The Ravencliff Bride (33 page)

“Yes, because Nero was with you just prior to that,” he said.

“I sought you in the study earlier, and saw your clothes and muddy boots on the floor, but you weren’t there. I couldn’t imagine why you had discarded them there, of all places.”

“Ahhhhh, so that was it,” he realized. “I discarded them there, because that is where the transformation took place. I’d been out on the strand, trying to walk off the effects you were having upon me all the way ‘round, and I barely made it to the study before it happened. It often happens out there, but not on that occasion. As I’ve said, I cannot control it.”

“Then . . . that day when I climbed down to the strand and found your clothes . . . ?”

“The day Nero saved you from drowning, yes. He nearly got cut off that day. There are several other ways to access Ravencliff from below, but not in a squall—they flood too quickly—and not in wolf form. I barely changed and made it back before that stretch of beach disappeared. As it was, half the clothes you saved for me are lost at sea, and those I did manage to salvage went straight into the dustbin.”

Sara shook her head and lowered her eyes. Were those tears glistening on her lashes?

“But this . . . I don’t know, Nicholas,” she murmured. “I . . . just don’t know.”

“What other changes did you notice in ‘Nero’?” he asked. “It’s important, Sara. I need to know.”

“Nothing specific that I haven’t already told you . . . except the time he dragged my clothes out of the wardrobe, I had to burn a nightdress and wrapper. He’d urinated upon them.”

“Nero marked his territory in your suite as well, that is why Alex’s wolf did that. He was canceling that out, claiming it—claiming
you
—for himself. Bloody hell!”

“He did it more than once.”

“Go on,” Nicholas growled, raking his fingers through his damp hair. “Anything else that you can recall.”

“When I found him in my bed that time . . . the night I doused him with water from the pitcher on my nightstand, I later learned that when he left me, he menaced Nell, but she shooed him off. I told her not to run from him . . . not to show her fear. Oh, Nicholas!”

“You’re sure he didn’t
bite
you?” Nicholas interrupted. “Not even the slightest scratch?”

“No, he didn’t,” she replied. “The cold water chased him, and I did lock the door afterward that time. I wanted to teach him some manners. That . . . wasn’t Nero?”

Nicholas’s heart was pounding. He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her and kiss her and shake her all at once.
He did none of it. He took deep, tremulous breaths, and swallowed his rapid heartbeat.

“No, Sara, it wasn’t,” he said. “How long ago was that?”

“Just before . . . Nell. She told me he had snapped at her, too.”

“Did he come back afterward?”

“No,” she said. “That was the last, until just now, when I brought him below . . . and found you.”

“How did you find that room down there?” he snapped.

“Nell showed me the way. We heard a howl in the tunnel, and then
one of you
appeared, and we ran back into the house proper.”

“That wasn’t Nero, either, Sara.”

“You’re frightening me now!”

“Good! Somebody has to. Do you finally understand why you must keep your door locked? Nero will not be returning to your suite, but that other wolf surely will, and it will kill you, Sara, just as it killed Nell.”

“Why couldn’t you have told me all this from the start?” she moaned.

“Would you have believed me, if I had?”

She hesitated. “No,” she said low-voiced. “Probably not then. I don’t even know what to believe now. This is preposterous!”

“Well, there it is,” he said, the words slumping his body. “I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t want to lose you.”

“That is unfortunate. You should have trusted me enough to take the chance,” she said, rising from the lounge. Dawn was breaking. The first bleak ribbons of a cottony fog were pressed up against the windowpanes, throwing a distorted shaft of light on the floor between them. “The storm is over,” she observed. “The vicar is coming this morning for the burial, and then the guards will doubtless return to finish searching the house and grounds for . . .
Nero
, the mad dog they think has killed her!”

“Sara . . .”

“Not now, Nicholas,” she murmured. “I need time to sort all this out. We must see to Nell first. We owe her that much. . . .
I
owe her that much.”

“Will you promise me that you’ll lock your door until the other wolf is found . . . and dealt with?”

Sara nodded.

“Nero gave him a few more wounds just now. That will only serve to rile him more than he is already. I will be in the green suite each night until this is resolved, and I will be armed.”

When she started to move past him, he took her in his arms, but she held him at bay with both her tiny hands pressed against his breast, and would not look him in the eyes.

“Not now, Nicholas,” she said. “Please . . . don’t! I need time to think.”

Nicholas hung his head. “Of course,” he said. The words tasted of bile. The worst of it was, she was right: He should have trusted her. He should have taken the chance. Even Mills had said as much.

“I love you, Sara,” he said. “I don’t want you to leave me, but you are not a prisoner here. I told you that at the start. If you cannot accept this situation—accept me, and our arrangement under these circumstances—I shall use my connections to petition the proper authority to release you from your vows. Either way, it will be a lengthy process. I shan’t lie to you; it could take years. I’m not trying to persuade you, only to make you aware, but you needn’t be cast upon poor relations if it comes to that. I have other estates, where you could be housed in comfort pending resolution. In return, I ask only that you not betray my secret. I shouldn’t want this bruited about, or I will likely be hunted down like the animal . . . that I am.”

Sara made no reply. She burst into deep, wracking sobs, broke free of his embrace, and fled.

Nicholas moved through the motions of the burial with a close eye upon Sara, who gave him no opportunity to continue their conversation. He would not press her. He watched in rapt amazement as she stood at the graveside, consoling the servants, taking matters in hand in a way that he himself never could have done, as though nothing had happened between them, though she would not meet his eyes. It was just as well. She had been crying. Despite a liberal application of talc, her fair skin was painted with blotches, and her eyes were nearly swollen shut. It seemed natural enough, considering the solemnity of the funeral rites amongst a collection of grieving servants beneath a dreary watercolor sky all shades of gray. But if she had dosed him with her teary-eyed gaze, he would have been hard-pressed to meet it, knowing that he had put the tears on those soft rose-petal cheeks.

Anticipation of the guards descending upon Ravencliff had everyone on edge. As the day wore on and they didn’t come, Nicholas took matters into his own hands. Wearing a caped greatcoat, and armed with a pair of Harcourt flintlock
dueling pistols in his pockets, he set out to comb the manor from top to bottom, and every inch of the grounds. Stopping first at the tapestry suite, he knocked and waited, encouraged that the door was closed, and reassured when Sara threw the bolt, barely cracking it open.

“I told you I needed time, Nicholas,” she said, opening the door a little wider, but not wide enough to admit him.

“I haven’t come for your answer,” he said. “I’ve come to give you this.” He exhibited the pocket pistol he’d been carrying all along. “And to show you how to use it.”

“I don’t want that, Nicholas.”

“It’s no longer a matter of what we want, Sara. You need to be protected. Just be certain before you shoot. Nero will never menace you.” He shoved it through the door. “Here, take it. Be careful. It’s loaded.”

Sara hesitated. “I . . . I don’t like guns,” she said.

“Take it!” he insisted, “and this.” He handed her a small case lined in burgundy baize. “The implements and ammunition you need to reload are inside. Do you see this key? It fits into the tool that allows you to remove the barrel for loading and cleaning. Here, let me show you.”

“I know how to load a pocket pistol, Nicholas,” she snapped. “My father was a military man, remember? I even carried a muff pistol once, on a journey from Nottingham to London. Father insisted, because of the highwaymen who frequented that quarter.”

“I’d like to hear the whys and wherefores of that, by God, but it will have to wait for another time. Keep that pistol by you, and keep this door locked. I shall collect you at the dinner hour, and return you here afterward. Then, after my session with Dr. Breeden, I shall retire across the way in case you have need of me.”

“You don’t have to do that, Nicholas. I’m hardly a child,” she snapped.

“It’s that, or I post the hall boys outside your suite again. You decide.”

Sara heaved a ragged sigh. “Do as you please,” she said with a shrug.

“You realize, of course, that you cannot discuss the situation at table. You know how the servants eavesdrop in this house. The last thing we need here now is to have more tales circulating in the village.”

“You needn’t worry,” she said. “I’ll behave.” She took his measure. “Where are you going now, with those?” she said, nodding toward the dueling pistols protruding from his pocket.

“Hunting. Now lock this door,” he pronounced, and waited while she closed it and slid the bolt.

Nicholas searched until twilight deepened the shadows and he had to light a candlestick, but there was no sign of Mallory. Convinced that the wolf was hiding somewhere along the passageway in one of the secret chambers, he haunted the lower regions, and followed the tunnel to its end, to the dungeon, and the revolving panel that gave access to the granite apron that edged the cliff. Nero had used it many times to exit the house.

Nagging at the back of his mind was the recollection that Alex Mallory had always been fascinated by the intricacies of Ravencliff; its many hiding places, branched corridors, access doors, and false walls. The steward knew them all—but so did Nicholas, or at least he thought he did. Some he hadn’t visited since a child, and others Nero frequented on a regular basis.

There was a way to lock the tunnel exit, though it hadn’t been employed in years, a tongue-and-groove mechanism hewn into the top of the panel that, once activated, prevented the panel from swiveling. A man could work it, but a wolf could not. If he were to engage it, and the slabs meshed inside the wall, he would be locking the wolf either in, or out. He would also be depriving himself . . . or Nero of an exit route if the need should arise. He tried to put himself in the mind of the wolf, and gave it only passing thought, before
he tripped the mechanism. The grating rumble of stone against stone echoed along the corridor. It was a gamble, but unless he missed his guess, the wolf was somewhere in the house and would surface soon enough with his exit route removed. Counting upon his instincts not to play him false, he retraced his steps, but the lower regions were vacant.

A search of the grounds on the courtyard side yielded nothing either, and he dragged himself back to the house at the end of it, drenched with the evening mist, and chilled to the bone, as was often the way of it long into summer in soft weather on the Cornish coast.

There was no way to repair the damage before the evening meal, though he did opt for a change of clothes, and ordered the hearths lit again in the dining hall, and in the master, tapestry, and green suites. The house was dank and musty, the old walls bleeding with mildew and rising damp. That had never bothered him before. Somehow, everything bothered him now.

Sara accompanied him to the dining hall in silence. Her eyes were still puffy and red, but the blotches had either faded, or been doctored more expertly with talc. He suspected the latter. The conversation was congenial, though forced during the meal. Dr. Breeden watched Sara’s every move just as he did, but she was the perfect hostess, above reproach, and Nicholas began to relax—as much as was possible under the enchantment of her closeness.

The low-cut décolleté of her sprigged muslin gown drew his eyes. He’d already tasted with his lips what lay beneath. How sweet it was to suckle at those perfect breasts. How magical to feel the silky softness of her skin beneath his fingers, rough by contrast; to feel the tall rosebud nipples harden against his tongue. How well they fitted together, as if she were the missing part of him, without which he had never been whole. What ecstasy it would be to feel himself live inside the soft, moist warmth of her, filling her, moving
to her rhythm. He’d imagined it a thousand times, but it could never be. His indigo breeches began to pinch, and he changed position in the chair. It didn’t help. He was tight against the seam, and thankful that he was seated and would be for some time.

Her scent was all around him—in him—threading through his nostrils, the subtle sweetness of gillyflower and roses chasing the stink of damp and decay. He inhaled it in deep breaths disguised as stifled sighs. Soon, the roses would bloom in the gardens, and flood the house with their perfume as they always did in summer, but their scent would pale before hers now, and torment him forever if she were to leave.

After the meal, he returned her to her suite, and waited while she threw the bolt. No words passed between them, except for a strained “good night.” Afterward, he dragged himself back up to the master suite sitting room, where Dr. Breeden had set up the armonica, and was waiting with his nightly cordial, while Mills and the footmen readied his bath.

“It’s no use,” Nicholas said, after half an hour of the doctor’s treatments. “There’s too much on my conscious mind for it to give way to my subconscious, I’m afraid. I’m sorry.”

“Not to worry, my lord. We’ve plenty of time.”

“That’s just it, we don’t,” Nicholas said. “The baroness saw me transform last night. How she hasn’t fled the place by now is a mystery, and a miracle. It may still happen. She hasn’t given me her answer yet, but I’m afraid I know what it will be.”