The Wolf of Haskell Hall

by Colleen Shannon

  He’d have to go to her naked, but she’d seen him that way before, and Jeremy would certainly feel less inclined to use that cannon on a fellow male’s vulnerability. But he was only half transformed when he scented the other.

  Ian froze, half man, half wolf, and watched Thomas try to ingratiate himself. They were too far away for Ian to hear their conversation, but Ian let the wolf take him again, concern for Lil paramount now. For once, Ian found Jeremy’s readiness with his marksmanship a comfort. Ian tried to ease closer, but a bare patch of grass separated them. He could only watch, his heart pounding with alarm, as Thomas and Lil walked toward the village.

  Ian knew every tilt of Lil’s head and every sway of those supple hips. She walked martially, head erect, spine straight. At least she wasn’t fooled by Thomas any more. She despised him, Ian was relieved to see. But he could only wonder what Thomas said to leave her staring after him, white-faced, as he strode off in his customary, arrogant way.

  And then, shortly after Lil entered the vicarage, Jeremy emerged. Ian watched him get on the carriage and cluck to the horse. He hesitated, but he had to know what Thomas had said to Lil. She was safe with the vicar for the moment.

  Ian took the shortcut through the woods. But to his dismay, Jeremy turned off the main road back to the estate, onto the dirt track that led but one place.

  Betrayal was rank upon Ian’s tongue. Lil had told Jeremy about their secret place! How could she? She knew she was the only one he’d taken there. Furious now, his lips pulled back in a snarl, Ian trotted behind the carriage. He’d subsisted on plump rabbits and greasy water fowl for the past week, and Jeremy’s scrawny figure suddenly began to look very tasty and lean….

  In her quarters above the stables a short while later, Shelly nodded vigorously at Lil’s interpretation of the curse. “Of course! We made something quite simple overly complex, cousin.”

  The vicar smiled. “A failing in our family, as I’m sure you’d agree….A priori, shall we then make something quite complex overly simple?”

  Shelly’s smiled faded. She turned away from the tea service sitting on the table in her tiny sitting room and fetched the pot off the stove. “More coffee, Lil?”

  Lil held her cup out. She shared a glance with the vicar and gave him a little nod in answer to his wordless plea. “If it’s true that the cure of lycanthropy can only be found in two nights, what do you plan to do, Shelly? Will you go with me to the Druid stones?”

  Warming her hands around her tea cup as if she were chilled, Shelly sat back down at the table and said quietly, “I hope that will be true, for Ian. But you forget one small but critical fact. I’m not a Griffith. The cure for his curse will quite likely not work for me.”

  Vicar Holmes stared down into his cup as if he couldn’t bring himself to look at his cousin while he pried so mercilessly into her heart and mind. But Lil was glad he asked the question anyway because it begged an answer. “Are you sure you wish to be cured, Shelly?”

  Quietness stung the enclosed quarters, and Lil felt its weight and worry on every agitated nerve in her body. If Shelly was corrupted by this strange gift that took even as it gave, then what hope had Ian?

  “Yes. This malady is like a sleeping sickness. At its height, I feel it least. Only when it’s in remission do I realize its seductiveness. The other night, well, the feelings came upon me at a most inopportune moment.” She buried her nose in her tea cup.

  Lil didn’t need her blush to know what she was talking about. “But I thought you said you could control it.”

  “I can control when I transform. Controlling how the change transforms me is not as easy. My mind remains clear, but my instincts get more primitive. Which offers its own reward, as I told you the other night. We humans, tempered by logic and society, would do well to listen more to our instincts. But the wolf’s instincts are to hunt, and they are much stronger than our veneer of civilization.”

  “So if you were already venal–”

  “I’d become more so.”

  “And if you were gentle?”

  “I’d find that gentleness becoming tinged with savagery, unless I control it very well.”

  Lil surged to her feet, her eyes wide. “My God! Jeremy! I sent Jeremy after Ian!”

  The cup fell out of Shelly’s hand, shattering on the floor.

  Jeremy drew the carriage to a stop. The track had all but disappeared, but that rock outcropping in the near distance should lead to the pool, if Lil’s directions were correct. Jeremy stuck his pistol in his belt and jumped down, the shotgun in his hand. He’d leave the rifle. The cursed fellow had become a ghost, and wasn’t likely to show himself.

  Jeremy hadn’t taken two steps before he smelled it. He stopped, lifted his head and sniffed the wind. His sensitive sailor’s nose had timed the tides by the scents on the breeze, and now it picked up something that alarmed him. It smelled like a wet dog. Like an angry wet dog, bristling with hostility.

  Hissing in alarm, Jeremy spun. Before he could get the shotgun into position, a brutal paw knocked it away. And then Jeremy was flat on his back, with the werewolf’s front paws pressing on his chest. The marshy ground oozed up around Jeremy, and for a moment, he thought he’d dug his own grave. Then the beastie propped its feet astride his shoulders, and he could breathe.

  And wished he couldn’t. Now he could see clearly, too. The fangs, inches from his face, saliva making them glisten in the brassy afternoon sunlight. Sunlight? He’d thought himself safe enough during the day. More fool I, he thought, raising his hands to the werewolf’s neck, forcing those fangs back from his face with his puny strength.

  And mayhap that would be a fitting epitaph.

  More fool I. To come to this cold land with its cold people. To fall in love again with a woman he’d never truly win when he was far too old for such foolishness. To traipse around the moors carrying love letters for werewolves.

  He felt tension increasing in the beastie’s spine, and a low growl shook that muscular frame. Jeremy thought about reaching for his pistol, but to do that he’d have to release the creature’s neck. Those teeth could rip out his jugular with one bite.

  Besides, he recognized those amber eyes. Perhaps the madness had fully taken Ian Griffith, but some part of the man remained in that mixed up brain, and Jeremy couldn’t kill the only being Lil had ever truly loved. And so, as had been his wont throughout his life, Jeremy gambled. Not on Ian, whom he admired but did not know very well.

  On Lil. Whom he knew well indeed. She could not be so smitten by a man who lacked goodness and mercy in his heart.

  Besides, he had another, more practical reason to gamble: nothing made a predator more vicious than running.

  Jeremy’s hands fell away. He went lax, closing his eyes, and turning his head away. “Get on with it, then, matey. Ain’t hardly enough of me to fill yer belly, but I’ll go down choice, I reckon.”

  Jeremy felt that great head come so close it blocked the sunshine. Breath, hot and hungry, on the side of his neck.

  By the time Lil, Shelly and the vicar reached Jeremy’s empty carriage, the grazing horse had dragged it off the path. It was near dark, and the moon was almost full, but Lil was too frantic with fear for Jeremy to worry overmuch about her own safety.

  While the vicar worked the carriage wheel free, Lil ran toward the rock outcropping, glad that Shelly came with her. If anything happened to Jeremy, she’d never forgive herself. And he? If he had to, would he shoot Ian in the heart? Dear God, what if she lost both men she loved best in all the world through her own selfish, heedless actions?

  She ran through the fissure in the rock so fast she scraped her side, but still, she didn’t slow down. When she burst into the clearing by the pool, she stopped abruptly. Blinked. And looked again.

  Jeremy sat on a fallen log by a fire, turning a rabbit on a spit. And next to him, lying down, his paws bracing the remains of a bloody carcass that looked to be, thank God, animal, lay Ian. As Lil watched, his massive jaws crun
ched into bone as if the hard substance were one of Mrs. McCavity’s scones. As he chewed, Ian looked at her. His muzzle was dappled with blood.

  Firelight caught in those amber depths. The reflected heat burned her where she stood, and she felt his thoughts as clearly as if he’d spoken. See? This is what I am. Run away again. Or stay. The choice is yours.

  Jeremy, quite unafraid, quite unmarked, turned the spit with a steady hand.

  Had Jeremy bagged the raw baby deer Ian was eating? Never in Lil’s life had she seen a stranger feast, or a more cavalier attitude in the face of danger, even from a man as bold and stubborn as Jeremy.

  He saw them, and gave a cheery wave. “Join us, duckies. We’ve plenty to go around.”

  Lil’s knees felt wobbly as she crossed the clearing. Shelly followed more steadily, but her grey eyes were luminous, too, in the firelight, as she looked at her lover. As if she wanted to eat him….

  Jeremy was too busy ripping off a rabbit leg to offer it to Shelly to see the look in her eyes. He watched her fall on the meat as if she were famished. “It were a close one, I don’t mind telling you. But when I backed off, the blood lust faded from him. When I offered to bag his dinner for him, he accepted. He even stripped the rabbit hide away for me as I’d gotten off without me knife.”

  “Jeremy, you could bargain with the devil,” Lil said, collapsing next to him on the log, trying to squelch the vision in her head that the meat she was currently eating had been cleaned by a werewolf’s jaws. One couldn’t catch the ailment from saliva, surely?

  Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Ian continue to grind the deer’s bones with a disgusting crunching sound. Finally, knowing he did it deliberately, driven as both man and wolf to taunt the mate he felt had betrayed him, Lil turned on the log to face him.

  “I’d ask if you’d read my message, but you’ve obviously been busy.”

  Ian only bared his teeth at her, and then went back to his feast.

  “I can only wonder, watching you, if you still want to be cured.”

  Those teeth stopped grinding. Those amber eyes fixed on her, alert. Merciless.

  Lil swallowed back her fear, telling herself he hadn’t killed Jeremy when he had the chance, but then Jeremy was not a Haskell. “Thomas plans to subdue you, or kill you, in two nights. At the Druid stones. That’s why I sent Jeremy after you. To warn you.”

  That great head lowered and rested on tired paws. Ian’s eyelids dropped.

  Panic seized Lil. Was the man already lost to the wolf? He didn’t act as if he heard her, much less comprehended her. “Ian, you have to listen!” She surged to her feet, taking a step toward him. “Be angry with me all you want. In truth, I can’t blame you, but you can be cured, or killed in two nights….” She trailed off, rearing back at his reaction.

  He leaped up, hair bristling, growling.

  “Sit down, calm like, me girl,” Jeremy said quietly.

  Lil collapsed back onto the log so hard her teeth jarred together. Tears came to her eyes, as much born of frustration as pain, but she tossed her half eaten rabbit into the fire and folded her dress over and over in her fingers until she’d won a measure of calm again. Outwardly, at least. But it did the trick.

  Ian sank back down and began to lick his paws.

  He seemed uncaring of her pain, or even her presence. When was the last time he took human form?

  When the rabbit carcass was bare, Jeremy wiped his hands and sighed. “Mayhap I should let him bite me. This is a better life than most people know.”

  Shelly looked at him sharply. She glanced between Ian’s drooping eyelids and Lil. Lil nodded. Her heart pounded in her throat with fear, but still, she had little choice. She had to try to reach Ian. To make him listen, at least, if not see reason.

  “Come along, Jeremy,” Shelly said briskly. She kicked dirt over the fire. “We’ll wait at the rock face entrance, Lil. If you need anything, just yell.” Jeremy’s feet dragged as she led him off. Quite rightly, Lil knew he was worried about leaving her alone with a werewolf.

  Feeling only slightly reassured that help was close at hand, Lil stood. Slowly and carefully this time. “Ian, please, listen. Don’t you understand? If you remain a wolf, Thomas plans to brutalize you into submission. If you try to find the cure, he’ll attempt to kill you. We have to make plans. We have to be ready. I’ve solved part of the riddle of the curse, but–”

  A snort came from the wolf. Ian’s head lifted, and amber eyes, glowing brighter than the dying embers of the fire, fixed on her.

  Lil mastered her own trepidation and forced herself to hold out her hand toward him. “Please, Ian. You have to fight this, or you will become what you hate most!”

  Perhaps it was the scent of her hand, hovering almost within biting distance of those sharp fangs. Perhaps it was the sight of her, silvery hair shining with a purity reflected in her face as she pleaded with him under the siren moon.

  A siren for a siren….

  But before she had time to react, before Jeremy, watching at a distance, could do more than raise his shotgun, Ian pounced on Lil.

  Catching the back of her dress in his teeth, Ian dragged Lil with him into the darkness.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  All the gruesome tales Lil had heard about werewolves, the horrid deaths of the other heiresses, even her memories of Ian’s savagery with Thomas, flashed through Lil’s stunned mind as Ian dragged her off. Jeremy’s roar of alarm, his bootsteps running after them but fading fast, at first made Lil’s weak struggles to get away more desperate.

  But she only scraped her elbows and legs against the grass, and the wolf only growled and dragged her faster. She stopped. Trying to run would anger him more. A fact verified by the amber eyes that glanced back at her, glowing in the darkness, and the strength that pulled her along as if her weight were of no more consequence than her life. Avid. Hungry. Fierce, they sliced her composure and her already ragged clothes to ribbons. Then he looked forward again, but now her own words in this secret place flashed like warning lights in her memory.

  “Do you want to feed me or eat me?” Flash on. Flash off. Brighter every time, yet they illuminated nothing, for the answer eluded her. And from that answer devolved not only the mystery of her ancestors, but also the greater quandary of who Delilah Haskell Trent really was, and ergo, finally, what she meant to the Wolf of Haskell Hall.

  How brave was she?

  Did she know the true meaning of love?

  Had she found a home, or lost one?

  Dimly, beneath the fear, Lil knew when she could supply these answers to herself, she’d answer the larger question of Ian’s intent. There was only one thing left to do, one defense left to follow until she was brave enough to seek those answers. Following Shelly’s advice and listening to her instincts, she forced herself to relax.

  Immediately he released her. With a small growl and a shove of his nose into the small of her back, he forced her ahead of him up the rocky slope near the waterfall.

  As her feet scrambled for purchase, she felt all the truths she’d taken for granted on equally slippery ground. It was as if the gentle but strong man she’d fallen in love with was lost forever inside the elemental power of the canine. And she was partly to blame, for she’d driven him to embrace his destiny…

  …and thus forged her own. At she climbed she knew not where, much less why, Lil looked down at what remained of Ian Griffith. As she watched him bound up the slippery slope as if he were not limited by the normal physical realities of gravity and exhaustion, the most frightening truth of all came upon her.

  Upon this moment, this night when an almost full moon scowled down upon them, hung the balance of their lives. This creature, half man, half wolf, was, in a way, her own creation. Ian let the wildness take him to save her from Thomas, and she repaid him by hurting him.

  The heiress called up the animal in the Wolf of Haskell Hall.

  Only the heiress could win back the man.

  And suddenly, clear
ly, gifted to her by instinct instead of insight, she knew what to do.

  The cold spray in her face was a welcome shock of reality. Over the twin thunders of her heartbeat and the waterfall, Lil couldn’t hear Jeremy and Shelly searching for her, as she knew they must be, but she wanted no witnesses to what was to come. She’d pushed Ian to his limits, hurt him so badly that he’d remained a wolf for almost a week. Whatever it took to win him back to her world, she’d risk it.

  Resolved now but no less afraid, she extended her hands, balancing her weight against slick, smooth rock, wondering why he kept pushing her closer to the waterfall. Then she felt it. A gap in the stone. Blindly, she ducked behind the spray into what she realized now was a cavern. She entered it. Darkness enveloped her, thick, smothering. She felt the wolf’s presence behind her. He was so enormous his breath was hot on the back of her neck, so it was with relief that she knocked against something that clattered. It gave her an excuse to kneel. Her trembling fingers felt a lantern.

  She lit it. She saw a stash of clothes, a few books, a trunk, dishes, food. This, then, was where Ian hid. But the fruit was old and dried, the clothes neatly folded and with the beginnings of mold growing in the folds.

  These supplies hadn’t been used recently. This further proof that Ian had forsaken both her and her world shook her to her half boots. With nothing left to distract her, she stood and faced him. And backed a step before she could stop herself. How was it possible to love and fear, idolize and despise, all at the same time?

  In the leaping shadows cast by the lantern, her demon took the worst face and form possible for any woman: that of her lover. Even as she watched, the wolf sundered itself to the puny essence of the man. The rapidity of Ian’s change astonished her. It was far faster than Thomas’s, and took no more than a few seconds.

  One moment he snarled at her, lips back over his fangs, the ruff on his neck bristling with aggression. The next, Ian stood there, lips curled equally grimly, beautiful male body glistening with spray in the lantern light, but that only accentuated his muscles that were surely more defined than the last time she saw him thus. Worst of all was the look in those amber eyes. It was the same in both males–accusatory, pitiless.