Really, it is about time he actually did something useful, she thought sourly, as she hobbled over to the medicine chest she had compiled with the knowledge she had gotten from Granny. If he is busy hunting that horrid beast, he won’t be making decent people miserable.
Everything she needed was already in liquid form as tinctures. It wasn’t going to be in the least pleasant to drink, but trying to sleep with an aching ankle was worse.
I just hope that there won’t be any more fuss, she thought as she drank down the vile-tasting potion. Fine, the wolf is vicious and dangerous. But I have no intention of putting myself in danger from it again.
She had managed to fall deeply asleep despite the pain of her bitten ankle. She awoke to an incredible commotion downstairs.
Dawn was not yet on the horizon and she blinked in the dim light of the fire, listening in confusion. Loud, rough male voices, heavy boots stomping all about…it sounded as if there was an entire troop of soldiers at the door —
Why would there be soldiers here?
Then came the sound of one man’s voice raised above all the others, barking orders.
What —
Then there was the unmistakable sound of boots on the stairs, and as she struggled to sit up and clear the fog of sleep from her head, Marguerite opened her bedroom door, and was propelled inside on a veritable wave of tall, strong men in the King’s livery.
“Are you Isabella Beauchamps?” the one with the most decorations on his cloak barked out. And before she could answer, continued, “Were you attacked by a wolf last night?”
Marguerite squeaked. Bella paid no attention to her. How — What —
“I — ” she began.
“Describe the attack!” the man ordered, glowering at her so fiercely that she found herself stammering out her story without thinking twice about it — nor about the fact that her bedroom was filled with armed men, and she was huddled in the bedclothes in her nightgown.
He questioned her closely about the wolf itself, color, size and, most especially, behavior. Then he turned to Marguerite. “You will get your mistress prepared for travel, pack her clothing enough for a month and present her and her belongings downstairs in fifteen minutes,” he commanded. “This is by order of the King.”
WHAT?
But she didn’t have any chance to ask for an explanation or even to protest. Marguerite was so terrified that she practically threw Bella’s clothing onto her. No sooner had Bella struggled into her gown than Mathew and two more of the menservants, and Jessamine, another maid, were crowding into her room and bundling things into trunks. She and her things were rushed downstairs and into the hands of the King’s men so quickly that she scarcely had time to catch her breath.
The chief officer didn’t even let her limp her way out; he swept her up in his arms while more of his men dealt with the two trunks that the servants brought down, and carried her out the door, to be dropped unceremoniously into a carriage. The doors slammed shut, and when she tried them, she discovered that they were locked.
She considered any number of actions, starting with screaming and kicking at the doors. But it was fairly obvious that neither would get her anywhere. This was — must be — on the King’s orders. Doctor Jonaton either had not known what his report would mean, or had known and considered the situation grave enough to withhold the information from her.
So screaming and protesting would get her nowhere, and this carriage, while comfortable, was clearly built to confine whoever was in it quite securely.
She had no idea what was going on — but she hadn’t broken any laws, and clearly, this wolf attack meant something important…
And that was when the answer struck her, and she sat, frozen in horror, for the remainder of the journey.
The carriage stopped. The door was opened from the outside. The King’s officer waited as she blinked in the sudden light. “Can you walk, Mistress Isabella?” he asked with gruff courtesy.
“I think so,” she said in a small voice.
He handed her down; she winced as she put her injured foot on the pavement.
Pavement?
Now she looked up. She was in the courtyard of what was clearly a fortified Manor; a high wall surrounded the building, and the King’s men were just closing a pair of massive metal-reinforced gates. The courtyard was paved, and swept clean of every vestige of snow.
The Manor itself, despite being constructed to withstand a siege, was surprisingly attractive. Part of that might have been the stone-work; cream-colored granite veined with faint pink. Part of it was that the narrow slits of the windows had rounded edges, as did the edges of the roof; in fact, there wasn’t a sharp edge anywhere to be seen, and the placement of the window slits conveyed a feeling of welcome rather than of a prison.
The King’s men were carrying her trunks into the building, via the main entry. The officer gestured to her, indicating that she should follow them. Limping, she did so.
There was a very narrow entryway, clearly designed for defense, just inside the door. Stone below, stone walls, stone ceiling — and she thought she glimpsed murder slits in the walls and ceiling. With two more men with a trunk coming behind her, she limped as quickly as she could through it, and found herself in a room that offered the same welcome that the exterior of the building promised.
She had only been in two Great Manors in her life; both of them had what had been called a Great Hall just inside the door. This was a Hall indeed, but it was not, in size, anything like those rooms. There was a huge fireplace to the right, and another to the left; the room itself was wide rather than deep, and the expanse of floor that could have been cold, had it been made of stone, was instead of warm, light-colored wood. The benches at the fire were made of a similar warm wood, the stone walls softened with tapestries and the whole brightened with oil lamps.
In the middle of the Hall, opposite the entry door, was another door that swung open even as she stood there surrounded by four trunks — when she only recalled bringing two.
Through that door came a young man about four or five years older than herself. He was not exactly handsome, but with a kind and thoughtful face that inclined her to trust him. That he was wearing spectacles, and a sheepish expression, helped.
“Thank you, Captain Malcom,” he said. The King’s officer saluted, and turned and left without saying a word, his men following him.
“You must be Isabella Beauchamps,” the young man continued, turning toward her. “You have a reputation for being very intelligent, so I suppose you have already figured out why you were taken away and brought here.”
“Taken away, yes,” she replied, and shivered despite the warmth of the room. “I was attacked and bitten last night by what must have been a werewolf. I am being isolated until it is determined whether or not I was infected. Though why I was brought here — I don’t know. I don’t even know where ‘here’ is.”
“Well, that’s easy to tell,” the young man told her, looking as if it was anything but easy to say. His expression was profoundly unhappy. “This is Redbuck Manor, I’m Duke Sebastian, and you are here because I am afraid that I am the werewolf that bit you.”
4
BELLA STARED AT HIM, AT FIRST SUSPECTING HIM OF A very bad joke. He, in his turn, watched her with a wary expression in his grayish-green eyes. His dark hair was a trifle long, but he carried himself well. After a moment, it was clear that this was not a joke, that he was entirely serious. And he seemed entirely sane.
Indignation bubbled up inside her.
He stands in front of me and tells me that he is the one who bit me. Of all the nerve!
Her ankle throbbed as she stood there and stared at him, waiting for him to say something else, because she was completely unable to speak right now. More than anything at this moment, her mind was a welter of emotions.
Her initial impulse was to seize something and beat him senseless. Fury was her first emotion, fury at him for attacking her in the first place, fury
that he was still free to run about his woods when the King obviously knew what he was and that he was a danger to others, fury at the King for sending her here — why? — fury at the situation itself.
I will not lose my temper, she told herself, clenching both hands at her sides until her nails bit into her palms. It won’t do any good. Bella had had plenty of practice in keeping her temper, given that Genevieve was incapable of controlling her own, and she employed every bit of that willpower now.
“Erm,” the young man said, diffidently, “I’m horribly, horribly sorry. This should never have happened. I’m supposed to be locked up over the full moon, and I’ve never gotten out before. I don’t know what went wrong. Eric has strict instructions… I was in the special chamber long before sunset, and I remember hearing the bars drop into place. And then the moon came up, and the change started as it always does, and well, the next thing I knew, I was waking up, lying in the kennels, outside, where I wasn’t supposed to be.” He pushed his spectacles up on his nose, nervously. “I don’t know if you believe all this, but I swear it’s all true. And I didn’t know I had bitten anyone until the King’s messenger arrived an hour ago to say you were being brought here and to tell me what to expect.”
Bella took a deep, deep breath. “My ankle hurts where you bit me,” she replied forcefully and resentfully. “I was abducted from my bedroom by the King’s men. I haven’t even had a glass of water, much less breakfast, I am hungry and thirsty and — ”
“And I beg your pardon!” the young man said, looking even more hangdog. “That last, at least, I can do something about. Please, follow me. I’ll try to explain more when you are feeling comfortable.”
When she hesitated, looking at the trunks, he added, “The servants will take care of those. Please, if you have gone this long without food or drink…” His voice trailed off, as if he had no good idea of what to say next. They stared at one another for a long and uncomfortable time.
A more charitable — or perhaps impartial — part of her noted that he didn’t look much like her mental image of a Duke. His hair, a sort of streaky brown, was a bit shaggy and unkempt. She really never thought of spectacles and noble together. Spectacles were something scholars wore. His brown tunic, shirt and trousers, while certainly quite good, were not anything special — no gold, no braid, not even any trimming. He was someone she would have taken for a scholar, actually.
His features were even, but not especially handsome, and in this Kingdom at least, most of the nobles were dazzlingly good-looking. There was none of the unconscious arrogance in his expression that she was accustomed to see in the few nobles she had met. All of the girls that the twins associated with, for instance — one and all, they carried with them an air that said, If I choose to order you, you will obey. This young man’s expression said, Please don’t stab me with a fork, especially a silver one. “I…I can’t help but hope that if I ply you with the pleasures of my table, you will feel a little more kindly toward me. Or at least, if you don’t hate me too much right from the start, you will be more willing to listen to me. I do apologize very well. Lots of practice.”
She considered this. The situation was not going to change, no matter what happened in the next few hours. And without knowing everything involved here, there was no way that she could change it.
And her ankle hurt, and she was, frankly, starving. She raised her chin. “I doubt very much that the so-called pleasures of your table will sway me in any way, Duke Sebastian, but if someone doesn’t tell me exactly what is going on here in the next half hour, I will see to it that your scale model of a duchy becomes annexed by His Majesty and given to my father as a garden.” Just how she was supposed to accomplish this, when she was being held far from everyone, she hadn’t a clue, but he looked as if he believed her.
“Fair enough,” he said. “Please follow me.”
He led her through the doors he had just entered the room by, which led to a very long passageway. More fortifications; this was plain, heavy stone with no other entrance than the one they had used, nor exit but the one at the end of it. There were slits in the walls and holes in the ceiling — another murder-hole, in which invaders could be trapped while the defenders shot at them through the slits and poured boiling liquid or molten lead on them through the ceiling. It was lit by torches in hand-shaped sconces. Rather unnerving.
He led her through the door at the end, and once again, it was as if these rooms belonged to an entirely different building.
To the right — well, she didn’t get a chance to look at it, because it was the room to the left that caught her attention immediately.
The two rooms must have stretched on either side of the murderous passageway. The room to the left was a sumptuous dining room, hung with tapestries of hunting scenes, and beautifully lit with more lamps. But that was not what caught her attention; it was the delicious smells wafting from the many dishes waiting on one end of a very long banquet table.
There were just two chairs there, neither one placed at the head. She limped toward the nearest; he hurried his own steps so that he could pull the seat out for her before taking his own.
If she had been asked to name every single food she liked most at breakfast, she would have found them here. Her stomach didn’t growl, but it did remind her forcefully that she hadn’t eaten since last night.
Since there didn’t seem to be any servants — which was odd, but perhaps understandable, given that the master of this place was on occasion a slavering beast that might turn them into bloody shreds — she helped herself. Perhaps the servants scuttled in at meals, left everything on the table and scuttled out again, locking themselves safely in their own quarters.
He sat opposite her, and served himself, as well. So he was used to it. She waited with her fork poised over her plate.
“You promised me an explanation,” she said, a little severely. He flushed.
“I am not sure where to begin,” he said, toying with his food.
“Well, you weren’t always a werewolf, or I assume people would have noticed,” she pointed out tartly, then did her best not to show how heavenly the bit of ham she had just eaten had tasted.
“No, and that is the peculiar thing.” His brows knitted in a frown. “I wasn’t bitten, not even by so much as a mouse. And Godmother Elena was unable to find any evidence of werewolfery being in my family line — ”
“Wait just a moment!” she exclaimed, interrupting him. “You mean the Godmother knows about this?”
He blinked at her from behind his glasses, mildly confused. “Of course,” he told her. “Why wouldn’t she? Just as the King knows. Anyway, even though I am a wizard — ”
“You’re a wizard?” This was getting far more complicated than she had ever thought it could be.
“I suppose people don’t know,” he mused. “It’s not as if I ever do anything with it — publicly, that is.” He pushed more food around his plate. “Besides, wizards aren’t all that powerful without a lot of practice and — well, never mind that now. It’s a very small duchy and it’s not as if I wanted people to know I did wizardry. They might assume I either needed hiring or conquering. Anyway I could faithfully promise Elena that I hadn’t tried any wolf-transforming spells, because I hadn’t tried any transforming spell, so everyone was pretty baffled the first time — it — happened. I had just turned nineteen.” He sighed. “It’s a very good thing that you don’t make the change and come out of it the first time in fine fettle. It hurts — it hurts every time, actually — and after the first change you are weak and confused. I was really lucky that I was here rather than at the town house, and Eric was there the first time it happened, and he had the presence of mind to throw the wolf in one of the old prison cells in the cellar and bar the door. Then he called the Sheriff and the Sheriff told the King and the King called Godmother Elena. So I didn’t just end up shot.”
“Or forked. Very fortunate,” she said, dryly.
He didn’t appear to notice
the faint sarcasm.
“They all decided that since I hadn’t hurt anyone, that Redbuck Manor was about as isolated as you could ask for, and that the old cells were more than strong enough to hold me, there was no reason why I couldn’t just…stay here. But of course, if I ever got loose and did bite someone…” He coughed.
“Well, lucky for you, you’re not some poor peasant they could just shoot when you finally got loose,” she snapped angrily.
He flushed painfully. “I’m really sorry,” he mumbled. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
Well, as nobles went…apologetic wasn’t a bad reaction. Especially sincere apology. “So now what?” she asked. “I am stuck here with you for the rest of my life?”
“Oh, no!” He finally looked up at her, meeting her gaze again. “No, just for three months, until we’re certain I didn’t — you know.” He gulped. “The Godmother says that because they don’t know for certain why I have this — trait — they don’t know if I even can change someone with a bite the way another can. So…not forever, not unless you…”
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