Winterset (31 page)

Anna turned and ran from the room.

“Anna, dammit!” Reed let out an oath and whirled, picking up the nearest object, a small lamp, and sending it crashing against the opposite wall. He stood for a moment, then turned and ran after her.

She was already running down the stairs, and Reed started after her, heedless of the startled gazes of his servants, many of whom seemed to have found some task that needed doing around the staircase. “Anna! Wait!”

Anna did not pause, but ran out the front door. By the time Reed reached the door, she was already mounted on her mare. She glanced back at him, and he saw her tear-streaked face. Then she dug her heels into her horse and was gone, leaving him staring after her.

By the time Anna got back to Holcomb Manor, the righteous anger that had sustained her at first had all drained away, leaving her feeling only an empty ache.

She knew that she had to stop seeing Reed. The situation was impossible. She had been living in a dream world, believing that somehow she could be with him and enjoy his company and not give in to her passions, but obviously that was not the case. Nor could she marry him. Despite what he had said, it would be wrong and cruel of her to tie him to a wife who might grow mad, a wife who could not give him children. He deserved so much more. Some other woman could give him that.

Anna tried to ignore the jealousy that gnawed at her when she thought of him marrying another, more proper, wife. She had to be reasonable, she told herself, and just because Reed was not adhering to reason, that was no excuse for her to abandon it. Indeed, she had to be reasonable for both of them.

When she reached her house, she ran up to her room and threw herself onto the bed to indulge in a good cry. Then she sat up and washed her face and rang for Penny to draw her a bath.

After a long soak in the tub, she got dressed and let Penny do up her hair, then went downstairs and started listlessly on her tasks. She found it difficult to concentrate, and the household problems she dealt with seemed inordinately petty.

She half expected Reed to come calling. He was not the sort of man to give up on something he wanted. She did not know how she could continue to refuse him when everything inside her yearned for exactly what he was offering. How could she be strong enough to deny them both the happiness they wanted?

She was in the midst of such gloomy thoughts late that afternoon, staring out the window at the garden, when she saw a figure moving through the trees toward the house. The day had turned as gray and dreary as her thoughts, and there was a fine mist in the air, obscuring the scene. Anna leaned closer to the window, peering out, her stomach tightening.

The man stopped at the edge of the garden, looking uncertainly toward the house. Anna’s eyes widened. It was Arthur Bradbury, her uncle’s manservant.

She walked quickly out of the room and down the hall to her brother’s study. “Kit. Arthur is here.”

“What?” He looked up from his work, his brow drawing together in confusion.

“Arthur Bradbury.”

“But what is he doing here?”

“I don’t know. But it must be important for him to leave…”

“Yes, of course. You’re right.”

Kit stood up. He had been working in his shirtsleeves, but now he picked up the light gray jacket from the arm of the chair across from his desk and shrugged into it as he followed Anna out of the room. “Where is he?”

“I saw him out among the trees at the edge of the garden. I think he must be waiting, hoping one of us will come out.”

Anna picked up her everyday bonnet from the coatrack by the back door and tied it on as they went outside and through the garden toward the trees beyond. As they drew closer, she could see Arthur’s large form beneath the trees. He was pacing anxiously, a frown on his face. His expression lightened when he saw Anna and Kit approaching him, and he swept off his cap as he stepped forward to greet them.

“Sir! Miss! I’m that glad to see you. I was just trying to think of a way to get your attention ’thout anyone seein’ me.”

“What is it?” Kit asked. “Is anything wrong with our uncle?”

Arthur shifted a little. “Fact is, sir, well, he’s missing, like.”

“Missing?” Anna asked, her voice rising in dismay.

“When I got up this morning, he weren’t anywhere to be found. It’s not like him to stray outside his ring of stones in the day, miss. I was a mite worried, and the longer I waited, the more worried I got. So after a while, I went out lookin’ for him. And I haven’t found him anywhere.” He looked from one of them to the other, as though hoping they would have an answer.

“Oh, Lord,” Kit sighed. “Has this ever happened before?”

Arthur shook his head. “No, sir. Not this long. He don’t like to be outside the ring when it’s light. I’m worried something might have happened to him. I can keep looking, but with just one person…” He shrugged.

“We will help you,” Anna said.

“I’ll get Rankin.” Kit named their gamekeeper, who carried supplies up to Arthur and their uncle. Only he, of all the servants, knew about their uncle’s presence in the woods. “I think you should return to your house, Arthur, in case Uncle Charles should go back there. He would be alarmed to find you gone.”

“Yes, sir, you’re right about that.”

Kit turned to his sister. “You should stay here.”

“Stay here?” Anna echoed, astonished. “I will not. You will need all the help you can get searching the woods.”

“It is not safe, not with everything that has been happening. And you can’t take one of the servants with you, since none of them know about Uncle Charles,” Kit reasoned. He hesitated, then added, “If you must go, come along with me. That will be safer.”

“That takes away the whole point of having an extra person to search,” Anna pointed out. “I will search one section alone, just as you and Rankin do.”

Frankly, she was not much inclined to strike out into the woods on her own, given the recent murders. But she could not simply stand by and do nothing while her uncle was missing.

“I shall be fine,” she assured her brother. “You need not worry about me. I know the woods as well or better than you, and there are few enough of us to search, as it is. Nothing will happen to me. It’s daylight, and the killer has not struck during the day. Besides, it isn’t me he has tried to harm, it is you. If anyone should stay home, it should be you.”

Kit snorted at the absurdity of that suggestion.

“Really, Kit, don’t make a fuss. Nothing is likely to happen, and if I do stumble upon someone suspicious, I shall scream, and you and Rankin can come to my rescue.”

“If we are close enough to hear you,” Kit pointed out. He sighed. “I am sure I should not allow you.”

“Allow me?” Anna’s eyes flashed dangerously.

“But I know you would pay no attention to me if I did forbid it,” he finished, long accustomed to dealing with his older sister. “So we may as well not fight about it.”

“I agree.”

Arthur, relieved to have passed on his burden, returned to the hut by Craydon Tor to await their uncle, and Anna and Kit went back into the house briefly, Kit to locate Rankin and enlist his help, and Anna to put on a sturdier pair of walking boots.

Soon they were making their way through the garden and across the fields behind the house into the woods beyond. The mist had thickened in the past few minutes, and Anna was glad for the bonnet that kept the moisture out of her face.

When they reached the edge of the woods, the three of them fanned out, heading off at different angles. Before long, Anna could no longer hear the sounds of either her brother or Rankin as they moved through the trees. It was, she admitted, a trifle eerie to be walking in the thick woods all alone. Even the slight noise of a squirrel scampering across a branch was enough to make her jump, and when a bird exploded out of the brush in front of her at her approach, she could not suppress a little shriek.

She clapped her hand over her mouth, hoping that her utterance had not been loud enough for either her brother or Rankin to hear. Scolding herself for being such a nervous ninny, she pressed on.

The mist was growing heavier now. In fact, she realized as drops hit the brim of her bonnet, the mist had evolved into rain. As she trudged on, the rain grew harder, and she wished that she had thought to throw on a light cloak over her dress. At least, she thought, her boots would hold up to the rain and mud.

Anna shivered and wrapped her arms around her body, hugging herself for warmth. She slipped on the wet leaves and grabbed at a sapling for balance. It was then that fear slammed into her.

She gasped, her knees giving way, and if it had not been for her grasp on the small tree trunk, she would have fallen to the ground. She leaned against the tree, wrapping her arm around it to hold her up, dreading what she knew was coming.

She feared it was her uncle—some horrible vision was going to unroll before her eyes concerning her uncle. But when it came, it was far worse.

First was the insidious fear, pervasive, and so intense it made her ill. Then she saw Reed’s face, just as she had seen it in her dream the other night, pale, eyes closed, looking as if he were dead.

A moan escaped her, and Anna sank down to her knees, unable to stand. Not Reed, she prayed, please, not Reed.

But there was no mistaking his face or the blood trickling from his temple. His face was wet, the rain running down it, and she knew with a certainty that this was no forewarning as last night’s dream must have been. It was no false vision, as she had let herself believe. It was now. It was real.

And Reed was in terrible danger.

T
error surged in her, and her first instinct was to close her mind to the vision, to pull away from it. It was what she always did. The intensity frightened her, and she would pull her mind back.

But she knew that she could not do that now. She had to see more. She had to know where Reed was and what was happening to him. It was the only way to save him.

So she remained on her knees, hanging on to the slender trunk of the tree with both hands, and forced her mind to stay on what she saw inside it, opening herself up to the horror and pain.

Reed was lying on his back on the ground, and there were trees around him. A man was kneeling over him, his back to her, a black cloak wrapped around him so that he was little more than a dark shape. He was leaning forward.

“No!” Anna cried, and staggered to her feet. She ran forward blindly, consumed by fear, and it wasn’t until she slipped in the mud and fell down that she stopped and pulled her thoughts together.

The vision was gone now, though the sick, quaking fear lingered in her body. She made herself remember it, made herself think, not of Reed and the danger that threatened him, but of the area around him.
She knew that place!
She was certain of it.

She closed her eyes and made herself stay still, remembering the placement of a large rock just beyond Reed’s shoulder and the spreading branches of an oak a little farther away.

Anna jumped to her feet, suddenly certain of where Reed was. It was in these very woods as they ran toward Winterset land, away from Craydon Tor. She was, she knew, not very far away from it.

She ran, dodging around trees and bushes, lifting her skirts to keep them from snagging, slipping now and then on the wet ground. The rain grew hard, drenching her, and a tree branch caught her bonnet, tearing it from her head. She paid no attention, just ran, her breath rasping in her throat, fear growing in her with every moment.

And then, at last, she saw them ahead—a man lying stretched out on the ground, a dark shape bending over him.

“No!” Anna screamed, throwing herself at the kneeling figure.

At her cry, he whipped around, rising and throwing out his arm. He caught Anna in the chest, knocking her backward onto the ground. She looked up at him and gasped, a paralyzing fear gripping her. The face of the figure looming over her was not human.

It took a moment for her to realize that the man, draped in a cloak, wore a mask similar to the ones they had found in the old Lord de Winter’s chambers. It was made of hide, white-and-gray-mixed fur, fitted to the face and ending across the cheeks and nose. The hood of the cloak was pulled forward, revealing nothing of his head but the masked face. Human eyes looked out at her from behind the holes cut into the hide, and the combination of human and animal in the face was somehow worse than either alone would have been.

“You!” he exclaimed, and glanced around wildly. “You should not be here.”

Someone she knew, she thought. Someone who knew her. She could not connect this monster in front of her with anyone familiar. She did not know what to do or say, how to stop him from killing Reed.

Slowly she rose to her feet, taking in the situation before her. There was a short club lying on the ground beside him, and there was a knife in his hand. However, the knife had no blood on it, which she hoped meant that Reed was not dead, just knocked unconscious. If she could distract the man, perhaps Reed would wake up and subdue him. Therefore, she should keep him talking and watching her, taking his attention away from Reed. It was not much of a plan, she knew, but it was the only thing she could think of at the moment.

“Leave him alone,” she ordered, trying to put as much firm authority in her voice as she could.

He shook his head. “No. No. He has to die.”

“Why?” she asked. “He’s done no harm to you.”

“He wants you!” the anonymous figure shot back. “Don’t you see? That is why he keeps hanging about. He wants to marry you. He is trying to disturb everything, and I cannot allow it!”

“I am not going to marry Reed.”

“Of course you are not. You are meant for me.”

Anna gaped.
What on earth was he talking about?

“We know that, the two of us,” the bizarre figure went on. “But
he
is interfering.” He flung a hand toward Reed, turning to look down at his body.

Anna moved forward, afraid that he was about to harm Reed, but the man swung back around, flinging up his hand, and she halted.

“No! Come no closer.”

“All right,” Anna said pacifically. “I will stay right here.”

She thought about what the man had said. It was clear that he was insane. But there must be some way she could use his madness to her advantage.

“I don’t understand,” she began, “what you mean about me. About my being meant for you.”

“We are destined for each other!” He flung his arms wide in a dramatic gesture, and Anna saw that beneath his cloak he wore a plain shirt and trousers, and tucked into the waistband of his trousers was the gardening instrument that Dr. Felton had mentioned, its four sharp tines bent forward like claws.

A shudder ran through her. He had used this on his other victims; he intended to use it on Reed. She swallowed hard against the nausea rising in her.

“We are both the Children of the Wolf,” he went on. “I am not the person you think you know. The people who call themselves my parents are not really my parents. I was adopted. I know that now. I realized it several years ago. At first, I didn’t understand who I was. I was just relieved that those foolish, weak, ordinary people were not really the ones who sired me. But then I learned that I was heir to the Wolf.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do! Of course you do! Or have they so indoctrinated you that you do not believe? Don’t worry. I will teach you.” He placed his hand upon his chest, saying earnestly, “My grandfather was Lord Roger de Winter.”

“That cannot be,” Anna said before it occurred to her that it was not wise to contradict this unhinged man. “I mean…Lord Charles has no children,” she went on in a conciliatory tone.

“Not him!” The man waved her mention of her uncle away with a gesture. “I don’t know who my father was, but my mother was the illegitimate child of a maid at Winterset. My grandfather was Lord de Winter.”

“I see.” That was, Anna thought, not an entirely preposterous idea. According to what Nick had said, the old lord had been a terrible husband, and he had clearly been a cold, hard person who would not have balked at seducing, or even raping, someone who worked for him. God knows, he had killed a maid; he would not have stopped at a lesser crime.

Who was this man? His voice, she thought, sounded a little familiar, but she could not place it.

“Winterset should be mine,” he went on, his eyes lighting fanatically. “Once I knew that, I got into the house. I searched through it, and finally I found my grandfather’s treasure trove.”

The lights in the house that Grimsley had seen, Anna thought. “You found the masks.”

He nodded. “Yes. You have seen them? Have you read his journals?”

“A little,” Anna admitted.

“Then you must know!” he said excitedly. “We are descendants of the Wolf.
He
doesn’t belong there.” He gestured wildly toward Reed. “It is you and I who should be at Winterset.
I
am the heir to Lord de Winter. It is I who should rule there.”

“So you are going to kill him?” Anna asked. “That won’t get you Winterset.” His belief was so impossible, so preposterous, that she scarcely knew where to begin. “It would go to Reed’s heirs. And even if it reverted somehow to the de Winters, you would never inherit the estate. You just said that you are illegitimate.”

“Ah, but I have figured that out,” he said craftily, his eyes taking on a gleam. “I will come into possession of the property after you and I marry.”

“Marry!” She gaped at him. “But how will that—my brother Kit is the heir…” Anna’s voice trailed off as she realized that it was because of Kit’s link to Winterset that this man had tried to kill him.

“You think I would marry you after you had killed my brother?” she cried. “After you killed the man I love? I would never marry you!”

“You must!” he snapped back, his eyes flashing. “We are destined for each other. We carry the de Winter blood. We belong together.”

“I may have that tainted blood flowing through my veins,” Anna flared. “God knows, I wish that I did not. But I am not like you. I am not like Lord de Winter.”

“You are.” His eyes flamed with anger. “You and I belong together. We are de Winters!”

“I will never marry you,” Anna said slowly and distinctly, her voice like iron. “You repulse me. No matter who you kill or what you do, I will never marry you.”

He let out an inarticulate roar, his hand coming up and back, as though he was preparing to strike her with the knife. But he stopped himself and stood for a moment, looking at her wildly.

“It is
him!
” he shouted, whirling around and pointing at Reed’s recumbent form. “He is why you act like this!”

He thudded down onto his knees beside Reed, raising his hand. With a shriek, Anna threw herself at him, grabbing his knife hand and pulling back with all her strength. Cursing, he rose and turned, trying to fling her aside, but Anna clung to his arm tenaciously, sinking her nails into his wrist. He howled with rage and clumsily cuffed her with his other hand.

His blow made her head ring, but Anna held on, screaming, hoping that Kit or Rankin might hear her and come to her rescue. He yanked one of her arms from his wrist, but by the time he removed the other, she had grabbed his wrist again, and so they struggled. From the corner of her eye, she saw Reed’s legs twitch, and hope surged in her. She struggled on with renewed strength.

She could see her attacker’s eyes grow dark with rage, the insane light burning brighter, and he let out a howl of frustration. With a burst of strength, he flung her away from him, and she stumbled backward and fell onto the ground. Before she could get up, he threw himself at her, raising his knife.

“Let her go!” a voice bellowed, and the next instant, a man barreled into her attacker, knocking him off Anna.

The knife went flying off into the grass, and the two men grappled, rolling across the grass. Anna scrambled to her feet, staring at them in amazement. “Uncle Charles!”

The other man landed a hard hit on her uncle’s chin, knocking his head back, and then he rolled out from under him, but her uncle lunged at him, hitting her attacker around the knees and toppling him over again. Anna looked around for something to use as a weapon and spied the fallen club lying beside Reed. She ran to pick it up and turned back to the fight.

Her uncle was on the ground on his back, the killer straddling him, his hands around her uncle’s throat. Anna ran to them and brought the tree branch down as hard as she could. She intended to hit his head, but at the last moment he dodged, and it cracked across his back instead, breaking in two. He turned toward Anna, snarling, and started to rise.

At that moment Reed lunged into the scene and brought his hand down sharply, rapping the killer on the head with his own club. The man wavered for a moment, then collapsed.

“Reed!” Anna launched herself into his arms, and he caught her, staggering back a little shakily.

“Sorry.” He gave a little half laugh. “I’m not quite steady.”

“Of course not.” Anna stepped back and looked up into his face. “You’re bleeding. He must have cracked you on the head.”

She dug into her pocket for a handkerchief and pressed it against the wound on Reed’s temple. Blood streaked the side of his face and neck.

“I don’t know what happened. I was riding along, and suddenly something fell on me. He must have been up in a tree.” He turned and looked down at his assailant. “Good God. Who the devil is he?”

“The Queen’s spy,” Anna’s uncle answered. He had gotten to his feet and was standing rubbing his throat.

Reed looked at him. Hastily Anna said, “Reed, this is my uncle. Uncle Charles, this is Reed Moreland. He bought Winterset.”

Uncle Charles looked suspiciously at him. Reed reached out to shake his hand, but her uncle backed up, shaking his head. “No. No. Can’t do that.”

“Uncle Charles doesn’t like to shake hands,” Anna told Reed. She turned back to her uncle. “Thank you, Uncle, for coming to help me.”

Lord de Winter nodded. “Of course. I saw him before. First I thought he was a demon. I wasn’t sure what was going on. But Gabriel explained it to me. Said he was an assassin sent by the Queen. He was in disguise. I have been searching for him. Then I heard you scream. I knew he was after you.” He turned toward Reed, explaining, “She would be in line, you see, after Kit, if he killed me.”

“Yes, of course,” Reed answered calmly. “Well, what do you say we see exactly who this chap is?”

He walked over to where the fallen man lay and bent over him. The mask was tied on, and he had to jerk at it strongly to rip it from the man’s face. He straightened, and the three of them stared down at the man beneath the mask.