Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1)

by Jeanine Croft

  The operose groan of the great doors opening and closing below banished all thought of sleep, however. Emma hastened out of bed and into her night-rail. Thereafter, she tiptoed quietly from her room and down the corridor to peek down from the gallery. Careful not to make herself or her movements conspicuous, Emma angled her head cautiously around the corner of the wall and over the railing to cast her eyes down at the checkered floor below.

  There he was, the master of Winterthurse. Winterly stood with his back to her so that she could only see the width of his broad shoulders beneath the black greatcoat he still wore. And he still had not doffed his hat, despite that he was indoors. He looked exactly as he did that first night they’d met, all shadows and mystery.

  He was speaking to the housekeeper, but his words did not carry from this distance. Even if they had, she suspected the din of her pounding heart would have drowned them out. He had that effect on her, and she realized now that it had always been so. She hardly knew the man, yet she was utterly infatuated with him, especially after that kiss, chaste or not.

  When he and Mrs. Skinner moved out of view into one of the corridors, she released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. As that silent gust of air left her lips, a strange howl floated up from the moors again, like a melancholic glissando. It couldn’t possibly be the wind, could it?

  If Milli was still awake then she had likely heard it too and was no doubt terrified—the night itself was enough to terrify her sister, let alone the sounds that haunted it. Emma turned away from the balcony and returned to her room to retrieve a candle before setting off to find her sister’s room, her feet padding silently across the smooth, stone slabs.

  After wandering the corridors for an interminable length of time, she chose a door at hazard, guarded by two tall suits of armor. Though they stood insentient and empty, her flesh horripilated, for she could feel the bold press of a stare against her neck. This castle, with its chessboard foyer, had something of Winterly in it—dark, mysterious, and watchful. They were well matched, she thought, reaching her hand towards the door handle.

  “Are you lost, Miss Rose?”

  She yelped, nearly startled from her flesh, and slammed her back against the door. The candle sputtered dangerously, it too nearly expiring of fright. Speak of the devil and he doth appear. “No, I…yes, I am.” She pulled self-consciously at the sheer fabric draped across her naked shoulders. “I was trying to find my sister’s room.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  Yes, it was an odd thing to be doing at midnight, running about in her underthings. “I heard howling, you see.” She licked her dry lips as his watchful silence prevailed. “I thought it sounded like…like…”

  “Like what exactly?” His voice was soft, almost conversational.

  “Wolves.” Lord, she knew how ridiculous that sounded.

  “Likely only the wind soughing through the battlements,” he replied.

  “Yes, that was Mr. Valko’s opinion too.”

  He studied her a moment. “But you think otherwise?”

  She shrugged.

  He lifted his hand to his chin in a thoughtful gesture. “It must have been my dogs.”

  “You have dogs?” Victoria might have mentioned the blasted dogs.

  “On nights like these I fear the wretched beasts might awaken the dead.” There was a flash of white as he smiled. “And the undead, come to that.”

  Her eyes widened to see his teeth. He had only peeled his lips back slightly, but, from what little she had seen of them, they had appeared uncommonly white…and sharp. She swallowed dryly.

  “Well, Miss Rose, if you wandered this way to discover my arcanum arcanorum, you won’t find any in there.” He gestured to the door she was propping up with her stiff back. “I keep my secret of secrets right here.” He tapped his heart.

  “Yes, well, I had best get to my room.” Milli knew where to find her if indeed she had been awakened by the howling.

  “Allow me to escort you there.”

  “I do not think I ought…” She nearly demurred, but remembered betimes that she had admitted to being lost, so it would have been rather foolish of her if she had declined his assistance.

  “Come now, Miss Rose, you are fagged to death, I insist, lest Mrs. Skinner find you asleep here on the floor in the morning.”

  What a notion! She conceded and fell into step beside him, feeling naked in her negligee. “No doubt I have kept you from your bed as well.”

  “Au contraire, you will find that we Winterlys are a nocturnal breed.” A short pause followed in which he seemed pensive. “Miss Rose, I hope you will be comfortable in my home while you are here, explore it at your leisure and go where you please; as I said, I do not keep my secrets behind locked doors.” He then stopped, forcing her to do the same. She fastened her eyes to his cravat. “I do, however, insist that you stay indoors from dusk till dawn, unless escorted by me. These moors are not safe at night.”

  “Unsafe only when you are not at my side?”

  “My eyes are well accustomed to the dark, Miss Rose.”

  “And what has that to do with anything?”

  “These grounds are treacherous at night, to say nothing of the dogs. Many have lost their way and their lives in the bog; the darkness has devoured more than one unsuspecting fellow, and once you are gone you are gone forever.”

  His words chilled her. “You have my word, I shan’t leave the castle at night. Besides, Mr. Valko has already warned us to remain indoors at night.”

  “Very good.” He made her a shadowy bow and set about escorting her back to her chamber. “The howling you heard might just as well have been some poor fool in the mire, disappearing into the underworld.”

  “I know what I heard and it was nothing human.”

  He made no answer; but, somehow, without even looking, she knew he was grinning again. They spoke no more after that, which only served to thicken the tension until all she could think about was the night of the Full Moon Ball when he’d kissed her goodnight. Would he do so again?

  When they reached her door, she glanced up at him, at once nervous and excited. But the candle sputtered out as her gaze met his. In that fleeting moment before the light vanished, the blacks of his eyes engulfed the whites like billowing hell smoke. She gasped and stumbled backwards into her room, gaping at the tall shadow filling the darkened doorframe.

  “Goodnight, Miss Rose.” There was something of mockery in his tone as he shut the door between them.

  She stood palsied with dread, listening as his footsteps retreated down the hallway. Silence fell all around her, yet still she could not find the courage to credit what she’d seen. Easier to defy her eyes than to accept that the master of Winterthurse was some underworld god. Emma had dismissed the housekeeper’s eyeshine easily enough, she was bone-weary after all, but Winterly’s company always enlivened her. And what she’d just seen in that last dying breath of candlelight… Dear God, would that she’d been struck blind ere she’d met those eyes!

  Emma backed away from the door till her thighs were pressed against the bed, the coverlet cold as she sank down. That infinite black stare would be forever seared to the back of her eyes. The goblet of wine sat untouched at her bedside, and thus, she promised herself, it would remain. If Emma was to sleep with her eyes open tonight, she would not have her wits dulled by Winterly’s wine.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Stuff of Myth and Nightmare

  My Dear Mary,—I have acquired a very disturbing new interest, though I hardly think you shall esteem it an improvement on gothic romances. I find I have become something of an amateur supernaturalist. With love,

  Emma.

  When morning arrived, Emma was already standing before the looking glass. She took note of the dark smudges that lay beneath her eyes—an attestation of a tenuous sanity. Either she was mad or there was something very preternatural about the master of Winterthurse. Was that what Ana had alluded to?
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  Her eyes lowered to the silver chain around her neck, her fingers curling around the vial. She removed the stopper and liberally applied the Devil’s Bane to her pulse points. Whatever apotropaic was necessary to preclude any nefarious assaults on her person, she would employ them. Let the world think her mad. Milli too would need to be safeguarded, but that could wait until her sister emerged from wherever it was she’d been bestowed.

  Armor in place, Emma made her way down to the foyer with the intention of finding herself a book in the library. She had bought Vampyris along with her, but could not yet bring herself to open it; guilt had overpowered her curiosity till now, and after the frightful night she’d had, she required something cheery to read, not something that would subdue her spirits further. The morning was so steeped in gloom that the lamplights in the sconces gave a cheerless shudder as she passed.

  Mrs. Skinner emerged suddenly from the shadows, her movements insectile and silent. “Breakfast, miss?”

  Emma’s poor heart could not take much more of these constant frights. It seemed that every time she ventured from her room she was given a turn from some or other skulking body. This old manor was more like a mausoleum or a haunted schloss than a home.

  “No, thank you,” she answered, “I shall wait for the rest of the household to rise before I break my fast.” She was thereat informed that his Lordship and the others had already eaten. “Upon my word, he eats very early.”

  “My master has always been in the habit of keeping odd hours.”

  And keeping odd servants. “Be so kind as to point me in the direction of the library.”

  “It is just through there, miss.” The rangy creature pointed a long, white finger towards a door at the far end of the gallery that lead towards the northern wing of the lower floor. “All the way at the end.”

  She thanked the housekeeper and proceeded towards the library, lest she glimpse again that vitreous green flash in the dark—the nocturnal eyes of some predator.

  “You will find that we Winterlys are a nocturnal breed.” The words of the master himself replayed in her thoughts. A nocturnal breed of what exactly?

  Emma’s teeth slid anxiously to and fro across her bottom lip as she pondered her predicament. How could she possibly explain to Milli that they were amongst strangers that were, Emma was coming to suspect, possibly not altogether human. Was Ana right, was this place really cursed? Had it been the family ghosts howling on the ramparts last night? Was Mrs. Skinner merely the frightful genius loci of Winterthurse? What then was its master?

  The library was as dreary and dark and cold as the rest of the castle. She pulled her shawl more snugly about her shoulders and made her way carefully around the shadowed furniture towards the heavy drapes. The room was instantly bathed in welcoming light as she pulled them aside. The prospect from the library window looked out across untamed moorland.

  The Winterthurse library was an enormous, rectangular space with Tudor and Stuart furnishings. The shelves were built into the entire length of the paneled walls that stretched the height of the room, reaching as high as the coffered ceiling, easily two-stories. The whole was stocked with hundreds of dusty tomes.

  At one end of the room were two high-backed chairs facing a large, gothic fireplace with a black stone mantlepiece; it was in desperate want of a fire to warm the room.

  Behind her, at the opposite end of the fireplace, was a very strange mural painted across the plastered wall, faded by time. She clasped her hands in front of her midriff, lest she be tempted to touch the ancient artwork. A grotesque and fascinating mural it was too.

  “Do you like it?”

  Though she hadn’t made a sound when Mrs. Skinner had startled her, this time Emma did shriek. Very loudly. She had not seen Winterly sitting in the high-backed chair because that corner of the room was still, even now, much enveloped in shadows. And he seemed to belong to the shadows.

  “For heaven’s sake, man! Why did you not say anything when I entered? You nearly stopped my heart!”

  He rose from the chair, chuckling, and came to stand beside her. “I could not very well greet you in the dark, now could I? You would have stopped your heart regardless of when I’d spoken.” His eyes were thankfully no longer unnatural. He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “You are very skittish today, Miss Rose.”

  “I have a right to be.” She narrowed her eyes meaningfully, willing him to understand her.

  He cocked his head to the side. “Do you?” But his question, such as it was, seemed more of a soliloquy than a reply. “Yes, perhaps you do.”

  Were they finally to speak candidly? Could she bear it just yet?

  He nodded to the mural. “Do you like it?” He was unwilling, it seemed, to give up his secrets just yet. Unwilling to give up the game, or explain his transmogrified eyes. “It is as old as the castle itself.”

  She shifted her attention back to the painted wall. Most of the tapestries and paintings in the castle were hunting scenes, but this was something altogether morbid, perhaps dating back to the Normans. It seemed to portray a king atop his charger pointing an accusatory finger at a crowd of peasants whilst, in the fiery foreground, a village was being laid to waste.

  No doubt noticing the confusion etched in Emma’s countenance, Winterly explained, “It is William the Conqueror you see there, punishing the Irish Scots for their cannibalism.”

  “Cannibalism?” The word turned Emma’s stomach.

  “Ay, but one might suppose it to be nothing more than hearsay and rumormongering propagated by the English.”

  “Let us hope so.”

  “Although St. Jerome himself mentions bearing witness to the practices of the anthropophagi,” he said, lifting his chin to indicate the ancient Irishmen in the mural, “when he was a boy in Gaul. So perhaps there is truth in legend.”

  “Monstrous!”

  “It is believed that before Whitby Abbey was destroyed by Henry the VIII there was a glazed window in the choir that was to have mirrored this exact scene.”

  She raised her eyes from the mural to him. “What do you believe?”

  “I believe it is human nature to make monsters of those they do not understand.”

  “Well, I certainly don’t understand how the consumption of human flesh can be anything but monstrous.”

  “It is only cannibalism,” he said, redirecting her gaze to the mural, “when the predator is as human as its prey.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I am saying that these creatures may have been mislabelled. Look again.”

  She stepped closer to the painted wall, pushing her glasses further up her nose, and finally saw what she had failed to notice before. The eyes of these anthropophagi were all strangely black and lifeless, their faces gaunt and white, and their teeth were all far too sharp to be considered normal. Or human.

  She gave an involuntary shiver. “What are they if not human?”

  “They are known by many names, but mostly they are myth and nightmare.” He moved to stand behind her. “Demons perhaps.”

  “Demons?” She backed away from the wall and gasped when she found herself pressed flush against his chest. Cheeks aflame, she begged his pardon and swiftly distanced herself.

  “Yes, demons,” he continued. “The incubi and succubi that prey on dreams.”

  She felt the chill of ghostly fingers burrowing beneath her flesh—he had ventured far too close to the truth for her liking.

  “You have lost your color, Miss Rose.”

  “I did not sleep well, that is all.”

  “I am sorry for it. You ought to sit down, have a little something to eat.”

  “Perhaps later.” Cannibalism and demons had waged war on her appetite.

  He guided her to the chair facing the one in which he had been reposing when she entered. “That is a very intriguing scent you’re wearing today, Miss Rose. A new…perfume, I believe.”

  The sudden change of conversation left her momentarily befogged. “A g
ift,” she replied tersely, aiming a finger at the wall of cannibals. “I was told it would deter…nightmares.”

  “An apotropaic?”

  “Yes.” She folded her arms, alive to the fact that she must appear a superstitious naif.

  “An ineffective safeguard, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  She looked a question at him, her brow furrowed.

  “Your restless night is proof of that, is it not?”

  She lifted a shoulder, for the moment unwilling to embark on the subject of what—who—had truly disturbed her sleep. In the light of day all was as it should be and she was merely a guest in the house of a very handsome viscount. She was not ready yet to know his secrets.

  Suddenly his face clouded with disdain and a moment later the library door was thrown open.

  “Miss Rose,” said Mr. Black jovially, “good morning.” He glanced over his shoulder as Mr. Grimm stalked into the room. Victoria was right, that gentleman really never had learned to smile. Even the bow he made her was terse.

  Emma could not help feeling as though she was intruding, despite Mr Black’s amiability. Grimm’s scowling defied her to stay. She stood directly and excused herself.

  Lord Winterly rose gracefully from his chair. “Miss Rose, I imagine you sought the library out for a reason. May I save you the trouble of browsing and make a suggestion?”

  “Please,” she answered, smiling gratefully.

  His lips curled as he left her to retrieve a book from the shelf. He placed it in her hand, holding fast when she moved to take it from him. “I look forward to discussing it with you later.” Finally he released the book and she stepped back.

  All too aware of their audience, Emma thanked him and left the men to their business. She nearly stumbled over her own feet as she stepped around the scowler (what had Victoria called him? A growler?). His eyes were fastened to the book she clasped and his lips were strangely animated with humor. So he could smile after all; it was frightening and she wished he never would again.