Castle of the Wolf (2 page)

Cissy shivered and huddled deeper into her old pelisse. Once it had been maroon-colored, and with a pang of remorse Cissy remembered its loveliness, how special she had felt when she had worn it during her only season in London. Almost like a princess. And now it was black, black, deepest black, and had lost all hint of its former beauty.

How ridiculous to mourn such a small thing, the color of a pelisse
, Cissy thought. But she knew that so much more than the color of a bit of clothing, she mourned the feeling of being cherished.

Never, never again
.

She sighed.

“What was that? Was that a cough?” Immediately, Dorinda’s high voice took on a quailing quality. “Miss Celia Fussell, did you
tousser
? I have
told
you that you should better stay at home, and now look what has happened!
Une toux
! And you know how frail my constitution is! Oh,
me dieu, me dieu
.” Agitated, Dorinda fanned herself with her gloved hands. “I already feel dreadfully faint. I—”

Cissy could have happily strangled her. “I assure you, I did not cough.”

“Well…” Her sister-in-law sniffed—a sound of injured dignity. “There is no reason to be so clipped, Miss Celia. One cannot be too careful of one’s health, especially if one has such a
fragile
constitution as I.”

At that, Cissy barely managed to suppress a snort.
Indeed. You’ve got a constitution like an ox.
From the corners of her eyes she watched Dorinda primly folding her hands in her lap.

“
En outer
,” the despised voice continued, “it would do you good to start showing some more consideration for those who kindly let you stay under their roof.”

Cissy’s hands clenched and tightly gripped the folds of her pelisse. She had to bite down hard on her lip to prevent any scathing reply from slipping out.

“Dorrie,” her brother protested weakly.

“No, no, Hailstone.” Dorinda patted his arm, then slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow. “It is well past time that your
sœur
acts up to her new situation in life.” Her voice had a satisfied ring, like a cat’s after it had licked up all the cream.

Oh, yes, the Right Honorable Lady Hailstone. How she relished the situation! Cissy turned her head and stared unseeingly at the rain veiled landscape.

The first day of her future life in hell had just begun.

~*~

The study, though warmed by a merry fire, seemed full of chills. The large, dark desk was curiously empty, while the thick ledgers stood lined up on the shelves like leather-clad soldiers. No whiff of pipe smoke lingered in the air, and the deep leather chairs, stiff with disuse, were cold and forbidding. The late Baron Hailstone had abandoned this room years ago and had created himself a den in the library instead—a room which always smelled of ink and old paper, where the books stood crookedly side by side like old friends and whispered to each other of old deeds of dare, of stories long forgotten and of ages past. It was a room where you snuggled up in front of the fire, where you sat down with a cup of hot tea when rain beat at the windows and a storm howled around the house.

Now rain was beating against the windows of the study, too, yet Cissy felt cold, so cold inside out, as if she were never going to be warm again. She tried to concentrate as Mr. Weatherby, the family solicitor, read out the last will in his thin, reedy voice. The wrinkles quivered down his throat, and his wire-rimmed spectacles had slipped down to the tip of his nose. He spoke slowly and with difficulty, as if he felt grief, too. And perhaps he did. Her father had always been fond of little Mr. Weatherby. “
A good man, that. A loyal man,”
he used to say.

“‘…to my son and heir, the Honorable George Alexander Fussell.’”

So the house and everything went to George; no surprise there. The surprise was that her father had twice entailed the estate, meager as its incomes were. Perhaps he had wanted to curb the tendency of his son’s wife to live above their means; perhaps he had hoped for a more sensible generation of Fussells in the future.

Cissy watched how Dorinda’s lips became thin and how displeasure contorted her face. Even more displeasure came when Mr. Weatherby read on and made it known that the late Baron Hailstone had bequeathed most of his books to his friends: people who, like him, pursued the study of mythology or the Middle Ages. Friends whom Cissy had never met, yet whom she had got to know through the letters she had read to her father in the last few years. It would be painful to empty the library and pack up all the books, which had been like a second family to Cissy. Yet she was grateful that they would be given into good hands, that they would be treasured and read with pleasure. Dorinda might have banished them to the attic so she could fill the shelves with fashionable novels and poetry instead, none of which she would ever pick up anyway.

Mr. Weatherby went on reading, listing pensions for the old servants and tenants. “‘…And lastly…’” For the first time, there was a break in the old lawyer’s even presentation of his late client’s wishes. Mr. Weatherby cleared his throat and stared hard at the piece of paper before him. “‘And lastly, to my only daughter, Miss Celia Fussell, I bequeath the estate of Wolfenbach under the conditions as explained in the letter enclosed. Should she fail to meet these conditions within a period of four months, the estate shall fall to the Altertumsverein Kirchwalden. With this I commend my soul to God. May He forgive my sins and give me His guidance so that after this life I fail not to enter His eternal kingdom. Signed, George Fussell, Lord Hailstone. Fifteenth September, 1825.’”

Cissy blinked.

“A double entail?” Dorinda gave an artful little laugh, which did little to hide the scorn underneath. “How very
curieux
.”

A worried frown creasing his smooth forehead, George leaned forward. “Surely there must be a mistake? I have never heard of this Wolfenbach before.” He turned to his sister. “Have you heard of it, Cis? Surely you cannot want a place we have never heard of?”

Cissy blinked again, while Dorinda managed a shrill giggle that had even the stout Mr. Weatherby wincing. “Wolfenbach? As in the novel? So it must be a joke, I assume? A very
étrange homme
, your father, Hailstone, full of peculiar jokes like the double entail,
pour exemple, n’est-ce pas
?”

Mr. Weatherby adjusted his glasses. “I assure you, my lord, my lady, Miss Fussell, that Wolfenbach does indeed exist, and that I here have the papers, drawn up in Miss Fussell’s name, to prove it. Miss Fussell?” He cleared his throat and lowered his head so he could peer over the rims of his spectacles at Cissy. “Would you like me to read out the accompanying letter?”

“But…but…” George spread his arms wide, a picture of genuine puzzlement. “Where exactly
is
this place? Surely our father would not want my sister to own a place we have never heard of?”

“
Exactement
.” Possessively, Dorinda settled her hand on George’s arm. “If there is another estate, it is only right and proper that it should go to dear Hailstone.”

Mr. Weatherby looked on the couple and sighed, as if the continuous interruptions in the proceedings finally began to annoy him. “Wolfenbach is situated, quite nicely as I have been assured, in the Great Duchy of Baden. In the Black Forest, to be more precise. The letter, Miss Fussell?”

Yet Dorinda was not yet finished. “The
Noire Forêt
?” She shuddered delicately and quite suddenly seemed to have lost interest in acquiring the property after all. “What an odious place! I have heard it is barely civilized. Whatever did your
père
think of, my dear Hailstone, to purchase a house somewhere like that in the first place?”

Mr. Weatherby gave her a bland smile. “Then you should consider yourself lucky, my lady, that the castle has been deeded to your sister-in-law. Miss Fussell?” His kind, watery eyes turned to Cissy once more.

A castle?

Who would have thought that her father owned a castle in Baden? He had friends there, for sure, living somewhere near Freiburg, where, as he had told her, small, man-made streams ran through the streets and filled the town with their faint babbling. Each year her father had received a carefully wrapped and boxed bottle of kirsch from the Black Forest. On the cold days of autumn and winter, he had liked to put a glass of kirsch in his cocoa
—“To warm my old bones,”
as he had said. Yet her father had not been that old, or so it had seemed to her. Surely not old enough to die…

“Miss Fussell?”

Cissy shook her head to clear the cobwebs from her brain.

A castle in the Black Forest.

“The…” She forced herself to concentrate. It would not do to live in the past. If you lived in the immediate past, her father used to say, it was escape. But if you lived in ages long gone, then it was called studies. At the memory, she almost felt like smiling. Almost. “The letter.”

“Yes, Miss Fussell.” She could hear concern in the lawyer’s voice. “Do you wish me to read it out aloud?”

A castle in the Black Forest.

For me?

“To my only daughter, Miss Celia Fussell, I bequeath the estate of Wolfenbach…”
—it seemed to Cissy as if she could hear her father’s voice, slightly rough and raspy with tobacco smoke—
“under the conditions as explained in the letter enclosed.”

What conditions?

Cissy met the lawyer’s gaze. Worry had darkened his eyes. Did he know what the letter contained? She moistened her lips and shot a look at the piece of folded paper he held out to her. Suddenly, her mouth went dry. “If you would be so kind,” she managed.

Mr. Weatherby nodded, then broke the wax seal. Carefully, he opened the letter and smoothed out the paper with long swipes of his hand. His eyes flitted over the page, darting back and forth as if caught in the web of her father’s spiky handwriting. After a moment, the lawyer cleared his throat delicately, adjusted his glasses once more, and looked up. “Lord Hailstone wrote this letter a few years prior to the existing will. The date given is the twenty-fourth of August, 1820.”

“But…but…” Agitation made George splutter. “That’s your birthday, Cis!”

Her twentieth birthday. The day she had resigned herself to the fate of being on the shelf forevermore. For a moment, the memory hurt. Even now. Even after all these years.

“Why would Papa write such a letter on your birthday?” George sounded puzzled.

“
Très morbidé
,” Dorinda commented, obviously piqued because so much attention was focused on her sister-in-law.

Mr. Weatherby chose to ignore her remark. His eyes remained fixed on Cissy. “Miss Fussell? Do you wish me to continue?”

She gave herself a mental shake and straightened her shoulders. “Of course.” Pleased, she noted how calm her voice sounded. As if nothing fazed her, not even the memory of that summer after her one and only season in London. Twenty years of age and no hopes for the future. How strange that it had not seemed to matter these past seven years. And how strange that it mattered now, more than ever.

Cissy folded her hands in her lap to prevent them from shaking while she listened to the even voice of the lawyer reading out her father’s last wishes:

“‘My dearest daughter, when I am no longer among the living and this comes into your hands, I would want you to know how much I have loved you. Indeed, you have brightened my days since the day you were born. Therefore, it particularly pains me that by that day’s twentieth return I have not been able to provide for you fittingly, as I strongly fear there will be no more chance for you to mingle with the rich and the wealthy in some fashionable town or other.’”

Cissy blinked, surprised that her father had seen her situation, after all. But she did not want his guilt, had never wanted his guilt, for she, in turn, had understood the family’s economic situation.

“How very touching this all is.” Dorinda sniffed. “Is this the reason,
peut-être
, for the double entail?”

Mr. Weatherby paused and looked at the new Lady Hailstone as he would at a particularly nasty insect under a microscope. Suddenly, a thin smile lifted his lips. “I believe, my lady, my late client chose that later date in 1825 to rework some points of his will.” For a moment his eyes glittered, before he abruptly turned back to Cissy, his face blank once more. “Shall I continue?”

Flabbergasted, she stared at their family solicitor. She could have sworn that for a moment something very much like malicious joy had lit his eyes. As if he held the new baroness in deep disdain. As if her father had indeed changed his will because of George’s wife. Cissy swallowed. “Please do.”

“‘Several years ago, when I still could do my friends financial favors, I purchased a most beautiful castle in the midst of the Black Forest. I had intended to give it back to my very good friend Wolfenbach upon my death, yet now I give it to you as I am sure you will treasure it just as I did. A castle fit for a princess, a castle fit for my own daughter. And still, it might fall back into the hands of the Wolfenbachs, for I give it to you upon one condition: that if Wolfenbach’s son is still unwed you will give him your hand in marriage. Wolfenbach has always been the most decent of men, and I have no doubt that he raised his son to be an equally honorable man. Be happy, my dear. With deepest affection, your father.’”

As he ended the letter, Mr. Weatherby carefully removed his spectacles and set them aside on the desk. “With this, I believe,”—his gaze settled warmly on Cissy—“he thought to secure you a suitable husband after all.”

Chapter 2

The tiled stove, a baroque monstrosity in white and gold, filled the sitting room with pleasant heat, while outside the wind howled around the snug little villa at the edge of the small town. Uneasily, Graf von Wolfenbach shifted on his worn armchair.

“Trouble, my dear?” came the soft voice of his wife. Immediately, the knot of anxiety in the pit of his stomach eased. Strange how, even after all these years, her sweet voice affected him, calmed the worst anger or soothed the deepest despair.
His little siren
, he had called her since the earliest days of their courtship so many years ago. In another lifetime, or so it seemed.