The Lady in Yellow: A Victorian Gothic Romance Page 25

  Veronica chafed her hands. “I'm worried about Jacques. Jacqueline was hanging one of those dolls from a branch. Lowering it into the water....”

  “Let's go look in on him. You'll see that everything is in order."

  "I hope so."

  Veronica marched up the stairs behind Mrs. Twig. Turning down the hallway, they found the door to Jacqueline’s room standing open. Jumping up and down on the bed, making faces at Wolfgang, was Jacques. In short white trousers and shirt, he looked like his usual self. At the sight of the ladies he stopped. The dog barked hoarsely. Some of Wolfgang's fur had been pulled out and his neck was bleeding. There could be not more obvious proof that there had been a fight on the stairs last night.

  "I'd better have Janet go for the vet," Mrs. Twig mumbled.

  Veronica hurried over to Jacques and wrapped him in her arms. “Thank God you’re here. I was frightened your mother had taken you away.”

  “But we're not allowed to go with Mamma,” Jacques said, pulling back. “Isn’t that right, Mrs. Twig?”

  “You know it, Jacques. And you know that no matter what you think you see, no matter what she seems to say, you must banish her."

  “Of course,” said Jacques.

  He slipped off the bed and gazed up at Veronica with those light green eyes, so innocent and fair. His face was tear-stained.

  Refusing to be disarmed, Veronica looked at Mrs. Twig and said firmly, “I saw Lady Sovay get in last night. Her spirit, or ghost, or whatever it is, went right in through the window.”

  Jacques continued to beam at Veronica through his puffy eyelids.

  “Miss Everly has an over-active imagination, hasn’t she?” he said.

  “You must be kind to Miss Everly. She worries a great deal about you,” the housekeeper said.

  With Mrs. Twig's stoic expression casting doubt on her perceptions, Veronica began to mentally retrace the events of last night. That wind hadn't been normal; those wolves that had chased her weren't either, yet they had seemed so real. She'd felt their power, smelled their wildness: the vague sulfurous fumes filling her head with stench. They'd lunged at her, howling like Furies. Surely the same creatures had made short work of Mr. Croft's body. She'd found his remains on the lawn.

  “I may have an imagination,” Veronica said. “But I also know that your Mamma got into that room last night. Where did she go, Jacques? What did she do?"

  Jacques looked over at Mrs. Twig with an innocent, questioning look in his eyes. Mrs. Twig returned his gaze, her face an impenetrable mask.

  "She hurt Wolfgang, for heaven's sake." Veronica pointed at the dog's wounds.

  The clock gonged eleven.

  Veronica remembered the time. “Mrs. Twig, may I be excused for an hour or so? I have an appointment with Mr. Rafe.”

  “Of course.” Mrs. Twig cast her eyes down as if a veil fell over them. “Come, Jack. Let’s find your other half and have some breakfast."

  "What about Wolfgang?" Jacques asked.

  The dog rolled on its side and lifted an injured paw.

  "I'll send Janet for the doctor. He'll be all right," said Mrs. Twig.

  "Will he be like us?" Jacques asked.

  Mrs. Twig shot a withering glance at Veronica.

  "I don't think so. Come along.”

  They left Veronica alone. Gauging the time, she hurried along the gallery to the stairs, stopping to glance up at the door in the corner of the third floor landing. From where she stood, the upstairs walls seemed to lean in. And that mirror where the white wolves vanished had a haunted air.

  "It was certainly not my imagination." Veronica recalled the spectacle of Mrs. Twig mumbling in the kitchen. "Magic has been practiced here for ages. Spirits inhabit Belden House."

  Glancing around to make sure no one would see her, she ran up the stairs, opened the corner door, and went into the room.

  The smell was foul. And despite its emptiness, the room seemed destroyed, the floor scratched, the curtains shredded. The door to the windowless room had been shattered to bits. She stepped inside.

  The atmosphere was foul.

  Across the main room, the row of three tall windows shone bright with daylight. Not a crack marred the glass. The chandelier was still intact. Hurrying over to the windows, Veronica flipped the casement latch open and went out onto the balcony.

  It was a long way down to the spot where Mr. Croft had fallen. A sheer drop. No wonder he hadn’t survived. She clutched at her tense stomach, and turned away.

  Rafe must tell her everything. Leave no stone unturned. She was practically a member of the family, now. Secrets only fueled suspicion, distrust, and false perceptions. Rafe would tell her the truth. He said he would, and she would demand he keep his promise.

  *

  Fifty

  Veronica rapped sharply on the door of the master suite. As if he’d been waiting behind the door, Rafe opened it instantly. He was elegantly dressed in a white shirt, a dark patterned waistcoat and black trousers. A black jewel shone on his cravat, inlaid with a golden symbol. Veronica felt inappropriately plain in her blue worsted day dress.

  “Come in, Miss Everly.” He opened the door wide and welcoming. The fragrance of fresh lilies escaped from the room.

  She baulked at asking Rafe to address her by her first name. She'd never imagined being on first name terms with an employer before, especially a gentleman. And she was no longer sure she could trust Rafe de Grimston.

  "May I call you Veronica?" Rafe drew out the O of her name like a caress. This took her aback.

  Unsure of what to do, she gave him a curt nod. He smiled.

  Touching her shoulder, he guided her to the divan near the fire. If he only knew how many times she’d taken refuge curled up in its soft cushions. On the low table, a bottle and two cut crystal tumblers gleamed golden in the firelight.

  “Would you like a brandy?” Rafe poised the decanter over one of the tumblers.

  Remembering the disaster that had followed her wine intake at Rafe’s homecoming banquet, Veronica waved it away.

  “I’m with you now, Veronica. I know the danger.” He smiled. “I’ll protect you.”

  Veronica's eyebrow went up before she could stop it. Now she had to give in. “Perhaps… a tiny bit… I’ll try.”

  Rafe grinned, poured two glasses, and handed one to her.

  “Cheers!” He touched his glass to hers.

  “Cheers,” she said.

  The brandy was sweet, burning, and soothing. Rafe’s presence was soothing. She hadn't known him to be this way before. As her tension drained away, she wondered how, after the terrors of last night, she'd dared to enter his room alone. But in the light of day, all the chaos of the night before, with its lurid madman’s moon, faded like a bad dream. She wanted the whole story. Rafe suggested he would give at last some of it to her. She was not going to leave until he told her everything.

  Veronica pulled back on the sofa with her glass. Rafe moved in to sit beside her. His body gave off waves of heat and a slight whiff of fine leather. Her heart began to beat gently against her ribs. Sipping her brandy, she began to feel drowsy, warm and languid.

  “Veronica... I must apologize for last night. I’m sure you were distressed by our madness around here.”

  “I’m not used to such goings-on, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “There’s no way I can mind. Even I had a surprise in store. When I was in France… Have you ever been to the Auvergne?”

  Veronica wasn’t sure she wanted to hear this just now. She didn’t want Rafe confiding in her about Miss Frenchie.

  “No. I’ve never been outside of Britain.” She took another sip of brandy.

  “It’s a land of volcanoes. Some of them are extinct, nothing more than green craters filled with lakes. Sometimes there are islands in the lakes, and some brave souls have built castles on them. Right in the mouths of the volcanoes.”

  “Proves great courage, I suppose,” said Veronica. “If not great faith.”
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  “Yes, faith. You’d expect some faerie queen to live there. Alas, my late wife’s chateau is not so dramatically situated. It’s in a wooded glen. A haunted place. In the midst of a circular garden surrounded by hemlocks. You did see the page I had marked for you in the book?”

  “Yes. I also read your translation. The murals. The lady in the yellow dress being carried off by a wolf. Who was she?”

  “It started with her. In the twelfth century. The eldest daughter was a great beauty, and to put it politely, a libertine. One of the many men she entertained was under a curse. Every night, when the moon was full, he turned into a wolf, and in that guise, one night, he carried her off.”

  “That’s the picture in the book… in the Bestiary.”

  “Yes.”

  “So?”

  “After a night of being lost in the forest, she was picked up by a coachman driving toward the chateau.”

  “Alive, then.”

  “Quite alive. But changed. From then on.” Rafe leaned toward her, looking deeply into her eyes. “She was loupe garou. A werewolf.” Rafe let his words stay in the air for a moment.

  Veronica grimaced, and set her drink on the table. Rafe set his glass beside it.

  “I’m not prone to nightmares, Veronica, but I had them in that house. Especially on nights of the full moon,” he said.

  “What kind of nightmares?” Veronica asked. She remembered the twins talking about the lady’s hand. Was it her hand? The hand of the libertine?

  “I dreamed that I was cursed. The same as she. There was a bell ringing, voices singing a single repetitious phrase...like a spell. And then the howling began. Sounded like a whole pack of them, filling the land with their wild music. I dreamed I was a soul tormented, roving the forests at night, killing any poor creature who crossed my path.”

  Veronica stared at him. He could have been describing Belden House.

  “A girl in a yellow gown led me along a path into those dreams, first as a seductive beauty, then as a ravening beast.”

  "Was she a white wolf? A slinking, unnatural thing, with brilliant green eyes that turn red when she fixes them on you?"

  Rafe studied Veronica' s face for a moment. His voice was gruff. "Yes. That’s why I am going to teach you how to shoot. So fear won’t get the better of you. So when you pull that trigger, you’ll have a will of iron.”

  Veronica was aghast. "Shoot? I'm not sure I want this."

  Rafe stood up and looked at the fire. He stood there for a long time with the light of the flames dancing over his face.

  "Someone's got to do it," he said as if to himself.

  Veronica put her hands over her face as memory gripped her. “White wolves chased me. Twice. It was the most terrifying thing... I can't believe I was able to escape. I'm sure they dragged Mr. Croft away.” Her voice broke on the man’s name.

  Rafe turned back and fell into the chair facing her. “Veronica… I brought my wife here from France thirteen years ago. The only wild animals we’d ever seen were hedgehogs, hares, foxes, deer… the usual English fauna. Never any wolves. Belden House was on the edge of ruin at the time. We used Sovay's money to restore it. It was her idea to build that folly at the top of the garden... that chapel and bell tower... using stones from ruined chapel on her land in France. Planted it with flowers from the gardens of her chateau. Soon after we’d settled in, there was a report of a lad being attacked and killed by a wild animal out on the moors. The villagers were reluctant to say it was a wolf. Perhaps a rabid dog, they said. They killed every stray mutt they could find, hoping to get rid of it. But the next month, there was another attack. And, next month, another."

  Veronica listened to the fire crackling in the grate, noticed the lowering light. Her brandy tumbler was inexplicably empty.

  “Would you like more?” Rafe asked. “Allow me.”

  He sat beside her again, his leg touching hers. Veronica let him refill her glass. “That’s quite a story,” she said. “But what did Lady Sovay have to do with it?”

  “Nothing that I knew of. By the time the twins were toddlers, I had developed a business that required long stays overseas. India mostly. Sometimes I’d be gone for many, many months. Once I began making a decent profit, I was set up, and lost my shirt. I came home only to find out that my eldest daughter was dead. Murdered.”

  “Murdered? Who would do such a thing?” Veronica asked. Feeling slightly tipsy, she set her glass on the table and pushed it away.

  “A farmer shot her."

  "That happened recently. To a man."

  Rafe leaned forward, laced his long fingers together and looked at the floor. "Unfortunately it was not a rare occurrence."

  Veronica's could feel his pain. "I'm so sorry."

  "As in the recent shooting, the farmer who killed my daughter declared he’d shot the rogue wolf they'd been hunting. A white wolf that appeared only once a month, skulking over the fields at night.”

  A slinking, sinister thing, glowing white in the moonlight...

  Rafe held Veronica’s eyes with his own, as if he were giving her time to let his words sink in.

  “As you can imagine… the mistake... well… farmers are a superstitious lot,” he said.

  “So they stayed clear of your family,” said Veronica. “Right clear away.”

  Rafe nodded. Then he rose and went back to lean on the mantelpiece and stare at the flames. Just above him hung his portrait, and beside it was she, Lady Sovay, the fashionable society beauty. But she had a hidden side, a dark twin that had carried evil forces to Belden House, desecrating a church and corrupting its priest, making it a shrine to Saint Lupine, mistress of werewolves.

  Veronica frowned, and held up her glass for more brandy.

  Rafe poured and went on. “Sylvie's death drove Sovay mad. She clung to the twins. Suffocated them with her constant attention and safety rules. She was jealous of every maid in the house. Accused them of all sorts of ridiculous things. If one of the twins fell down and scraped a knee, one of the maids would get the whip. She especially liked to have a go at the governess."

  "Jealous?"

  "Yes... I suppose so. It was my fault for being away so much, leaving her to imagine all sorts of scenarios. I had no idea how unstable she was. And then… that.”

  "She needed to blame someone for Sylvie's death. Though she'd played a part in it herself," Veronica said. "Turning her own daughter into a werewolf."

  Rafe's eyes widened as if he were shocked at Veronica's bluntness. Was she speaking too freely? She was beginning to feel a bit more than tipsy.

  "I hadn't thought of it that way before," he said. "That guilt may have driven her over the edge."

  "And fear that she'd be the next one shot," Veronica said.

  The firelight glowed around Rafe’s dark head like the nimbus of a saint, but he was not a saintly man. Indeed, he was somewhat wicked inside, cursed, perhaps damned, yet beautiful in his damnation.

  “I suppose Lady Sovay thought that, if you really loved her, you might have helped her,” she said.

  Rafe rolled his eyes and sighed. “I’m not sure I did really love her. She was lovely, charming, aristocratic. She had lots of money. I needed money.”

  Sovay sounded like the kind of woman every man wanted. “Isn’t a lady with those qualities worthy of love?” Veronica asked.

  Rafe glanced sharply at her.

  “I thought I loved her. I was young...nineteen. I didn’t really know what love was. How deep it could go with the right person.”

  The way Rafe looked at her, as though he sought her very soul, Veronica couldn’t help but feel self-conscious. She was only nineteen. Perhaps she didn't know what love was either. Her breathing grew deeper, her entire body felt as if it were opening, blooming, like flower. Rafe’s eyes were the shade of blue tiles from ancient Greek mosaics. His skin and hair were burnished, like some Greek god's.

  He looked at her strangely, then shifted his gaze to the fire. “She’d been in the garden with the
children looking up at the full moon between those two tall cypress trees that rise like horns above the woods. ‘They look like the tall ears of Anubis,’ she always said.”

  “They do,” Veronica said.

  Rafe stared at the flames as if he saw a vision in them. “I went out onto the lawn to join them in their fun. When they began dancing in a ring and chanting about the moon, I came inside for a drink. I was looking at the newspaper when I heard that blasted bell tolling. And just under the sound of the bell, voices singing. There was howling in the yard." He shuddered. "Made my flesh creep. Naturally, being a father, I was extremely vigilant. I grabbed my pistol and hurried downstairs to find a large white wolf circling the twins.”

  Veronica saw it in her mind. “Good god! What did you do?"

  “I fired. I thought the beast was down, but I was wrong. It was infuriated by its wound and flew at me, tearing at my arm with its teeth. With an oozing, bloody arm, I fired again. The bullet went straight into its heart. The thing crumpled and fell to the earth. I kept my gun pointed at it until it lay completely still. I shouted to the twins to get inside, but they were already gone. The next thing I knew…. was that it was not a wolf that I had slain…. It was my wife.”

  The golden glow shattered. Veronica stared at Rafe in horror. “You were terrified for the twins. You didn't know it was your wife."

  “That’s what I told myself for one long year." Rafe poured another glass of brandy and drank it in one go. He took a deep breath and looked into the fire. "To avoid a police investigation, I held a private funeral for her. Buried her in that tomb in the woods. Then I fled to France.”

  To that other woman…

  Veronica stood up. “I’ve got to go now.”

  Rafe looked at her with eyes like vast blue seas. “Of course.”

  At the door, she paused. Rafe was close behind her, almost embracing her as she turned toward him.

  “Why did you tell me all of this?” she asked. “You know things will never be the same now. I mean... I can’t just be your employee any more when you confide in me such... such terrible things.”

  “I know,” he said. “I had to tell you. I am compelled to tell you, of all people, the truth.”