Dawn Thompson (3 page)

Lulled by the snapping and crackling of the logs in the hearth, he began to doze. Sleep dulled the pain and his fingers relaxed on the glass in his hand. When the knock came at the study door, the snifter slipped from his fingers and shattered on the floorboards that edged the Aubusson carpet, scattering glass shards and what remained of the brandy in all directions.

Joss lurched erect, his sleep-dazed eyes trained upon the study door. “Come!” he said, clearing the thickness from his voice. He vaulted upright in the chair. For a moment he was disoriented. His sleep had been sound.

Grace entered, sketching a curtsy—no mean task, he observed, considering her age and circumference.
She must be nearly seventy now,
he thought.

“The young lady hasn’t come ’round,” she said, “but we done for her as best we can, and she appears ta be restin’ comfortable. Cook is fixin’ an herbal draught ta bring the fever down, and we’ll try to get her ta take it, but she needs the surgeon, and there’s nothin’ for it till the snow stops fallin’. ’Twill be a miracle if the poor lass don’t take pneumonia.”

“The blood . . . Was she . . . injured?” Joss said.

“There was some bruises on her, and a real bad lump on her head, which is probably why she ain’t come ’round. Cook’s makin’ a poultice, but there was no wounds ta cause blood the likes o’ what was on her frock.”

“There were others in the coach that had been savaged by a wild dog. The blood was evidently theirs,” Joss explained, ignoring the woman’s gasp. “Did you burn her things?”

Grace gave a crisp nod. “Tossed them straight inta the kitchen hearth, I did. Her mantle’s dryin’ out below stairs.”

“Good,” he replied. “I do not want her left alone. Have Amy stay with her till she comes ’round. Her companions are dead. It must have been a terrible ordeal for her. She is bound to be frightened when she wakes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll look in on her before I retire.”

The housekeeper opened her mouth to speak, but a hollow pounding on the front door echoing through the Great Hall and along the corridor brought Joss to his feet, and he streaked past her. Bates had shuffled to the door and opened it by the time Joss appeared with Grace in tow. A man stood on the threshold dressed in coachman’s togs, a green coat with a wide skirt, a wide-brimmed, low-crowned brown hat, cord breeches and top boots—all caked with snow. The only thing that wasn’t was the bright red traveling scarf he had tucked inside his coat.

“Beggin’ your pardon, gov’nor,” the man panted. “I’ve lost my way. My coach bogged down in the snow. I went off afoot to get help . . . and got lost in the blizzard. . . .”

He hadn’t crossed the threshold. Snow was swirling past him in little whorls, and his caped coat was flapping
in the wind. Could this be the missing coachman from the carriage on the moor? If it was, he knew naught of the fate of his passengers. Something didn’t ring true. He was either a colossal dunce, or there was more to it than he was telling. Why hadn’t he unhitched one of the horses to go for help instead of trudging through the drifts afoot? Still, the poor man looked done in, and Joss could hardly turn him away.

“Come in, man,” he said. “I believe I have given one of your passengers sanctuary.”

The coachman stepped inside and jumped out of the way as Bates slammed the door shut on the storm.

“Only one?” the man said. “There were five in that coach.”

“The rest are dead,” Joss said. “I came upon them just after dark.”

“How dead?” the coachman queried, doffing his hat. He was a man of middle age, clean shaven, his dark wet hair plastered to his head. He was tall and thin, with angular features and the sharpest pair of black Gypsy eyes Joss had ever seen. “They were alive when I left them.”

“They were attacked by a wild dog,” Joss told him. “I chased it off, but not in time, I’m afraid. How is it that you didn’t take one of the horses instead of floundering about afoot in this blizzard?”

“I thought I saw lights off to the east, and I was sure I could reach them easily enough afoot. I was mistaken. ’Twas will-o’-the-wisp, no doubt; the fells can be deceiving at night. Where is this place?”

“Whitebriar Abbey,” Joss said. “I am Joss Hyde-White. This is my home. And you . . . ?”

“Owen Sikes, at your service, sir,” the coachman said, sketching a bow.

“Well, Sikes, you look about to drop in your tracks,
and there is naught to be done tonight. Go along with Bates and Grace here. They will see you have something to warm your belly and a place to sleep in the servants’ quarters. Then, in the morning, once the storm has passed over, I will take you to your coach. I managed to save one of your horses. The other had to be destroyed, I’m afraid.”

“Thank you kindly, sir,” the coachman said, sketching another bow. “You’re a fine gentleman to be givin’ shelter to a total stranger on such a night as this is.”

“I wouldn’t turn a dog out in such a storm,” Joss said.

The coachman smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. “I was banking on that, sir,” he said, giving a nod and following the Bateses toward the servants’ quarters behind the green baise door under the stairs.

Amy was nodding in the chair when Joss entered the yellow suite. That wouldn’t do. When he shut the door behind him, the mousy little maid scrabbled up, wide-eyed, squaring her posture, and she surged to her feet as if she’d been launched from a catapult as he prowled closer to the bed.

“She hasn’t come ’round?” Joss said.

Amy cleared her throat. “N-no, sir,” she replied. “She’s limp as a rag poppet, she is. The fever seems to be goin’ down some, though. We give her some o’ Cook’s herbal tisane, and it’s took hold right nice.”

Joss stared down at the unconscious girl. How pale she was. There was no trace of the blood now, but he could still detect the odor of it lingering in the air. How strong his senses were becoming: he’d only just begun to realize. Cold chills riddled him. He didn’t need to think about that now, but the unanswered questions kept gnawing at his thoughts, prying their way into his mind. What was happening to him, and why?

A hitch in the girl’s breathing brought him back to
the present; a gentle, barely audible groan, though she didn’t move. He stepped closer. How frail she looked, dwarfed in the huge sleigh bed beneath the mound of quilts and counterpanes Grace and Amy had heaped upon her. Circulation must be returning. That had to be a good sign. He studied the planes of her delicate face, the high cheekbones and wide-set eyes whose dark sweeping lashes rested on the alabaster flesh beneath. Her gently bowed lips were still tinged with blue. How lovely they would be tinted with the color the cold had robbed from them. And her hair, long and wavy, was a rich shade of brown, like chestnuts warmed by the sun, drifting over the eiderdown pillow. Something pinged in his sex. It had been a long time since he’d been with a woman.

He turned to the maid. “Go and fetch Grace,” he said. “Tell her I want her to spell you and remain here in this chamber with the young lady through the night.”

“But I thought I was ta—”

“No,” he interrupted. “I caught you nodding when I came in just now. We cannot have that. Our guest has just come through a horrendous ordeal. When she wakes, she will be frightened to find herself in a strange place. Grace will be better at dealing with that than you.” No doubt the silly chit had been looking forward to a comfortable night beside a roaring fire in the well-appointed chamber. Grace would be the better choice.

“Yes, sir,” Amy said, pouting.

“Run on, then, girl, and tell Grace to bring the poultice. That’s a nasty bruise on her brow.”

Amy grumbled another “Yes, sir,” bobbed a careless bow, and quit the chamber.

Minutes later, with the girl’s care resolved and Grace in Amy’s place fully instructed with orders to fetch him
at once if she regained consciousness, Joss dragged himself to his own chamber and his warm bed. Yet, exhausted though he was, he couldn’t stay in it.

Outside, the storm showed no signs of stopping. The hissing of the blowing snow assailing the mullioned panes in his bedchamber window, and the howling of the relentless wind, screaming like a woman, gave him no peace. It reminded him of the strange young lady down the hall in the yellow suite. Cold air was seeping in through the panes, teasing the fire in the hearth, and tall flames leapt into the air trailing smoke, casting grotesque shadows on the walls and ceiling. Was the chimney clogged with snow? The heat of the fire would eventually melt it if that were the case. But he’d scarcely completed that thought when a heavy clump of the stuff plopped into the middle of the flames in a hissing, spitting whoosh of ghostly white that all but put the fire out.

Hissing within, hissing without. It seemed as if he had been cast into a pit of angry snakes. It was no use. Surging out of the bed, Joss padded toward the window and parted the heavy gold portieres. Below, the tor was a solid mound of white tinted blue in the darkness. The driving snow was impossible to penetrate with the eye. Joss couldn’t even see the courtyard, much less the kirk in the valley below. A run on the moor would be welcome right now. That would tire him enough to sleep, but the prospect of going back out into that frozen wilderness—even in wolf form—after finally thawing out was unthinkable. Besides, he couldn’t take the shape of a wolf now, not with strangers in the house, in any case. But he could go abroad in the house as he was. Something was not as it should be. He had, since a child, been able to perceive when things weren’t just so, when a threat of danger or deception was near. That gift
was awakened now, detaining him from his sleep, preventing it. It had activated earlier, when he’d found Amy nodding in the chair in the yellow suite. What would he find if he went there now? There was only one way to know for certain.

Shrugging on his dressing gown, he cinched it about his waist and burst through his bedchamber door barefoot. The Oriental carpet runners he remembered crawling over as a babe had been rendered to threadbare tatters. They were taken up by the time he was breeched, and the floor was cold against his just thawed bare feet. Riveting chills shot through his body, causing him to misstep. Maybe he should have shape-shifted into wolf form after all. He never felt such things in his wolf incarnation, or if he did, he took no notice.

That part of the
condition,
as his father called it, had always appealed to him. The shapechange had manifested itself early, when he reached puberty. He never could fathom why his mother and father were so upset over it, since they, too, possessed the gift. Why hadn’t they ever told him about the rest? If only they had been at the London townhouse. But they had not, and now he was on his own, with strangers in the house, and something untoward was about to happen; he could feel it in his marrow-chilled bones.

Those thoughts had gotten him to the yellow suite without realizing it. Lifting the latch soundlessly, he opened the door and stepped inside only to pull up short on the threshold. Now Grace was asleep in the chair, and a strange, dark figure was stooping over the girl in the bed. At the click of the latch, the figure spun toward him. It was the coachman.

“What are you doing here, Sikes?” Joss said. His voice had all the subtlety of a thunderclap, but Grace didn’t
move, curled in the large old wing chair beside the hearth. Was the woman drunk?

“You startled me, sir!” the coachman gushed. He nodded toward Grace, laying a finger across his lips. “Shhh . . . or you’ll wake her. I’ve taken great pains not to do that.”

Joss paid him no mind. Let Grace wake. She had some explaining to do. “You dare to ‘shhh’
me,
sir? Why are you in this room—in this part of the house, come to that? You were given accommodations in the servants’ quarters. You weren’t given leave to prowl about the Abbey.”

“Forgive me, sir,” the coachman gushed again, “I could not sleep without seeing that the young lady was resting comfortably with my own eyes—not after hearing that all the others . . . are dead.”

“Well, you have seen. Now I must insist that you return to the servants’ quarters, and kindly remain there until I send for you. Morning comes quickly, and we have your other unfortunate passengers to deal with once the snow stops falling.” What was the matter with Grace? She should have wakened by now, considering their raised voices. If she weren’t snoring, he would have thought her dead, slouched as she was in the wing chair.

The coachman bowed. “Of course, sir,” he said. “Dreadfully sorry if I’ve erred and overstepped my bounds. I meant no harm.”

Joss studied the man, looking deep into his dark eyes. Something in them made him uneasy, and drove his gaze away. Perhaps he should have shapeshifted into the wolf after all; his intuition was always heightened when he took that form. He heaved a sigh. His imagination
was running away with him. After the events of the past few hours, he shouldn’t wonder.

“Wait,” he said, arresting the man with a firm hand on his arm as he passed. “She was your passenger. You should know something about her. What is her name? Who were her companions in that coach? Where were you taking them?”

The coachman hesitated. A smug smile creased his lips. He’d smiled that smile before. There was neither warmth nor good humor in it, but rather a patronizing air of superiority that was most annoying. The man was working class, after all.

“She is Miss Cora Applegate,” Sikes said. “Her father, Algernon Applegate, hired my coach. The young gentleman was her intended. I do not know his name, nor that of the other elder gentleman, his father. We were headed for Gretna Green.”

“I see,” Joss said, though he didn’t see at all. His eyebrow lifted, and his forehead wrinkled in a thoughtful frown, narrowing his gaze. “All haste to the anvil, with both parties’ fathers in such a storm? An odd business, I daresay. Why not a cozy drawing room, or a church wedding? Or was this the sort of wedding that is prodded by the barrel of a gun?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir,” said the coachman. “My coach is for hire to any who can pay the price. I do not make it a practice to meddle in my passengers’ affairs.”