Read Wolf of Arundale Hall Online

Authors: Jennifer Leeland

Tags: #Romance

Wolf of Arundale Hall (2 page)

Elizabeth ignored him and marched into the foyer. The only illumination in the hall was candlelight and she stared at the residents in the next room.

The light from there was brighter than in the entrance and the scene was thrown in shadow on the wall. Women were naked, writhing beneath the ministrations of several men. One woman had reached the pinnacle of pleasure, her head thrown back, her neck corded, whimpers breaking the silence.

Two men were entwined, one with his cock buried deep in the arse of the other. The musky smell of sex and sweat filled the house and Elizabeth’s gaze swept the patrons. “He’s not here.”

“We’ll try upstairs.” Jaimison gripped her elbow. This wasn’t the first time they’d seen such sexual excesses, but the raw sensuality of it shook her. So different from the coarse brothels Perry often visited. There was something…dangerous here.

They had begun to climb the stairs when a man appeared at the top, on the first floor. “May I help you, my lady?” His black hair and gray eyes shone in the muted candlelight. He was tall and lean, but muscles bunched beneath his perfectly cut waistcoat.

“I am looking for Mr. Perry Arundale.” She swept up the stairs. “It would be easier if you would lead me to him, but I won’t expect it,” she said contemptuously.

The man’s gaze narrowed. “I am the lord of this house, my lady. I can assure you Mr. Arundale is not here.”

Elizabeth’s blood boiled. She hated these smug purveyors of forbidden pleasure, who played on the fear and anguish of her family. “I hope you won’t mind if I assure myself of that?”

She reached the landing and the man studied her from head to toe. Jaimison stiffened beside her. The man’s glance touched Jaimison and the other three men behind him. “I seem to have little choice in the matter.”

“Thank you,” she said sarcastically.

Room to room, Elizabeth searched along the passageways. In the fifth room, after viewing some of the most perverted and fascinating sexual tableaus, she found Perry. He was restrained to a huge four-poster bed, his face in the pillow and his bare arse up in the air. His back was criss-crossed with red marks that glowed wickedly in the flickering candlelight.

Jaimson and the other men untied Perry. They lifted him and carried him from the room. Elizabeth followed and kept her gaze ahead of her. The strange lord was still at the top of the stairs as they progressed to the exit.

“I see you found your missing lord.” His smile was razor-thin and Elizabeth noted the pinched expression around his eyes. The man was angry with her.

She faced him, suddenly frustrated, her blood burning. “I found him. It’s a shame there are those who would use his torment against him.” The words tumbled from her mouth. “I don’t doubt he came here of his own free will and begged for the treatment meted out to him. But it disgusts me that no one, none of his so-called friends, or those who take his money for these excursions, have the wits to see he is in pain.”

Her breath came fast and her heart raced. Normally Elizabeth said nothing to these people. She retrieved her brother-in-law and walked out, dignity intact. But for some reason, tonight she had reached her limit.

The man stared at her for a moment. “What do you know of torment, my lady?” he sneered.

She glared, her fists clenched. “What do you know of my knowledge, my lord?” she snapped. “How easy it must be to provide these pleasures and know nothing of the anguish behind them. I congratulate you on the ease with which you distance yourself.” She tipped her chin and placed her hand on the banister. “I bid you goodnight with the doubtful hope I will never see you again.”

Jaimison’s face was carved in stone as she reached the front door, her hands shaking. What had possessed her to confront that dissolute aristocrat about his deviant pleasure house? Especially since she couldn’t remain unmoved when she saw some of the things he provided.

Perry remained in a stupor even when the men deposited him in his bed. Elizabeth’s stomach rolled and she felt exhausted.

“Are you all right, my lady?” Jaimison asked.

“I’m fine. Thank you.” She saw him to the door.

What a fool. She was the biggest fool in England. She loved a man who had abandoned her, took care of the man’s brother, and for what? For love? She shook her head and stripped off her gloves. Yes, for love. Ten years and that hadn’t changed. From the moment she’d met Joshua she’d loved him. He had cared for her, given her an escape from her drunken father. Then he had left her.

A loud thump sounded from the front door.

She whirled around and stared at the heavy wood etched with the coat of arms that represented the Arundale family. The faded wolf’s head perched on top of the knight’s headpiece and the graceful flock of swallows suddenly seemed menacing.

Ridiculous. It was just Jaimison or one of his men. She strode to the door and jerked it open.

On the doorstep lay a disfigured body, blood running over the ancient stones and oozing from myriad wounds. The face was obliterated, the clothes tattered. The coppery smell of blood hit Elizabeth full blast and she froze, unable to look away, unable to move.

She opened her mouth and screamed and screamed.

Her hand was still on the polished doorknob when she slid to the floor and drifted into oblivion.

Chapter Two

Where the hell was he? A shack. The wind ruffled the hair on Lord Joshua Arundale’s bruised head and he rose from the straw bed. He flexed his jaw and stretched his aching back. The fight the night before had been a brutal one. The Beast was sated…for now. Midday was coming, but the breeze was cool through the window.

Joshua fingered the roll of money on the table beside his bed. Marie must have collected it for him, minus her fee of course. An English lord willing to take a pounding was good entertainment for the locals here and paid decent money. Luckily, Marie was terrified of him and wouldn’t take a farthing without his consent.

His bed had been paid for and there was no reason to linger. His horse was hidden behind the woodpile and the animal nickered as he saddled it.

Even though he used these fights to keep the wolf within satisfied, it never really was. No, for true peace, Joshua would have to give in to the one thing the Beast demanded that he refused to do.

Go home to Elizabeth.

The place he approached on his horse as the late morning sun beat down on his head was no home. It was a hiding place. No one was on the road, the heat probably having driven many indoors.

The stark white paint of his Jamaican home made him blink. Just the thought of Elizabeth made the wolf within growl, rise to the surface, even though Joshua had spent hours the night before pounding it down. Slowly, painfully, he shoved the wolf back into the cage of his human body. The damn Beast fought him, resisted Joshua’s will. But years of isolation and anguish had taught Joshua to be hard and determined. He would win. He always won.

Now.

The memory of that one night, the night that kept him in Jamaica and away from the woman he truly loved, flooded his mind and tore the man and the Beast to shreds.

It had been shortly after his marriage and his passionate but incomplete wedding night. The moor had been shadowed and fogged in, the moon hidden behind random clouds. A perfect night. Joshua, or the wolf part of him, had stalked his prey. He had sniffed the air and growled in anticipation. His mate, his woman. He had scented the mark, the possession begun that needed only his passion to complete.

There, in the brush and heather, his wolf had slipped the leash of control.

No! You cannot have her.

But the Beast had been in full gallop, leaping over the land like a lion. Joshua’s human side had fought for control and the wolf within had knocked him aside.

When Joshua had become conscious again, he’d been standing over his sleeping wife, claws drawn and blood dripping from his fingers.

In anguish, he had commanded the Beast to obey him, struggling to contain it. Finally he’d won. And when he had, he’d realized the wolf had drawn his own blood. But it had been so close, so near to Elizabeth.

He had run, the Beast howling in frustration.

When he’d awoken the next morning with his face in the dirt and his naked body sore, he had immediately packed his bags. It had taken another two days, but he’d put an entire ocean between the wolf and Elizabeth.

Inside him, the Beast whimpered. Even the freedom of Jamaica could not appease the wolf within. It demanded its mate.

Joshua stabled his horse and methodically brushed the gleaming coat, his thoughts dark and unpleasant. Those first few years had been a blur, a blot on his normally spotless moral record. He’d got involved with slavers and shamelessly used anyone to appease the wolf. Control had been the last thing on his mind. Out of desperation, he’d distanced himself from Elizabeth, completely rejecting his old life. Adrift and miserable without the woman he loved, he’d drunk too much, seeking oblivion. The inevitable had happened.

Joshua put away his combs and brushes, his mind far away from the present. The Beast, completely in charge, had acted on instinct and done something the human side of Joshua would have never done.

The wolf had ripped the heart out of a man and eaten it.

Joshua gritted his teeth and jammed his hands into his pockets. What if the doctor hadn’t protected him? What would have become of Elizabeth and Arundale Hall if he’d ended up in a French prison? Drunk, dissolute and lost, it could only have been a matter of time before he’d ended up in jail. Or dead.

If not for a Scottish doctor who’d had more curiosity than sense, Joshua never would have known how to control the Beast. It had been Dr. Comac Sutter who’d forced Joshua to open the letters from Elizabeth and Jaimison. Though it had been years before he’d broken away from the destructive life he’d created for himself, Comac had continued to deliver letters from home and admonish him to crawl back from the brink of his own personal hell.

The fans turned slowly and gave no relief. The white linen trousers and soft cotton shirt stuck to his skin immediately. His servants were nowhere to be found, since the afternoons were usually too hot to move at this time of year. He longed for a cool English summer, the morning fog that dotted the landscape with silver drops of dew. The longing had grown over the last three years, but he lacked the fortitude to leave Jamaica and return to the life he’d so thoroughly rejected.

He lounged on his porch and watched the sun climb in the sky, the afternoon in full force. A man on horseback approached the house. For a moment he tensed. Then he saw that it was Dr. Comac Sutter, as if thoughts of the man had conjured him. He often brought the mail.

Jaimison wrote dry, unemotional reports, which Joshua appreciated, since any emotion would have made the separation from his home more difficult. Perhaps Elizabeth had written another of her stilted little missives. It was his own fault. Fear had prompted him to reject her attempts to get answers. Answers he couldn’t give her.

“My friend, you look terrible,” Dr. Sutter said with a grin. The Scot was a Navy doctor who sailed between Jamaica and England to capture pirates. It had been a miracle that he had been there when the worst had happened.

“And you look like you’ve lost weight.” Joshua rose and was gratified to see one of his servant boys run out to take care of Comac’s horse. “What news?”

“A letter for you, my boy.” The older man handed him an envelope.

Jaimison’s scrawl.

Joshua stared at the letter in his hand and his heart stuttered. It wasn’t the usual business letter, the cold collection of facts with the dark truth lingering behind them, but a disjointed note, quickly dashed off by the looks of it. Jaimison had been the closest thing to a friend Joshua had had before he’d fled England. He’d begged his friend to watch over Elizabeth. Edward Jaimison had been a legacy from Joshua’s father—the Jaimison family had served the Arundales for three generations as their men of business.

Whether Jaimison knew about the Beast Joshua didn’t know, though beneath the reports about Perry and about Elizabeth there seemed to be an underlying message he chose to ignore. But now Jaimison bluntly revealed the current events at Arundale Hall.

 

My Lord,

I write to you, as you commanded, to inform you that there has been a development on Arundale land. Your lady, though quite capable, has had a terrible experience. A murder has been committed and the body placed upon your doorstep, found by Lady Arundale. I beg you to come home at once, since this a matter that concerns you personally.

Though the local authorities have taken a firm hand, they seem to be focused on your brother. Lady Arundale has not spoken to me about the matter and has been closed-mouthed with everyone. Your cousin, however, has been loud in her opinions, causing more distress for the household.

Enclosed is the doctor’s report.

I entreat you to come home.

Mr. Edward Jaimison

 

Joshua’s hand clenched around the missive.

“Bad news?” Sutter’s sharp black eyes studied him.

“My man at home.” He clenched his jaw. “He writes to me about…a situation.”

“Ah.” Dr. Sutter took his pipe out of his pocket and tapped it against his palm. “And?”

Suppressed violence rippled through Joshua and he slammed a fist into one of the wooden pillars. “There’s been a killing.”

Dr. Sutter showed no surprise. All the things Joshua had fled England to avoid seem to have happened anyway.

He had to return home. The thought made his blood freeze in his veins. Here, in the wilds of Jamaica, he’d found no relief from the curse that governed his life. Only through domination, pain and fighting other men could he keep the wolf at bay.

But if he went back to Arundale Hall, back to Elizabeth, the Beast would demand the thing Joshua had denied it for the last ten years.

Its mate.

Dr. Sutter knew about Lord Joshua Arundale. The rest of the island might believe he was a recluse, but the doctor had seen the wolf. “A killing means another wolf.”

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