“You find it hard to believe?” Cassia demanded.
“I find it more likely to believe that you and Mother didn’t take too well to being snubbed,” she muttered to the collective gasps of her female kin present.
Meghan took a step toward her, but Cassia held up a staying hand. “And just why do you find it so hard to believe, Myrtle? Because of his title? Because lords and ladies aren’t capable of truly evil acts?” she challenged, and had Cassia been more defiant and less calmly matter-of-fact, it would have been easier for Myrtle to dismiss her sister’s story.
Cassia looked back to Linnie and Meghan. As she resumed and her cousins went wide-eyed and silent, Myrtle knew this wasn’t a telling solely for her benefit.
“He was once the most sought-after gentleman in all of London . . . until he wasn’t. Because”—Cassia paused for effect—“he went mad.”
Linnie clutched a hand to her throat and took a step away from the curtain, distancing herself farther from the stranger down below.
“They say he collects one log for each of his victims . . .”
Myrtle didn’t want to be caught up in her sister’s story, and yet she found herself latching on to that outrageous telling.
“He waits for his servants to displease him,” Cassia continued in those eerie tones, but let the remainder of those words go unfinished.
And if they did . . . ?
“What happens when they do?” Meghan whispered in terror-filled tones, posing the very question that had formed in Myrtle’s mind. “What does he do to them th-then?”
Clearly relishing their absorption, Cassia waited until all eyes were squarely on her. “Why, he practices his swing.” Pretending she had something in her hand, Cassia brought it up and then slashed down in a wide arc, coming near her audience.
The young women—Myrtle included—emitted like shrieks and jumped.
“He’s killed servant after servant, taking his rage out on his staff. And when he’s done”—her sister paused—“he feeds them to his wolf.”
Myrtle wrinkled her nose.
His wolf?
“A wolf?” Linnie asked incredulously.
Cassia nodded and pointed.
Despite herself and her annoyance at her sister’s over-the-top storytelling, Myrtle found herself craning her neck around her kin and following Cassia’s extended finger.
Sure enough, engrossed as she’d been in the towering stranger, Myrtle had failed to note the enormous wolf at his side.
She cocked her head.
It really was . . . a wolf. Or at the very least, an enormous dog.
“Why would he do that?” Myrtle asked her sister. “Why would a duke kill his servants?”
Cassia lifted both palms faceup. “Because no one would notice if a servant is offed. Other peers’ absences would be remarked upon.” She dropped her voice again. “But a servant who’s gone missing will not earn proper notice, and as such, he keeps his victims to the servant station.”
“That is rude,” Myrtle said, even as she hugged herself tightly.
She realized what she’d done and swiftly let her arms fall.
“Not even his mounts are spared from his wrath,” Cassia said in that same haunting way. Myrtle’s sister looked out again toward the courtyard belonging to their neighbor. “They say he enters the stables daily and takes his annoyance out on the horses and practices his swing.” Once again, she slashed her arm back and forth in a wide arc.
Oh, this was really enough. Myrtle rolled her eyes. “That is a lot of claptrap. Who says that?”
A frown formed on Cassia’s lips, her disapproval at having her story challenged stamped on her face. “People.”
“Which people?” Myrtle pressed.
“Lots of them,” her sister snapped.
“Lots of nameless people?” Myrtle snorted. “And unknown victims?” Yes, the more she heard, the more it sounded a good deal like there’d been offended sensibilities on her family’s part. “You should stick with the first part of your telling. The part about the horses is where it veers entirely off course. Everyone knows British gentlemen favor their horses and dogs more than they do people.”
Cassia lifted her left shoulder in a dismissive little shrug. “Say whatever you wish to make yourself feel better.”
“Casssssia!” Their mother’s voice came from the hall. A moment later, the countess appeared in the doorway. She beckoned with a single hand. “I must speak with you about the travel arrangements for tomorrow.”
And with that her sister left, her cousins dispersed, and Myrtle was left alone . . . with the window and the stranger and his wolf dog outside.
Myrtle lingered at the edge of the curtains; her mother’s and sister’s voices grew fainter until only silence remained. A silence made all the more eerie for the tale told by her sister.
A mad duke?
Myrtle dampened her lips.
This was nothing more than Cassia up to her usual storytelling, meant to elicit the precise response she’d had from Myrtle.
Well, Myrtle wasn’t the same young girl who’d been marched off to Mrs. Belden’s. She was a young woman, just months away from making her London debut.
Her cousins could believe that rubbish yarn her sister had woven all they wanted.
Myrtle, however . . . Myrtle had left fanciful and returned practical. She’d had to. After all, it had been her hoydenish ways that had seen her sent away to that miserable, if distinguished, finishing school.
No, she was decidedly not one to go about believing tall tales about her family’s new neighbor. Or . . . new-to-her neighbor. It appeared she was the last of the McQuoids to learn about the gentleman.
Those assurances did not completely chase away the chill left by her sister’s telling.
You are being ridiculous . . . There is no mad duke next door.
Before her courage deserted her, Myrtle stole one more peek, immediately catching sight of him. In an attempt to bring the gentleman into focus, she squinted . . . just as he disappeared into the stables.
He returned a short while later with his horse.
As any gentleman might.
“Murderer,” she muttered. “Impossible.”
And yet, her gaze crept over to the window, and she followed him as he rode off. She wasn’t so silly as to believe all that.
The gentleman was likely only lonesome, was all.
And that was certainly a sentiment she could relate to. She’d endured four lonely years at Mrs. Belden’s, where friends were few and far between, only to return and find, even with the household swarming with McQuoid kin and servants, she was lonelier than she’d ever been.
It would bring her great satisfaction to inform Cassia that not only was there an abundance of servants in their ducal neighbor’s household but also that he was an entirely affable chap.
Enlivened for the first time since she’d returned home, Myrtle released the curtains, setting the fabric rustling . . . and waited for the duke’s return.
Chapter 2
They’d been staring again.
Such had been the way since Valentine “Val” Bancroft, the Duke of Aragon, had moved into the sprawling limestone Mayfair townhouse four years earlier.
Just before his life had fallen apart when he’d suddenly found himself a widower.