The Cursed One

by Ronda Thompson

  “We need our wits about us,” he cautioned despite her claim.

  Amelia frowned at him. “If anything else bad is going to happen tonight, I’d just as soon be drunk as a loon.”

  He nearly smiled again, and she wondered what he might look like if he did. When he spoke, she saw that he had straight, white teeth. The girl recaptured his attention.

  “Now the leg.” Mora’s cheeks flushed. “You’ll have to shuck the trousers, my lord.”

  Just the thought of seeing Gabriel Wulf naked flooded Amelia with sudden heat. She eyed her brandy glass. Perhaps it was the liquor. A bride should not be having such thoughts about another man on her wedding night. She set the glass aside and turned toward him.

  “You may use the blanket on the bed to cover yourself,” she said. “Mora and I will turn our backs while you undress.”

  He shrugged in response. “It makes no difference to me one way or another.” He rose and began unfastening his dusty, bloodstained trousers. Amelia realized neither she nor the young maid had turned from the sight until he was nearly finished.

  “Mora, join me,” she instructed. The girl obediently came to stand beside her. It took Amelia a minute more to actually turn from the sight of Gabriel Wulf about to shuck his trousers in front of God and anyone who cared to look.

  Both she and Mora stood facing the chest and mirror. Amelia had a devil of a time not looking into the mirror in hopes of catching Wulf undressed. The liquor must have affected her for a fact, and still she reached for the decanter to fortify herself again.

  “Best leave me some of that,” Mora said. “I’ll need it to clean his wound once I’ve dug the ball from him.”

  Curious, Amelia asked, “Did he tell you he’d been shot?”

  The girl blushed. “No. Didn’t have to. Seen such wounds before. Not a particularly good background I come from, my lady.”

  “All right, I’m covered,” Wulf called behind them, interrupting the conversation. “Hurry, girl. I still have much to do tonight.”

  They turned to see Gabriel sitting upon the bed. The blanket was wrapped around his waist, parted so that his injured leg could be tended. Amelia had never seen a man’s naked leg before. While men’s fashions left little to the imagination these days, it was altogether different seeing a man’s bare leg from simply seeing the shape of his leg outlined in snug-fitting trousers or tights.

  Even injured, Gabriel Wulf’s leg was quite something to behold. It was long and muscled and dusted with blond hair. Amelia stood gawking as Mora sprang into action. She supposed she watched the entire procedure, stood numbly by as the girl dug a ball from Gabriel Wulf’s thigh with the long nasty-looking tweezers. He gritted his teeth and a sweat broke out upon his brow, but other than that, he complained little.

  “The spirits, my lady,” Mora called to her. “If you don’t mind, would you fetch the decanter for me?”

  Glad for something to do, Amelia lifted the decanter from the tray and brought it to the bed. She took another sip from the bottle before handing it to Mora. The girl, in turn, offered the brandy up to Gabriel.

  “To fortify yourself,” she said. “This will sting something fierce.”

  He nodded, took the decanter, took a swig, and handed it back. An odd thrill ran through Amelia at the thought of him placing his mouth where hers had been. As if he felt her regard, Wulf’s green gaze lifted to her. He stared into her eyes while the girl poured the liquor over his bloody thigh.

  He never so much as flinched.

  “Now I’ve got to stitch you,” Mora said. “Then I’ll be finished. If you keep it clean like you’ve been doing, you should heal.”

  Wulf said nothing in response. He kept staring at Amelia, and she suspected he did so to distract himself from the pain. Bold as she was at times, she grew uncomfortable under his intense study. Amelia suspected he could nearly see through her thin robe. She wasn’t as modest as a proper young woman should be. Once, she’d been bold enough to wet her gown at a social function. Her mother had nearly fainted dead away when Amelia emerged from an upstairs guest room, where several other ladies had been doing the same thing.

  Still, something about the way he watched her … like a fox watched a rabbit, made her uneasy. And she was uneasy enough with all that had happened. She needed something to do to keep her mind off of it.

  “I might find you something clean to wear,” she offered. “Robert.” Her voice caught and she took a moment to collect herself. “Robert was not nearly as big as you are, but perhaps I can find something.”

  “No need to trouble yourself with that,” he said, and his gaze finally broke from her to stray to the closed door that separated her room from Robert’s. “I won’t ask you to go back in there.”

  In a way, Amelia needed to see the body. If for no other reason than to convince herself that the man was not Robert. How could her mind have been so confused? How had the man managed to trick her?

  “I can do it,” she whispered, not sure who she was trying to convince more, herself or Gabriel Wulf.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Amelia took a candle with her. She feared the door, barely hanging upon its hinges, would fall off when she opened it, but it held. She didn’t want to look at the floor where she knew the impostor’s body lay. She’d just as soon avoid it, but it had been her intent, besides finding something clean for Gabriel Wulf to wear. Taking a deep breath, she glanced down at the floor. No one was there.

  She breathed a sigh of relief. Wulf had obviously removed the body during or after his search for Robert. Steadier now, Amelia walked to Robert’s wardrobe and opened the doors. She thought a nightshirt would have to make do for Lord Gabriel as a shirt. Breeches or trousers of any sort she couldn’t imagine fitting him. He was much taller than Robert had been, and his legs, well, his thighs were nearly the size of tree trunks.

  Grabbing up a nightshirt, she turned and picked up the candle she had set aside. Something gleamed at her from the floor next to the bed. It appeared to be a silver letter opener. Blood tinged the tip. She shuddered; then she noticed something else there on the floor. Amelia tucked the nightshirt under one arm, bent, and picked it up. It looked like an animal claw. She quickly dropped it.

  Upon entering the adjoining room, she saw Mora just rising from her position upon the floor next to her patient.

  “Got him fixed up, I think,” the girl said to her.

  Amelia placed her candle on the stand next to the bed and unfolded the nightshirt. “This will have to do for the time being,” she said.

  Wulf took the garment from her and put his muscled arms through the sleeves first. Amelia was staring again.

  “Thank you for taking … for removing the man. I thought I should look at him just to assure myself he wasn’t Robert, but then—”

  “What?” Wulf paused in his task of pulling the nightshirt over his head. “What did you just say?”

  “The body, you moved it … didn’t you?”

  He pulled the nightshirt over his head and was off the bed in an instant. The broken door didn’t survive his wrenching it open and fell partway off the hinges. Shocked, Amelia simply watched him. She heard him in the next room, heard him curse, then the sound of running feet in the hallway.

  But wait, it was not running feet she heard in the hallway. It was the sound of horses running. The stable!

  Amelia opened her door and ran into the hallway. She just caught a glimpse of the white nightshirt Gabriel wore moving down the stairs. She glanced around her room and spotted his pistol still lying on the chest.

  “Stay here,” she instructed Mora, rushing over to grab the pistol. Amelia ran from the room and downstairs. Lord Gabriel had left the front doors standing wide, and how he managed to unbolt everything and still be ahead of her, Amelia had no idea. Dust coated the damp air outside, and she coughed. Someone grabbed her from behind.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  Amelia had almost screamed; now she sagged against him with rel
ief. “The pistol. I thought you might need it.”

  Wulf reached around front of her and took the heavy pistol from her hand. Amelia wanted a moment longer to simply lean against him. He felt solid, strong, and represented safety.

  “Someone’s run the horses off,” he said. “I intend to go to the stable and find out whom. Go back into the house. Bolt the doors.”

  Whatever else her mind would or would not accept tonight, Lord Gabriel represented safety to Amelia. He had rescued her from an impostor bent on defiling her. She didn’t want Lord Gabriel out of her sight. “I’ll go with you,” she insisted.

  When he sighed, his warm breath brushed her ear. She shivered. “I haven’t time to watch your back and mine both,” he argued. “Do as I say, woman.”

  In shock, half-inebriated, whatever she was, Amelia was not the sort to tolerate that kind of talk from a man. “Woman”? Had he called her “woman”? “I hardly do as I’m told by men who are related to me,” she informed him. “I certainly don’t take orders from complete strangers. I’ll wager I’m safer tagging along with a big, strapping man such as yourself rather than cowering in the house with a frightened girl.”

  His hands were warm through the thin fabric of Amelia’s robe when he turned her to face him. “That ‘girl’ is showing more sense than you are. She at least knows to stay put and not to argue with her …”

  She blinked up at him. It was dark, but a half-moon made his features readable. “With her what?” she asked. “Her betters? Is that what you were going to say?”

  Wulf didn’t answer. He shook his head and muttered something along the lines of “God save us from independent women.” He moved past her. “Do whatever you want then. It’s your neck.”

  Amelia reconsidered now that he’d actually given her permission to follow him into possible danger. She glanced behind her at the house. All was dark except the candle burning in her upstairs bedroom. She saw Mora’s pale face pressed against the glass. The girl hardly inspired confidence that she would be helpful in any way should Amelia be attacked again.

  Gabriel was already halfway to the stable. Even in nothing but a nightshirt, his long legs bare, he was a formidable sight. She’d take her chances with him.

  The lady baffled him. Gabriel knew she followed. She wasn’t like any society miss he’d met before, not that he had met many. She wasn’t like his perceived notions of a society miss. Perhaps the brandy had given her courage, for he expected hysteria and constant vapors would be more the norm after having been attacked and widowed in the same night. Instead, the woman stalked after him in the dark, wearing nothing but a thin robe that revealed more than it hid.

  His shoulder and thigh hurt, but he tried to concentrate on the task at hand. The lady’s scent distracted him. The lady in general distracted him. Everything about her baffled him. From the fact that he had seen her before and hadn’t been able to forget her, to the way she stirred him as no other woman had stirred him to date. He’d been attracted to her from the moment he saw her upstairs, and in circumstances that made feeling anything besides worry for her safety and sorrow for her loss ridiculous.

  Gabriel shouldn’t be having such thoughts about a woman barely married and now widowed … one who had been wed to his childhood friend, Robert Collingsworth. If she was bent on following though, Gabriel wanted to know where she was. He paused before the stable doors, which were now thrown wide since the horses had been turned out of their stalls. Once Lady Collingsworth reached his side, he pressed a finger to his lips to warn her to keep quiet. Together, they crept into the stable. There were no lanterns lit and it was deathly quiet.

  Gabriel glanced around, his hand trained upon the pistol he’d rushed off without. It embarrassed him that he hadn’t thought to take the weapon, but then, he got on well enough with his fists in most confrontations. He heard the scurry of mice in the loft—the creak of leather as harnesses and bridles swung in the breeze of the open doorway. A coach sat inside. He’d noticed it earlier when he’d ridden inside but hadn’t thought much of it.

  Where were the coachman and the footman? Gabriel had a very strong feeling he knew. He turned to Lady Amelia. “Stay here,” he said; then he walked to the coach and opened one of the side doors. Two bodies lay inside, both men’s throats slit. He quickly closed the door and returned to Lady Collingsworth, took her arm, and steered her toward the open stable doors.

  “What is it?” she whispered. “What did you see?”

  He didn’t answer. Something was terribly wrong at Collingsworth Manor. He had to get the lady back inside the house and bolt the doors again. He nearly had her there when the howling began. Both he and Lady Collingsworth froze in their tracks.

  The noise came from the surrounding woods. Close. Too close. Wolves? To Gabriel’s knowledge, wolves had long been extinct from England. And wolves did not open stalls and run horses off. They did not crawl into bed with a new bride and pretend to be her husband. They did not murder men for no good reason.

  “It sounds as if there are a hundred of them,” the lady whispered beside him.

  Sound, Gabriel knew, traveled easily in the woods around Collingsworth Manor. He doubted if there were as many wolves as it sounded like. He also knew from listening to the direction each answering howl came from that they were surrounded.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Amelia opened her eyes to a confusing sight. She wasn’t in her bed at home in London. Across the room, a man stood with his back to her, staring out her window at the first rays of dawn. He wore a nightshirt and dusty buckskin trousers along with knee-high boots. His hair brushed the back of his collar, dark blond except for the lightning-colored streaks. Gabriel Wulf. And she was not safe and sound at her parents’ home. She was caught in a nightmare.

  “Have you slept at all?” she asked.

  Lord Gabriel turned from the window. Amelia tried not to suck in her breath. Good lord, he was handsome, and it obviously took more than being terrified for a woman not to notice.

  “I thought it best to stay awake.”

  She glanced around. “Where is Mora?”

  He moved to the bed and stood staring down at Amelia. “Downstairs. She said she’d fix us a bite of breakfast. A very practical young woman, that one.”

  As opposed to a very impractical one, Amelia understood, such as herself. She let the statement pass. There were more important things to worry over. “What are we going to do?” she asked him.

  He raked his fingers through his hair. “We need to get to Wulfglen.”

  Amelia frowned at him. “Do you mean walk? The horses are gone.”

  Without being invited, he sat upon the edge of the bed. Amelia supposed it was a good thing for him that she wasn’t very practical, for she knew it was indecent of him to do so.

  “Afoot, it might take us a few days,” he said. “But if we make it to the main road, we might find someone to give us a ride.”

  Collingsworth Manor was a bit off the beaten path. Amelia knew that from her journey yesterday. The fields were some distance off, and the area around the house was completely wooded. “We’d have to travel through the woods,” she said. “All things considered, I don’t believe that is a wise idea.”

  “Because of the wolves?”

  Amelia considered his question. “Because of whatever or, rather, whoever is killing people around here. The coachman and the footman are dead, aren’t they?”

  His green gaze slid away from her. He didn’t answer, which was answer enough for her. “I don’t believe the wolves we heard last night are normal wolves.”

  Amelia remembered the feel of claws against her neck, the smell of fetid breath, the sensation of fur against her skin. She shivered. But she was being ridiculous, and so was he. “Of course they are wolves,” she said. “Don’t tell me the girl has you spooked about such things.”

  “And after what happened to you last night, you are not afraid?” he challenged.

  She didn’t want to think about last night. Am
elia couldn’t wrap her mind around what had happened to her. “Last night, I was quite hysterical,” she said. “I couldn’t have heard and felt what I thought I did in the room next door. I must have imagined it.”

  He lifted a dark brow. “What did you hear and feel?”

  As if closing her eyes could block the memory, Amelia tried. Only the nightmare was there waiting for her. She quickly opened them again. “I was attacked by a man pretending to be Robert. He must have looked a great deal like him to have deceived me.”

  Wulf shrugged. “Not really. He might have been about the same height, the same build, same color of hair, but he did not resemble Robert otherwise. I saw him, remember?”

  Amelia rose from the bed and began to pace. “There must be some logical explanation,” she insisted.

  Lord Gabriel rose and blocked her path. He reached out and gently touched her neck. “And is there a logical explanation for these scratches? Is there a logical explanation as to why a man I shot, and took for dead, somehow managed to escape the room next door and disappear? Is there a logical explanation as to why Robert is dead in the cellar and two other men are dead in the stable, their throats ripped out?”

  Amelia’s heart lurched. Tears stung her eyes. “Robert,” she whispered. “I cannot believe he is gone. I keep thinking this is a nightmare and I will wake in a moment, and everything will be as it was before.”

  Her words softened Wulf’s gaze upon her. “Forgive me. It was insensitive to say that to you. I’m sure you cared deeply for Robert.”

  Did she? Amelia wouldn’t try to fool herself into believing she had loved her husband. She was sorry he was dead, but to carry on too much would be hypocritical. “I cared for him,” she admitted. “I thought he would make a fine husband. His death saddens me, but I will not pretend that he was the great love of my life. I do not believe in love.”