Winterset (17 page)

They agreed that it would be easier to look at them at Winterset, and Anna promised solemnly that they would return the materials as soon as possible. They went back to Winterset and sat down in the library with a pot of tea, then opened the journal between them on the table. They sat side by side at the table, leaning in to look at the book. Their arms touched—it was impossible not to—and even though Anna could feel only the material of his suit coat against her own skin, bared by her summer dress, the contact made her flesh tingle with awareness.

In her mind, she imagined covering his hand with hers, feeling his warm skin beneath hers.
He might open his fingers slightly, allowing hers to slip between his….
Her skin warmed, and she shifted a little in her chair, so that their arms were separated by a fraction of an inch. But she could not escape the other ways his nearness affected her. There was still the faint scent of his skin in her nostrils; she could still feel the warmth of his body; she could still glance at his profile and see the curve of his jaw, the straight line of his nose, the curl of his impossibly long eyelashes, the dark shadow of beard that was already beginning to lurk beneath his skin, even though he had doubtless shaved only hours earlier.

Reed turned to glance at her, and their eyes caught and held. Anna’s breath was shallow in her throat; she could not turn from his silver gaze. Yearning for what she would never have pierced her. If she had married him, they would have sat often like this, but then she would have had the right to slide her hand through his, to lean her head against his shoulder. She would know every line and curve of his face, would have touched them many times, tracing a loving finger over his brows and nose and lips.

Reed’s gaze darkened as he looked at her, and for an instant Anna thought that he was about to kiss her. She waited, her heart pounding ferociously, not knowing what she would do if he did lean toward her. But then he broke the contact of their gazes and turned back to the journal in front of them, flipping through the pages until he reached the first of the murders.

“Here it is.”

Anna leaned in, looking at the doctor’s notes. There was a detailed drawing of the servant girl’s body, with lines leading to the places where she had been stabbed. The stabbed areas were then drawn in insets, enlarged, with the marks detailed. It was a gruesome drawing, even with the doctor’s dry, clinical remarks attached. On the next page, the doctor had jotted down such information as where she was found and when.

“Look. She was found on a farm, also,” Anna said. “Weller’s Point. That is on one of the Winterset tenant farms. Not the same one as where Estelle was found, but still…”

“A definite similarity,” Reed agreed. “It seems clear our killer is imitating the first.”

“Let’s look at the second drawing,” Anna suggested, reaching out to flip through a few more pages. She stopped, running her finger down the center of the book. “This—it feels as if a page has been torn out here.”

Reed nodded. “I noticed that earlier on.” He flipped back toward the front of the journal. “Pages are missing here, as well. And here.”

“Hmm. Why do you suppose that is?”

Reed shrugged. “I suppose there could have been mistakes, a drawing done wrong and ripped out.”

“Or something that he did not want anyone even to read,” Anna put in.

“Yes.” He glanced at her. “Are you suspecting the doctor of the earlier murders?”

“I don’t know. I don’t suppose he should be ruled out, though. What if the cuts were made with a scalpel, just spaced apart to look like claws?”

“Then why write in here that he thought they were too even to be an animal’s claws? If you go to the trouble to do that, trying to fool everyone, you aren’t likely to write down the truth in your journal.”

“I suppose that is true,” Anna conceded as she turned the page and found the drawing of the old farmer who had been killed next. She peered at the drawing. “I don’t think these marks look exactly like the ones on the Johnson boy. I mean, they aren’t in the same places.”

Reed nodded. “You’re right. And this old man’s throat was not as damaged as Frank Johnson’s. So the killer imitated the killings, but not in every point. Perhaps he had only heard that they looked like an animal attacking but had never seen these drawings showing exactly where they were.”

“Which would be almost anyone in the area,” Anna commented with a sigh.

“Yes, I am afraid it’s not a terribly useful supposition.”

“There must be some reason for the imitation, though. I mean, the killings are the same in so many particulars that he has to be copying the earlier murders.”

“I think you’re right,” Reed agreed. “I mean, unless you subscribe to the eternal man-beast theory. Then it would be the same, er, person.”

Anna grimaced at him. “I think we can safely discount that theory. Nor does it seem likely that it was the same person, even if he is not a supernatural being. He would be far too old now to be doing such things, wouldn’t you think?”

That also, Anna thought with inward relief, tended to exonerate her uncle. He had been only a boy at the time of the killings, no more than seven or eight. Of course, she reminded herself reasonably, perhaps talk of the killings had been so significant to him that he had incorporated them into his madness.

She flipped back and forth a few times between the drawings, studying them, then went back to the notes the doctor had written about the first victim. Suddenly, something toward the bottom of the page caught her eye.

“Look. He says here that she was a servant at Winterset.”

“What?” Reed leaned closer, his eyes going to the spot where her finger pointed. “‘Susan Emmett, a parlormaid at Winterset, was found beneath the large tree at Weller’s Point.’”

He looked at Anna. “Well, I suppose it makes sense. If she was a servant girl, she would in all likelihood have served either here or at Holcomb Manor. You say Weller’s Point was a de Winter tenant farm. How far away was it?”

“Not too far.”

“It says here it happened on a Sunday evening. She might have been off that Sunday and had gone to see her family, then was walking back to Winterset when he attacked her.” Anna couldn’t suppress a little shudder at the thought.

“Do you suppose there would be anyone here who might remember her?”

“I should think it was all too long ago for any of them to still be working here, but if we could find out their names, some of them might still be alive.”

Reed nodded, and they bent their heads to the pages once again. Finally he sat back, letting out a groan. “I think I have absorbed all I can for the moment.” He looked at Anna. “Care for a walk?”

“That sounds very nice.”

They went out the back, wandering through the garden, which had obviously been cleaned up quite a bit, weeds pulled, and overgrown bushes and trees cut back. There was some semblance of order now, although the roses still grew in wild profusion, casting their heady scent in the air.

Anna’s hand was tucked into Reed’s arm. The sun was warm on her back, shielded from her eyes by the brim of her bonnet. It was a delightful day, she thought, seemingly far removed from the tales of murder they had been studying inside. And yet, murder had taken place not far from here only a few days earlier. It seemed impossible.

She breathed in the roses with a sigh of enjoyment, and Reed, a smile touching his full lips, broke off a bloom, carefully stripping it of thorns, and handed it to her. Anna brought it to her nose and sniffed deeply, her eyes shining with thanks above it. Her heart welled with feeling. This, too, could have been hers, she thought—long summer days with Reed, walking in the garden, side by side. Perhaps they would have been holding hands, laughing as they talked about their lives. There might even have been children running about. She pictured them laughing and intelligent, full of questions, something like the twins—perhaps even with their black hair, but with Reed’s silver eyes.

It was a picture so compelling that she almost let out a soft moan of longing. She had done the right thing, she knew. The honorable thing. It had been her only choice. But she knew with an ache just how much she had cut out from her life.

They strolled through the arch, covered thickly with a flowering vine, and a figure popped up in front of them, startling them.

“What the devil—oh, Grimsley. You gave us a turn.”

It was the caretaker, Grimsley, small and dark, wearing a cap pulled low on his head to shield his eyes from the sun. He swept the cap off now to Reed, revealing his stringy mop of graying hair, and bobbed a bow.

“My lord. Miss.” He nodded at them, grinning and twisting his cap in his hand. “Out for a stroll, eh? The old place is lookin’ better, innit? Now that I got some help. We’ll have it lookin’ tip-top in no time.”

“Yes, it is much improved, “Reed agreed.

“Sorry her ladyship and the young’ uns left,” Grimsley went on. “They was interested in all the plants, them boys.”

“Yes. They are generally interested in everything.”

“Too bad about them folks being killed.” Grimsley shook his head. “Strange it happened again.”

Reed shot Anna a look. They had not even thought about the gardener when they had been talking about the Winterset servants earlier.

“You were here then?”

“Oh, yes, I were just a lad then, twelve or so, I guess. But I helped me dad out sometimes. He was head gardener here before me.”

“And did you know the girl who was murdered?”

“Oh, no, sir, she worked at the Manor, now, didn’t she?”

“No, I meant the murder that happened a long time ago.”

“Oh. Aye, I think she did work here, now I think about it. But I didn’t know her, like. I only worked out here, you see.”

“Yes. Of course.” Reed paused, then asked perfunctorily, “And the murders—do you think they were committed by the ‘Beast’?”

“The Beast,” the old man repeated scornfully. “Nay, my lord, I don’t believe in any Beast. That’s just a tale, now, innit?”

Reed looked at him in surprise. “Yes, that is what I think. But most of the servants I’ve talked to believe that it is indeed the Beast of Craydon Tor who has been doing the killings.”

“Oh, them…” Grimsley made a dismissive gesture toward the house. “They’re new here, ain’t they? They don’t know nothin’.”

“And do you have a theory as to who it is, then?” Reed asked, his interest piqued.

“Sure,” Grimsley replied easily. “It’s clear as day. It’s the ghosts.”

T
here was a long silence as Reed and Anna stared at the gardener.

“Ghosts?” Reed repeated.

“Aye, sir. It’s ghosts right enough.”

Anna cast a glance toward Reed, then said, “Why do you think that?”

“Well, miss, it’s like this,” Grimsley began confidentially, coming a step closer to them. “I been workin’ out here fifty years or so. I spend all me time outdoors, workin’ here, walkin’ places, goin’ to visit me sister what lives in the Fell. And in all that time, I never seen any beast other than a fox or dog or such. But, now, ghosts—ghosts I’ve seen.”

Anna caught the scent of gin coming from the man, now that he was nearer to her, but she asked gamely, “You have? Where?”

“Why, right up there, miss,” Grimsley replied, looking surprised, and gestured toward the house. “I seen ’em at night. Lots of times. It’s the late lord and lady. Not your uncle, miss, but his father and mother, what died right here in the summerhouse.” He gestured off toward the left to where the summerhouse had once stood, Anna presumed.

“Why do you think it is they?” Reed asked.

“Well, they’d be the ones walkin’, now, wouldn’t they?” Grimsley answered unarguably. “Happens, dying sudden like that. ’Orrible death, burnin’. ’Sides, the lights always come along the gallery, you know, where he liked to walk.” Grimsley pointed toward the long row of windows on the right side of the house, where the gallery lay, then lifted his finger higher and over to the left, pointing to a set of four smaller windows, all covered with wrought-iron bars. “And they’re in the master’s old bedroom, too. It’s the old lord walkin’, like he used to late at night. I seen him oftentimes.”

“You saw lights?” Reed pressed, frowning. “When was this?”

“Oh, before you come back, my lord. Not all the time, of course. They don’t always walk. Stopped once you come back. I guess the old lord’s shy, like.”

“And how long has this been going on?” Reed continued.

Grimsley contemplated this question, his head to one side, and finally said, “’Bout a year now. More or less.” He smiled a little apologetically. “I’m not so good with the time anymore, you understand.”

“Yes. Of course. Well, thank you, Grimsley.”

The man nodded, seeming satisfied, and turned, going back to the bush he had been tending and picking up his shears. Reed offered Anna his arm again, and they strolled away.

When they were securely out of earshot of the old caretaker, Anna looked at Reed, saying in a wry voice, “Now ghosts?”

Reed half groaned, half laughed. “That is all I need. As if it isn’t bad enough to have homicidal man-beasts roaming about…”

Anna turned to look back at the house. “Do you think he really has seen lights in there?”

Reed shrugged. “I suppose it is possible. The house has been empty. Someone could have broken in—though the place certainly did not look as if it had been ransacked. And why else would someone break in except to steal things?”

“Well, I understand that ghosts don’t really steal things,” Anna told him, her eyes dancing.

He grinned at her. “Laugh if you like. I have a sister—not Kyria—who came to believe quite seriously in ghosts.”

“Really?” Anna looked at him with interest.

“Yes. I will tell you the story sometime. It’s the sort that sends shivers down your spine.”

“Thank you, I have no need of any more of those,” Anna replied.

“However, I find Grimsley’s story somewhat less reliable than Olivia’s,” Reed went on. “For one thing, when he pointed to the old lord’s bedroom, he was pointing not at the master’s bedroom but at the nursery, I think. Did you see the bars?”

Anna nodded. It was a common practice to bar the windows in nursery rooms so that children could not fall out of the high windows. “Yes, I thought that must be where those windows were.”

“Nor does it seem likely that the old lord—or lord and lady, if you will—should come back to haunt the place a year or two ago, after resting quietly in their graves for the past however-many years.”

“Forty-four or forty-five, I think,” Anna said. “They died a few years after the first Beast killings.”

“How did they die?” Reed asked.

“They were caught in a fire in the summerhouse,” Anna said. “I’m really not sure of the details. They died when my mother was quite young, only three or so, and she didn’t remember her parents. She was raised by her aunt—my grandmother’s sister—who lived in London.”

“She did not grow up here?” Reed asked, surprised.

“No. My uncle was away at school when their parents died. He was ten or twelve years older than my mother, and he had already gone off to Eton. Except for occasional visits, I presume the house must have stood empty for several years then, too. I believe he returned here when he finished at Eton, but my mother, of course, remained with her aunt until after her debut.”

“Did she meet your father in London, then?”

“No. After her first Season, she came here to stay with her brother for a few months. It was then that she met my father. An unequal match, some said. She was a beauty, and the de Winters were of higher birth. But she didn’t care for that. She and my father loved each other very much.”

Anna was unaware of how her face softened and her eyes warmed as she talked about her parents, but Reed could clearly see her grow even lovelier as she talked. He looked down at her, a more carnal heat stirring in him.

“My parents, too, were a love match,” he told her, and he could not keep his fingers from trailing lightly down her arm.

Anna’s breath quickened in her throat. She looked up at him, her eyes meeting his, and the heat she saw in them set up an answering warmth in her own loins. She remembered the moment earlier in the library when she had thought that he was going to kiss her. She wondered if he was going to now.

She wanted him to kiss her. However foolish or wrong it was, she wanted to feel his lips on hers, wanted to have his hands on her arms, sliding up over her bare skin, his fingers pressing into her flesh. Anna trembled, her lips parting slightly.

His eyes went to her mouth, and they burned suddenly with a silver fire. “Anna…you are so beautiful.”

Would it be so wrong? she wondered. Would it be so terrible to kiss him, to taste for a moment the joy, the pleasure, that she would never have?

But she knew the answer, even as she thought the question. Kissing Reed would only make everything harder. A taste of what she had given up would only leave her wanting more. And Reed…it would be unconscionable to do that to him. To stir his desire again. To let him know that desire still burned in her.

Anna stepped back, her gaze shifting away from him, even as everything inside her screamed not to.

“We ought to get back to the doctor’s journals,” she said stiffly.

“Of course.”

Anna glanced back at Reed. His face was set, his eyes unreadable. He extended his arm to her in a stiff, formal way. Anna took it; his muscles felt like iron beneath the sleeve of his jacket. They walked back to the house, the distance between them palpable.

They spent the rest of the afternoon in the library. Reed took a seat across the table from Anna, and he started on the doctor’s notes again, while Anne read some of the articles from the clippings that the doctor had given them.

The newspaper articles were by and large lurid accounts, full of overblown language and possessing few facts. They wrote of the innocent girl “ripped from life” and made references to the bloody legend of a “ravening beast” who roamed the area. They made, in fact, a great deal out of nothing, and Anna soon realized that they had learned far more from the few pages of the doctor’s notes than they would from the stacks of articles.

“These are useless,” she said at last, tossing down the clipping she had been reading.

Reed glanced across at her with a rueful smile on his face. He had finished with the doctor’s journals and had read a few of the articles, too. “I fear you are right.”

He stood, rolling his shoulders to get out the kinks put there by hours of reading. He strolled across to the window and glanced out. “It’s gotten dark.” He paused for a moment, then said neutrally, “Will you stay for supper? If I know the cook, it is nigh ready. We adhere to country hours here, apparently.”

Anna glanced down at the papers as if they could tell her what to do. “I—Kit will be expecting me.”

“I can send a groom over with a note, explaining.”

She wavered. The thought of dining alone with Reed, chatting and laughing, was appealing. That was the problem, of course. It was too appealing.

“No,” she said firmly, standing up and giving him a false smile. “I must go. I have spent all day on this, and there are things I need to attend to at home.”

He acquiesced gracefully, with no further urgings for her to stay, and a few minutes later the carriage was brought around. Anna found, perversely, that she was a little disappointed by his seeming lack of interest in whether or not she left.

He rode home with her in the carriage, making plans for the morrow, and bade her a polite goodbye at her door. Anna went inside, only to find that Kit had sent a note home saying that he had been delayed at one of the farms and would be taking his evening meal there. So she dined in lonely state in the small dining room and spent the evening reading in her room, reminding herself now and then why she had chosen to live her life without Reed Moreland.

It was something she had to remind herself of on several occasions during the next few days. She spent most of her time with Reed, searching for answers about the murders, both past and present, and, despite the gruesome subject, those days were some of the happiest she had spent in years.

She had forgotten how much she enjoyed Reed’s conversation, how witty he could be, the way his gray eyes danced with amusement. In quiet moments, she found herself turning to look at him, her eyes drawn to the full curve of his lower lip, the firm line of his jaw. Once, feeling her eyes on him as he read, Reed glanced up, and a slow smile spread across his face. Anna could not keep from smiling back, and she ducked her head quickly, returning her eyes to the pages she had been reading.

In every moment that they spent together, there was always the subtle running undercurrent of attraction between them. When he smiled, heat curled within her abdomen, and when he laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling up, she felt a visceral tug. Anna could not look at his hands without thinking of the way his fingers had felt on her skin. When they looked together at a piece of paper, they leaned closer in, and his scent, his warmth, stirred her, making it hard for her to concentrate.

She wanted him, wanted him perhaps more than she had three years ago. He had never kissed her three years ago in that raw, desperate way in which he had kissed her at Kyria’s party, and that kiss had awakened something within her that was strong and primal, a hunger she had not felt before, even when she had been most in love with him. He was older and harder, and the changes in him drew her. He no longer treated her, she noticed, as if she were made of glass, and she enjoyed it.

After examining the doctor’s notes, Reed and Anna decided the best course would be to try to locate someone who might have had more immediate knowledge of the case. Since Susan Emmett had been a servant at Winterset, they set out to find another servant who had worked there. Reed started with his butler, who informed him a little haughtily that he was not a local, having been hired from an agency, and his last posting had been in Brighton. It turned out that the housekeeper, too, had been hired in the same way and was, in fact, from Devonshire.

“I remember Uncle Charles’ butler,” Anna told him. “His name was Merriman—although he was one of the sourest men I have ever seen. I believe he retired when Uncle Charles left, but I cannot remember where he went. I suppose he could have been the butler during that time, as well. He looked as if he might have been here since the house was built, frankly. But I don’t remember anyone else. I’m sorry.”

In the end, they turned to Anna’s housekeeper, Mrs. Michaels. Anna was surprised to see that formidable woman all but gush at being asked to sit down in the presence of the son of a duke and talk to him.

“Oh, yes, I remember Merriman,” she said, nodding. “Always had his nose up in the air because he’d once worked for an earl—as if the de Winters hadn’t come over with William the Conqueror himself. But I’m sorry, miss, he wasn’t the one who was the butler back when they had those other awful killings.” She gave an expressive shudder. “That was Cunningham. But he died several years ago. That was why his lordship took on Merriman.”

“Oh,” Anna said, disappointed. “What about the housekeeper back then?”

“Well, that was before my time, you understand,” Mrs. Michaels told her. “But when I came here to the Manor, I remember that it was a woman named—oh, what was it?” She frowned. “It will come to me in a moment, I’m sure. A regular tyrant, she was. That’s what all the girls who worked for her said.”

Anna wondered what the woman must have been like for Mrs. Michaels, who now made a bed check of all the servant girls every night at ten, to find her too dictatorial.

“Hart?” Mrs. Michaels said tentatively. “No…Hartwell! That was it. Mrs. Hartwell. I believe that she was there until your uncle left for that heathen island. And where did she go after that?”