Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark (24 page)

Lady Anne descended, and as she emerged from the dimness of the wide staircase, he was assaulted by the vision of elegance she had become in the few short hours since he had last seen her. He leaped up the three steps remaining and grabbed her arm. “Why the devil did you make yourself over into some kind of society diamond? What are you thinking?”

“What do you mean? Unhand me!” she said in clear, frigid tones, yanking her arm from his grasp.

“I mean,” he muttered, “how are you going to melt into the background and watch the exchanges we hope for if you stand out like a bird of paradise among hens?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Darkefell. I’m simply wearing appropriate clothing. To dress otherwise would be to invite derision. I assure you, I shall blend in far better dressed thusly than as some fright, as you clearly prefer.”

She stalked down the last three steps, leaving him fuming. He followed, regulating his facial expressions as his mother guided guests who had never been to Ivy Lodge—Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins and Miss Beatrice Lange—to the appropriate room.

The play was about to begin.

Anne burned in silence as she strolled toward the drawing room. How dare the man take exception to her style of dress? Just because he had not seen her in proper attire, did he think she didn’t own any beautiful clothing? That was the perfect example of how impossible he would be to whatever unfortunate woman married him. He could be all charm and appeal when he wished, and then become, in the next moment, imperious and unbearably high-handed.

She entered the drawing room and paused, glancing around at the gathering. The first face that drew her attention was Lord John. He was pale, appeared ill, and she felt a qualm as to their procedure. Lydia, too, looked ill, and in fact appeared to be faint. She sat in a chair but leaned heavily on her husband, who stood beside her.

What was wrong with those two? Lydia looked up at her, and their eyes locked. Anne thought she mouthed, “I’m frightened,” but couldn’t be sure, and her attention was demanded at that moment by Mrs. Lily Jenkins, who flounced over to her.

“What is going on here?” she asked.

Anne was ready for this and replied, “Lady Darkefell thought it would be kind to have a little dinner party for me, as I will be here only another few days. She invited everyone I mentioned having met and found congenial in the last weeks.”

The young woman appeared mollified and said with exaggerated politeness, “I beg your pardon, my lady, for my tone just now. I was just
that
taken aback at finding so many others arriving.”

Anne watched her eyes as she said, “Are you uncomfortable with any of them, Mrs. Jenkins? I would not want you to feel ill at ease.”

“La, of course not, my lady,” she said in light tones but with hard eyes. “I am perfectly accustomed to every upper level of society, I must say, for my husband is of the most elegant family in town, I assure you.”

“Speaking of elegance, I understand Mr. Jenkins aspired to the hand of Fanny Allengate once, but that she turned him down or broke off her engagement with him?”

“Well,” the young woman said with a sour expression on her narrow face, “he proposed
only
out of kindness, you know, to an old family friend, for she had just lost her father. But he was
so
relieved when she released him, for he had been in love with me forever, he was just shy to say it. He knew I had refused more eligible offers, you see, and did not have confidence in his ability to attach a woman of my spirit and strength.”

Anne was not fooled for one tick of the clock by Lily Jenkins’s bluster. Her words were those of a determined shrew who will always characterize herself as spirited rather than shrewish.

Richard Allengate and Mr. Benjamin Jenkins were talking affably at that moment, and Anne watched while Richard played his part. He frowned and leaned into Mr. Jenkins, asking him the question and giving the salient information with which he had been supplied by the marquess. Mr. Jenkins looked surprised, then glanced toward his wife. Mrs. Jenkins’s eyes widened in alarm and swept across the room toward her husband.

Mr. Hiram Grover, attired in an old-fashioned, wide-sleeved jacket and bag wig, was sitting by the fire when Mr. Osei Boatin walked into the sitting room. Anne noted the watchful gaze of the gentleman and his increasing agitation as Mr. Boatin walked steadily over and took the chair opposite him by the fire. Mr. Boatin said not a word; he merely sat, gazing calmly into the fire. Grover moved so he was facing slightly away from the secretary.

The stage was set.

Lord Darkefell, with a significant—and dare she say sheepish?—look to her, took a position near the fireplace by the mantle. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention?”

The majority of the people gathered turned their attention toward the marquess, but there were a few notable exceptions. Hiram Grover, his face and neck showing a brick red color as his wig slid askew, stared into the fire. Lily Jenkins, also red-faced, clasped her hands together and stared up at her husband, who bore the shocked expression of a man who had just had mist cleared from his gaze and seen horror. Lord John seemed concerned only with Lydia, who still looked faint and ill.

Anne faded into the background and watched each one in turn, waiting.

Lord Darkefell cleared his throat and began: “I have been remiss in addressing the concerns of my people, the people of Hornethwaite and Staunby, for the last year or more. I have no excuse, not when people were laboring under fears I ought to have soothed and instead exacerbated.”

The vicar, who stood with his wife and Miss Beatrice Lange, spoke up, saying, “My lord, as much as you are responsible for the people in a corporal sense, it is I who bear the responsibility of caring for their spiritual needs and immortal souls, and I feel—”

“Not now, Mr. Sydney,” the marquess said, holding up one hand. “In an effort to clear the air and to inform all of you—for each one of you has your sphere of influence and can disseminate what comfort I have to offer—I am going to reveal the truth about some things that have been, until now, clouded in a shroud of doubt and suspicion.”

Anne watched Benjamin Jenkins, his frown deepening as he threw a questioning glance at his wife, who gazed at him in mute appeal. She tugged his sleeve and said something, but he shook his head and firmed his lips. It looked, to Anne, as if she was pleading to leave. She put one trembling hand to her forehead in a feign of illness, but he was unmoved, folding his arms over his chest.

“I don’t have solutions to everything,” the marquess went on, letting his gaze travel over the gathering. “I cannot say who killed Tilly Landers, nor do I know who was responsible for Fanny Allengate’s unfortunate death. I believe I
do
know who caused that poor girl much torment before her death, though, and loss of her sterling reputation after.”

Richard Allengate still bore the look of solemnity he had ever borne, but now there was an added element of anger directed toward only one individual.

“But Cecilia Wainwright, whose well-being was my responsibility in a way not one of the other unfortunate girls’ was… well, I know how she died. Ambitious, but foolhardy in that ambition, she aspired to a life beyond what she could ever have as a lady’s maid. She was brutally and foully slaughtered, not by a wolf nor a werewolf—there never was any werewolf but some frivolous fellows and myself—but by a human hand. She was murdered by someone in this room.”

The expected gasp went around the room, and Lydia wavered, her husband’s firm arm the only thing that kept her upright. Several voices called out, “
Lord Darkefell is the werewolf?” “Is
that true?
” and “
Killed… by someone
in this room? Surely not?
” but they stopped when Lady Sophie Darkefell stepped out of the gloom.

“This is enough!” she said, approaching the marquess. “Tony, you cannot invite people to dinner and then accuse one of murder.”

“Aren’t you curious,” he asked, watching his mother’s face, “as to which of your guests I consider guilty?”

“No!” she cried, her hands balled into fists, her gloves bunching. “No!”

Darkefell’s brows knit together, and he stared down at his mother.

Her eyes glittered oddly in the candlelight, and Anne’s stomach twisted. Had they got it wrong? Why was the marchioness so distressed?

Mr. Grover stood and approached Lady Darkefell, grabbing her arm and supporting her while he glared at the marquess. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” he bellowed, shaking so much that his old-fashioned wig skewed even more sideways. “Ashamed, I say. To bring us all here and to bring in that… that son of Canaan,” he said with a furious gesture toward Osei still sitting by the fire. “It’s disgusting! If that trollop, Cecilia, had not consorted with him, she wouldn’t have died. Shameful strumpet got what she deserved!”

Lady Darkefell pointedly removed her arm from his grasp and said, so quietly Anne had to strain to hear, “Hiram, that’s enough.”

“No, Sophie, I’ll not let you be shamed by your son. A whoremonger, lying with barmaids and town girls like Tilly Landers and Miss Allengate… he may do as he likes, but I’ll not have him slander his neighbors by accusing one of murder.”

“How interesting, Mr. Grover,” Darkefell said in steely tones, “that you so strenuously revile Mr. Boatin’s presence here, and yet he is silent upon the subject of your presence, which he has had to suffer innumerable times over the last few years.”

“You compare us, sir?” the gentleman roared. “You
dare
compare me to that… slave of slaves?” Grover dropped back down into a chair and passed one shaking hand over his bulging eyes.

“See here, Darkefell,” the magistrate said, eyeing Grover uneasily but then turning his attention fully to the marquess. “Am I to understand that you believe someone in this room to be guilty of the murder of Cecilia Wainwright? William Spottiswode is
not
guilty?”

Darkefell cast him a look of patient derision as he said, “Ah, Sir Trevor, you’ve finally joined the rest in catching what I said and what I meant… both the same thing, I assure you. Someone in this room foully murdered Cecilia—I do not see Spottiswode in this room.”

The magistrate turned red, so that made three people in the room suffused with the color. It was increasingly difficult to watch all that was occurring, but when Anne again looked at Lydia, her gaze was riveted, for her friend was rising, pulling herself from her husband’s grasp. She dashed across the room and threw herself at her brother-in-law.

“He didn’t mean to do it! I’m sure of that,” she cried.

“What on earth…?” Darkefell grunted, set off balance; he cast a look of appeal to his younger brother. “John, come get your wife! Unhand me, my lady!”

“Nooooo,” she keened, clinging to him, her knuckles white as her fists bunched in the fine fabric of his jacket sleeves. “John didn’t mean to kill Cecilia. You cannot prove it!”

Anne watched in horror, dizzy with doubt. Did Lydia know something they had not considered? But Lord John appeared mystified and horror-struck in a way that left no doubt—in her, at least—as to his innocence.

“My God,” Lady Sophie cried, both trembling hands up to her forehead, “John, I said you would regret marrying that foolish featherbrain!”

Weeping, Lydia whirled away from the marquess and glared at her mother-in-law. “You’ve always hated me,” she sobbed. “You tried to turn John away from me and succeeded.”

John made it across the space in three steps and took Lydia into his arms. “My love, don’t be silly! Mother could not turn me away from you.”

The babble in the room, consisting of confused murmuring and questions circulating from person to person, grew. Sure as she was of John’s innocence of the worst suspicions, Anne spared a moment to shake her head at Lydia’s absurdity. The girl was truly shatterbrained, but at least her husband was gentle with her, taking her into his arms and murmuring to her as she wept against his chest. Anne glanced over at the marquess, to see that he was going red-faced himself, now. Four red-faced folks. To forestall further speculation, she stepped into a pool of lamplight and said, “Calm, everyone, please! Despite my friend’s fears, her husband is not the culprit Lord Darkefell spoke of just now.
Please
listen to the marquess.”

“Thank you, Lady Anne. John, perhaps you should take Lydia to her room,” he said, raising his voice over her sobs.

“No, we’ll stay, Tony,” the younger brother said grimly, his arms still around his wife, her head against his shoulder. “We’ll stay if just to see in what folly you’re engaged. I thought I was the foolish son, Mother, but perhaps Tony has decided to usurp my position.”

“Very good, John!” Darkefell said with a flash of a grin. “Congratulations on the best sally I have heard from you in many a year.”

Lord John fell silent, his cheeks burning with a crimson stain at his brother’s teasing. Anne was beginning to suspect the red-faced malady was infectious, from the number who now sported scarlet flags on their cheeks. She was pleased to see that the marquess was regaining
his
normal color, so perhaps the infection spread quickly but was as soon defeated.

Darkefell exchanged a brief glance with Anne, and she nodded once; he scanned his audience. “I cannot tell you the entire story, I’m afraid, but several things have united to give me confidence that I now know the culprit of at least that one terrible crime, Cecilia Wainwright’s murder. She was guilty of ambition beyond her status in life, but who can blame her? She was with child when her life was cut short; that much is commonly known,” he said over a few gasps. “But much speculation has been bandied about. My secretary’s name has been posited as the hopeful father.”

“Disgusting,” Grover grunted, his arms crossed over his paunch. “The taint of that unnatural union is what got her killed, for what is the fellow but a savage, a beast plucked from that sinister continent for the purpose of servitude, his natural state since Ham first dared make a jest of his revered father, Noah!”

Anne longed to answer as Osei, speechless and ashen, could not, for Grover’s twisting of the mythic biblical curse of Canaan revealed him to be a sophist of the most degraded and dangerous type, willing to misuse Bible verses to justify any kind of foul behavior.

But the marquess was prepared. “Grover, you’ve revealed yourself to be a biblical hypocrite, for doesn’t that Book also tell us not to bear false witness? Your implied accusation against Osei is a sham.”

“Do not use the good Book against me, you fornicator,” Grover said, rising with difficulty from his chair. “You, who bedded that bar wench, Tilly Landers, and likely killed her, too?”

“Be careful, Grover,” the marquess said through gritted teeth. “You tread on dangerous territory.”

“Sophie, despite the friendship I bear you, I will not stay to be insulted by your son. He is not fit to wash my feet nor those of my son.”

“Your son, your
only
son, the same one who will no longer speak to you, Grover?” Darkefell said, his tone deadly soft. “The son who has severed ties with you, despite your lies to the contrary?” he went on, his tone rising. “Theo wrote to me, you know, to apologize for your wickedness, and told me he no longer considers you his father. Perhaps he suspects something we should know about? Something
besides
your willingness to kill innocent Africans on their terrible voyage to slavery in Jamaica?”

“You… you have
never
proved I had anything to do with that!” Grover said, jabbing his finger in Darkefell’s direction.

“No, perhaps I cannot tie you to it by a specific order given, but if I had not come forward with what Julius and I witnessed, you would have recovered for damages from lost slaves, slaves that your crew tossed overboard. You knew about that, for I told you myself. Yet you tried to recover their monetary value from your insurer for accidental death, even knowing your case was a lie from start to finish. Your crew performed actions that any civilized nation—and I do not count our country among those civilized nations, not when we can wink and turn our face away from this—would call murder!”

Grover began toward the doorway, pushing past horrified guests.

But John leaped in front of him and grabbed him by the shoulders, saying, “Do you want him to stay, Tony?”

“Yes, Brother. I have one more crime to lay at his door, one that both his biblical studies and the law of this land
do
condemn, the murder of Cecilia Wainwright.”

Lady Sophie gasped and put one trembling hand over her mouth.

“What proof do you have of this infamous accusation, my lord?” Sir Trevor shouted.

“Sit down, all of you, and I’ll tell you,” Darkefell said. But the crowd could not so easily settle, though they gathered in tightly around the chair in which John had forced Grover to sit. “Lady Anne, will you join me?” he asked, putting out his hand.

She advanced and took his hand, which he used to pull her close and tuck her arm in his.

“This lady,” he said, covering her hand on his arm with his free hand, “was the inspiration for every bit of evidence I discovered—”

She cleared her throat.

“That, uh,
we
discovered, and she reasoned out, with me, the sequence of events.”

Mr. Grover tried to rise, but Lord John put one hand on his shoulder, saying, “Do get on with it, Tony, if you have proof. Grover seems restless.”

“Sophie,” Grover said, staring up at the marchioness with beseechment in his goggling eyes, “stop your sons, please, for they’re tormenting an old man.”

She mutely shook her head, but there was confusion and fear over her face. “Tony, do you have proof that he had anything to do with Cecilia’s death?”

Anne met the marquess’s gaze. Because of their tiff on the stairs, she hadn’t told him of the confirmation she had received from Robbie about Cecilia sending a note to Hiram Grover on the very day she was murdered, a note Anne suspected asked him to meet Cecilia, to accede to her blackmail. They had earlier deduced that Cecilia figured out Grover was responsible for the slaughtered sheep, a crime for which Jamey was afraid
he
would be blamed because of his use of the wolf costume. Nor had Anne had time to tell him of her speaking with Ellen and her confirmation of their theory of what happened to her.

She leaned close to his ear and murmured to him briefly all she had learned. He squeezed her arm in exultation, and Anne stared up at him, distracted by just how dangerously attractive she found him in that moment, handsome, as always, but triumphantly doing what was right.

He turned to his mother and said, “Yes, madam, I do have proof.”

“He’s lying, Sophie,” Grover cried. “You, above all people, should know my measure.” He stared at the marchioness with an unwavering gaze, and there was something in his eyes that Anne thought was different than the appeal one might expect; it almost seemed a threatening expression, but the woman shrugged and shook her head. It was an odd little exchange, and Anne stored it in her memory to mull over later.

Tony turned toward the door and said loudly, “Sanderson, bring them in!”

Anne’s burly groom pulled in, by the scruff of their necks, William Spottiswode and Jamey. Some of the ladies fell back and gasped, while the men turned angry stares toward the marquess.

“What do you mean by subjecting our wives to the foul presence of this… this monster?” Benjamin Jenkins asked, flinging one hand out toward Spottiswode.

“Darkefell, you have gone too far,” Pomfroy blustered. “How can you justify stealing a prisoner away from my cells? Who authorized such a thing?”

“No one. But if you listen, you’ll agree that I have, indeed, brought a murderer into the midst of this gathering, by inviting Hiram Grover.”

Several voices began speaking at once, clamoring, asking questions, demanding answers. The marquess put up his hand as Grover, pale now, sweated in his chair, John’s heavy hands still on his shoulder.

“Let’s leave, Jenkins—I want to go home,” Mrs. Lily Jenkins said, her voice clear but trembling.

“Go if you wish, Jenkins,” the marquess said. “But remember what you have heard from Mr. Allengate of your wife’s dealings with Mrs. Holderness and how she’s responsible for an innocent woman, Bess Parker, being held on a charge of theft. Mrs. Jenkins broke into that woman’s home and planted the only evidence of her supposed thievery, just because you happened to speak with Mrs. Parker one day on the street, and someone told her about it.”

The marquess paused, then with a quick glance at Richard Allengate, said in a softer tone, “And then ask her about Fanny Allengate and the girl’s diary, which she purloined from Allengate’s home and filled with poisonous lies about that inoffensive young lady’s supposed ‘affair’ with me. During a bereavement visit after Miss Allengate’s tragic death, she returned the tainted journal to its hiding spot. I invited you both here tonight because I wished Miss Fanny Allengate publicly vindicated.” He swept his gaze over everyone gathered. “She and I were not involved in any illicit affair, nor did we meet secretly. She was innocent in every sense of the word. Mrs. Lily Jenkins is a young lady who will stop at nothing where she fears her husband’s emotions engaged. She was jealous of Miss Allengate, and she was jealous of Bess Parker.”

Lily Jenkins shrank next to her husband. “Lies, Benjamin, all lies.”

Darkefell said, his voice hard with anger but his manner restrained, “Not lies, madam, the truth. You fail to recognize it, perhaps, because you abuse it, and so it is no friend of yours.”