The Cursed One

by Ronda Thompson

  He hadn’t expected kindness toward a servant from Lady Collingsworth. He hadn’t expected the passion she’d shown upstairs. She became more intriguing to him by the moment. She turned from offering the girl comfort and looked at Gabriel.

  “I need to see him,” she said softly. “I cannot believe Robert is gone if I do not see him.”

  The lady had acted as if she believed Robert was gone easily enough upstairs, but that was not her fault. Gabriel was the guilty party. His scent had been what attracted Lady Collingsworth—what had made her act irrationally with him. His younger brother Jackson had once told him of this particular “gift” all Wulf brothers possessed.

  Gabriel had never to his knowledge used it upon a woman. Perhaps he couldn’t help it upstairs. Perhaps the scent simply seeped from him when he was unreasonably attracted to a woman.

  “I need to bury Robert,” Gabriel said. “Him and the other two in the stable.”

  Lady Collingsworth took a steadying breath. “Robert deserves a proper burial. One with his friends around him to mourn his passing. And how will I explain … I mean, if he was murdered …”

  “There is no proof that he was murdered,” Gabriel reminded her. “I told you, there was not a scratch upon him. It was as if he’d been frightened to death.”

  The lady shuddered and he realized he had not taken care with her sensibilities. Gabriel wasn’t a stranger to women, but he preferred them as jaded and world-wise as he was himself. He had no idea how to deal with a delicate butterfly pleasing enough to look at but rather useless when it came to the harsh realities of life.

  “We cannot leave Robert and the others as they are,” he said. “They deserve to be laid to rest.”

  The lady had steadied herself with a hand placed upon the back of Mora’s chair. She put a brave face forward, but Gabriel noted that her hand shook. “I suppose you’re right,” she agreed. “But please at least bury Lord Collingsworth in the family cemetery. I know it must be somewhere on the property close to the house.”

  “Not far from here,” Gabriel said. When she lifted a brow, he explained, “We used to play there sometimes when we were boys. We’d hide behind the stones and jump out at one another.”

  Lady Collingsworth nodded. “Please, I’d like to see him now.”

  “But your breakfast, my lady,” Mora said. “You need your strength.”

  The lady shook her head. “I find my appetite seems to diminish the moment food is placed before me. I’d rather get this behind me.”

  “Then I’ll come along and offer you my support,” the girl said.

  Lady Collingsworth pressed a hand to the girl’s shoulder gratefully. Gabriel placed his napkin aside and rose. He paused to pull Mora’s chair out for her, a gesture that seemed to surprise the servant almost as much as Lady Collingsworth’s comfort had earlier. Gabriel reasoned it probably was for the best that Lady Collingsworth viewed her husband’s body. She needed some type of closure regarding what had happened last night.

  Although Gabriel still wasn’t certain what was going on at Collingsworth Manor, he could at least allow the lady to grieve. His leg throbbed, but the wound felt better than it had for the past two weeks. Gabriel tried not to limp as he led the way to the root cellar.

  The root cellar reminded Amelia of a crypt in itself, with its damp smell and cool, dark confines. Her legs trembled beneath her gown, but she put one foot in front of the other and followed Gabriel Wulf down the creaky steps. Mora followed behind her, and she was glad for an extra body. Strength in numbers. As she moved farther down into the cellar, she tried to mentally prepare herself for the task of viewing Robert’s body.

  Although she’d attended viewings in the past, most had been old relatives. It seemed sacrilege that a young man would be cut down in his prime. But then, Robert had never looked the picture of youthful vitality. He hadn’t liked to dance, she recalled. He always seemed winded afterward.

  “He’s over here,” Wulf said, holding a lantern that did little to dispel the darkness. Amelia braced herself. When Lord Gabriel shone the lantern light to the floor, there was nothing there.

  He frowned, then walked around the cellar, casting light in all the corners. All Amelia saw was a few sacks of potatoes, a basket of carrots, one of onions, but no body.

  “He’s gone,” Wulf said.

  “They must have taken him,” Mora whispered.

  “Damn,” Wulf swore. “It never occurred to me that Robert’s body would also come up missing, and it should have.”

  Amelia shivered in the damp, musty air. “Why would anyone take him?”

  Wulf looked none too pleased by the development. “More important at the moment is how?”

  Mora walked to a dark corner. “The root cellar door, my lord,” she reminded. “Someone could have carried him out that way.”

  Lord Gabriel joined the girl and shone the lantern light up earthen steps. “Mora, we need to block the door.”

  The servant nodded. “Yes, my lord, but we’ll have to do it from outside. Should we leave the safety of the house?”

  He considered. “It is at least daylight,” he finally said. “And I do have a pistol. I think we’ll be all right long enough for me to have a look at that door.”

  Amelia had visions of opening the cellar door from below only to be confronted by a killer waiting on the other side. “I think we should go back through the house and outside.”

  Wulf glanced back up the darkened stairs. “Probably a wise idea,” he agreed. “I can look out of the windows before we go out and see if anyone might be lurking about.”

  The matter decided, Wulf led the way back to the stairs leading down from the house. Amelia and Mora followed. After checking the outside view from several vantage points, Wulf unbolted the front door and swung it wide. Amelia stood behind him while he removed the pistol from the waistband at the back of his trousers, unseen beneath the nightshirt that hit him midthigh.

  “I’ll warrant the bodies that were in the coach are also now missing,” he said. “Whoever these people are, and I’m convinced there are more than one of them, they cover their tracks well.”

  “They are not people,” Mora whispered behind them. “At least not normal people. Mark my words on that.”

  Amelia suppressed another shiver. It was ridiculous. To fear something that could not exist. Wolves were wolves, and men were men, and that was that. She tried to forget the claw she had picked up from the floor in Robert’s bedchamber.

  “I’ll check the stable first.” Wulf extended his pistol toward Mora. “Do you know how to use a weapon, Mora?”

  The girl shrank back from him. “Won’t touch one,” she said. “Seen too many times firsthand what they can do to a body.”

  His gaze strayed to Amelia. He seemed to dismiss the possibility before even asking the question. That he would annoyed her. “I know how to use a pistol,” she said. “I am, in fact, quite an accomplished marksman.”

  Her professed skill had him lifting a dark brow.

  Amelia supposed she should explain. “When I was younger, I was determined to show my brother up at all things masculine. Mostly to upset my father,” she added.

  His lips turned up in the usual hint of a smile. “Why does that suddenly not surprise me,” he remarked. Lord Gabriel handed Amelia the pistol. “Stay here on the porch until I return.”

  The pistol was heavy in her hand, but Amelia welcomed its weight. It represented a measure of safety. What, she wondered, as she watched Wulf walk away, did he plan to do if confronted in the stable? A thought occurred to her.

  “Mora.” She turned toward the girl. “Surely there are other weapons in the house. For hunting and such?”

  “Not anymore,” the girl said quietly. “The servants took what they could find when they fled. For protection.”

  “Shame on them for leaving you behind in the first place, but defenseless as well, it is inexcusable,” Amelia muttered. The truth of the matter was, Amelia might not have give
n the plight of a servant a second thought before she’d been sucked into her current nightmare. The girl was so young, looked so helpless, that Amelia couldn’t help but be enraged on her behalf.

  “Kind of you to care, my lady,” Mora said. “But to be honest, not much had happened before. Not until last night. Not until he came.”

  Mora nodded toward Gabriel’s retreating figure. Amelia suddenly wondered how Wulf had gotten into the house last night. She didn’t remember him explaining that. But she was being silly to suspect him. Lord Gabriel might be from a family considered outcasts among the social set in London, a family said to be cursed by insanity, but his family still maintained wealth. Her best friend was married to his brother. There was nothing in the least suspicious about Gabriel Wulf. He’d saved her life last night.

  Wulf disappeared into the stable a moment later. That’s when Amelia noticed it. “Listen,” she whispered to Mora.

  The girl glanced at her. “I don’t hear anything, my lady.”

  Amelia gripped the pistol tighter in her hand. “I know. There should be sounds. Birds chirping in the trees. Insects buzzing. It is totally quiet.”

  Mora rubbed her arms. “Do you feel it?” she asked. “Eyes watching us?”

  Scanning the trees surrounding the manor house, Amelia saw nothing. But Mora was right. Amelia felt as if they were being watched. If Lord Gabriel didn’t come out of the stable in a moment, she would take Mora back inside and bolt all the doors again.

  Amelia breathed a sigh of relief when Wulf emerged from the stable. He was frowning. Even so, he was so handsome she couldn’t help but stare at him. Just as she had done those months ago in London, her chaperone finally cuffing her on the back of the head for being so bold in public.

  “The bodies are gone, just as I suspected,” Gabriel said upon reaching them. “I saw no signs of tracks. Mora, show me where the outside cellar door is.”

  The girl nodded, although it was plain that she didn’t care to be outside in the open. Gabriel took the pistol from Amelia’s hand. Their fingers brushed and again an odd tingling raced up her arm. She thought by the slight tensing of his jaw that he felt it, too.

  “Around the back of the house,” Mora said. “This way.”

  The three of them moved away from the porch and walked around the side of the manor house. Luckily, the thorny shrubs that surrounded the house would also make gaining access to the many windows on the lower floor difficult, Amelia noted.

  “They once bloomed with wild roses,” Wulf said to her, as if noting her interest in the shrubs. “That was when Robert’s mother was still alive. He’s let them go since her passing.”

  “How did you get into the house last night?” There, she would ask and put her mind to rest over the matter.

  Lord Gabriel nodded toward a tall oak that cast shade over one side of the house. “As boys, we all used to climb down that tree late at night and steal away and swim in a pond not far from here. I recalled that and climbed the tree. The window to Robert’s boyhood room was not latched. We should make sure all windows are latched when we return to the house.”

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  “Here it is.” Mora halted before a wooden door that lay upon the ground. “Look,” she breathed, nodding toward the door.

  Deep claw marks marred the old wood, as if something had been digging at it. Amelia shuddered again. Wulf studied the door.

  “I see no way to secure it from the outside. I’ll bring up whatever you think we will need, Mora; then I’ll secure the door leading to the cellar closed from the house.”

  “You sound as if we must make the house a fortress,” Amelia commented.

  “Yes,” he answered. “At least until we decide to do something different.”

  A thought occurred to Amelia. One that raised her hopes. “Surely someone will come along …”

  Wulf glanced up at her. He seemed to weigh his words; finally he shook his head. “I feel I must be honest. Both Collingsworth Manor and Wulfglen are quite isolated. And with you being on your honeymoon, I doubt anyone would think to intrude upon your privacy.”

  Damn all considerate people, Amelia thought. “We weren’t to return to London for a month. My parents expected us to stay with them until our ship set sail for abroad. An extended honeymoon. We won’t even be missed for that long.”

  “Don’t know that we have supplies to last us a month,” Mora worried. “The servants took most with them when they fled.”

  “No need to worry just yet,” Wulf warned the girl. “We are not even certain exactly what the threat is.”

  “Of course, my lord,” Mora apologized.

  Amelia had a nettling suspicion that Wulf was trying to protect her from the truth of their situation, even if he’d said he had to be honest with her earlier. The reason was obvious. He didn’t believe she could handle the truth. And yet, upstairs, he had kissed her. He had wanted her. That, she supposed, made him no different from most men. Always looking at the outside of a woman and judging. Oddly, it had never bothered her before that her face and figure alone attracted men to her. It bothered her now.

  Something bothered her worse. Staring out into the woods, she thought she saw a shadow move. And then another.

  “Come, ladies,” Wulf clipped, and glancing at him, Amelia saw that he had seen them, too. “We must return to the house and spend the day preparing.”

  He ushered Amelia and Mora toward the front of the house. One weapon. Very little in the way of food supplies. “Preparing for what exactly?” she asked.

  He was silent for a moment. Then he answered, “For the night. And whatever it brings.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Amelia had checked and double-checked the windows upstairs. Mora and Gabriel had fetched necessities from the root cellar and Gabriel had barred the door. They all now sat in the parlor as day turned to night. A cheery fire burned in the grate. Gabriel had nodded off once Mora checked his wounds. Amelia imagined the man was exhausted. The girl, too, had leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Amelia was too keyed up to rest. Besides, someone needed to maintain a vigil, and it seemed she was the one.

  Up until her marriage to Lord Robert Collingsworth, Amelia’s duties in life had been rather nonexistent, with the exception of finding a suitable match. She’d never had to wonder if she might starve because the pantries were not well stocked or fear for her very life. She had never had to question what was real and what was imagined. She’d never looked in the shadows and felt threatened by what she saw or didn’t see.

  All of that had changed on her wedding day. The absurdity of her situation made her fidget nervously. She wished she’d been practicing her needlepoint when she’d been a gangly girl instead of trying to show her younger brother up at one masculine sport after another. Then she could possibly sit and stitch to give herself something to do.

  Tea sounded heavenly and she almost leaned across the settee to nudge Mora awake and ask her to prepare her a cup. Amelia stopped herself, realizing that it was time she learned to do for herself. At least until they were safely away from Collingsworth Manor. Fixing tea wasn’t so very difficult. Amelia felt certain she could manage.

  She ignored the fact that earlier she thought she could dress herself without help, as well. Besides being humiliating, the memory was laced with thoughts of Lord Gabriel. The feel of his warm hands against her skin, the thrill of having him kiss her, of having him desire her. And as he had said, whatever happened in that brief moment of insanity, it was wrong. Wickedly, deliciously, wrong.

  Amelia rose from the settee. She moved toward the parlor door but stopped before Gabriel. In sleep, his features relaxed, he resembled more the young man in the portrait that hung in the parlor of the Wulf townhome. A lock of hair hung over one eye and she was tempted to reach out and push it aside. Why these tender feelings for a stranger? Why couldn’t she have felt them for poor Robert?

  What she needed was a distraction. Tea, she recalled, and made her way through the h
ouse to the kitchen. The stove was still stoked from the modest dinner Mora had prepared earlier. A kettle already sat upon the stove. Amelia touched the lid and jerked her hand back. She stuck her burning finger into her mouth. She glanced outside and marveled at how bright the moon shone down and how well she could see in the darkness. As she recalled the shadows she’d seen earlier, her gaze scanned the tree line closest to the house.

  A second later her heart nearly stopped beating. There, among the thick vegetation, she made out the shape of a man. A moment later he staggered forth into the yard. She saw him quite clearly in the moonlight.

  “Robert,” she breathed. “Wulf!” Amelia called. “Lord Gabriel!”

  Gabriel was beside her in a heartbeat. “What?”

  Amelia pointed. “Look, it’s Robert.”

  Robert stumbled into the yard. He went to his knees, holding out a hand as if beseeching Amelia.

  “Stay here,” Lord Gabriel said, then he was gone.

  Stay here? What if it really was Robert this time? Amelia had never seen his body. Maybe Lord Gabriel had been mistaken. Maybe Robert hadn’t been dead. Amelia rushed after Gabriel. Mora had stirred and now stood at the door, her eyes wide.

  “He told me to bolt the door behind him,” she said. “What is happening?”

  “Stay here,” Amelia repeated Gabriel’s instruction to her. “Keep watch for our return, but if you see anything or anyone else, bolt the door.”

  Amelia rushed out. She ran around the house to see Lord Gabriel standing a few feet from the man, his pistol drawn.

  “No!” she screamed. Amelia ran to Lord Gabriel and placed a hand upon his arm. “I believe it truly is Robert. He needs our help!”

  “Get back to the house!” Wulf growled. “It is not Robert, Amelia. Robert is dead.”

  How could he be so certain? The man looked like Robert to Amelia. Then he called to her.

  “Amelia.”

  Hackles rose on the back of her neck. It was the same voice she’d heard in the darkness upon her wedding night. Amelia stumbled back a step.