The Dark One (33 page)

If Mary had hung the sheet again, something had happened. Maybe the duchess had taken a turn for the worse. The lady could be dying, and Mary would not know what to do. Rosalind hurried to her night table and placed the poem on top of the book. Worry now chased away the haunting words she'd read, and she ran down the stairs and flew through the house and out the front doors, down the rocky path past the stable, along the hedges, and across the lawn.

She was panting by the time she reached the house. The back entrance stood open, as Mary would have left it if she'd signaled her, then had to be by her stepmother's side. Rosalind entered and raced through the kitchen, through the dining hall, past the front parlor, and up the stairs. She was almost across the second-story landing and to the stairs leading to the third floor when a voice stopped her.

“Hello, Rosalind.”

She gasped and turned around. Franklin stood in the hallway, blocking her exit back down to the first floor.

“Where is Mary?” she panted, trying to regain her breath and disguise her sudden terror.

“I insisted she visit her daughter,” he answered. “I told her I would tend to my poor mother this evening.”

Rosalind's gaze moved toward the stairs leading up to the duchess's room.

“She's sleeping, as always,” he said. “I wanted to see you, Rosalind. I know about the sheet, and you shouldn't leave your petticoats in a puddle on the balcony. I saw them later that day on my way out. This morning I pretended to leave, but waited to see if Mary would hang the sheet again. When she did, and shortly thereafter I saw you hurrying across the lawn, I realized you had been paying my mother visits whenever I left the house.”

“You tricked me,” she whispered.

He smiled, but as always, the expression never reached his eyes. “You left me little choice. Penmore grows tired of substitutes. He wants you.”

“Penmore?” Was the repulsive man Franklin's partner in murder? It made sense that he was, she realized. The man had more than her stepbrother's gambling debts to dangle over Franklin's head. No wonder Franklin was under the viscount's thumb. “He's just as guilty as you are,” she said.

He shrugged. “But his title and his wealth make his word worth more than mine. He likes to play games. Lydia he left as a reminder that I should deny him nothing, not even you. He forced me to go out later and leave another dead woman in Wulf's stable to take suspicion off of having a dead one show up in my very home. He's ruthless when it comes to getting what he wants, Rosalind. A pity he had to want you.”

“Why did you bring me to London?” Now Franklin's motives didn't make sense. If he'd only wanted to fetch a high bride's price for her to pay off his gambling debts,
Penmore would still have the murder of Bess O'Conner to hold over his head.

“I had a plan to escape him,” he admitted. “I thought if I could sell you for a high bride's price, sell the house, and collect my mother's inheritance from your father once I had given her sufficient time to die of her long-standing illness, I could escape. I could go abroad with enough money to buy myself a title and live the life your father denied me. I hadn't counted on Penmore seeing you and deciding he had to have you.”

His confessions made her livid. He would use anyone for his own gain. He had no heart. “If you would kill your own mother for simple monetary gain, you are as much of a monster as he is.”

“I know,” he admitted, then shrugged. “The world is full of monsters, Rosalind. My father was one. You didn't know that, though, did you? He beat my mother, he beat me, and what a pity that day he took me hunting at the tender age of ten and I turned the rifle on him and shot him dead. My mother thought I had a chance then, I suppose, but she was wrong. It was too late. I had already learned the only way to feel good was to have control over people, to prey on the weak, the way that he did.”

Franklin considered her the weak. He always had, Rosalind realized. Women, she supposed, in general. She wasn't weak, although he had bullied her to the point of nearly losing her spirit before Armond had rescued her from him. She couldn't recall if the duchess's room had a lock on the door. It was worth a try, even if she could only hold him off for a time. Perhaps she could find something in the room to use as a weapon against him. She bolted for the stairs.

Franklin was upon her before she made it halfway up. He twisted his hand in her hair and dragged her backward. She screamed and he clamped a cruel hand against
her mouth. Struggling, he pulled her back down to the first-floor landing.

She fought him with all of her strength, clawing at the hand he had clamped across her mouth. She bit into the flesh of his palm and he swore loudly and released her. She only made it a few steps before he grabbed her by the hair again. He whirled her around and then he hit her. Hit her so hard, spots danced before her eyes before darkness descended upon her.

Armond arrived home in a nasty mood. He'd gone to collect Rosalind at the dowager's home, only to find out she had never arrived. The dowager's footman had told him that his wife said she had a previous engagement she had forgotten. What engagement? Hawkins greeted him at the door.

“Is Lady Wulf home?”

The man blinked. “I believe so, my lord. I haven't seen her since I went up earlier to inform her when dinner would be served.”

Armond marched past the steward and headed upstairs. The scent of lavender lingered in his room from Rosalind's morning bath. He inhaled deeply for a moment, then walked into her room. She wasn't there. He glanced around and spied a book on her night table; on top, a faded scrap of paper. His heart started to pound. He sucked in a deep breath and approached the night table. He knew what it was before he picked it up and made certain. The poem. One written long ago by the first Wulf cursed.

She knew. Surely she had read the poem and made the realization that it was connected to him, to his brothers, to the family curse. His hand trembled as he laid the faded piece of parchment back on top of the book. He must
speak to her about it, explain what he knew, warn her of what was to come, beg her to forgive him for not telling her sooner. Pray that she wouldn't hate him or, worse, fear him. But where was she? Had she run away in terror? And if so, where would she seek sanctuary?

First, he would search the house, he decided. If Hawkins hadn't heard her leave, she could simply be hiding. That thought made him feel physically ill. That she would hide somewhere from him, as if she thought he might hurt her. And he did not know for a fact that he wouldn't, once the beast claimed him. Armond began a meticulous search of the house, trying to keep his growing concern hidden from Hawkins. He didn't find his wife, he didn't smell her in any of the rooms that were not in use, or the rooms his brothers chose to use when they were in residence.

He ended up in her room again, searching for clues to where she might have gone. He moved around the room, catching her scent, stronger in certain areas where she must have last been. One of those places was next to the window. He stood, staring out, his thoughts in turmoil. He had hoped to have at least another night with her, another day when she would look at him and see only a man. If she ran, how did she go?

The stable seemed his next logical choice to visit. She might have taken her horse. He started to turn away when something caught his eye. A sheet draped over the balcony of the house next door. The housekeeper's signal to Rosalind to visit when Chapman had left the house.

He turned from the window and moved quickly from her room to the stairs. He found himself nearly running. He did run once he left the house and started down the rocky path and past the stable. The rear door was closed and locked. He ran around to the front entrance, finding it the same. Armond used the heavy knocker to announce
his presence. No one answered the door. He ran around to the carriage house and glanced inside. The coach was there, the phaeton missing. There were no servants inside roaming about.

Armond glanced toward the balcony where the sheet still ruffled with the breeze. He approached the trellis and began his climb. The balcony doors were not locked. He moved through Rosalind's former room and out onto the landing. The house was deathly quiet. No one was home. But someone had to be home. The duchess, Rosalind's stepmother. He moved to the landing and up the stairs to the third floor. Her door was open, the room dimly lit and the lady asleep on the bed. He approached the bed and stared down at her.

Something inside of him told him Rosalind was in danger. Her scent was in the house. . . . So was Chapman's. He gently shook the woman. She opened her eyes and stared up at him.

“Rosalind, Your Grace? Do you know where she is?” he asked.

The lady closed her eyes again. Armond turned away. He would search the house.

“He took her,” came a raspy voice from the bed. “I heard her scream. I could do nothing to help her. You must save her from him. He is a monster.”

Armond's blood turned to ice. Chapman had Rosalind? He walked back to the bed. “Where is your housekeeper? I cannot leave you here alone.”

“Sent her off for the evening, I imagine,” came her hoarse reply. “Sent her off so he could do his dirty deeds. You must stop him. He's mad. As mad as his father was. I kept hoping he would change. I kept trying to save his soul, but I could not. I realized that when he beat that poor woman so in my very home. I heard her screams. One of his parties that got out of hand. He wanted to blame
someone else. I told him he couldn't. I told him he must confess to his crimes and take responsibility for them. Then he turned on me.”

“I can carry you next door, Your Grace,” Armond offered.

“No,” she insisted. “My life is over. Rosalind's has just begun. She is in love. I heard her tell me so, although she didn't know that I could understand what she said to me. You must go now, find her, save her from him.”

The lady was right. There was no time to spare. Thank God he knew where Chapman would take Rosalind. Thank God he had the key. He would kill Chapman tonight. Kill him for daring to touch Rosalind again. Kill him so that he would threaten her no more.

Rosalind opened her eyes to the sight of Franklin slouching against a wall, staring at her. Candles flickered inside an empty room. She lay on the floor, resting upon a dirty mattress. Her jaw ached. She imagined it was bruised and tried to lift her hand to rub the throbbing pain, but her hands were tied behind her back. She tried to move her feet. Her ankles were tied as well.

“What are you going to do to me?” she asked, and hated the quiver in her voice. It made Franklin smile.

“I'm not so sure you want to know,” he informed her. “But then, I want to tell you so I will. Remember when I told you that Penmore had a problem with his manly parts?”

She nodded.

“Well, I didn't tell you everything.” He shrugged away from the crumbling wall behind him and paced back and forth in front of the mattress. “Penmore does have a problem to be sure, but quite by accident the night I was entertaining him, along with Bess O'Conner,
he realized something helped him tremendously with his problem.”

Rosalind tried to move her hands. She was lying on them and had nearly lost circulation. Franklin stuck his boot in her ribs and nudged her.

“Pay attention. You can't get away,” he assured her. “Now, where was I? Oh yes. We were drinking and playing cards, and I decided I wanted to have Bess O'Conner, so I took her right there in the parlor. Seems Penmore got excited watching me have her, but when he wanted a turn, Bess did not wish to comply. I slapped her around a little to convince her to service Penmore, but the bitch started screaming and fighting back.

“My mother was asleep upstairs, so I couldn't let her keep screaming. I hit her some more.” He sighed. “I hit her a lot. I strangled her, too. Penmore was more stimulated by me beating the woman than he had been by me humping her. I thought I killed her. Penmore had her while he thought she lay there dead. My mother called to me from the stairs. I had to keep her from coming into the parlor and seeing the dead woman, so I spoke to her for a time upstairs. Penmore, the idiot, fixed himself a strong drink and turned his back on Bess O'Conner's bloody and beaten corpse.”

“Only she wasn't dead,” Rosalind already knew.

Franklin suddenly bent and put his hands around her throat. “I'm telling the story! Shut up!”

Rosalind gasped for breath. Franklin seemed to realize he was killing her and let go of her throat. He rose, straightened his collar, and continued with his pacing.

“The whore escaped through the back entrance and managed to drag herself next door and into your husband's stable. I went after her, but then I saw the bastard come home. Then I realized what a stroke of luck I had
had. Everyone knows the Wulfs are dangerous, are cursed with insanity. Lord Wulf would look more suspicious than I ever would if he had the bad sense to call in the authorities, which of course he did. So, that was the end of it, I thought.”

Penmore wanted more, she wanted to say, but didn't dare speak again. Not with her hands tied behind her back and her helpless.

“Penmore enjoyed it so much, he said if we didn't do it again, he'd see me hanged for murder. I was, after all, the one who beat Bess O'Conner, the one who was responsible for her death. So, he had me, not only with the money I owed him in gambling debts, but with the murder.”

Franklin paused to wipe sweat from his brow with his sleeve. “We tried for a time just to repeat that night without killing the whores. It wasn't enough for Penmore. His member grew limp again, and we had to play new games to keep him amused. He liked to dress the women up like ladies. He liked to pretend he was having his way with an innocent society miss, which of course he could never do without serious repercussions . . . at least until you came along.