Castle of the Wolf (3 page)

He looked up from the letter he had been reading to where she sat at the window, which overlooked the prosperous valley all the way to the dark sweep of the hills beyond. She dyed her hair black—in order to please him, he knew. Yet even with gray hair, white hair, with no hair at all, she would have been the most beautiful woman to him. The only one he had ever loved. The only one who had ever gifted him with children, fine sons, so a part of themselves would live on. He had always hoped the kind of love he and his wife shared would blossom for his sons, too. Yet it seemed as if that was not going to be.

“Ferdl?” A faint line appeared between her brows, and she put her embroidery aside. Her tone and the fact she had used her pet name for him betrayed her worry.

“It’s nothing,” he hastened to reassure her. “I …” He took his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. At her sound of distress, he smiled apologetically. “I am sorry, Anna. It’s just… I have just received news that my dear friend Hailstone passed away last month.”

“Oh, my dear.” She rose and hurried to his side, her movements slowed by aged bones and muscles. And yet, when he rested his head against her soft breasts and her hand tenderly stroked what was left of his hair, it seemed as if the years slipped away. And like the first time he had found this heavenly place God had created for him on earth, a warm flood of gratitude and well-being filled his body.

His hand slipped around her waist, while he turned to rest his forehead against the warm flesh of her upper chest. He inhaled her familiar scent, letting it take the sharp edge off his grief. “Do you remember the provisions of the will?” he murmured against her skin.

Her hand on his hair momentarily stilled. She cupped his skull, and he felt the subtle pressure of her fingers. “The mad scheme the two of you cooked up all those years ago? Oh dear.” Her fingers relaxed. Her hand glided down to rest on his neck in an oddly protective gesture. “He will not like it. He will not like it at all.”

And in accord, both of them turned to look out the window to the hill where the castle nestled amidst the dark trees, the crumbling tower to them a symbol of dying hope and shattered dreams.

~*~

“I still don’t think this is a wise idea.”

Instead of answering, Cissy carefully wrapped one of her tea dresses around her copy of the
Lyrical Ballads
so the leather-bound volume would not come to harm in the travel chest during her journey. She had sent her maid away because the girl had kept blubbering into her big white hankie. That Evie accompany Cissy to Germany was out of the question—a journey to Newcastle would have been enough to make Evie perish on the spot. Yet the thought of losing her mistress seemed equally disconcerting for the poor thing.
Well, I wouldn’t cherish the thought of working for Dorinda, either.
Cissy sniffed.

“Have you listened to me at all?” George asked.

Cissy threw a look over her shoulder at her brother, who sat at her desk and looked mournful.

“Dorinda and I, we would have been perfectly happy if you had decided to continue living at Badford Park. You know that, don’t you? We still would. You could still stay here and—”

Her back to him, Cissy rolled her eyes. “We have been through this numerous times in the past three weeks. You will not persuade me, George.” She prodded her dress-wrapped book of poetry to find out if it needed more padding. Satisfied, she put it into the chest and reached for the next book and the next dress.

“I cannot imagine what you want to do in Baden.” Wood creaked as George shifted on the chair. “There is nothing for you there.”

There is nothing for me
here. For a moment, Cissy had to close her eyes. Then she shook her head and busied herself with wrapping her book and putting it away. “I am going to have a castle.”
Just imagine: a castle! Like a princess!
She took up another tome.

“And marry a man you have never seen in your life.” Suddenly George sounded aggressive. “How our dear father could have come up with such a harebrained scheme is quite beyond me, I swear!”

Distracted, Cissy frowned and rubbed a thumb over a scratch in the blue leather cover of her book of German fairy tales, a present from her father for her nineteenth birthday. With her forefinger she traced the golden lettering:
Kinder- und Hausmärchen gesammelt durch die Brüder Grimm.
“Wolfenbach’s son will surely be already married and bouncing his little ones on his knee,” she murmured.

“And if not?” George jumped up. Before she had time to react, he was at her side and wrenched her around, hands like iron bands on her shoulders. “What will you do then, Cis? You know nothing of… You cannot know what…” Hot color suffused his face.

His vehemence surprised her, yet she managed a small shrug, even though his hands weighed her shoulders down. “You have heard what Papa wrote. That Wolfenbach is a decent man, and that Papa was convinced his son—”

“For heaven’s sake, Cis!” George shouted. “A man might be the Archangel Michael personified, and yet his son might grow into a good-for-nothing! A…a rakehell.” His voice rose even more. “Dammit, Cis, this is not one of your blasted fairy tales!” He grabbed the book she still held in her hands and flung it across the room. With a dull thud, it hit the wall and fluttered to the floor, rustling like a bird with broken wings.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

Then another kind of hot color filled George’s face. “I beg your pardon.”

“What for?” Her face expressionless, Cissy stared at her book. “For swearing or for ruining my book?” Slowly, she raised her eyes to his face, the same apple-cheeked face she had loved all her life. Now it seemed the face of a stranger.

“I do apologize,” George said stiffly. “But still, just because Father left you a castle doesn’t mean that life has turned into a fairy tale. Life is
not
a fairy tale, Cis.”

A harsh laugh escaped her. “And yet you want me to turn into Ashputtel?”

“What?” A puzzled frown marred his smooth forehead.

Of course he would not know. For a moment, she felt tempted to tell him: reduced to a servant in her father’s house, to sleep in the ashes of the hearth. Dorinda would love that.

Cissy shook her head. “It’s nothing.” She brushed past him to retrieve her fallen book. “You will not change my mind in this,” she said, her back to him. She lifted the once beautiful book and tried to smooth the crumpled pages with the flat of her hand.

“Cis…” he began.

She looked up. Apple cheeks and soulful brown eyes, and yet the face of a stranger. “Go, George. And tomorrow I will go, too.”

Another scratch in the blue leather, one corner bumped. No longer fine and new, but a relic from golden times never to be retrieved.

The door closed with a click.

She was alone.

~*~

The next day, for the first time in weeks, the sun broke through the thick, gray clouds and tinted the world in his early-morning hue. Shades of orange and pink touched the trees, the grass and the house, and the road appeared to be strewn with gold. Jubilant birds rose up into the sky to greet the new day.

Standing on the drive in front of the manor, Cissy took a deep breath to draw it all in—memories that were made of familiar sights and sounds, the smell of damp air that mingled with the rich scents wafting up from the kitchen where Cook was preparing breakfast.

“M-miss?”

Cissy looked around.

Evie stood on the front steps, shuffling her feet and twisting her fingers in her apron. “M-m-m…” The maid snuffled. “M-mi-miss…yer b-b-b…” Her lower lip trembled and then she burst into tears. “Oh, Miss Celia!” she wailed. “How can ye leave an’ go to ‘em barbarians?”

Cissy sighed. “Evie—”

“Oooh!” The girl sank down on the cold stone of the steps and buried her face in her apron. Big sobs wracked her plump little body, and the sounds she emitted reminded Cissy of the elephant she had seen at a Covent Garden pantomime all those years ago.

“They are not exactly barbarians.” Cissy walked back to the front entrance and gently patted Evie’s bent shoulders. “Really, you shouldn’t take this so hard, my dear.”

Raising her head from her now crumpled apron, Evie blinked up with bloodshot, redrimmed eyes. “Oh, miss…” She reached for Cissy’s hand. “Can ye not stay?” she whispered.

“Oh, Evie.” Cissy sat down on the stairs next to her maid. “You know I cannot. I…” She looked down on their linked hands: Evie’s pink and plump, her own slender and almost white. “I have this one chance to be something more than mere Miss Celia Fussell, Lord Hailstone’s spinster sister.” She rubbed her thumb over the girl’s knuckles. “Just that one chance, Evie. I cannot forsake my father’s gift.”

The maid sniffled. “I’ve always liked ye fine as ye are, miss.”

Cissy felt a smile tug at her lips. The girl had a good heart. “And I thank you for it, Evie.” She looked up to meet the girl’s tear-filled gaze. “But being the baron’s spinster daughter was one thing. I could not stand being the baron’s spinster sister.”

A large tear rolled down Evie’s cheek. “I understand, miss. It’s just tha’ I will miss ye so.”

“My dear, sweet Evie.” Impulsively, Cissy gave her maid a hug. “I will miss you, too, you know.” She sighed. “I wish things would have been different…” Releasing the girl, she stared down the drive toward the street. On and on it went, a gravelly band through meadows and fields. Soon, it would take her away from all that was dear to her, would carry her far away into a new life.

As if she had somehow sensed Cissy’s thoughts, Evie suddenly said, “He wouldn’t ‘ave wanted it, the late master, God bless his soul. He wouldn’t ‘ave wanted fer ye to stay his spinster daughter forever an’ ever. He’d ‘ave wanted fer ye to be married to a fine young gentleman and ‘ave little ‘uns.”

With a pang, Cissy remembered the words of her father’s will:
“It particularly pains me that… I have not been able to provide for you fittingly…”

“I suppose you are right,” she said slowly.

Evie wiped her face with her apron and nodded. “I’m sure… I’m sure tha’…” New tears welled in her eyes, and her voice started to wobble again. “Tha’ he’s…he’s found ye a right nice young man.” Swiping her hand over her eyes, the girl sniffed loudly. “Miss.”

Cissy stared down the street. “I sure do hope so,” she murmured, then suddenly shivered as a slither of ice whispered down her spine.

~*~

He prowled the hallways of his home like a beast on the loose. Restless and always searching,
searching
…

Outside, the storm howled around the casements, hissing viciously through cracks in the ancient walls. The old trees groaned under its onslaught, while overhead, wind scattered the clouds like a distressed flock of sheep. For a short moment, the dark veil was ripped from the moon and a splinter of light fell through the windows, wandered over Spartan furniture.

Instinctively, the man shrank away from the light.

Better the dark, where shapes became obscure and no pity existed.

As if it had suddenly become too heavy, he leaned his head against the door frame, rubbing his leg to ease the pain of over-exercised muscles. This was all he had left: darkness and pain. All he would ever be: a ghost, a specter, a fairytale beast not fit for human company.

A harsh laugh escaped him.

No, not a fairytale beast.
These
still had hope. In the end, they would always turn back into dashing Prince Charming. But for him, there would be no salvation, no return to a past where he had been fêted as the darling of society, where women had given him smiles full of sexual promise and men had regarded him with respect and envy.

Another flock of clouds hid the moon and plunged the room into welcome darkness.

Bitterness churned in his stomach, a poisonous snake. And yet, together with the pain, it was his only companion in this life that had gone wrong so many, many years ago. He shuddered. No, there would be no turning back to the past for him, no return to innocence, to life in the light. No salvation for this beast. Only loneliness.

Defeated, the man bowed his dark head, accepting the inevitable as he had accepted it all those years ago.

Chapter 3

“…and then the mice ate the evil bishop up so all that remained was his skeleton,” Mrs. Chisholm whispered in her most eerie voice, while peering at the stocky tower from underneath the dripping hood of her oilskin coat. Cissy stood beside her on the deck of the steamer and tried to discern something through the steady drizzle.

Mist whirled around the base of the Mouse Tower and rendered the small island in the midst of the Rhine invisible. More mist, dirty white, poured from the hills to their right and left, and reached out its tentacles to span the expanse of the broad stream. Like an eerie apparition in a gothic novel, the towers and battlements of a castle would sometimes rise above the clogging gray.

Her ears ringing with the never ending bluster of the steamship’s engine, Cissy huddled deeper into the folds of her own coat. She blinked. Dampness clung to her lashes like tears. Yet despite the mist and the rain, Mrs. Chisholm had insisted on staying on deck so they could properly admire the splendor of Father Rhine.

Cissy could still hardly believe that she really was on board a ship heading up the Rhine and bringing her nearer and nearer to a new life. A sense of unrealness shrouded the journey to London with Mr. Weatherby, who had not only organized a passport and the necessary signatures for her, but had also introduced her to Mrs. Chisholm, the widow of a wealthy manufacturer. She liked to spend the winters in the town of Baden-Baden and had agreed to take on Cissy as her companion for the length of their journey. Well versed in the art of traveling at this time of year, she also had insisted on their oilskin coats.

As Mrs. Chisholm stood beside Cissy at the railing, the widow reminded her of a rather tall, thin scarecrow. A beaming scarecrow, despite the water which dripped from her nose. Mrs. Chisholm didn’t even bat an eye when the ship stopped at yet another customs house, and they had to dig out their passports so they could leave Prussia and enter Hesse-Darmstadt.