Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark (3 page)

The woman’s face bleached under her paint, and Lord John gasped.

Lydia hastily said, “Now, Anne, I
am
sorry.” She stood, her lap robe falling to the floor in a heap, and turned to her mother-in-law. “Lady Darkefell, Anne
was
invited, truly she was. I merely… forgot to say anything.”

“Or to order a carriage to greet me, or tell anyone at all I was coming.” Anne watched the dowager’s expression, but it betrayed no more emotion. Turning to Lydia, she said, “You haven’t explained the worries expressed in your letter—”

“Anne, please, let us talk in private later,” she said hurriedly with a sidelong look at her mother-in-law.

Glancing from one feminine face to the other, Anne held her tongue. As Lydia was the only one of the three she knew, she would speak with her first before she decided what to say or ask. “I’m deeply sorry about poor Cecilia,” Anne said with a gentler tone. “I know she’s been with you since your coming-out season, and she always seemed to me to be a valuable help to you, and a quiet, unassuming girl.”

Tears filled Lydia’s eyes. “I cannot understand what she was doing out of the house after dark, especially with all that has gone on lately.”

“Clearly she was having an affair with someone,” Lady Darkefell said, trailing her fingers along a console table as she strolled closer to the fire.

“Why do you say that?” Anne asked, watching her eyes. It was a conclusion she had considered, for it explained what the young woman would be doing out of the house at dusk and beyond the immediate environs of the lodge, but it seemed to her there was no clarity in it at all, until they knew more. Perhaps the dowager marchioness
did
know more. If so, now was the moment to reveal it to the dead woman’s mistress.

The marchioness merely shrugged, though, and said, “What other reason could there be for her being so far from the house? She was meeting a lover, an arranged assignation.”

“Cecilia was not like that,” Lydia said, her voice tight with tension.

“Mother is likely right,” Lord John said with a serious frown that ill suited his round, pleasant face. “You said yourself she was acting different lately. You thought she was just lonely for home.”

The young woman’s eyes filled with tears as she stared at her husband. “But—”

“Lydia, enough,” Lord John said with a quick glance at Anne.

“If you know something, Lady Darkefell,” Anne said, staring at the woman, “you should say it. Where were
you
while this was going on?”

The marchioness’s eyes widened, and her lips tightened into a slash. She shook her head. A footman opened the door, and the marquess strode in, jacketless, and stalked to the fire, warming his hands in front of it. Anne could see only his profile, but he appeared deeply troubled, not surprising given what his last few hours must have been like. He had sent for the local magistrate and had been closeted with him, presumably, for some time, while his men searched the grounds.

His dark sleek hair was tied back in a queue, confined at the nape of his neck with a black ribbon, but a stray lock fell loosely over his forehead, shadowing his deep-set eyes. His full lips were set in a grim expression. After a moment, he turned and surveyed them, his gaze stopping when he reached Anne. “I find it difficult to believe that, in walking up to the house, you managed to stumble across Cecilia’s body among the hundreds—nay,
thousands
—of acres of land surrounding this lodge.”

Stung by his cynical tone, Anne retorted, “I beg your pardon. Perhaps I didn’t explain myself sufficiently. I did not
stumble
over her body in a stroll toward the house. First I heard howling, an eerie sound that cut through the night. Then I heard a scream. Then footsteps. I
then
heard moaning indicative of someone in trouble. I responded, followed the sound, crashed through some bushes, and
then
stumbled across the body of the girl.”

She expected him to reply in kind, with a sarcastic tone, but instead his gaze sharpened.

“You heard footsteps? You didn’t say that before. Human footsteps?”

“I was a little distracted.” She could hear the soft sound of Lydia’s weeping but did not take her eyes off the marquess’s arrestingly handsome face. “Of course it was
human
footsteps.”

“I’ve been searching, but so far, found nothing,” he muttered, his gaze unfocused. “My first thought was that the attack was by an animal, but you say footsteps… ” He trailed off and met her eyes once again, his brow furrowed, his expression deeply troubled. “Are you certain?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry I didn’t make myself clear before,” she said, employing a more conciliatory tone in the face of his understandable disquiet. “In the heat of the moment—”

“No, don’t blame yourself.” He smiled at her briefly, a dazzling grin of self-reproach; it disappeared as quickly as it appeared. “You did everything most correctly, and I commend you on your bravery and poise in a terrible situation. Not one woman in a thousand would have behaved as you did. I should have asked more questions before running off.” He passed one hand over his thick, dark hair, sweeping the stray locks back from his broad forehead.

Anne had decided she didn’t like the man, but she might have to change her mind. He seemed fair-minded and genuinely deeply troubled.

“Tony,” his mother said, “could it be…?” She didn’t finish but gave her eldest son a significant look that was meant to be understood by him and him alone.

“Could it be
what?
Or whom?” Anne said, unwilling to be left out of any discussion that held conjectures about the perpetrator of the deed. She looked to the marchioness and then the marquess. Neither spoke again, and the marquess gave his mother a stern look that seemed to hold a warning. Perhaps she was hasty in deciding she might have to like him. This was no time to be hiding anything from her, after what she had been through. After her ordeal, she was in no temper to be reasonable. “Do either of you know who may have done this awful deed?”

“Of course not,” the marquess said. “I would shield no one who would do such a thing.” He gathered them all in his glance. “It’s late—I suggest to you all that you get some sleep. The men have been searching the grounds with the dogs for hours but have found nothing. The perpetrator is probably far off by now.”

“Ah, so he arrived here just to murder the young woman and then conveniently left, did he?” Anne said. “Even though your estate is miles away from anywhere, as I have cause to know, having walked here from that desolate hovel masquerading as a post-house. Do you expect me to believe that a complete stranger would have come so far, found a maid wandering about in the night, attacked her, and then disappeared without a trace?”

Lydia was sobbing again, and her husband murmured, trying to soothe her, but Anne had no time for her hysterics. She was not about to let the marquess go without answering.

“I’m suggesting nothing of the kind,” he said, his mouth tight with repressed fury.

“Then what
are
you saying?”

“I have no answer, my lady, nor do I owe you an explanation.”

Shouts in the corridor outside the parlor door drew all of their attention.

“Good heavens. What is that commotion?” Lady Darkefell asked.

The door flew open, banging against a table and rocking the vase upon it, and a man strode in. He was slender and very dark skinned, wore gold-rimmed spectacles, and carried a sheaf of papers clutched in one fist. “What is this about?” he cried. “I just heard that Miss Wainwright was hurt! I heard… what is going on?”

Lydia gasped and put one hand over her mouth, and Anne’s gaze, drawn to her friend, passed over Lady Darkefell, noting peripherally that the woman’s mouth drew up slightly in one corner.

“Osei,” the marquess said, his tone fraught with tension. “Calm yourself, man!”

The fellow stood stock still and stared at Darkefell. “Where is she? I was just walking with her in the garden not more than three hours ago—what has happened? An accident? Let me see her.” For a long moment, tension tightened the very air of the parlor, and no sound cut through it. His dark eyes were wide with horror, and the sheaf of papers quivered. “Tell me,” he pleaded, looking from face to face.

Darkefell walked slowly over to him and put one hand on his shoulder. “Osei, I have sad news.”

“About Cecilia? What do you mean?”

“Not here—let’s go back to the castle.”

“No,
tell
me!”

“Tony, tell him. He looks ghastly, but I’m sure he can handle the truth,” the marquess’s mother said. She turned. “Cecilia is dead, Mr. Boatin, murdered. While she was out of the house
with
someone, it is conjectured.”

Even if Lady Darkefell had not mentioned the possibility just moments before, and even if he had not said he was walking with her just hours before, Anne would have known that the man had a personal interest in Lydia’s unfortunate maid. His face twisted in anguish, and he fell to his knees, releasing the papers in his hand; they scattered in a drift, like rustling autumn leaves. “No!” he shouted. “How is that possible? How—”

Darkefell gave his mother a disgusted look and grasped the other fellow by the shoulder. “Osei, come with me this instant.” He pulled the fellow to his feet, but even as the man turned away, doubled over in agony, Anne could see the tears streaming down his cheeks, the dark skin ashen in cast. “Wait for me in the hall!” Darkefell ordered, giving him a shove toward the door. The fellow stumbled out on stiff legs.

The marquess turned back to them all. He gave his mother a long level look then included them all in his scanning gaze. “I will be searching for the perpetrator of this outrage all night. Do
not
discuss this terrible event with anyone until I’ve had time to investigate thoroughly.”

“You cannot forbid us from discussing it among ourselves, my lord,” Anne said.

“I mean what I say—not a word, not even to one another!” he commanded, one finger raised. “I will be most harsh to
anyone
who disobeys me! I include you in that, Lady Anne.”

“That is unforgivably high-handed, my lord,” Anne said, “but given the circumstances, I will forgive your severity. However—”

“Good evening,” he said loudly over her last words, and then he bowed, whirled, and left.

Anne, in a fit of pique, excused herself and made her way back upstairs. From her room, she gazed out the window over the landscape and could see, in the waning moonlight, the marquess, his white shirt glimmering, striding up a hill with his arm over the shoulders of the unusual Mr. Boatin. Infuriating fellow, the marquess. On the morrow she would have to demand answers from him, but tonight she would speak to Lydia. There had to be something going on besides all of the superstitious nonsense in her letter, and that “something” had perhaps ended in murder.

Lord John refused to allow his wife to be disturbed, claiming she was tucked in her bed, dosed with laudanum, the housekeeper at her bedside. He then retreated to his own room and would not answer Anne’s questions, though she spent half an hour at his door, knocking and entreating him to be reasonable. She desperately wanted to know what was going on, but no one would tell her a thing.

Disgruntled, she finally decided to retire, even though her exhaustion had transformed into a frenetic vigor. The housekeeper, still closeted with Lydia, would not come out even to bring order to the chaotic household, so Anne was on her own. She went through a few awkward contortions—ladies’ clothes were not intended to be managed without help—pulled off her dress and summoned a maid to take it away for brushing, and then removed her mangled hat, the plume damaged beyond repair, tossing it on the vanity table.

She tugged a brush through the tangled mass of her heavy curls and stared in the mirror at her ghostly gray eyes, underlined by dark smudges. When she finally did climb into bed, scandalously clad only in her shift, she was furious and wide awake. She blew out her candle and stared through the darkness at the ceiling, reciting the calumny of the household, until the memory of a pair of dark eyes intruded. She stared into the darkness and considered what she knew of the Marquess of Darkefell.

He had attained his title several years before, after his father’s death, and held a string of minor titles as well, with estates scattered across England. Darkefell Castle was, however, the largest and was his principal seat. He was unmarried and the eldest of three brothers—one, Lord Julius Bestwick, had died just a year ago. There were ladies in society who kept a list of all eligible men, and he was on it, though never the first, for his abhorrence of marriage was well known and bruited about town as an example of his eccentricity. So he was known in social circles and journeyed to London for Parliament every year, but gossip damned him as reclusive and arrogant to the point of unpleasantness. Having met him, she couldn’t say he was exactly
unpleasant.
He was arrogant, yes—commanding, intelligent, and enigmatic. Weaker people than she could be intimidated and find him disagreeable. In direct opposition to the favored pale, gentle, artistic youths beloved by many young ladies, the marquess was dark and bold. He was not a beautiful man in the modern sense, but he
was
dangerously compelling, with those fine eyes that would bore holes through a simpering maiden looking for an easy conquest.

But
she
was no wilting pansy either, not as she once was. She turned on her side, pounded her pillow, and thought of herself seven years before, a plain, awkward, and frightened eighteen-year-old girl in her first Season. She had been opinionated and clever, but her fashionable mother, training her for her Season, regally proclaimed that men did not like women they suspected were more intelligent than they; therefore, she must hide her cleverness. So she had become graceless and unnatural, afraid to speak lest it be discovered that she knew a few things.

Anne closed her eyes, but immediately the image of Lord Darkefell, his grim face pale above the bloody body of Cecilia Wainwright in his arms, assailed her. She would never go to sleep if she kept seeing that!

She went back to considering her past, a safe and boring subject. As desirous of all of the courting and fuss as any other young lady, she had gone along with the charade of idiocy. In elaborate detail, her mother had explained that, as Anne was “unfortunate” in appearance, she must make up for it by being the perfect model of ladylike behavior. Once she was married and had produced children, then she could become as original as she wished, exposing her intellect in public places.

So, imitating the most sought-after beauties of that London Season, she became vacuous against her natural intellect, vain in defiance of her plainness, and frivolous despite a desperate need to do something that mattered. In private she read Descartes and Mary Astell; in public she discussed face powder and the latest fashion in bonnets.

All the determined subduing of her natural personality, the deliberate downplaying of her intelligence and education, worked. Sir Reginald Gladstone Moore, a conceited and dim-witted captain in the Horse Guards—and Lydia’s older brother—had taken an interest in her. Before long, in a bored and nasal tone, he made the appropriate requests of her parents, said the usual banalities, and they were engaged to be married without a murmur of protest from her.

The ongoing trouble with the American colonies escalated. He journeyed across the ocean with his regiment to earn glory on the battlefield and lost his life in the decisive American siege at Yorktown, in the colony of Virginia, in the autumn of ’81. When the news reached her of Reginald’s death, she was in London to bespeak a wedding trousseau. With her engagement tragically ended, she retreated to her home in Kent for a period of mourning and never came back out. The London Season had been a torture chamber for her at eighteen, and at almost twenty, her mourning done, she didn’t think it would have improved.

In that intervening time, a year of quietude and reflection, she questioned whether marriage would provide her with the freedom for which she longed. It seemed to be a move from one form of imprisonment—the proper behavior expected of a young, unmarried lady—to another form, becoming one man’s burden forever, bearing child after child to fulfill her marital duty. Her father was studious, quiet, and did not bother himself with her activities. As long as she observed society’s dictates in matters of attire and public behavior, he was untroubled by the shame of a spinster daughter and quite happy for her to remain in his home forever, taking the place of her mother as nominal mistress of Harecross Hall. Her mother preferred the convivial social whirl of Bath, and lived there with
her
mother, the Dowager Viscountess Everingham.

Anne had received a bequest from her paternal grandmother upon her twenty-first birthday, and so was independently wealthy; with her father’s amiable aid, she had access to her fortune. A husband would not be as understanding as her father, she feared. Her mother, though furious with her over her refusal to come back to the London Season after her period of mourning to try a second time to capture a husband, had no power to control Anne’s life beyond the weight of guilt she tried to inflict on her daughter.

Guilt did not work. Anne had broken free of that burdensome emotion when she decided against marriage, at least for the time being. Someday she might meet the right sort of man, but until then, life as a spinster bluestocking suited her. She had no desire to be notorious, and so observed the proprieties—she always had a chaperone when at their house in London; Lolly, a dotty aunt, was happy to accompany her wherever she went—but there had been no time to acquire her aunt’s services in this instance. Lydia’s letter was quite specific as to the fear she felt and the anguish she suffered. This was the first time Anne had broken with convention to travel north to this wild place alone; it was a simple coincidence that she had immediately stumbled over a dead body, but she was sure her mother would see it as divine punishment. Anne turned over, still sleepless, turning her mind away from the brutalized maid and back to her own life, a safer subject to induce drowsiness.

Anne would have been unhappy as Captain Sir Reginald Gladstone Moore’s wife; he was dreadfully vain and had chosen her deliberately, she now understood, because of her plainness, so his dandified looks would always outshine hers. Five years after his death, as little as she thought of her late betrothed, she would never interfere with Lydia’s idealization of her brother as wonderful beyond words, and Anne as dying of love for him.

She turned over again and tried to sleep, but slumber was chased away by the awful memory of the evening’s events. That poor girl, Cecilia Wainwright. To think she had heard the young woman’s last cries and moans.
And
heard the footsteps of the perpetrator, whoever that was. Had she been out meeting a lover, as Lady Darkefell conjectured? And was that lover Mr. Osei Boatin, as seemed indicated by his highly emotional response to the news of her death? He had been out walking with her, he said, but his violent reaction to the news of her death meant he either had nothing to do with her murder or dissembled to appear innocent. The savagery of the attack, though, did not seem such as could be inflicted by a lover. And what creature had howled with such eerie wildness? With so much to wonder, she would never get to sleep. The house was dark and silent around her, and she stared up at the ceiling, feeling terribly alone.

But weariness won out, and she fell into Morpheus’s welcoming arms. When she next became conscious, it was morning, and a young woman was setting a tray on her bedside table. Anne spied a glimmer of tears in the girl’s red-rimmed eyes before she turned away to pull back the draperies.

“What’s your name?” Anne asked, propping herself up on one elbow and examining the contents of the mahogany tray: a pot of steaming chocolate and a plain white china cup, a damask napkin, and a hothouse rose in a crystal vase.

“Ellen, milady,” the girl said, turning away from the window and curtseying, her dull stuff gown silent, her neck and shoulders modestly wrapped in a neckerchief of snowy white. As with all good servants, she would not be heard arriving or departing and could move as a ghost through the house, unnoticed except when needed.

“Well, Ellen, in future could you ask Cook to send up a rack of toast with my chocolate? I’m often hungry first thing in the morning.” Anne blinked and gazed out at the sun, now ascending over the spring landscape. “And could it be an hour earlier? I’m generally an early riser. I slept past my usual rising this morning.”

“Yes’m,” the girl said, turning away.

“Excuse me, Ellen,” Anne said. When the girl turned back, her head hung, she continued gently, “I’m sure no one else has noticed that you’ve been weeping, and the tears still stand in your eyes. Were you close to the poor unfortunate who last night met her end?”

She nodded and snuffled.

“What was she like?”

The girl looked startled at her opinion being sought. “Milady?”

“What was Cecilia Wainwright like? If you are so deeply affected after presumably a short acquaintance, I must guess she was an engaging girl?”

Ellen nodded. “She were, milady.” A shaky sigh ended with a sob. “Cecilia would do anything for anyone.”

Anne examined the pretty, guileless face framed by blonde curls and a white lacy mob cap. The rosy cheeks were marred only by tear trails down them. “You mourn her, and yet you’ve known Cecilia only since she came here with Lady Bestwick?” That was a few short months before.

“Yes’m.” She sniffed back tears. “Before that it were only Lady Darkefell and Lord John Bestwick in this house, you know. When Lady John came and brought Cecilia… why, it was like the house became sunny.”

“So what was she like?” Anne repeated, swinging her feet out of bed and stretching.

“Cecilia? She were so very pretty and good-natured, not stuck on herself like Lady Darkefell’s French abigail, Therese. Cecilia even give me a silk wrap her ladyship didn’t want no more, and it only had two small rips in it!”

Anne sighed at such a vague answer. “Did she get along with the rest of the staff? Or did she put on airs?” A lady’s maid was a superior servant and often felt the difference between herself and the others most keenly; abigails and valets were next only to the butler and housekeeper in importance at the servants’ table. Divisions below stairs were as rigid as those above stairs.

“Oh, no, milady. Cecilia were pleasant to everyone.” Ellen looked uneasy and began to glance at the door.

“Did she have a sweetheart?” Anne asked.

The girl shook her head but would not speak again.

“Does that mean you don’t know?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say,” she said, a remote expression on her tearstained face. “If that’s all?”

Anne sighed. Once a good servant had gone silent, there would be no opening her mouth until another emotional, vulnerable moment. “I shall need my portmanteaux retrieved from that unspeakable post-house. Until I have them, I must wear the traveling dress I wore yesterday. Has it been brushed?”

The young woman nodded. “Mrs. Hailey done it herself. She sponged it out, seeing as how… seeing… ” She trailed off and paled.

Anne nodded. “I understand,” she said. The sponging was necessary because blood had gotten on the skirts of the dress, though it had not been noticeable in the dim light of the previous evening. She turned her mind away from that dreadful thought. “Could you see that my dress is brought up to me and return to help me with it? I expect my abigail, Mary, to arrive some time tomorrow with my trunks, but until then I’ll need someone’s help. I don’t wish to trouble Lady John or Lady Darkefell. Perhaps, if you’re willing and Mrs. Hailey allows you enough time, you could try taming my hair,” she said, putting up one hand and feeling the tangled mass. “It needs a stern hand. And could you see that I get hot water immediately?”

Ellen agreed and quickly returned with the garment, as well as the traveling cloak and shawl, which she hung up in the wardrobe in the attached dressing room. A younger maid carrying a ewer of hot water accompanied her and filled the washing bowl on the dressing table. Anne washed, then dressed with Ellen’s help, and sat at the dressing table so the maid could do her hair. If Anne had her morning gown, a more relaxed style would have been appropriate, but with only her traveling attire, she couldn’t leave her hair down. It would be most unsuitable.

“Do you like your position here, Ellen?” Anne glanced up at her face in the dressing-table mirror.

The young woman was pale but composed and said, “I do, milady.”

Anne watched her in the mirror. The young woman frowned as she tugged at a recalcitrant lock of hair. It would probably have been better for her scalp’s sake to have borrowed the services of Lady Darkefell’s abigail, but that woman would have to help Lydia now, too, no doubt. She did have another purpose in retaining Ellen’s services, though; Anne had already made inroads with the maid, as far as trust was concerned, and was determined to learn more about what was worrying Lydia. “Has it always been safe hereabouts, Ellen?”