Defiance at Werewolf Keep (Werewolf Keep Trilogy) (3 page)

'And as no formal introductions have been
made of me, I am Mr William McManners, also a resident of Breckenhill Keep,' Will added with a flourish at the end of the introductions.

'Sorry
, old man, I forgot about you. Did I not introduce you yesterday?'

'No, you did not. As far as Miss Lily is concerned
, I am your lackey, not worthy of an introduction.' Will smiled to take the seriousness from his words.

'You are my right-
hand man, Will, not a lackey. I never travel with lackeys.'

'Resident
? Does that mean you have this contagion, too?' Lily asked, looking at Will with concern.

'We have quite a
bit to tell you about your condition on this journey,' Byron answered. 'For the moment, just accept that we are a community like no other. We have our own code of conduct that must be enforced for the safety of all concerned. Will, here, has the task of enforcing that code of conduct, whether at the Keep or elsewhere. He is also one of the many who suffer the contagion. '

'You make me sound like a thug,' Will grumbled.

'You are neither a criminal nor a ruffian, my dear man. Would you prefer I call you our Constable?'

'Och
, no! I bear no resemblance to them blue-suited monkeys with their big black sticks. I use ma fists to make ma point.' His brogue was suddenly much more distinctive in his mock disgust.

'Will was a sergeant
in Her Majesty’s Light Infantry in the Crimean War and then turned his hand to pugilism when he returned to Britain,' Fidelia informed her.

'
Pugilism? You were a boxer?' Lily asked in surprise.

'Can't yer
tell, lass? I wasn'a born with ma nose bent this many directions. Aye, and didn't it spoil ma pretty-boy looks, too?' One side of Will’s mouth quirked up in amusement.

'You canno
t blame boxing for the face the Lord gave you,' bantered Byron.

'At least I have an excuse for looking like a piece of uncut rock, what's yours?'

'Gentleman, please, you are frightening Lily. She does not know you well enough yet to understand your … ways,' Fidelia scolded with mock disapproval.

In all honesty, Lily was a little frightened by the men's attitude toward each other. She had never been a part of a large family. She had no understanding of playful insul
ts that could form part of the cement that bound one part to another. Her parents were never anything but polite to each other and had never spoken an angry or reproving word to her, so for someone to insult another so rudely seemed the action of an enemy, not that of a friend.

The train tooted its whistl
e and the guardsmen blew theirs to alert the driver that all passengers were safely on board. With a loud
chuff-chuff-chuff
the steam train began to chug its way slowly out of the glass-enclosed station.

A
thrill of excitement ran up her spine. Whatever this infection was, it couldn’t be any worse than what she had experienced in the past. She had felt like she was living on borrowed time since she was twenty, the age her doctor had predicted her death. That she had outlived his estimate, and now had this opportunity for adventure, no matter its eventual result, was one to be cherished.

She could smell the heavy
, acrid odour of coal in the air. And a few burning cinders flew in the window. She moved away from the opening and looked for a way to close it. Will, seeing her dilemma, reached over and pulled the wood-framed window up, leaving a gap at the top to let the warm air out.

‘Thank you. I wasn’t expecting cinders,’ she said softly as he finished with the window and sat back down across from her
again. His long legs were like book ends on either side of her own. The pose was so relaxed and yet so ungentlemanly that Lily wasn’t sure whether to be discomforted or soothed by it.

This man
had the contagion that her madman attacker had. But he seemed perfectly at ease with his condition. Could it be so bad if he were allowed out and about, and exhibited no signs of disease?

Blushing at the intense
gaze he kept on her, she looked away, out the window. For the first time in her life, she was going to see the world beyond her street. And though she thought she knew from her reading what to expect, the novelty of it was still exciting.

T
he changing view beyond the window didn’t disappoint. It proved endlessly fascinating to her, hour after long hour that passed. The built-up city gave way to countryside. Countryside sped by, replaced first by dark and dismal towns and factories, then by quaint villages with children playing in the streets. It was a whole varied world flying past her and she was witness to it all over a few short hours. Nothing could distract her from the view, even the arrival of the maid who came to offer them refreshments.

* * *

Will kept his own watch. Lily was the most fascinating creature he had ever met. Her name suited her completely. Poised on the edge of her seat, watching the different scenes passing them by, she looked as delicate as a flower. Her pointed elfin face with its huge, violet eyes stared with rapt attention at every new tree, carriage or hillside they passed. She was like a child seeing the world for the first time.

That idea seemed abs
urd. She was a woman in her mid-twenties, though she looked younger because of her thinness. Surely, she had to have seen something of the world in all those years.

He decided to test his theory as he
handed her the tea cup he’d been given by the maid. 'Here you go, lass, drink some tea. It's been a long time since you broke your fast.'

Lily turned away from the window long enough to take the proffered cup and
saucer with a smile and a nod. She sipped at the hot tea as she turned back to stare out the window.

'Have you nev’
r travelled by train before, Miss Lily?' he asked.

'Oh, no,
I have never travelled further than the end of our street, to the doctor’s premises. If I'm well enough, he prefers it if I visit him for our appointments because he has more of his equipment there. Mama and I would ride down the street by carriage, as it was considered too far for me to walk.'

Will stared at her in astonishment. Her blithe acceptance of her limited
experience humbled him. What must it be like to never go beyond the end of your street and the only greenery to be had, the walled garden behind her home? The image of a bird in a gilded cage came to mind.

'You have been poorly a long time
, then?' he asked gently.

'Oh, yes, all my life. My mother had a difficult confinement and I came into the world earlier than expected. My lungs weren't properly formed, the doctor said. They didn't expect me to live. But I did.
And for that I am always grateful, no matter how onerous life can be at times. So, until now, it has been a somewhat limited life in most ways. When I was well enough I worked in the shop, but for the rest of the time I was confined to my room. Or the garden in good weather. But I love to read and I have a very fertile imagination, my mother informs me. I am rarely bored. I would also do the shop's bookkeeping. I liked to help out, if I could. I hate being a burden.'

'Y
ou poor dear, what a life you have had to suffer!' Fidelia exclaimed with genuine concern. She took Lily's gloved hand in hers and pressed it.

Will had been sceptical about this
little noblewoman when she had first arrived on their doorstep in winter, expecting her to put on the usual airs and graces of her kind. But she had proved to be as genuine and unaffected as any lesser-born woman might be, and her kindness and compassion had quickly won them all over.

It didn’t hurt that she loved one of them enough to give up her old life for him. Someone like the former Duchess of Clarence coul
d have had the world on a plate had she wanted it. Instead, she had settled for one room in a rundown Castle Keep in the wilds of the Yorkshire Moors, just so she could be with the man she loved.

'I have had
a good life, Lady Horton, much more so than many people. I have had loving parents, good food, and comfortable and safe surroundings in which to indulge my passion for learning. There are many, so I have read, who cannot say the same.' Lily obviously didn't like being pitied, even when it was meant in such a kindly way. She gently extracted her hand from Fidelia's.

'Please, call me Dee
. Lady Horton is still an unfamiliar title. I am more likely to answer to Lady Montgomery.' Fidelia gave a little laugh to cover up the discomfort she obviously felt at the polite rebuke.

'Montgomery
? As in the Duke of Clarence?' Lily asked, seemingly contrite and trying to make up for it by engaging in a more socially acceptable exchange. The conversation had ebbed and flowed around her all morning, but she had seemed to pay no attention to it. Now, she blushed at her own social shortcomings.

If she had lived the life of an invalid, how had she learned to be comfortable with strangers? The inane prattle that passed for social intercourse annoyed Will mightily, but he understood the need for it. But it didn’t come naturally to him, and it now seemed likely that such was the case with this young invalid
, too.

'I was the widow of the Duke of Clarence,' Fidelia
indicated her black bombazine dress and the mourning broach pinned to her bodice. ‘As most of the Ton do not know I have remarried, when I come to London, I retain the outer trappings of my mourning. When I get home I will change into more appropriate clothing. A new wife does not mourn the husband she no longer has, but celebrates the one she does.’

Lily stared at the widow’s weeds as if taking in their significance for the first time.
Mortified, she stumbled over her apology. 'I am so sorry, I didn't realise. I didn't notice your apparel …'

'My dear, please, do not trouble yourself. I wear black in the city because it is still less than a year since my
first husband passed. I was sad at the loss, but not heartbroken. In many ways, it is only when I visit London and see my family and friends that I remember that part of my life at all. So much has changed in so short a time. You will understand when you have been at Breckenhill Keep for a few months.'

CHAPTER THREE

'A few months? Surely the quarantine won't require me to be away t
hat long?' Lily asked fearfully, the mortification she had felt the moment before forgotten as her new concerns reared their heads.

'I imagine there is no better
time than the present to start explaining your circumstances,' Byron said. He looked from Fidelia to Will as they all exchanged meaningful nods of agreement. Byron reached across and secured the compartment door so there would be no interruptions.

'What did you see the night y
ou were attacked, Miss Farnsworth?' Byron began.

'I have no memory of
that night. They tell me an unclothed man climbed over our wall.' She didn’t want to discuss this now. Why spoil her enjoyment of the adventure with worries for the future? Hadn’t she learned years ago that such thinking only ruined the moment?

'Is that what you think happened?' Byron inte
rrupted.

'I...
I don't know. It must have been. My father saw the man. But...I have nightmares. And in them everything I'm told happened, does happen, except for two things. It is not a man that attacks me and it is not a knife that cuts me.' Lily shuddered and the fine bone china cup in her hands began to shake so badly against the saucer that she feared it would shatter. She hastily handed the empty cup back to Will, who placed it on the tray by the door.

'What was it that attacked you in you
r dream?' Byron pressed.

'A beast. A dog or wolf, but larger and wilder. A monster
with great yellow teeth and long claws that swiped at my shoulder.'

Lily waited to hear the usual response to her description.
But no one denied what she said. No one laughed at her nervously, as if thinking her mad. No one smiled at her sympathetically, placating the invalid.

They all
simply nodded.

'What attacked you was a beast,’
Byron said slowly, trying to find the right words. He seemed to be leading this conversation, and the others sat silently by, lending their unspoken support. Lily looked from one to the other, as if she had misheard.

'You think it
was a beast? Then you are the first. I had started to believe my nightmares were just that, horrendous dreams sent to keep me from sleep.’

‘It was a w
erewolf, in fact. Have you heard the term before?'

She stared at him in stunned surprise. Was he making fun of her?
‘Werewolf? They are mythical creatures, Lord Carstairs. They don't exist. My creature was not a werewolf.'

'Not mythical,
nor a creature of legend. Werewolves do exist, and yes, that is what attacked you. He turned back into human form as soon as his heart stopped beating.'

Lily felt numb. S
he couldn't seem to get her mind to accept the enormity of what she was being told. She had been attacked by a mythical creature, the stuff of horror stories. It was too much.

She had
always enjoyed reading horror stories. Her favourite had been Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein
. She’d even briefly read about werewolves in Reynold's
Wagner the Wehr-Wolf
,
before her mother had confiscated the book, saying it was not suitable for impressionable young ladies.

Now here was this respectable gentleman telling her that such stories were true. Not only th
at, but that she had been attacked by one. She wanted to laugh. It was too absurd to consider. They were playing with her in the same way they had played with each other. Because she was unfamiliar with this kind of banter, she had started to believe them. Any moment now, they would burst into laughter at her expense.

'Please
, don't make fun of me in such a way, sir. I may be inexperienced where the world is concerned, but I am well-educated and I do know where reality stops and fantasy begins. There are no such things as wehr-wolves.'

'Lass, we're absolutely serious. What attacked you two weeks ago was a werewolf, a man infected with lycant
hropia. The doctors tell us it’s a contagion of some kind that is passed by bodily fluids while the man is in animal form. It doesna appear to be passed down through families.' Will leaned across and placed both his big hands on top of hers, as they lay like broken toys in her lap.

'Lycan... I've never heard of it.'

'Aye, likely you have no’. I nev’r heard the term until I was attacked.' Will squeezed her fingers gently as he let his meaning sink in.

'You were attacked as I was? You saw the beast? You escaped?' Lily felt the comfort of the big hands on hers and allowed his calmness to soak into her
, like water into parched soil. What her mind could not accept, her heart did. This Scot was trying to comfort her. He had shared the same horrifying experience and knew how she felt.

'Aye, Lass
, I did. Claire was driven away before she could end me.'

'Claire
?'

'Claire Greaves. She wa
s one of the long-term residents at Breckenhill Keep at one time,' Dee informed her, a nervous smile playing across her bow-shaped lips.

'I thought you said you were attacked by a werewolf? Now you say it was a woman?' Lily wanted to get away. She wanted to leave these people and their confusing, terrifying story and go home. She tried to rise
, but Will's gentle hands held her firmly in place.

'Claire
, like most of the inhabitants of Breckenhill Keep, was a werewolf, turned by a lover who came home from the Crimean War. In those days, some eleven years ago now, there was only a small group of people aware of the plague that war had unleashed on us. It took many months to track Claire down and convince her that she needed to be protected from herself.' Byron spoke in his serious, unemotional way, as if discussing the latest harvest yield.

'And you are taking me to a place where there are more creatures like the one who attacked me? Are you mad? What kind of
cruel trick is this? Let me go!'

S
he pulled her hands out from under Will's and struggled to escape. She was wild with terror, and the big Scot, forced to draw her to her feet to still her, wrapped his arms around her writhing body, holding her as he would an injured bird as she thrashed in his arms.

'There lass, donna fash you
rself. You'll be perfectly safe. That's the point of the asylum. It protects us. You’ll come to no harm, I promise you,' he murmured into her hair.

Lily stopped
struggling. She let her head rest against her captor’s warm chest, feeling the strong arms comforting her, even as they trapped her. His words dripped into her awareness a phrase at a time. 'Perfectly safe' ...'Asylum'... 'Protects us' ...'Us…'

'How can a place that imprisons werewolves also be a safe haven for its victims?' she asked
breathlessly, almost afraid to hear the answer.

'Because every werewolf wa
s a victim. Like us, Lily, Lass. We were all bitten or scratched by werewolves. For me it was Claire, for Claire it was her lover, for her lover... I donna ken his name. He was shot before the Captain could get to him... But that ex-soldier was, in-turn, bitten on one of the bloody battlefields of the Crimean Peninsula. Before that…we have only suppositions.'

Byron took up the story.
'We have been fighting to contain an epidemic, in the last eleven years, of such proportion that it could destroy society as we know it. And we do it in secret. If the general public were to find out what roamed their streets at night, we would have panic and mass hysteria on our hands.’

'Is there a cure?' she asked, feeling Will's arms
loosen enough for her to turn and look at Byron.

'We’
re hopeful. But, although we now know a great deal more about the condition than we did even five years ago, we have found no cure, as yet.'

‘How can you live with the woman who attacked you?’ She turned her head up to Will, wanting to see another truth in his dark eyes
other than the one they had told her.

‘I didna have to for verra
long. She died…’

‘Will! Do not give her more than s
he can handle!’ Fidelia snapped, more fiercely than Lily would have expected from the lady-like noblewoman.

‘How did she die?’ Lily wasn’t about to have such a crucial piece of the puzzle held back from her now
. Surely, if she knew this, the rest would start to make sense.

‘She took her own life. The horror of her condition became too much for her. It does
, for some. But it doesna have to be the case,’ Will rushed to assure her as he saw the shock she was feeling.

Lily felt sorry for all those poor people
who had been turned into werewolves; people who had been driven to end their own lives because of the horror of being turned into a werewolf; people just like her who had been victims ; people just like her who had become monsters.

People
just like her?

* * *

Will felt the moment when realization came. Lily's body went very stiff and still in his arms. It was as if she had stopped breathing, had stopped existing, for those long moments that it took the reality of her situation to sink in. Then she went limp in his arms, and he hastily sat down with the unconscious girl across his lap.

When he made no move to
reposition her on the seat, Fidelia tutted. 'Will, that is hardly appropriate. Anyone passing our compartment will think her a drunken doxy passed out in your arms.’

'I donna give a dev’
l’s damn what someone passin’ will think. She isna waking up to this nightmare alone. I’ll hold her until she's strong enough to bear it.' Will's tone brooked no argument.

'It i
s so unfair that someone so innocent should be burdened with this,' Fidelia went on, giving in to Will’s decision with no further argument. 'She has suffered so much in her life. Now this. I do not see how she will be strong enough to withstand it.'

'
She's a survivor. They didna think she'd live when she was born, and she did. She's battled all manner of ailment every day of her life. This is just one more. If anyone can be strong enough to survive this, she can,' Will snapped back, trying to convince himself as much as Fidelia.

'I hope you
are right. It is a miracle she survived the attack. Children and the very weak and infirmed usually do not,' Byron said, taking a sip of his now cold tea.

Will knew that, in moments like this, Byron hated his job. He hated what he was forced to do, to protect his people. If he didn't have his beloved Phil awaiting him at the Keep, pregnant with their first child, Will thought he would have been beaten-down by it by now.

One night in his cups,
not long before Phil’s arrival and shortly after the death of Captain Davenport, their leader, Byron had confided that he found his job harder with each passing year. If Phil hadn’t come into his life, Will thought that Byron’s burden would have finally become unbearable. But the last year had changed their guardian, eased his lot so much that it was only in moments like this, when the victim was someone so wholly innocent and overburdened as Lily Farnsworth was, that he appeared overwhelmed by it.

'I will help
her through,' Will spoke softly to no one in particular as he stared down at the unconscious girl in his arms.

She looked more child than a
dult in that moment. His index finger traced the spattering of freckles across her sharp, upturned nose, then found its way to her wide, full lips and the pointed chin with its delightful little cleft in its centre.

It was a fey face that denied her strength.
But she
was
strong, he knew it. And what strength she lacked he would supply for her. He would get her through this. Not because he lusted after her, certainly not because he loved her, but because protecting her had become a personal need. A need he was more than happy to meet.

* * *

When Lily returned to consciousness, her first impression was one of safety. She felt enveloped by the warm comfort of a caring heart.

Not since she was a child had she heard such a
steady thud beating beneath her ear. Memories of those long nights suddenly filled her mind. Nights when pain had wracked her body and driven her to the edge of sanity. During those nights, the only comfort to be found was being rocked in her mother’s arms, listening to that steady heartbeat as it anchored her to life and kept her from giving up.

But
now, as the world beyond that comfort slowly pressed in on her, she knew that this heartbeat didn’t anchor her to life. Instead, it weighed her down. It pulled her, kicking and struggling to the very depths of despair.

They had told her that she was a werewolf. Not in so many words, but that was the implication. If she was bitten by a werewolf then she was now a werewolf
, too. At the time of the full moon she would turn into an ugly, demonic beast and attack innocent people.