"Does she hold the purse strings?" Florizel the clown cried out.
"You said Munroe made a threat if we didn't get out of town," said one of the Flying Grassotti Brothers. "We have heard that he's a powerful man in this city. He has offered us money to leave—it's not worth the risk to stay and make him angry."
How could she counter that argument? Circus folk never stood up well against townies, let alone prominent ones. They knew the wisdom of strategic retreat when townies became hostile. She glanced at Harry, at Morgan, and last at Ulysses.
Ulysses moved only a little, but every eye focused on him when he did. "Harry formed this troupe," he said quietly. "Many of us had no homes, no employment, nothing at all before he took us in. His hearth has always been open to anyone in need—anyone who is different, regardless of the nature of that difference." He looked directly at Florizel. "Once you aspired to be a great thespian of the legitimate stage. But no one would employ you because of your appearance. Your talent meant nothing. You were lost in the throes of dipsomania when we found you, and Harry gave you a chance to play to the crowds."
He turned to Regina, whose tall, impossibly thin body towered over everyone else. "Your brother cast you out when you refused to marry a man who would not touch you if not for your family wealth. You would not easily have found a partner outside, but here…"
He didn't finish his sentence. Regina clasped her long, spidery fingers around the thick ones of her husband, Tor the strongman.
"There are countless other stories like these," Ulysses said. "It is clear to me—"
"Harry asked for our opinions," Giovanni said. "You don't want us to stay, do you, Harry?"
"It… well, it is true that Mr. Munroe wishes us to leave and will pay us half the promised sum if we do so. But Miss Munroe—she is so very set on our performance. She even wishes to keep us on for a second one."
"I still don't see how it's worth turning a man like Munroe against us," Giovanni said. "If we have enough to see us through winter—"
"Only if nothing else happens," Caitlin said. "If we have another fire, or any bad luck at all—"
"We'll get along. Let's pull out, Harry. We don't need to borrow more trouble."
"I also vote that we leave," Tamar said, slipping up to the front of the gathering. "What do we owe to this… Athena Munroe? To any of their kind?"
"That's right."
"Tamar speaks truth. As long as he pays, he doesn't matter what his sister—"
A deep, reverberating growl sliced through the strident words. Morgan fixed his potent stare on each of the speakers in turn. Every one of them stepped back into the safety of the crowd.
"Cowards," he said. He didn't have to raise his voice; every word rang like the clash of cymbals. "You pride yourselves on being different and better than townies. You say you are a family. Now one comes to you who needs what you can give, and you turn your back on her."
A chorus of protests. "You are not making any sense, Morgan," Giovanni said. "Athena Munroe is rich as Croesus. How can she need our help?"
"She is not like us," Florizel said, daring to step forward again. "In what manner is she a freak, as Caitlin so kindly refers to us? She is a cripple, that is all."
Morgan snarled. Florizel's face lost what little color it had.
"A cripple," Morgan said. "An outsider among her own kind, who helps strangers without asking anything in return. She saw me Change today, and she was not afraid. And she did not change her mind about us."
Caitlin stood at Morgan's shoulder. "What Morgan says is true. She may be a towny, but she knows what it's like to suffer."
"We gave our word to perform for her orphans," Morgan said. "I will go to Munroe. I'll tell him that I will leave Denver if he allows the performance."
"You'll do that just for this lady and her orphans?"
Florizel asked. "Have you been enjoying the lady's favors—what favors she has to bestow—and that is why her brother wants us gone?"
Caitlin had seldom seen Morgan make the actual Change into the "Wolf-Man," the creature he became in the sideshow. Now he began to transform, his body half-wreathed in black mist, fine dark hair flowing over his hands and feet and at the neckline of his shirt. His face remained almost untouched, but it was undeniably lupine. And deadly.
Harry intervened. "Morgan's honor and his word have been good from the first moment we met him," he said. "I trust his instincts, and Caitlin's. I think… I think they are right." He mopped at his face with a handkerchief. "I believe we should stay for the performance, and then leave."
"And what if Munroe refuses to pay anything?"
"Miss Munroe will see that you get your money," Morgan said. Between one heartbeat and the next, he was human again. "You decide whether or not you let a towny tell you where you can go and how you can live."
Harry coughed behind his hand. "I believe it is time for a vote. Will those who wish to leave say 'aye'?"
The few ayes were restrained and almost inaudible. When Harry asked for the nays, they rang out with conviction. Caitlin grinned at Morgan and Ulysses.
"This course does entail some risk," Ulysses said as the troupers began to disperse. "Munroe is a powerful man."
"I think you are underestimating Athena's strength of character," Caitlin said. "She wants us to stay, and I know she can stand up to her brother if she has to."
Harry blotted his face again. "I hope you are right, Caitlin. I do so wish to please the poor child. I confess that I have developed a certain… fondness for her."
"Calculated risks are occasionally necessary," Ulysses said, scrutinizing Morgan with interest, "if for no other reason than to preserve one's honor and keep one's word."
"Honor," Caitlin snorted. "When did honor ever get you anything, Uly? This is simply the right thing to do."
"Your reaction seems somewhat personal, Firefly."
"What's done is done," Harry said. "We've only to go ahead as best we can."
"And someone must explain to Athena what has happened," Caitlin added. "We will have to find an excuse to get her back to the lot. I'm certain her brother did not plan to tell her until we had left Denver."
"Maybe she won't defy him," Morgan said. "Her life depends on her brother's money. If he chooses, he could take away what freedom she has."
Caitlin stared at him in surprise. "It is true that he tries to protect her too much. I don't know what Niall Munroe is so afraid of, but he is not a—" She flushed and hurried on. "You spoke up for staying, Morgan. You want to help Athena—you even called her brave, yet you have no faith in her ability to fight for what she wants?"
She could see him withdrawing into himself again, denying the feelings that had prompted him to speak up for Athena with such uncharacteristic passion.
"What did you and Athena speak about in the backyard, Morgan?" Caitlin asked. "Are you testing her? Do you want her to fail, so that you'll have no reason to care?"
His head gave an almost imperceptible jerk. "Munroe thinks he can buy anything or anyone," he said through his teeth. "We are not his lapdogs."
"Neither is his sister. But if you're right, and Athena is willing to let us go—what then?"
"We must abide by her wishes, of course," Harry answered. "It is days like these when I wish I had retired years ago."
"Oh, Harry—" Caitlin paused when she realized that Morgan was halfway to the front door. "Where are you going?"
"To tell Miss Munroe," he said without breaking stride. "To find out what she wants."
Caitlin thought quickly. Who was better suited to deliver a clandestine message? And who is more unpredictable when his heart is involved? "You can't just walk into her house. You do not even know where she lives."
"I'll find out."
"If Niall sees you—"
"He will not see me." As if to prove his point, he seemed to vanish even before he reached the door.
There's no turning back now, Caitlin thought, haunted by that sense of destiny that had first
come with Morgan Holt and returned with Niall Munroe.
"This is a hazardous game, Firefly," Ulysses said, stepping up beside her. "Morgan is not one to be made a pawn of fate."
"I thought you didn't believe in fate."
"Only when it trifles with those I consider my friends."
She rested her hand on his shoulder. "Then, my friend, let me keep the faith for all of us."
Chapter 9
Athena had never longed quite so much for the ability to pace. Her body was racked with shivers born of conflicting emotions that sought to pull her one way and then the other. The walls of her peaceful, silent room seemed about to crush her like some medieval implement of torture.
If she had faced only a single quandary this evening, she might have dealt with it easily enough. But the incidents had come as thick and fast as snowflakes in a mountain blizzard—first the near escape in the big top, then Morgan's incredible exhibition… the disconcerting conversation that followed… and finally Niall's sudden appearance and irrational behavior.
She was still angry with Niall. It was easier to nurse anger than face the other feelings that pummeled her from every direction. But even the anger frightened her, for only in recent weeks had she allowed herself to become angry for any personal reason.
Anger on behalf of the downtrodden was useful, and justified; anger due to hurt pride, or resentment, was the worst sort of selfishness. Athena knew it, and yet the knowledge did not seem to help.
She rolled her chair to the window. Niall had escorted Miss Hockensmith home, but he had not yet returned.
The passage of hours had not helped Athena's mood. She continued to relive the moment when Niall had come for her at the lot—how he had barely looked at her, dismissed her like a child, and ordered her away. How he had spoken to Caitlin, with less courtesy than to a servant. And when they had reached the privacy of home, he had refused to give any explanation for his behavior.
She had felt humiliated, treated so by her own brother in front of a friend. For Caitlin had become a friend, despite all the differences between them.
In a strange way, Caitlin reminded Athena of herself when she was younger—rash, passionate, refusing any concession to femininity or propriety—quick to give her loyalty, and her heart. What must she think after the way Niall had acted? She would believe that Athena was under her brother's thumb.
Athena had done nothing to dispel that impression. She had let Niall bully her back to the carriage, endured Cecily Hockensmith's sympathetic looks, and tormented herself with speculation upon Niall's business with the troupe.
What had gotten into him?
She picked up a bit of needlework she had left on a side table and set it back down again a moment later. Surely Niall couldn't have guessed what Morgan really was. She had been the only one privileged with that secret. That amazing, wonderful secret.
I am not alone.
That single, foolish thought came to her again and again, beating out a rhythm as constant and indisputable as a heartbeat. I am not alone.
It was not that Morgan had welcomed her with open arms as a fellow werewolf. But she had seen his eyes widen and his guard drop for just an instant when she had told him what she was.
The man she had glimpsed behind the mask… oh, that unveiling was fully as powerful as learning his secret. He had claimed she could not be of his blood because she lived in a city and enjoyed a comfortable life. Yet when she had spoken of her mother, there was such understanding in his eyes, such compassion, that she could have wept.
That unexpected sympathy was the reason that she let self-pity slip its tight rein. She had said little of the accident, but it was so much more than she had ever told to anyone except Papa, just before he died. She had even admitted that her mother and father had not been married.
Thank heaven she had recovered before she could wallow in events long past and irreversible. She had been able to accept Morgan's final rebuff—and his touch on her body—without flinching. And she had seen that all the tough ferocity he exhibited covered a great vulnerability and the sorrow of profound loss.
Loss so similar to her own. And he was loyal to his fellow troupers, protective of them as any elder brother might be. Yet his last words to her held a cryptic warning: "Do not mistake enemies for allies."
What had he meant? Surely Morgan was not her enemy. She would have liked—even been grateful for—his friendship.
Friendship? Did you hope that he could share some great mystery that you never discovered? What kind of relationship can exist when you will likely never see him again once the circus has gone?
Had she not restored the boundaries between them—the high walls of money, temperament, and belief? Did those walls not reach far higher than even the strongest wolf, whole of limb, could leap?
And why should she think he would ever wish to scale such barriers? He wanted no part of them.
Yet… You are not alone, her heart insisted. And neither is he.
She rapped her hand on the arm of her chair and turned hard away from the window. Sleep was what she required.
A good night's rest cured so many ills, purged a multitude of unproductive thoughts. Most especially thoughts of what she should not want and could never have.
She bit her lip and frowned at the bed. Ordinarily she would call for Fran to assist her in moving from chair to bedstead, but it was pure selfishness to drag Fran out of her own cot at such an hour. Was it such an insurmountable gap, those few inches between her chair and the bed? Her arms were strong enough. The tiny ember of rebellion that had disturbed her of late, nursed along by the day's events, sparked into a flame.
Setting her jaw, she wheeled the chair as close to the bed as she could, aligning them side by side. She took a firm grip on the iron railing that ran the length of the bed, designed to keep her from falling out.
Perspiration broke out on her forehead, though the room was cool. The muscles in her arms already ached with the effort to come.
You can do this. You are strong enough. Alternately pushing and pulling, she began to transfer her weight from the chair to the bed rails. Her arms screamed in protest. She clenched her teeth and dragged herself up and over to the gap in the rail.
The chair rolled a few inches away. The space between it and the bed grew accordingly, widening into a chasm. The hem of her dressing gown caught on the arm of her chair. A stab of very real pain shot down her spine and lodged at its root.
She did not cry out. She would win, or they could find her on the floor in the morning. She made another laborious effort, and her dressing grown ripped and then slid from her shoulders.
For a moment she hung suspended between bed and chair, her upper half almost… almost… flat on the coverlet. Then some movement of her body shoved the chair another precious inch away. The dead weight of her lower half pulled her down, down, like grasping hands reaching from perdition.
She tumbled. Her elbow struck the bed railing as she fell, shooting pain into arm and shoulder. Far, far worse was the slow, ignominious slide to the floor.
She lay on the carpet, her nightdress bunched up about her useless knees and her elbow numb from the blow. Tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes. She let them fall. No one would see them tonight. But in the morning…
Rolling onto her stomach, she pushed up on her arms. It might take hours, but she could make it back to the chair or the bed. If one was not possible, the other must be. God forbid that Niall should find her like this.
A faint noise came from the direction of the stairs: footsteps ascending, so soft that she had to strain to hear them.
Morgan Holt had made her more aware of the keen senses she had always taken for granted. She knew the step of every member of the household, from Fran's light patter to Niall's purposeful thump. But this was not a tread she recognized.
Her skin began to prickle. Instinctively she reached for the hem of her nightdress and tried to tug it down over her knees. The movement set her off
balance, and she fell back on her sore elbow just as the footsteps came to a halt outside her door.
It swung open. A familiar, disturbingly fascinating scent blew in with biting October air. The doorway filled with a lean and powerful figure.
Morgan Holt had come to return her call.
Morgan knew, when he opened the door, that Athena Munroe's alluring scent had led him to the right room. But she was not where he expected her to be.
She lay on the floor beside the fancy four-poster, her awkwardly bent legs half-covered by her nightdress, her face pinched with a mighty effort to conceal shock and pain. He knew at once what she had been trying to do.
He closed the door behind him and knelt beside her. Her shudder did not make him hesitate; he set his arms under her shoulders and knees and lifted her onto the bed. She brushed frantically at her gown, intent upon hiding her legs from his sight.
With an effort at detachment that should have come easily, he pulled the hem down to her ankles and drew the crumpled blankets to her waist. His fingertips brushed her calf; he snatched his hands away, but not before he felt the warmth of her damp skin and suffered a jolt of breathtaking arousal.
She flushed. "What are you doing here?"
His physical response to her left him so shaken that he could find no answer. Her emotions cascaded over him like a flash flood in the desert, and not a single one of his most impregnable defenses could hold them back.
Chagrin. Anger. Shame. All her self-contained pride was lost, for he had witnessed her failure. She recoiled from him, but it was not only because a man of her kind did not touch a woman so intimately unless he was her mate. She was ashamed because she was vulnerable, exposed—a wingless bird to be ridiculed, a rabbit to be devoured. She, who should have been strong and free.
His mind formed a picture of her rising stiffly from her chair, grimly bent on reaching her bed—her brave efforts to persevere even when her body betrayed her—her humiliating tumble to the floor. He knew what it was to regard a simple movement from chair to bed as if it were a leap across a hundred-foot chasm.
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