Kate shook her head. So that was it. Neat and tidy. The other deaths hushed up. She paced before the window, staring out at the late-autumn gardens. She saw the two men she had just left continuing their circuit of the grounds. One of them was the head gamekeeper, and he carried a wide-bore shotgun. She had set a guard around the house to intercept Colonel Hibbert should he attempt to contact Imogen. Kate felt assured by her defenses, but now she needed to go on the offensive.
She had already spent a day lingering at home since that horrific night at Viscount Gillingham’s. After leaving the party in the wee hours of Saturday morning, she had recovered Imogen from a cousin’s home where they were staying the weekend and come straight from London, reaching Hartley Hall at dawn. Imogen had stomped angrily to her room, from which she had yet to emerge. Kate had collapsed into the fitful sleep of exhaustion, only to rise a few hours later and seek refuge with her alchemy. But every image of beakers and tubes of bubbling liquid was torn apart by visions of that horrible beast that had been Lord Oakham.
A werewolf. Hibbert. Imogen. What—if any—were the connections?
Did Hibbert know that Lord Oakham was a werewolf? Was he one himself? Before the party, everything seemed clear. Kate had had no doubt she could ward off a simpleton suitor. Now, however, new plans had to be made.
In frustration, she had made for the study, where her father had kept his notebooks and journals. Late into Sunday night, she poured through the many volumes devoted to his world travels, including his frequent observations on the strange and occult. She searched for information on lycanthropy, and she found some. Her father had encountered tales of were-beasts, and made a record of them. However, there was certainly no credible mention of lycanthropy in Britain.
Her father would have been in as good a position to know as any. He was Sir Roland Anstruther, a great explorer, and perhaps the most widely traveled man of his day. If a hierarchy of English manhood of the last century were created, Sir Roland would rest under a bare few—Nelson, Wellington, Cook. He was a deity of the Empire. Yet, to Kate, he was her father. She could hear his deep, wild laugh and feel his rough hand around hers. He had the warmest blue eyes. There was no bird’s warble he could not identify, nor animal track he couldn’t sort out. He had taught her French and German and sent her overseas to make use of them. He had made certain she could sit a horse like a lady and fight like no gentleman. He was a master mathematician and an engineer, and Kate always admired his analytical, practical nature.
She also valued his attachment to mysticism, and very few besides her knew how significant it was to him. As a child, it was a way to spend time with him when he was at home and as an adult it was sheer curiosity. Kate had devoted much of her time to a scholarly pursuit of magic and its history. She had pursued the discipline of alchemy, perhaps because it combined the reproducible specificity of science and the misty spirit of the occult.
Again her thoughts drifted to the mysterious Simon Archer, as they had many times over the last day. Handsome and confident, with the wry sensibility of a gentleman of means. Kate had sensed something strange in him, as if he wore a mask. Something dark that he either tried to hide or didn’t recognize himself. Plus, he clearly performed acts a normal man couldn’t. He lifted a mahogany billiard table that must have weighed hundreds of pounds. He wrestled with the monstrous werewolf as Kate would with her beloved hound, Aethelred.
And then there was his companion who, one moment, appeared to be a languid fop and the next, an unshaven street vendor. Very odd. To say nothing of the fact that the fellow produced fire from his bare hands.
Kate wondered what manner of men these two were, but now, as the sun was rising on a chilly Sunday, she needed to set plans in motion. She stood before the fire when she heard the door open.
“Hogarth,” Kate greeted warmly, “I was just going to send for you.”
He was a tall man, well over six feet, and his livery hid the fact that he was stunningly muscular. Kate had taken many a boxing lesson from him, secretly so as not to scandalize the other servants, and knew that he was as well-knit as any man she had seen in an undershirt, which, admittedly, was few. He was not handsome but striking in a grim fashion. He had dark and quiet eyes. She had never seen him discomfited.
“I will be going into London tomorrow.” Kate found an appetite now that she was finished waiting and had a plan of action. She reached for a plate, shooed Hogarth away from serving her, and began to pile on eggs and sausage.
“Yes, Miss Kate. Shall I accompany you?”
“I would like you along.” She sat and began to eat voraciously. “It’s time to deal with Colonel Hibbert. I want to find out more about him. What few inquiries I made since he latched onto Imogen a few weeks ago left me unsatisfied. I intend to run him to ground.”
“But you say he is associated with Lord Oakham, who is a lycanthrope,” Hogarth reminded her matter-of-factly. “Was a lycanthrope. He must be dealt with outside normal channels. Your father asked me to take care of you and your sister. Leave it to me.”