Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark by Donna Lea Simpson

exclaimed, pushing her bonnet all the way off her head, allowing it to dangle by its strings on her back. “That could be the man who murdered Cecilia, for all you know! You must go after him, detain him, arrest him! The magistrate must still be at the castle. Go get him, for God’s sake!” She shook him, or tried to, anyway.
    He glanced down at her gloved hand clutching his arm, unmoved by her violent action. “Allengate is no murderer,” he said.
    “But he just tried to kill your mother!” She stared into his dark eyes, perplexed and infuriated.
    “If my mother says he tried to kill her and wishes him to be arrested, I will know where to find him.”
    “But he may have killed Cecilia! Don’t you need to question him or turn him over to the magistrate? You can’t just let him go, after what he did to Lady Darkefell.”
    “On the contrary, I can do whatever I want,” he said, insinuation in his soft tone.
    She felt a shiver race down her spine. What exactly did he mean?
    He turned her around and took her arm in his, seeming completely at his ease, despite the muck on his breeches and the rain dampening his linen shirt. A young stable lad had appeared, and Darkefell called over his shoulder, “Gilbert, see to Sunny. I will ride back to the castle in about half an hour.”
    Bemused and baffled, Anne allowed herself be led away by the marquess. Once again the sensation of his muscular form next to her left her a little breathless, and she searched her mind for the wit to say something, anything! “It seems,” she said stiffly, “that there is much more going on here than the silly werewolf sightings and even the murder of poor Cecilia.”
    “Whatever do you mean, Lady Anne?”
    “I mean, Lord Darkefell,” she said, shaking off his arm and confronting him face on, blinking raindrops out of her eyes, “that I want to know why you let that fellow go, after he nearly strangled your mother to death.”
    “Do you not think,” he said, “that I know better than you what my mother wishes in this case?”
    “You cannot mean that she would let the fellow roam free to strangle some other poor woman?” She began to shiver. “You saw that girl, p-poor Cecilia. And after that, you can make light of it?”
    “I am making light of nothing.” The words were ground out of his handsome mouth. He grabbed her elbow in his steely grasp and began to march her, swiftly, around the lodge and toward the front door, his footsteps crunching on the graveled pathway. “Come, you’re getting damp and cold. I’ll not be responsible for your becoming ill. I think your concerns would best be put to rest if you hear from my mother how she wants me to deal with Richard Allengate.”
    She tripped and trotted, trying to keep up with his stride; though she tried to slip from his grasp, she couldn’t. She kept casting him glances, his profile so arresting as to make her breathless, even if the pace had not. He was jacketless—shockingly so—and the muscles of his brawny shoulders were now delineated by the dampening affect of the mizzling rain that came down, plastering his shirt to his torso. She daren’t look down to his chest, or she might not survive the sight. This was an exceedingly inconvenient time for her occasional attraction to a man to assert itself. He was not a man to whom she wished to be attracted; on the contrary, he was high-handed and supercilious and needed to be taken down a peg or two. Or three.
    Darkefell fought to control his ire. Of all times for Allengate to pull such a boneheaded move, it had to be in front of this infuriatingly nosy woman. Lydia he could have intimidated. The servants he could command. But Lady Anne Addison? He threw open the door and hauled her after him; she squawked like a perturbed hen, and he chuckled mirthlessly. But entering Ivy Lodge had the effect of cooling his fury.
    He released her, took a deep breath, and in the dimness of the entry hall, gazed down at her as she rubbed her