Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark (15 page)

Her chin went up, a mulish expression on her sweet face. “We were friends, ma’am, weren’t we, Jamey? Cecilia an’ me were friends,” she said, looking back at her beau with a significant look and digging him in the ribs.

He nodded. “Aye… friends.”

She had handled them all wrong, Anne thought ruefully, giving them a chance to present a united front. “That’s not what I’ve heard. Nevertheless, Ellen, I would strongly advise you to accompany me back to the lodge.”

It was interesting how the meek girl Anne had met the first morning returned in an instant.

“Yes, milady, of course.” She cast a glance back at Jamey. “You remember what I said, now, Jamey.”

“Go along with Mary,” Anne said to Ellen, “for I’d like to speak to Jamey for a moment.”

Mary said, eyeing the sullen young groom, “I don’t like leavin’ ya alone just now, what with th’wolf an’ all.”

“Nonsense. That has to have been a dog, not a wolf, after all.”

“Like no dog I’ve ever seen,” she muttered, but at a look from her mistress, she took Ellen’s arm and said, “Right, you come along with me, and we’ll wait for her ladyship down’t th’ bottom of the hill.”

Anne turned to the groom as the two women departed; he appeared uneasy. “You, young man, have caused quite a bit of trouble among the girls of Ivy Lodge with your flirtatious ways.”

“Don’t know nothin’ ’bout that,” he said, the sullen expression still on his handsome face.

He was a good-looking enough fellow in the flickering light of his lantern, with a broad face, even, unblemished features, good teeth, and a sturdy frame. Among the other farm workers and stable staff, he likely looked a prince. That was the only explanation for so elevated a creature as a lady’s maid—Cecilia Wainwright—falling for him, that and her evident loneliness since coming to Ivy Lodge. A lady’s maid would normally set up a flirtation with a footman, as they were, without exception, tall and handsome. Or a secretary, like Mr. Boatin, would be a catch for a girl like Cecilia.

“Do you deny that you had a flirtation or more than that with Cecilia Wainwright? And that you met her on the night she died?”

At that he looked genuinely frightened. “Look ’ere, yer ladyship, I were nowhere near Ivy Lodge that night. Wasn’t me she met. You arsk that blackamoor whut he was doin’ talking to a girl like Cece.”

“Cece? A pet name?” she asked, watching his face. He wasn’t as handsome as he first appeared, and she could see how coarseness was creeping in on him. Eventually he would become careless about his personal grooming, his beard would coarsen, his clothes fail to fit over a thickening belly, and one day soon he would be just a scratching, spitting, belching groom, and the girl who married him would sigh for the handsome lad he once had been and wonder where he had gone. He eyed her with ill-concealed dislike. A girl as refined as Cecilia had seemed to be, on the one or two occasions Anne had seen her when visiting Lydia’s home, was wasted on him. Ellen, simpler of mind and heart, would be more his cup of tea. “What do you say to that? You had come so far as to have a pet name for Cecilia?”

He reddened. “Didn’t say we wasn’t friends, just said I din’t meet ’er that noight.”

“And she and Mr. Boatin were friends, too. If she could have you as a…
friend,
could she not also speak to Mr. Boatin?”

He didn’t say anything.

“And the werewolf costume you and some friend devised—tell me about it, how you made it, what you’ve done with it? Come, tell me, for I know it was you all along posing as a werewolf. Did you and a friend not frighten the girls in turn, howling and running about? Who is your confederate in this? He’s out this very evening, isn’t he?”

But Jamey, a mulish expression on his face, turned, muttering, “Got to get back t’the castle.” He turned on his heel, and without permission, bolted, racing quickly out of sight, taking the light with him.

“Dash the fellow!” she exclaimed as darkness closed around her. She could no longer hear Ellen and Mary but hoped she could find her way, orienting herself from the dark tower and heading off carefully in what she thought was the right direction. Once she was out of the brush, she would be all right.

A rustling nearby made her pause. “Mary?” she said. No answer, but more rustling. She tried to go faster, but she was afraid she had gone astray a little. She paused and called out Mary’s name again. No answer.

Something was near, though, she could feel it, and her hair stood straight up on her arms again. A quivering, superstitious dread trembled deep in her belly and she stumbled, trying to move toward a faint hint of light… or at least a lessening of the dark shadows within which she was mired.

Out of the woods rushed a figure, and she screeched, but then a very human hand clamped on her arm and another over her mouth.

“Shhh, don’t scream, and stop squirming!”

It was the marquess’s gruff voice, and she wriggled around in his grip, beating at his arm, but he would not loosen his hold, so she bit his finger.

“Ow, damn you!” he grunted, releasing her.

“What do you mean by following me, creeping up on me, then grabbing me like that!” she gasped, panting.

“I didn’t want anyone to know I was here. Then came you and your confounded prying. You almost ran into me in your blundering through the woods! You moved so quickly, and I wanted to catch hold of you before you hurt yourself in stumbling about in the brush.”

“I began to move so quickly only because I heard you rustling around in the brush,” she exclaimed. “Cecilia’s confessed murderer has been arrested. Doesn’t that mean the property is safe? What are you doing out this time of night anyway?”

“I should be asking you that, milady.” He grabbed her arm and began to propel her forward. “Why
are
you out here in the woods?”

She ignored the question. “I saw that wolf you say doesn’t exist,” she said as branches whipped in her face and her feet seemed to barely touch the ground. She wrenched free of him after a few moments, exclaiming, “Let me find my own way, if you please, if you’re going to be so violently difficult!”

“You were going in the wrong direction!” he exclaimed. “That’s why I had to stop you, or you would have ended up on the other side of the woods near Staungill Force. I’m bloody well not going to have another woman take a tumble off that.” He took her arm and more sedately helped her through the forest.

They finally came to a clearing, and a shot of moonlight silvered the darkness. She shivered and looked around, not recognizing where they were. “I didn’t come out alone, anyway—Mary, my maid, was with me and will be worried sick if I don’t join her.”

He chuckled, a deep rumbling sound in his chest that was terrifyingly attractive. He moved closer to her, so close his body heat bathed her in warmth. “Are you saying that,” he whispered close to her ear, “because you wish me to know someone will miss you if you disappear?”

Determined to keep her dignity intact, she shrugged away from his warm breath and said, “Sir, please do not play at being menacing. It only makes you appear foolish.”

“You are a most unusual woman,” he said after a moment, moving away from her. “Perhaps I’m flirting with you. Some women find mysterious men attractive. Have you considered that?”

“That you flirt with me? No, for I gave you credit for more sense than that, though I can easily change that opinion if necessary. But I have considered that you’re trying to hide something, like who is perpetrating this werewolf hoax. Or what the real animal is, for I heard and saw something, Lord Darkefell, and it was
not
human. I also saw something else… something that perambulated on two feet!”

“Nonsense!”

“It is
not
nonsense.” She turned, but he grabbed her arm and whirled her around.

“I must tell you again, please keep to your room at night.”

“That sounded oddly like a threat, or a warning from someone who knows something. But the murderer has been caught,” she said coldly. She regarded him in the dim light of the silvery moon; his handsome face gleamed with dampness, though the night air felt cold to her, and she wondered what caused such perspiration. A guilty conscience? “And I don’t believe in werewolves. Is it simply more convenient for you if I stay in my bed, shivering, with the covers pulled up to my nose?”

He growled and released her. “Maddening,” he said, thrusting his fingers through his hair and pulling at it. “Infuriating. Baffling. Unwomanly.” He threw up his hands and retreated, saying, “Go, then…
go!
Devil woman.”

She sighed, trying to settle her trembling as she watched him disappear. He really did have the most extraordinary effect on her, setting her heart to throbbing and her insides to quivering like quince jelly. She slid awkwardly down a damp hill and finally out to a broader clearing. Mary trotted toward her; Ellen, shivering, stood sullenly some distance away, her shawl pulled close around her.

“Milady, I was that worrit! I was just about to go back, for I thought I heard voices.”

“Just me talking to myself,” she said, savagely kicking at a tuft of grass. The marquess had to be the most irritating man she had ever met. He insisted on mocking her with his faux seduction, and then he called
her
maddening?

Mary eyed her but held her tongue, and in silence, the threesome returned to Ivy Lodge.

The next morning Darkefell dourly contemplated the state of things as his man, Harwood, completed his toilette, preparatory to Palm Sunday service and the church appearance that was required of him.

“Lift your chin, please, milord,” Harwood said, expertly wielding the straight razor. “Now down, please, milord.”

Darkefell closed his eyes; there was to be a special prayer of thanksgiving that Spottiswode had been “captured.” Every crime of the last two years had been laid at his feet, starting with Tilly Landers’s supposed murder on the Staungill Force, up to and including the poor-box money being pinched the previous Sunday after service.

The slaughtered sheep were believed to be sacrifices for a witch’s rite Spottiswode performed. Cecilia Wainwright supposedly threatened him with exposure for moral lapses—though why anyone supposed Spottiswode had any moral standing left from which to lapse, Darkefell couldn’t imagine—and so he had murdered her. Some of the more suggestible even thought the poor drunk was the “werewolf.”

Perhaps Darkefell should be grateful the locals had decided Tilly Landers’s death was a part of Spottiswode’s criminality, since suspicion before that had fallen on his head or that of his brother, Julius, but he wasn’t. The
facts
were clear: Tilly Landers’s body was found below the waterfall after an anonymous note addressed to the magistrate claimed that the marquess had pushed her off the cliff. Darkefell denied it, and it likely would have been forgotten, but Julius, fearing his brother would be arrested, claimed it was he who was seen, that he had met her to offer her money to leave the marquess alone—she was apparently claiming that he had fathered her unborn child—but after meeting her, he saw her fall from the cliff.

Darkefell scowled as Harwood applied pomade to his dark hair and plaited his queue. Julius didn’t kill Tilly Landers, but that’s what many concluded after such an idiotic story as his brother had told. Now, of course, the villagers believed it was Spottiswode, even though that made no sense either. Her death was an accident, Darkefell thought, though the anonymous note, suggesting there was more to the girl’s death, still troubled him.

Today the marquess had to stand up in church and praise the Lord that Cecilia Wainwright’s killer had been secured and would be tried. Despite the confession, he wasn’t convinced the fellow had done anything of the kind. If Spottiswode had been worth a damn, he would have protested, but the man had been headed for the hangman’s noose since the day he was spawned. However, Darkefell had heard that vaguely worded threats were being bandied about; Spottiswode was not well liked, and some thought they should save the Crown trouble and just hang him.
That
Darkefell would not allow, and he would make sure everyone in Hornethwaite knew his feelings on the subject. Spottiswode would get his trial.

But Darkefell’s foul mood had little to do with service. He would say the correct things and calm the upsets of his people with just the right mix of humbuggery and sententiousness that they seemed to expect from their lord. It was that damned fool woman, Lady Anne Addison! Last night’s expedition had been the outside of enough, and he was ready to command that she be hauled away by her coachman and set down, with her wrists tied and a gag over her ever-flapping mouth, in her Kentish home, where she would be safe. Who would ever guess that she would wander out at night, following a maid who was trysting with her swain? Though she hadn’t told him that was her object, he had guessed it, having spotted Jamey and Ellen together. He had had to confront Lady Anne, sweating like a lathered horse, to make sure she got back to her maid rather than wandering on in the direction she was headed, to fall into Staungill Pool, or something equally as ridiculous.

An unwilling smile tugged at his lips; perhaps he was being unkind. She wasn’t foolish, but she
was
foolhardy.

“Done, milord,” Harwood said, sweeping away the cloth used to protect Darkefell’s clothes.

The marquess regarded himself in the mirror: his dark, glossy hair was swept off his forehead and tied back in a neat queue, his face was clean-shaven, and his neckcloth perfectly tied. Fortune and fickle fashion smiled on him, for with a full head of hair, he could eschew wigs for any occasion but Parliament, now that it was deemed acceptable. Harwood fetched his gleaming boots and helped him put them on. Darkefell then stood, and as Harwood held his blue brocade jacket for him, he slid his arms in; he then allowed his valet to perfect his knotted cravat and regarded himself for any flaw in his appearance. But no, he was perfectly groomed and attired.

“Have Mr. Boatin summoned, Harwood,” he said, still looking at himself in the cheval mirror by his wardrobe. “He will attend church, and I don’t give one confounded blast what people say.”

“As you say, sir.”

“And send a message down to the lodge. I want every single person at church service in Hornethwaite, including Lady John Bestwick and Lady Anne Addison. I will accept no excuses. Not
one.
” He didn’t dare leave Lady Anne alone on the estate; who knows what she would do without supervision?

“As you say, sir.”

“And Harwood,” he barked.

“Yes, sir?”

Darkefell regarded himself in the mirror, adjusting the intricate folds of his cravat and smiling at his reflection, trying to improve his expression. “Have Quentin,” he said, naming the castle gardener, “send up a bouquet of posies. Nothing too showy. Tulips, I suppose. Yellow. Or… no, not yellow, purple. Purple goes with gray nicely.”

His valet was quiet, and Darkefell caught his glance. “For the ladies,” he said defensively. “We have already provided bouquets of tulips and daffodils to the church for the altar, and I thought the ladies should have bouquets. It is spring, after all.”

“Then, should I have Quentin send up
three
bouquets, sir?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” he said, waving one hand negligently. “One for each lady. In different colors. But definitely
one
purple.”

A half hour later, Darkefell leaped down from his best carriage outside of Ivy Lodge and waited as the others came out the front door in a procession. First his mother, then John and Lydia, then the irritating Lady Anne. He presented a posy to each lady: yellow for his mother, pink for Lydia, and finishing with a flourish by handing the purple one to Lady Anne, who coincidentally was dressed in a becoming shade of lilac.

He handed her up into the carriage—Osei sat above with the driver—climbed in after, then hammered on the roof to indicate the driver to move on. The silence was stifling but for the rattle and creak of the carriage. “Did everyone sleep well last night?” he asked with a significant look at Lady Anne, who so far had refused to meet his gaze.

“I didn’t,” Lydia complained, leaning heavily on her husband, who was silent and gloomy. “I’m not well at all, but no one seems to care,” she said with a sniff.

Lady Darkefell glanced over at her with little interest. “You must learn,
dear
Lydia, that not every complaint will be answered instantly with sympathy. Others are fatigued and ill, too. Just look at Lady Anne, who appears gaunt and sallow this morning.”

Startled, Darkefell stared at his mother. Such rudeness left him speechless.

“Thank you for your evident concern for my health, Lady Darkefell,” Anne said, examining her tulip bouquet with every appearance of enjoyment, “but if I appear gaunt and sallow to you, then it must be habitual, for I look today just as I always do.”

He regarded the younger woman with admiration. It was a setdown both oblique and clever, leaving no stain on Lady Anne but pointedly referencing the marchioness’s discourtesy. His mother had cowed every lady he had ever met… until this one.

“Indeed,” Darkefell said, “I think you look particularly fetching this morning, Lady Anne, in that shade of purple. I chose your posy myself with great care, for the color goes well with the lovely dove gray of your eyes.”

Everyone in the coach stared at him, after such a florid speech. He shifted uncomfortably. Silence returned and reigned until they arrived in Hornethwaite.

The church, a pleasant chapel constructed in the previous century from local stone, was full, the coughs, shuffling feet, and sighs of a hundred people or more echoing into the upper reaches of the vaulted ceiling. The vicar read the appropriate verses for Palm Sunday, spoke of the Savior’s ride into Jerusalem, then preached a homily of thanksgiving, reading several piquant verses concerning the punishment of evil and seeking out wrongdoers. He reminded everyone that there would be a Maundy Thursday service and a special service for Good Friday. The next Sunday being Easter, a vigil and resurrection service would be held on the hill above the village.

Then it was Lord Darkefell’s turn to finish the service.

He had thought long and hard what to say. In the end, he decided to keep it simple. Osei Boatin sat with his family in their box, and Darkefell began with a Palm Sunday reading, spoke briefly about the meaning of Easter, the Resurrection and Ascension, but then surveyed the gathering. “Some of you,” he said, sweeping his gaze across the congregation, “have decided, at last, on a guilty individual for all of the ill that has happened in our corner of this riding in the last few years. But before you did so, you cast aspersions on others, in particular a man in my employ, Mr. Osei Boatin.”

Anne glanced around the church. Some churchgoers shifted uneasily in their seats, but many others stared at the marquess with stony expressions, while others glared at the secretary. Mr. Grover was not one who glared at all; he kept his gaze fixed firmly on the altar. When she glanced over at Mr. Boatin, pity flooded her heart. He looked most uncomfortable to be the cynosure of all eyes; though she didn’t suspect Darkefell of deliberate cruelty, he should have imagined how his speech would affect Mr. Boatin.

“Now, though,” he continued, “you have decided that William Spottiswode is guilty. He convicts himself with his own words. So be it. But I warn you, wait for the rule of law to be enforced. I have heard stirrings of unrest, the desire to effect what some would call righteousness but which I would call injustice, by taking Spottiswode from his cell and hanging him.”

He leaned forward on the pulpit and swept his dark gaze across the audience. “I vow to you now, in this holy place and on this holy day,” he said, his deep voice gruff with restrained anger, “that if one person dares to deny Spottiswode his day in court, I will bring down vengeance upon the man who crosses me. We live in a nation of courts, not a land of extrajudicial assault.”

Spellbound, Anne watched him. Though she noted that, in invoking the rule of law, Darkefell made a personal threat of violence on anyone who violently broke the law, she was quite sure the irony of that escaped him. But she applauded his intent.

Whispers rippled through the crowd, and a few people abruptly got up and left. Mr. Sydney, the vicar, rushed up to the pulpit and babbled, nervously interrupting the marquess, to remind the congregation, yet again, that the next Sunday was Easter; they would gather, some for Maundy Thursday, but certainly for Good Friday service and then on the hill overlooking the village for an Easter Sunday vigil and service. He gave the homily even as others rose and made their way down the aisle to the big oak hobnailed doors.

One of the congregation who slipped out quickly was familiar to Anne; it was Richard Allengate, considerably cleaner and steadier on his feet than when she had first seen him. Why did he depart so hastily?

The service was over, the marquess mired in a heated conversation with the vicar, who seemed to be protesting Darkefell’s usurpation of the pulpit to threaten the gathered congregation. Anne rose and hustled down the aisle of the church out to the brilliant spring sunshine.

She stood at the top of the church steps and scanned her unfamiliar surroundings: the village road, the long, low wall around the church property, the sweeping trees and greensward of grass. Where had Allengate gone? She saw a tall male figure shambling between the tombstones in the cemetery below the church yard, his pace slowing and the whole demeanor of the fellow sagging with every step forward. That was him.

Mrs. Lily Jenkins, who had evidently been one of those who left the service in a huff during Darkefell’s unusual diatribe, stood at the bottom of the church steps with a young man who must be her husband. He was speaking animatedly with another young woman, but as Anne watched, Lily grabbed his arm and tugged it, hard. He stumbled sideways, swept a brief bow to the young woman, and obediently guided his wife toward a waiting open carriage. There was no mistaking the irritation on her face as she turned toward her husband and plainly, even from a distance, berated him. Perhaps about stopping to speak to the young woman, as innocent as the conversation appeared?

Anne was torn; she would have liked to speak again with Lily Jenkins but could not let Richard Allengate go. He was surely the better source of information about his own sister. She swiftly hurried after him, down the steps and across the grassy yard, threading through gray, lichen-encrusted stones toward newer ones as she got farther away from the church.

In the back corner of the cemetery, Allengate knelt by a tombstone near a weeping willow just showing delicate fronds of green. The engraving on the stone named young Fanny Allengate as the sad inhabitant of the grave. Mounded dirt in front of the stone was just beginning to sprout fresh shoots of grass. She paused and hung back. Now that she was there, it was impossible to interrupt his grieving. The young man’s shoulders shook with grief. Anne turned to go.

“What do you want from me?” he asked.

She turned back and saw that he had stood up to face her. She regarded the tears standing in his blue eyes and trailing down his smooth, pale cheeks, and said gently, “I’m sorry. It wasn’t right to follow you.”

“I recognize you. You interfered when I attacked poor Lady Darkefell.”

“Yes.”

“I’m so ashamed,” he said, hanging his head.