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

truly heartbroken. Cecilia was all I have here at this awful place. Everyone else hates me.”
    “Oh, come. You have John, and he loves you very much.”
    Lydia dropped her hands to her lap and brought her knees up to her chin, her tears drying. “No, he regrets marrying me—I’m too silly and stupid. The moment we came here, his awful mother and brother began to pick away at me.”
    This was not the topic that Anne wished to pursue, and she knew her friend well enough to understand that, once focused on her suffering, it required firmness to redirect Lydia’s thoughts. “Who wanted to harm poor Cecilia? I remember her a little—she always seemed a nicely behaved girl to me. Had she gotten in trouble?” Anne asked, thinking of the shocking condition she apparently was in at death.
    According to Lord John, Lydia knew all about it, but her expression was now veiled. “Trouble? I don’t know what you mean.”
    “Lydia,” Anne said, standing. “I’ll just go home if you don’t intend to confide in me.”
    “No! Don’t go!” Lydia slipped from bed, donned a wrapper that was draped over the foot, and tiptoed to the door; she closed it tightly, then raced back across the room and jumped in bed, shivering. “I hate this place.”
    “Don’t be childish,” Anne replied, stern in the face of such a petulant statement.
    “You don’t know what it’s been like.” She pulled the covers up over her legs.
    Cecilia’s murder was a topic Lydia was clearly not prepared to tackle. All right, then. “I’ve heard stories of your werewolf from the maid who helped me this morning,” Anne said. “But why don’t you tell me about it?”
    She took a long, trembling breath and began; at first she thought it a joke, one she and John laughed about. She blushed a little when she said that, and Anne suspected some husband and wife tomfoolery was involved, but she directed her imagination away from such a topic as the intimate details of a married couple.
    “But then Therese, Lady Sophie’s abigail, saw it in the flesh, too. And it ripped some sheep to shreds, up in the hills and down at Mr. Grover’s. It’s so terrible!” Lydia began to breathe quickly and paled.
    “Lydia, calm yourself. There is no point in making yourself hysterical.”
    “That’s so like you, Anne. As if I choose to become hysterical!”
    “You do choose it,” Anne said. “I see the signs and know the patterns. Women use hysteria as a retreat from difficulties. While you’re indulging in hysteria, you need not handle anything and will be looked after by men and serving women.”
    Lydia, distracted from her mounting frenzy, eyed her with a pout. “You are so very unfeminine, Anne. No wonder you have not found another beau. Men would not like so unwomanly a woman.”
    Disregarding the insult, Anne went on, “I find it interesting that fainting spells and hysteria are the sole province of women of the upper classes. Farmers’ wives, serving girls, dairymaids… you’ll never see one of them swoon from hysteria.”
    “That’s because they’re less delicate. Really, Anne, that you would class us among such creatures!” Lydia fanned herself with one hand.
    “Now, see, you’re working yourself up this moment, and yet if I change the topic to, say, shoes, you would become quite calm again.”
    Lydia stared at her and shook her head. “I have never understood you.”
    “I note that you did not call any other woman to your rescue, not your sister nor even your mother.”
    “Why would I call upon them? They would be no help to me at all!”
    “Exactly.”
    Lydia eyed her, brow furrowed in pretty confusion. “I don’t think I understand.”
    Anne sighed. “No, of course you don’t.” Satisfied that Lydia showed no signs of lapsing back into a swoon, she said, “Now, about this werewolf nonsense—”
    “But it’s not nonsense, for even the marquess has not denied there could be one.”
    Anne thought of the man, bold as a pirate, dark