Guardian of Werewolf Keep: Werewolf Keep Trilogy, #1

By Nhys Glover

Philomena Davenport is shocked at her first sight of Breckenhill Keep, the monstrous ruin she had inherited from the father who had deserted her as a child. Even more shocking was the mysterious stipulation in the will that required her to remain at the Keep for three months, before she could claim her inheritance. How could she do that when the Guardian of the Keep, the handsomely daunting Byron Carstairs, wants her gone, and the spine chilling howls echoing up from the bowels of the ruin urge her to escape while she still can?

 

But Phil is made of firmer stuff than that. She will take on the denizens of this dark domain, and make the place her own. No monster or man would keep her from it, and only love could drive her away.

 

For Byron, Phil is a light in the darkness of his duty-bound life. He had never expected to meet someone as beautiful, courageous or compassionate as she. In only days, she manages to spin her magic around the hearts of all who dwell within the sanctuary. But no matter how much they needed her, it is no kindness to keep her there. She deserved far better than a burdened man and a castle filled with monsters. For her own good, he must drive her light from his dark life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nhys Glover
• Release date: Dec 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798224566051

Nhys Glover

After a lifetime of teaching others to appreciate the written word, Aussie author Nhys Glover finally decided to make the most of the Indie Book Revolution to get her own written word out to the world. Now, with more than a quarter million of her ebooks downloaded internationally and a winner of an SFR Galaxy Award for 'The Titan Drowns', Nhys finds her words, too, are being appreciated. At home in beautiful Durham County England, Nhys these days spends her time "living the dream" by looking out over the moors as she writes the kind of novels she loves to read.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE  

Philomena Davenport stared up at the pile of weathered stones and fallen turrets outlined on the twilit skyline of the desolate Yorkshire moor. This was Breckenhill Keep? How could it be? Her father’s will stipulated that she must live here for three months before inheriting his immense wealth, but no one but goats could live in this fallen down ruin!

It was a ghastly trick. Yet another perpetrated on her by her cruel, absent parent. What other explanation but cruelty could there be for leaving his wife and daughter to live in genteel poverty, believing him dead all these years, while he had lived on in what could only be considered spectacular wealth? What kind of man would do such a thing?

The carriage trundled on toward its destination as the shadows gathered. The closer they came to the ancient castle, the more daunted she became. In places, it was several stories high, towering over them like a malignant giant. In others, it had toppled to the height of a fence.

The central part of the Keep seemed solid enough. It appeared to be a stronghold of sorts, with long, thin windows harking back to a time when bowmen hid at such openings to fire down upon their medieval enemy. Rounded by age, the castellated battlements at the top still reminded her of the castles on a chessboard.

The horses pulled up on the rutted driveway in front of a huge oak door. This, at least, seemed to be in a fit state of repair.

Her new footman jumped down from his seat next to the driver and came to the window. He peered in at her anxiously. Phil lifted her chin and tried to look imperious.

‘Please open the door, Phelps, and help me down. Then go up to the door and knock. It is obvious that the staff is as yet unaware of our arrival.’

Phil tried to sound older and worldlier than her twenty-two years. She knew servants would easily lose respect for a mistress who showed an uncertainty of any kind. Her new staff didn’t need to know that, before last week, she had been little more than a servant herself.

The footman opened the door with marked reluctance and helped her down from the coach. Young Prudence, her maid, scrambled down after her. They both stood patiently waiting while the footman climbed the rough-cut stone stairs to the monstrous door.

Phelps used the huge brass doorknocker, shaped like a yawning beast, to draw attention to them. The hollow sound of the loud rap echoed in the gloom.

They waited; then waited a little longer. As the minutes passed, Phil realised she had stopped breathing. Deliberately, she drew a deep, calming breath into her lungs and called up to her man.

‘Knock again. There has to be someone here.’

Phelps did as her bidding, this time with more enthusiasm.

Night was upon them now, and the full moon provided their only light. In the eerie silence, she heard the horses’ restless shifting in their traces. It felt like they were the only people alive on this desolate moor.

When the second knock still brought no response, Phelps raised the knocker again. As he did so, the door flew out from beneath his hand, and he almost fell across the threshold.

‘Who are you and what do you want coming here at this time of night?’

Phil saw the door fly open and heard the commanding male voice, but she could not see its owner. Her footman obviously could, because he was backing up fast, almost falling down the stone stairs in his haste to get away from whoever had addressed him.

As it was clear the footman would not make the announcement of her arrival, Phil stepped forward with her head held high. ‘It is the new mistress of this house, Philomena Davenport. We were delayed. Please be so kind as to have your people see to my needs. I am tired. It has been a long trip from London.’

From the cavernous doorway stepped a tall figure. The moonlight provided only a silhouette of his shape, but it was enough to portray size, strength, and vitality. This was a young man in his prime, and he was furious.

‘Go back to the village and find shelter there for the night. We have not prepared for your arrival. Come again tomorrow at a civilized hour.’

The man’s voice was deep and gravelled, as if he suffered a sore throat. However, the volume made it apparent that there was nothing wrong with his windpipes. His voice was loud enough to echo off the stones around them and out onto the lonely moor.

‘How dare you speak to your new mistress in such a way! I am sorry that we must put you and the rest of the staff to inconvenience, but I have arrived and I will be staying.’

She wondered how she had put such steel into her tone when she felt like folding up like a stringless puppet and falling to the ground. However, the idea of getting back into the carriage and making her way back down the steep goat track, which passed for a road, to the nearest village some miles away, was more than she was prepared to consider.

‘This is no place for you this night, madam,’ the tall silhouette ground out with bare civility. ‘I have no time to see to your needs. Go away!’ He stepped back into the Keep and made to close the huge door.

Without thinking it through, Phil bounded up the stairs, ignoring her heavy skirts. Thrusting her foot through the doorway, she yelped in pain as the heavy door slammed into her boot. Gritting her teeth, she remained in place.

‘Madam, you would test a saint, and I am not one. Take your foot away from the door and be gone! I have no time for your spoiled and brainless tantrums. There is danger here this night. Be gone!’

For a moment, Phil was dumbstruck. The shock of his attack scattered all thoughts from her head. Then a slow burn made its way up her neck, and with it came fury.

‘You think that what you have witnessed so far is a tantrum, sir? Do not push me, or I will show you a tantrum; one that will bring an army to this door and have you thrown out on your high and mighty posterior!’ she growled, lending her words weight. ‘Open the door and let us in, or there will be real danger here when I return. I am no brainless twit. This is my inheritance, and you will not keep it from me, even for one night!’

The door flew open once more, before the sound of her steely voice had died away, and Phil pulled her aching foot back beneath her. For the first time, she saw the arrogant bounder who stood gatekeeper to what was hers.

She was not a short woman, but she felt tiny compared to the giant who towered over her. He reminded her of the Keep that surrounded them: big, rough-hewn, cold and forbidding. And, just as the Keep frightened her but would not put her off, neither would the man.

He dressed as a gentleman, if a rather dishevelled and unfashionable one. His hair was over-long, falling in curling waves to his shirt collar and looked black in the deep shadows that surrounded him. What she could see of his features in the moonlight was heavy and harshly defined, the arrogant nose jutting from between high cheekbones. Heavy brows shielded the caverns of his eyes. Several days’ growth bearded his cheeks. He was as tense as a coiled spring, and tired, she realised with an unexpected pang of sympathy.

‘I am sorry for keeping you from your bed,’ she said more gently, now that she had gained the advantage.

‘There will be no bed for me this night. Nor will you find sleep within these walls if you are foolish enough to stay. I have warned you. Be it on your own head if you choose not to heed my warning.’

With that last volley, the man retreated swiftly into the darkness. There wasn’t one taper lit in the huge entryway. How he made his way without light was just another mystery amongst many.

‘Wait. Where are you going? You cannot just leave me here. You must send someone to show me to my bedchamber. Someone to accompany my men to the stables and find them a place for the night...’ Her voice petered out as she realised he would not stop or turn around.

Her victory of the moment before seemed suddenly very hollow.

What could she do? She didn’t know what lay beyond the door. She didn’t even have a lantern to light her path. This was madness!

She turned back to the coach and her servants, whom she had hired in London using the travelling money her father’s solicitor had provided. They looked as confused and frightened as she felt.

‘Unload my bags please, put them inside and light me a lantern. Prudence will come with me and the two of you men will have to find what accommodation you can at the stable, which I assume will be around the back.’

None of her words seemed to appeal to the three people waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

‘You can ‘ave your bags an’ a lantern, Miss, but no amount of coin’s gonna make me stay ‘ere this night. I’m takin’ the Master’s advice an’ goin’ back to the village. It’s not far,’ said the gruff coachman.

Phelps nodded his head in agreement.

After a quick glance at the men, Prudence joined the revolution. ‘I’ll also be stayin’ elsewhere tonight, Miss. You seem a nice sort, really ya’ do, but I don’t like this place, not a bit. I don’t need the work enough to risk me neck.’

‘You’ll be risking far more than your neck by going back down that goat track in the dark. Don’t let that oaf put you off. We are perfectly safe here.’

Phil felt as if the ground beneath her feet had suddenly turned to quicksand. She fought the urge to panic. She had paid them all good money in advance. They couldn’t go off and leave her here alone, could they?

But it seemed they could and would.

After unpacking her new trunks from the top of the coach and lining them up just inside the door of the Keep, the men lit the gas lanterns on the side of the coach. The gruff coachman’s studious gaze avoided hers as he handed Phil the last lamp.

Speechless, she watched them go about their preparation to desert her. In the gentle glow of the lantern, Phil studied her travel-soiled clothing and grimy kid gloves that had been brand new at the start of her journey. Her fears intensified. They were doing it. They were really going to go off and leave her here alone!

She could change her mind; there was nothing keeping her here. She could give in gracefully and let them drive her back down the moor to a warm, comfortable bed in a village inn. She didn’t have to stand her ground.

But she did. Because that was how her father raised her. If he could stand with bravery against the marauding Russian enemy at Balaclava, then she could do the same here. This might not be the Charge of the Light Brigade, but there was no reason she couldn’t show the same bravery those men had done. She may only be a woman, but this was her land. Her father had left it to her. No one was going to drive her away from it, even for one night.

With stubborn chin jutting, she watched the coach drive away into the night. The doorway yawned open, waiting to gobble her whole. Reolved, she turned toward it and marched into the Keep.

CHAPTER TWO

Byron Carstairs watched the coach drive away with some satisfaction. At least now he only had one unsuspecting person to protect this night.

And what a one she’d turned out to be: The new heiress. The daughter of the man who had been like a father to him for nine long years.

He hadn’t even known she’d existed until he read the letter Patrick had given him on his deathbed.

Byron understood why ‘the Captain’—as all those who lived in and around Breckenhill Keep called him—had kept the girl a secret. His past life would have been a painful memory he preferred to forget.

But why leave the girl this legacy? No loving father would be so cruel. What purpose was there in insisting that a young, innocent woman spend three interminable months in the hellhole that had been his own prison for the last ten years? Why put her in such danger? Why let her risk learning his horrifying secret, which she was bound to do if she stayed long enough, after keeping her away from it for so long?

Byron felt anger seethe beneath his carefully maintained facade. Wasn’t it enough that the Captain had laid the duty of care for the unfortunate denizens of the Keep in his reluctant hands for the last nine years? Now he’d added another burden to his overflowing load: Guardian of an innocent young woman?

How could anyone expect him to protect her from what lived within the Keep’s stone walls? How was he supposed to shelter her from the truth that would surely drive her mad if it didn’t kill her first?

The only redeeming feature in this ever-increasing nightmare was that the girl wasn’t as sweet and docile as he’d expected. Patrick Davenport’s daughter appeared to be a chip off the same block of granite as her father. She even shared her father’s fiery countenance. Although, where Patrick had been a self-proclaimed carrot-top in his youth, Philomena’s hair beneath that demure bonnet had seemed a darker shade—more auburn.

Darkness was deceptive, however. In the full light of day, perhaps her hair was ginger, her luminous white skin marred by freckles and those dark eyes fringed with pale red spikes that would leave her looking insipid. She might not be the glorious beauty the darkness had wanted to make of her.

But even if that were the case, and her eyes were not as dark and appealing as they appeared to be, he doubted that the word insipid would ever be used to describe Miss Philomena Davenport. There was just too much fire and passion in her to have any other label, but glorious, applied to her.

He was glad of that, even though it might have made his life easier if he could have bullied her into doing his bidding. If she were to stand a chance in hell of surviving, unscathed, her three months’ detention in Breckenhill Keep, she would need all the fire and spirit that she had at her command.

What the Keep contained had driven brave men mad with fear. How was he to keep such a fate from befalling this one frail woman, no matter how spirited?

The coach was gone now, and he heard the oak door close. Byron knew she was standing there in the entry hall, alone and unsure of her next actions. If he wanted to keep her from falling into immediate danger, he would have to return for her. He would have to give her a room with a stout lock and insist she use it. The moon was rising higher with every passing minute, and though it was still quiet, he knew it would not be long before those kept imprisoned beneath the Keep discovered they were trapped and began their frenzied attempts to escape.

Byron wanted her safely locked down before that happened. Safe and unsuspecting. The first was far easier to achieve than the second would be.

He hastened back down to the entry hall where the girl stood illuminated by the glow of her one lantern. She looked terrified, standing there in her sober travelling clothes, dusty from the journey, bonnet eschew. Loose wisps of dark golden hair hung around her pale face. Huge, dark eyes peered around her into the gloom.

‘If you insist on staying, then follow me,’ he ordered, his grudging bad-temper obvious.

He didn’t want to make this easy for her. Nor for himself.

She seemed to have been aware of his return, even though he moved in darkness, for she didn’t jump at his harsh words. Instead, she picked up a small valise at her feet and walked toward him.

‘Thank you for making an effort at hospitality now that you have scared my servants away.’ Her tone said that she was not in the least