The Wolf of Haskell Hall

by Colleen Shannon

  The minute she saw the redness in his prominent ears, she knew he lied when he mumbled, “These blokes be so standoffish, they probably made their own mothers curtsy and sway.”

  Lil observed that he hadn’t answered the question. Her green eyes darkened to the color of polished jade. Cold. Hard. Sharp enough to cut. Lil stood, tossing her napkin beside her untouched main course. There was obviously a conspiracy of silence here. But to involve her own servants….Lil spun on her heel. “Jeremy, have my curricle brought around. I’m going to the village.”

  “But mistress….” he whined.

  “Instantly!”

  Muttering to himself something along the lines that a “man here couldn’t even have a decent meal without having to listen to female blathering,” Jeremy stuffed so much bread and meat in his mouth that he looked like a chipmunk. He rose to do her bidding, however.

  Lil ducked back around the dining room corner, pulling her driving gloves on as she did so. “I heard that! With the insubordination I’ve suffered this day, I find myself missing one of the seafaring traditions you always repine for.”

  “Sailing away on the seven seas?” Jeremy ventured.

  Lil smiled sweetly. “No, the cat-o-nine-tails. Applied to the place you’d feel it least. Your head. Now go!”

  Jeremy scurried away. As Lil donned her driving bonnet and her light capelet of black-braid trimmed green merino wool, Safira entered the vestibule. She looked at her mistress with those wise dark eyes that had always seen more deeply and easily into Lil than anyone else.

  “Mistress,” she said formally, and that was warning enough to Lil that she was treading carefully, “it is not my practice to offer counsel where none was asked, but….” She had the grace to blush slightly at Lil’s disbelieving look, but went on steadily enough. “But I feel a….disturbance in the gloaming between this world and the next.”

  “Disturbance? You mean you’re having bad dreams?” Lil straightened her bonnet in the hall tree mirror.

  “No, I wish it were only that. I feel this….foreboding, of disaster lurking around every corner of this cursed place. If we do not leave now, within the next few days, I fear it will be too late.”

  “You know what the solicitor said. Would you have all these people lose their livelihood because I’m craven?” Lil turned to meet appraise Safira’s lovely, worried face.

  “If the choice is between that and your own death, then yes, so be it.”

  Strangely, a shiver climbed up Lil’s spine despite the warmth of the capelet. “You have seen this in the bones?”

  “No. For the last few days, I have been too afraid to cast them. I smell it in the very walls of this place, and feel it every night when darkness approaches and the moon rides high.”

  Lil shrugged off her own unease and Safira’s warning. “You have been wrong before in these strange premonitions. You thought my father only had a cold, after all. Please see to the straightening of my closet while I am in the village. Things are in a sad mess there, and perhaps once you organize that, you can also sort your feelings to a semblance of normalcy.” Lil walked out to wait under the portico, but she took with her the look on Safira’s face.

  Fear. Depression. Almost….desperation. As if this time, Safira’s premonition was much harder to banish. This time, it took shape and substance, for it walked upon the moors with them.

  But the day was lovely, the sky almost as blue overhead as it had been in Ian’s picture. Jeremy was, as he played the role of tiger, for once, quiet. Lil savored the scents of moss, and heather, and the salty taste of the damp marsh wind. Despite its bleakness, this place had a curious beauty. One she’d never seen before and would likely never see again, for she knew of no landscape in America like this.

  Looking at the seamless blending of greenish-brown-blue moors to the far horizon, where the mountains took the same strange hues, Lil reflected that she could understand why Ian Griffith was so drawn to this place of his birth. The very air here made one feel….wild. Free. As if it would be a joy, in truth, to fling off her clothes and frolic naked in the moss.

  The village came in sight, relieving her from her thoughts. It was a shabby little place. Neglected too long from the tiny, dingy apothecary to the habberdashery with a crooked sign and the smithy, where at least she heard the clang of hammer on anvil.

  Hearteningly, she saw other signs of life everywhere she looked. The tiny village school was packed as she drove past, and a mob-capped barmaid bustled between the courtyard and interior of the only publican house in the village. She carried tankards of foamy ale and a jouncing bosom that drew more than one ribald eye from the dusty miners and farm workers obviously taking a noontime break.

  As Lil slowed, she noted that the barmaid lingered at a particular table half in the shadow of a great tree. She straightened her mobcap with a flirty, natural femininity Lil envied. Lil’s mother had possessed that innate understanding of how to best use the only assets females had in a male-oriented world. Lil had none of that artifice, which was one reason, no doubt, her former lover had lost patience with her. Seldom had Lil regretted that lack, but when the barmaid leaned down to whisper in her patron’s ear, Lil caught the amber gleam of hungry eyes directed at that overflowing bosom.

  Shock and outrage battled for dominance in Lil’s mind as she stared at her estate manager.

  Bold as brass, Ian sat there, his hat off in the shadow of the great tree, those strange amber eyes glowing like beacons that rivaled the bright new day. And Lil was as surely drawn to them as a ship seeking safe port in a storm.

  Safe? Balderdash! If she hadn’t been so furious, she might have laughed at the ridiculous notion. And she was a moon-eyed, green girl, despite her advancing years and dabbbling in the sensual arts, to romanticize him so.

  Lil realized she’d let the lazy carriage horse draw to a stop and graze, but she was too busy analyzing her own strange feelings to care that she was beginning to draw attention by her bizarre behavior.

  Furious with the stab of jealousy she could not control, she watched the two Cornish people share comity of more than a meal. Lil pulled the ribbon to her bonnet taut about her chin, almost choking herself, and gripped her reins more firmly. Time to drive on, forget this shocking display of lust right in the middle of town. It was clear how Ian Griffith kept the female denizens of this little village in their places.

  With an iron hand indeed!

  Still, she was hideously fascinated as Ian pulled the flirtatious barmaid down on his lap and nuzzled her neck.

  Suddenly, Lil’s pride in her lady-like bonnet and lady-like capelet and lady-like manners felt as constricting as the garments themselves.

  “Be we stopping here, mistress?” Jeremy asked hopefully.

  “Hmm?” Now the blackguard’s huge hand was splayed on the barmaid’s generous waist as he whispered in the girl’s ear. The girl tossed back her black head and laughed. A throaty, sensual laugh that would have sounded natural in bed. It drew every covetous male eye in the place.

  And two covetous, lady-like ones.

  Perhaps it was the carriage blocking the sunlight.

  Perhaps it was the intensity of her own confused emotions.

  But something drew Ian’s attention. He looked up, only his eyes moving as he continued to nuzzle the side of the girl’s neck. Plain as if he spoke it, his taunting gaze said, “Envious? You’ve only to ask….”

  Her mouth dropped open at his temerity, and her green eyes hardened to green agates. To Lil’s fury, his dark lashes went down again. He showed no trace of concern or embarrassment. He was impervious to her scorn or anger, her employee or not.

  And he kissed the top of one lush breast. Right there, an affront to decency and gentlemanly behavior everywhere.

  “Don’t mince words, nor action, neither. Now there’s a man who should be stridin’ a quarterdeck–” Jeremy said admiringly.

  He seldom offered his ultimate compliment to any landlubber, especially a backward Cornishm
an, and that only infuriated Lil more.

  “Aye, but meself thinks you’ve the wrong of it a mite.” Lil imitated Jeremy’s Cockney accent. “He’d look better hangin’ from a quarterdeck than stridin’ one.” And she clucked to the horse, well aware that her progress down the street was followed by those strange amber eyes.

  She could feel them.

  As they approached the small stone church with a white cross steeple, Lil observed tartly to Jeremy, “At least I know now where my estate manager disappears to midday. I shall have to dock his wages accordingly, since I shall not pay for such shocking behavior.”

  “A man’s got his appetites, mistress. Even these strange, backward Land’s Enders.” Jeremy climbed down to offer her a hand off her perch.

  “He can satisfy them on his own time,” Lil retorted, skirts held with miffed dignity as she walked onto the stone porch of the manse next to the church.

  Immediately, Jeremy’s expression took on a hunted look as he appraised the tiny church. “Ah, mistress….me throat’s dry as a desert. Could I….” He looked back longingly over his shoulder at the tavern.

  “Oh very well. Meet me back here in an hour.” Truth to tell, she didn’t want any witnesses to this talk. Surely even if everyone else in this county lied to her, she could count on the vicar for that truth. Perhaps some of Safira’s foreboding had worn off on her, for she feared it might be more painful than lies.

  But it had to be done. Lil reminded herself of her motto. No pretend crocodile tears, no siren call to lust, not even the false leads the hyenas hereabouts had tried to plant in her way, would distract her from this unpleasant task.

  Before she could truly feel herself the heiress of this grim, forbidding place, she had to know what had happened to her predecessor. Given how desperately everyone had tried to keep the information from her, she knew it wasn’t pleasant. But how could she arm herself for the future if she had no knowledge of the past?

  An hour later, if Lil hadn’t been wearing her bonnet, she would have pulled at her hair in frustration. The vicar was away visiting a sick tenant. The vicar’s wife was a simpering, silly woman, so intimidated by having the heiress herself in her humble abode that she spilled tea on Lil’s dress as she tried to pour it with shaky hands. When Lil gently tried to broach the subject of the former heiress, the little woman turned beet red and snapped her teeth down on a crispy scone still warm from the oven.

  “Ladies do not discuss such things,” she said after she’d meticulously wiped her mouth and hands on a tiny linen napkin.

  Lil almost snapped back that maybe, ladies didn’t, but she didn’t pretend to be one. But luckily, the door to the parsonage opened.

  The vicar was as tall and severe as his wife was plump and silly. He nodded when his wife introduced Lil, but his pale blue eyes seemed to penetrate to her spine. “And to what do we owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit?”

  His wife opened her mouth, shut it, and looked at Lil. She’d been so busy chattering that she’d never stopped to ask.

  Lil cleared her throat. “Might we have a moment of privacy, sir?”

  He deposed his long form on the shabby sofa, accepted the cup of tea his wife made just so for him, and then smiled at her. For the first time, his dour countenance softened as he said with genuine fondness, “Letty, would you make more of your delicious meat pasties for the Foster boys?”

  Immediately, Letty jumped up, her plump face concerned. “Their mother’s confined again? Poor dear.” And she was off.

  One mystery explained.

  Lil had grown up puzzling over the wondrous conundrum that was male-female attraction. Her own parents had been an odd match. This pair seemed equally mismatched, but it was apparent that what Letty lacked in courage, she made up for in kindness. And her husband, it seemed, had enough intelligence for both of them.

  “Lady Haskell, do I apprehend that you are here about your predecessor?”

  “Why, yes. How did you know? And please, it’s Miss Haskell. I am American, after all, merely the daughter of a poor miner.”

  Shrewdly, he appraised the quality of her garments. “Poor? I think not. But I know most of your servants. Many attend my church quite regularly. They were greatly aggrieved at what happened to the last heiress, and I know that they have formed something similar to the Sicilian code of silence to avoid frightening you off. Your presence is needed more than your enthusiasm, or at least so they believe.”

  “Surely the village would profit better with both.”

  Those pale blue eyes warmed slightly. “Here, here. I think perhaps that you are very different to the last heiress, a spoiled girl who insisted on her way. Whether it was safe or not.”

  Was that a subtle warning? Lil wondered. “And what did she do that was so unsafe?”

  He paused to taste a scone, and she sensed the debate behind that calm countenance. “She liked to ride upon the moors. Alone. At night.”

  Lil laughed. “If that was her grievous sin, you’ve no fear I shall repeat it. I do not like to ride. And I have never ventured onto the moors after dark.” Until today, she hadn’t ventured on them at all, but he didn’t need to know that.

  But he apparently did, for he smiled slightly at her prevarication. “It has been my experience that only when we face what most frightens us do we conquer the fear.”

  Arrested, Lil stared at him. “Are you related to a Miss Shelly Holmes?” she asked.

  “Why yes. She’s my first cousin. I recommended her for her current position.”

  “I should love to meet the rest of your family.” In that, she was quite sincere.

  He had the same deep, honking laugh, too. “A trying affair, I’m afraid. All of us invariably try to get the best of one another, proposing riddles, solving anagrams, and the like.”

  With her usual forthrightness, Lil almost spoke her mind, but she bit back the question instead.

  “That’s quite all right,” he replied as if she’d spoken. “It is an odd occupation for one of my bent to choose, but I find that, the more one thinks, the more one needs respite in duty. Caring for the sick. Preparing dull sermons so the children will squirm as is their own duty.”

  Lil laughed. “Dull? You, sir? This, I doubt. And I shall so discover the truth for myself when I attend church this Sunday.”

  “I shall be quaking in my slippers.” His honking laugh joined hers in the tiny room, an easy acknowledgment that, like his cousin, he almost never quaked at anything.

  They sobered soon enough. He nodded, again as if she’d spoken, and said, “Quite right. Enough roundaboutation. I do not blame you for your fears, Miss Haskell. Or your precautions. Both are well placed.” But he hesitated again.

  The truth, when it finally came, roiled through her like a tidal wave.

  “There is no easy way to say this. So…The previous heiress was ripped apart by wolves.”

  “Wolves? I didn’t know there were any left in these parts.” She pulled the capelet closer about her shoulders. The room was warm, but still, she was suddenly cold.

  “A few are sighted from time to time, closer to the mountains.”

  “But….the mountains are miles away.”

  Vicar Holmes didn’t reply.

  “If this was merely an unhappy accident, there’s no reason for a conspiracy that has obviously included my own servants. Poor girl. A terrible fate, no doubt–”

  “Her heart was eaten.”

  Her own heart seemed to lodge in her very throat, pounding frantically. “Only….h-her heart?”

  “So we heard. Miss Haskell, are you all right?”

  Lil surged upright again, only then realizing she’d sagged against the sofa back. “Of course. This….is why Miss Holmes came here, isn’t it?”

  “This exact information was not allowed in the papers, but yes. I told her. She’s something of an investigator of strange phenomena.”

  “A hobby?”

  “A calling. One she excels at.”

  “And
what has she discovered so far?”

  “That, you will have to ask her. She never talks about her investigations until she’s solved them.”

  Which meant she must be a long way from solving this one, Lil deduced. “Vicar Holmes, I have to know….am I in danger, too?”

  He hesitated, but then he rose, went to a desk, unlocked a hidden drawer, and retrieved a pile of yellowed newspapers. “These will answer you far better than I.”

  Her hands shaking, Lil thumbed through them, feeling as if she were, in truth, all thumbs. They were in chronological order. The first account went back to….Lil gasped, wondering if she read the faded, brittle paper and strange printing right. “Almost one hundred years ago?”

  “Yes. 1779. The first heiress, reputedly the daughter of the last of the male line. Next year will mark the one hundredth anniversary of the first death.”

  “H-How long did she survive as the heiress?”

  “The years vary. Sometimes almost an entire lifetime. Your….predecessor died within a few months of taking possession.”

  “So….this has happened repeatedly? The heiresses all die the same way?”

  “Yes.”

  Lil flipped through the rest of the accounts, looking only at dates. By her reckoning, roughly five heiresses had died this way, their throats ripped out, their hearts eaten. All on the moors. All at night. And they were all alone.

  Lil tossed the sheaf of papers aside. “But that’s preposterous!” Reason began to master fear, and her voice was clear, the hint of Scottish brogue stronger. “Fiction. A legend propagated by people hereabouts to frighten outsiders.” Yes, that was it, Lil told herself. These people were more insular than any she’d ever known in the brash wildness of America, and they’d do anything to keep their culture sacred.

  But that didn’t make sense, either. These villagers needed her, as the conspiracy proved.

  “I wondered about that once, too,” he interrupted her chaotic thoughts. “But…this time, I saw the body myself.”

  Lil’s stiff spine wilted. “But why? No wolf would only eat the heart. They’d consume everything if they were hungry enough to approach civilization so far from the mountains.”