The Wolf of Haskell Hall

by Colleen Shannon

  Looking quite content, Jeremy caught the reins and waited for Lil to go first up the path, keeping a suspicious eye on the limp form on the travois.. But Ian didn’t stir, so Jeremy soon stuck his shotgun back in the holder on his back.

  Holding the stable manager against his scrawny chest, Jeremy whistled one of his ditties to light their way. Shelly added her own accompaniment: the sound of her grinding teeth. But for the moment, she let the little banty cock crow.

  It was the strangest end to the strangest night of Lil’s life.

  Retracing the horse tracks as she led the way home, Lil knew that, as dangerous as the expedition had been, she was glad she’d come. She’d faced her three worst fears this night. The moors. Riding. And the wolves.

  As usual, Shelly had been right. Only in facing her fears had Lil overcome them. None terrified her any longer. Often, she looked back at Ian, assuring herself that he was still unconscious, still safe on his way home. He didn’t stir. And the more she looked at him, the more beautiful she found him.

  God willing, maybe it would be a new beginning, too. For both the heiress and the wolf of Haskell Hall.

  If she could face her own worst fears, so could Ian.

  Somehow, they’d find a way to be together.

  There she stood again. A sprite, or a ghost, just on the edge of his consciousness. But every time he reached out to touch her, she dissipated to smoke in his arms. And with her passing, his arms became legs, his hands forelegs tipped in lethal claws. Fur grew thickly over his body. He threw back his head to call for her, but only a wolf’s howl came out.

  Long, low and lonely. The lament of his becoming.

  When he lost her, he lost himself. Yet the matter of choice had long since passed him by.

  She was the last heiress, he, the last Griffith male. Their macabre dance of destiny would play out as his ancestress had wished. Either the werewolf would die, or Ian Griffith would die–but only after he’d killed the woman he loved.

  Shocked at the revelation that came on that half awake, half asleep threshold, Ian opened his eyes. There she was again, her hair as bright as the morning. But this time, she was real, not a dream. With her smooth, fair skin, her silvery hair, even her soft green eyes, she was so much a creature of the verdant day that he could only lie helpless before her and stealthily try to absorb some of that light into his darkness.

  She was bending over him, her lovely face concerned, that willful mouth so soft and nurturing that he’d have given the little that remained of his soul to kiss it. Almost afraid, he reached out to touch her, and to his vast relief, his paw was a hand again, and the only lust he felt was carnal.

  Memories of the other night seemed all the more vivid in her bright reality. She was life, life incarnate. As precious to him as she’d been when he filled her with his own life essence, trying to imprint himself on her, in her, in the age old way no woman could forget.

  Or any man….At least, not when the encounter touched more than the body.

  He stroked her soft arm, wondering if she felt the near worship in his touch. Gladness chased the last of his misery away. He didn’t know how he came to be here, but to his heartfelt relief, she appeared unhurt. For now, he’d merely bask in the radiance of her presence and forget the night to come.

  Green eyes bright with unshed tears locked on his, and this time, it was he who felt naked. What did she seek, looking so deeply into him? Only then did he realize he was naked, at least from the waist up. She was doctoring a wound on his chest, and he lay on a cot inside an isolated horse stall, one that had been reinforced for recalcitrant stallions.

  He was a man again. For now….He felt the hole in his chest, but she gripped his hand and drew him away, continuing to clean the wound.

  “Have you ever heard of the concept of reincarnation?” she asked, smearing a foul-smelling medicinal salve on his wound.

  Equally casually, he replied, “Yes, but feel free to refresh my memory.”

  “I had a Hindu nurse once, and to my Calvinist father’s horror, I almost became a Hindu myself. Their religion holds that every creature has a soul.”

  Ian grew very still, his eyes locked upon her face. Her tone was casual, but her intent was not.

  She made a pad out of a clean roll of gauze, her movements efficient. He was not the first man she’d bandaged, and he marveled again at how different this petite American virago was from the insipid heiresses who came before her. “Hinduism holds that every life is one great journey of becoming, and that our deeds in each successive life determine what we become the next time. Only when our deeds are pure does our karma allow us the ultimate oneness in which our souls are liberated.”

  She pressed the pad to his wound, and helped him sit up. As she wrapped bandage about his chest to keep the pad in place, she added quietly, “In my next life, I want to be a wolf.”

  He was half expecting it, but still, the shock of her words jolted through him, part thrill, part foreboding. “And why is that?”

  “Twice you could have killed me. Twice you hesitated. I held my very hand before your nose last night, and still you didn’t bite. You remembered me, Ian. Even in your savage, four legged form, you remembered. You chose to listen to your instincts instead of your stomach. I never knew a wolf could think, or reason, or choose right over wrong. And your strength, and beauty, and grace….it would not be such a bad end.”

  He shoved her touch away. “You seek it, then! Not knowing from one night to the next who you’ve attacked, or what you’ve eaten, or even if you’ll awaken a man or a beast. Good karma? I should hate to see a bad one.”

  Grabbing his shoulders, she stuck her passionate, flushed face into his. She even shook him slightly. “But it’s not your nature to be so savage. You’re being drawn into these hunts against your will. Don’t you have any memory of the other wolf?” She hesitated, as if she wanted to tell him something, but then she sat back and just stared at him.

  Frowning, Ian stared past her hypnotic green eyes to the blue sky beyond the pasture. Sometimes, just as he felt his consciousness slipping away, he thought he heard a howl, a howl dark with a savage hunger that went beyond any blood lust he’d ever known as either man or wolf.

  But then the darkness consumed him, and he knew nothing until he awakened, naked and shivering, a man again. Dreading the next becoming, for each one seemed to last longer and steal more of his human self away. “I….don’t remember. You think we hunt together?”

  “No. I think he strikes first, tempting you to taste. It’s almost like a very human hatred of you has taken shape in the other wolf. He w…is a bit larger than you, with red-tipped fur and black eyes. Don’t think. Feel. Can you not see him with your instincts?”

  But as hard as he tried, Ian saw nothing but the murk of his own shadowy despair. He shook his head, unable to speak past the lump in his throat.

  What had he done to earn this steadfast belief in those clear green eyes? Mayhap he had hesitated, briefly, but he must have ultimately attacked, or they would not have shot him. How many more times could he suffer this conversion and still retain an ounce of that goodness she so obviously believed in?

  She said staunchly, “We have to find out who he is. If we stop him, I don’t believe you’ll feel the blood lust so strongly. He….calls it up in you.”

  “And what then?” Ian sank back on the cot, an arm over his eyes to block the sight of that winsome, passionate face. “I’ve spent years looking for a cure for this curse, even before I couldn’t resist the urge to come home. If there is a cure beyond death, I haven’t found it.” He turned on his side away from temptation. He wanted more than hope, or life, or breath itself, to take her in his arms and bask in her loving warmth and generosity.

  But this new softness in the pit of his stomach had a surprising resiliency. It demanded that he think of her instead of himself, so he forced the words out. “Leave me, Delilah. Lock me in tonight and don’t come near the barn. Do not trust me to be so forbearing ag
ain. With every conversion, I become more inhuman. That much, I know.”

  “You’re not alone any more, Ian.” The soft touch of her hand on his shoulder made him shiver, but she was surprisingly strong as she turned him to face her. Her tremulous smile was the loveliest thing he’d ever seen, and almost, she gave him hope that there was a way out of this for both of them.

  She said softly, steadily, “You’re not the only one becoming….something else. When you made love to me the other night, you did exactly as you warned that first week I came here. You cemented a bond between us that nothing can break. And as you also warned, perhaps I am as shameless as my name. For I’d have it no other way. As long as you return to me by daylight, I will fight the darkness to make you whole. For without you, I am not whole, either.”

  And Ian, who twice outweighed this indomitable little sprite, felt helpless before her. Trembling with the force of his emotions, he reached out to cup her soft cheek. “Man or wolf, I’m not good enough for you, Delilah. Run. Run back to America and leave me to my fate–”

  But she stopped his words in the simple way, the inevitable way–with her mouth. And there, in the warm sunlight that was cold compared to the fire of her generosity and passion, Ian Griffith learned the most important lesson in his becoming.

  He learned to hope again….

  Redemption was sweet on her lips.

  For the rake he’d been, and the animal he was in danger of becoming.

  And then he couldn’t think at all. He pulled her onto his lap and bowed her over his arm, drinking forgetfulness from the bountiful fount of her femininity. And with every precious sip, the wild urges of the wolf receded to the darkness where it belonged.

  Only the needs of a man were brave enough to revel in the sunlight with this innocent temptress.

  Still, the man had something in common with the wolf: they both wanted to eat her up.

  He trailed burning kisses down the smooth column of her neck to the high button of her oh so proper gown. Laughter glittered in his deep, dark voice like the sunshine she led him into. “Such prim modesty only makes me long all the more to strip you naked.”

  Lying against his chest, her arms about his neck, her eyes steady on his face, she replied demurely, “Why do you think I chose this dress?”

  His shout of laughter made the horses in the stalls across the way stamp the ground.

  A groom quit mucking the stalls to listen to the happy sound, but he quickly returned to his task under Shelly’s baleful look.

  But Shelly’s stern face relaxed into a smile as she, too, listened to the laugh trail off to a chuckle. Sighing with what might have been a twinge of envy in a less formidable personality, she returned to her own job of inspecting a repaired saddle.

  Inside the stall, Ian nuzzled Delilah’s neck, stabbing his tongue into the vulnerable hollow. “Show me, then, temptress, what you hide. Fill in the gaps of my memory.”

  Firmly, she moved his straying hand from her thigh. “You seem quite able to fill those gaps yourself.” She went scarlet as gleaming amber eyes beamed into hers. “That is, I mean, it’s full daylight and I’m not so shameless that I–”

  “Daylight is safer. For both of us.” The laughter was gone.

  She mourned her foolish choice of words. But perhaps it was for the best. When he touched her like this, she couldn’t think. And never had she needed to think more clearly. She slipped off his lap and moved to a safe distance. Even then, her gaze traveled hungrily over his bare chest.

  The bandage didn’t spoil his male beauty. It only gave him an even more rakish, indomitable look. In this wounded male form, he was still power curtailed. Twice she’d looked into the wolf’s eyes. They were the same color, with the same depth of wildness and will, as the eyes that looked at her now with a similar hunger.

  And she, heaven help her, found both his personas fascinating and fearful. What did that say of her?

  She saw the same thought in his face before he spoke it. “Do not romanticize me in either shape, Delilah. Perhaps this end was inevitable for me. I’ve been a lone wolf my entire life. Now I must pay the price for that independence. But you don’t have to.”

  “Perhaps not. But I choose to.” Turning on her heel away from the stunned look in his eyes, Delilah exited the stall and dropped the sturdy bolt on the outside.

  He leaped up and grasped the bars, so quick and alert even wounded that she instinctively backed a pace. “Do not come back tonight. I implore you.”

  She quickly walked away. He had her at such sixes and sevens that she’d hardly have been human if she hadn’t wanted him to wonder, too. Besides, she hadn’t made up her own mind about whether to stay with him tonight. Perhaps she was undergoing some strange transformation, too, for fear was fast becoming fascination.

  She met Shelly in the yard. Shelly’s smile looked strained, and Delilah noted that the stable manager’s hand was bandaged now. “How is he?”

  “Recovering rapidly,” Lil replied. “Too rapidly. I hope the stall holds him tonight.”

  “Perhaps we should drug him.”

  “No. Just see that all the hands are sent away. I want no one but myself, you and Jeremy close enough to hear him.”

  “Then what? What have you decided to tell the servants?”

  “That he’s ill, but recuperating, and that within a few days, he’ll be able to take over his duties once more.”

  Skepticism gleamed in the acute gray eyes. “And how do you intend to quiet the gossip?”

  “By ignoring it. It shan’t be any more lurid than the things they say about me. Since I own this estate, surely it is no one’s concern but my own if Ian stays on as estate manager.” Lil couldn’t avoid staring at that neatly bandaged hand any more. “Shelly, have you felt any….ill effects since the wolf clawed you?”

  Uncharacteristically, Shelly turned away without answering. And that alarmed Lil most of all. Lil trailed after her. “Shelly, perhaps we should fetch the doctor. Perhaps your wound is infected.”

  “Nonsense. It’s a scratch, merely. We need to expend our energy on finding the cure for Ian’s malady. I’ll speak to my cousin. Perhaps he’ll know of some source in the village we haven’t thought to check previously.” She walked quickly inside the stable. Almost running. Not once had she met Lil’s eyes.

  And Lil knew then, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Ian’s malady had become Shelly’s illness, too. The thought of that magnificent intellect reduced to lupine craftiness was enough to spur Lil on her own mission.

  She had the lives of two people she cared about at stake now. Somewhere in this place that had seen the birth of this curse lay the seeds of the remedy….And it was up to the last heiress to find it.

  The night passed quietly, to Lil’s great relief. If the servants were frightened and suspicious of the growling and howling issuing from the stables, they took their cue from their mistress and ignored it. Lil had scoured her own library for the rest of that day, but she found nothing even relating to wolves, much less to werewolves.

  By the time night fell and the moon rose, clear and taunting, Lil had once again invaded Ian’s quarters. She told herself that it was best she stay here rather than go to the stables again and make Ian’s transition even harder. His interests were better served if she found a cure.

  But the truth was, she was afraid. Afraid her own terrible fascination with Ian’s lupine form would ultimately be their undoing.

  If the curse proved too strong, Delilah would be as lost to the wiles of the moon as Ian.

  Even as she frantically paged through every book Ian had on the subject of werewolves, the thoughts crept slyly through the back of her head.

  Would it be such a bad fate, to be a wolf?

  To bound across the earth as if she had wings, fall from a great height and run off, unharmed? To take a near mortal wound and, by the next morning, be virtually healed? To be one with the night, her senses so acute that no dull human could understand the allure of seeing, an
d smelling, and tasting. To understand, at last, the wonder of rebirth.

  And the becoming….

  A mournful wail raised its homage to the moon, as if chastising her for her weakness. Lil snapped a dusty tome closed. “Delilah Haskell Trent, you’ve taken leave of your senses!”

  She sought her bed, but spent the rest of the night in a chair before the window.

  Watching the moon.

  Coveting its power and beauty….

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When the full moon passed, the march of days became dull routine again. To Delilah’s fury, Ian retook his duties with all the passion he’d once lavished on her. He dealt with estate affairs through intermediaries.

  A few servants balked at taking orders from him. Two even quit rather than work for a man and a mistress so benighted. But, with Shelly’s and Mrs. McCavity’s help, within a few days, Lil and Ian had the estate running smoothly again. If people in every village within a fifty mile radius whispered, for the moment, that’s all they could do.

  Speculate. Was the curse true? If it were, why did the latest heiress continue to employ Ian Griffith? Was he really a werewolf?

  The question uppermost on everyone’s mind was loudest of all, because it was whispered rather than spoken aloud: who would die next?

  But neither of them dignified the lurid curiosity by so much as acknowledging it.

  Twice Lil came upon Ian on the grounds; twice he walked away before she could stop him. One evening she went to the tower, but to her fury, he’d changed the locks.

  She simmered, she stewed, she vowed to herself she’d fire him and leave him to his fate. But in the end, beneath her fury, she grieved.

  It wasn’t himself he was protecting, as events soon proved.

  One of the groundskeepers and two grooms were sent packing a few days later, all bearing the marks of a brawl. Lil couldn’t pin anyone down as to why, so she sought out her one honest-to-a-fault fount of information: Jeremy.

  She found him sulking over buttermilk in the kitchen with an expression so sour she wondered if he’d curdled the milk himself. “Jeremy, do you know why Ian fired the grooms and the yard man?”