Lady Anne 01 - Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark

by Donna Lea Simpson

  “No,” Lydia said.

  “Did Cecilia ever speak of Mr. Boatin?”

  “Not to me.”

  “Why does Mr. Hiram Grover not like the marquess?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Anne sighed.

  “It seems my little sister-in-law is not as helpful in your snooping as you could wish, my dear Lady Anne.”

  Anne whirled and stared toward the door, where the marquess leaned against the doorframe, handsome in a dark blue cutaway jacket, richly embroidered waistcoat, fawn breeches, and stockings that outlined muscular legs.

  “So,” he continued, “you did not believe me when I said that Mr. Grover still holds an old resentment regarding my schoolboy corruption of his sainted son, Theophilus, whom I introduced to gin, rum, cards, tobacco, and women of ill repute?”

  “Your school days are so far behind you, my lord,” she replied stiffly, “that I merely doubt any sensible man would hold such a long resentment as that would imply.”

  He smirked. “Ah, yes, as you point out so cleverly, I am considerably older than you and more wise about the ways of men.”

  “Age and wisdom have so long been paired, I must gracefully admit that his lordship would seem to have the better of me in both,” Anne commented, the waspish tone in her voice a deliberate reaction to the still-tangible quivering of her body at his appearance.

  He threw his head back and laughed, then strolled into the room, prowling the perimeter and watching her like a handsome, sleek cat might watch a drab gray mouse, with much more interest than the rodent would seem calculated to inspire. “I must thank you, Lydia, for inviting such a fantastical creature as Lady Anne Addison, by whom I am entranced. She makes me laugh, and in such hours as these, with terror and sadness forever looming, that’s a rare and wonderful quality.”

  Lydia merely snuffled and huddled in her own misery.

  “I don’t like to be laughed at, my lord,” Anne said, her gaze following his progress. Every circle around the room brought him closer to her.

  “Ah, but I’m not laughing at you, Lady Anne. You make humorous comments, and I laugh at your sallies, Lady Anne. May I call you my dear Lady Anne?”

  She had regained her composure at last, determined not to allow the rogue dominance over her pulse, and inclined her head slowly as Lydia slipped away. “You may call me what you will, sir. And what shall I call you?”

  He stood before her, too close, the buttons of his waistcoat inches from her nose, heat from his solid form washing over her in waves. “A woman I once knew called me ‘Dark,’” he murmured, taking her hand, stripping off her glove, then turning her hand palm up and bending low over it. “I fear she considered it an endearment.”

  Tempting, oh, so tempting to slap his cheek again. He was being impertinent, deliberately so. “Or perhaps she considered it a description of your heart,” she said softly, gazing up at him. If he would be insolent, then she would be daring. His breath was warm on the naked skin of her wrist, where he pushed back the edge of her sleeve. He pressed his lips to her pulse, thumbed her palm, then released it; her heart, after thudding heavily, raced once more as her glove fell, disregarded, to the polished marble floor.

  “That’s possible.” He turned as the doors swept open, and Lady Darkefell, dressed in a gown with a fichu concealing her throat, strolled into the room on her younger son’s arm and accompanied by another man, tall and thin with a small, round paunch under his waistcoat. The marquess advanced on them, bowed and murmured a greeting, then motioned for the other man to stroll with him. When they reached Anne, the marquess bowed to her and said, “Lady Anne Addison, may I introduce to you the magistrate, Sir Trevor Pomfroy. Sir Trevor, Lady Anne has some rather sharp questions for you, and I warn you, she’s like a terrier with a rat once she is on the scent.”

  Eight

  After such an introduction, there was no questioning the magistrate, of course. Lord Darkefell had made certain of that by putting the man on his guard. They were joined by the vicar, Charles Sydney, a short, fiery gentleman, and his intelligent-looking wife, Mrs. Philodosia Sydney. Dinner was long and tedious, the conversation among the guests about people Anne did not know and events about which she didn’t care. When conversation strayed toward the previous night—not so much “strayed,” as Anne raised the topic—Lady Darkefell resolutely turned it away from the murder, the throttling incident earlier giving her voice a husky, pleasant tone. Anne, silenced once more, sourly reflected that strangulation should perhaps be introduced in London for girls in their first Season, to give their voices that indubitably attractive quality. Given the other tortures of the Season, it could make the experience no worse.

  After dinner the ladies sat for a time in the drawing room. Lady Darkefell took Anne aside, and in a stilted fashion, admitted that she had said intolerable things to young Allengate, things she now regretted; in his drunken state he had objected, which resulted in his attack. As wrong as his behavior was, she still wished to forget about the incident. Anne had no recourse but to nod and agree as the marchioness turned and stalked away.

  They were then joined by the gentlemen, who smelled of port and cigars, not an unpleasant combination to Anne’s sensitive nose. Especially not on the marquess.

  But the evening was a waste of time as far as her investigative purposes went. Sir Trevor, her dinner companion, had been austere and remote, and in company, Anne could not ask what she wanted even if he had been more approachable. She sensed the marquess’s mocking gaze on her often through the evening. Her frustration mounted; what were they all hiding, and why?

  It had been a long, weary day. She slept soundly, awakening early the next morning just as the first hints of daylight filtered wanly through her bedchamber window.

  Sadness filled her as she sat curled up in the window seat of her room. Her view was of the front of Ivy Lodge and the gravel drive disappearing up the hill, beyond which lay Darkefell Castle. Young Cecilia Wainwright, with a life blooming in her womb, would never greet another dawn, never love another man, never see her baby’s face or hold it to her breast. All the glorious trouble and turmoil, joy and pain of existence was lost to her, gone forever, as was the life she was bringing to the world. Though the marquess appeared to be genuinely determined to track down the killer, and she had no wish to impede his progress, it frustrated her that he would not allow her to help. Instead, he blocked any attempt she made to join him in his investigation.

  Why would he do that? Why, if he had nothing to hide, did he not just accept her help? Granted she was a stranger to him, and if she was fair, there was little reason for him to trust her, but still, a woman had been brutally murdered, she had found the poor soul, and she could not just let it go and leave it in someone else’s hands.

  She dressed in a morning gown as best she could without a maid to help her, twisting and turning and doing up laces meant to be tied by other hands; pulled back her abundant hair, securing it with a ribbon; then draped her warmest shawl over her shoulders. April mornings were cold and damp in Yorkshire. Pattens she eschewed, though she had brought them, for mud and muck were enemies of the elevating objects, clogging them and sometimes making them treacherously heavy, clumsy mechanisms. She would rather her hem be muddy than her footsteps be hampered. Also, the metal soles of pattens did not promote stealth. Though she didn’t intend to creep around like a thief, she had no intention of signaling her whereabouts to anyone, neither man nor monster. A stout pair of half boots would suffice.

  She slipped from her room and down the stairs. Life was just beginning to stir in the household. It was not even six in the morning, daylight still just a pearly gray, rose-tinted promise on the horizon, a hint of light soon to come. A young girl hunched on the front step, scrubbing it with a brush and a steaming bucket of water, but she scuttled away into the shadows with an alarmed look on her pinched face as Anne emerged from the house. Servants rarely saw their betters up and about at this time of day.

  Anne wanted
to retrace her steps of the night she arrived and see the scene of the crime. She glanced around in the misty predawn half-light, noting the stone wall and gate through which she had arrived that evening, two nights before. She headed toward it. The stable lad who had tended the marquess’s horse the day before raked the gravel path and grubbed stubborn weeds that pushed up among the stones, tossing them into a barrow. He looked up and touched his forelock, ducking his head, but then bent back to his task. He likely needed to complete the whole path before he would be given any breakfast.

  She took her time, stopping to examine the drive once she had closed the gate behind her and turned in the direction of the highway. There was a copse of trees to the left, from her vantage point now. Picking up her skirts, she left the path and followed the sloping grass down to a break in the shrubs and trees. Morning sun began to brighten the scene, and through patchy fog she could make out disturbed spots among the brush, leaves strewn ’round, and a couple of broken branches. That must be, she decided, where the dogs and men, including the marquess, had found poor Cecilia that night, blundering around in the dark until they happened upon her.

  Anne paused and closed her eyes, picturing the scene, lanterns held high, the mournful baying of hounds, and Cecilia, lying alone and beyond earthly help, her throat savaged, whether by man or beast she had not yet decided. What else? She opened her eyes and advanced, making her way under the low branches and toward the spot where poor Cecilia met her end. There, she thought, finding a spot that still bore some evidence of the murder; that was it, where she had expired.

  Crouching, she examined the spot, her sharp gaze following the path of the girl and murderer, possibly even as they staggered about in the auditory turmoil that had first drawn Anne’s attention. Under the brush was a dark patch of splotches and drips; blood, Anne thought, a tremor of horror racing through her. After the turmoil of that night, with men and dogs searching for Cecilia, the dead leaves were scattered, no sense now from what direction the murderer may have come.

  A tuft of gray drew her attention above where the girl’s body must have come to rest, and Anne reached up to the thorny branch of a hawthorn shrub, where a hank of fur was caught. She examined it where it was, then pulled it off and rubbed it between her fingers, holding it briefly up to her nose. It was some kind of animal fur, no doubt, but it had a feel of age and decrepitude, not freshness, and it smelled of… she wrinkled her nose. Camphor? It did not seem as if it was pulled from a living creature.

  But perhaps that was her own fanciful imagination. She was about to back cautiously out of the area when the silvery dawn light pushed fingers of brightness into the shadowed shrubbery and caught on a glint of gleaming metal. She reached out one hand, stretching deep into the shrub’s depths.

  “Halloo, there! Are you quite all right, miss?”

  Startled, she fell backward, and her uncovered hair caught on a hawthorn, tearing one hank of it from its roots and pulling the rest from the ribbon. She scrambled from the bushes and beheld Lydia’s husband, mounted on a russet mare and staring at her with alarm on his pale face, his hat under his arm.

  “Lady Anne!” he exclaimed.

  “I…” How to explain what she was doing? Anne could feel her countenance grow crimson with confusion.

  He simply stared, awaiting her explanation.

  “What is it, John? What on earth are you looking at?”

  Her mortification quadrupled. That was the marquess’s deep voice, and he rode up behind his brother on the grassy hillock and stared down at her, amusement lighting up his dark features. “Lady Anne,” he said heartily. “An early riser, I see. But I suspect this was no morning promenade that brought you to this exact spot.”

  Aware of the fiery red spots on her cheeks and the state of her tumbled hair, she crawled out of the shrubbery and stood, rapidly concealing the hank of fur in her tucker under the guise of straightening her shawl. She plucked a thorn out of her hair and discarded it, and brushed leaves off her shawl.

  The marquess’s expression grew serious, and he gazed thoughtfully at the area she had been examining. Suddenly he leaped down from his horse, threw the reins to his brother, and followed her path, diving into the brush.

  “Stop! Be careful,” she insisted, following him and tugging on his jacket skirt.

  “All right, all right,” he said, irritably, resting back on his haunches in the grass and leaves. “It would help if you told me just what it is—other than these tragic blotches of blood—that caught your eye under here.” He turned around to stare up at her from his awkward position. “Or have you already recovered the item?”

  Cornered, she thought of the shiny object and said with all sincerity, “No.” She followed him and crawled past, while Lord John plaintively asked what the devil they were doing. Both Anne and the marquess ignored him as she wiggled past the elder brother to where she had spotted the glint of metal. She reached out, gently pushed some twigs away, and found the treasure.

  “While the view I have is most stimulating,” Lord Darkefell said from behind her, “I would be more entertained if I knew what you’ve found.”

  She twisted around and abruptly ended up on her bottom on the damp ground, but held up the item. It gleamed dully, besmirched with some clinging debris. It was a couple of inches of heavy, gold, elaborately woven chain, likely part of a watch fob or some such thing. The marquess stared at the hank of chain for a moment then met her gaze.

  “How did you ever see that among that tangle of brush?”

  “Does that matter?” she asked crossly, crawling out from the brush. “What I want to know,” she went on, staggering to her feet and dusting off her damp bottom—really, she would have to stop soiling her clothes, or she would have nothing to wear—and holding the chain up to the growing daylight, “is how it got there, and if it has anything to do with Cecilia’s death.”

  Lord John stared down at them, blinking and frowning. “I don’t understand,” he cried plaintively.

  The marquess ignored him and instead addressed Anne’s query. “I think it must have something to do with it,” he said, looking back at the brush. “That’s exactly where we found Cecilia’s body, and given that the gold chain was visible, it must not have been there too long.”

  “Yes, I had thought of that. It was just as if it had flown there during a struggle.” She held it up and looked at it. The chain was thick and good-quality gold. It would not likely have belonged to any feminine object, nor would a maid, even a lady’s maid like Cecilia, own anything so fine.

  The marquess snatched it from her, saying, “I shall take charge of it and figure out where this came from.”

  “But, but—”

  “No, don’t thank me,” he said, taking the reins of his horse from his brother and leaping up on the animal’s back. “I may decide to let you know if I find anything. Have a good breakfast.” He whirled and rode off, with his brother following at a more subdued pace.

  “Arrogant! High-handed!” She huffed and stared after the marquess as he disappeared beyond the hill. It required another half hour of walking to regain her composure, but she eventually decided, as there was nothing she could do about his seizure of the chain, she must make the best of it. She did have the piece of fur, after all, and she had examined the gold chain closely and noticed how the last link was twisted, as if it had been ripped off of something.

  Not that it would do any good to remember the details. Many people had items on gold chains: pendants, pocket watches, trinkets, seals, chatelaines.She thought back. A heavy gold chain on a chatelaine. Mrs. Hailey had one. Though she had thought the chain could not belong to a woman, she must not make such assumptions without investigation. A gift or an inherited piece could easily be so thick.

  In her walk she came to a tower and realized that she had inadvertently found the folly Ellen had spoken of, as the place she had seen the werewolf. Anne examined the ground all ’round but found nothing, then stood back and examined the tower itself
. It was tall, sixty feet at least, and had windows in an ascending pattern that likely corresponded with the winding staircase that would lead to the viewing tower at the top. A sweet conceit on the part of a newly elevated marquess many years before, Anne thought, the marquess’s father, if she remembered right, a tall tower over which to view his vast estate but also a metaphor for his rise in status.

  It was constructed of hard red brick, with prominent gray stone lines circling it every ten feet or so, all the way up to the gray stone parapet at the top. There must be a door somewhere, she thought, following the base around. A Romanesque arch with a plank door was on the lee side of the tower, and she pushed down the handle. It smoothly opened. It must have been used recently, or surely the latch and hinges would be stiff, not well-oiled and working.

  She glanced around. No one would be out this time in the morning to see her… except for a meddling marquess and his brother, she amended. But they were long gone.

  The interior was dreadfully gloomy and cold. She left the door open for light and air, wedging it with a stone. The morning sun had not yet pierced the gloom of the interior, so it took a few moments for her eyes to become accustomed to the dimness.

  When they did, she saw that the inside was really just a tall hollow, with steps in a spiral going up the interior. And no railing. Against one curved wall, in an alcove under the steps, was a large trunk, but it was securely padlocked. There was nothing else, nothing to investigate but the tower itself. “However,” she said aloud, her voice echoing strangely and then disappearing in the vertical tunnel, “I do not need to go up there this morning. What possible purpose would that serve?”

  But that, she decided, examining the stair and tentatively putting her foot on the bottom one, was the whining voice of terror that had led to almost marrying Lydia’s brother. Years ago she had been afraid what society would say of her, a plain woman and shamefully unmarried. Saved from a disastrous alliance by Reginald’s untimely death, she had vowed never to listen to that inner voice of unreasoning fear again. Perhaps marriage and a steep ascent up a tower could not be compared, but then again, both could end in tragedy if one was not careful.