Wolf in Waiting
Page 16
I, however, felt honored. I felt touched by a miracle, dazed with discovery, ecstatic and in awe…and more desperately unhappy than I had ever been in my life.
I have learned to be content with my lot in life; what would be the point of doing otherwise? But it’s easy to be content when you don’t know any better. It’s easy not to want what you never knew existed before. But Noel had shown me possibilities. I hated him for that. And adored him.
You no doubt think I’m referring to the physical pleasures. Certainly that was a part of it. The sensations he allowed me to experience were wondrous, magnificent, utterly indescribable to one who has never known them…which, until Noel, I never had. He was as skilled as I had heard him to be, as he by rights should be, and I was delighted to have discovered for myself how he had earned his reputation. But werewolves do not become attached to each other over such things. To do so would be akin to falling in love with your tennis partner because of his excellent serve.
Did I say falling in love? Well, I didn’t mean it. I’m sure I didn’t.
What I meant to say was that the physical aspect was only the smallest percentage of our relationship; so small, in fact, that I’m sure to him it was inconsequential, and yet I could not even fulfill that.
He had shown to me the possibilities of a world I had never been sure really existed. He had reminded me of my nature and how wondrous a thing it was; he had allowed me, through his simple generosity, to share myself with another of my own kind. For one such as I, who spends her life constantly balancing between the society of humans and werewolves, a part of both but belonging to neither, this was a rare and inexpressibly beautiful thing. He made me feel alive and glad to be alive. He made me feel a part of something larger than myself. He made me feel special. He made me feel, whether he’d intended it or not, loved. And in return for all that, I had given him absolutely nothing.
This made me feel unhappy and confused, filled with yearning one moment and despair the next. And even though I would not have changed the night we had shared for all the world, I almost thought I would have been better off never having known it, never having learned to want things I could never, ever, possibly have.
I kept my hairdressing appointment, partly because Raoul really was temperamental about people who stood him up and partly because I didn’t know what to say to Noel, how to behave around him or what to expect. I alternately wanted to postpone the encounter as long as possible and hurry to meet him, unable to bear another moment outside his presence. He made me happy, he made me sad. He made me nervous, he made me giddy, anxious and excited, pleased and frustrated; he fulfilled all my fantasies and he left me filled with longing. I couldn’t bear to be near him nor could I stay away. Oh, this was a miserable feeling. And I wasn’t even in love with him.
I was quite sure of that.
I could sense the undercurrent of excitement when I entered the Clare de Lune building and caught murmurs of conversation that led me to understand someone from Castle St. Clare was on the premises. It wasn’t until I got off the elevator, however, that I caught her scent and I knew it immediately. Madame St. Clare.
I stepped back and held the elevator door for her, lowering my eyes in respect. Even if I had not recognized her by scent—a virtual impossibility—her appearance would have been enough to intimidate. She was tall, elegant and dressed to the nines. She carried herself with a queenly demeanor that seemed effortless, and she never failed to inspire awe in even the grandest of us.
She was flanked by four bodyguards, two of whom entered the elevator before her, giving me long hard looks, and two of whom remained behind her. One of the bodyguards pushed the Door Open button on the elevator and I quickly stepped out.
As I moved past her, Clarice St. Clare murmured, “Enchantment.” It was my perfume. “Lovely on you, my dear.”
A thrill went through me, and I bowed my head in acknowledgment and modesty. Clarice St. Clare had noticed me. The maternal symbol of all our people, the woman every little girl dreams of growing up to be, had said my perfume was lovely.
But as she moved toward the elevator, she suddenly looked back at me sharply. My heart started to pound.
She said, “You’re…”
“Victoria St. Clare,” I supplied quickly.
Her eyes narrowed fractionally, and I don’t mind saying, I was terrified. Then she murmured, without ever taking her eyes off me, “Yes, of course.”
She held me in that silent, assessing gaze for perhaps five more excruciating seconds, and without another word she and her bodyguards got on the elevator. I dared not raise my eyes, but I could feel her gaze on me even as the doors closed.
It probably all seems very meaningless and insignificant, but her behavior upset me…enough to make me recall that I had been singled out by a member of the ruling family once before, when Sebastian St. Clare had assigned me to work with Noel. And then I remembered what Noel had said yesterday about Sebastian St. Clare’s setting him up for failure, and then I started to wonder, treacherous as it seems, just how deeply the powers that be at Castle St. Clare resented the outcome of the battle for succession. I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t help wondering what had brought Madame St. Clare to Montreal.
Doubtless it all seems very silly and farfetched, but the truth is that without that chance encounter I never would have begun to form my theory about the identity of our spy.
My heart had yet to regain its normal rhythm when I reached my office. Sara was waiting for me eagerly. “Who was that?” she wanted to know. “She’s had this place in a buzz ever since she got here. Wasn’t her suit fabulous? And that hat! Your hair looks great, by the way.”
I touched my coiffure absently. “Thanks. He put in red highlights, but I don’t know. Too brassy?”
“No, I can hardly tell, really. Just in the light. It’s gorgeous. Now, who was that woman? Do you know her?”
I explained briefly who Madame St. Clare was and added, “I suppose she was here to see Monsieur Duprey.”
Sara nodded. “She was in there about half an hour, I suppose. He left a message for you to see him as soon as you came in.” She dug around on her desk and produced the message slip.
My heart leaped and speeded again as I took the slip of paper from her. I was torn between wanting to go to him as fast as my feet would carry me, and wanting to postpone the meeting until I composed myself or at least decided how I was supposed to behave. Would anything have changed between us? Would he regard me differently today? Was he sorry he had shared intimacy with me, disappointed in the way the evening had turned out, regretting having confided in me at all?
But no, I decided briskly. I was being foolish. Today was different from no other day, business as usual, and that, undoubtedly, was precisely what Noel wanted to see me about—business. Either that, or he wanted to scold me for being late. Resolutely, I turned toward his office, but something caught my ear.
Anyone with my sense of hearing learns to screen out background noise; otherwise, I would surely go mad. A hundred thousand clatters, clinks and conversations cross my ears every day; only rarely does one catch my attention enough to make me listen.
The voice I heard was Madame St. Clare’s, six floors below me. But it was what she said that made me listen.
“Greg,” she said warmly. It was unlikely that any but the most talented of werewolves on the floor she was on could have overheard her. “I’m so glad I got a chance to see you. I wanted to convey to you personally how grateful we are for your help…”
Something—the high-pitched whine of a fax or an incoming computer call—interfered with my hearing, obscuring the rest of her sentence. The next voice I heard was Greg Stillman’s.
“…nothing I wouldn’t do to—”
The phone on Sara’s desk rang piercingly, and I flinched and swore silently.
“My loyalty has always been to the St. Clares,” Stillman finished.
“And don’t think it won’t be rewarded,” Clarice
assured him.
That was all I heard.
I turned slowly back to Sara, Noel’s message slip still in my hand. She covered the mouthpiece of the telephone and looked at me inquiringly.
“Will you do me a favor?” I said. “Stall him for a few hours. There’s this project I was supposed to have ready for him and it’s not quite done.”
She nodded sympathetically. “Sure thing. Anything I can do to help?”
I smiled at her gratefully. How could Noel not like humans? “I’ll let you know,” I told her, and hurried to my office.
It took me less than two hours to discover what I wanted and then I wasn’t at all sure it was what I wanted at all. Even though my pulse was racing with excitement, I didn’t trust my own judgment. I needed to talk to Noel. It was only the first step, of course, and it might mean nothing at all, but perhaps this could in some small way begin to repay him for all he had done for me. And make up for the other things I could never give him.
I was a little breathless as I stopped by his secretary’s desk. “Is he in?”
She didn’t glance up from the document she was transcribing, nor did her fingers slow in their keystrokes. “He has a lunch appointment in twenty minutes.”
I went past her quickly and, after a brief knock, opened Noel’s door.
The room smelled of Earl Grey and hickory wood, computer printouts and Clarice St. Clare. Noel stood in a spill of sunlight before the window, wearing a charcoal and heather tweed jacket and black silk turtleneck, the molten flow of his hair glittering in the light, his head bent over the sheaf of papers in his hand. He seemed to be absorbed in what he was studying, so I did not interrupt, but took a moment to draw a calming breath and enjoy the view.
But the view took my breath away. Would I ever reach a point where just looking at him did not make my heart race and my palms sweaty? And the scent of him, washing over me in waves so intensely pleasurable that I wanted to open my mouth and taste it…spice and hardwood, citrus and evergreen, sunshine on wool and beneath it all, so subtle as to be detectable only by another werewolf, the feral, musky scent of power and virility. And beyond that, even more subtle, snow and wind, herbal bath salts and yes, my own scent, faintly intermingled with his…the memory of our time together clinging to his skin as it no doubt clung to mine.
And even as the pleasure of the memory began to warm my cheeks, something else occurred to me, and I knew why Clarice St. Clare had stopped, and looked at me so oddly. She had smelled him on me.
What that might mean for either of us I couldn’t begin to imagine.
Noel said, without turning, “Who was that human king who had such an excess of wives that he killed a few?”
The question caught me off guard—small wonder—and it was a moment before I could orient myself. “Do you mean King Henry VIII of England?”
“Yes, I think so.” Still he didn’t turn, but gazed out the window into the snow-covered city with absent absorption.
“I can’t think how you graduated from Oxford without knowing that,” I observed, but in fact I knew perfectly well. Our short-term recall is excellent, but our long-term memory can be highly selective. Noel had no use for extraneous information about human kings, so he promptly forgot what he did not need.
I was deeply curious to know what had triggered his sudden interest in such arcane subjects, so much so that I almost forgot—momentarily, of course—the urgency of the reason for my visit.
He said, still oddly reflective, “And before him no human king had ever married one woman while loving another?”
I was fascinated. “Well, no. Human males have always used females in the most promiscuous fashion, you know that. But I think the significance of this incident with Henry had something to do with religious law. He had to marry and produce an heir, but the Church would not allow him to divorce when the wife who was selected for him turned out to be unsatisfactory. The poor fellow really was in a bind.”
“Still, it seems as though murder was a rather drastic solution.”
I shrugged. “Humans are often given to grand drama.”
“Which we, naturally, are not.” Even in profile, I could see the sardonic curve of his lips.
“Not in recent history, anyway,” I admitted. “Certainly we don’t go around murdering our mates because we find them inconvenient.”
“No, of course not.” Was that bitterness I heard in his tone? “We are far too civilized for that.”
“Or practical,” I suggested.
“And do you think it was practical of Henry to spend his life wedded to a woman he didn’t love simply for the sake of an heir?”
“I think he may have loved some of them.”
He turned, frowning. “Who?”
“His wives. I think I read somewhere he was in love with Anne Boleyn.”
“Who in the world is that?”
“One of the wives of Henry VIII,” I replied on the edge of exasperation. “Isn’t that who we’re talking about?”
He gave an impatient shake of his head. “Human history is an absurd and bloody maze of treachery and deceit. I don’t think there’s anything at all to be learned from it.”
And I replied, now desperately confused, “I don’t believe I said there was.”
He looked at me sharply. “What have you done to your hair?”
Self-consciously my hand went to my hair. “Nothing much. I went to the salon this morning.”
He scowled. “The color’s different. I don’t like it.”
I lifted an eyebrow, wisely biting back any one of a number of acerbic replies that were on the tip of my tongue. Fortunately, Raoul had assured me that the highlights would wash out with a couple of shampoos.
I linked my hands before me and said formally, “I had a message you wanted to see me.”
“That was two hours ago.”
“Well, I had that appointment—”
He stopped me with a cutting look. “I heard you come in, Victoria. Why were you avoiding me?”
I swallowed hard. Dared I think that the inquiry had some personal origin, that he cared whether I avoided him or not? That he had wanted to see me because…because he wanted to see me, and for no other reason?
And the answer was, I told myself firmly, no. No, I dared not think any of that.
Still, there was an uncomfortable pressure deep in my abdomen that felt like longing, a dryness in my throat, a quickening of my breath. I knew he could hear my heartbeat speed, and the flare of acknowledgment within his eyes only made it beat faster.
I took a deep breath and plunged in. “Did you also hear Madame St. Clare’s conversation with Greg Stillman?” I demanded.
Those eyes, which had been so intent upon mine, like probes of hot green ice boring into my soul, now moved reluctantly away, reflecting surprise and annoyance. “What?” he replied. “What are you talking about?”
I breathed a little easier, although anyone, observing the two of us, would have been hard put to know why. Noel was clearly at the edge of his patience with me, and I was so tense—afraid I might be wrong and even more afraid I might not be—that I was sure he could smell it. Still, I managed to explain in a more or less reasonable manner, “As she was leaving, Madame St. Clare paused to thank Greg Stillman for all his help, and to assure him he would be rewarded for it. He in turn assured her that his loyalties had always been to the St. Clares.”
His frown darkened, but I could see uneasiness there. “It means nothing. His loyalties are properly placed. The St. Clares are our rulers.”
“Yes, I know,” I admitted. “What I heard could have had a dozen interpretations. But I was wondering, do you know of any project on which he might have been giving Castle St. Clare particular help?”
The line between his eyes deepened, and his lips tightened. “No.”
“Or why he should have sent twenty-one e-mail messages to Castle St. Clare in the past two weeks under his personal code—sixteen of which were tagged Moon-song?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know how to access them,” I admitted. “I only knew how to call up the log because my friend Sara—I mean, my secretary—had to do it one time to prove her then boss was handling something properly.”
Noel paced a few steps across the room, his eyes returning to the paper. “Stillman’s head of the division,” he said. “Of course he’d be in touch with Castle St. Clare. He probably sends twenty-one messages a day to headquarters.”
“Not under his personal code,” I told him. “All routine e-mail is automatically send under the department code, unless someone deliberately changes it.”
And when he tossed me another sharp questioning look, I explained, “I asked Sara. And why all the messages about Moonsong?”
He looked back at the paper. His voice grew more thoughtful. “Not so unusual. Moonsong is the most important project we have going now. If he’s in communication with headquarters about it, he might simply be doing his job.”
“But you didn’t authorize him to do that.”
“No.”
“In fact, you specifically ordered secrecy.”
He looked at me. “Yes.”
“Noel, you don’t think—”
He interrupted me, and he was right to do so. Neither one of us had any business thinking, much less speaking out loud, what I was about to say.
“It would be interesting to know what was in those messages,” he said, and held out the paper to me. “And also whether any similar correspondence existed regarding the other lost formulas.”
I had no idea whether it would be possible to find out any of that. But I nodded as I accepted the paper, and knew I would move heaven and earth to get the answers for him.