Winterset

by Candace Camp

  “Well, miss, it’s like this,” Grimsley began confidentially, coming a step closer to them. “I been workin’ out here fifty years or so. I spend all me time outdoors, workin’ here, walkin’ places, goin’ to visit me sister what lives in the Fell. And in all that time, I never seen any beast other than a fox or dog or such. But, now, ghosts—ghosts I’ve seen.”

  Anna caught the scent of gin coming from the man, now that he was nearer to her, but she asked gamely, “You have? Where?”

  “Why, right up there, miss,” Grimsley replied, looking surprised, and gestured toward the house. “I seen ’em at night. Lots of times. It’s the late lord and lady. Not your uncle, miss, but his father and mother, what died right here in the summerhouse.” He gestured off toward the left to where the summerhouse had once stood, Anna presumed.

  “Why do you think it is they?” Reed asked.

  “Well, they’d be the ones walkin’, now, wouldn’t they?” Grimsley answered unarguably. “Happens, dying sudden like that. ’Orrible death, burnin’. ’Sides, the lights always come along the gallery, you know, where he liked to walk.” Grimsley pointed toward the long row of windows on the right side of the house, where the gallery lay, then lifted his finger higher and over to the left, pointing to a set of four smaller windows, all covered with wrought-iron bars. “And they’re in the master’s old bedroom, too. It’s the old lord walkin’, like he used to late at night. I seen him oftentimes.”

  “You saw lights?” Reed pressed, frowning. “When was this?”

  “Oh, before you come back, my lord. Not all the time, of course. They don’t always walk. Stopped once you come back. I guess the old lord’s shy, like.”

  “And how long has this been going on?” Reed continued.

  Grimsley contemplated this question, his head to one side, and finally said, “’Bout a year now. More or less.” He smiled a little apologetically. “I’m not so good with the time anymore, you understand.”

  “Yes. Of course. Well, thank you, Grimsley.”

  The man nodded, seeming satisfied, and turned, going back to the bush he had been tending and picking up his shears. Reed offered Anna his arm again, and they strolled away.

  When they were securely out of earshot of the old caretaker, Anna looked at Reed, saying in a wry voice, “Now ghosts?”

  Reed half groaned, half laughed. “That is all I need. As if it isn’t bad enough to have homicidal man-beasts roaming about…”

  Anna turned to look back at the house. “Do you think he really has seen lights in there?”

  Reed shrugged. “I suppose it is possible. The house has been empty. Someone could have broken in—though the place certainly did not look as if it had been ransacked. And why else would someone break in except to steal things?”

  “Well, I understand that ghosts don’t really steal things,” Anna told him, her eyes dancing.

  He grinned at her. “Laugh if you like. I have a sister—not Kyria—who came to believe quite seriously in ghosts.”

  “Really?” Anna looked at him with interest.

  “Yes. I will tell you the story sometime. It’s the sort that sends shivers down your spine.”

  “Thank you, I have no need of any more of those,” Anna replied.

  “However, I find Grimsley’s story somewhat less reliable than Olivia’s,” Reed went on. “For one thing, when he pointed to the old lord’s bedroom, he was pointing not at the master’s bedroom but at the nursery, I think. Did you see the bars?”

  Anna nodded. It was a common practice to bar the windows in nursery rooms so that children could not fall out of the high windows. “Yes, I thought that must be where those windows were.”

  “Nor does it seem likely that the old lord—or lord and lady, if you will—should come back to haunt the place a year or two ago, after resting quietly in their graves for the past however-many years.”

  “Forty-four or forty-five, I think,” Anna said. “They died a few years after the first Beast killings.”

  “How did they die?” Reed asked.

  “They were caught in a fire in the summerhouse,” Anna said. “I’m really not sure of the details. They died when my mother was quite young, only three or so, and she didn’t remember her parents. She was raised by her aunt—my grandmother’s sister—who lived in London.”

  “She did not grow up here?” Reed asked, surprised.

  “No. My uncle was away at school when their parents died. He was ten or twelve years older than my mother, and he had already gone off to Eton. Except for occasional visits, I presume the house must have stood empty for several years then, too. I believe he returned here when he finished at Eton, but my mother, of course, remained with her aunt until after her debut.”

  “Did she meet your father in London, then?”

  “No. After her first Season, she came here to stay with her brother for a few months. It was then that she met my father. An unequal match, some said. She was a beauty, and the de Winters were of higher birth. But she didn’t care for that. She and my father loved each other very much.”

  Anna was unaware of how her face softened and her eyes warmed as she talked about her parents, but Reed could clearly see her grow even lovelier as she talked. He looked down at her, a more carnal heat stirring in him.

  “My parents, too, were a love match,” he told her, and he could not keep his fingers from trailing lightly down her arm.

  Anna’s breath quickened in her throat. She looked up at him, her eyes meeting his, and the heat she saw in them set up an answering warmth in her own loins. She remembered the moment earlier in the library when she had thought that he was going to kiss her. She wondered if he was going to now.

  She wanted him to kiss her. However foolish or wrong it was, she wanted to feel his lips on hers, wanted to have his hands on her arms, sliding up over her bare skin, his fingers pressing into her flesh. Anna trembled, her lips parting slightly.

  His eyes went to her mouth, and they burned suddenly with a silver fire. “Anna…you are so beautiful.”

  Would it be so wrong? she wondered. Would it be so terrible to kiss him, to taste for a moment the joy, the pleasure, that she would never have?

  But she knew the answer, even as she thought the question. Kissing Reed would only make everything harder. A taste of what she had given up would only leave her wanting more. And Reed…it would be unconscionable to do that to him. To stir his desire again. To let him know that desire still burned in her.

  Anna stepped back, her gaze shifting away from him, even as everything inside her screamed not to.

  “We ought to get back to the doctor’s journals,” she said stiffly.

  “Of course.”

  Anna glanced back at Reed. His face was set, his eyes unreadable. He extended his arm to her in a stiff, formal way. Anna took it; his muscles felt like iron beneath the sleeve of his jacket. They walked back to the house, the distance between them palpable.

  They spent the rest of the afternoon in the library. Reed took a seat across the table from Anna, and he started on the doctor’s notes again, while Anne read some of the articles from the clippings that the doctor had given them.

  The newspaper articles were by and large lurid accounts, full of overblown language and possessing few facts. They wrote of the innocent girl “ripped from life” and made references to the bloody legend of a “ravening beast” who roamed the area. They made, in fact, a great deal out of nothing, and Anna soon realized that they had learned far more from the few pages of the doctor’s notes than they would from the stacks of articles.

  “These are useless,” she said at last, tossing down the clipping she had been reading.

  Reed glanced across at her with a rueful smile on his face. He had finished with the doctor’s journals and had read a few of the articles, too. “I fear you are right.”

  He stood, rolling his shoulders to get out the kinks put there by hours of reading. He strolled across to the window and glanced out. “It’s gotten dar
k.” He paused for a moment, then said neutrally, “Will you stay for supper? If I know the cook, it is nigh ready. We adhere to country hours here, apparently.”

  Anna glanced down at the papers as if they could tell her what to do. “I—Kit will be expecting me.”

  “I can send a groom over with a note, explaining.”

  She wavered. The thought of dining alone with Reed, chatting and laughing, was appealing. That was the problem, of course. It was too appealing.

  “No,” she said firmly, standing up and giving him a false smile. “I must go. I have spent all day on this, and there are things I need to attend to at home.”

  He acquiesced gracefully, with no further urgings for her to stay, and a few minutes later the carriage was brought around. Anna found, perversely, that she was a little disappointed by his seeming lack of interest in whether or not she left.

  He rode home with her in the carriage, making plans for the morrow, and bade her a polite goodbye at her door. Anna went inside, only to find that Kit had sent a note home saying that he had been delayed at one of the farms and would be taking his evening meal there. So she dined in lonely state in the small dining room and spent the evening reading in her room, reminding herself now and then why she had chosen to live her life without Reed Moreland.

  * * *

  It was something she had to remind herself of on several occasions during the next few days. She spent most of her time with Reed, searching for answers about the murders, both past and present, and, despite the gruesome subject, those days were some of the happiest she had spent in years.

  She had forgotten how much she enjoyed Reed’s conversation, how witty he could be, the way his gray eyes danced with amusement. In quiet moments, she found herself turning to look at him, her eyes drawn to the full curve of his lower lip, the firm line of his jaw. Once, feeling her eyes on him as he read, Reed glanced up, and a slow smile spread across his face. Anna could not keep from smiling back, and she ducked her head quickly, returning her eyes to the pages she had been reading.

  In every moment that they spent together, there was always the subtle running undercurrent of attraction between them. When he smiled, heat curled within her abdomen, and when he laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling up, she felt a visceral tug. Anna could not look at his hands without thinking of the way his fingers had felt on her skin. When they looked together at a piece of paper, they leaned closer in, and his scent, his warmth, stirred her, making it hard for her to concentrate.

  She wanted him, wanted him perhaps more than she had three years ago. He had never kissed her three years ago in that raw, desperate way in which he had kissed her at Kyria’s party, and that kiss had awakened something within her that was strong and primal, a hunger she had not felt before, even when she had been most in love with him. He was older and harder, and the changes in him drew her. He no longer treated her, she noticed, as if she were made of glass, and she enjoyed it.

  After examining the doctor’s notes, Reed and Anna decided the best course would be to try to locate someone who might have had more immediate knowledge of the case. Since Susan Emmett had been a servant at Winterset, they set out to find another servant who had worked there. Reed started with his butler, who informed him a little haughtily that he was not a local, having been hired from an agency, and his last posting had been in Brighton. It turned out that the housekeeper, too, had been hired in the same way and was, in fact, from Devonshire.

  “I remember Uncle Charles’ butler,” Anna told him. “His name was Merriman—although he was one of the sourest men I have ever seen. I believe he retired when Uncle Charles left, but I cannot remember where he went. I suppose he could have been the butler during that time, as well. He looked as if he might have been here since the house was built, frankly. But I don’t remember anyone else. I’m sorry.”

  In the end, they turned to Anna’s housekeeper, Mrs. Michaels. Anna was surprised to see that formidable woman all but gush at being asked to sit down in the presence of the son of a duke and talk to him.

  “Oh, yes, I remember Merriman,” she said, nodding. “Always had his nose up in the air because he’d once worked for an earl—as if the de Winters hadn’t come over with William the Conqueror himself. But I’m sorry, miss, he wasn’t the one who was the butler back when they had those other awful killings.” She gave an expressive shudder. “That was Cunningham. But he died several years ago. That was why his lordship took on Merriman.”

  “Oh,” Anna said, disappointed. “What about the housekeeper back then?”

  “Well, that was before my time, you understand,” Mrs. Michaels told her. “But when I came here to the Manor, I remember that it was a woman named—oh, what was it?” She frowned. “It will come to me in a moment, I’m sure. A regular tyrant, she was. That’s what all the girls who worked for her said.”

  Anna wondered what the woman must have been like for Mrs. Michaels, who now made a bed check of all the servant girls every night at ten, to find her too dictatorial.

  “Hart?” Mrs. Michaels said tentatively. “No…Hartwell! That was it. Mrs. Hartwell. I believe that she was there until your uncle left for that heathen island. And where did she go after that?”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Michaels,” Anna assured her. “We can find her whereabouts, I think. It just occurred to me that my uncle would have given her a stipend.” Though he might not remember, it was a certainty that her father would have. “Mr. Norton would be the one sending it, I imagine.”

  Reed nodded. “Yes, of course. We’ll ask Norton.”

  It took no more than a note to the solicitor, delivered by one of Reed’s grooms, and within an hour they had a missive in return, stating that Mrs. Hartwell resided with her son in the nearby village of Sedgewick. This seemed to them a hopeful development, and they set out the next morning in good spirits to visit the housekeeper.

  They rode, rather than taking a carriage, and Anna could not help but enjoy the morning. When Reed had courted her three years ago, they had often gone riding, and simply being out with him this way again was enough to make her feel the way she had then—at least a little.

  The cottage to which Mr. Norton had directed them was a pleasant half-timbered house of Tudor construction, well kept up, with a small, fragrant garden in front. When Reed knocked on the door, it was opened by an apple-cheeked young girl, who stared at them a little shyly and bobbed them a curtsey, then called for her mother.

  A middle-aged woman appeared next, and when Reed explained that they were there to see the Mrs. Hartwell who had once been the housekeeper at Winterset, she gave them a puzzled look but invited them inside.

  “It’s John’s mum you’re wanting to see, then?” she asked, leading them into a small but pleasant parlor.

  “Yes. I am Lord Moreland. I live at Winterset now. And this is Miss Holcomb. We were—I had some questions regarding Winterset that I wished to ask Mrs. Hartwell.”

  “Well, I—of course you can see her, if you wish, but I doubt there’ll be much you can get from her. Please, sit down, and I’ll get you some tea. Lizzie!” She bustled out of the room, and Reed and Anna exchanged a look.

  The apple-cheeked girl returned not long afterward with a tea service on a tray, and a few moments after that, Mrs. Hartwell came in, her steps slowed to accommodate the old woman who leaned heavily on her arm.

  The girl, who had been uneasily waiting, shifting from foot to foot, sprang forward to help her mother lower the old woman into a chair.

  “Mother Hartwell,” the middle-aged woman said loudly, bending down and looking directly into the old woman’s face. “You have visitors.”

  The elder Mrs. Hartwell turned to look blankly at her daughter-in-law, then swiveled her head to cast the same blank look at Reed and Anna, sitting on the couch across from her.

  “Mrs. Hartwell, I am Lord Moreland. I own Winterset now, where I understand you used to be the housekeeper.”

  The old woman blinked and turned back to the o
ther woman, opening her mouth and making a few garbled noises. The middle-aged woman shot Reed and Anna an apologetic look.

  “I’m sorry. It’s hard to understand what she says. She hasn’t been the same for the past few years, ever since she had the apoplexy. The doctor said it was a miracle she lived, but she hasn’t been able to walk or talk right since then.”

  “No, it is we who should apologize for intruding upon you like this,” Reed replied. “We did not realize…”

  “If you want to go ahead and ask her, I can tell you what she says,” the woman offered.

  “We were going to ask her about some of the other servants who worked at Winterset while Mrs. Hartwell was housekeeper there,” Anna began.

  They all looked at the old woman, who was nodding pleasantly. Encouraged, Anna went on, “We were especially interested in Susan Emmett. She worked there almost fifty years ago.”

  The old woman continued to nod, smiling a little. The younger Mrs. Hartwell bent and asked her, “Do you remember Susan Emmett, Mother? At Winterset.”

  The old woman made a few more garbled sounds, and her daughter-in-law turned to them apologetically. “I’m sorry. Sometimes she doesn’t make much sense. She said…I think she said something about an animal.”

  “The Beast?” Reed asked.

  The other woman looked surprised. “Yes, that is what it sounded like. Does it mean something to you?”

  “A little.” Again Reed and Anna exchanged a look. It would be almost impossible to get any useful information about the murders from Mrs. Hartwell. “We were hoping she could tell us about Susan’s death.”

  “Beast gor ’er,” the old woman managed to get out, the clearest thing she had said yet.

  She added something, and her daughter-in-law cast them an embarrassed look. “I think she said that the girl was a silly chit.”

  “Could you tell us, Mrs. Hartwell, the names of some of the other servants who worked at Winterset then?”

  There was another long struggle to speak from Mrs. Hartwell, translated by her daughter-in-law. “I think she said, Cutting or Cunning.”