Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark

Excerpt

   The bank was mossy and verdant, with a slender creeping vine that blossomed, opening trusting flower faces to the sunlight that filtered through the newly-green branches of languorous willows. Lord Darkefell brought the pony trap to a halt, jumped out and lifted Anne down, pausing for a long moment with his hands at her waist, staring down into her face. Breathless, though she had taken no exercise, she turned and took a few steps away from him to regain control of her breath and to view to scene.

“How happy it makes me to see a view such as this, that has been left alone, as the hand of the Creator made it,” Anne said.

“I’m not one to tamper with what God and nature have conspired to create. I leave that to my mother, who never sees a patch of open ground without wishing to tame it.”

“But cultivated gardens have their place, my lord,” she said, ambling toward the eddy, a swirling, shadowed pool at the base of the waterfall. She stood on a humped hillock of moss and stared, admiring the sparkle of sunlight on the drops that scattered as a rivulet hit a rock. Mist billowed from the force of the falls, and bedewed her cheeks.

“I still prefer the wild,” he said.

She started and whirled; he was right behind her, his approach so silent that it took her breath away. He pulled her into his grasp and stared down into her eyes. His were dark, the sooty lashes long and striking, but the effect not the least bit feminine. So hard-muscled and masculine a man could never be thought of as effeminate.

“My lord,” she gasped.

“I wonder,” he murmured. “Would you strike me again if I kissed you?”

“I’m likely to, if you act without permission.”

“Alas, I rarely ask permission.” He bent his head and paused, then kissed her lips, the touch clinging, cloying at first, becoming firmer.

She closed her eyes; a light breeze caressed her cheek with the mist moistening them both, the sound of a lark somewhere not too distant fluted, and the trilling of the waterfall was music. And the kiss, his lips full, her own answering…she wouldn’t strike him this time. It finally ended. She opened her eyes to find him still staring down into her eyes. Had he closed his eyes as she had, or kept them open?

“Why did you do that?” she asked, breathless.

“Because I wanted to.”

“Do you always do what you want?”

“Always.”

“Oh.” Anne tried to work out how they had progressed from speaking of gardens to kissing in the dappled sunlight of an April Sunday afternoon drive, but it failed her and she gave up trying to connect any action previous to the kiss with the caress itself. She didn’t care to ask any further questions. “I suppose it’s blasphemy to behave thus on the day our Lord rode into Jerusalem.”

“I cannot consider so pleasant a thing blasphemous. That is the voluptuary in me.” Darkefell turned her around and took her arm, strolling with her to the water’s edge.

She had been thinking of something, earlier, and now gave it voice. “I hadn’t realized before that there is a cart track right up to the falls. If Fanny and Tilly were murdered elsewhere, they could easily have been killed somewhere else, then brought here and thrown in.”

“You are the most extraordinary woman,” he said.

She looked over at him in surprise. “I beg your pardon? Why do you say that sir?”

“You have just been kissed, and appear to have enjoyed it immensely, and yet in another moment you can calmly speak of murdered young ladies and discuss how and where they were possibly dispatched.”

“What’s extraordinary about that?”

“If you don’t know, I must assume you know no other young ladies, or that your acquaintance is made up entirely of extraordinary young women.”

Indignant, she faced him, hands on her hips. “I take exception, my lord, to your taunting. I am not extraordinary. I’m no different than any other young lady.”

“All right then,” he said, taking her arm in his steely grip. “You’re quite ordinary. Let us climb.”

“And another thing, Darkefell, I resent that you presume to say that I enjoyed your kiss immensely. How do you know such a thing?”

“I know.”

   She stopped talking, then, for she longed to offer him a setdown, but her honesty would not let her lie. She had enjoyed the kiss, thoroughly, deeply. He might persist in viewing her as an extraordinary young woman, but Lord Anthony Darkefell was without doubt an extraordinary man and exceptionally skilled.