Wolf Bride (23 page)

Jeremiah

Dearest Mr. Dawson,

I write to inform you of my interest in an advertisement you placed in a paper some months ago. For reasons I can’t quite sort through right now, I have a mind to consider your offer. You have written of your want for a proper wife, and I assure you my high bred pedigree stretches for generations. As I’ve fallen on misfortune, I don’t have any dowry to offer or material possessions to give if that is what you are looking for, but I’ll be easily companionable and diligent in my wifely duties. I have to admit, as I would feel terrible for pursuing you under false pretense, that I have been a victim of a serious scandal here in Boston recently and won’t bring any prestige to your lineage. However, if you are willing to overlook all of that and still would consider me a candidate for your arrangement, please contact me in Boston.

Yours,

Lorelei McGregor

I had the letter memorized, but I still liked to read over the elegant handwriting. The fire flickered behind the piece of cream linen paper and illuminated the emblem of her initials at the top of the fine stationary. Whatever scandal she was involved in peaked my interest for sure, but I hadn’t received any other responses, so my options were limited. It was Lorelei McGregor or no wife at all. And from the way I’d been tearin’ at those barn walls at night to get to Kristina, I was damned near desperate to try anything to give my wolf his mind back.

I knew Boston because Da and Ma lived within the city limits. They lived by modest means, but even upon visiting them, I’d heard the name McGregor. She’d been telling the truth about her pedigree, but what could make her fall so far that she wanted to seek refuge in the wilderness?

Kristina giggled as she and Luke emerged from the woods behind me. I’d built the fire near the charred remains of our house and the only surviving piece of our cabin was the rocking chair from the front porch. One of the Hell Hunters likely flung it to the side while they were busy trying to murder us. I rocked lazily in it and rubbed my thumb across the smooth paper.

“You’d better write her back before she changes her mind,” Kristina sang over the
pop, pop
of the burning logs of the fire. “She won’t wait forever you know.”

She was right of course, but I didn’t feel good about bringing a lady out to this kind of danger. We’d just been hunted, almost hanged and burned alive, and I was living in a rough camp in the woods. The timing couldn’t be worse.

Kristina had it only slightly better because she and Luke lived in the barn, but still—she lived in a barn. And she was a different sort of woman. One easily adapted to the changes of the wilderness we called home. A proper city lady wasn’t going to be so patient with our lack of housing.

“I need to change tonight, Jeremiah,” Luke said as they passed by the firelight. “Might want to stay out of the barn for a bit.”

He didn’t sound too torn up about the prospect of a painful turning. Usually he moped about all day if he knew the change was coming, but since he’d married Kristina, he couldn’t seem to change enough.

Luke draped his arm around her shoulders and whispered something in her ear. I couldn’t hear what from this far a distance, but from the way she giggled and pushed him away, I wasn’t going too far out on a limb to guess it was something inappropriate, as per usual. He grabbed her hand and pulled her in close before kissing her soundly. Never once in all of their touching and whispering did they stop their ascent to the barn.

Yep, whatever the change in Luke, it was Kristina who’d caused it. Good for her. My brother had never accepted his wolf like he needed to. It kept him unhappy, and now he’d found somethin’ worthwhile and reassuring in the woman he’d married.

I shook my head at the mysteries of their relationship and dropped my eyes to the letter again. Was Lorelei the one who’d fix my wolf like Kristina had done for Luke?

I had no right to drag her out here to live in a tent, to marry a monster, and to bare sons who’d grow up to be wolves. But the most selfish parts of me didn’t care about all of that. I needed a woman to hold at night and to soothe the snarling beast inside.

Lorelei McGregor was about to get much, much more than she’d bargained for.

Wolf Brides Series

Red Snow Bride (Book 2)

Coming November 2014

Dawson Bride (Book 3)

Coming November 2014

For exclusive sneak peeks and new releases, sign up for T. S. Joyce’s Shifter Romance Newsletter
HERE
.

RED SNOW BRIDE

(Wolf Brides, Book 2)

Read on for a sneak peek of the thrilling sequel to Wolf Bride.

Chapter One

Lorelei

“Are you all right, my love?” I asked Daniel. He’d been quiet all evening which was very uncharacteristic of my usually boisterous spouse.

His blond hair threw threads of golden color under the extravagant crystal chandelier, and his blue eyes were like ice frozen into his pale skin. A fine sheen of sweat dusted his brow, and I frowned as his gaze settled on me without really seeing me. Maybe he was ill or perhaps he was having a vision of his time in the war again. Those came frequently in recent months. Or maybe it was just more of the same, ignoring me because he found me useless in some way or another.

The Countess Delecroix d’Maine sat next to me and touched me lightly on the arm with her gloved hand. “And so I said, ‘Well get them to the ships then. Get them all to the ships!’”

The dining room exploded with delighted laughter and some small applause, but I still couldn’t manage to take my eyes away from Daniel. Something cold moved within my center, like some long buried instinct that told me to run.

The clamor quieted down as my husband rose with a toasting glass and spoon in his hand. “I have an announcement to make to you, all of our dearest friends.”

Twelve sets of dancing eyes settled on him as he made a tinkling sound against his crystal glass. The delicate noise was quite beautiful.

Richard Pratter, who sat at the end of the table with his fiancé, lifted his glass. “After a year of marriage, have you finally an announcement of the next heir to the Delaney fortune?”

The crowd burst into a happy murmur and I wrenched my hands under the table. Giving Daniel a son would be wonderful, but he hadn’t visited my bed in months, and even when he’d done so before that, I was quite convinced we were doing everything wrong. No, there was no child growing in my belly to announce.

Daniel laughed but it sounded forced with an edge of cruelty. “No, something much better is happening.”

Richard’s deep set eyebrows turned down. “Well, tell us, Delaney. What could be better than an heir?”

He looked down at me and smiled vacantly. “Right now, at this very moment, I have a team of lawyers working on a divorce between my wife and I.”

A few of the ladies at the table laughed. “Oh, Daniel’s just putting us all on again,” one of them mumbled behind a gloved hand.

The Count said, “Here, what’s this about divorce, Delaney? It’s hardly a joking matter to utter that word in mixed company.”

Something had grown cold and dark within me at the shame he’d brought by joking about it in front of me. In front of anybody, really. Divorce wasn’t talked about in society. It just wasn’t done.

“The law clearly states a divorce can be granted in the presence of impotence in the marriage. And if a man can be divorced for impotence, then Lorelei can be divorced for leaving my bed cold and wanting. She’ll never grant me an heir as is her wifely duty, and so the proceedings have begun long before now.”

Different flavors of horror sat upon everyone’s face. The only sound was the kitchen door opening, but the servant holding a tray of food froze when she laid eyes upon the table of silent highborn. Heat, burning and telling, crept up my neck and landed in the very tips of my ears until I had to stifle the urge to cover them with my cold, clammy hands for comfort.

“What is this?” The Countess whispered. Under the table she clasped my hand in a steely grip. “The disrespect you’ve shown your good wife in this joke is insurmountable. I’ve never witnessed anything so crass in my life. Give us the punch line and be done with this conversation, sir.”

Daniel’s mouth set in a grim and somber line. “No punch line, I’m afraid. I deserve better than the person I married.”

The Whitten’s and Ash’s stood as one, throwing their embroidered napkins onto their dinner plates with fire in their eyes. Without a word they left the room, quickly followed by Richard and his betrothed.

I couldn’t move. Every angry glare was a lance across my heart. My friends stood and left one by one until only a few endured to witness the remainder of my plummet from society. The Count waited by the door for his wife, and the Countess stood over me with a poisonous glare for Daniel.

Her delicate nostrils flared as she said, “You’ve ruined her with what you said in here tonight. News of her cold bed will reach even the darkest crevices of Boston by morning.”

“That was the plan. It’s the only way my lawyers will be able to win my case. It has to be common knowledge that she is an undeserving wife,” he said dryly before he downed his champagne.

“She’s a McGregor,” the Countess fumed. “You’ve just spat on generations of good breeding for the chance to elope with one of your whores.” She turned and with a whoosh of deep, red silk skirts, she disappeared through the door after her husband.

“Why?” I asked in a small, trembling voice.

“I’ve already told you. You don’t please me in bed. You bore me, like the flavor vanilla or the sight of yet another brown horse.”

The tears that built in my eyes made dual rivers of warm water down my burning cheeks. “I want my dowry back.”

He sat heavily in the chair beside me and poured more champagne until his glass was filled to the brim. “Your dowry was spent in the first few months of our marriage, I’m afraid. You’ll have nothing and no one from society will call on you after this scandal. Your best bet is to borrow money from your family and move away. The farther the better.”

White hot anger boiled inside of me until surely I’d explode into a million broken pieces. “I hadn’t any idea you hated me so much, Daniel.”

He made a clucking sound with his mouth. “Poor naive Lorelei. Your problem has always been that you’re too sweet for your own good. I don’t hate you. I just never loved you. We married because my family line benefited by being tied to the McGregors, but now, I don’t care about all of that so much. I’ll remarry and this scandal will be old news by next season. At least for me it will be.” His eyes were cool and emotionless, like some slithering serpent. “I’ve arranged for a carriage to take you to an inn. You may gather your most personal possessions, but I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave the valuables here in my care. Go now. I’d like to eat my dinner in peace.”

The palm of my hand itched to slap him across his smirking face, and if I were lower born and able to get away with such behavior, I would’ve. Instead, I covered my mouth to hide my treacherous sobs and ran from the room. He didn’t deserve to see how much he’d hurt me.

Divorce! That was the foulest word you could dare to utter, and he’d thrown me under a carriage in front of the most prominent members of society with it. The Countess was right. I was ruined—utterly, unerringly, and devastatingly ruined.

No man would ever touch me after such a scandal. I’d die cold in my bed, alone and without the comfort of a husband, or of children. He’d cursed me to an existence beneath everything I knew.

Mariel Loche flitted across my mind and my heart sank in terror. I didn’t know anyone else in the living world who’d weathered divorce except for Mariel Loche. Her husband divorced her and left her nothing but a meager living to eat on. When that had been spent, she’d fallen further and further and last I’d heard, she was working in a brothel in the worst part of town. Whoring and making coins by selling her body to survive. That would be my fate.

No. I was still a McGregor. I could borrow money, surely, and eventually some man would overlook my scandal and marry me. I shook my head in devastation. What man would ever want a woman who’d been so cold in bed, she’d pushed her husband into
divorce
?

Shame filled my veins until I was filled to bursting. I hadn’t known how to fix that part of my relationship, so I just let it go. How could every other woman manage to please their man but me? I’d bare this humiliation like a heavy metal chain around my neck for the rest of my life. My fists clenched until my nails dug into the skin and the smell of moist iron hung faintly in the air. I’d never marry a man for anything but necessity ever again. I’d loved Daniel and look where that got me. Men were harsh and unfeeling creatures, incapable of receiving love, incapable of giving love.

As long as I breathed, I vowed my heart would never be touched by another again.

RED SNOW BRIDE

Coming November 2014