Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark (8 page)

“Oh no, not Lord John… it was the marquess’s
other
brother, Lord Julius Bestwick. They saved seven, I think, between them. I was so ill, I will never know exactly, and the marquess does not boast of such things. It is perhaps hard to imagine,” he said with a faint smile, “but the marquess is not a conceited man.”

Anne smiled, too. Yes, the marquess could easily be thought of as conceited by people who mistook his confidence for vanity and his pride for arrogance. “How brave that was, to jump from so high up!” she remarked.

“Yes,” Mr. Boatin agreed. “He and his brother sailed on a smaller ship than the one upon which I was captive, but the water was still a good many feet below. It took great courage and determination to do what he did. From what I understand now, Lord Darkefell took the initiative, as always, and his brother, Lord Julius, followed.”

“Lord Julius,” she said out loud. “Ah yes, his twin!” She remembered the painting she had seen; so that was Darkefell and his twin brother, Lord Julius Bestwick, as children, with Lord John the infant on his mother’s lap. “I remember hearing something about him a year ago. He… disappeared, did he not? Then died?” After being charged with murder, Anne thought but did not say.

“Yes, there was some trouble, as you no doubt remember, and an unjust accusation of murder leveled against Lord Julius. He left England under a cloud and was next heard from in Upper Canada. But then he was killed in a tragic accident and buried there.”

“How sad.”

“He was a good man. Not so daring as his brother, the marquess, but good and lighthearted, the jewel of his mother’s heart. She, poor lady, was devastated by his death.”

“Were they identical? I saw them in the painting in the gallery at Ivy Lodge, and they looked alike.”

“I suppose, as children, they did, but they altered as they got older, I think. Lord Julius was shorter than the marquess and… different. His hair, his smile, everything about him. I knew them both and would not consider them to be interchangeable. Lord Julius was a great loss to his family.”

Anne went back to the story of Mr. Boatin’s rescue by the marquess. “And so you came back to England. What of those dreadful sailors who threw you overboard—they were charged with murder, I hope?”

He met her steady gaze. “No,” he said gently. “If you shoot your horse that is ill, are you charged with murder?”

It hit her then. “There was no legal recourse,” she whispered, staring into his dark eyes. “None at all, was there?”

“None. The killings were not an illegal act, for we were considered chattel, not men. It was as if they had thrown overboard a set of chairs or trunks.” They had walked on, in the meantime, and were at Ivy Lodge. “Here we are, my lady. I must get back to the castle,” the secretary said with a bow, “for the marquess will need my services.” He led her to the front door. “Good day.”

Anne had no other avenue but to let him go. Mr. Boatin’s tale had filled all of the time, and she had been unable to probe further about his relationship with Cecilia Wainwright. Perhaps that was his purpose?

She watched Mr. Boatin walk away but felt too restless to go in just yet. The secretary’s story had affected her deeply. Though the sky was closing in, becoming a solid ceiling of dull gray and threatening rain, she walked along the gravel driveway and followed it back to the rear of the house, where a vista of bucolic tranquility greeted her.

The back of the red-brick dower house showed the same style of large, shuttered windows as the front, and the same elaborate, openwork parapets along the roofline, fanciful as fairy towers. But then the scene opened out onto vast gardens, arranged in linear patterns, as well as the kitchen plot and herbs in a knot garden; there she saw the dowager marchioness, in a faded bonnet, dusting dirt off her hands from replanting a perennial.

This was a side of the marchioness Anne had not expected to see, a woman of her rank grubbing about in the dirt. She was about to approach Lady Darkefell, hoping the informal surroundings would make conversation more natural, but a young man accosted the marchioness, and the two began talking. Rather than interfere in what might be estate or garden business, Anne decided to explore the grounds and wait until the marchioness was free, though there wasn’t much to see this early in the season. April was a month of green shoots and rare blossoms.

Anne scanned the landscape; beyond the line of trees on the hill above Ivy Lodge, she spied what appeared to be the top of the tower folly Ellen, the maid, had mentioned. She would go to see that, as she was curious what secrets the folly might hold. She was just taking the first steps when she heard the marchioness scream.

Anne whirled around and saw the young man that she had taken to be an undergardener throttling the marchioness. “Stop!” Anne hollered. Holding her skirts up, she raced across the damp ground, her vision obscured by the first raindrops in her eyes, bounding over cultivated beds that still wore a topdressing of mulch.

The marchioness’s choked screams were dying, and the young man, red faced and with a bulging vein at his temple, seemed oblivious to Anne’s approach.

“Stop, I say,” she cried as she reached them.

The woman was beginning to turn purple, her tongue jutting out, a fearful sight. Anne crashed into the young man, clawing at his hands and doing her best to break his firm hold on the older woman. Her bonnet was knocked askew in the fray.

A thudding sound made her turn; the marquess, on a dark gold stallion, leaped the last garden and threw himself off his horse, pulling the young man away. They rolled in the mucky, sodden earth, the marquess finally tossing him aside as if he were no more weight than a rag doll. The young man rose, shook himself, and, as Anne raced to the marchioness’s side, began to shake and moan; he had smelled strongly of alcohol, Anne realized, watching him closely.

The marquess turned toward his mother, but the young man suddenly wailed, a cry of pain so unutterably deep and a sound so piercing that it drew both Darkefell’s and Anne’s attention. The fellow fell to his knees on the damp grass.

“What the devil was going on?” Darkefell said, helping Anne raise up his mother, who, now that she was able to breathe again, was recovering apace. Bruises began to empurple her throat, but she gasped that she would be fine and shook away their helping hands.

The commotion had drawn attention from the house, and Andrew, the footman, was approaching with horror on his lean, handsome face.

“If that question was aimed at me,” Anne gasped, hand over her heart, out of breath from the tussle, “I haven’t a whisper of an idea. I was approaching to talk to her ladyship, saw the young man speaking to her, and turned away, but then heard her scream. I turned back and saw him throttling her. Who is he, and what shall we do with him?”

“What’s going on, Mother? Why did young Allengate attack you?” the marquess asked, leaning over his parent.

She waved off his question, unable or unwilling to speak, so Darkefell motioned to Andrew and said, “Help her ladyship back to the house and summon her maid. I will be in once I’ve dealt with this.”

The footman nodded and supported the marchioness toward the house. The marquess turned to the young fellow, who now stood, head bowed, awaiting the older man’s attention. Anne watched the scene, puzzled. Why had the fellow not run away after such a crime as attacking the marchioness? It was a hanging offence to attack a woman, his superior, in such a violent manner and with the apparent intention of killing her.

Was that the face of a murderer? Anne examined the scruffy young man, his unshaven face and bleary gaze suggesting a worrisome combination of little sleep and the liquor consumption she had already detected. His clothes, she noted, looking him over, were very good quality but looked as if he had slept in them for some days.

Would the crime of the previous evening be so swiftly solved? Had this fellow been hanging about just waiting for another unwary victim? She was about to hint such a thing to the marquess, but he put his arm over the younger man’s shoulders and led him a short distance away. Baffled, she watched them speak, then frustrated at being left out of the conversation, Anne moved closer.

To her utter amazement, Darkefell clapped the fellow on the back and shoved him away. Allengate, if such was his name, slumped away and then trotted, wobbling a little, across the gardens, around a garden shed, and disappeared.

“What are you doing, letting him get away like that?” Anne cried, striding over to the marquess and grabbing his arm. The limb was like steel under her fingers, no fleshy give at all under the fine linen of his besmirched shirtsleeve.

He turned and regarded her with calm, dark eyes. “Are you questioning my handling of this affair?”

“I am,” she exclaimed, pushing her bonnet all the way off her head, allowing it to dangle by its strings on her back. “That could be the man who murdered Cecilia, for all you know! You must go after him, detain him, arrest him! The magistrate must still be at the castle. Go get him, for God’s sake!” She shook him, or tried to, anyway.

He glanced down at her gloved hand clutching his arm, unmoved by her violent action. “Allengate is no murderer,” he said.

“But he just tried to kill your mother!” She stared into his dark eyes, perplexed and infuriated.

“If my mother says he tried to kill her and wishes him to be arrested, I will know where to find him.”

“But he may have killed Cecilia! Don’t you need to question him or turn him over to the magistrate? You can’t just let him go, after what he did to Lady Darkefell.”

“On the contrary, I can do whatever I want,” he said, insinuation in his soft tone.

She felt a shiver race down her spine. What exactly did he mean?

He turned her around and took her arm in his, seeming completely at his ease, despite the muck on his breeches and the rain dampening his linen shirt. A young stable lad had appeared, and Darkefell called over his shoulder, “Gilbert, see to Sunny. I will ride back to the castle in about half an hour.”

Bemused and baffled, Anne allowed herself be led away by the marquess. Once again the sensation of his muscular form next to her left her a little breathless, and she searched her mind for the wit to say something, anything! “It seems,” she said stiffly, “that there is much more going on here than the silly werewolf sightings and even the murder of poor Cecilia.”

“Whatever do you mean, Lady Anne?”

“I mean, Lord Darkefell,” she said, shaking off his arm and confronting him face on, blinking raindrops out of her eyes, “that I want to know why you let that fellow go, after he nearly strangled your mother to death.”

“Do you not think,” he said, “that I know better than you what my mother wishes in this case?”

“You cannot mean that she would let the fellow roam free to strangle some other poor woman?” She began to shiver. “You saw that girl, p-poor Cecilia. And after that, you can make light of it?”

“I am making light of nothing.” The words were ground out of his handsome mouth. He grabbed her elbow in his steely grasp and began to march her, swiftly, around the lodge and toward the front door, his footsteps crunching on the graveled pathway. “Come, you’re getting damp and cold. I’ll not be responsible for your becoming ill. I think your concerns would best be put to rest if you hear from my mother how she wants me to deal with Richard Allengate.”

She tripped and trotted, trying to keep up with his stride; though she tried to slip from his grasp, she couldn’t. She kept casting him glances, his profile so arresting as to make her breathless, even if the pace had not. He was jacketless—shockingly so—and the muscles of his brawny shoulders were now delineated by the dampening affect of the mizzling rain that came down, plastering his shirt to his torso. She daren’t look down to his chest, or she might not survive the sight. This was an exceedingly inconvenient time for her occasional attraction to a man to assert itself. He was not a man to whom she wished to be attracted; on the contrary, he was high-handed and supercilious and needed to be taken down a peg or two. Or three.

Darkefell fought to control his ire. Of all times for Allengate to pull such a boneheaded move, it had to be in front of this infuriatingly nosy woman. Lydia he could have intimidated. The servants he could command. But Lady Anne Addison? He threw open the door and hauled her after him; she squawked like a perturbed hen, and he chuckled mirthlessly. But entering Ivy Lodge had the effect of cooling his fury.

He released her, took a deep breath, and in the dimness of the entry hall, gazed down at her as she rubbed her elbow and undid the strings of her rain-soaked bonnet. She tossed it to a nearby table. Sense reasserted its dominion in his fevered brain; his best tack now was to flatter or coddle her into forgiving him for his violence. “I must apologize, my lady,” he said with a deep bow, “for making so free with your person.”

“You’re unbearably imposing, my lord,” she said, huffing and settling her dress properly about her person. “But you will not overcome my curiosity nor my determination to discover why you have handled such a vile crime, perpetrated upon your mother, in such a shocking manner!”

She licked her lips and gazed up at him, and really, he thought suddenly, for a plain woman her eyes were ridiculously fine, brilliant though they were gray, almost silver in color, and fringed with long, dark lashes. Dew clung to her skin, giving it the sheen of nacre, and her pink tongue, darting out to wet her trembling lips, was a silly little enticement. Irritation waged war with rationality, but irritation won. He could not turn her over his knee to teach her to mind her own business, so… he grabbed her around the waist, hauled her into his embrace, and bent her backwards with a hasty and impetuous kiss certain to silence—and possibly confuse—her. A servant who had approached at their entry gasped and backed out of the hallway.

But it did not daunt her. The moment he released her, she slapped him. Hard. The sound echoed to the upper reaches of the third floor. “How dare you, sir?”

He planted his hands on his hips and laughed out loud as his brother, John, raced down the steps, his pudding-pale face gleaming with perspiration.

“Tony, what’s going on? This is no laughing matter! Mother won’t tell me what happened with that poor fellow, young Allengate, but said I must ask you, and—” He stopped ranting finally upon seeing Lady Anne, who had been concealed from his view by Darkefell’s own bulky form. John’s breath still came in deep, gasping gulps as he stared from one to the other of them. “What’s going on?” he wailed plaintively, hammering his fist on the oak banister railing.

“I would like to know the same thing,” Lady Anne said, her cheeks pink from Darkefell’s amorous assault. “Who is Allengate, and why did he attack your mother?” She looked from the marquess to his brother, but both men were silent.

Darkefell made a sudden decision. This was already too complicated, and he had much to do that did not include placating an irritating spinster with too long a nose and too sharp of a gaze. “I don’t owe anyone an explanation, least of all you, my lady.” He turned to his brother. “John, will you escort the lady back up to her room? I’m sure, now that her bags are here, she’ll want to change her damp and soiled clothing. I will see you both at dinner, but for now, I do need to see Mother about something, which is why I was on my way here in the first place.”

He turned back to Lady Anne. “I’ll assure myself that she’s well, I promise you. I value my mother very much, for all you may have doubts on that topic. Good afternoon, my lady—I will see you at dinner, no doubt.”

***

Anne, after a couple of hours of rest and reflection in her room and clad in a more suitable dress of blue lustring, sat in the drawing room with her hands folded on her lap. Nobody would speak to her, not even the maid, Ellen, whom she had summoned to help her change out of her traveling dress, now ruined beyond redemption by the rain and muck of the garden. Her hair still looked a fright, but there was not a thing she could do about that. The maid had been resolutely silent, even when closely questioned, frightened into silence by the bullying marquess, Anne felt sure.

Lydia sat at the piano in the corner of the room, picking out a plaintive little tune. Either she truly did not know who Allengate was, or she had been warned not to speak about him, for she shrugged her shoulders when Anne pestered her about the garden incident, merely answering that, since her mother-in-law did not wish the fellow arrested, then she supposed that was the end of it.

But Anne must keep trying. Her frustration was mounting, and the only appeasement would be to learn something. It was either that or go back to pondering the feel of Lord Darkefell’s too-perfect lips pressed against her own. And his too-perfect body against hers. He was entirely
too
perfect—if there was such a concept as overabundant perfection—in a physical sense and entirely too maddeningly imperfect in every other way. Especially evident was the imperfect transparency of his motives and character.

He was making a mockery of her with that kiss; he must have sensed her attraction and was using it to disarm and distract her. Her cheeks grew warm, and she fidgeted in place, pulling at the fingers of her gloves. It had worked too well, for even the memory of his shocking action caused her heart to race and her palms to perspire. Agitated, she burst into speech, saying, “I don’t know how I’m to help you figure out what’s going on, Lydia, if you won’t speak to me!”

Lydia merely shrugged again, plinked a few piano keys, and sighed.

Anne narrowed her eyes, watched her friend, and said, “I shall just go home, then, when Sanderson brings my carriage tomorrow.”

Her younger friend sniffed back a sob but said nothing. Anne stood and stalked over to Lydia, putting her hands over the other girl’s on the piano keys and crouching down beside her. “My dear,” she pleaded, staring up at her young friend, “please talk to me! I don’t mean to badger you, but—”

“You don’t understand at all what it’s like to be married! How could you, a spinster likely never to wed?” She sobbed aloud, and her breath caught in tiny gasps.

“Has John been cruel to you in any way?”

“N-no,” she said but then added, “but he’s still a man, and men… oh,
why
do they kiss other girls and… ” She trailed off and shook her head.

“Kiss other girls? What on earth do you mean?”

But Lydia shook her head and turned away. Anne asked again what she meant, but she wouldn’t be drawn. Finally, she sighed and said, “I thought marriage would end all of my worries, and I did love… I
do
love John, but he has some secret that he’s not willing to share, and how can we be truly married if he won’t tell me what’s troubling him?”