Haskell.” Though she detested the affectation herself, she wasn’t happy that these smooth gentlemen didn’t offer the obvious courtesy to another person of their social rank. Were they subtly trying to snub her?

  “You must have been to Paris, too,” she said sweetly.

  They laughed.

  “Yes, and hard it is upon a man’s stomach to return to English food,” Preston admitted. “Though I’ve heard you’re lucky enough to have a French cook. We’re having a ball in a few weeks. You wouldn’t want to lend him out, would you?”

  “Not unless you wish to have gashes all over your house. He tends to throw knives at whomever upsets him. The dark side of creativity, no doubt.” Lil waved them to a settee and took up her station behind the tea pot.

  “That’s why we’ve come, actually,” Thomas said, sipping his tea in the veddy stuffy British way Lil secretly detested. He even had one pinkie, decorated by a heavy emerald signet ring, raised in the air. “To invite you to the ball.” Thomas nodded at Preston, who took a vellum envelope from his pocket and laid it on a table next to the settee.

  “All the gentry roundabout are agog to meet you. Mrs. Farquar has been singing your praises far and wide,” Preston said gallantly.

  Lil could imagine what ‘praises’ that dreadful woman was spreading, but she only shuddered, finished her half cup of duty tea and set it quickly aside. Good, strong coffee, for her. She’d never get used to these insipid dregs that truly tasted as if made from, well, leaves. “I shall be delighted to attend, assuming, of course, that I have no prior commitments.” And she might have to think up one. She’d taken a dislike to society balls in Denver because invariably she was either a wallflower at the snooty balls, or a trophy at the ones given by social climbers and brash new millionaires.