Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark (18 page)

There was silence for a moment, then Anne said, “Having met you, I have a sense that I now know how the marquess became such a fine man.”

“Dinna count out the marchioness, milady. Lady Darkefell can be a fair difficult woman to coom to know, but she be good where it counts, deep in the ’eart of ’er, an’ she’s not ’ad an easy life.”

“What do you mean?”

But the woman shook her head and would say no more. Darkefell returned, said good-bye to Mrs. Patterson, then assisted Anne into the pony cart and headed back to the castle. He had offered to take her back to Ivy Lodge, but she was not a bit weary. Dinner was to be at the castle that evening, but Anne was impatient by nature and knew that a family dinner was not a good time to tour the structure; she thus demanded her tour commence that afternoon.

As they rode, she raised a question she still did not have an answer to. “I asked earlier if it was true that you’re buying Mr. Grover’s estate?”

“I am.”

“A wise purchase, I’m sure. It expands your property boundaries. How fortunate for him that he’s not bound by an entail and has the freedom to sell.”

“He inherited the estate from a distant relative when he was quite young. He was in trade,” the marquess said with a disgusted expression, “but it was such as could be managed from anywhere, so he lived here and married a local lady.”

His bias against someone in trade was not unusual. “What kind of trade was he in?”

Darkefell shrugged uneasily and said, “Whatever was profitable, I suppose. For a time it was the triangle trade.”

“He was a slaver? You never told me that before!”

“It was his ship—well, he didn’t own it, he leased it—that carried Osei. Julius and I were going to Jamaica to see if buying a plantation for him to run was a worthwhile investment.”

“So, does this explain the animosity Mr. Grover feels for you?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps. But he has nothing to be angry about, so I don’t think so. He wasn’t even aboard the ship—he stayed in England. I did him a favor, really, prevented him from making a grave error. He’s better off out of the triangle trade, for it’s a risky affair. Aside from the human toll on the slaves, one bad crossing can wipe out a vast investment. I’m sure he knows that now.”

“You know him far better than I. So you and his son grew up together—is he close to your age?”

“A year younger,” he said, glancing over at her, amusement twitching his mouth. “I told the truth about Theophilus, you know. I did introduce him to many corruptions when we were in school together.”

“I never doubted that, my lord,” she said, her tone dry. “His father’s resentment was avid and had the tone of disbelief, but your confession held the ring of truth.”

“I should be insulted by your ready belief in my corruptive influence.”

“I’d think that you would appreciate being believed.” She glanced over at him. “Unless you routinely prevaricate and so expect to be
dis
believed?”

“Don’t you think the world requires one to lie?”

“If you mean agreeing that a friend’s bonnet is lovely when it is hideous, or that a woman’s baby is adorable when it looks like a gargoyle atop a cathedral roof, then yes, I think skillful evasion of the truth is requisite.”

“Ah, ‘skillful evasion of the truth’… what a lovely turn of phrase.”

She ignored the barb and asked, “Are you not still friends with Theophilus Grover?”

“Oh, no, I’m too wicked a sinner for Theo, who has his eye on a high post in the church. He really
is
perfectly saintly. I don’t object to his sanctity, only the unbearable airs that accompany it. Ah, here’s the castle!”

They topped a rise and looked down over the structure. Anne was once again struck dumb. She had stayed in many fine residences, and her own home, Harecross Hall, the Harecross earldom’s prime residence in Kent, was beautiful: large, lovely, gracious. But Darkefell Castle was something more. To the impression of size and age, it added a hint of gloomy foreboding, a delicious melancholy mood that even the brightest sun could not alleviate. It appealed to a part of her she never suspected existed.

She was silent, always a good thing, Darkefell reflected, though she didn’t seem the sort who must fill every second with chatter. That only added to her other interesting attractions. He pulled up to the main door and left the pony trap for his groom, guiding Lady Anne into the castle through the twenty-foot tall double oak doors.

The main section was not made for modern comfort. He was loath to make any dramatic changes, for though he wasn’t fanciful, still, he felt the ghostly hand of his ancestors reaching out to him, imploring him to preserve for future generations, if there were to be any, the Darkefell legacy untainted. It might be too late for that—recent years had spotted their reputation as much as any past barbarities—but he would persevere.

Lady Anne’s enthusiasm was boundless, even for the gloomiest portal. “This place… it
seethes
with history,” she said, her voice echoing in the upper reaches of one of the tower sections.

“An excellent description—this section, the old keep, was the defense against Scottish marauders centuries ago, when the clans to the north were fractious, but during the civil war it was useful, too. My family was Royalist,” he said, guiding her through the great hall as his butler entered. “Lady Anne’s cloak, Tanner.”

“No,” she said, waving away the hovering butler. “I can stay only a half hour and then must go back to Ivy Lodge, if we’re to dine here tonight. I’ll keep my cloak for the walk back to the lodge.”

“Surely you are not one of those ladies who must spend three hours on her toilette?” he chided as Tanner bowed and retreated.

“I assure you, my lord, that the plainest of women require as much fuss and bother as the most sparkling of diamonds. Perhaps more—while they are merely gilding the lily, we are primping the weed.”

He was silent, not sure how to answer, afraid that saying the wrong thing would hurt her, and he didn’t want to hurt her. She was plain and aware of it—unnaturally so, it seemed to him—but how to admit that and yet compliment her many fine features? He stayed silent; there was no way that was not patronizing or insulting.

He directed his efforts to showing her at least part of the castle. It was too vast to do more than begin in the brief time they had. She was quiet, merely listening with that rare quality she had: absolute focused attention. He guided her to the armaments room, where he displayed the ancient weapons used by his ancestors in bygone battles, and then to a huge, virtually empty chamber with vaulted ceilings. “This,” he said, “was the knights’ hall. This is where the Barons Destaun met with their knights, ate, planned strategy. Plotted.”

“Some of the work looks newer,” she said, eyeing the stone corbels. Several did not have the natural patination of age.

“It was crumbling in places and becoming structurally unsound. I commissioned stonemasons to repair the foundation.” He guided her through the hall, up some concealed steps, and through a door to an open gallery that looked out over the back. “This is the best view of the chapel on the hill over there,” he said, pointing to a low rise with a stone chapel atop it, “and the cemetery just to the left. Ten generations or more of my people and their valued servants have been buried in the plot just beyond, and a mausoleum only for family members. It is guarded, my grandmother said, by the ghosts of my ancestors.”

But Lady Anne wasn’t listening to that last part. “Darkefell, I keep meaning to ask Lydia about this, but perhaps you know. Was it truly Lydia, or was it Lord John who objected to Cecilia’s being properly buried in the servants’ plot? What decision was made?”

He felt frozen to the marrow, and for the first time, did not admire her focus on the problem at hand. Why could she just not let it go for a time? “I’m sure I don’t know, my lady, which it was who truly objected. Why don’t you ask your friend?” He turned away. When he glanced back to see if she was following him away from the window, she was eyeing him with a quizzical slant to her eyebrows.

“To answer the other part of your question, Cecilia, poor girl, has already been buried in the plot we reserve for family serving staff. Yesterday, in fact. She will have a suitable memorial. I corresponded with her mother, sent all her belongings and also a considerable sum of money, but I did not tell Mrs. Wainwright that Cecilia was with child. I thought that would be too cruel, and if Cecilia had somehow already communicated that fact, unnecessary.”

“You are a most unusual and thoughtful man, my lord.”

“Thank Osei, not me,” he said, curt from discomfiture. He could not allow her to praise him for qualities he didn’t possess. “He made all the arrangements. My part was reserved to making decisions about where she would be buried, what would be told her mother, and how much money would be provided for the poor woman.” The day had turned dull for him with the reminder of business he had yet to conduct. Lady Anne could not know it, he supposed, but he was dreading the confrontation he would have that evening when the family was gathered. He had to confront the owner of the murder weapon and find out when it had last been accounted for, and that haunted him.

The night would tell its own tales, and he couldn’t predict the outcome. He took her arm and guided her onward. Finally they were back in the main great hall, a huge open square near but not directly opposite the doors, and he led her up steps toward a gloomy enclosure; he caught her by the arm when she would have surged forward. “No! Be careful, my lady, for headlong movement will send you somewhere I don’t think you wish to go.” He took her arm and led her sedately up the last two steps… to the pit.

She stood on the flagstone edge and looked down, a shiver passing through her body. “My, my, but your ancestors were a bloodthirsty lot, weren’t they?” she said. “To have such a thing in their home?”

“This is the castle keep, and it was always more than just their home. It was my ancestors’ protection from attack, their haven from enemies.” They stood on the lip of a dark and deadly pit, thirty feet or more into the ground and lined with stone blocks. A cold breeze constantly swirled up from its depths. “Some say the present generation emulates the past,” he said, still seized by the grim mood from her questioning.

She glanced over at him. “Do you refer, sir, to the awful gossip that your late brother killed Miss Landers?”

He shook his head and sighed, rolling his eyes. “Now why should I be obscure in my references, when you have so clearly pried into every dark corner of my life and have no restraint in raising the stories in my presence?”

“You forget, my lord,” Lady Anne replied tartly, “Lydia brought me here to reassure her about the marauding werewolf, but finding Cecilia’s murdered body set me on a different path. I won’t rest until her murder is solved, and if that means prying into past tragedies and asking awkward questions, I’ll do it. I’ll not curb my tongue to save your delicate sensibilities.”

“Would
anything
curb your tongue?”

She bridled, and her chin went up. “Kindness, sensitivity where it is due, love, compassion, appreciation—many things curb my tongue when necessary. This is not the time for that, and I did not think you the sort of man who needed coddling. Forgive me if I’m wrong and your sensitive feelings have been wounded. I want to know what happened to Cecilia Wainwright.”

“But it’s not your mystery to solve, my lady,” he growled, irritated by her biting remarks. “And Cecilia’s murder has nothing to do with Tilly Landers’s unfortunate death!”

“How do you know? You may think it was an accident, and Fanny’s death suicide, but I keep trying to find a pattern in the deaths on your property of three women whose only similarity seems to have been in age. I admit I’ve had no luck so far, and no one seems willing to help.”

There was a long silence.

“The pit, my lady,” he said, redirecting her attention and grimly clutching her arm.

She gazed steadily down into the pit. “Just what did your ancestors have such a menacing structure for?” Anne glanced over and watched his face. A sardonic smile quirked his perfect lips, and the effect was unsettling in the gloomy shadows.

“It depends upon who is telling the tale. My father maintained that it was a prison in ancient times, nothing more. As there was no way out unless someone threw down a rope ladder, it did not need a jail keeper.”

“That makes sense. Your family was probably the only law three or four hundred years ago.”

“Yes, but I came across an old drawing of the layout and was intrigued enough to bring it here and examine it, orienting it properly.”

“And?”

He turned her about so she was standing with her back to the pit. Her head got a little light, and the impression of the yawning pit at her back, a cold breeze lifting her curls under her bonnet, turned her stomach. She was not going to let him see how it affected her.

“Look down the steps toward the wall.”

“Yes?” She determinedly focused.

“Do you see a slight difference in the stone coloration there?” His fingers traced in the air a tall arch in the wall.

“I do,” she said. “It looks less weathered.”

“Once, long ago, that was a doorway. Unsuspecting enemies would break down what appeared to be an unguarded door and charge up what they thought was a stairway to the main part of the house. In the gloom, instead, they would be met by a sudden drop, and many of them would fall to their deaths down this pit. It is called a murder hole. I don’t know of any other like it in all of England, and so I preserve it.”

“Oh,” she said. She stepped forward and turned to face him, taking in a deep, shuddering breath, forcing her stomach to settle. “And do you practice that story, with just that gloomy intonation, to frighten young women? Or to impress them with your melancholy fascination?”

He laughed out loud and stepped forward into the light of a high window above the gloomy pit. “I would never try such a trick on you—for you, my lady, are indomitable.”

“That’s not true, but I have seen your tricks and am therefore wary. I do think I should go now, my lord. I will see you at dinner.”

“Let me drive you back—you should not walk so far, for I expect you to dance this evening after dinner. Nothing wears off a heavy meal quite so well as a country dance or two.”

“I won’t take you out of your way, sir,” Anne insisted, stepping away from his troubling touch. “Though he is staying at Ivy Lodge, my coachman, Sanderson, is at the castle today mending a spring on my carriage. If you will loan him an equipage—the pony trap will do—he can drive me and bring the trap back.”

Darkefell merely nodded. He couldn’t very well refuse such a request.

***

“You’ve spent some time in the castle stables now, Sanderson—what’s your impression of young Jamey?” Anne sat up next to her coachman in the pony trap as the burly man gloomily handled the reins. Such a vehicle was beneath his dignity, and he drove only because she asked. “Is he capable of murder?” She had absolute reliance on her driver’s astute opinion as well as his discretion.

Sanderson shook his head. “Naw.”

“That was my thought. But if Cecilia was carrying his child, and that threatened his position, then he
may
have. Men have killed for less.” She thought for a long moment and sighed. “But I don’t really believe that. He would not have planted those items I found where she lay. This was a deed of deliberation, not passion.”

“Had no chance.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He had no chance, milady. Yoong Jamey were gambling th’noight of th’maid’s morder, with t’other lads in th’castle stable. Playin’ hazard.”

“Hazard—they were playing dice! You’re sure of this?”

“Aye. Two of t’other lads say so.”

She blessed her surly driver’s gift for drawing others out while he said nothing himself. She had not had to direct him as to what she needed. “So, she could not have crept back out to meet
him,
and that eliminates him from Cecilia’s murder.”

“Aye.”

“Which leaves me still with the possibility that this murder is connected to the other two deaths of young women. Or wholly unrelated. Those most intimately connected with Cecilia and, thus, most likely to have reason to harm her, are Jamey, Ellen—jealousy will make a young woman do many awful deeds, though killing your competition seems a little extreme—and… well, I must include Lord John. He entered the great hall quickly after I came to the house after finding Cecilia, but still… I think he would have had time to kill her and return to Ivy Lodge. Lydia is firm in believing he doesn’t care for her as he used to, and the young man does seem to be mired in unusual gloom. What if he has some dark side to him that she is only beginning to suspect?” She bit her lip as she thought. “And I cannot forget Mr. Boatin.”

Sanderson was silent.

“I like Mr. Boatin,” Anne said, staring off at the landscape without seeing it. “But after all he has suffered in his life, can I really say that his calm exterior is the true one? I’ve known people who seem, on first meeting, to be one way, only to show their true selves at some later date. If he was in love with Cecilia and she led him on, only to take up with Jamey… again, jealousy can be the motivation for murder. And he was with her just before her death—that we already know.”

“Aye.”

“But I don’t want it to be him, Sanderson.”

“Aye.”

“Nor do I want to think it could be Lord Darkefell. But he’s a deep man, Sanderson, one whose depths I have not begun to plumb,” she said, thinking of his gloomy delight in the “murder hole.”

She mustn’t concentrate too much on the marquess—as fascinating as he was, he seemed to expect her to fall desperately in love with him. Ridiculous man. She noticed that they were in a part of the estate she had not yet seen; the gravel lane from the castle to Ivy Lodge wound through a lovely park. “How pretty this part of the property is,” she said, delighted at the glades of young trees and drifts of spring blossoms arranged for the most picturesque display. Someone had planted clumps of Holland bulbs, and they burst forth in the vernal sunshine.

He was silent.

“Stop!” she cried. As the pony trap pulled to a quick halt, Anne stared into the wooded glade. She had seen movement. Of course, that was not unexpected; there were probably deer and other creatures afoot. But… no, it was not a deer. She saw something slinking through the underbrush. “What is that?” she asked, pointing.

“Don’t see nuthin’, milady.”

She had forgotten how myopic he was. “Stay here!” she commanded as she shrugged out of her cloak and scrambled down from the pony trap. She lifted her skirts and sprinted across the grass toward the shady copse, but just as she approached, she saw the animal streaking away through the trees so quickly, it was a blur of gray and white. Panting, she put one hand against a tree and rested. The animal was gone. But she was fairly sure that it was the same creature she had seen from the tower, slinking away from the hut on the hill as Lord Darkefell and Lord John approached.

Oh, how her poor feet ached! She limped back to the gravel drive and climbed back up into the pony trap. “It must have been a dog,” she said as Sanderson set the vehicle in motion again with the merest click of his tongue against his teeth and the slightest of movements.

“Not any kind I ever seen,” he said.

“Exactly my thoughts.” She looked over at him. “How well
do
you see, Sanderson?”

“Well ’nuff when it suits me, milady. It cooms and goes.”

His vision seemed remarkably bad when having good vision would require effort on his part, yet remarkably acute when he wished to make a comment on something in the distance and for driving. Despite Sanderson’s faults, though, he suited her.

“Find out for me, if you can, anything about Edward Carter and his ne’er-do-well son, Neddy. Carter was the gamekeeper for the last marquess and lives in a hut on the side of the hill about a half-mile distant.”

“Aye, milady.”

Back at Ivy Lodge, Anne stormed Lydia’s bedroom, plunking herself down by her friend’s bed and waiting. Lydia was sleeping, or rather, pretending to sleep. This had gone on long enough.

“What was going on with Cecilia, Lydia?” she said loudly. “Who did you suspect was the father of her child? I know you, my girl—Cecilia was at one time dear to you. You would not keep her out of a cemetery plot just for a moral lapse. Something personal prompted your pettiness.”

Lydia’s eyes flew open, and she leaped up, very awake for someone who was supposedly napping. “If I had known,” she cried, pounding her fists on the silky bedcover. “If I had only known… oooh! Traitor!” She broke into tears, great, heaving, choking sobs.

Anne, genuinely concerned, hopped up on the bed, taking Lydia in her arms and soothing her with little noises and words: “Hush, Lydia, don’t cry. No, it’s all right, my dear, really. I didn’t mean to upset you… hush, now.” She pushed Lydia’s curls back off her forehead, and the girl, her head on Anne’s shoulder, wept as if her heart was broken.

Once she had calmed, her lovely blue eyes reddened and tear trails marred her creamy skin, Anne, her arm still around her friend’s shoulders, said, “My dear, you know me.
Trust
me. Tell me what has been worrying you.”

Lydia sat up straighter and moved out of her friend’s protective embrace. Biting her lip, she gazed at Anne and said slowly, “All right. But I’m frightened what you’ll think.”

“You must trust me!”

“I do, but I know you, Anne. You won’t bend for anyone. If… if someone I l-love has done something…” She trailed off and looked confused.

Anne felt a trill of concern in her stomach. What was Lydia going to tell her?

The girl looked away, composed herself, and then looked back at Anne. “John doesn’t love me any more.”

“I told you, Lydia, that’s nonsense. He loves you. The night I arrived, he was there, worried to illness about your swoon.”

“No, you don’t understand. He’s just pretending now for everyone else’s benefit.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Everything was grand while we were alone,” she said, her eyes misty and unfocussed. “He was attentive, kind, l-loving. But then we came back
here.
” Her tone held such loathing. “And his mother… she picked away until I felt I was not good enough for her son. It was awful. I felt… I felt as though John was looking at me differently, that he was seeing me as his mother does, a silly girl, a child with no sense. I’m not like you, Anne, with brains and sense and logic.”

“Lady Darkefell doesn’t seem to like me much either, my girl, so there you have it. You cannot let your mother-in-law’s behavior worry you.”

“But it’s not just that. John… he stopped… stopped coming to my room after a while.” Lydia looked away, and a pretty blush mounted her soft cheeks. “And then… he was seen kissing Cecilia.”

Anne’s stomach twisted. The vision of the poor dead girl being carried in by the marquess, her throat savaged, dripping with blood; the sense she had in the dark of death: it all came back. Had Lord John been the father of her unborn child? Did he kill her to keep it a secret? But wait—“You said he was ‘seen’ kissing her… you didn’t see him yourself?”

Tears dripped down her face and off her chin, and she shook her head. “Of course not. He’s too careful for that.”