Lord of the Beasts Read online

  Donal wasn’t sure if the fact that she was caught in her thievery contributed to her remorse, but she seemed sincere enough in her desire for a new start. Her three mongrels—christened Billy, Jack and Daisy—had infected her with their enthusiasm, and Sir Reginald honored her by falling asleep in her lap. She spent every moment of daylight with her nose pressed to the window, devouring the sight of fresh grass and hedgerows and spring-green trees as if she were on her way to heaven itself.

  Donal’s thoughts had taken other directions. Again and again he drifted into dreams of the wilderness, lost in the memories of beasts born in lands that called to him more urgently with every passing day. And only one human being invaded those dreams: the gray-eyed Athena named Cordelia Hardcastle.

  It was a strangely appropriate designation for her. She was no delicate beauty; her gaze was direct, her speech without coy flattery or empty pleasantries. “Hard” was too strong a word for her determined manner, and yet she was not unlike the castle in her name: sturdy, uncompromising and completely impregnable.

  A man of her type and class…like Viscount Inglesham, perhaps…might be tempted to breech her defenses and scale her walls. Even Donal had not been immune to her obvious intelligence and compassion for those weaker and less privileged than herself. And if he were honest, he would be compelled to admit that something deep inside him had responded to the undeniable, lush femininity she held in check beneath those layers of corsets and petticoats—no more or less instinctively than the way a stallion responds to a mare.

  But, encroach on his dreams though she might, Miss Hardcastle belonged to a world in which he had no part.

  Donal tried to push such speculation aside as the wagon rolled up the last rise to Stenwater Farm. He had plenty of business to attend to when they reached the farm; there were animals to be visited, accounts to peruse and neighbors to consult regarding Ivy’s future. The girl sat with the dogs in the bed of the wagon, her blue eyes wide with excitement, still ignorant of his plans for her. He didn’t look forward to explaining how she would be much better off with a good farming family, who had children close to her age and could provide a growing child with a conscientious upbringing.

  And I may soon be gone, he thought, gazing up at the cloud-dappled sky. Taking leave of his animals would be difficult enough without the additional burden of a child. There were a few humans he might trust with the dogs, cats, sheep, cattle, horses and pigs—men who would not consign his friends to the cook-pot—and Benjamin would gladly remain at Stenwater as caretaker for as long as he was needed.

  And what of Tod? The little hob had been his closest companion for a quarter of a century, a constant playfellow and wise advisor throughout Donal’s awkward childhood and youth. But Tod was bound to England as surely as if he wore shackles of iron on his swift brown feet. He was a part of the woods and fields and streams of this island, and there was no telling if he could survive being separated from it. Even though Tod would always find a welcome at Hartsmere with his former master, the parting would be painful for man and hob alike.

  The wagon rolled to a halt. Ivy was out before Benjamin could set the break. Daisy, Jack and Billy scrambled out of the wagon, quivering with joy at the myriad scents and sounds, while Sir Reginald patiently waited for someone to help him down.

  Donal scooped the spaniel up in his arms and gently set him on the ground just as a half-dozen farm dogs barreled around the corner of the byre. Sir Reginald dived under the wagon, but the street curs held their ground, legs and tails stiff. Soon enough they had determined the vital matters of status and rank, and the entire pack dashed off together.

  Ivy twisted a handful of her skirts between her hands and bit her lip. “It’s so big,” she said. “I ain’t never seen so much…”

  “Space?” Donal offered, briefly resting his hand on Ivy’s shoulder. “You’ll become used to it in time. The air is clean here. You’ll have fresh-baked bread, eggs from our chickens, potatoes and carrots right out of the good earth. You can run as far as you like without fear.”

  She sniffled, pressing her knuckles to her nose. “But wot will Oi do?”

  If it were up to him, she would be free to do whatever she liked…help Benjamin with the chores, wander the moors, spend days reading the books in his library. But of course she probably couldn’t read at all, and would have to be taught by whichever family agreed to take her in.

  “There is something you can do now,” he said. “Sir Reginald is a bit frightened by so much change. If you could care for him until he has settled in…”

  Ivy blinked, emerging from some inner world of her own, and nodded. “O’ course. I’ll look after ’im.” She bent down and coaxed the spaniel from under the wagon. “You stick wiv me, Reggie, and you’ll be just foin.”

  Donal nodded to Benjamin, who led the horse and wagon off to the stables. Still murmuring to Sir Reginald, Ivy followed Donal up to the house, passing the border of flowers Benjamin had planted along the path. He opened the door to the cozy kitchen and let Ivy look around.

  “We live simply at Stenwater,” he said. “Benjamin and I share the cooking duties, and we have a cleaning woman and laundress come in once a week. Benjamin cares for the larger animals…we have several horses and a pony you might ride, if that suits you.”

  “’Ow many animals ’ave you?” Ivy asked, her gaze moving hungrily about the room with its hanging pots and massive box stove.

  “Oh, a score of dogs, and as many cats…most live in the byre and stables…several milch cows, a small flock of sheep and a dozen cattle up on the fells…six horses and the pony…ten pigs, at last tally. Perhaps forty chickens.” He cocked his head, surveying the farm in his mind. “Sometimes we have a fox or a badger visiting us, if they need tending. I’ve never tried to count the mice.”

  Ivy giggled, a burst of nervous sound that seemed to relieve some internal pressure. “D’you eat ’em…the sheep ’n’ cows ’n’ pigs, Oi mean?”

  “Since I consider them my friends, it would hardly be fair, would it?”

  “Then ’ow d’you keep from starving?”

  “You would be surprised how much nutrition one can derive from the fruits of the earth,” he said. “Our chickens are willing to provide us with eggs in plenty, and our cows are happy to supply all the milk we can drink.”

  Ivy considered this for several moments. “Oi guess Oi’d rather not eat yer friends, either.”

  Donal laughed, took her face between his hands and kissed her forehead. She jumped back, regarding him with something akin to shock.

  Donal sobered instantly. “I’m sorry, Ivy. I shouldn’t have—”

  “It’s awroight,” she said, glancing away. “You just surprised me, is all.”

  Of course he had surprised her. She’d likely received far more blows than kisses in her short lifetime. And he was not in the habit of doling out caresses to any creature whose skin was not covered in fur or feathers.

  Nevertheless, though Ivy would not be with him long, he must remember that she was human. Whatever affection he might hold for her or any other person, the communion he enjoyed with the animals could never be shared with a member of her species.

  After he had shown Ivy the kitchen and parlor, he led her through the hall to the bedchambers. The room he kept for guests had a window that looked out on the informal garden, and it was furnished with a brass four-poster adorned with a hand-quilted coverlet.

  “This will be your room,” Donal said. “If there is anything it lacks, you must tell me.”

  Ivy crept through the doorway and slowly set Sir Reginald down on the braided rug. “This…is fer me?”

  “Yes. I’m sure you will want things…suitable for a young girl. What we can’t purchase in the local village we will surely find in York.”

  Ivy scarcely seemed to hear him. She approached the bed warily, ran her hands over the coverlet, and cautiously sat down. Sir Reginald jumped up beside her and immediately made a comfortable nest out of one of th
e pillows. He sighed in complete contentment.

  “Mine,” Ivy breathed. She rubbed her fist across her eyes, shot from the bed and hurled herself at Donal. Her thin arms closed around him with desperate strength.

  “Thank you,” she whispered into his waistcoat. “I don’t know…how I can ever repay you.”

  Once again her rookery accent had vanished, but Donal was too startled to give much thought to the transformation. He patted her back awkwardly.

  “You owe me nothing,” he said. “But I do think you have had enough stimulation for one day. If you and Sir Reginald would care to rest, I’ll fetch your luggage and see what I can find in the kitchen.”

  She pulled back and studied his face. “You won’t leave me?”

  “If I leave the farm, it will only be for a short time, and Benjamin will be here.”

  “I want you to show me the animals. Your friends.”

  “After you’ve rested.”

  Her lower lip jutted with incipient rebellion, but she thought better of it. With a final sniff she returned to the bed and drew back the coverlet. She crawled under the sheets, holding very still as if she feared her mere presence might sully such luxury. Sir Reginald tucked his body against her, one long, fringed ear draped across her chest.

  “Sleep,” Donal said, backing out the door. “I’ll wake you in time for dinner.”

  But her eyes were already closed, and she didn’t stir again. Donal shut the door and walked silently back down the hall. He met Benjamin in the kitchen, checked the contents of the larder, and asked the old man to prepare a simple but hearty meal. Then he left the house and began his rounds.

  The old gelding and the pony in the stable greeted him with whinnies of welcome, telling him of the new litter of kittens born in the loose box. The proud mother cat put in an appearance and allowed Donal to examine the babies. He cradled each tiny, blind body in his hand and felt the new seeds of consciousness beginning to awake.

  His next stop was the byre, where the elder cows chewed their cud and gossiped in their bovine way about their youngest sister and her knobby-kneed calf. A quintet of canines followed Donal to the home pasture and maintained a polite distance as he called upon the other horses and cattle, checking hooves and eyes and ears and assessing the gloss of sunwarmed coats. He climbed alone up the fell, standing quietly while the sheep gathered about him and nuzzled his coat and trousers.

  Nothing had changed in his absence. All was as it should be, the animals absorbed in the continual “present” of their lives, altering little from one hour, one day, one year to the next. They trusted in the natural order of the universe. And like Nature herself, moor and fell and beck would persevere for a thousand generations, their metamorphoses measured not in decades, but eons.

  No, Donal’s world had not changed. Only he was different. With every step that he walked across the rolling pastures or scaled the low stone walls, he felt it grow—the strange, undeniable sense that the unnamed thing his life had always lacked lay beyond this spare, immutable landscape, somewhere in the sweeping veldt of Africa, the high desert of Mongolia or the jungles of Brazil.

  And what of Tir-na-Nog? he asked himself. What if that is what you truly seek? Endless beauty and freedom from responsibility in a land humanity can never taint with its madness…

  A land that had banished his father for daring to be “human.” A country Donal had rejected in favor of the challenges of a mortal existence, the chance to do good where it was most needed. To return to the Land of the Young was to surrender his humanity.

  And would that be so terrible a price?

  Donal descended the fell as twilight settled over the dale and the farm buildings. The scent of cooking drifted up to him on the breeze. Soon the comfortable routine he and Benjamin shared, sitting at the kitchen table in their customary silence, would be broken. Ivy would be there. And tomorrow he must go to the local farmers and learn which family was best suited to caring for a bright but troubled child….

  The fox darted under his feet, nearly tripping him into a tumble down the fell. He righted himself quickly, his mild oath turning to laughter as the fox began to chase its own bushy tail, leaping and gamboling like a red-furred court jester.

  “Tod!” Donal said, easing himself onto the grass. “Are you trying to do me in?”

  The fox came to a sudden stop, cocked its clever pointed head, and jumped straight up into the air. It landed on two small feet and grinned at Donal from a face neither child nor man, nut-brown eyes dancing with merriment.

  “My lord is home!” Tod said, dancing nimbly just above the ground, his tattered clothing fluttering about him. Even at full stretch, he reached no higher than Donal’s waist. Like all his kind, lesser Fane of wood and wildland, he was shaped to hide in the forgotten places men tended to ignore. And no human saw him unless he wished it.

  Donal returned Tod’s grin to hide his sadness. “You would think I’d been gone a year,” he teased. “You couldn’t have missed me so very much, busy as you were at Hartsmere.”

  Tod flung himself onto his back and gazed up at the twilit sky. “Tod always misses my lord,” he said, spreading his arms wide. “The mortal world is dreary and dull without him.”

  Donal passed his hand through his hair and sighed. “What news of my parents?”

  “They are well, but yearn for my lord’s company.” His mobile mouth twisted in a scowl. “The Black Widow was there.”

  The “Black Widow” was Tod’s nickname for the woman with whom Donal had shared an intense and harrowing affair. She was indeed a widow…or had been, when Donal broke off the relationship.

  “My brothers?” Donal asked, eager to change the subject.

  “Both prosper. They, too, would call you back.” He hopped up, balancing on one bare foot. “Shall we return, my lord?”

  Donal gazed down at the grass between his feet. “Not now, Tod. Perhaps not for some time.”

  Tod leaned forward to peer into Donal’s face. “What troubles my lord?” he asked. “Did the Iron City do you ill?”

  Donal shook his head. He acknowledged to himself that he was unprepared to admit the truth: that his trip to London, and his time with the animals in the Zoological Gardens, had finally convinced him that he had no place in a world ruled by humankind.

  “I saw much cruelty in the city,” he said. “I did not return alone.”

  “Tod met the new dogs,” Tod said eagerly. “They praise my lord with every breath.”

  “Not only dogs, Tod. There is a girl…a child from the worst part of London. She’s come to stay in Yorkshire.”

  Tod went very still. “A female?”

  “A young girl. She’s seen much sorrow in her life, and I wish to give her a brighter future.”

  Tod was silent for a long while, frowning up at the emerging stars. “She stays here?” he said at last.

  “Only until I can find a suitable home for her.” He gave Tod a coaxing smile. “You’ll like her, Tod. She has spirit.”

  The hob hunched his shoulders, his face hidden beneath his thick shock of auburn hair. “As my lord says.”

  Donal got to his feet and held out his hand. “Walk with me,” he said. “Tell me all my mother’s gossip from Hartsmere.”

  TOD PERCHED on the windowsill and watched the girl sleep. She did not look so terrible now, her small form smothered in blankets and her face relaxed against the pillow. But appearance could so easily deceive. No one knew that better than Tod himself.

  Since Donal’s childhood he had been the boy’s closest friend and companion. Together they had wandered the ancient woods of Hartsmere, running with the red deer and conversing with the badgers in their setts. The Fane gifts Donal had inherited from his father had made him an expert healer…and kept him forever apart from those of his mother’s human blood.

  But Tod had made certain he was never alone. Wherever Donal went, he followed…except when his master ventured into one of the cities of Iron, which few Fane could tolerate. On
ly once before had anything or anyone come between them, when the Black Widow caught Donal in her web.

  Now there was another.

  Tod closed his eyes, almost longing for the tears no true Fane could shed. For the first time in the many years he and Donal had lived at Stenwater Farm, Tod had been banished from the house during the evening meal. “Ivy wouldn’t know what to make of you,” Donal had said. “Perhaps you’ll meet her later, when she’s accustomed to her new life.”

  But Tod had taken no comfort in his master’s promise. He had listened to their laughter as they sat at the table, sharing bread and cheese in the warmth of the kitchen. Ivy had gazed at Donal with such a look of gratitude and admiration in her eyes that made Tod’s skin prickle and his hair stand on end. Donal had smiled at her as if she had earned the right to his affection. And Tod had known then that if he were not very, very careful, she would take his place in this small, sheltered world he had learned to call “home.”

  Tod glared at the girl, wondering what arcane powers she might possess. He was certain she did not know what she was, and neither did Donal. Perhaps it was his mortal blood that made him blind. Perhaps it was instinct that had drawn him to rescue her, though the gods knew how she had come to be living in the streets of the Iron City.

  Whatever the nature of her past, the danger now was very real. Tod was no High Fane to place a curse upon her. All he could do was watch, and wait. And if she did not go to live with some local human family, he would find a way to drive her from Donal’s life.

  THE LETTER ARRIVED at Edgecott the evening after Cordelia’s return. Half-dressed for dinner, she dismissed Biddle and sat down at her dressing table. With deliberate care she slit the envelope and removed the neatly folded paper.

  When she had finished reading, Cordelia remained at the table and gazed unseeing in the mirror, oblivious to the passage of time until Biddle discreetly tapped on the door to remind her of the impending meal. She let the maid button her into her dress and work her hair into some semblance of order, but even Biddle noticed that her mind was elsewhere.