Chapter Five
HAVING JOINED THE ANCIENT Great North Road that led all the way to Scotland, the Whitworth coach was making much better time the second day.
Although the road was bumpy, Alfreda’s pet cat, Raston, didn’t seem to mind and purred on the seat between them.
Raston had never been allowed in the house.
He’d lived in the rafters of the Whitworth stable.
Oddly, the horses had never been bothered by his presence.
Alfreda had brought him food. The stableboys had given him more.
Now Raston was fat and heavy to hold due to all those meals.
“Your father told the damned driver to make haste,” Alfreda grumbled when she was jostled on the seat for the third time that morning.
“But this is too much. I don’t think Lord Whitworth wanted you to arrive in York before the Prince Regent’s emissary did.
I will warn our driver to slow down when we stop for lunch today.
They can go as fast as they like on the return trip. ”
Brooke grinned. “But this is fun. I really don’t mind a bouncy ride.”
“You will tonight when you feel the aches from it. But I’m glad to see you smiling.
You know you can be yourself now, laugh when you want, cry when you please, even lose your temper from time to time if you feel like it.
Away from that house that choked the life out of you, you no longer need to keep your inner self contained, poppet. ”
Brooke raised a black brow. “You’re suggesting I let this Prince-picked groom see who I really am?”
“You could. Why pretend with him?”
Brooke laughed. “I’m not really sure who I am anymore.”
“Of course you are. You are yourself with me and always have been.”
“But only with you, and only because you were the only one in that house who actually loved me.”
“Your mother—”
“Don’t defend her to me. She spoke to me only when she had to, or when my father and Robert were away and she was in one of her chattering moods. And even then she only wanted me to sit there and listen, not participate in a real conversation.”
Many times Alfreda had tried to convince Brooke that Harriet loved her.
At times Brooke had thought it might be true.
Occasionally, her mother would smile at her when no one else was around or stand in the doorway of the study watching her during a lesson with her tutor.
Once, when Brooke cut her arm, Harriet brushed Alfreda aside to tend it herself.
She’d even given Brooke Rebel, her most prized possession, for her thirteenth birthday.
Yes, a few times Harriet had acted like a mother toward her, but Brooke knew what love felt like and what it looked like.
She saw it every time Alfreda looked at her.
She never saw it in her real mother’s eyes.
Yet she knew Harriet was capable of love because she displayed it in abundance for Robert.
“She could be like two different people, Freda. Most of the time, cold and indifferent, and on rare occasions, caring and interested. Sometimes I thought . . . but if I’d been myself with her, I would have been caught in the crosshairs when she reverted to being as cold as my father.
The hurt she caused me would have been so much worse if I’d allowed myself to hope it could be otherwise.
But you—I wished so many times that you, not Harriet, were my mother. ”
“Not as many times as I wished you were my daughter. But you are the daughter of my heart, never doubt that.” Then Alfreda cleared the emotion out of her throat and added more formally, “We know why you hid yourself from that unnatural family of yours. It was the only way to save yourself pain and abuse. Let us both hope those days are gone for good.”
“What d’you think will happen if Dominic Wolfe doesn’t like me and sends me back home?” Brooke wondered aloud.
“Nothing other than you will likely get that Season in London that you were promised, and soon after, some other husband. But there would have to be something very wrong with Lord Wolfe for him not to like you, poppet.”
“But he hates Robert and will hate me because of it.”
“Then he would be a fool.”
“He could be that anyway.” Brooke sighed a little forlornly. “I knew I would marry eventually, but I expected a courtship.”
“As well you should have.”
“To at least know my husband well before we reached the altar.”
“We have passed beyond ‘usual’ circumstances here. You could ask for a brief courtship, though. If your wolf is a good man, he might agree.”
“Or he could be as afraid of the royals as my family and drag me straight to the altar instead.”
Alfreda chuckled. “Which is it you want, to be turned away at the door or married straightaway?”
Brooke sighed again. “I won’t know until I meet him. I wish none of this had happened.”
“Take heart, poppet. This northern lord could be wonderful. The Prince Regent could be doing you a very big favor.”
“Or Robert could have done me the biggest unplanned ill yet. Getting me stuck with a husband who could well repulse me.”
Alfreda tsked. “Then perhaps we shouldn’t speculate?”
“Perhaps not.”
On the third day of their journey, when they stopped for lunch, no one at the inn knew who Dominic Wolfe was.
But they found out that the Regent’s emissary was traveling so swiftly that he was probably on his way back to London by now.
Apparently, he was traveling day and night, merely changing horses when he could, and sleeping in his coach.
That night, they were only a few hours away from Lord Wolfe’s estate, but Alfreda refused to continue on in the dark.
She wanted Brooke to be refreshed and looking her best when she faced the wolf for the first time.
They took a room at an inn and Alfreda went down to order a bath for Brooke and to have food delivered to their room.
When she returned, she had information about the Wolfe family.
“You aren’t going to like this,” Alfreda said with a dour look. “As if you already don’t have enough worries on your plate, this family you’ve been ordered to join apparently has a curse hanging over their heads, so I think now we need to hope you get turned away at their door.”
“What sort of curse?”
“The nasty sort, centuries old, a curse that has killed all the firstborns in each generation in their twenty-fifth year—unless illness or accident takes them sooner.”
Round-eyed with amazement, Brooke said, “You’re joking, right?”
“No, just repeating what the barmaid, then the cook, and then one of his own villagers who is visiting a relative near here had to say about Lord Wolfe’s family.”
“But we—I mean, I don’t believe in curses. D’you?”
“Not really. The thing is, poppet, many people do, including those who are supposedly cursed. If you are told you are going to die by a certain age, you might be more reckless with your life so the harm invoked by the curse ends up happening anyway. But I doubt the Wolfe heirs just dropped dead for no reason. Ask yours to explain when you feel comfortable with him.”
“I will. There’s obviously some simple explanation that the family just doesn’t bother to share, thus the rumor never got quashed as it should have.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“And maybe they like having such a rumor floating around—for some reason.”
“You don’t need to convince me, poppet. But it’s the ‘centuries-old’ part that worries me.
That means this rumor has been around for a long time and has been kept alive because firstborns have died, and at least a few of them in their twenty-fifth year.
That’s a lot of bad luck for one family to have if it is only bad luck. ”
Brooke was scowling but she wanted to know what else Alfreda had heard about the Wolfes. “Was anything said about Dominic in particular?”
“He’s young. No one gave an age, but obviously he’s not twenty-five yet.”
Brooke rolled her eyes and accused, “You do believe in curses!”
“No, just a little levity on my part that obviously failed abysmally.”
“Robert mentioned that Lord Wolfe had a sister who died. The wolf might not even be the firstborn of his generation.”
“Which might be good news if we believed in curses, but a death is never good news. He could have other siblings your brother doesn’t know about.”
“Or be the last of his line and determined to get himself killed in a duel. I wish we knew more about him.”
“Well, there is another rumor, one even more absurd. They say he prowls the moors as a real wolf and his howls are the proof of it.”
Brooke’s mouth dropped open before she demanded, “Tell me that’s more levity?”
Alfreda grinned. “No, but you know how rumors get embellished every time they are passed along. They end up being so far from the truth that they are no more than wives’ tales.”
“Well, that rumor is obviously superstitious nonsense. A wolf man? Maybe they have an ogre living in a tower, too.”
Alfreda chuckled. “I don’t think anything would surprise me at this point. But there must be something unusual about the Wolfe family for these rumors to have started in the first place.”
“And aren’t wolves extinct in England now?”
“Indeed.”
“But they weren’t centuries ago when superstitious people started these ridiculous rumors,” Brooke said with a nod, making her point.
“I’m not arguing with you, poppet. However, because wolves are extinct, no one would believe they hear a real wolf, only an unnatural one. But if people really have heard howling, it’s no doubt just the cries of a long-snouted dog.”
Brooke huffed. “Well, you found out more about the Wolfes than I wanted to know. I think I will be most disagreeable when I arrive so I do get turned away at his door.”