Then he was holding her, kissing her cheeks, her eyes, babbling little love words meant only for her and the stones of their ancestors. “Lil, Lil, I feared I drove you away…never lose you…keep you with me…den or tower…four feet or two…couldn’t kill you. I killed him to protect you. Nothing hurt you. Ever. Wolf or man, I mate for life.” He ended on her lips.
As the eclipse faded and the moon began to peek again at the changes wrought when it was helpless, Eros held sway instead of Diana. Sheathing her arrows, Diana faded away into the heavens, leaving a growing, glowing orb that could have been green cheese for all the heed Ian gave it.
Jeremy shook his head as he stared at the naked man embracing his charge. Ian was still covered in blood. It smeared Lil’s clothes and hands, even her face. But she was oblivious, lost in his embrace, until they broke the kiss, gasping for breath.
The eclipse faded more, and the moon grew brighter above their heads. Ian Griffith smiled down at his employer, but there was nothing subservient about him. With the wolf’s possessiveness, he promised to make her glad she’d chosen him. But his amber eyes were still alight.
From within.
With love.
Lil buried her cheek against his chest, listening to the strong thump against her ear, wondering if she’d ever hear anything else as wonderful. And then, carried on the breeze of forgetfulness and forgiveness, Lil fancied she heard the soft crying stop.
Lil lifted her head and looked across the moors. Perhaps that was a swath of black hair flipping over proud shoulders, the ghostly image rising as Lil watched, to join the heavens she’d cursed. A release gifted to her by the descendant of the blood line she hated. That, too, had a continuity and justice that pleased Lil. Cornwall, finally, felt like home.
“What are you looking at, darling?” Ian asked her, turning to follow the direction of her gaze.
“Nothing. We made our own fates, Ian. That’s why we were both strong enough. We’ll continue to make them, every day of our lives, and our children will know nothing of curses or evil, or fear.” Lil pulled his head back down to her level and sealed her vow with a kiss.
Shelly sniffed and fumbled for a handkerchief.
Jeremy glared at her. “Ducky, if ye become a watering pot, I’ll enter a monastery fore I’ll see ye become as silly and sentimental as other females.”
“Jeremy, stop your yammering. Do you think I’m blind?” She handed him her kerchief.
With another glare, Jeremy wiped his own tears away.
Shelly turned her back on the moon and went toward the glowing cottage window. “Now come along. We’ve another Harbaugh to account for and take to the sheriff.” She and Jeremy dragged a dazed, grieving Preston out of the cottage, tying him securely to the carriage. “Bribe your way out of kidnapping and attempted murder, Preston,” Shelly said sweetly.
Preston stared at the two figures, still embracing against the backdrop of the moon. His face twisted at the bloody remains of his brother on the ground, and his shoulders shook with silent tears. Then he turned away as if he couldn’t bear to look any longer, and Jeremy and Shelly gave the two lovers privacy.
The standing stones were the only remaining witnesses to the death of the Wolf of Haskell Hall. But they saw only a man holding a woman.
Above, the moon was merely a satellite of the Earth.
A month later, the new master and mistress of Haskell Hall met their retainers in the foyer. Lil handed out gifts for all, purchased on her honeymoon trip to Italy. Ian passed out cigars.
As she took her present, Safira hugged her mistress. As she pulled away, her hands brushed against Lil’s abdomen. She nodded reassuringly and shared a secret smile with Lil. She’s a strong girl. She’ll be the best of Griffith and Haskell.
Safira and Lil both looked at Ian, conversing quietly with the butler about Italian politics. He looked no different than the estate manager Lil had met on that month so long ago.
He’d refused, as he told Lil, to change his very attire along with his marital status. He liked the way he dressed, rich or poor, and that was that. Secretly, Lil had been glad to see that something of the alpha wolf remained in Ian, after all. Ian caught her glance, nodded at the butler, and returned to his wife’s side.
“Are you feeling well, darling?”
“I’m fine, Ian.”
Safira looked from Lil’s trim waist to Ian’s protective clasp around his wife’s shoulders. “You’ll both need me, in about eight months’ time. I will return. When winter is over.” She shuddered distastefully at the growing nip in the air.
Scowling, Jeremy took her bags to the portico. Safira nodded her turbanned head regally at the servants and followed.
The servants returned to their duties, and Lil turned toward the study. The door was still closed, and it was very quiet inside. As she and Ian exchanged a concerned glance, the door opened.
The vicar ushered his cousin outside with his usual courtesy, but he was pale, his pale blue eyes dull with concern as he watched Shelly.
She, however, was resolute. She glanced at her bodice watch and picked up one of her bags waiting in the hallway. “Jeremy will be even more furious if I don’t get on with it. We’ll never it make it to the train station by morning if we don’t leave now.”
“You will send me your new address when you’ve rented a flat in London, correct, Shelly?” the vicar insisted.
“Certainly.” But she didn’t meet his eyes. Shelly walked toward Lil, her hands outstretched. “You will let me know about the baby, yes? Then, for all time, the curse will truly be broken.”
“Of course. And you, Shelly?” Lil whispered in her ear as she hugged her former stable manager. “What will you do?”
“Seek. Read. Learn.” Shelly glanced around, but she, Ian, the vicar and Lil were alone in the foyer. Shelly looked back at her friends and said solemnly, “It’s not such a difficult trick, you know. The instincts of the wolf are actually far less brutal than the instincts of our human kind. I long ago learned to control my baser impulses. I actually find this shape quite malleable, forming and disappearing at my will. In short, I control it. It doesn’t control me. It is not so different, after all. I have always been alone.” But her gray eyes turned sad as Jeremy stomped inside and glared at her, holding the door wide.
Daring her. He wasn’t happy with her for leaving.
“Did you ever tell him?” Lil asked quietly as she walked Shelly to the door.
“No. Since I’m leaving…no. It’s best this way.”
Waving, the vicar climbed aboard his own carriage and clucked to his horse, rattling down the drive, but not before Lil saw him cast a last worried glance at his cousin.
Lil watched Jeremy help Shelly into the carriage. Still in high dudgeon, he avoided Shelly’s pleading glance and snapped the door closed. He mounted the seat. “I’ll be back in a few days, mistress.” Jeremy lifted the reins, but waited for Lil’s final leave-taking.
Lil leaned through the open window to take Shelly’s hand. “I’ll miss you. Please, write often. And if I find anything myself, well….send us your address.”
Shelly nodded. She glanced at Ian. “Take good care of her, Ian. You’re a very lucky man.”
Ian pulled Lil under his arm. “I know. And I wish the same luck for you.” They stepped back.
The carriage pulled away, but the last picture Lil had of her indomitable friend was the doubt in Shelly’s face. She didn’t believe much in the power of luck. Especially for an ailment as strong as hers.
As they watched the carriage rattle through the gates, Ian pulled Lil closer. He kissed her tears away. “Don’t mourn for her, darling. If any person on this earth can turn something so horrible into something useful, it’s Shelly Holmes.”
Lil wiped her tears away. Her green eyes grew slumberous and smoky as she looked at her husband, still indomitably powerful with only two legs, instead of four. But equally virile. “And what if I miss my wolf?”
Ian glanced around. The
y were alone in the drive, with a full moon rising. “Would you like a midnight feast at our secret place? I am a bit…ravenous. I’ll prove I still know how to howl at the moon. I might even teach you before I’m done. And we’ll see if we can’t shock the county even more than we have now.”
Arm in arm, the master and mistress of Haskell Hall went in to tell cook to prepare a basket.
Above the estate, the moon cast its silvery glow.
And in the carriage turning on to the London road, Shelly Haskell’s eyes glowed.
Rear Cover Copy The Wolf of Haskell Hall
Lil Haskell Trent, redoubtable daughter to a newly minted Colorado gold miner, is not the usual wilting English wildflower. She scoffs at the rumors of predators on the moor and gypsy curses even as she battles for control of her new estate with the long time estate manager, Ian Griffith. As overseers, his family has been granted legal right for many generations to a wing of the mansion, a wing Lil is forbidden to inspect. And so of course she finagles the keys from the housekeeper and invades his chambers, unaware she is setting in motion a series of events that will endanger her mind, her body, her life, and even her soul. The rumors of wolves on the moors she might not believe, but the mysteries behind Ian’s strange amber eyes she is determined to solve.
With the aid of her salty tar man servant, Jeremy, her uncommonly intelligent new stable master Shelley Holmes, and her own intrepid spirit and curiosity, Lil will learn the ageless lesson of women throughout history: only love can bring moldering Haskell Hall into the light. But will she be just the next Haskell victim or the only heiress brave enough to break the curse?
The Wolf of Haskell Hall Page 30
