by Unknown
“Thank you, m’lord.” She acknowledged his compliment as the groomsmen came over to her up into her saddle, but Gregor got there first. She couldn’t do anything but smile as he manhandled her up onto her mount, his hands in places no man’s hands should ever go in polite company. She gritted her teeth and bore it, as her fiancé seemed to either not care, or wasn’t paying attention. The horse didn’t stop grazing on the early spring shoots of clover.
“Alistair.” Her betrothed tightened his grip on Winnie’s reins, forcing the horse closer to his own, as he reminded Sybil that he wanted to be called by his Christian name. “Ye ken?”
This made Sibyl’s knees, hidden under mounds of green velvet, brush up against his bare ones. It also shifted the makeshift satchel she had hidden under her skirts and she stiffened, trying not to let on. She looked up at him—his was a war horse, far taller than her own—as he leaned over to murmur something close to her ear. “That’s the name ye will be callin’ on yer wedding night, lass.”
“Yes… Alistair.” She gave a short nod, heart thudding hard in her chest, wondering if the man even remembered her own Christian name, and doubted it. She just wanted him to let her horse go, so she could steer Winnie away from him. Sibyl didn’t like to think about wedding this man, let alone bedding him. But all he seemed to think about was the latter.
“I like the way ye say it.” He didn’t let Winnie’s reins go. In fact, he pulled the nag closer. The horse whinnied in protest, but she side-stepped, her flank brushing his big steed’s. Alistair’s mouth was now right against Sibyl’s ear. His breath reeked of alcohol. “And from such a pretty mouth.”
She was relieved when he pulled away slightly, but only far enough for him to look into her eyes. His were as gray as a storm cloud, his features sharp, angular. His hair was a dusty, dirty blond and a lock of it constantly fell over one eye. His gaze moved over her mouth, tracing the line of her lips, and Sibyl thought for a moment he was going to do something very unknightly with everyone’s eyes on them.
“Jus’ a week away now,” he murmured, those gray eyes lifting to meet her own. “Are ye lookin’ forward to your wedding, Lady Blackthorne?”
She’d been fitted for her wedding dress before she left—it was part of the not inconsiderable dowry she had carried with her from England. The gown was waiting on a dress dummy in a room all its own down the hall. The train was long enough to fill it.
“Every girl dreams about her wedding day,” she answered properly, and quite loudly.
Other girls might have dreamed about and planned their wedding day, but Sibyl Blackthorne wasn’t every girl. She reached out to take the reins of her horse from his hands. He was surprised, and this gave her the advantage. She had her horse five steps away from his before he could even respond. “So I hear we’re not hunting for boar?”
She said this last to change the subject and mitigate the sting of her actions. Alistair straightened on his horse, looking coolly down at her. He didn’t like what she’d done, that much was clear. She was going to have to do more to make up for it.
“I heard the men talking about wulvers,” she said innocently, actually batting her eyelashes at him. She’d seen Rose do this with one of her guardsmen and had practiced it herself in a looking glass when no one was around. She felt ridiculous doing it, but she’d had a feeling it would come in handy. She was right. “We don’t have those in England. Are they like badgers?”
The men, who had been watching the whole encounter, couldn’t helped their laughter. Even Alistair reluctantly smiled, that same smile that never reached his cool, gray eyes, and even gave a little chuckle at her ladylike misunderstanding.
“Wolves,” Alistair corrected her with that same condescending smile.
“Wulvers are wolves?” She blinked at him in surprise. “So wulver—that’s Scottish, er, Gaelic, for wolves?”
She was surprised to hear it, as she’d never been on a hunt for wolves. Her father had told her, when he was a boy, wolves were one of the five “royal beasts of the chase,” but their numbers had dwindled over the years until they were almost nonexistent in England.
“Nuh, m’lady.” Alistair’s brother, Donal, pulled his horse up beside hers. She was now sandwiched between the two MacFalon brothers. “Not jus’ any ol’ wolves. Wulvers is a whole other animal.”
“What do you mean?” She cocked her head at Donal, frowning. “What kind of wolves are they?”
“They’s not really wolves at all, ya ken?” Donal’s blue eyes glittered, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.
“No.” She shook her head, knowing he was somehow putting her on, but not quite understanding how. “I most definitely do not ‘ken.’”
“They’s wolves that turn into men.” Donal leaned forward on his saddle to whisper this loudly. The rest of his men were watching her reaction, all of them smiling. “And men that turn into wolves. Wulvers—ya ken?”
“Do’na scare the poor girl t’death.” Alistair chastised his brother when Sibyl didn’t respond to his stage-whispers. “She’ll run back t’her room and hide on ye.”
“I will not.” Sibyl’s spine straightened instantly, which wasn’t easy to do in a side-saddle. For some reason, side-saddles always made her want to slump, an offense her mother often chastised her for. “I’m not afraid of wolves. Or… wulvers.”
“Aye, she’s a brave lass.” Donal straightened in his saddle, laughing. “Might wanna give’er a bow, brother.”
“She hasn’t seen a wulver yet,” Alistair countered, steering his horse closer to Sibyl’s. “I’ll keep ye safe, lass. No need for ye to worry.”
“Thank you.” Sibyl nodded, giving him an obligatory smile. “But I really would like to have a bow. Would that be possible?”
She looked between the two men and saw Donal trying to hide a smile. He clearly understood his brother’s desire to have a dainty, feminine English companion, and just how far Sibyl actually fell from that mark.
“Your brother tells me that Scots women ride astride and carry bows in a hunt,” she said, hoping she wasn’t getting Donal into too much trouble by repeating his words. Alistair gave his brother a long, cold look.
“But ye are English, m’lady,” her betrothed reminded her in his Scottish brogue. “Mayhaps—”
“But shouldn’t I learn your ways?” She decided to try batting her eyelashes again. It seemed to have an effect on Alistair’s mood. “I would like to learn all of your ways. Can’t you teach me how to use a bow?”
This last seemed to decide her fiancé and Sibyl could almost see him fantasizing about holding her close while he instructed her on the proper way to hold the weapon. Alistair motioned to one of the groomsmen and told him to bring over a longbow and a quiver of arrows. She slung both over her shoulder, feeling much better about her plan. Poor Donal had no idea what he’d just given her, and surely wouldn’t have encouraged it if he’d known.
“Thank you,” she mouthed to Donal when she was turned away from Alistair so he couldn’t see. The younger MacFalon just winked and turned his horse toward his men.
“Let’s ride!” Donal yelled and all the horses’ ears pricked up.
“Stay with me,” Alistair urged as the rest of the men took off, riding across the field of heather toward the line of trees in the distance. “Stay close.”
She did as she was told—she was starting to get used to that, a fact which disturbed her—riding at half the clip the other men were, keeping up only with Alistair.
“Are ye really not afeared, Lady Blackthorne?” Alistair asked as they neared the trees. The other men were already into the woods, heading down a well-worn path on their horses. “Of the wulvers?”
“I… don’t know.” It was a lie.
She knew they were all fooling, just putting her on, trying to get her to react in typical feminine fashion at some Scottish folk tale about men that turned into wolves or the other way around. And if they weren’t—if Alistair really believed in these stra
nge, fantastical creatures—she had even less respect for him than she’d managed to muster already.
“I wanna show you somethin’, if ye can be a brave lass.” He smiled at her, a secret smile that, this time, almost reached those cold gray eyes.
“Of course.” She gave him a nod as they entered the woods, the temperature dropping a good ten degrees just from the cover of trees. “I can be brave.”
Her father had taught her to be a brave girl, after all. She followed Alistair deeper and deeper into the woods, their horses side by side on a path they seemed familiar with. She heard the men whooping and hollering ahead of her and longed to be with them, riding astride instead of side-saddle, wearing a pair of breeches instead of this heavy velvet dress. Her father had taught her a lot of things, she realized, and most of them would be useless to her here, living with this man who wanted her to be something she wasn’t.
She had to smile at the thought of Alistair and Donal and his men believing she would be scared of an old wives’ tale. There were far more frightening things in the world, she was coming to realize, than what old women and men told youngsters around the fire to scare them into being good. She’d heard those tales herself as a child, stories of dragons and unicorns and griffins. Maybe they had scared her once, when she was what Moira would call a “wee bairn,” but not anymore.
She rode fearlessly into the forest, realizing she was far less afraid of wolves—or wulvers, whatever they were—than she was of marrying Alistair MacFalon.
Chapter Two
Sibyl would have enjoyed the ride through the woods, if it hadn’t been for Alistair’s constant yammering. The man loved to hear himself talk and she had no idea how they were going to find anything to hunt with his constant chatter scaring away all the game. She listened with half an ear to his words—he was going on about some tournament he had won in England, a feat probably meant to impress her, since he was Scottish and she English—but she was paying far more attention to the woods around her.
Her father had taught her to track. Not just to hunt, which often involved tracking an injured, bleeding animal through the forest, if you were unskilled enough not to make the first shot a kill shot, but to actually track. He had taught her the difference between animal prints. She could even differentiate between a chipmunk and a squirrel print. Her father and his men had taught her the names of all the plants, their medicinal uses and their dangers. He had taught her how to care for herself out in the woods—how to build a shelter, make a fire.
She was thinking these things, and how they would come in handy when she escaped, paying attention to the sounds of the men in the distance—she could tell they were still on the hunt and hadn’t found any wolves, or wulvers, or anything else for that matter—the sound of a stream off to her right, the crackle of branches to the left, a small animal, a fox or perhaps a rabbit, when she heard something that made her pause and rein in her horse. It was a familiar sound, one she’d heard a hundred times—the sound of an injured animal.
“Lady Blackthorne?” Alistair reined in his horse, glancing back at her inert form with a frown.
Her ears were as attuned as the horse’s. She had heard something to their right, off in the direction of the stream, but the sound was gone now. Alistair spoke up again and she waved at him to be quiet. It wasn’t a gesture he was used to heeding and he bristled and blustered at her boldness, making it impossible to really listen.
“Please,” she insisted, holding up her hand for him to stop. “I thought I heard something.”
“’T’was nothing, surely.” Alistair winked. “Not a wulver, a’course. Want to hop up ’ere with me, lass?”
He patted his bare thigh with a wink.
“No, thank you.” Sibyl shook her head, averting her eyes and frowning, still listening for the sound. She might be willing to bat her eyelashes to get her hands on a longbow, but she wasn’t willing to indulge this man’s fantasies that she was afraid of imaginary animals.
“Ye sure?” he offered again, leaning forward in his saddle so he was eye-to-eye with her. “I promise ya a good ride.”
Sibyl’s hand itched to smack him across the face and thanked God she was out of arm’s reach. Just seeing the smug, self-satisfied look on his face made her realize, even if she was chased, caught and killed by whatever roamed these woods at night—even the fantastical “wulvers”—she couldn’t marry this man. She preferred being eaten by wolves.
A long, baying howl rose up around them and Sibyl sat up straight in her saddle, eyes wide, not from fear, but in surprise. That wasn’t just a wounded animal, it was a dangerous one. A coyote, a wild dog—or perhaps a wolf. She knew the sound of a pack call well enough. Her father had taught her about the way canine packs hunted. Often one would lure a victim down a path where the pack waited, and then an ambush would ensue. He’d warned her never to follow a lone canine anywhere, even if it pretended to be hurt.
“Surely you hear that!” she exclaimed hotly, meeting Alistair’s amused gaze.
Sibyl urged her mare onward, but Winnie didn’t move. She might have been old and slow, but she wasn’t stupid. The horse knew what she’d heard and so did Sibyl.
“Aye, I did,” he agreed. “Ye think it was a wulver, then?”
“No.” She scowled at his persistent attempt to try to scare her into his lap. “But it was a pack call. There’s an animal in trouble.’
“And how do ye be knowing that, lass?” His fair eyebrows went up in surprise and Sibyl could have kicked herself for saying it. He liked his women beautiful and dumb, and so far she’d been perceptive enough to attempt both in his presence.
“I…” She swallowed, and was once again saved by another long, keening howl.
This one was closer, and the sound of it actually made goose flesh rise on her arms.
“Come.” Alistair smiled again, eyes narrowing as he guided his horse to the right.
Sibyl urged her horse forward and the mare reluctantly followed Alistair’s big, black steed through the trees. There was no worn path here, but horses had been through this way before nonetheless. The foliage was denser, the ground covered in bluebells. It was a lovely ride, to tell the truth, and Sibyl would have enjoyed it immensely if it hadn’t been for her companion, her damnable saddle and dress, and, alarmingly, the sound of that wounded animal.
“There it is again.” Sibyl stopped her horse, straining to hear. The men were off to the north, so it wasn’t a result of an arrow finding its mark. At least, not from any of MacFalon’s men. Mayhaps there were other hunters in these woods, she mused, or mayhaps trappers. Although this was MacFalon land, and anyone setting traps would be seen as a poacher. It was a crime punishable by death in the Middle March, but Donal said you had to catch them first. The border was thick with thieves—reavers, they called them—always poised to steal from a laird.
“Come.” Alistair jerked his head forward, urging his horse on, and Sibyl sighed and obediently followed.
They were headed in the direction of the sound of the wounded animal. As the horses made their way through the trees, the cry grew louder. This wasn’t the wolf call she’d heard. This was the sound of an animal trapped, perhaps injured. Might be it was the wolf’s kill she was hearing? Surely Alistair had to hear it now? But she didn’t stop again, didn’t ask him. He seemed to know exactly where he was going. The path narrowed, the horses parading through the trees single file, dappled sunlight falling on the carpet of bluebells that scattered the forest floor.
“Are ye ready to be brave, Lady Blackthorne?” he called over his shoulder, grinning back at her.
She’d never seen him smile so wide or look so delighted doing so. It gave her a chill and she slowed her already sluggish horse, letting Alistair pull even further ahead.
“Look here.” Alistair stopped his horse, the big steed dancing sideways, perhaps surprised by the sudden maneuver.
Sibyl’s mare halted without her doing anything and the horse’s ears twitched. The old nag shook
its head, shuddering Sibyl on its back, and she wondered at the motion. A fly in its ear mayhaps? But Winnie seemed jumpy all of a sudden, and for this horse, that was a miracle. Even Fian, Alistair’s war horse, was stomping and pawing at the dirt.
And then she saw it.
The animal was enormous, but the cage even bigger. Sibyl sat rooted in her saddle, staring at the white wolf pacing back and forth, round and round. It saw them and its hackles rose, teeth bared in a snarl. Its eyes were a bright, luminous blue, a color she didn’t even know existed in nature.
“A wolf!” she whispered, incredulous, sliding down from her horse—side-saddles did make for an easier dismount. She’d never seen one before. Coyotes, dogs, yes. Drawings and paintings of wolves, even a horribly smelly wolf hide her father’s huntsman liked to wear, but never a real wolf.
Winnie nickered and tossed her head as Sibyl passed. The horse, divested of its rider, decided to back a safe distance away from the giant, iron cage. She wondered at the construction of the thing as she neared it, barely hearing Alistair’s cry of caution. Someone had dragged this monstrosity—the cage, not the wolf—down the path to this small clearing, had perhaps even created the spot itself, scattering underbrush to make way for it.
“Is it a trap?” she wondered aloud, glancing up as Alistair quickly dismounted and tethered his stallion to a nearly tree, urging her to stay back.
Even the seasoned war horse backed away from the pacing, snarling wolf, but Sybil was too entranced to keep her distance. The wolf was snow white with silver streaks, the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life. She wanted to reach out and touch it, but she wasn’t that foolish. Its canines were long and impossibly sharp, still bared at them as Alistair grabbed Sybil by the elbow and pulled her safely back against him.
“Are ya scared, lass?” He had trapped her in his arms. She struggled against his hold, but he had her held quite fast, and his grip only grew tighter as she squirmed to get free. The truth was, she wasn’t afraid of it—she was in awe. “Ye know, wolves’re ferocious animals. Man-eaters.”