by T. S. Joyce
I thanked the driver and pulled my bag out with me. The sound of receding hooves echoed through the quiet street. Maybe Gable was here already. Warm candle light flickered from inside and it added to the inviting look of the home. The hour was late—much too late to be calling—but I hadn’t much choice about the matter. This is what Gable told me to do and I’d clung to his words over the weeks of missing him. Now, a nervousness so potent my knees shook took me and hammered me into blatant hesitation. What if he’d changed as much as me since we’d seen each other last? What if he’d decided against me or worse, met someone else?
I brushed my hands down my dress like it would make the filthy rag any nicer looking. I was going to meet his parents looking like this. I swallowed a lump in my throat.
The door creaked open just before I gained the courage to knock. A tall man with dark hair streaked with gray at the temples stood inside.
His eyes were dark and serious. “I thought you’d never get around to knocking.”
I looked around but he was most definitely talking to me.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“M-my name is Lucianna Whitlock. I’m a friend of your son’s.”
“Which one?”
“Gable.”
His face froze into an unreadable expression. His eyes, mouth, eyebrows—all had gone slack. Quietly, he said, “Please come in. Margerie, I think you should get in here.”
Mrs. Dawson was dressed for bed already but she batted away my apology. She pulled a rose pink robe more tightly around her tiny waist and said, “Dear, who are you and what’s happened?”
“She says she’s a friend of Gable’s,” Mr. Dawson said.
Mrs. Dawson’s frown stayed on her husband like she couldn’t understand the order of his words. “Gable?” she breathed. The shocking green of her eyes fell on me. “Are you here to tell us he’s dead?”
“No! No, nooo, I hope not! He’s supposed to meet me here.”
Her eyes grew wide and hopeful. “He’s here? In Boston? Come in and sit down, child. Tell me all about it while I make us some tea.”
“How long has it been since you’ve seen him?” I asked.
“Oh, since the war. He never came back home to us after it was all done. Where did you meet?”
I wanted to tell her some romantic story of our first time laying eyes on each other. I didn’t know what I was allowed to tell her about my situation. I certainly didn’t want to put her life in danger, but Gable trusted his parents enough to send me here. I couldn’t tell her everything, but I wouldn’t lie to her either. “Your son saved my life from a man who wanted to harm me.”
Her face hardened. “Is that where you got your limp?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve just got off a boat after six weeks of sailing and my sea legs don’t help much with my hobble either.”
“A boat? Gable gets terribly sea sick. He could never last on a boat for so long. Where did you say you met?”
“In the country outside of London. About twenty miles from Northwich.”
Mr. Dawson spoke from a corner rocking chair. “So that’s where the boy’s been hiding all this time.”
“What was he hiding from?” I asked.
Mrs. Dawson shook her head. “War does terrible things to men, honey. He’s running from himself.”
Clutching the warm porcelain teacup in the palms of my hands, I found myself thankful for the comfort. My eyes landed on the door more often than was even polite in the length of our conversation. I tried to stay engaged with Mrs. Dawson, but the more time that passed where Gable wasn’t here, the more dread filled my stomach. Maybe something had happened to him. Maybe he wouldn’t show up for days. How long was I to wait before he’d want me to move on?
“You look exhausted, dear. Perhaps you should try and sleep,” Mrs. Dawson offered. “We have an extra bedroom you can use. There are clean linens and everything.”
“I haven’t slept on clean linens since…well, in two months. That sounds lovely.” I forced myself to stand and turn away from the door.
Just as I was about to follow her down the short hallway, Mr. Dawson got the most curious smile on his face.
Knock, knock, knock.
I looked at Mrs. Dawson with wide eyes and got the same expression mirrored back. My heart pounded against my rib cage until my body almost shuddered from the beat. I hung back as a creeping shyness took me and she pulled open the door. Gable looked skinnier and his eyes were lighter than I remembered but he ducked under the door and caught his mother’s hug.
She sobbed openly and I could’ve sworn I saw Mr. Dawson wipe moisture from the corners of his eyes. “Welcome home, son.”
“Oh, my boy, my boy,” Mrs. Dawson crooned. She studied his face between her palms. “What’s happened to you, my boy? What’s happened?” She turned his face toward the light until his marred skin shone unevenly in the dim glow.
His eyes never left me. His pale gaze sent fire through my veins and a hungry desperation to touch him filled my fingertips. Could he see the effect he had on me? Could he see me burning from the inside out? He’d kept his promise to come for me. After all these weeks of missing him, I stood frozen in place and unable to run to my stranger.
He kissed his tiny mother lightly on the cheek, then approached slowly until he stood right in front of me. My neck arched back to take in his full height and I swallowed audibly. His eyes scanned every inch of me. He wore the same, billowing red shirt and black threadbare pants he’d donned the last time I’d seen him. His beard was gone and in place was the crisp smell of shaving cream. He looked at me uncertainly as my eyes fell on his scar. I’d thought they marred him, but they didn’t. They added to his fierce beauty. They gave him a rugged and dangerous edge that made my stomach do curious flip flops. I reached out and touched the roughness of it and smiled.
He answered me with a hug that lifted me from the ground. He breathed against my neck and I squeezed him until I thought I’d hurt him. It felt so good to be safe in his arms. My eyes burned with moisture and I squeezed them tightly closed to try and keep my emotion inside.
He smelled like animal, but not unpleasantly. There was something vaguely familiar about his scent but maybe it was just a memory I’d carried with me from an ocean away. He was here with me and that’s all I cared about. He rocked gently back and forth like my absence had been just as painful for him.
“I got something for you,” he said through a breathtaking grin.
With my hand in his, he pulled a box from just outside the door and handed it to me. Mrs. Dawson leaned against his father with happy tears in her eyes and I unwrapped it right there on the entryway floor. Inside, delicate paper lined the soft edges of a dress. I gasped and pulled it out. It was cream colored with tiny red rosebuds every so often. The fabric was soft as a flower petal. It was a relaxed fit from the fashion I’d been raised wearing, but I clutched it against my lips and inhaled the clean, crisp scent of it.
“Ma, can Lucianna use your soaking tub? She’s been on a boat with a bunch of heathens for weeks.”
“I’ll heat the water,” Mr. Dawson said.
“Of course you can. Come. I’ll show you where it is.”
No part of me wanted to leave Gable but he said, “Go on now. Try on the dress for me when you’re done.”
It took some time, but when I was finally in the room alone with a tub of steaming water, I slid out of the filthy dress and peeled my skin from my shift. Mrs. Dawson had a full length mirror and I surveyed the damage of all my bullet wounds. They were healing slowly, but over time they would turn silver. Gable had seen me unclothed and hadn’t complained. I turned from side to side. We made quite the couple, he and I. Both scarred and broken.
I sank into the water until even my face was submerged for as long as I could hold my breath. I used the delicately scented oils, soaps, and washes Mrs. Dawson insisted I borrow, and when my skin was scrubbed to glowing and the water tepid once again, only then did I towel off and dre
ss in the casual gown Gable brought me. It was fitted attractively on top, showing off my collar bones and the sleeves were puffed. The skirt wasn’t meant to be filled with petticoats or the like. It was meant to cut a slim silhouette. I didn’t miss my corset one bit. My hair was still damp but quickly drying in waves and I let it fall loosely to my hips. I wouldn’t have dared leave it unpinned except that Mrs. Dawson wore her hair in a similar fashion.
Padding into the room soft murmurs floated from, Gable sat with his back to me, talking quietly at the dining table with his parents. At my entrance he turned, then stood quickly. His crooked smile was slow and mesmerizing. “You look…” He cleared his throat and pulled out a chair for me.
When I was seated comfortably beside him, he draped his arm over the back of my chair and traced lazy circles on the back of my arm. His touch left trails of fire against my skin and conjured a simmering in my stomach that had nothing to do with hunger.
“When was the last time you saw your brothers?” Mr. Dawson asked.
“Since the war. I haven’t gone back yet. We’re headed for the homestead as soon as we can manage it. I figured we’d leave on the train first thing in the morning.”
“But you just got here. We could eat a nice meal and go down to the shopping district,” his mother pleaded.
“Ma, Lucianna’s in danger from the man who shot her up. He’s been right there with us at every turn, and now’s no different. He knows she fled through the harbor at Liverpool. He don’t know exactly where she landed, but he’ll have eyes everywhere. We can’t put you at risk by staying here. I need to get her someplace safe.”
“She’s safest with you and your brothers,” Mr. Dawson drawled. “I think you’ll be surprised at how much they’ve changed since you last saw ’em.”
A significant look passed between his parents and Gable frowned. “Are they all right?”
“Hunters found them, but they survived,” Mrs. Dawson said in a somber tone. “The homestead’s still there but the dynamic has changed.”
“Hunters?” Gable whispered.
I didn’t know who was hunting his brothers, but my heart stretched out for them. I wouldn’t wish what I’d been through on anyone.
“There’s a train that leaves first thing in the morning to Denver,” said Mr. Dawson. “It’ll stop a lot but you can take a carriage from there. You’ll have to travel wary if her man’s got eyes like you say.”
“Ralston wasn’t ever my man.” I don’t know why it felt so important to clarify. “Gable’s my man.”
I was too chicken to look directly at him, but from the corner of my vision, he jerked his head to me and nearly undressed my soul with his cool blue eyes.
We said our goodnights and Gable followed me into the cozy guest room. The walls were covered in floral wallpaper and thin, white curtains adorned a small window. I collapsed onto the soft mattress but frowned when Gable lay on the floor beside it. The space between us was unfairly wide.
“Will you sleep beside me tonight?” I asked.
“What about your rules?”
“I’m not asking for you to bed me, Gable. I’m asking for you to hold me.”
He unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged out of it before he blew out the flickering candle on the night stand. The bed sank and groaned under his weight, and I pulled the covers over us.
His skin. I’d missed it, though I couldn’t recall ever touching it. His chest was strong and warm under my fingertips, like sun-bathed iron, and his arm wrapped around me in the dark as I lay against his shoulder. Jagged pink scars dotted his torso like a mountain range and I touched them each in turn, accepting them as part of the man I’d missed so badly. This must be what it feels like to lose your mind. We’d spent only a fraction of a second together against the span of our lifetimes, yet here I was, greedily absorbing his warmth as my own and wishing desperately for the moment to drag for eternity.
His hand caught my fingerings but he didn’t stop my progress, only held on and stroked my palm as I ran my hand down his ribs. Here in the dark, it was easy to nestle into his safety and not think about consequences or the immodesty of our situation. I was in a new land, far away from home and bound by different rules. Tomorrow, I could be caught and only have tonight to feel sheltered against him. I didn’t know what it was to be Gable’s woman, but I knew what it was for him to be my man. I wanted physical touch from him. It comforted me in a way I craved to soothe my fractured heart. We didn’t need to talk. I just needed to know he was warm and alive against my cheek.
He kissed the top of my head and held me close and it was enough.
For tonight, it was enough.
Chapter Eleven
Gable
Lucianna looked so beautiful as the light of dawn touched her cheek. Her snow colored hair spread out like ocean waves across the pillow and her berry pink lips were slightly puckered. Damn, she was intoxicating. She filled my head until the wolf inside of me howled to claim her. If she knew half the filthy things I wanted to do to her, she’d turn tail and never look back.
For six weeks she’d tossed and turned in that hammock, but last night she hadn’t moved a muscle. I’d checked to make sure she was breathing twice, just in case. She made a tiny sleep sound and curled closer to my ready body. If she kept wiggling around like that, I’d ignore her rules and consequences be damned.
I had to get up. The temptation to touch her skin was too much.
She stirred as I pulled my shoes on. “Gable?”
The sound of my name against her lips pulled my head to the side, just enough to see the color of moss in her sleepy gaze. “The train leaves in two hours,” I said.
While she readied for the day, I crept out of the room to find Ma had been up with the sun and was making enough breakfast to feed a small army. I ate my first meal while Lucianna was still in the bedroom, and the second when she joined us. She probably wasn’t prepared to see how much food I really needed to maintain my size and satiate the wolf.
The last six weeks had left me nearly starved, but she’d given me all she could, including food from her own rations. At least part of her thin appearance was my fault. Sea sickness was to blame for the rest.
I couldn’t travel by boat as a human. I’d learned the hard way I never got over sea sickness. I’d just wither until I died. I’d had to change on Kelley’s ship on my way over the ocean years ago, and that’s how he found out werewolves were real and I was one of them. Six human weeks on the Atlantic would’ve killed me. I didn’t know how I was supposed to explain to her that I wouldn’t be able to travel by train with her either. I’d been running as a wolf for too long and needed to change almost daily. Being stuck on a train and trying to stifle my wolf was a recipe for a bloody disaster.
I was helpless to wean myself from the necessary numbness my animal brought. The human part of me ran rampant with the horrible things I’d done in a war I shouldn’t have joined in the first place. Killing all those men for nothing more than a difference of opinion had stunted my wolf. I was the alpha in our three wolf pack, and I’d left my brothers so I could drown my wolf in blood and maim his instincts to protect. I’d butchered the balance and now, even when I wanted to stay human to touch my mate, I couldn’t manage it for long.
Da’s eyes lightened in response to my animal so close to the surface. He knew what I was now—Ripper, Bringer-Of-Death, more wolf than man—he was just too polite to say it in front of Ma.
Rows of lotions, oils, washes, and salves lined the table. Ma showed them to Lucianna one by one and told her what they were used for. “You’ll be going to the wilderness now and you’ll miss these things. I know I did.”
“But, there are so many,” Lucianna said.
“You’ll know what to do with them when you get there. I’ll send along more when you run out.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever run out,” she said as she helped Ma put the scented washes into a sack.
She sent us with a jangling coin purse and a ba
g of food that would keep, and when we’d said our goodbyes, I waved to Ma and Da from the buggy we’d flagged down.
As the pair of bays clomped off for the train station, I swallowed the yellow belly in me and turned to my mate. “Lucianna, I can’t go on the train with you.”
Her look was so monumentally startled, it panged at even the hardest parts of my heart. “Are you leaving me?”
“No. There’s only enough train fare for you. I’m going to find a horse and ride for Denver. I’ll be there before you, but I’ll wait. We’ll hop a carriage together.”
“I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to travel all across America alone and with somebody chasing me, Gable. I just got you back. Please.”
I rubbed my face at the thought of trapping my wolf inside of human skin, inside of a train but I couldn’t lightly ignore her pleading. Not when she was sitting here with her green eyes all round and her lips puckered out like she was about to cry. Dammit, I was in trouble.
“We have enough for me to make it part of the way. I’ll go with you as far as I can, okay?”
Her shoulders relaxed and her relief caused the ache in my bones to settle. Was it like this for all mated pairs? I hadn’t even bedded her yet, but she was mine the same as if I had. Every single instinct inside me said that much was true.
At the train station, the whistle blasted and set my hairs on end and my ears to screaming. I didn’t like all those people in one space but there wasn’t any help for it. I bought our tickets and escorted Lucianna to a red cushioned bench in a passenger car. Steam billowed outside the window and her heart pattered away.
“You ever been on a train?” I asked.
“Never.” Her excitement was catching and I pulled her into my side.
“I’m sorry about scaring you earlier. I won’t leave you unless I have to, all right?”
Her nod was solemn and serious. “I can’t enjoy any of this adventure without you. I feel safe with you around. When you aren’t, I spend every moment worrying and looking over my shoulder.”