The Wolf of Haskell Hall

by Colleen Shannon

  The moment her feet touched the ground, Lil doubled up a small fist and swung on Ian. The easy way he dodged, caught her wrists in a secure but not painful hold, and marched her toward the parsonage steps only angered her more. “You have no right to manhandle me like this. Let me go, you, you–”

  Abruptly, he turned her to face him. He bent and stuck his flushed face into hers, saying for her ears alone, “Wolf, I believe, is the appellation you seek. It’s time you accept that truth, Delilah. No romantic notions, no generosity on your part can change my nature, or my fate.”

  Was that actually a sparkle of unshed tears in those fearless eyes? No, that wasn’t right, either. Ian had fears aplenty–but in that vulnerable moment, he let her see deeply into the heart and mind he kept so private.

  His fears were for her.

  The knowledge took the sword out of her hand and turned it into an olive branch. How could she fault his passion when she only had to look at him to go a bit mad herself? Lil braced her small feet, staring straight back into his eyes, wondering what he saw in her own.

  The words came easily, after all. “Don’t you see it’s too late for me to run?” she whispered. “‘My fate is your fate.’ You told me so yourself. Would you curse me to everlasting darkness, too?”

  With a strangled groan, he tried to turn away, but now it was she who caught his wrist. Lil had forgotten her anger, her humiliation, even their fascinated audience. She knew only the same need that had been driving her since this wild, dangerous man gifted her, in his bed and in his arms, with the deepest tenderness any woman could imagine. “Ian, it’s you who do not understand. Whether I run back to Colorado, or die on the moors as was foretold, life as I knew it has ended. I’d rather die trying to find a way to end this curse upon both our names than run home a coward and perish one day at a time without you.”

  There it was again. A strange look to see in a face as indomitable as this one, but all the more precious for it.

  Tenderness.

  Tenderness a woman could dream of, but seldom hope for.

  His long lashed eyes closing, as if he felt her more than saw her, sensed her more than touched her, Ian reached out one large, strong hand and traced every passionate curve of her face. Forehead, eyelashes, cheekbones, nose, chin, and finally, mouth. He rested his fingertip there, and the trembling contours of her lips seemed to incite a like unsteadiness in him. “Delilah,” he whispered.

  It was enough. Perhaps through the conduit of their touch, perhaps through the husky, moved purr of his voice, she sensed his yearning to believe her. A yearning that was a wellspring from which poured the best of Ian Griffith, both man and wolf. A need for trust, for contact, for purpose…

  ….for hope.

  Her own eyes bright with tears, Lil kissed his fingertip and turned to the couple still standing silently on the stoop. She saw from the looks on their faces that they hadn’t heard the whispered exchange. But it was also apparent that they didn’t need to.

  Mrs. Holmes leaned against her husband’s shoulder, so moved she needed support, and the vicar’s voice was throaty as, gently supporting his wife by her shoulders, he said, “Welcome back to the village, my dear Miss Haskell. I suspected when Ian came to me that I’d see you shortly, too.” He looked beyond her to Ian. “Do you want me to show her what we found?”

  Ian nodded.

  The vicar looked down at his wife. “Lovey, we shall save our visit to the Cromwells for tomorrow, if you’ve no objection?”

  Blowing her nose on a clean kerchief, the vicar’s wife stood straight. “Certainly. I shall see you for supper, lovey mine.” With a last tremulous smile at Ian and Lil, she went back inside the house.

  To distract from her own shyness, Lil instilled a teasing note in her voice. “Lovey? Lovey mine?”

  The unflappable vicar actually blushed. “A foolishness granted only by twenty years of happy marriage. I shall…hope the same for you one day.”

  This time, it was Ian and Lil who couldn’t look at one another.

  “Shall we walk?” the vicar asked, sweeping an arm before him.

  Lil preceded them, but with an automatic courtesy surely out of keeping with the savage Cornish common laborer Ian tried to pretend to be, he offered his elbow to her. As they walked, she felt how rigid his arm was in the slight contact, and when she looked up at that strong jaw shadowed by his hat, she saw a muscle tic. Matching his stride to hers, he stared straight ahead, but she felt his dread as they approached the edge of the village and started walking toward a sheltered copse of trees.

  Wherever they were going, he was obviously nervous about her reaction at what they’d find. Vicar Holmes, walking silently at her other side, seemed grim, too.

  Her heart beginning to pound with fear, Lil cleared her throat, but before she was faced with a new mystery, she had to solve another one. “Mrs. Holmes wasn’t afraid of Ian,” she commented to the vicar. “Your wife–she knows about us?”

  “Oh yes. She’s as fond of Ian as I am. She has faith that, between the four of us, we can find a cure.”

  “And the rest of the villagers?”

  “A few suspect, but most of the people have known Ian since he was in shortcoats, and they also know how many times he’s risked his life for the people hereabouts. Did you know that during a mine cave-in, he insisted on being the one to climb through the tunnel they made through very unstable rubble? To test its safety before he led the men out himself?”

  The man under discussion obviously didn’t like it, for he pulled his arm away and hurried ahead, but Lil was amused to see his reddened cheeks. Odd how he’d rather be taken for a savage than a saint.

  Relieved of his distracting presence, Lil felt the vicar’s earlier comment hit her with belated impact.

  The four of them. Vicar Holmes didn’t know Shelly had been bitten.

  Lil hesitated, glancing between Ian’s watchful face and the vicar, wondering if she should voice her own suspicions and betray Shelly’s secret, but the vicar was Shelly’s cousin, after all. He and Ian both needed to know. Lil rushed through the unpleasant truth, “Shelly was scratched the other night.”

  Turning, his face going ashen, Ian stopped cold. “Did I–?”

  “No. The other wolf. Do you have any idea who he is, Ian?”

  Rapidly, Ian started walking again.

  The vicar sighed at his reaction and confided softly to Lil, “I have my suspicions, but haven’t been able to confirm them. When and if I can, you shall be the first to know. Shelly….dear heaven, I cannot imagine another person in this world who would so hate to lose her self control and become….” He swallowed as if he couldn’t say it.

  “Perhaps that’s why she has the most hope,” Lil countered. You see, sir, I believe, from the two contacts I’ve had with these creatures, that the personality of the human is somehow transferred into that of the wolf. In other words, if a man–or woman–is basically decent and honorable as a person, he remains so in his otherworldly form. Twice Ian could have killed me with ease, and twice he hesitated.”

  “That theory would postulate, then, that the other wolf must be as evil and cunning in his human form as he is in his lupine being.”

  “Yes.” Lil stopped as they reached their goal. At first she was confused, for she saw nothing but a wild tangle of growth beneath the trees. But then her eyes adjusted to the shade from the bright sunshine. She made out crude crosses, a few homemade headstones of brickwork, even one of carved granite. But it was so covered with ivy that she couldn’t make out the name. She was standing in a cemetery. A very neglected cemetery. Set apart from the town.

  These poor people were as isolated in death as they’d been in life. It must be a gypsy cemetery.

  Knowing she was right from the look on Ian’s face, Lil knelt at a grave slightly apart from the others. It bore a simple headstone half covered beneath moss. Part of the moss had been recently ripped away, and she could just make out an inscription. But the words were strange; she didn�
��t understand them. But the date….the year the gypsy girl died. Lil traced the crude block letters with her fingertip. They weren’t Latin.

  “Romany,” Ian said between his teeth.

  Lil looked up at him, standing so tall and invincible over his ancestor’s grave. He’d removed his hat, and as he stared down, with her increasing sensitivity to his thoughts, she read the mix of emotions behind his expressionless face. He wanted to hate the woman who’d visited this curse upon his name.

  But he couldn’t.

  He felt a great sadness, regret that she was no more respected or honored in rest than she’d been in her pain and suffering. Feeling the same sadness, Lil realized something else: today had been the first time he ever sought her grave. He was ashamed of his gypsy blood, too. Or mayhap resentful that she’d left him such a shameful legacy. Lil could hardly blame him for that.

  “Do we know anyone who can read this?” she asked.

  The vicar nodded. “Shelly lived with gypsies for over a year, and she has a facility for languages. I’d planned to bring her here tomorrow, but now…”

  “Now it’s more important to her than ever, isn’t it?” Lil pointed out. “Besides, maybe the scratches she suffered were superficial.”

  Ian snapped, “And maybe the moon won’t rise tomorrow, and the tides won’t match their rhythm to it. Will you never stop believing in miracles?”

  Slowly, Lil stood, wishing, for the millionth time, that she was taller. Still, she met him look for look. “No. Not willingly. And maybe that’s why I have a better chance at finding a cure than you do. Maybe if you believed there were one–”

  With a tormented sound, Ian whirled and stalked off down the road, back toward the village. She started after him.

  The vicar gently caught her arm. “No. In his present state of mind, it’s better to let him deal with this in his own way.”

  “Why did he want me to see this?”

  “To understand the gulf between you, I expect. Have you seen the Haskell crypt next to your mansion?”

  Indeed she had. Pain pierced Lil, so acute she had to grab her side. The crypt was lovingly tended inside and out. Every Haskell had a tombstone, a loving inscription, and some had a catafalque. She’d only been in the crypt early on when Mrs. McCavity showed her about the estate grounds, but even now, she remembered the ornate monument decorating the last male Haskell’s grave.

  Whereas the woman he’d wronged lay unmourned, unknown.

  Oh yes, Lil understood Ian’s message and why he brought her here. Such was his fate–he’d die as he’d lived, alone, unloved. Either forever the lone wolf who roamed the moors until the day it died, or as the man who’d wandered the world to avoid sharing this fate he tried so desperately to shield her from.

  The pain in her side grew so sharp she gasped.

  Vicar Holmes frowned and peered into her face. “Are you well, my dear?”

  By sheer effort of will, Lil dropped her hand and stood tall, staring blindly down at the neglected marker. She fell to her knees and began to frantically pull the rest of the moss away from the headstone. It had a century’s head start on her, but she was young, and vibrant, and strong with desperation.

  She felt the vicar’s appalled gaze as, like a madwoman, she continued to yank at the moss until the headstone was totally clear. “Sir, could I trouble you for some strong lye soap and a sturdy brush?” She couldn’t meet his eyes as she made the request. She couldn’t explain, even to herself, why she felt such urgency. But the need to do all she could to redress the wrong of her own ancestor offered a symbolism as powerful as Ian’s own intent in bringing her here.

  “But you have an army of servants,” the vicar protested.

  “I don’t know quite how to explain this, but it was Haskell hands that began this evil. Only Haskell hands can end it. Please, sir. I must do this.”

  An arrested look in his gray eyes, he gave what might have been an approving smile, turned and hurried back toward the parsonage.

  Glancing over her shoulder to assure herself she was alone, Lil knelt by the headstone again and traced the name with a soothing fingertip. “Somewhere, you must be watching and listening. We’re both women of the wilds, gypsy girl. I don’t like the airs and proprieties of this society any more than you did. But surely you see that if I suffer the same fate as the others, and Ian is cursed forever as a wolf, you perpetuate what you hated most. Male heirs will come again, and not just a Griffith and a Haskell will suffer. The entire village will be ruined. Is that your legacy for the child you labored alone to bear, and his children?”

  Footsteps drew her to her feet. She took the warm water, strong lye soap and brush the vicar handed her. “Please, I’ll be fine. I’ll return to the parsonage when I’m finished.”

  With only a nod, he left her to her self-imposed task. For what seemed hours, but was probably only minutes, she scrubbed. And, strangely, the harder she labored, the suds burning her hands, the more the pain in her side receded.

  When she was done, she tossed the brush into the dirty water, stood again and stared down at the now clean headstone. The lettering, at least, was stark, and would be easier for Shelly to read. Feeling much better despite her chapped hands, Lil turned to leave.

  But the same mysterious instincts that had been her only comfort of late compelled her. She moved back and stood over the remnants of what must have been a vibrant life, clasped her hands and looked down at the gleaming headstone.

  With only the urgent pounding of her own heart as witness, Lil closed her eyes on the soft vow. “I promise to come here every day. With my own hands, I will clean these stones one by one, and place flowers on your grave. And if there is a bridge left between this world and the next, perhaps a kindness, a daily good deed, can slowly supplant the wrong that was done you. Please, in return, show me how to end in happiness what you began in pain. Let Ian and me end this curse in the best way–by the ultimate bond of blood as we create a half Haskell, half Griffith child. We will protect her, and nurture her, and see that she knows as much of the Griffith heritage as the Haskell one.”

  For a blink of an eye, that bridge seemed to form. It seemed to Lil as if a sudden eerie stillness parted the busy divide between the world she knew and the one she imagined. Perhaps even the wind paused in its gusting dance with the grass and flowers to listen.

  In the distance, a dark, bushy plant seemed to shake its mane defiantly. Was that a winsome face framed by black hair? If Lil had concluded her symbolic gesture as fancifully, she might even have believed the girl not only listened from whatever spirit world the Romany inhabited.

  She smiled. Approvingly.

  As if she’d awaited just such a promise as this….

  A soft gasp behind Lil made her whirl around.

  Ian stood there, one foot forward, as if he’d frozen mid-step. She saw from his expression that he must have heard at least part of her vow. He looked from the shining headstone to the dirty water, to her reddened hands, and finally to her face.

  Darkness fled his eyes. Like a light turning on, they glowed from within with an amber radiance as welcoming as a home hearth bright enough to chide the night.

  Or bridge two worlds. And meld two fates.

  Ian held out his hand to her. “Come, Delilah. I have to show you my favorite place in all the world. Together, we will cleanse it. And if there’s a bridge, as you so poignantly stated just now, between this world and the next, between light and darkness, and pain and happiness, together, we will find it.”

  Lil could have hesitated, or bristled at his temerity, for she knew he wasn’t inviting her on a tour of the moors. He wanted to share with her that patch of earth he’d taunted her with back when they first met.

  In exactly the way he’d described then.

  Softness upon her backside, hardness at her front.

  She didn’t hesitate. In two steps, she met him, her hand clasping his.

  Perhaps this was all they’d have. But it was enough, for now,
to celebrate life with him.

  While it was yet daylight, at least, good karma was strong enough to cheat death.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Ian and Lil left the village as they’d arrived, riding double. But this time, the shocked stares didn’t bother Lil. Like everything else beyond the scent and touch of this man, the scandalized villagers had taken on an unreal quality. The streets soon faded behind them, and Lil noted, but didn’t care, when Ian left the road to weave a tortuous path deeply into the moors.

  No one else existed in this sheltered world she and Ian made together.

  The clip clop of hooves was the only sound that broke the beat of two hearts pounding in tandem. Toward one goal.

  To use their bodies as an extension to merge their hearts. Lil understood, finally, that Ian’s odd behavior since their last joining made perfect sense if she cast it in the right light. He’d avoided her, dragged her to the grave despite his own torment for one reason only: to protect her. In a peculiarly honorable way, he was determined to frighten her away. For her own good.

  Just as the wolf had growled ferociously but hesitated to attack, the man acted fierce to cover a vulnerable need.

  For her. If not, why would a rake of his experience be so tender to a woman whose name he hated? She recalled the rude, suggestive way he’d called her ‘mistress’ from the very beginning, and she realized deferring to a little slip of a snobby American girl, an outsider to boot, must have been a blow to his pride.

  Yet his prickles had been stripped away along with her own. That night of the full moon had been the culmination of an obsession neither of them could resist, not the beginning. But why? Ian Griffith was the strongest, most independent man she’d ever met. Too strong to be led by the nether regions of his anatomy, no matter how much Delilah tempted him.

  Her heart skipped a beat with the thought: Could he love her?

  And did she love him in return?

  Lil stared blindly ahead, examining her own feelings. Her fiance had hurt her almost beyond bearing by going from her bed to another woman’s, pretending to love her when all he cared about was her money. But she’d been a green nineteen year-old, a headstrong only child, heiress to a fortune she neither relished nor knew how to manage. Her father had tried to warn her of her fiance’s shallowness, but she’d refused to listen, as usual. Now she knew that her fixation had been part defiance, part sexual fascination, and part infatuation.