The Wolf of Haskell Hall

by Colleen Shannon

  Here, in a land where tradition was sacred, she’d be a curiosity, no more.

  Thomas smiled at her gently. “We promise not to stare. At least, not overtly.”

  Lil’s eyes snapped, startled, to his face. She smiled ruefully. “Am I that transparent?”

  “No. I’m just uncommonly intuitive. For a mere male.”

  Lil cocked her head and studied his handsome face a bit more closely. “Perhaps you are, at that. Modest, too, I see.” There was more to this pampered English blue blood than she’d first supposed, but he was either unaware of, or uncaring about, her own subtle dig.

  “People don’t stare because they think you’re odd, you know,” he went on. “It’s because they’re stunned at your beauty.”

  Preston nodded, made a picture frame with his thumbs and said judiciously, “No fairer English rose will ever bloom on our moors–”

  “She’s American, you idiot,” Thomas reminded him under his breath.

  “No prettier American wildflower will–”

  Laughing, Lil raised her hands in supplication. “Please, sir, the only flour I smell of at the moment is of the wheaten variety.” Lil brushed at the flour still clinging to her skirt. “Pantry duty today, which accounts for my appearance.”

  Thomas’s deep male laugh sounded genuine this time. “A wit! I knew our boring country lives had taken a turn for the better the moment I saw you.” He looked behind her. His smile faded. His sunny expression grew wintry.

  Preston scowled, Byron in a temper tantrum.

  Lil turned to look at the doorway.

  Ian stood there, his strange eyes glowing in the shadow of his hat as he stared at her guests. And he had no more liking for them than they obviously had for him.

  “Trouble comes not in single spies, but in battalions,” as Shakespeare had said.

  As Ian strode aggressively into the room, Lil saw living proof of that homily.

  The Harbaugh brothers rose, taking a step to meet him before they checked with automatic, obviously deeply ingrained courtesy.

  Wishing she were the true English rose who could wilt and pretend a headache, Lil rose and stepped between the three Cornishmen.

  She’d need all her tact to mediate this battle.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Get out,” Ian said through his teeth. “Stay to your own lands, and mind what’s yours.”

  Even Lil, who didn’t put much past him, was shocked at his rudeness. “Mr. Griffith, you will apologize at once!”

  He didn’t so much as glance at her, dividing his hostile stare equally between both brothers. “You don’t understand. They are not fit company for you. They–”

  Preston laughed harshly. “And you are? You, who–” he broke off with a wheeze as Thomas elbowed him in the gut.

  “At least I don’t rape women,” Ian snarled.

  The hairs rose on Lil’s neck as she stared at the brothers.

  Thomas went red in the face. For a minute it seemed he’d strangle with fury, but then he collected his silver-headed walking cane, tapped it to his temple in a salute and said cooly, “We shall be delighted if you can attend our ball, Miss Haskell. And please feel free to bring a guest of your own choosing. Good day. Forgive the untimely interruption.” He stalked out, pushing his sputtering brother before him.

  As they left, Lil heard Preston say hotly, “Are you going to let that bastard talk to us like that? We should call him out. We should–” Then the door closed behind them.

  Her knees weak, Lil sagged down on the couch, knocking against the tea tray as she went. The bone china rattled, and two cups rolled to the rug. She bent to pick them up, but Ian had already knelt. Their fingers brushed. She shied away, even that small contact sending a burning tingle up her arm.

  He set the cups carefully on the tray and stood. She had to tilt her head back to see his face, and she didn’t like the way he overshadowed everything, so she pointed at a chair a safe distance away. When he sat down, removing his hat to slap it restlessly against his thigh, she breathed a bit easier. “Why?”

  He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. He didn’t prevaricate. He went very still and spoke very softly. “I don’t trust them. They are rakes, unfit for your company. Besides, I don’t like the way they look at you.”

  For a second, Lil was shocked speechless. A rarity for her. She saw the same thought in his softening amber eyes and quirking mouth and was so infuriated at the easy way he read her that she blurted, “It’s less shocking than the way you look at me!”

  “Ah, but I have the right.”

  She blinked. Her hearing was faulty.

  Now her sight had failed, too.

  She could have sworn he was leaning back at his ease, not in the least abashed at his own temerity. Lil’s dazed eyes wandered the room, anywhere so as not to look at that magnetic, indomitably male face that did such queer things to her equilibrium. She had to retaliate, do something to set her tilted world right-side up again.

  The next thing she knew, her hand acted of its own accord, picked up a delicate bone china tea cup–and flung it at his head.

  Naturally, he ducked. The cup shattered against the floor.

  But it was his laugh that really tipped sensible Delilah, doughty Scots heiress, on her axis. A soft, purring growl, seductive, throaty. He all but dared her to do it again.

  And Lil, the extremely unsensible side of Delilah, who was beginning to understand she was heiress to more than a big patch of earth, a village and a moldy mansion, responded. Using both hands this time, she flung everything within reach at that arrogant head.

  The salon door burst open. Panting, as if she’d run, a housemaid stood there. Behind her came the butler. And then Mrs. McCavity. They all stared, mouths agape, at the new heiress. And her target.

  Ian didn’t even spare them a glance as he easily lifted an arm to deflect the sugar tongs. “Get out.”

  Mrs. McCavity wavered, “M-Miss Haskell?”

  “Get out,” Delilah agreed through her teeth. This was between Ian and her. Mayhap if he was covered in scones, sugar, tea and broken china, that overweening male pride would be a bit cockeyed even as it righted her own off balance world. She picked up the plate, still filled with scones.

  Shaking her head, the housekeeper shooed out the accumulated servants and gently closed the door.

  Lil hurled the plate. The heavy crockery smashed into the floor shy of his feet. Scones went flying, as if they really were filled with air.

  To her fury, he caught one with an adroit hand and stuffed it whole into his mouth, eating with enjoyment. Almost cross-eyed with apoplexy, Lil reached blindly down for another missile. She was determined to make him wince, make him beg for mercy, or make him run. Somewhere within that indomitable frame were at least a few of the same human frailties he incited in her.

  And she’d find them, by heaven, she’d find them.

  The teapot went next, spattering the silk-screened wallpaper with brown splotches. Then the spoons, the sugar bowl, still filled with lumps. But did he wince? No. Did he beg for mercy? Far from it. As for running….

  He merely lifted a casual arm to ward off the few missiles he couldn’t duck, advancing on her step by inexorable step. Laughing all the while. That soft laugh that both made every hair on her body stand on end and that queer weightless sensation in her belly move lower. To the soft center of her she’d spent the last year hardening.

  But Ian wouldn’t allow her to deny anything–least of all her own nature.

  When she picked up the now empty tray to throw it at him, too, he was close enough to catch her wrist. With easy strength, he removed the tray with his other hand and flung it across the room. It hit a piece of furniture with a clatter, but their eyes never wavered from one another.

  “Here I am–mistress. Your favorite target. No need to break all the china in the house. Slap me as hard as you please. But know this….” He leaned so close those amber eyes became her whole world. “Passion begets passion. I hav
e never hit a woman in my life and do not plan to start now. But every blow you smite upon me pushes you one step closer to my bed. That’s what this is all about, in the end. It is not I you fear and detest. It is yourself.”

  If Gabriel had flown through the window and blown his trumpet in her ear to warn of the second coming, Lil wouldn’t have been able to move. She stared into those depthless amber eyes, feeling like a fly that had landed unwisely.

  What was this strange allure? On the one hand, shining and golden and promising.

  On the other–deadly. But even as glittering gold encased her, pulling her in until she had no breath, no entity beyond Ian, she reveled in the warm doom. Forever would she dwell here, part of him, that moment of flight and fight preserved.

  So when he reached out to enfold her in truth as she already was in spirit, she couldn’t move. Then she felt the rapid thrum of his heart sledging against hers. She realized he was more affected by their battle of wills than his expression admitted, and the last of her fury dissipated.

  With a moan, part agony, part delight, she lifted her face to his kiss.

  Doom had never tasted so sweet….

  Warm, just as she’d thought. Best of all, when she quit fighting it, deadly amber became honey to sustain her. His lips filled her with golden nectar everywhere they touched. And she could only lie helpless in his embrace, shyly kissing him back, exactly as he’d predicted.

  Passion begets passion….

  His, as well as hers.

  He gave a little husky purr as she pulled his neck down to bury her fingers in his thick black hair and better slant her mouth upon him. And the tender bumblebee kiss became a wasp’s sting. His mouth hardened. She felt the sting of his teeth nibbling at the now tender contours of her lips. He always had this strange urge to bite her, yet he never broke the skin, and there was something incredibly erotic about the rake of his teeth on her tender skin.

  And then, even more arousing and shocking, his tongue dabbled at the tingling nerves, soothing the sting–and inciting a deeper urge. The same urge that made bees pollinate flowers, and flowers cast out their pollen, beginning the cycle anew.

  The same cycle she and Ian wanted so badly to celebrate. She felt it in the thrust of his tongue into her mouth, the hardness stabbing into her abdomen, and every particle of femininity she possessed responded. If he had lifted her and crushed her into the couch with his weight, she would not have been able to stop him.

  With a harsh, animal-like growl, he lifted his head from the drugging pressure of her mouth. He cupped her face in his hands, breathing hard. His nostrils flared as if he could scent her own arousal. He stared down at her with eyes more flames than amber. “Come to me. Tonight. Before….”

  Lil took a deep, shuddery breath, and a modicum of sanity returned. “Before?”

  He started to reply, but something caught his eye. He stared above her head. A tic appeared in his strong jaw, and then he backed away and said something she’d never expected to hear from him.

  “Forgive me. You make me feel things, hope things…..” He turned and walked out so fast that, in a lesser man, she might have called it running.

  Groping for a chair, Lil sat down, and then she followed the direction of his gaze. Whatever had he seen that changed him so abruptly from raw male need to raw human despair?

  At first she saw nothing, just pictures on the wall, innocuous enough. And a clock. Her eyes wandered, came back. Her legs still shaky, she stood and walked over to the grandfather clock. Above the hands, it had a dial that showed the phases of the moon.

  In about five days, the moon would be full.

  Lil searched again, but she saw nothing else that could account for his strange moodiness. Why would he be frightened by the moon?

  Knowledge she both longed for and feared tapped like an unwelcome guest at the back of her mind. She pushed back the tendrils of hair that had escaped her prim coiffure. And then she held her hand out in front of her to observe its trembling. As if it belonged to someone else.

  Making a fist, she turned and ran, flinging open the door, feeling as if the hounds of hell she didn’t really believe in nipped at her heels. She ran through the foyer, past the startled footman and butler, outside, into the bright sunshine. Drawing deep breaths of the strangely scented air, part marsh, part moss, part blooming things, all life a’borning, she finally calmed enough to stroll to the stables.

  Miss Holmes seemed to be a walking encyclopedia. Perhaps she would remember the half recollection knocking on a closed corner of Lil’s mind. The childhood tale, tied somehow to the phases of the moon. But no matter how hard Lil tried to open that door, it was stuck.

  Or she was afraid to face what lay beyond.

  For she feared whatever monster lurked there wore Ian’s face….

  She found her stable manager inspecting tack.

  Shelly turned on the wiry little man who’d obviously just polished it. “Can you not see that you left tarnish on the brass? This is not acceptable. Do it again and do it right next time.” Shelly turned and strode off, but checked when she saw Lil. “Hello, my dear. Have you changed your mind about riding?”

  Lil shook her head. “I was wondering if you might like to share a cup of tea with me.”

  Shelly smiled, delighted. “I’m flattered you find my company engaging.”

  “Not at all,” Lil couldn’t resist teasing, just to see that confident smile slip.

  And it did. But only a bit. It widened again when Lil finished, “Merely engaging, my dear Miss Holmes? Not the half of it. Stimulating, fascinating beyond measure.”

  That honk of a laugh made a flock of sparrows chirp and fly away from the fence where they’d perched. “Upon my soul, it’s the rare man or woman that either impresses me or surprises me. You, my dear Miss Haskell, do both. Come along. I have something I suspect you enjoy far more than tea.”

  In the cramped but pretty quarters above the stable, Lil soon found herself inhaling God’s best aroma: freshly ground and brewed coffee. She sipped again, adding a smidgen more of the thick cream that came from her own cows. “Delicious. Why is it that you are the only one in this place who has figured out how much I miss my coffee?”

  “Unlike most of my fellow Britons, I do believe a world outside these isles exists. I have seen it, I have even enjoyed it on occasion. And since I also saw your face when you last shared tea with me, I had the grocer in the village order this for you. You Americans have some peculiar habits, but, divided as we are by an ocean, a government, and even a common language, we each enjoy our stimulants.”

  Lil finished the last drop of coffee and held her cup out for more. “I didn’t know the grocer even carried coffee, or I would have ordered it before now.” Only when she was braced by her second cup did Lil feel strong enough to broach the true reason for her visit.

  She saw curiosity in those intelligent gray eyes, and she knew Shelly had already deduced that this was more than a social call. “Miss Holmes….”

  “Shelly, please.”

  “Then do call me Lil. I confess I don’t quite like being called Miss Haskell since my father’s name was Trent. But no doubt if I remain, I shall become accustomed to it.” Lil looked at the bookcase in the corner stuffed with scientific tomes of every type. There was no easy way to say this, so she took a deep breath and blurted, “Do you know of some significance to the phases of the moon?”

  “The tides, of course.”

  “No, this is a legend. Something frightening I heard as a child, told to me by a Frenchman.”

  Shelly froze with her teacup halfway to her lips. “Why are you asking this?”

  Lil became interested in the dregs of her coffee. “Curiosity.”

  “Killed the cat.”

  Startled, Lil dropped the cup and a few dots of brown liquid oozed onto the spotless tablecloth. “Whatever do you mean?”

  Shelly sighed heavily, and then admitted, “I had hoped it would be awhile yet before you heard about this. To g
ive you time to get accustomed to the moors, our ways.”

  “You wanted me to leap upon a horse and gallop my fears to dust, did you not?” Lil gripped the table edge with both hands. “I am far past the age of being told that if I eat my vegetables, I can have dessert. I can take the palatable and the unpalatable with equal composure. Furthermore, I’ve spoken to Vicar Holmes in the village, and I know why you came here, and that you are his cousin. If you have knowledge of these peculiar deaths, you have no right to keep that knowledge from me.”

  “As your employee, I believe I can interpret from your tone,” Shelly said cooly.

  “No. As the only person, other than the two friends I brought with me, whom I trust.”

  Shelly’s manner warmed. “For that, I thank you. And I assure you, your trust is not misplaced.” She hesitated, rose and went to her book shelf, returning with a very old tome entitled Lycanthropy: Loupe Garoux, Lupe Manaro and Werewolf: LEGENDS, MYTHS AND REMEDIES.

  The minute she saw the name, Lil remembered. “Loupe Garoux! That was it. A creature half man, half wolf….” She trailed off. Memory flooded back.

  Shelly must have seen that, for she took the book out of Lil’s limp hands and set it on the table.

  Lil scarcely noticed, too intent upon recalling the look on Ian’s face when he saw that innocuous dial on the grandfather clock. Rough passion, urgent desire became….fear and frustration. And then he bolted out.

  “Do you remember how the cycle of the werewolf is governed by the moon? Or so it is said.”

  Shelly had to repeat the sentence before Lil was able to drag herself back to the present.

  “The tale frightened me so much when I was child that I must have blocked it from memory. The closer the lunar cycle to the full moon, the more they change and become…inhuman. And then, on the night itself, they have urges they cannot control, do terrible things they often cannot even remember. With the dawn, they become fully human again. Until the next cycle. Do they really…eat human flesh?”

  “If you believe what you read. I, personally, have never seen evidence they even exist. These stories may well belong with such foolish tales as Coronado’s golden city, vampires and ghosts. All three of which, I might add, I feel that my own previous investigations have disproved.”