“How could you over the tramping of your own boots? Over there.” Clara pointed to a spot beyond Lord Alden, which was lost in the mists. “Although they might be long gone now. I hope they are all right.”
“This place is quite haunted,” Mr. Forsythe remarked. “Might have been anything. Brave lass to rushtowardit.”
Lord Alden’s expression turned disparaging. “I suppose you are going to say it was a ghost,” he said to Clara.
“No, indeed, I am not. If you will please move aside, I will continue with my search and hinder you no more.”
Lord Alden glanced deeper into the burial ground, where tombs in pale white marble or polished black granite pierced the fog. As he did, the moan came again, ending in another pathetic whimper.
“This way.” Lord Alden pointed with his walking stick before barging forth along the path.
Mr. Forsythe gestured Clara onward. “After you, my lady.”
“Thank you, sir,” Clara told him. “At leastyourmanners are impeccable.”
Mr. Forsythe raised his brows as if in surprise, then chuckled as he followed her into the fog.
*
Alden waved asidethe damp wisps that surrounded him. Fogs could linger on these hilltops north of London before they wended their way down to the rest of the city. The many ponds and streams around Hampstead Heath did nothing to keep away the damp.
Alden had come to visit the grave of a friend, trying to manage the well of grief he’d been wallowing in the past year. Encountering Lady Clara, the most enchanting of Lord Griffin’s daughters—he knew full well who she was—even in this frustrating way, might be just what he needed to snap out of his doldrums.
She was a lovely young woman, with her red-gold hair now slick from the mists under a rather absurd, small-brimmed green bonnet, and blue eyes like pieces of summer sky.
Not that she was a tender, courteous miss with enchanting manners. Clara had no awe of Alden, correct that she recalled him as an awkward youth, when she’d always been elegant.
Having her crash into him, after the first abrupt surprise, hadn’t been so bad a thing. She was soft, warm, and lithe. The moment she’d been against him had done things to Alden’s body he hadn’t felt in too long a while.
Alden hadn’t felt anything at all in the past year, not since that terrible night in Hyde Park when he’d lost a person dear to him, the only one who’d really understood him. Alden had believed his emotions dead, until Clara, moments ago, had glared at him with her beautiful eyes and ordered him out of her way.
Clara hurried closely behind him, her soft footfalls echoing his louder ones. He knew that if he hadn’t led the way, she’d have dashed off into the mists alone, encountering who knew what in this benighted place.
Alden didn’t believe the ghostly tales others liked to tell. In his opinion, any sighting of a ghost was the result of too much imagination, assisted by gin or other spirits. However, danger in human form could lurk here, perhaps a footpad happy to see a well-off young woman paying no attention to what paths she trod.
The sound came again, deep in the darkening fog. It was the wail of a hound of hell, making Alden pause a step.
“Oh, the poor thing.” Clara pushed past him and straight into the black opening of an open tomb.
Why someone had taken out the stone that enclosed it, Alden couldn’t say, but the doorway gaped like a startled mouth. Clara ducked into it without a qualm.
“Damn and blast.” Alden charged in behind her, nearly banging his head on the low-hanging lintel.
A chill breeze pressed behind him. Wind would send off the mists, eventually, but it also announced that the coming night would be brutally cold.
Clara knelt next to something huddled on the ground. What little light penetrated this enclosure showed Alden that it was a dog.
Not so much a hound of hell as a tangled-haired, long-legged canine of questionable lineage, folded up on the ground, with one great front paw wedged under a stone. He was thin and dirty, obviously a stray who’d probably gone feral, though the terror in his eyes when he beheld Alden showed no viciousness whatsoever.
Clara, unmindful of the grime that covered the dog, knelt beside him and tried to pull the stone up from the animal’s leg. The chunk of granite had cracked off one of the slabs next to her and now was wedged between grave and wall.
How the dog had become stuck was anyone’s guess, though he might have been searching for scraps and decided this was a good place to dig. He was scrawny, ribs pressing against his ragged coat.
“Do help,” was Clara’s greeting as Alden stooped under the low ceiling.
The wind grew stronger, colder. Not the place to be caught in the freezing night.
The dog shivered as Alden crouched next to him and shifted himself to be closer to Clara. Alden didn’t reach for him, not wanting the dog to jerk away and perhaps hurt himself and possibly Clara as well.
