Chapter 12 #2
He gave a sharp inhale, his nostrils flaring. As if he caught a particular scent. Eyes still closed, he croaked, “So—it’s like that, is it?”
“Like what?”
He opened his eyes to slits. “Ah, never mind me. I canna be jealous—but I’m surely envious.”
He couldn’t possibly mean her and Des. Perhaps Des told him about their tryst in the glasshouse. But they’d said they wouldn’t discuss it with anyone. But if Des hadn’t said anything, it seemed impossible that Hugh could know.
“I need to check the condition of your wound.” She gently removed the poultice. By the light of her candle, she examined his injury. “There’s some improvement. The redness is going down and…” She laid her hand across his forehead. “Your fever has diminished.”
“No one could ask for better care.” He held out his hand.
She slowly slid her hand into his. He turned it over, and, his eyes locked on hers, he kissed her wrist.
She didn’t pull away, even though she ought to, for so many reasons. But surely, he felt the flutter of her pulse beneath his lips.
“In an hour,” he went on, his voice a rolling rasp, “it won’t matter.”
“Of course, it will matter,” she insisted. “I have no intention of losing my patient in the next hour, or the hour after that.”
“You won’t.” He said this with assurance.
Which was a relief. In her experience, a patient’s beliefs about their prognosis and recuperation strongly shaped how they’d recover.
“I’ll bring some food up for you.” She slid her hand from his grasp.
“Roast beef and potatoes?” he asked, brightening.
“Broth and toasted bread.”
He flopped his head back on the pillow. “I have to recover, if only so I can eat some actual food.”
“You’ll have carved roast and mountains of roasted potatoes. In due time. For now, you must follow a strict sickroom protocol when it comes to nourishment.”
“Fine, fine.” He waved his hand irritably. “But, mind, when I’m standing on my own two legs, I’ll hunt down a joint of beef and chase it with fine Scotch whisky.”
“I haven’t any Scotch whisky, but there’s a local farmer who distills his own spirits.”
“Lord protect me from English liquor.”
Shaking her head, her heart fluttering in her chest, she left the Blue Bedchamber. It made no sense that she could take vigorous pleasure with Des, while also being drawn to the calm and handsome lake that was Gideon, and beguiled by Hugh’s wicked and earthy humor.
You were supposed to desire only one person at a time. At the least, that’s what nearly every person told her. The forbidden novels she read, however, had a different approach. Yet that was fiction, not real life.
She walked to the landing, then stopped when she heard voices below.
“Is it necessary?” That was Des, sounding aggravated.
“You know what tonight is.” Cyrus, clipped and hard. “She can’t see. Or, if she does, she’ll have to be dealt with.”
Oh, God. They were talking about her.
“I don’t like your way of dealing with situations,” Des answered tightly.
She was a situation?
“Then lock her in her room,” Cyrus said flatly.
“How do I explain it to her?” Des demanded.
“You needn’t bother explaining anything. She’ll do whatever you tell her to. You were clever to fuck her into obedience.”
Horror slammed into her, her gut churning, and her hand flew to her mouth to cover her gasp.
Please, please tell him that’s not what it was.
Rather than say anything to the contrary, Des kept silent.
Again. It was happening again. She wasn’t someone to be desired. Only used for an ulterior purpose. Arthur wanted a broodmare. Des needed a lackey.
The warm joy that had filled her oozed away, replaced by cold and abject despair.
Tears blurred her vision, and she turned to creep away. She prayed they didn’t know she’d overheard them.
She knocked into a narrow little hallway table. It wobbled, but before she could catch it, the unsteady piece of furniture fell to the floor with a clatter.
Dismay barreled into her.
“Ah, fuck,” Des said below.
“Kill her,” Cyrus barked.
Two sets of footsteps thudded on the staircase, heading towards her.
Acidic horror turned to cold fear. Instinct had her running for the panel that concealed the secret passageways. She could find safety there.
She slipped inside and closed the hidden door just as someone reached it. Pounding sounded on the wall.
“Clara, please.” Des’s voice was muffled. “It’s not… We won’t—”
But she didn’t want to hear. She ran through the passageway. The twisting corridors snaked in all directions around her.
Luck had her finding the staircase that led to the ground floor, and she hurried down it. Making her way through the passageway at the bottom, she located a specific panel and pulled it open.
Clara emerged in a book-lined room, with a desk at one end.
Her study. Though it was intended for the master of the house, she was the manor’s mistress, and it was here that she balanced her ledgers and kept accounts of her household expenses.
Windows lined the back wall of the study, the sky dark now with full night.
She paid little heed to the bound volumes stacked neatly atop the desk, or all the books that had given her so many hours of comfort and escape into fantastical realms.
She lived in this world. And it was dangerous.
From her pocket, she took a key. With trembling hands, she unlocked a drawer in the desk.
Des appeared in the doorway, and he froze when she leveled a pistol at him.
“It’s loaded.” Her voice wasn’t as steady as she wanted. Far from it. But she couldn’t let him know how badly shaken, and hurt, she was. “Get out.”
Hands spread, he advanced toward her. “Listen, sparrow—”
“Don’t call me that.” She carefully kept the desk between them. “Don’t call me anything. Just leave.”
Before Des could answer, Cyrus barreled into the room. Worse than an expression of anger on his face, he instead appeared icy cold. There was nothing behind his eyes. Only the grim determination to rid himself of an obstacle.
Cyrus’s hand went to his belt, and he started to draw a thin-bladed knife that gleamed with surgical sharpness. It was the sort of blade that could easily cut a throat.
He took a step toward her.
“Stop it, Cyrus,” Des snarled. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“There is no other way.” Cyrus didn’t turn as he took another step in Clara’s direction.
Still holding the pistol, she retreated, until the windows met her back.
She hated how much her hand shook as she aimed the gun at Cyrus, her finger hovering over the trigger.
Though she knew theoretically how to fire a pistol, it was something with which she had no actual experience.
The weapon was heavy and foreign in her hand, and she prayed she wouldn’t have to use it.
“Stop now, Cyrus.” Des sounded almost agonized.
“You can’t survive in this world,” Cyrus said, his predatory gaze still on Clara, “as we are, if you’re too soft. We’ve got to protect ourselves. No one else will.”
“No—”
But Cyrus kept stalking her. He held the blade out, and Clara gulped as the cutting edge gleamed.
Des leapt. He wrapped his arms around Cyrus’s knees and slammed them both to the ground in a full-body tackle.
As Cyrus sprawled across the floor, Des clambered up his body and grabbed the wrist that gripped the knife.
Yet Cyrus held onto the blade. He twisted beneath Des, flipping onto his back as Des straddled him.
They rolled on the carpet as they struggled for the knife.
Clara continued to point the pistol at them. Locked together as the two men were, she couldn’t fire, not without fear of hitting Des.
They crashed into furniture, knocking over small tables, sending books tumbling down, and tipping over a reading chair.
While one of Des’s hands was locked around Cyrus’s wrist in a battle for the blade, Des balled up his other hand into a fist and plowed it repeatedly into Cyrus’s face.
Blood sprayed, but Cyrus didn’t relinquish his grip on the knife.
He rammed his elbow into Des’s chest and gut.
Des grunted, yet he stayed locked in combat with his leader.
She took aim at Cyrus’s foot, since it was farthest from Des. Yet her finger hovered on the trigger.
The study brightened as light from the full moon poured in through the windows. It cast pale squares upon the floor. The brawling men were suddenly bathed in its silver illumination.
Cyrus abruptly dropped the knife. He and Des broke apart, each man hunching in on himself. They writhed, as if in tremendous pain, and both grimaced and snarled.
Both of them had been stabbed. Yet there was no blood on the knife.
Clara took a tentative step toward Des.
He lifted his head, and she froze.
His face…stretched…lengthened. The area around his mouth elongated into…a muzzle. Whiskers sprouted above his lips. His ears grew pointed.
Silver light glowed from his eyes.
At the same time, his entire body seemed to swell. His limbs grew longer, his torso thicker. His muscles expanded, stretching the fabric of his clothing so much that the seams ripped apart. Coat, waistcoat, shirt, breeches. Even his boots. All of them fell away from his body in scraps.
Dark fur sprouted from his flesh, down to his long hands and feet. Black claws tipped his fingers and toes.
He lurched to his feet, and his head brushed the ceiling. He easily stood seven feet tall, filling the chamber with his size.
Des was no longer Des.
The pistol dropped from Clara’s nerveless hand. It landed with a thud on the floor, yet she barely heard it. All she understood was that something impossible stood before her.
Werewolf.