Dawn Thompson

by The Ravencliff Bride

  “He stepped out for a walk on the strand last night,” said the valet, “before the tragedy . . . as I told you.”

  “And, he’s been gone all night?” she queried.

  “He sometimes spends the night on the strand in fine weather, my lady. We are so often deprived here, what with the prevailing winds that never cease, and the currents on this coast that make short work of fine weather more often than not at this time of the year.”

  “You’re lying,” she said flatly, surging to her feet.

  “I beg your pardon, madam?” the valet breathed.

  “I said, you are lying, Mills,” she repeated. “He went for no walk on the strand last night. He was with me in the green suite until Nell’s scream parted us. He ran out to see what had occurred, and he never returned. Now will you tell me what has become of your master?”

  “With you, my lady?” the valet murmured.

  “With me.”

  “Praise God!” he murmured in an undertone.

  “I’m waiting, Mills. Where is my husband?”

  The valet’s posture collapsed. “I do not know, my lady, and I did not want to overset you.”

  “Well, I am overset, Mills,” Sara said. “Nero did not harm Nell. I will never believe it. You tried to shoot him just now.”

  “My lady, you must leave such matters to us,” he said, “but if you would be of service to this house, there is an urgent matter that needs your immediate attention.”

  “And, what might that be?” She was verging upon being rude, but there was nothing for it. If he could not give her an honest answer, he hardly deserved civility. What did they all know that she did not, and why wouldn’t they tell her? If she were in such danger, as they all professed, why would no one tell her from whom, or from what?

  “Nell has not died . . . of natural causes, my lady,” he said. “The guards must be called in. In the absence of his lordship, the authority for that falls to yourself. The body cannot be removed and prepared for burial until they’ve come and gone.”

  Sara sank back down on the lounge. Finally, something for her to command as mistress of Ravencliff, and she would have given anything to designate it to someone else. Tears welled in her eyes. Of course the guards must be called in. The poor girl had lain all night where she’d fallen. Of course Sara must be the one to give the order, and in so doing, she would seal Nero’s fate. Where was Nicholas? Her heart was breaking.

  “I’m sorry, my lady,” said Mills. “There is no other way.”

  “Of course,” said Sara. “Send someone to fetch the guards at once.”

  “It would be best that you keep to your apartments until they’ve come and gone, my lady,” said the valet. “I do not know if you are aware, but they have already been out here once over tales that were told in the village. This will be difficult now because of that. You had best leave the guards to me. It would stand to reason that you would be in a taking after such an event. If they insist upon questioning you, it would be best that you actually be in a taking, if you follow my meaning, and offer as little by way of explanation as possible. If you will permit me, you were asleep when the scream woke you, and by time you exited your suite, the servants had gathered ‘round the . . . body, and you were so overset Mrs. Bromley saw you back to your rooms, and stayed to quiet you.”

  “You have it all sorted out, don’t you?” Sara said.

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “What of his lordship? Where was he when all this was taking place?”

  “His lordship has been called away on urgent estate business. He left Ravencliff before the tragedy. I helped him pack, and saw him off.” 242

  “Yes, of course,” Sara replied. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? The last time his lordship was ‘called away’ on urgent business, I found him in his rooms recuperating from a pistol shot. You were trying not to overset me on that occasion, too, as I recall. What would I find if I stormed the bastion up there now, Mills?”

  “N-nothing, my lady,” said the valet. “He is not there, I assure you.”

  “Then you shan’t object if I see for myself.”

  “I would rather you not, my lady,” said the valet. Why did he look as though he was about to expire? He’d suddenly gone as white as the morning mist drifting past the window. Indeed, the mist had more color. “I shall send Mrs. Bromley up with an herbal draught to calm you, and she will remain closeted with you in your suite until the guards have come and gone.”

  “After I’ve visited the master suite,” Sara returned, storming out through the foyer door.

  Mills’s spindly legs were no match for her long, agile ones. She reached the third floor before he negotiated the landing, and burst into the empty master suite sitting room.

  “Nicholas?” she cried, moving on to the bedchamber, but that was empty as well, except for Dr. Breeden, whom she found on his knees brushing up wood splinters with the hearth broom.

  Sara skittered to a halt and gasped. “What on earth has happened here?” she murmured, staring at the gaping hole in the dressing room door.

  “Nothing to cause you concern, my lady,” said Mills from behind, clutching his elbow. His breath was coming short, and his color had not been restored, for all the blood-pumping experience of chasing her down two corridors and up a wicked flight of stairs. “‘Tis just a little . . . architectural mishap.”

  “It looks rather like something more,” she replied, arms akimbo.

  “Well, I assure you, it’s being addressed,” said the valet. “And now, my lady, as you can see, his lordship is not here, and I really must insist that you return to your suite and lock yourself in. I shall see you there, and have Mrs. Bromley attend you straightaway. I shall need you to draft a missive to summon the guards?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Sara, her eyes still following the doctor’s movements. He had pried some of the splintered wood away from the lower door as if it were something he did as a daily occurrence, and was stacking it neatly against the dressing room wall.

  “Very good,” said Mills. “Once I have it in hand, I shall have the stableman fetch them at once.”

  “I will do that,” said the doctor, “and I will accompany her ladyship to her rooms, and remain with her until Mrs. Bromley arrives. Meanwhile, you will sit and calm yourself, Mills, or by the look of you, the guards will have two corpses to deal with when they arrive.”

  Twenty-four

  Sara moved through the hours that followed like an automaton, with no more life than the little mechanical poppets sold at the fairs. Watts, the head stableman, brought the guards. They arrived at the noon hour, on the heels of a blustery squall that chased the morning mist with howling winds and torrents of horizontal rain. It couldn’t have been more ill timed. They were too few in number to do a thorough search of Ravencliff, only a brief walk-through of the most-used chambers, and Nero’s favorite haunts, pointed out by the staff.

  A complete search of the house couldn’t be conducted without more men, and a search of the grounds could not be managed in such a gale even if they were more in number. Despite Mills’s account that he had fired on the animal that had killed Nell, and driven it from the house, the matter could not be laid to rest until every corner of the house and grounds had been searched and the animal responsible caught and killed before it attacked again. What this meant to Sara was that as soon as the gale subsided, they would be coming back. She had to find Nero, and hide him away in the alcove room again. It was the one place in the house where he would be safe from the guards. With any luck, they wouldn’t even find the secret passageway, but if they did, the entrance to that hidey-hole was virtually invisible. She would be more careful in locking the panel this time. That was the plan, and it saw her through those hours, with only one thing left unsettled. Where was Nicholas?

  The guards found no fault with Mills’s explanation of Nicholas’s absence. They did question Sara, as she knew they would, but she followed the valet’s direction to the letter—even to feig
ning a swoon when the interrogation became awkward—and they contented themselves with the accounts of Mills and Smythe and Dr. Breeden, whose medical report and corroboration of the servants’ accounts went a long way toward satisfying the investigators.

  Permission was given to remove the body for burial. The nearest undertaker was brought from Padstow, and with Mrs. Bromley’s help, he prepared Nell and placed her body on a bier in the morning room, where she would remain until the storm passed over. The coffin, illuminated head and foot with candle branches, was closed, which was a mercy. The little abigail had been brutally savaged.

  Sara refused to believe that Nero had done such a thing, but if he had not, who could have committed such a heinous assault? All signs pointed to Nero—the manner in which Nell was killed left little room for argument. Nell didn’t like the animal, and lately, when he was out of sorts, she’d feared him. Dogs were known to attack humans in whom they sensed fear, and Nicholas said Nero was part wolf. Who knew what that combination bred? Had the feral instinct in him surfaced? Had Nell become a victim of it? Sara thought of the times she’d felt fear in Nero’s presence, and, yes, it had emboldened him on all occasions. No! Not her Nero. She would never believe it. There must be another explanation.

  She decided to take her meals in her rooms. She was perfectly fit to go down to the dining hall, but it would be harder for her to collect food for Nero from there, and get it back to her suite without the footmen or Dr. Breeden noticing. It was a much better plan to play the overset mistress in earnest. She did, however, spend her time in between by keeping vigil in the morning room. It was the least she could do for the little maid who had been such a faithful servant.

  One by one, the staff members filed in as their time allowed. All the while, Sara’s eyes were trained on the morning room door in anticipation of Nicholas striding through, but he never appeared. The candles were nearly burned to their sockets, when Mrs. Bromley came to replace them.

  “Fie, my lady, are ya still down here, then?” she scolded. “It’s half-eleven. Do ya mean ta tell me nobody came ta see ya upstairs?”

  “I put them off,” said Sara, rising. Her limbs were stiff. She couldn’t imagine from what. Sheer tension, she supposed, and she soothed the back of her neck, and stretched.

  “Nobody can be spared to replace her,” said the housekeeper, laying a hand on the coffin. “You’ll have to be content with me, comin’ as my duties allow, till the master returns and we can bring another maid from the village ta attend ya. This has always been a man’s house, my lady. Menservants is what we’ve got mostly, but for a few chambermaids and scullions, none o’ which is fit ta offer ya.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Mrs. Bromley,” said Sara. “I’m well accustomed to managing on my own. I’ll be fine.” This was good news. She needed no witnesses to what she was planning. “Has the master returned?” she asked.

  “No, my lady, neither Mills nor Smythe knows when he’s expected, neither. Why, Smythe didn’t even know he’d gone off—none o’ us did, only Mills. It must’ve been somethin’ what come up suddenlike.”

  “I expect so,” said Sara.

  “Look here, I can do this later,” Mrs. Bromley said, laying the candles aside. “Let me see ya to your suite. You’re goin’ ta need your rest. The rain’s slackin’ some. If the storm blows over by mornin’, so’s the groundskeeper can dig the grave, we’ve got the burial ta deal with.”

  “Where will it be?” Sara wondered.

  “We’ve got our own graveyard, my lady,” Mrs. Bromley informed her. “It dates back ta the days when Ravencliff was a priory, or some such. It’s all consecrated proper. Watts’ll fetch the vicar down from Padstow when ‘tis time. ‘Tis what the master would want. He’s offered it ta us all for our final restin’ place, so long as we stay in his service, and those o’ us who have no other scrap o’ ground ta go inta when the time comes are grateful for it.”

  “The master is a very generous man.”

  “That he is, my lady. Nell had no folks livin’. We was her only family, so ta speak. ‘Tis a fine cemetery, my lady—’tis where she’d want ta be, where her friends can visit her now and again, and not cast off on some strange parish. Why, his lordship’s father and mother are buried out there, and them that went before and all. She’ll be keepin’ good company, she will.”

  “I think I will go up,” said Sara, letting the housekeeper lead her. “I’m quite exhausted.”

  “I can ready ya for bed, but I can’t stay with ya, my lady. There’s just too much to be done here now.”

  “That’s quite all right, Mrs. Bromley,” Nell replied. “If the master should return, I want to be told at once—no matter what the hour.”

  “O’ course, my lady, and ya lock yourself in up there, ya hear? We don’t want no more untoward happenin’s in this house. My poor ol’ heart won’t stand it.”

  “Yes,” said Sara. “I’ll be sure and do that.”

  Dr. Breeden repaired to the master suite to keep the vigil with Mills after dinner. They were closeted in the sitting room sipping sherry, which Mills poured one-handed, his left arm being confined to a sling.

  “How is that elbow?” the doctor inquired.

  “Mending,” said the valet, as convincingly as he could manage. It was swollen and throbbing; a nasty sprain.

  “Hmmm,” growled the doctor. “Old bones mend slowly. You’d best favor that for awhile.”

  “I never expected to make ‘old bones,’ ” the valet observed. “I’ll be careful. Thank God it wasn’t my pistol hand. I never doubted Nero—not for a second—but I’d never seen him in such a taking before, and that worried me. It was as if he had gone mad. Now we have proof positive that my faith in him was well-founded. The master was with her ladyship when Nell was killed. He left her to find out what happened, and never returned. He wasn’t there when the rest of the staff arrived, and he never returned to my lady. Where could he be all this while, Dr. Breeden? I’ve wracked my brain over and over, and I cannot puzzle it out.”

  “It was Mallory’s wolf incarnation that killed the girl, that’s obvious, but we cannot tell that to the guards. They’ll have us carted off to the madhouse.” The physician gestured toward the dressing room. “Did you see the look on their faces when they saw that door?”

  “I think they accepted my story, that we were trying to confine the animal until they arrived, and that he chewed through the wood, knocked me down, and escaped the house when I tried to stop him with my pistol. It was the only thing I could think of.”

  “They believed you, of course, but it made them all the more anxious to continue the search until the animal is found and destroyed.”

  “What we must do is have the master back, and make certain that never happens,” Mills replied.

  “I doubt they believed the animal was a stray—not after the tales your hall boy told in the village. Especially not that Captain Renkins, strutting and preening and gloating that he’d known something untoward was afoot out here. I don’t envy his lordship, he’s going to have the Devil’s own time convincing him of that once he returns. What bothers me is that his lordship hasn’t changed back in all this time. He should have done by now, unless, as you say, he is still in the same state of distress. The other alternative is too terrible to consider.”

  Mills entreated the doctor to elaborate with a silent stare. He couldn’t bring himself to voice what was gnawing at his reason, either.

  “That he has met with a similar fate as poor Nell,” said Breeden. “We have to face the possibility, Mills. You yourself have said that Nero is a docile wolf. We both know Mallory’s incarnation is not. I wonder are they equally matched.”

  “Considering how we last saw Nero, I would have to say yes, Doctor.” Mills defended. “After all these years, I can almost read Nero’s mind. Some, if not all, of his distress was over my lady. I thought so then. I’d stake my life upon it now. His lordship had been with her just prior to finding Nell savaged. He came here right a
fter, and transformed before our very eyes. He loves her very much, Dr. Breeden. He won’t be calmed until the stress of that is alleviated.”

  “Then, we must find him and calm him, Mills, as quickly as we can.”

  “Why? You think he might never change back if we don’t?” Gooseflesh riddled the valet’s spine until the bones snapped.

  “I cannot say for certain,” said the doctor. “Studies such as these are all speculative at best. We’re plowing untilled soil, as it were. There is scant material on shapeshifters to draw from, and there doesn’t seem to be a defined pattern of behavior that threads through all the known cases. I’m groping in the dark here, and I certainly hope I’m wrong, but Mallory was in a blind rage when he transformed, wasn’t he, and he hasn’t changed back, either . . . has he?”

  Sara locked the door to her suite while Mrs. Bromley waited outside. Once the housekeeper’s heavy footfalls receded along the corridor, she unlocked it again, and left it ajar for Nero, just as she always did. Everything was in readiness. The food she’d collected was bundled away with the sash from her blue voile gown, which would suffice for a leash, and she’d climbed into bed to wait wearing her nightdress and wrapper. All that remained was for Nero to make his appearance.

  Outside, the wind had died to a sighing murmur and the rain had ceased tapping on the window glass. The soft moaning echo of the sea crashing on the shore below began to lull her to sleep in spite of her resolve to stay awake. She dared not give in to it. If Nero didn’t come to her, she would have to go to him, wherever that might be. The burial would certainly take place in the morning, now that the storm was passing. Then the guards would return, and they would find him, and they would kill him.

  If only Nicholas weren’t so set against her in this. If only he were as fond of Nero as she was, and she could have appealed to him—but he wasn’t, and she was almost glad of his absence. If he were in residence, he would be first in line with a loaded pistol against the poor animal. These thoughts fed her dark, disturbing dreams as she dozed, all tangled into recollections of his deep, sensuous kiss, the power of his strong arms around her, the pressure of his hardness—the taste and feel and scent of him. She awoke with a start to a different scent, the musty odor of unwashed animal fur. Her eyes came open with a start.