Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark (14 page)

The secretary admitted it with a nod of his head. “But we resolve our differences quickly, and I never forget how much I owe him.”

“Have you ever considered going back to your homeland?”

He nodded again, more slowly. “But I can never repay the debt of gratitude I owe to his lordship. He did far more than save my life, he saved my spirit. I came here with little comprehension of the world into which I had been thrust, and he gave me everything I required to save myself. He offered me language and knowledge, the two pillars upon which the fate of the world rest. And more than that… he gave me hope. My only wish is to find out if my sister survived and where she is. I wish I could rescue her from slavery, if she is so bound.”

Irusan stretched in the gentle man’s arms and purred loudly.

“You were friends with Cecilia Wainwright.”

He nodded.

“And you were with her the evening she was killed?”

He nodded again. “We were walking and talking, no more than that, my lady. Serving staff are allowed a couple of hours each evening to walk outside or rest in their rooms after their duties are done. I walked her to the back door and saw her go in.”

“You saw her go in?” She chewed her lip for a long moment. “Why would she go back out, I wonder?”

He was silent. She eyed him. He knew, or he thought he might know, she realized, judging from his downcast gaze and concentrated lack of response to her question. How could she reassure him that she didn’t wish to blacken the girl’s name or reputation? “Mr. Boatin, if there was any way you could help discover Cecilia’s murderer, you would do it, as her friend, wouldn’t you?”

He nodded, misery deep within his dark eyes.

“I think you have an idea why she went back out but don’t think it involves someone who could be suspected of murdering her?”

He nodded again as he scruffed Irusan under the chin and behind his ears.

Anne leaned forward. “But what if you’re wrong?”

Mr. Boatin stood and gently set Irusan on the chair he had just vacated. “But I am not, my lady.” He bowed. “You must excuse me. I have work to do.”

As Osei left, Mary entered Anne’s bedchamber. “How did that man calm Irusan? Puss was yowling, taking on in sech a manner, and for him to go from that wild beastie to a purring puss in two minutes is beyond wonderful.”

“Some people just have a way with animals,” Anne said, staring at the door.

“Aye, like that Jamey, the lad all the girls are crazy for,” Mary said, brushing cat hairs from the chair just vacated by the cat. Irusan had decided the bed was more to his liking for a midday nap and was now curled in the center of a pillow.

“Jamey, the groom Ellen walks out with? Does he have other flirtations?” She watched Mary as the woman bustled around, tidying small things put out of place.

“Indeed he does. And that explains a brangle between Ellen and Cecilia,” she said, turning away from the dressing table. “Come, have your hair done properly, milady, for it’s gang agley.”

Anne obediently sat in the dressing-table chair. “A falling out? An argument? I thought they were best of friends. Who heard it? What was said?”

“Well, first, Jamey is new to his lordship’s stable staff, hired at last Martinmas servant fair to work on the home farm, but Dandy Lincoln—he runs the home farm wi’ his wife Peg—told the marquess that Jamey was a dab hand wi’ horses, and so he came to th’castle in December, just afore Christmas.”

“About when John and Lydia arrived at Ivy Lodge with Cecilia, from their bride trip. Whom did he work for before?”

“Now that’s interestin.’ He worked for Mr. Grover and so knew the ways o’ the castle and some of the staff. During the holiday nonsense that always happens with extra time off and spirituous fluids, Jamey Spencer flirted with all the maids, from the tales I’ve heard.”

“Among them Cecilia and Ellen.”

“Aye. There was much foolishness at first between the girls, good-hearted, mostly. But that appears to have ended badly on St. Agnes’ Eve.” Mary twisted Anne’s hair tightly, winding it into a neater style and pinning it, her face in the mirror a study of concentration.

“What happened on St. Agnes’ Eve?” Anne finally asked. That was in late January, just three months before.

“Ah, well, Caroline, one of the maids, was there an’ another maid who has since left service and married. The girls, Cecilia and Ellen, needed two more girls to do the love posset that would tell them who Jamey was truly meant to wed, for the fool girls went so far as to think the fellow serious about matrimony.”

“What on earth is a ‘love posset’?”

Mary sighed. “Have you no’ ever bin a daft girl, milady? Called a ‘dumb cake,’ as well. Some girls did that even back home when I was a lass. I dreamt of my own dear Collin after such a thing. But these fool girls don’t think they will
dream
of the fellow, but that his living spirit will actually
come
to them!”

“Oh, I know!” Anne cried. “I’ve heard of this, of course. Some of my friends did it. Four girls make a cake—when it’s made, it’s cut into four pieces, and each girl gets a piece and stands in a corner of the room. Then you do some nonsensical hocus-pocus, and the spirit of your husband is supposed to take the cake.”

“Aye, the key being the fellow is visible only to the maiden he’ll wed. The lassies did this, and Ellen, being more gullible than Cecilia, so it sounds, believed her when Cecilia claimed to see the spirit of young Jamey walk right up and take her piece and eat it. That’s when the trouble started.”

“Hmm. But Ellen claims to have been a dear friend of Cecilia’s. She was crying the morning after Cecilia was murdered.”

“P’raps she was feeling that badly that the girl was kilt an’ there bein’ bad feelings still between them?” Mary finished her fussing and patted Anne’s hair. “Better.”

And indeed it was, Anne thought, twisting this way and that in front of the mirror. “You’re a miracle worker, Mary. You should have seen the abomination foisted upon me by Ellen.”

“I’ve heard of it. Begging your pardon, but it’s become legendary in the servants’ hall. Therese, Lady Darkefell’s abigail, a French woman,” she said with a sniff of disapproval, “said that Ellen ought to have been brought up on charges for murderin’ your appearance. Not one o’ the other servants, to their credit, thought that humorous, after the events that took puir Cecilia’s life. But then, none o’ them have any use for Therese, and most like Ellen.”

“So Ellen, far from being a friend of Cecilia’s, was her rival for the affections of Jamey.”

“A rivalry that Cecilia is said to have won.”

“I shall speak to Jamey. Perhaps he’s the father of her unborn baby. I wonder if she had already told him? Perhaps she went back out that night to speak with him about what she should do once she started showing her condition. A girl would lose her position over that. I wish I’d known this before I spoke with Mr. Boatin just now.” She thought for a moment then said, “How could I get to speak to Jamey?”

“I’ll talk to Sanderson, milady—the coach and horses are kept up at the castle, but Sanderson is bedded here and eats his supper in the servants’ hall. He might be able to tell us more about the lad.”

“I did ask him to befriend Jamey, as I suspect he’s involved in this werewolf business. And I’ll speak to Ellen and even the terrifying Therese, the superior French abigail. According to Ellen, Therese said that she, too, saw the werewolf.”

“Aye, I already asked her aboot that, but she claims ’twas just from a window.”

“Mmm, that’s not enough to question her on. I had hoped for a lucid account—French women are supremely rational. I suppose I’ll get busy, then.” But first… “Mary, this is dreadfully inappropriate to ask, but you’re the only one who may know.”

“Aye, tell me then. I’ve had a feelin’ somethin’ was amiss.” Between them was a boundless trust and complete understanding. Mary and Wee Robbie were mired in destitution after her husband died in the Gordon riots. Catholic to the bone, Collin MacDougall had been protecting a priest from the mob incited by the rabidly anti-Catholic Lord George Gordon, and died shielding him. The church would have taken them both in after such a martyrdom as her Collin endured, but Mary preferred to work for her living.

“I wouldn’t say it’s anything amiss,” Anne answered, pondering how to raise the topic on her mind. She touched her hair and glanced at it in the mirror one more time, though she already knew it was perfect. When Anne found out about Mary from a friend, the Scotswoman knew nothing of being a lady’s maid, but Anne hired her anyway. It was just a few months after Anne’s fiancé had died, and sequestered in mourning, anyway, she was beginning to realize she didn’t wish to rejoin the marriage market, baiting a spinster’s hook with her considerable personal fortune. Mary had repaid the kindness of a job for herself and a home for her child, Wee Robbie, by applying herself to the art of taking care of a lady and becoming proficient at it, even though she didn’t truly care about such fripperies as bonnets and hairstyles.

Anne, still unsure how to go on, moved the brushes Mary had laid out precisely. “Mary, if a man has no interest in a woman, would he still kiss her?”

“Beggin’ your pardon?”

Anne repeated what she said, adding, even as she focused her gaze on a spot above Mary’s face, “Men, I’ve heard, use seduction to get what they want just as some women do. Do you think a man might kiss a woman he has no interest in, perhaps just to shut her up? Or confuse her and stop her from asking questions?”

“Are you asking, milady, do I think Lord Darkefell kissed you to silence you?”

Anne gasped.

Mary said, “D’you think you weren’t observed?” Her rolled r’s rippled with laughter. “In the servants’ hall they’re a’chatterin’ about the master’s behavior. E’en though Ivy Lodge is Lady Darkefell’s domain, make no mistake, milady, the marquess is still master. They daren’t cross him. I overhaird the chatter, for they wouldna have spoken to me ’bout such a thing.”

Anne defiantly crossed her arms over her chest. “Since I have no secrets, Mary, what do you think?”

“A man’s capable of anything, milady, some more’n others. I’ve no’ had time to study the marquess, though a powerful handsome man he is. As far as I ken, he’s no’ in the habit of inflictin’ such behavior on ladies of his acquaintance, leastways not at the lodge nor th’castle.”

“Oh.”

“So, what was it like, the marquess’s kiss?” Mary asked, her eyes wide.

“It was adequate,” Anne said, retreating to hauteur and disarranging the brushes on the dressing table yet again.

“Likely more’n that,” Mary said under her breath, apparently recognizing that no amount of prodding would elicit a dram more of information.

“I’m going to visit Lydia and find out how Irusan happened to be in her room,” Anne said hastily. “I suspect he was invited there and took umbrage when Lord John swept him aside as if he were a common cat.”

She started out the door but, at that moment, heard a commotion downstairs. A loud voice shouted, “
They’ve got him—they’ve got him!
” She swiftly descended into the hall and found Hiram Grover joyously calling out to Lady Darkefell, who was approaching from the corridor as Andrew, the footman, stood back from the open door.

“What is it, Hiram?” the dowager marchioness said, her cold tone bell-like and echoing in the great hall.

Anne continued down the stairs.

“They have the murdering bastard who killed the maidservant, begging your pardon, my lady, for the coarseness. I’m that turned about with relief!”

“Who is it?” she cried, her hands clutched together and held out in front of her, an oddly beseeching position for so haughty a woman. “Who? Tell me, Hiram!”

“That drunken wretch from Hornethwaite, William Spottiswode.”

As Anne watched, the woman staggered slightly, and her voice weak, she said, “Thank the good Lord!”

Hiram Grover guided her to the drawing room off the great hall. Anne followed, and Lord John, drawn by the commotion, followed too. Gathered in the drawing room, Hiram Grover helped Lady Darkefell to a seat and then held court, Lord John sitting by his mother, on the arm of her chair, her hand in his, and Anne standing nearby.

“I was in town to see about selling some of my horses to a fellow there,” Mr. Grover said. “I happened to see Sir Trevor. I called out to him, but he was in a hurry, on his way to the alehouse, for something extraordinary was happening. I followed.”

“Go on, Grover!” Lord John prodded.

“Patience, my lord,” Grover said, his face even ruddier than normal. He mopped his brow with a cloth pulled from his pocket and sat down near the fireplace. After a moment, he said, “I followed Sir Trevor into the alehouse, and there was the most extraordinary sight! William Spottiswode—that fellow they call Spotted Willie, the disgusting drunk who begs outside the tavern—was sitting with a circle of young fellows surrounding him, and saying he murdered poor Cecilia Wainwright.”

Anne gasped, and her legs felt wobbly. Was that the same fellow who had accosted her outside the alehouse and begged a farthing? Had she been that close to solving the murder if she had asked the right question?

“What happened?” Lady Darkefell said.

“Sir Trevor charged him with her murder, and Spottiswode is now confined in a cell below the guildhall. I heard him with my own ears—the fellow claims he was Cecilia Wainwright’s lover and the father of her unborn bastard. He met her that night to discuss her demand that he marry her, and they argued. He had no money to marry, but she said that didn’t matter, for she would not bear an unnamed child. He became enraged when she taunted him with talk of her new lover, Lord Darkefell’s secretary, and murdered her.” He put one hand over his heart and said, “How terrible! The poor girl. That her immoral behavior should lead to her death may seem a judgment from God, but I, for one, cannot find it in my heart to condemn the poor child’s conduct, as disgraceful as it was.”

“He confessed?” Anne asked, reflecting on the suggestion that Osei Boatin was named as her other lover rather than Jamey, the groom.

“He did. I heard it myself.”

“And said he was the father of her baby.”

“Yes.”

“But she taunted him, saying she had taken Mr. Boatin as a lover?”

“Yes!” Mr. Grover said, fastening his walleyed stare on her.

“How could you tell all that?” Anne asked. “I spoke to that fellow, and his dialect was incomprehensible.”

“But I have lived here many years, madam, and understand the language.”

“It sounds like a lot to decipher.”

“Thank God,” Lord John said, sighing. “A confession. That poor girl—to have sunk so low as to try to force a man like Spottiswode into marriage!”

“It defies belief,” Anne agreed, thinking of what she had heard of Cecilia’s and Jamey’s affair. None of that accorded with what Spottiswode apparently said, even about Cecilia supposedly having taken Mr. Boatin as a lover, but then, who was to say she wasn’t lying to Spottiswode to make him angry? To hurt him? He had certainly been infuriated about Mr. Boatin when she briefly spoke to him.

“I thank you, sir, for bringing us the news,” Lady Darkefell said hoarsely, rising on unsteady legs, her full skirts swaying with her movement. “If you will excuse me, I find myself in need of rest.” She left the room, and Grover departed soon after.

***

It was only Anne and Lord John at the dinner table, for Lady Darkefell pled illness, as did Lydia. Lord Darkefell, after he dropped Anne off that day, had disappeared. With this new development, he likely had to confer with the magistrate.

Anne toyed with her whitefish, pushing it around her plate and eying Lord John. “You and I have not had much occasion to speak, Lord John.”

He nodded.

“Lydia has been badly frightened by this werewolf nonsense. Do you have any idea what is happening? I understand it’s not just your own people who have seen it, but villagers as well.”

He blandly said, “Some dog is killing sheep.”

“While that’s possible, it doesn’t explain the sightings of an actual werewolf, seven feet tall and standing upright like a man.”

“Idiocy. If people are frightened, they should stay in at night.”

His demeanor was truculent, and she began to wonder if she had been too hard on Lydia when she thought the girl imagined her husband’s change of manner toward her. “Is that how you’ve comforted your wife, by telling her that?”

“My behavior toward my wife is no one’s affair but my own.”

They were both silent while a footman—not Andrew but a lesser fellow—made the change of courses.

“Do you deny that you have changed in your behavior toward her?”

He was stonily silent, eating his beefsteak, but his cheeks flamed.

“Where were you the night Cecilia was killed?”

“You saw me,” he said.

“But you came from the back hall,” Anne remarked. “Where were you before you entered?”

“I fail to see what business any of this is of yours, Lady Anne!” he said, rising.

“Will you not tell me what has gone on? I’m trying to help,” she said. “What of Fanny Allengate’s death? And Tilly Landers? What about your brother, Lord Julius, being accused of Miss Landers’s death and disappearing to the Canadas? What say you of that?”

“Good evening, Lady Anne,” he said, his face red, the blush extending down to his cravat. He bowed. “I’m going to see my wife. Apologize for my abrupt departure. Ask the serving staff for anything you require!” He bowed again and exited hastily, bumbling into the sideboard on his way.

Anne retired early to her room but sat up in the window seat. So Cecilia had been murdered by a lover, but such a lover as Spotted Willie, or whatever Mr. Grover had named him! Why, if Cecilia had been successful in winning the handsome–by-all-reports Jamey as a lover, did she take up with the loathsome Spotted Willie? And was this same fellow also responsible for the slaughtered sheep and the deaths of Tilly Landers and Fanny Allengate?

The moon shone down on the lawn, and a movement drew her attention. Someone was stealing out a side door and moving stealthily, just as another figure moved toward the lodge from the opposite direction. Mindful that, though she had conjectures, she still was not sure of the identity of the prankster who was posing as a werewolf, Anne leaped into action. She recognized Ellen, draped in a shawl, her blonde curls escaping and illuminated like burnished gold in the moonlight. The other figure, moving toward her, was surely Jamey. Perhaps she would find out more about the werewolf hoax by following them. The young man had much to answer for, wooing both Cecilia and Ellen—who knew what other mischief he was up to?

She rushed into her adjoining dressing room. Mrs. Hailey had agreed that it would be least upsetting to the household if Mary and Robbie had cots in her dressing room. She crossed and found Mary’s bed; the woman was not sleeping and sat up immediately, still fully dressed.

“I knew y’wouldna be asleep yet, milady. Do you wish something?”

“Yes, I wish your company,” Anne whispered. “Let Robbie sleep, get your cloak and mine, and come!”

Mary, accustomed to sudden decisions, didn’t protest. She helped Anne into a warm dressing gown and hooded cloak, donned her own, and they were soon outside Ivy Lodge and following the direction Ellen took. Anne damned the time it had taken to find a discreet exit, creep from the lodge and, staying off the noisy gravel, steal along the lodge walls toward the open lawn where she thought Ellen and her swain would meet. Now she could see no sign of them, even as she and Mary were out in the open.

She peered into the dark, and it came to her in a flash; she knew where they would head. The tower! She grabbed Mary’s arm and headed up the slope toward the structure, explaining in a hushed tone along the way, but then both fell silent as the rigors of scrambling through the night required all their concentration. It was fortunate indeed that her ankle had recovered quickly from her first night’s misadventure. Anne blessed Mary’s stalwart and loyal nature, for this was beyond what a lady’s maid should be expected to do.

Happily, the moon was waxing, not waning, and the trees were still light of leaf. Being a countrywoman had its benefits; the terrain was hilly, and night noises would have made an inferior woman nervous. Anne occupied the time identifying noises. One in particular she recognized was the night sound of a moorhen. They must be near water. She remembered seeing the stream and waterfall from the top of the tower; the stream’s path must meander close by.

Just then a howl rent the night air, silencing the other night noises. Mary gasped, and Anne reached back, grabbed her arm, and the two stopped. The small hairs on the back of her neck and along her arms stood straight up as Anne pushed her cloak hood back, whispering, “I heard that howl the night I arrived, just before I heard Cecilia Wainwright’s death cry.”

The howl echoed through the night again, and then a woman screamed.

“That must be Ellen! Come, quickly,” Anne said, pulling Mary after her.

The howl split the night air again. As Anne and Mary crested the hill and found the tower, a black blot in the dimness of the shadowy grove, Anne heard a rustling sound then saw, in a clearing, a creature lope by, running to the top of the next hill, where it stopped and howled. It moved on, but a moment later Anne saw the indistinct shape of a creature on two legs… a man? But no—it had, outlined clearly by the moonglow, a long snout!

“What is that?” Anne cried, but by the time Mary turned and followed her pointed finger, it was gone.

“What?” Mary cried, gasping for breath.

“We must find Ellen!” Anne turned toward the tower, fearing the worst. Her stomach churned in fear.

“Who’s there?” a male voice called out.

Anne, heedless for her own safety and concerned only with the young maid, headed toward the voice, breathlessly demanding that Mary stay in the open where she would be safer.

“I’ll no’ leave you on yer own, milady,” Mary cried, following on her heels.

A wavering light flickered and fluttered, and Anne stopped, terrified into caution for just a moment. She dreaded what she might see—had poor Ellen suffered the fate of Cecilia? Did that mean they had the wrong man as murderer, and young Jamey was the culprit?

“Who’s there? Where’s Ellen?” she demanded again, her voice quavering.

“Lady Anne?”

A slim figure, illuminated in the flickering flame of a lantern, emerged from the shadows at the base of the tower, and Anne almost wept in relief.

“Ellen, you’re alive!” she cried, falling on the girl and hugging her in an uncharacteristic display of emotion. She released her and set her at arm’s length as a young man—Jamey, it seemed likely—emerged from the shadows after her. “What’s going on here?” Anne asked. “I heard the howling and a shriek. Are you two cozening me?”

The young man, a fresh-faced fellow of about twenty, stepped forward and brazenly said, “Ow’d we do that when we din’t even know you wuz there?”

Ellen stepped forward and pushed Jamey behind her, saying, “Excuse him, milady. We didn’t mean nothing. Just some joshing on Jamey’s part. You won’t report me to Mrs. Hailey, will you? She’d let me go!”

Anne, her heart finally beginning to settle down, regarded her thoughtfully. “Did you not hear that howl? I saw the creature running, and it stopped and howled. A wolf, it looked like.”

“We heard the sound, ma’am—that’s what caused me to scream like that.” She paused then continued. “Well, that and I was startled when Jamey, he was… he tickled me, see, and scared me—”

“Enough,” Anne said, holding up one hand. She decided not to say a word for the moment about the two-legged creature. “I think you should come back to Ivy Lodge with me, Ellen. You’ll suffer more than a damaged reputation if you persist in creeping out at night to meet this fellow. You’ve not been completely honest about your feelings about Cecilia Wainwright, and though her killer has been caught, I’m still interested to hear the story.”