The Wolf of Haskell Hall

by Colleen Shannon

  Jeremy swiped the moustache from his lip. “Aye. I was there.”

  Lil waited, but he only hunched lower over his glass. “Well? Answer me, if you please.”

  “Ye got a swelled head enough, if ye arsk me. Like ye and all yer kind.” But he sighed at the look on her face and shoved his glass back. “They insulted ye. Ian rammed their nasty talk straight back into their throats with his fist and sent ‘em off.”

  Ignoring the cook’s scandalized look at her bourgeois behavior, Lil sat next to Jeremy on the sturdy bench and poured herself a glass of buttermilk. She’d suspected as much. When the cook and his assistants were safely occupied at a distance, she lowered her voice to a mournful, “He won’t even see me, Jeremy.”

  “Aye, he be a better man than I give him credit for. Or he loves ye dearly. What does he have to offer ye, him a commoner, and a beastie three nights of the month to boot?”

  The simple male perspective Jeremy offered should have made Lil feel better. Maybe Ian did care for her deeply, for she knew beyond doubt that he still wanted her. But her frustration only grew. “How can we find a remedy if he won’t let me help him?”

  “Mayhap he wants to find the cure himself. Or mayhap he doesn’t believe there is one.”

  Likely the latter, Lil thought, growing more despondent by the minute. And maybe Ian was right. After all, he’d looked for a cure for years, even before he returned to the soil that birthed both man and monster. And who was she, to think she could find what generations of Griffith men had searched for?

  The last heiress of Haskell Hall. The last potential victim of the curse. Who had better motivation end it?

  Draining his glass, Jeremy stood. “Mistress, belike we’d all be better off leavin’ these backward West Enders to their scandals and tragedies and go back to Colorado where we belong. Ye did yer best, but some things were not meant to be.”

  Surprised, Lil stared up at him. This was most unlike Jeremy. Running away was not in his nature any more than it was in her own. Then she realized that Jeremy stood a bit too tall, his hands propped on his scrawny hips, scowling in offended male pride as he awaited her answer. She had to take another sip of buttermilk to keep from smiling.

  She knew he’d tried several times to visit Shelly. Each time, she‘d sent him packing. Now the impulses that had taken a Cockney lad of no breeding, no connections, and little money around the world and, on occasion, into the company of potentates and princes, urged him to go back to the safe and familiar. He loved Colorado, too.

  “Sad figures we are, the two of us, Jeremy. Stalwarts mooning, if you’ll excuse the term, over Samsons who’d as lief jump off a cliff as turn to us for succor.” She saw the question trembling on Jeremy’s tongue and added hastily, “Comfort. In a word, old friend, because we have the same temperament, I can tell you confidently that if you run away from Shelly, you’ll always regret it.”

  Jeremy’s brows twitched like climbing caterpillars. “Ain’t a woman been born yet can make me run nowheres I don’t want to be.”

  “Then go back to Colorado if you must. I stay here to meet my fate, whatever it is. Stubborn I am, maybe even foolish. But all I know is that the curse will die with me and Ian. Either because we’re the last of the lines, or because we find a way to break it. I’ll pay for your passage if you and Safira wish to go back, but….I’ve never needed the two of you more than now.” Lil stood and braced her hands on the sturdy wooden table.

  Jeremy’s anger had faded to melancholy, but she recognized that fierce love and loyalty in those pale blue eyes. God forgive her for exploiting it. If Shelly had been….infected, then Shelly needed him, too. If he left and heard that the indomitable woman he’d been so attracted to turned into the very creature she was trying to study, he’d be devastated. No, it was in Jeremy’s best interest to stay, too.

  Quietly, Lil said, “You’ve risked your life for me many times. But now you have to risk something even more precious to one of your bent. Pride is the boon and bane of our existence, Jeremy. It’s made us who we are. Two strong people, be hanged with propriety. But strength without compassion is like steel without alloy: we will break, not bend.”

  His eyes flickered, as if he wanted to look away from her steady green gaze. But then he put his hands on her shoulders and softly kissed her forehead. “If yer Pa could see ye now, he’d fair bust his breeches with pride. Ye shame me, me girl. I stay. I promised him on his death bed I’d die in service to ye, and so I will. Curse or no. No skinny spinster will make me forget me duty.” With that pride and determination etched deeply in his face, the banty cock strutted from the kitchen, all but crowing his lust for the one hen in the barnyard who ignored him.

  Laughing, in much better spirits and determined to heed her own advice, Lil flew to the tiny mirror on the wall and straightened her coiffure. Besides, she decided with a wicked grin, wolves could be quarry, too. If the huntress was wily enough.

  Then, turning aside so she didn’t have to see her own blush, Lil undid the two top buttons of her dress. At least, in this regard, both the two legged and four legged forms of Ian Griffith had the same weakness.

  For the flesh….

  Her blush deepened as she visualized the two legged Ian Griffith’s seductive, unique method of consummation. Odd how it only left them both hungry for more.

  Even better, anticipation was delicious on her tongue….

  Search as she might, Lil couldn’t find her quarry. She heard raised voices in Shelly’s rooms above the stable, and at one point recognized Jeremy’s exasperated tones.

  The men working the grounds shrugged when she asked about Ian’s whereabouts. They were sullen, and she didn’t like the way they looked at her, but finally one young lad shyly tugged his cap off and rolled it in his hands.

  “Yes?” Lil queried.

  “I believe he be in the mine, ma’arm. He were supposed to inspect the new equipment, or so the foreman told me Da.”

  “Thank you, young man.” Lil gave him some shillings for his trouble. His eyes got huge, and he grinned, bobbing his head in thanks.

  Running back to the house, Lil fetched a shawl and driving gloves. Under the butler’s disapproving gaze, she realized her dress was unbuttoned and turned her back to correct that oversight. She said curtly, “I may not arrive back for dinner. Please inform the cook.”

  Outside, she climbed onto the curricle driver’s seat, determined to make the trip alone, be hanged to the proprieties. If she found Ian, she didn’t want witnesses. Blushing, she lifted the reins, but Safira came running out.

  “Mistress! Mistress, wait.”

  “Yes, Safira?” Lil turned to her sometime companion, sometime maid.

  Safira’s dark eyes glittered with tears, but she glanced uneasily at the attentive groom still holding the horse’s head. “Do not go into the village today.”

  “Whyever not?”

  Safira folded and unfolded a clean kerchief. “I…have seen an omen. The bones point at the moors. Death awaits there.”

  A chill ran up Lil’s spine. All of Safira’s omens proved true. Eventually. Lil nodded the groom away. He walked off, glancing curiously over his shoulder. Then she beckoned to Safira until she could be sure none of the other servants milling about heard her quiet, “Whose death?”

  “I….do not know. But a young woman. She dies…like the others.” Safira couldn’t meet Lil’s eyes now.

  “When?”

  The slim shoulders shrugged. “Please, stay in the house today.”

  Lil considered the request, but surely she was safe enough now? It was weeks before another full moon. “I cannot.” She had three weeks to find a cure for a curse one hundred years in the making.

  Briskly, Lil gripped the reins. “I shall be fine.” She patted the pistol in the holster beside her on the seat. She also wore her silverleaf necklace and a pouch of cinders under her clothes, just in case. For all the good that had done a few nights past.

  Taking with her the look of dread
on Safira’s face, Lil was nervous the entire way to the village. At the fork in the road that led to their estate, she saw Thomas and Preston riding toward her. She drew the horse to a stop and smiled as they pulled up beside her.

  “Well met, Miss Haskell,” Thomas said, tipping his hat. “We were just on our way to see if you’d decided whether to accept our invitation to the ball. Seating arrangements, you know. A bore, but necessary.”

  Not certain where the impulse came from, but certain somehow she did the right thing, Lil smiled back demurely, like a proper heiress of a proper estate to proper gentlemen. Though Lil was becoming increasingly certain these men were neither proper nor gentlemen…. “I intended to post my acceptance on the morrow. I do, indeed, plan to attend. But I plan to bring a male guest, if you’ve no objection. Just so I don’t throw your seating arrangements off, you understand. Even a gauche American has some sensibilities about such things.”

  “Gauche?” Preston expostulated, glancing at his brother as if for confirmation of the nonsensical comment. “If you are gauche, that Farquar chit is positively primitive.”

  “Not to mention horse-faced and rude,” Thomas agreed.

  The two brothers burst into laughter.

  Lil was not overly fond of either Miss Farquar or her silly mother, but still, she knew any young woman would be hurt to hear herself so described. And it was hardly gentlemanly of these two men of blue blood but purple prose to mock their compatriot to a newcomer.

  However, since she’d never been good at hiding her emotions, Lil realized Thomas must have seen the glint of disapproval in her eyes, for he stopped laughing and even had the grace to look ashamed. “Sorry to gossip, Miss Haskell. Miss Farquar does tend to…run a man to ground, but that’s neither here nor there.” Embarrassed, he cleared his throat.

  Lil’s affront relaxed into mild amusement. Yes, she could just imagine how determinedly Miss Farquar and her mother pursued the area’s two most eligible bachelors. Lil said sweetly, “Then find her a different fox. Perhaps you can find someone new to introduce her to at the ball.”

  “A capital notion!” Thomas averred. “But it shall come as no surprise to you that I have my sights set on you, instead. There’s a great deal to be said for an…attachment between us.”

  Lil had done some investigating herself about his interest in her, and she’d discovered that their lands were joined by a choice finger of property that the Harbaughs had tried on numerous occasions to purchase from the Haskells. It was lovely, tied to the river, and allowed a shortcut to the coast road between the two estates. “Could my parcel at the junction of the roads account for part of my fascination?”

  Thomas had the good grace to at least look embarrassed, but then he blustered, “Now see here, you shan’t put me off so easily from my true mission–I demand you save at least three dances on your card for me.”

  “And three for me,” Preston added.

  Lil picked up her reins again. “I’m quite sure you’ll both understand if I, too, have a bit of a problem with commitments. But I shall consider your requests at a more appropriate time.”

  Thomas pretended to pull a knife out of his heart. “Gauche? Wily. As dangerous as she is lovely.” Abruptly, he leaned forward, and all the teasing went out of his face as he said gruffly, “You are a lovely, exciting woman, and it would be a crime against nature itself if you should meet the same end as your predecessors. Be very careful, Miss Haskell. Do not go out on the moors alone. Beautiful women have a tendency to meet….unsavory ends there.”

  “Just like that waitress who disappeared, what was her name? The comely one with beautiful black hair who worked at the tavern,” Preston said.

  “Hush, Preston, don’t spout such horrors. You’ll frighten Miss Haskell needlessly,” Thomas rejoined. “Well, needfully, perhaps. It is unfortunately true that no one has seen the wench for days, and her family has contacted the sheriff about the matter. But so far the man hasn’t turned up any trace of her. She didn’t so much as pack a new dress, or so it is whispered.”

  Black hair….Lil remembered the lovely, buxom barmaid Ian had cradled on his lap that first time she went to the village. Her hair had gleamed like a raven’s wing. Lil cleared her voice to be sure it was steady. “But, she’s not a Haskell. Surely you aren’t implying she lies somewhere on the moors, rip–” But she couldn’t complete the sentence.

  The grim stare exchanged by the brothers punctuated her aborted statement well enough. “Oh well, it’s too lovely a day to worry about such ugly things,” Thomas said.

  He tipped his hat to her. “But do be careful. You are the most exciting thing that’s happened around this backwater in years. We will both look forward to dancing with you at our ball. Good day.” They drew aside to give her the road, watching her as she drove off.

  The day was one poets would eulogize. Wild flowers preened under the breeze’s brazen caress. A hawk keened above, soaring aloft of the trials and tribulations of the tiny earthbound beings below.

  But Lil’s troubles colored her enjoyment of the day nevertheless. She was still wondering about the waitress when, as she drew close to the tiny, rutted road that led to the mine, she finally saw Ian. He was riding that great brute of a black stallion. Riding as if the hounds of hell he symbolized chased him, too.

  He pulled up short when he saw her. Brutus reared and snorted, but Ian controlled him with a flick of one strong arm and the flexing of his powerful thighs. The stallion settled down. Ian’s muscles bulged beneath the shirt sleeves, and man and stallion were as much a part of this wild place as the toothy mountains chewing the landscape in the distance.

  And the smells….why was she so susceptible now to scents? It was as if, in sharing his essence with her, Ian had also shared his heightened senses.

  Warm earth.

  Warmer horse flesh.

  Warmest healthy male flesh.

  Ian’s white shirt clung to his skin with all the loving attention to detail Lil longed to lavish upon him. On a vague level, Lil realized he must have checked the mine equipment himself, for his hands were filthy. As her eyes adjusted to the shade of his wide-brimmed hat, she saw streaks of dirt on his face. But then, like a blow, she saw the expression in his eyes.

  She literally reeled where she sat under the impact. All thoughts of the waitress, the brothers, the ball, or her determination to take Ian as her guest, narrowed to something more ephemeral and instinctive than thought, scent or touch–emotional empathy. An empathy that, incongruously, grew apace with her fears and frustrations. Something had happened to Ian recently, something he hadn’t told her about.

  If Satan’s minions had descended on this remote stretch of road to build a gateway to hell, they could not have cast more blackness upon the land than the stygian night staring out of Ian’s eyes.

  Endless darkness.

  Pain without surcease.

  Lil’s voice broke under the emotional impact of that look. “Ian, why will you not let me help you? Between the two of us we can–” She broke off with a gasp as, in full daylight, Ian took on his other persona.

  Like a wild man, in one smooth movement, he kneed his mount next to the curricle, leaned down and swept her sidesaddle before him. Then he kicked the stallion into a gallop, sitting on the animal’s hindquarters, yet still moving with each powerful stride as if he were, in truth, part of the animal.

  Where were they going? For one heart-stopping moment, Lil thought Ian was as subject to the uncontrollable passion between them as she. Did he intend to take her into the wilds, as he’d once threatened, to ravish her?

  But then she realized he was riding straight down the road toward the village. And here she was, the foreigner already subject to much gossip and dislike, ankles and calves showing, hat knocked askew, a madman holding her in the clutch of his arms.

  About to be paraded through the village she owned.

  The thought of yet more scandal, more staring eyes, made her struggle and pull at his iron grip about h
er waist. But he only held her more tightly in the secure circle of his arms, gripping the reins on each side of her waist.

  Lil’s teeth jarred together on a garbled protest. He ignored it, hauling her back against his strong chest. The feel of him, the smell of him, made music in her head, but it was a jangled dissonance that matched the jerky rhythm of the horse.

  It wasn’t passion tensing the strong muscles surrounding her. It was despair. Determination. To prove–what to her?

  She felt his hot breath blow on the nape of her neck. Prickles ran through her as he growled, “Be still. Since you persist in playing with matches, you might as well learn the dangers of fire. If you won’t listen to me, I’ll take you to someone more persuasive.”

  And question him as she might, that was all he said on the ride into the village. When they wound through the quaint streets, sure enough every man, woman and child they passed stopped and stared. Ian seemed to realize, a bit too late, the additional scandal they courted. He pulled her dress down.

  Looking dignified and unruffled under the circumstances was a challenge, especially as she felt her skirts flapping around her calves, but somehow Lil managed. Spine erect, she set her hat back at the proper angle and stared straight ahead as if she arrived in town this way every time she came. Through the act, she wondered where in blue blazes he was taking her.

  She didn’t know whether to be relieved or upset that Ian ignored the whispers and shocked stares as he rode straight to the vicarage.

  She’d intended to visit the good man herself, but not on this mode of transport. As Ian pulled the stallion to a stop and slid off the animal’s powerful hindquarters, the door to the parsonage opened.

  Mrs. Holmes froze on the threshold, her taller husband peering over her shoulder. Both were dressed for an outing. Lil had time for one flashing glimpse of the shocked look on her face and the amused quirk to Vicar Holmes’s mouth before Ian pulled her willy-nilly off the horse, not allowing her time to pull her skirts down. In fact, the movement revealed her knees, and the humiliation Lil had stifled exploded into action at the vicar’s muffled laugh.