Chapter 7
It was a simple meal of roast rabbit and foraged greens and berries, held in broad leaves.
No tea. No pastries or toasted bread with coddled eggs.
Even so, it far outpaced any breakfast Jessica had ever had in her cramped little rooms, or the coffee house down the road.
For one thing, she wasn’t alone as she ate.
Typically, she usually endured miserly solitude.
Even though they didn’t speak during their meal, the silence held no strain or awkwardness.
The men seemed content to simply be, and she could be with them.
She sat beside the fire, gnawing on a bone with as much delicacy as she could manage, given that she was ravenous and napkins were in short supply. Ezra, Tej, and Rhys sat on the other side of the fire. They concentrated on their meal with the focus of hungry men in their prime.
She kept sneaking glances at them, at all of them, watching their teeth sink into the meat, or their fingers plucking some cress or a wild bilberry and popping them into their mouths.
“Surprised we take our meat cooked?” Tej asked wryly, catching her staring.
“She thinks we’d eat like wolves, too,” Rhys noted. “All slobber and fangs.” His tongue came out to carefully lick his fingers.
“I believe no such thing.” She ran her hands over the grass to clean them. “Though the setting and the company are unfamiliar to me.”
“Little experience breaking your fast in the woods with a trio of highwaymen,” Tej said.
“Who are more than ordinary highwaymen,” she added.
At this, Tej merely shrugged. “Is there any such thing as an ordinary highwayman? We’ve all got tales.”
“And you?” she pressed. “What’s your tale?”
His eyes flashed dark and cautious.
“I’ve proven that I’m not aligned with the law.” Quietly, she said, “Not anymore.”
“Tell me, then, what you are aligned with.”
She looked down at her hands. They were capable hands, not a lady’s, able to speedily load and fire a pistol, or form a fist and punch without fear of breaking her bones. She dressed herself without the benefit of a maid, and paid for her own lodgings and food, dependent on no one but herself.
“Survival,” she said after a moment. “I’ll do what I must to ensure it.”
Tej raised one of his thick eyebrows. “Including turning in three highwaymen for a reward?”
“If money was my concern,” she snapped, “I wouldn’t be here with you now. With any of you.”
She looked at each of them in turn: Tej, watching her guardedly; Rhys, contemplatively gnawing on a bone, offering little of his own thoughts; and Ezra, with the glint of wary humor in his eyes.
“I left that path,” she went on. “But the road ahead is unknown and covered in brambles. Apologies if I’m not quite agile with an answer as to what lies ahead for me.”
Tej stared at her for a long while. Then, “My father, Jayesh, is a lascar. He was a lascar. After a time, he decided to stop sailing and settled down to raise a family in Portsmouth. We—my father, my mother Sarah, my sisters Nitya and Meera—ran a woolen-draper shop together. It was hard work, and they did their best to provide for us. The shop did well enough. There was always plenty to eat, and new clothes, and the family around the supper table. We were…happy.”
“What changed?” she asked softly.
“I did.” His voice was tight. “Lycanthropy starts as a boy is moving into manhood. My family didn’t know what was happening to me.
I didn’t either. But it was terrifying, and they did their best to protect me from those who wouldn’t understand, and hurt me.
Already we had to tread with some degree of caution, because of the color of my father’s skin, and my sisters’ and mine, as well.
But when I began to change into a werewolf, it made us into targets. I endangered us.”
She shot glances toward Rhys and Ezra, who listened to their comrade with quiet but attentive expressions.
“What happened?” She spoke carefully.
He spread his hands. “I ran. I ran to keep them safe. The years after that…” His gaze turned even more distant.
“Dark ones. I was always…” he swallowed, “…chased by guilt, that I had left my family. But I did what I had to in order to survive, and to protect them. So, I stayed away. And it was a hard life. When you spend a night a month in the form of a giant wolf, you can’t stay anywhere too long, lest anyone get suspicious.
Finding regular employment…it’s a challenge. ”
“So, you turn to crime,” Jessica said without judgment.
“It’s what some werewolves must do to feed and clothe and house ourselves,” Tej answered.
“Pickpocketing, robbery,” Rhys explained.
“An expert at second story work, you are.” The coldness left Tej’s eyes as he looked at Rhys. The Welshman’s smile was small but warm, and Ezra gave a roguish grin.
“And what of you?” Jessica asked Rhys.
His smile fell away. “Lived with my aunt and uncle in Aberystwyth. As Tej said, the wolf part of us comes out when we begin to leave childhood behind. Aunt Rhian and Uncle Alastair cast me out when they learned what I was becoming. They didn’t want to risk their neighbors or the vicar learning that their nephew was a monster, or what that might mean for them.
They refused to become pariahs. Better me than them. After that, I was on my own.”
She pressed a hand to the center of her chest, covering her bruised and aching heart.
The pain these men had suffered, the loneliness.
The fear. In Tej’s case, he fled from his family because he loved them, to protect them.
For Rhys, those that were supposed to love and protect him failed in their duty.
What a brutal place this world was to those who were different.
“But you found friends,” she pointed out, gazing toward Tej and Ezra.
“Rhys had his back against the wall in an alley brawl in Colchester,” Ezra said, “five against one. Bullies and uneven odds never sit well with me. So, I stepped in.”
“You were a sight, with your fists swinging and a grin on your face.” Rhys chuckled.
“And you would’ve kept on grinning as your arses were handed to you,” Tej pointed out, “if I hadn’t joined the fun. We chased those drunk lackwits halfway to Chelmsford, then bought ourselves a round at the Doe and Dove.”
“Several rounds, if memory serves.” Ezra snickered. “Which it doesn’t, because we all got so disguised, I have very little memory of the rest of that night.”
The three men shared a laugh, shaking their heads.
It was almost enviable, the kind of friendship they shared.
She had almost no one in her life she could consider so bosom a companion.
Her parents were buried in an overcrowded churchyard, Charlie was often away, and there was Marie, a dress lodger down the hall where Jessica rented her rooms, whom she might share a pint with when they were both between engagements, but that was seldom, and Marie had her own circle of friends.
Strange, to be sitting here with these men and be harrowed with isolation.
“The hell of it was,” Ezra went on, “none of us knew the others were also werewolves.”
“A remarkable coincidence,” she exclaimed.
But Ezra gave another shake of his head. “There was a part of me that felt it, in some fashion.”
“We all felt it,” Tej said. “I knew you were like me. I was drawn to you, as you were to us.”
“We found each other,” Rhys said simply, “when we didn’t belong anywhere else.”
“Wolves live in packs, after all,” she noted.
A shadow fell across Ezra’s face. He stood abruptly and kicked dirt into the fire, extinguishing it. “Our appointment approaches,” he said gruffly. “There’s but one mount between all of us. Traveling on foot will take us longer, so if we’re to meet Quentin, we ought to leave now.”
With that, he stalked away from their makeshift camp. He moved toward their horse, placidly cropping grass two yards away.
Jessica frowned in confusion. “I’ve offended him, but I don’t know why or how.”
“A changeable man, is Ezra,” Tej said.
“What is his tale?” She didn’t implore precisely, but her words were taut with urgency.
Tej and Rhys kept their expressions blank.
“That’s his to give or not,” Rhys said, “as he chooses. Best take care of your needs, madam, before we head out. Once we start, there won’t be much time for stopping.”
Rhys stood and stretched his long body, graceful as a dancer, before going to join Ezra.
Jessica remained where she was, staring at the smoldering remains of the fire. Only when Tej’s large hand appeared in her sight did she realize he’d approached and offered to help her up.
She slid her hand into his, a jolt of awareness traveling through her at the touch of his skin to hers. It was hot and alive, a connection that singed her to her marrow. He possessed an impressive size and a strong body. He carried wounds even as courage helped him endure exile from those he loved.
When she had taken lovers in London, she’d preferred to tryst in their beds or in rented rooms so she could leave and return to her solitude, no fear of taking on their burdens when her own were so weighty.
Yet…she could linger with Tej. Stroke and soothe him long after the sex was over.
They could give each other solace…and pleasure.
And there would be a lot of pleasure. She knew this with a soul-deep understanding. They would burn brightly together, flame to flame.
A person didn’t desire more than one lover at a time. That wasn’t how attraction and affection worked. Or did it?
Yet as Tej helped her to stand, his gaze was hot and intent on her face, his eyes locking with hers. She couldn’t look away as her breath seized in her lungs.
“Thank you,” she said breathlessly. At his frown, she explained, “For sharing your story with me. You don’t know me, but I’m honored by your trust.”
“I think I do know you, Lady Vixen.” His use of Ezra’s name for her caused her pulse to flutter. “There’s courage in you, and fire. And an open heart. All rare qualities in this place, in these times, and you possess each one.”
Her lips parted, and his gaze flicked down to her mouth.
She found herself leaning closer to him, their hands still clasped. Within the frame of his dark beard, his mouth tempted her.
“Quentin’s waiting!” Ezra clipped.
Tej abruptly let go of her hand. She craved the warmth and texture of his skin immediately, but let him walk away from her just the same.