Winterset

by Candace Camp

  “Well,” he said, looking down into the trunk. “Here are the lord’s masks.”

  Anna went quickly to his side and peered into the trunk. The inside was filled with masks, some metal, others wooden, and still others made of clay or cloth or—Anna reached down and touched one—of animal hide. Reed began to pull them out and line them up on the floor. Some were amazingly realistic renditions of animals—there were a few that even had protruding snouts. Others were more like stylized drawings of animals, and others seemed to be mythical beasts or more human-looking beings that were what Anna supposed Mrs. Parmer had termed “demons.” Teeth were painted on some; others had actual animals’ teeth glued to them.

  Even laid out here on the floor, the masks looked eerie and bizarre. She could well imagine how frightening they would appear hanging all over the walls, teeth bared.

  “Lord de Winter seemed to favor wolves,” Reed commented.

  Anna nodded, glancing over the masks. There was, indeed, a preponderance resembling wolves.

  Reed lifted out the last mask and laid it down, saying, “There are books on the bottom of the trunk.”

  “His journals?” Anna looked in at the rows of identical brown books.

  “I presume.” He reached in, took one out and began to glance through it.

  Anna did the same. The pages were filled with words in a small, cramped hand. She glanced through them. Though at first glance they appeared to be sentences, with periods and commas, the strings of words made little or no sense.

  “Gibberish,” Reed said, flipping through the pages.

  “I can make out a few things. This looks like king, maybe. Oh, and here, I think this says Wolf People.” She could make out little else. Some of the words were written, as Mrs. Parmer had noted, in something that was definitely not English—nor any other language Anna had ever seen.

  She laid the book aside and picked up another one. It was much the same. As she went down through the stack, she noticed, however, that there were more and more words that made sense and even sentences that were understandable, although wildly irrational.

  “Reed, look—here it says, ‘We are the descendants of the Beast.’ And here, ‘not cursed, but blessed.’”

  Reed moved closer, reading over her shoulder, “‘At night I roam with my…’ What is that?”

  Anna peered at where he pointed. “‘Brethren?’”

  Reed nodded. “‘At night I roam with my brethren. None can see us. None know the power we hold. We walk between the worlds, and all is dark.’”

  “His mind was clearer at this time,” Anna mused. “Perhaps they are earlier books, or maybe he went through more lucid periods. Didn’t Mrs. Parmer say that he had ‘spells,’ or something like that?”

  Anna flipped through more pages. “Here—wolves again. ‘We are the Children of the Wolf. The power is in us. None can reach us, none can stop us.’ Who is this ‘we’?” she asked.

  “God knows. The wolves? People that only he saw?”

  “Oh, look. ‘When I was fifteen, the King of the Wolves spoke to me.’ But this makes no sense—‘Come down from the mountain and bury beneath my skin.’” She turned the page. “Here is some more about the King of the Wolves talking to him.”

  Reed picked up another journal and paged through it. “This one is gibberish again.” He searched through the others remaining in the trunk, glancing through them and setting them aside until he found one that was more intelligible.

  “All right,” he said, his eyes scanning down the page. “Here he says something about being superior, part wolf, part man. Apparently he thought he had the sense of smell of a wolf and their acute hearing. ‘I walk upright, but I have the heart of my brothers. At night I walk in the woods and converse with them. But none hear, for we speak without words.’”

  Anna shuddered. “Ugh. This is all horrid. I cannot bear it.”

  She set the journal back in the trunk and glanced around the room. “It is so cold in here.” She rubbed her arms again. “I want to leave this place.”

  “Of course.” Reed took off his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. They had been kneeling on the floor beside the trunk, and he stood up, reaching down to offer his hand to her.

  Her hand was ice cold. Reed looked down into her face. It was pale, her eyes huge and haunted. He put his arm around her shoulders, sweeping her out of the room and down the stairs to his study.

  “Here. Sit down.” He led her to the sofa that sat at one end of the room, then turned and walked across the room to the liquor cabinet, where he poured whisky from the decanter into two cut crystal glasses. He returned to Anna and handed her one. “Drink this.”

  Anna looked doubtfully down at the strong-smelling liquid, then back at Reed.

  “Trust me. It’ll put some color back into your cheeks,” he told her, taking a sip of his own drink.

  Anna took a sip, and the whisky roared back through her throat and down into her stomach like liquid fire. She coughed, her eyes beginning to water. “How do you stand that?”

  “You get used to it.” Reed smiled. “Take another drink. You’ll feel better.”

  Obediently, Anna had another swallow before she set her glass on the table beside her. “I don’t know if I will ever feel better.”

  “Did you feel something from the room?” Reed asked. “The way you did in the room off the gallery?”

  “Not at first—or, at least, only a little. It wasn’t the same as the feelings I’ve had before. It just made me…uneasy, I guess, is the word for it. But the longer we stayed there, as we looked through his journals, I felt more…a kind of dark anger and…something that was like pleasure, but sick and repulsive. It was so cold, down-to-the-bone cold. I thought I might start shivering and never stop.”

  “Cold. Like he was,” Reed commented.

  “Oh, Reed, I cannot bear to think that that man was my grandfather!” Anna exclaimed. “He was evil through and through.” She turned to look at Reed, her blue eyes shining with tears. “I feel so ashamed, so sick, that I am related to him. His mania, his illness, runs through us. It is bred in me.”

  “No, no!” Reed quickly set his drink aside and reached out to Anna, pulling her into his arms. “You are not mad. Whatever was wrong with Lord Roger de Winter, it is not in you. There is no evil in you—of that, I am sure.”

  “But these things I see…” Anna cried out softly. “My feelings, my visions, whatever you want to call them. Don’t you see? He saw things, heard things. My uncle sees things, too. The Angel Gabriel speaks to him.”

  “That doesn’t make you mad,” Reed retorted. “The things that your uncle sees, that the old Lord de Winter saw—those were figments of their imagination. The things you have sensed, or ‘seen,’ were things that had actually happened or were about to happen. They were very real things. Besides, you did not believe that they were playing out in front of you. You knew they were visions, that they had happened at some other time or in some other place.”

  “Yes…”

  “But your uncle believes that the angel is standing right there talking to him.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “So what you see is different. You are not like your uncle, and certainly you are not like your grandfather.”

  “I wish I could truly believe that,” Anna sighed.

  “Believe it. Listen, I have a large number of relatives whom I would rather not possess. We all do. My grandmother was the terror of the family. And my great-aunt, Lady Rochester, has a tongue that would blister paint. Great-Uncle Ballard lives in fear of her still. And you think they aren’t peculiar? My grandmother swore that she talked to her dead husband—and he answered. Lady Rochester has a vast array of wigs, all of them quite atrocious, which she switches as if they were hats, believing, apparently, that none of us notice that her hair is red one day and black the next. And my cousin Albert is an utter nodcock.”

  “But none of them have murdered people.”

  “Not that w
e know of, though, frankly, I would not put it past my grandmother. My point is that we cannot choose our relatives. We are simply stuck with them. But their actions, their lives, do not determine ours. I am not like my grandmother. You are not like your grandfather. I know you regret what he did. I do, too. But you are no more responsible for his actions than I am. You must not blame yourself. It took place almost fifty years ago. You cannot change what happened. You cannot put it right. And the man who did it has nothing to do with you. Whatever he was, you are a wonderful, kind, beautiful human being. That is what is important, not your grandfather.”

  “Oh, Reed…” Anna let out a breathy little sigh. “It is so easy to believe that when I hear you say it. When I am with you, nothing seems to be so bad.”

  “There is nothing bad. Not in you.” He kissed the top of her head. Her hair was like silk beneath his lips; her perfume teased at his nostrils. He raised a hand to her cheek, gently running his finger along it. “You are so beautiful.”

  Anna’s heart seemed to skip a beat. The whisky she had drunk had turned her warm inside, making the cold recede. At the touch of Reed’s finger upon her cheek, the heat spread out through her body. She turned her face up toward his, and she was caught in his gaze.

  “Anna…” His voice was barely more than a whisper, and the sound of it sent a tremor through her.

  For a long moment, they did not move. Indeed, they scarcely seemed to breathe, as though the slightest movement might break the moment.

  Then, knowing that she should not, Anna stretched up toward him. She wanted to feel the touch of his lips upon hers. She wanted to have his hands on her body. Everything inside her yearned for him.

  His lips brushed hers, caressing first her top lip, then the bottom. His hands came up, cupping her face and sliding back, his fingers tangling in her hair. His skin was faintly rough against the soft flesh of her face as his thumbs stroked over her cheekbones.

  Anna’s eyes fluttered closed, and her skin flared with heat. Her breasts felt swollen and heavy, the nipples prickling as desire flooded her loins. She remembered his fingers upon her breasts, caressing and arousing her, his hands sliding up her legs, seeking the hot, moist center of her. She ached there, her whole body alive and tingling with need, trembling with desire.

  He kissed her, his lips soft and supple on hers, enticing and seducing her. Anna quivered, lost in his taste, his scent. His hands slipped down her neck and over her chest, coming to rest on her breasts. A soft moan escaped her as he caressed her, and she wanted to be free of her clothes, to feel his skin upon her naked flesh.

  Her hands went to his chest, sliding up across his shirt. She could feel the musculature of his chest beneath the material, firm and strong. She wanted to slip her hands beneath his shirt and caress his bare skin, to know the texture of him. She thought of tasting him with her mouth, of sending the tip of her tongue lazily gliding over his skin.

  Reed’s kiss deepened, and his hands dug in at her waist. He turned, bearing her back against the sofa. In another moment, Anna knew, she would be lost, unable to stop the hurtling force of their passion.

  “No!” she gasped out, twisting away. “No. We cannot.”

  Her hands came up to her face. She could not bear to look at him, knowing that even a glance might break her resolve. Anna jumped to her feet. She heard him rise behind her, and she whirled, one hand out.

  “Please…no.” She looked at him, wanting with all her heart to throw herself back into his arms.

  Color flamed along Reed’s cheekbones, and his chest rose and fell in uneven rhythm. He had never looked so handsome to her, so desirable, as he did in that moment, and Anna clenched her hands at her sides, fighting her own treacherous instincts.

  For a long moment they stood like that, caught in the tangle of their desire, and then, with an almost physical wrenching, Anna whirled and ran from the room.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Someone tried to break into Holcomb Manor that night.

  In the middle of the night, Anna was pulled from her sleep by the sound of raised voices. She got up and wrapped her dressing gown around her, then hurried downstairs to the music room, where several of the servants were already gathered. Kit hurried in almost on her heels.

  “What the devil is going on here?”

  “Someone broke the window, sir,” one of the footmen answered, turning to Kit and Anna. “I was keeping watch, sir, like you told me, and all of sudden I heard this sound like glass breaking. So I called for John, here, and we started looking around. When we got to the music room, we found the pane broken and the window up. Someone had reached in and unfastened the lock, looks like. But I guess we scared them off.”

  “Close the window and board up that pane,” Kit ordered. “We’ll have the glazier in tomorrow. Hargrove, set someone on that. Then get the rest of the men. We are going to search outside the house.”

  While the butler snapped orders to the servants, Kit strode out of the room and down the hall toward the kitchen. Anna hurried after him.

  He turned. “Where are you going?”

  “With you,” Anna replied. “Where else?”

  “You should stay in here.”

  “I shall be with you,” Anna countered.

  Kit started to protest, then raised his hands and let them fall. “All right. I can’t waste time arguing.”

  They continued into the kitchen area, where Kit picked up the lantern by the back door and lit it. Hargrove followed them, handing out lanterns to the servants in clusters of two or three, and the entire group trooped out the back door, spreading out to cover the immediate grounds.

  Kit and Anna walked through the garden, glancing in either direction, heading toward the trees at the back. They had not reached them when a cry went up from near the house.

  Turning, they hurried back through the garden to where Hargrove and a footman were bending over something on the ground. When they grew nearer, they saw that it was one of the outside guards whom Reed had sent over. He was stretched out, unconscious.

  “He’s been knocked out,” Hargrove told them. “I can feel the bump on the back of his head.”

  They carried the man inside and laid him out on the servants’ table, where Anna could tend to his wound. The others returned to their search of the gardens, but few had any hope of finding the intruder.

  Anna bandaged up the man’s head, and, when he came to, she gave him some of the powder Dr. Felton had left for Kit’s headaches. Everyone returned before long with the expected news that they had found no signs of any person on the grounds.

  Anna looked at Kit worriedly. Obviously, whoever had tried to hurt Kit was not giving up on his plan. She had to find out who was doing the killings—and soon.

  * * *

  Anna and Reed went the next morning to visit Nick Perkins. The old man greeted them warmly, though he looked surprised at their visit.

  “Come in, come in. Let me brew some tea for us.”

  “I don’t know that we will be staying that long,” Anna said somewhat stiffly.

  She wasn’t quite sure how to act around Nick now. Looking at him, she felt the same friendship and affection that she always had. Yet she could not help but think about the fact that he had aided Lady de Winter to cover up the murders her husband had committed. She understood that he had not told her the truth about the murders because he was trying to protect her from the knowledge that her own grandfather was a killer and a madman, but, still, there was a pinprick of hurt, knowing that he had lied to her.

  “Is something the matter, Miss Anna?” he asked, his forehead knotting in concern.

  “We learned some things yesterday,” Reed said. “And we need to talk to you about them.”

  The old man looked at them a trifle warily, but he led them into the main room of his cottage, gesturing them toward the chairs. He sat in a chair across from them.

  “All right, then,” he said. “What is it you’re wanting to know?”

  “We foun
d out yesterday that it was you who discovered Susan Emmett’s body,” Anna said flatly.

  Perkin’s eyebrows rose. “Aye, that I did.”

  “Yet when I asked you about that murder you said nothing about it.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know how that could have helped you, miss.”

  “But surely you can see that it would have been of interest to us that you helped cover up those killings,” Anna shot back, unwanted tears springing into her eyes.

  Perkins stared at her in dismay. “Miss Anna…how…who told you that?”

  “I see you cannot deny it,” Anna said, her voice laced with hurt. “Nick, how could you do that?”

  The old man sighed, seeming almost to shrink before their eyes. He cast a look at Anna and said, “You’re right. It was a wicked thing to do. You cannot blame me more than I blame myself. If it weren’t for me and what I did, old Will Dawson wouldn’t have died.”

  He paused, rubbing his hands over his face, then went on. “My family’s been loyal to the de Winters for generations. We’ve worked for them, farmed their land, even fought for them back in the old days. My first instinct, I guess, was loyalty, even though I never liked Roger de Winter. He was a hard, cruel man.” Nick’s face tightened as he spoke. “When I came upon him standing over Susan’s body—he had carried her out to Weller’s Point after he killed her in the house—my first thought was to get him away from there, to get him back to the house.”

  Nick stood up and began to pace. “He took my helping him as his due, of course. That is the arrogant sort he was. Everyone else existed to serve Lord de Winter. But Lady Philippa—his wife—was a wonderful woman. She didn’t deserve the shame, and neither did their son. It would have stained the de Winter name forever. When I told her what I had found, she begged me to help her. So I did. What was done, was done, I thought. His going to the gallows wouldn’t have brought the girl back. I told the constable that I had found Susan and led them to the body, but I said nothing about his lordship. And, of course, no one ever questioned him or Lady de Winter. There was no indication that her death had come at Winterset. Lady de Winter saw to it that the room was cleaned up.”