CHAPTER SIX
Anna was not sure why she was so certain that the body they were speaking of was the maid Estelle, but she was. She felt suddenly weak in the knees, and her concerns of a few moments earlier fled her mind. Turning, she hurried over to where her brother stood with Lady Kyria and Miss Farrington, and slipped her hand through his arm. He glanced down at her, his hand going protectively over hers.
“Do you know what’s happening?” Anna asked Kyria, who shook her head.
“I just heard someone say they’d found a body.”
At that moment Rafe McIntyre came up beside his wife, sliding a supporting hand around her waist. She leaned into him a little, casting him a grateful glance. “Who is that man?” Kyria asked, nodding toward Reed and the others.
“The constable,” Anna replied. “I think he must have come to fetch Dr. Felton.”
“Oh, dear, how awful,” Rosemary Farrington gasped, looking pale.
“What if it’s Estelle?” Anna asked her brother.
“Who?” Kyria asked. “Who is Estelle?”
“We don’t know that it is she,” Kit protested. “It could be anybody.”
“She is one of our maids,” Anna explained to the others. “She has been missing the past few days. Everyone thought she had run away with a man, but…”
Anna cast another look toward the door. Dr. Felton and the constable were no longer there, and Reed was walking toward his sister, the rest of the party falling around him, clamoring with questions. When he reached his sister, he said quietly, “I am sorry to spoil your party, my dear.”
“Never mind that,” Kyria said, shaking her head impatiently. “What is going on?”
“Apparently a body has been found.”
“Where was it?” Anna asked, her mind going again to the woods and the strange feeling she had had there the other day—though surely the body could not have been found there, for she had seen nothing.
Reed shook his head. “I’m not sure. I believe the constable said something like Hutchins’ farm. I think a farmer found her.”
“Sam Hutchins?” Kit supplied. “He is one of our tenants. I mean, one of my uncle’s tenants.”
“Yes, I got the impression it was on de Winter land.”
“Do they know who it is?” Kit asked, and Reed shook his head.
“He did not say. Only that they needed the doctor to examine the body.”
“Miss Holcomb is afraid that it might be one of their servant girls,” Kyria explained.
“Estelle Akins. She left the house several days ago. We thought she had gone off with someone.” Distress filled Anna’s voice. “We should have looked harder. Done something more.”
“Now, Anna, you don’t know that the body is Estelle’s,” Kit pointed out. “Nor do we have any idea what happened. And how could we have known? She obviously left the house on her own.”
“I know. It’s just—” Anna thought again of her feeling in the woods that day. She had known something was wrong; she had felt it strongly. No one would have believed her, she supposed; she scarcely believed it herself. But she could have pushed the issue, she thought; she could have sent the men out searching farther afield than she had.
Yet even as those thoughts went through her head, she knew that she would not have thought to send the men as far away as Hutchins’ farm, where the body had been found. The “vision” she had seen—or felt, or whatever one called it—had been in the woods.
Anna looked at Reed and asked, “What happened?”
Again Reed shook his head. “I’m not sure.”
“There were claw marks,” said the squire from behind them. “I heard Wright say there were claw marks on the body.”
Anna’s eyes widened, and her mind went immediately to the dog that the twins had found, its side slashed. Her eyes went to her brother. There were gasps from several of the guests, and the vicar’s wife said in a horrified whisper, “The Beast!”
“Now, my dear…” the vicar began in a soothing tone.
“The beast?” Kyria repeated, glancing around. “What beast? What are you talking about?”
“The Beast of Craydon Tor,” Mrs. Bennett said in tones of awe.
“It’s nothing,” Anna said flatly. “Just a local legend.”
“My dear, how can you say that?” the vicar’s wife admonished her.
“The area is full of legends,” Kit said. “All of them apocryphal, I’m sure.”
“I told you one of them,” Reed said to his sister. “How the staghounds on the columns at the gate come to life at the full moon and follow their dead master as he races on his phantom horse through the countryside.”
“Yes, you did,” Kyria said with a dramatic shudder, “and it gave me the shivers, I can tell you. But is that what they call the beast?”
“The Beast is something altogether different,” the squire’s wife said.
“Long, long ago,” piped up Felicity Bennett, in the tone of one telling a fairy tale, “there was an important nobleman—one of the de Winters, perhaps, but it was so long ago, no one knows who. He had a beautiful young daughter, and he betrothed her to another lord. But the daughter had already fallen in love with a local lad, and when her father told her that she was to marry the lord, she refused. He locked her in her room, but the local lad helped her escape and they fled into the forest. Lord de Winter and his men hunted them down and killed the girl’s lover right in front of her. He took her back to the castle, and that very night, the girl, crazed with grief, flung herself to her death in the castle courtyard.”
“A rather typical legend,” Mr. Norton, the solicitor said, somewhat pompously.
“I don’t understand,” Rosemary Farrington said. “It’s very sad, but what does it have to do with a beast?”
“That’s the next part.” Felicity picked up the story. “The boy the nobleman killed was the son of a witch, and she was furious. She went to the nobleman and put a curse on him for having killed her son, and for causing his own daughter’s death, as well. She changed him into a beast, part man, part animal, and doomed him to roam the earth forever, reviled by everyone.” She stopped with a pleased look on her face.
“A lot you know about it,” her brother put in scornfully.
“Oh, and I suppose you know better?” Felicity pouted, putting her hands on her hips.
“There are other variations of the story,” the solicitor said. “That every seven years the present Lord de Winter turns into the Beast, or that every generation a de Winter is born a beast. But Miss Bennett’s version is the most popular.”
“They call him the Beast of Craydon Tor,” Reed went on. “I was told all about it when I bought Winterset. The Beast supposedly lives in the woods around Craydon Tor.”
“It’s all nonsense,” Anna said. “Just a bogeyman to frighten children.”
“But he’s been seen!” Mrs. Burroughs protested. “Many, many times. I read about it in a book Dr. Felton lent me.”
“There have been stories that he has been sighted,” Anna replied. “But none of them have ever described him in the same way, have they?”
“No,” her brother agreed. “Some have said it was a dark animal, like a panther. Others have said it walked upright and had a head like a lion. And then there are those who said it looked like a man, but with claws and hair all around his face and long, sharp teeth.”
“Besides,” Mr. Norton, clearly a skeptic, put in, “it’s nothing but hearsay—some priest recounting legends of beasts, or a newspaper story full of things like ‘a local farmer said.’”
“But what about those killings?” the squire asked. “Those were the work of the Beast. I was just a baby when they happened, but I remember everyone talking about them when I was young.”
“Killings?” Kyria asked, her eyes wide. Beside her Reed looked almost as surprised.
“Oh, yes,” the squire nodded, looking important. “It was nigh on fifty years ago when it happened. Four years or so before Lord and Lady de Winter died in that fire—” He turned toward Anna and Kit, adding, “Your grandparents, your uncle’s parents. Terrible tragedy, that.” He gave a sigh and a lugubrious shake of his head, then went on. “But a few years before that, the Beast killed two people.”
“Really?” Kyria looked amazed.
“I never heard about this,” Reed commented.
“There were killings at that time,” Mr. Norton said, in the carefully precise way he spoke.
“The victims were clawed,” Mrs. Burroughs said, much more firmly than was her wont. “That is what everyone says. One of them had his throat ripped out.”
Her words seemed to hang in the silence, harsh and terrible.
“Did they find who did it?” Rafe McIntyre asked.
Several people shook their heads. The solicitor was the first to speak. “A number of people didn’t think it was a person. They thought it was this ‘Beast.’”
“One can hardly believe that a person would do such things,” the vicar added.
“People were scared about it for years afterward,” put in the squire. “I remember my nurse used to tell me about how people would bar their doors and windows, even in the heat of the summer, afraid of the Beast.”
Even disbelieving as she was, Anna could not help but feel a little shiver run down her back at his words.
* * *
The party broke up shortly after that. There seemed little more to say, and the natural inclination for most was to seek the shelter of their own homes.
When their guests had gone, Rafe slid his arm around his wife, pulling her against his side, and Kyria laid her head gratefully on his shoulder.
“Sorry about your party, darlin’,” Rafe said, kissing her gently on the temple.
Kyria shrugged. “I don’t mind that…. It’s that poor girl.”
“Do you think it’s the Holcombs’ maid?” Rosemary asked, frowning in concern.
“It seems likely, given the fact that she is missing,” Reed commented. “I did hear the constable say that the body was that of a woman.”
Miss Farrington shuddered and said in a subdued voice that she was going up to bed. Reed cast a look at his sister and Rafe, saying, “Join me for a drink in the study?”
“I think a bit of brandy is exactly what we need,” Rafe agreed, and the three of them strolled down the hall into Reed’s study. A large, comfortable room, it was still furnished with the large leather chairs that had been there when Reed bought the place, all well worn into a buttery softness.
Reed walked over to a cabinet against the wall and took out a decanter of brandy, pouring a healthy dollop of cognac into three small balloon glasses.
Kyria sighed as she sat down on the sofa. “It’s so awful. Poor Anna. She looked white as a sheet. Did you notice?”
Rafe nodded as he sat down beside her. He linked his hand through hers and brought it up to his lips, kissing it tenderly. Kyria smiled at him and snuggled up against him.
Reed, pouring the drinks, turned at his sister’s words, his eyes narrowing. “I wasn’t with you when she heard. Was she much distressed?”
“I would say so,” Kyria said. “She was quite pale. Of course, she assumed it was their servant. That is much worse than just hearing that a stranger has died.”
“I wonder…” Reed murmured, staring down at the glasses without really seeing them, the decanter still in his hand.
Rafe and Kyria exchanged a glance. “Wonder what?” Rafe asked bluntly. “Did you know this servant girl, or whoever it was that was found?”
Reed shook his head. “No. But…” He set down the decanter, then picked up two of the drinks and brought them over to Rafe and Kyria. “You will probably think me mad. I told Theo about it, and I’m fairly certain that he did.”
Kyria raised her eyebrow. “Told Theo what? How is Theo involved in this? He’s in London.”
“He’s not involved. But I told him why I was coming here.”
Kyria stared at him. “I thought you were coming to put the house in order so that you could sell it. That is why Rafe and I came along, to look at the house in case we wanted to buy it. Is that not why you came here?”
“Not entirely, no.”
Rafe and Kyria exchanged a glance, then looked back at Reed. “Reed…what are you saying? Are you not planning to sell Winterset?”
“I don’t know. I—I had thought I might.” He sighed. “I don’t use the place. And it seemed like a reasonable excuse to come.”
“Excuse?” Rafe picked up on the word. “Why would you need an excuse to visit your own house?”
“Because it has been three years. Because…I thought it would stifle any awkward questions.”
“From the family?” Kyria asked.
Reed nodded. “Yes. And from everyone here. I thought it would seem a trifle odd to go off for three years and then come running back.”
“The odd thing was buying it and then leaving it in a few months and never going back,” Kyria said shrewdly. “That is what I have always wondered about.” She paused, then said, “Why did you really come to Winterset? Is it because of Anna Holcomb?”
Reed looked at her sharply. “How did you know?”
Kyria grimaced. “I’m not blind, you know. I saw you this evening—you scarcely took your eyes off her all night. And the other day, when she came back here with the twins, it was the same. Then you insisted on escorting her back to her home, when it would have been enough simply to have sent her home in the carriage. And when you came back, you were in such a terrible temper, I didn’t dare talk to you.”
Reed shot her an expressive look. “As if you’ve ever hesitated to say anything to me.”
“Well, that is true,” Kyria admitted, giving a little grin. “But no doubt others would not have dared to approach you, you looked so grim. And I have seen how Miss Holcomb looks at you, too.”
“She looks at me?” Reed leaned forward, his eyes intent on his sister’s face. “How does she look?”
“The way a woman does when she is interested in a man,” Kyria replied. “Her eyes kept straying about the room this evening, and whenever they lit on you, she would stop. Then, a few minutes later, she would do the same thing.”
Reed grimaced. “Most likely she was looking for me so she could avoid me.”
Kyria smiled a little smugly. “I don’t think so. There is a certain warmth in her eyes when she looks at you.” She cocked her head to the side, studying her brother. “There is also the little matter that she is far too attractive and likable a woman to be still unmarried. What happened when you were here three years ago, Reed? Did you break her heart?”
“I? Why would you assume that it was I who broke her heart?” Reed asked.
“Are you telling me that it was the other way around?” Kyria asked.
“I offered for her. She refused me.”
Kyria stared. “She turned you down?”
A faint smile touched Reed’s lips. “I suppose it is gratifying that you find that so startling.”
“But of course it is! There are always women dangling after you, you know that. Why, the only bachelor who is more sought after than you is Theo, I warrant, and that is only because he will be a duke one day.” She paused, frowning, then said slowly, “Unless, of course, she was already in love with another…”
Reed shrugged. “I have no idea what happened. I will doubtless appear insufferably arrogant, but I was certain that she would accept my proposal. She seemed…well, we had not known each other long, but from the moment we met, there was a…a certain feeling between us. I cannot explain it.”
Kyria smiled and glanced at Rafe. “I know what you mean.”
Reed smiled. “Yes, I suppose you do. But apparently the feeling was entirely on my side. I thought it must be clear to her what my feelings were, and she—well, I thought she encouraged them. I called on her frequently, we went for rides together—I even held parties, just so that I could have an opportunity to dance with her.”
“My goodness, you must have been bewitched,” Kyria teased.
“I was. I knew almost as soon as I met her—the way Papa says he felt when he met Mother.”
“What happened?”
“I’m not sure.” Reed shook his head, his face tinged with the old sorrow. “She had been ill. I had not seen her for a few days. Looking back on it, I suppose she wasn’t really sick at all those days, simply avoiding seeing me. But at the time, I had no suspicion. Certainly, when she did see me, she looked pale enough to have been ill. I thought I should wait until she felt better to ask her, but I could not. As soon as I started proposing to her, she looked as though I had struck her. She would not even let me finish. She was quite agitated. She popped up, then sat back down, then got up again and paced about the room. Then she said all the things that women are taught to say in such circumstance—what an honor I had done her, how surprised she was, how she had not realized how I felt, how she had not meant to mislead me, but there was no possibility. We would not suit.”
He stopped, his mouth grim.
Kyria looked at him, frowning. “I scarcely know what to say. It sounds so…so odd. I would never have guessed, from seeing her with you, that she had turned you down. I would have said that she had…well, feelings for you.”
“I thought so, but obviously I was wrong. And tonight, I—” Reed stopped, looking uncomfortable. “It seemed to me again that she felt something for me, that she would not be averse to my suit, but then she turned and all but ran from me. I don’t know what to think.”
They were silent for a moment, then Rafe said, “What made you decide to come back now, after all this time?”
“Oh.” Reed grimaced. “You will think I’m mad if I tell you. That’s why I said I was coming to see about selling the house. The real reason is absurd.”
“I am sure we will not think you are mad,” Kyria assured him. “We have had some rather bizarre things happen to us, as well, you know.”
“I came back because of a dream,” Reed said with the air of a man owning up to a dreadful flaw.
“A dream?”
He nodded. “Yes. I dreamed that I was with Anna, and that she was in trouble. Something was pulling her away from me in the dream, and I could not move, could not reach her. It sounds foolish when I say it, I know, but you cannot imagine how real the dream was. Even after I woke up, I was seized with something close to terror because I could not help her. I tried to tell myself that it was only a dream—and that whatever happened to Anna was not my concern, anyway. I felt sure that she would not welcome my help. But I knew I could not stay away. I had to see if she was all right. I had to help her if I could.” Reed cast his sister an abashed glance. “You have every right to think I am insane.”
“Why? Because you’ve had one of the famous Moreland dreams?” Kyria asked lightly. “I am the last person who would say you were foolish to do something on the basis of a dream—or a feeling. You know what happened with that reliquary.”
She paused, thinking back to two years ago, when a man had died at the Morelands’ house, bringing with him a reliquary and setting into motion a strange chain of events that had brought her love and almost cost her her life. Kyria could remember quite clearly the sense of connection she had felt with the reliquary and the huge black diamond on its side, and the peculiar dreams she had experienced after she held it.
“Or what happened with Olivia and Stephen,” Rafe added, alluding to Reed’s and Kyria’s sister and the man she had married, Lord St. Leger. Rafe had been Stephen’s best friend and had shared part of their eerie adventure. “The dreams they shared…the couple seemingly speaking to them from the past…”
“Maybe Grandmother was right,” Kyria told Reed. “Perhaps there is a special…sensitivity in our family.”
Reed rolled his eyes. “I have a little trouble believing that Grandmother was sensitive in any way. I think her ‘visions’ were more a way of keeping everyone’s attention focused on her than anything else.”
Kyria chuckled. “That may be. But I know what happened with me, and I don’t doubt that there were forces at work there that were far beyond my understanding. When that happens, I think it’s best not to fight it. You felt that she was in trouble and you should come here. And I think that is what you should have done.”
“I felt a fool when I got here and spoke with her. Everything was obviously all right with her, and she wished me gone. I could see that. But now, after tonight, I wonder….”
“You think your dream was prophetic? That she is going to be in trouble before long?” Kyria asked.
“And that this maid’s death is part of the trouble that she is in—or will be in?” Rafe added.
“I don’t know. Obviously, it is a terrible thing, although I cannot see how it connects to Anna—I mean, more than superficially. But clearly I am dealing with something that I don’t understand. If I heard someone else say the sort of things I’ve just been saying, I would be certain he was an idiot.”
“Well, murder is very real,” Kyria said.
“If the maid was murdered. It could have been an accident,” Reed pointed out.
“You think she was really killed by an animal?” Kyria asked skeptically.
Reed cast her a sardonic look. “I doubt it was some mythical beast, if that is what you mean. That is simply the sort of sensational story people seem to prefer to the truth.”
“People always love a good story about a supernatural beast,” Rafe put in, taking a sip of the fiery cognac. “I remember a story that used to go around home about the swamp cat. There was some swampland not too far from where I lived, closer to the coast, and people swore there was a black panther that lived in there. But not just any old panther—no, sir, this one was bigger and stronger than any ordinary cat, and he had eyes that glowed like red coals in his head. People said he couldn’t be killed, no matter how many times you shot him. The devil’s cat, they said, and if you got lost in the swamp, when nighttime came, you were likely to meet him. Thing was, he didn’t just kill you—he took your soul, as well.”
“I think it’s most likely that the maid was attacked by an actual animal,” Kyria put in.
“Like what?” Rafe responded. “That’s the problem I see. I haven’t noticed too many wildcats or bears or such running loose in England.”
“No. But it could have been a mad dog, I suppose.”
“What I find the most intriguing about it,” Kyria said, “is the fact that it’s like those killings that took place almost fifty years ago.”
“If it is like them,” Reed pointed out. “We have very little information about either the original killings or the body that was found.”
“Well, it seems clear to me that we need to find out more about both this death and the murders that took place fifty years ago,” Kyria decided.
“‘We?’” Reed asked. “I was just about to suggest that you and Rafe take the twins, Emily and Miss Farrington, and go back to London.”
“You are kicking us out?” Kyria asked with mock indignation.
Reed grimaced. “Hardly. But if there was a murder here, it scarcely seems like the place for children or a gently reared young lady like Miss Farrington. And someone has to take them back.”
Kyria started to speak, then stopped and sighed. “Yes, I can see your point. It’s all so different when one has a child, isn’t it? But I cannot really see how this woman’s death, even if it is murder, could affect one of us. I mean, obviously it has to do with the local people and something that was going on before we arrived.”
“Mmm. Probably this fellow that Miss Holcomb was saying they thought the girl ran away with,” Rafe agreed.
“That may be. But I think you will agree that investigations of evildoing have a way of getting out of hand,” Reed said.
“I won’t go out investigating,” Kyria protested. “I am a mother now. I’m not going to endanger my child or her future. Or the twins or Miss Farrington, for that matter. And with both you and Rafe here, I can’t think there will be any danger to us in this house.”
“I should hope not.” Reed glanced over at Rafe, who smiled wryly, and Reed knew that he was thinking the same thing Reed was: the more one tried to push Kyria into doing something, the more determined she became not to be moved.
“It would be quite bad of you to toss us out,” Kyria went on teasingly. “It seems the least you could do is to let us stay here awhile longer, since you don’t mean to let us buy Winterset, do you?”
Reed looked faintly surprised, then thoughtful. “No, I think you are right. I don’t want to sell this house. I’m sorry. I thought I would, but now that I’m here—I really can’t give it up. I suppose I had better send a note to Mr. Norton tomorrow telling him I’ve changed my mind.” He paused, then looked at his sister seriously. “But you will promise me, won’t you, Kyria, you’ll leave and take the children if there appears to be any real danger?”
“Of course I will,” Kyria agreed. “If there is real danger.” After a moment she added, “But right now, I think we had better concentrate on finding out what we can about what’s going on.”
“Whose body it was, whether or not she was murdered, and how, if at all, it’s linked to Anna,” Reed said.
“We might do well to find out about those old murders, too,” Rafe pointed out. “I have a little trouble believing that somebody now, as well as two people back then, were all killed by wild animals. I have even more trouble believing that there’s some ancient man-beast popping up every fifty years or so to kill somebody.”
“So where will you start?” Kyria asked, looking at Reed, the expression on her face challenging.
He sighed. “With Anna, of course. I’ll ride over there tomorrow and see what I can find out about this servant.”
They finished off their brandies, and Kyria and Rafe left the study, starting up the stairs toward their bedroom. Rafe’s arm was looped around his wife’s shoulders, and he held her close against his side.
He leaned down and nuzzled her hair, saying in a low voice, “Why do I get the feeling that you were trying to maneuver Reed into going to see Miss Holcomb tomorrow?”
Kyria smiled and turned to kiss his cheek. “Perhaps because I was.”
“And your reason for throwing the poor man together with the woman who broke his heart three years ago is…?”
“My brother is a wonderful man, but he has a maddening habit of listening only to his head and not to his heart. She told him she wouldn’t marry him, and he accepted it because that was the logical thing to do. But his heart obviously has a different opinion. I don’t know whether Miss Holcomb is in trouble or not, but I do know that he dreamed of her, and that when he thought she was in trouble, his first instinct was to fly to her rescue. That is his heart speaking, and he should follow it.”
“And what if she turns him away again? What if she still does not want him?”
Kyria cast him a sideways glance. “I looked around the room this evening and saw that neither my brother nor Miss Holcomb were there. A few minutes later, she came sliding back into the room from the terrace, her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling, a certain expression on her face, as if she’d just barely saved herself from falling off a cliff. I don’t know why Miss Holcomb turned him down three years ago. But I think I can definitely say that it is not the case that she does not want him.”
She smiled her cat-in-the-cream smile at Rafe. “Maybe they just need to be thrown together until finally they figure out that they belong together.” Her smiled curved up even more as she said, “After all, that’s what happened with us.”
Then, with a giggle, she pulled away from him and ran lightly up the rest of the stairs. Rafe, grinning, went after her, taking the stairs two at a time.