Shelly kissed him back. And when he groaned into her mouth, one of his hands fondling her breast, she opened her lips to the thrust of his tongue. When he reached around her to fumble with the lock on the salon door and lead her to the divan, she went meekly.
Well, perhaps it wasn’t precisely meek to rip Jeremy’s shirt and pants open, but he didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he helped. And then it was his turn. In contrast, he very slowly, very sensually, unbuttoned her shirt.
With his teeth. Dabbling his tongue along the exposed skin as he went.
Before she lost herself in the only act that ever gave her liberty from the dispassion of her own thoughts, she realized four things. One, she was glad she didn’t bother with such encumbrances as chemises. Two, she was glad she’d judged him correctly: of unusual size and virility for a man his height and age.
Three, as she pulled him free of his breeches, she was glad she still wore her gloves.
She’d have to be very careful not to scratch him in the heat of passion.
Four, and most liberating of all….whether this was moral, or even smart, well, for once she’d act, not think.
Feel, not reason.
As Jeremy pulled her breeches down her long legs and kissed the vee already most for him, Shelly stared blindly out the window, wondering why she felt the sensations much more keenly than usual. His scent whirling in her head, his gentle touch setting up a measured pulsing in her loins, Shelly smiled back at the moon, admiring the way Venus dangled bright from one crescent point, Antares from the other.
And then, thankfully, Shelly let her five senses sweep over her and carry her away. This, too, was as much a strange gift from this strange little man as a bequeathal of the moon: for the first time in her long, lonely life, Shelly Holmes didn’t think at all.
From the moldy, dank and dark cellar, Ian Griffith stared out at the same moon. He clutched the bars of the one tiny window above ground level and wondered why, even mid month, the crescent moon seemed to draw his spirit out of his body to prowl the moors. Biting his lip savagely until he tasted his own blood, he found strength enough to turn aside from that alluring glow and huddle in the corner.
His werewolf senses were becoming more acute with every month that passed, and even as he reveled in the sounds and scents of the night, he despaired. Perhaps this month, or the next, he wouldn’t return to himself at all. He’d remain a werewolf until the villagers hunted him down and shot him through the heart.
At least, that would have been his fate, if he hadn’t wrested his destiny back in this last desperate act. Now, he’d be imprisoned in this tiny, foul smelling place until the next change. Then all the whispers and gossip would end as villagers lined up to gawk at the curiosity they’d all suspected for many years but never truly believed in, good, practical Cornishmen that they were.
Ian wrapped his arms about his legs, rocking back and forth, but that was the only movement he allowed himself at the moment. He’d already paced a path in the mud floor, and pacing only made him more restless, the weight of his confinement even worse. The longing to run free almost made him choke, so he closed his eyes to rats eyeing him from opposite corners and visualized something more precious to him even than liberty.
Delilah.
Delilah as she’d been next to the pool, flushed and shyly eager with the passion neither of them could control. Not as she’d looked, ghastly with fear and accusation, judging him, like all the others, from atop his own horse.
He’d walked the moors for hours, trying to decide what to do. He couldn’t go home. He had no home any more save these barren wastes. He couldn’t run away, for he took this sickness with him and left the people he loved helpless before the other werewolf. He could hide. Amongst the Druid stones and the ancient burial site that even the locals avoided, saying it was haunted.
But none of those options protected Delilah. As far as he could see, only one act would safeguard the woman he loved as a man, and the heiress he was fated to kill as a wolf: he’d turn himself in.
Imprisoned, ridiculed, set to hang, he’d end as he deserved, but at least Delilah Haskell Trent would be safe from her role in the curse.
And he’d never have to see that look in her eyes again.
Ian tried to take peace in what he’d done, for at least it was the act of a rational human being, not a wild beast. But the clawing need to get out of this stifling, enclosed space made his sacrifice seem more than he could bear.
And then distraction came, but not in a sound he welcomed.
A snarl. A vicious growling. And a scream.
Ian ran to the window, his head cocked, listening. Somewhere in the village, the other attacked. A boy, by the sounds of it. Screams that trailed off to a gurgle too faint for anyone with normal senses to hear.
Ian ran to the cell door, pounding on it until his knuckles were bloody, trying to raise an alert, but no one came running. He pulled with all his human strength at the bars, but he was too weak, the bars far too strong. He’d never get through them anyway, at least not without a powerful amount of digging.
The screams trailed off. Then there was only the sound of feeding.
Scents drifted to him.
Blood. Excrement. Death. And then…nothing.
Ian sank back to the floor, dully aware that at least this act proved his claim to the sheriff that there was more than one werewolf. It still wouldn’t vindicate him, however, especially when he awoke next to the waitress he’d once made love to.
But as the normal night sounds and scents soothed his senses again, calming him enough for reflection, Ian sat up straight in terror. “Idiot!”
Somehow, the other had found an ability to control the change. The full moon was two weeks away.
Even more frightening, he’d murdered a boy, someone who was not of Haskell blood.
The other killed now for sport.
Locked up in here, Ian hadn’t a hope of protecting Delilah.
The next morning, Delilah felt much stronger. Equal to any task, even convincing the sheriff to release Ian into her custody. As she called for her second, more serviceable curricle at the stables, she saw Shelly exit her quarters, a strange smile on her face. Behind her came….Jeremy.
Having recently become, well, intimately familiar with how strong the passions could be between the sexes, Lil didn’t need more than the blush on Shelly’s face to deduce that the two had spent the night together.
If Shelly’s feathers looked a trifle ruffled, Jeremy definitely had a tomcat’s satisfied grin as he watched his ‘ducky’ blush. Lil could almost see feathers drifting from his mouth as he doffed his cap and wished her a cheery good morning.
Lil smiled blandly back at them both, pretending she’d noted nothing out of the ordinary. “I’m off to the village. Are you coming, Shelly?”
Shelly nodded and hurried off with a sigh of relief. Jeremy watched her go, a gleam in his eyes Lil had never seen before, and then he offered his arm to Lil. She accepted his help into the curricle, but when he climbed up behind in the tiger’s seat, she turned to him. “This may take the better part of the day, Jeremy. Are you sure you wish to come?”
“Aye. With murder and mayhem roamin’ about, ye think I’d let me two gals go by their ownselves?” And he answered something similar to Shelly’s complaint.
And somehow, though she had no reason to be worried in the cloudless day, Jeremy’s small but stalwart presence in the tiger’s seat was a great comfort to Lil during the short ride into town.
When they arrived, they found the streets almost deserted. A dull, angry roar came from the direction of the grainery office that also served as the town’s gaol. Lil clucked urgently to the horse, her heart pounding with fear for Ian.
So many of the men from the countryside clustered at the door of the sturdy building that at first, Lil couldn’t see what they were angry about. But several in back moved aside, and Lil saw a low cart near the steps, and above that, two old men holding ancient blunderbuss
es aimed at the crowd.
Lil had never seen a lynch party, but Jeremy obviously had. He grabbed the carriage pistol and leaped down, elbowing through the crowd. Terrified for both Ian and Jeremy, Lil tried to get down to follow him, but Shelly caught her arm.
“These men won’t take favorably to interference from either of us. Remember, they consider us both outsiders. Let Jeremy handle this. It’s obvious he’s faced mobs before.”
“But he’s an outsider, too.”
“Yes, but at least he’s a man.” Shelly’s lip curled as she watched those of the opposite gender mill about like frightened cattle about to stampede. “The big question is, what’s in that cart that has them so afraid?”
Lil stood on the tiger’s seat, and she was finally able to peer down inside the cart. She gagged, covering her mouth.
Shelly’s eyes darkened. Absently, she straightened her gloves over her own hands. “Pity,” she murmured. “Can you tell who it is?”
“It looks….like a boy.”
Shelly nodded without surprise. “I suspected the larger wolf didn’t die. I went back the next day just to be sure there were no pawprints, but there were. Leading away from the bog. This is proof positive that this werewolf has the strength and ferocity of his lupine half and the cunning of his human half. Only a man would know that, to escape a bog, you let it take you and swim into it instead of struggle to escape. It’s still out there, Lil. Still killing.”
Dumbstruck, Lil stared down into Shelly’s hard gray eyes, trying to grapple with both the fact that the alpha werewolf had survived, and was killing mid month now, too, but a voice they both recognized came from the men agitating near the front of the crowd.
Thomas said, “We’ve evidence aplenty that this unnatural creature must be stopped. Let’s do it now, before night falls, and he kills again.”
One of the guards on the stoop spat in the dirt. “He were in that cell all night long, I locked him in meself. That blood’s fresh, so some other critter did it. Mebbe even wolves, real ones this time. Stay back, all of ye. My eyes ain’t too good, but this here cannon has enough shot to send half of ye home, butts a stingin’.”
Preston’s voice came next. “How do you know this beastly hell hound can’t shape shift and get through the bars? He admitted to killing the girl. Ian Griffith is like all wild animals Once he tastes blood, nothing else will satisfy him! We must stop him, now, before more of our people die so horribly.”
Lil saw a swelling in the mob near the steps, and it reminded her of a vast, foul pustule about to burst. And then, blessedly, she heard Jeremy’s voice.
Calm. Rock hard. “Go ahead, me hearties, take justice into yer own hands. But be willin’ to face yer kids and wives this evenin’, for, rape me if else, ye go home the same as the critter ye claim to stop. Blood drippin’ on yer hands.”
Abrupt silence. But then the rabble rousers safest in the middle shoved those in front.
One nervous guard got a bit too ready with his finger, and the BOOM! made Lil cover her ears and pray Jeremy wasn’t hurt.
A few of the men near the steps groaned and backed off. But it was apparent they’d only gotten a bit of lead and were not seriously hurt.
Taking advantage of the startled break in the crowd, Jeremy shoved through them and climbed up the steps. He stood next to the guards, who really looked scared now.
Thomas’s voice rang out again, “It’s no different to shooting a rabid dog–”
But Jeremy’s voice was stentorian, with the ringing authority learned by a man who’d shouted many a captain’s order through a gale. “Avast, ye nodcocks! Cursed Griffith may be, but he’s one o’ ye, and he’s risked his life fer ye moren’ once. Can ye say the same o’ these lily-livered lords tryin’ to rile ye to do their dirty work? Griffith turned himself in. Be that the act o’ a blood-thirsty fiend?”
This time, the mutters stopped altogether.
From her perch, Lil saw several of the men in back exchange chagrined looks. A few, eyes focused on the ground as they passed so they wouldn’t have to look at her, slithered off in shame. And with their leaving, went the support of the ones in the middle.
They, too, dispersed, and that soon left the ones in front exposed. With sympathetic looks at the farmer who, Lil saw now, had cried throughout the ordeal, they covered the lad’s defiled body and carried him up the street.
Swiping his nose on his sleeve, the farmer followed. “What will I tell me missus?”
Lil’s heart ached for him, and she became more determined than ever to find a remedy for this foul legacy that had begun to strike more than those of Haskell blood.
When the villagers were gone, Lil and Shelly approached the steps, where Preston and Thomas still glared up at the guards and Jeremy.
Startled, Thomas turned to her, and some of the anger faded from his face. “I’m sorry you had to hear this unpleasantness.”
“And I’m sorry you had to cause it,” Lil rejoined coldly. “Why do you hate Ian so?”
“An unsavory tale, I’m afraid, not fit for your tender ears. Now, my good man,” Thomas turned an imperious gaze on one of the cowering guards, “I wish to see your prisoner for myself, verify that his bars have not been tampered with.”
The guards exchanged an uncertain look.
Jeremy inserted, “I’ll go with them. Keep ‘em peaceable.”
Relieved at not having to escort the brothers themselves, the guards nodded eagerly.
When Jeremy and the brothers entered the small, dark office, Lil and Shelly followed.
The scent of rotten grain knocked Lil back two paces, but she covered her nose and followed the three men down a curving flight of stairs. As the dank, depressing place swallowed all the bright joy of the open countryside outside, she could only wonder how badly Ian’s wild spirit must be chomping at the bit.
She deduced that, long ago, the cellar might have been a temporary storage facility, but this grainery had long since grown outmoded. It was seldom used for anything but a jail and an occasional customs’ house.
When they reached the cell, Lil heard a hoarse curse and what sounded like the growl of a wounded animal. A heavy thud came as Ian’s full weight pressed against the sturdy door inset with a small grill. “You cowards! You’re the lowest vermin, to always blame another for your own cr–” Ian broke off when he saw Lil and Shelly behind the three men.
Using the key a guard had given him, Jeremy opened the cell door. “Back up, lad. We must inspect your window bars.” Just in case, Jeremy pulled the pistol from his belt.
But the grill was blank now, the cell grimly silent.
Quelling her own sense of dread, and a deeper despair that Ian was trapped in this terrible place, Lil followed the brothers into the cell. Shelly crowded behind her, and Jeremy blocked the door, his pistol at the ready.
The cell was so full Ian barely had room to back away, but he managed to turn his face into a corner and ignore them.
But Lil saw his trembling shoulders and realized the effort it cost him not to attack these two aristocrats. What was the feud between them? One strong enough to make them want to kill each other?
She longed to go to him, to offer words of comfort, but now was not the time, and it most certainly was not the place.
As Shelly and Thomas stepped around Ian to carefully examine the bars on the tiny window that was far too small for Ian to slip through, anyway, Lil was distracted by something else, something far more tangible to her than fear. Muttering a small oath of pain, Lil slipped her hand inside her dress to see what was burning her. Until she touched it, so warm to her touch she could barely hold it, Lil had forgotten the moonstone. Turning her own back, Lil pulled the amulet from her dress.
It glowed. Pale blue. Eerily bright and luminescent as the moon it emulated.
A warning. The one who would try to kill her was present….
Swallowing, Lil shoved the amulet back inside her gown. Making sure it overlay her chemise, she turned back to the o
thers, glad for the darkness. At least they couldn’t see the tears in her eyes as she looked at the man she loved.
The one who would, in less than a month, probably try to kill her again.
But then, with an instinct that had little to do with reason and all to do with desperate hope, she glanced at the brothers, both pulling now at the bars.
They were entirely too eager to implant the accusation Ian had escaped somehow last night. Could it be they were trying to cover their own crime? Maybe no one had ever seen any trace of the other werewolf’s manly patterns because no one dared follow it to its lair. Or watch it take human form as it sought its true den of iniquity.
The wealthiest estate in the district.
Clutching the warm moonstone again for comfort, Lil decided that tonight, during the ball, she’d have to do a bit of investigating herself. But she’d better not tell Shelly or Jeremy, or they’d have a fit.
Satisfied the bars were secure, Shelly finally turned aside, giving the two brothers a scornful look. Then she smiled over at Lil.
Lil’s quick returning smile faded.
In the shadowy cellar, Shelly’s eyes glowed greenish gray…..
CHAPTER ELEVEN
With a frustrated snarl, Thomas turned away from the barred window. “I don’t know how he did it, but somehow he got out last night.”
“Perhaps it’s a phoenix we should be looking for instead of a werewolf,” Shelly said sweetly. “Only a bird could flee this cage.”
Thomas ignored her, watching Ian with an enmity as dark and dank as the cellar itself. “Perhaps you’ve fooled these women,” his tone implied idiots, but he didn’t quite go that far, “but I know you for what you are, and before the month is out I’ll prove it.” Thomas turned on his heel, but Shelly blocked the door.
“From what I understand, the sheriff has been summoned. Perhaps you should stay and share your evidence with him. After all, we can’t have monsters roaming the countryside, now can we?” Shelly looked him up and down. “Especially if they’re so thoroughly well disguised–or not.”
The Wolf of Haskell Hall Page 20