“There you are!” she murmured. “I knew you’d come. I have a present for you.” She lifted the food parcel from the dry sink next to the four-poster, and waved it in front of his nose. “Ah-ah-ah, not yet,” she said, sliding her feet to the floor. “You have to be a good boy and come with me first.”
Slipping the loop she’d made in the sash over his head, Sara pulled it tight enough that he couldn’t slip out of it, took up the food parcel and candlestick, and led the animal out into the deserted hallway. It wouldn’t be deserted long. It was nearly first light, and she hurried below, thankful that he was more interested in the food than proving his alpha-wolf status. He was in one of his moods again, nipping at the parcel, and blowing snorts through his nose that were too close to growls for her liking.
“No, you have to wait,” she scolded, holding the parcel out of his reach. He did curl his lips back then, but they were nearly at the alcove room and, with the end of her mission in sight, resolution overcame fear.
He was used to traveling the passageway; that was obvious in the way he almost led her at the end, but he seemed to want to go into the tunnel, and she had to pull him back into the alcove. He’d nearly ripped open the food parcel, and she had to set the candlestick down to keep it out of his reach while she groped for the panel.
“All this could have been avoided, you know, if only you’d stayed in here,” she said, feeling for the spring mechanism. “I don’t know how you did get out, unless you tripped a spring on the other side. You mustn’t do it again. The guards will be here in the morning. They will shoot you on sight if they find you roaming these halls.”
It was becoming harder and harder to hold him. When her hands released the spring, she cried out in relief and nudged the narrow timber aside, expecting to find an empty chamber. Instead, two shiny dark eyes glowing red-gold in the candlelight glared back at her, and a tousled mass of silver-tipped black fur trailing a burgundy brocade dressing gown sash heaved through the opening, trampling a mound of splintered wood.
Sara dropped the food parcel and leash, as a rumble of bloodcurdling snarls echoed along the corridor. Before her wide-flung eyes, two streaks—no more than a blur—of shaggy, hackle-raised fur leaped into midair and collided, their bodies locked chest to chest in a tangle of muscle, sinew, and bared fangs, flinging drool and foam.
“My God!” she shrilled. “There are two of you!”
Nero had a death grip on the other wolf’s shoulder, but when Sara’s screams distracted him, the beast broke Nero’s hold and lunged for her with deadly aim at her throat. Again Nero sailed through the air, impacting the other, spoiling its aim and clamping sharp fangs into the shoulder of his barrel-chested adversary, until the wolf yelped its discomfort.
Still concentrating on Sara, the animal lunged again, and again Nero clamped down with deadly jaws, this time on the back of the wolf’s neck. It screamed, spun, and plunged yowling into the tunnel, dragging Sara’s blue silk sash behind it.
Nero threw back his head and loosed a triumphant howl that reverberated along the passageway once, twice—three earsplitting times, before he began to run in circles, backing Sara against the wall as his path widened in the narrow confines of the corridor. Then there was no more room to run. On the cutting edge of yet another mournful howl, he sprang through the air, and Nicholas emerged from the silvery blur of fur and fang and muscle, surging to his full height, before dropping spent and breathless to his knees, naked, at Sara’s feet.
Staggering upright, Nicholas tore the dressing gown sash from his neck and spun toward her, shaking his damp hair out of his eyes, his broad chest heaving, glistening with sweat. For a split second, their gazes locked in the flickering semidarkness as the candles faded, then failed altogether just as Sara did, collapsing unconscious in his arms.
Twenty-five
Grinding out a string of blue expletives, Nicholas scooped Sara up, and carried her along the passageway to a different panel than the one she had come through. He needed no light to find his way. Possessed of night vision in both incarnations, he traveled the convoluted passageway with ease to a hidden door obscured by a tapestry. It led to the back stairs, and he took them two at a stride to the third floor, and stepped out into the shadowy corridor.
No one was about. It was still at least an hour before dawn. Hoping that Mills and the doctor had retired to their respective rooms, he made his stealthy way to the master suite unseen, and laid Sara on the bed. She looked so pale and still lying there. If he hadn’t felt her sweet breath puffing against his skin as he carried her, he would have sworn she was dead.
The catastrophe had happened. There was nothing to be done about it now, and he raked his wet hair back from a pleated brow, and yanked his burgundy dressing gown from the wardrobe in the corner. Untangling the sash Sara had tied around Nero’s neck, he cinched it about his waist ruthlessly. He didn’t even remember bringing it with him from the lower regions.
Sitting beside her on the bed, he began a frantic search of her person, praying he would find no wounds. He had not bitten her, of that he was certain, but Mallory’s wolf had come close on several occasions—too close. His hands were trembling, his heart hammering against his ribs as he examined her slender throat, her arms, hands, and legs. Nothing. No blood, no break in that translucent skin anywhere.
“Thank God,” he murmured, heaving a mammoth sigh. Should he wake her? God, no! Let her stay so, at least until he’d formed some sort of defense. What that would be, he had no idea, and he began to pace the carpet, his hands clasped in white-knuckled fists behind him in a vain attempt to give birth to a plausible explanation. All at once, a shuffling sound at his back spun him around to find Mills, in his nightshirt, one arm in a linen sling, the other aiming a flint-lock at his middle.
“Oh, my lord!” the misty-eyed valet gushed, lowering the pistol to his side, as though it weighed ten stone. “Praise God in His heaven! We’d all but given you up.”
“Shhh,” Nicholas hissed, nodding toward Sara.
“What’s happened?” the valet murmured.
“The worst,” said Nicholas, drawing him into the sitting room, for fear of waking Sara. “It happened right in front of her.”
“Is she . . . ?”
“No. She’s just fainted,” said Nicholas. “What have you done to yourself?”
“The other animal knocked me down, and spoiled my aim. Dr. Breeden’s seen to it. It’s nothing. Where have you been, my lord? We have been half out of our minds with worry.”
“I was with Sara in the green suite when Nell screamed. Another moment, and there would have been no more talk of petitioning the Archbishop of Canterbury. I went to see what had occurred, and found Nell . . . what was left of her. I knew at once it was Alex, and I knew something else, too. He has been visiting Sara as well. She thought Nero was suffering from changes of mood, and she was concerned because he frightened her at times.
“To make short of it, I felt the transformation coming on. I couldn’t go back to Sara, and I couldn’t stay with the body, either. It would have happened before the staff, they were nearly upon me. I ran up the back stairs, and got here just in time.”
“So that’s what put you in such a taking. My lord, in all these years—”
“I was aroused. Then the shock of Nell, and the fear of Sara welcoming that bastard into her suite, thinking it was me . . . I believe I did go mad, Mills. Then it got worse.”
“But, where have you been all this while, my lord? The guards have come and gone, and they are coming back to seek out the animal and kill it.”
“Good!” Nicholas flashed. “Let them kill it, because if they don’t, I will.”
“But what if it’s you they kill? If you transform again here now, it will be your last.”
“I shall make every effort not to,” said Nicholas. “But as things are, I can promise nothing.”
“We searched everywhere for you, my lord—everywhere!”
“Not quite everywhere, old boy,
” Nicholas returned. “After Nero broke out of here, he ran to the green suite. The brouhaha was over, and fearing I would be shot on sight, her ladyship made a tether of this sash”—he slapped at it—”and shut me in the alcove chamber below. The timber there that forms the door is more than a foot thick. Nero had chewed halfway through it, when she came below just now with the other wolf in tow. We fought, and at the end of it, Alex’s wolf ran off, and I changed right before her eyes. There was no way to prevent it, Mills, and when it happened, she dropped like a stone.”
Mills heaved a ragged sigh. “What will you ever tell her, my lord?” he breathed.
“That is exactly what I would like to know,” said a voice from the bedroom doorway that spun them both around.
It was Sara.
“Leave us, Mills,” said Nicholas, not taking his eyes from hers. Why couldn’t he read that look?
“Very good, my lord,” said the valet, bowing as he left.
“Sit down, Sara,” Nicholas said, sweeping his arm toward the horsehair lounge.
“I think that I shall,” she replied, making her way to it—on unsteady legs, he noted, and why not? She’d just witnessed her beloved pet change into her naked husband.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“A mild understatement, I daresay,” she said with a humorless chuckle. “Where is Nero? And where did that other dog come from? Tell me I didn’t see what I think I saw down there just now.”
“Not a dog,” said Nicholas. “It was a wolf . . . the wolf that killed Nell. He just tried to kill you, as well.” She drained of all color before his eyes. God, don’t let her swoon again! He needed to have this said now, while he had the courage. “Let me pour you a glass of sherry,” he offered, reaching for the decanter on the drum table.
“I do not want sherry,” she snapped. “I want answers, Nicholas. What in God’s name is going on here? Where has Nero gone? What have you done with him?”
Nicholas bypassed the sherry, and poured himself a brandy. Would she understand something that he didn’t really understand himself? Would he be able to convince her to stay once he’d told her? Would she ever be able to love him—accept him as the bizarre phenomenon he really was? By the look of her then, it didn’t bode well.
“I have done nothing to Nero, Sara,” he said. “Nero and I are one entity . . . or rather, two forms of the same entity. We are one and the same. I’ve always told you I meant him no harm.”
“How can you be? That’s insane! You said yourself that I shouldn’t become attached to that dog, because you were planning to get rid of him. What? Were you contemplating suicide . . . meaning to get rid of yourself? Why did you bring me here, then? That’s ridiculous!”
“No, the servants told you I was planning to get rid of him. That was the story I told them. They know none of what I’m about to tell you, Sara, and it must remain so. I told you that you shouldn’t become attached to Nero because he might be leaving us. That is why Dr. Breeden has come . . . to help Nero leave us.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” she said, shaking her head.
“I’m going to try to help you understand, Sara,” he said, “but you have to bear with me, and promise to hear me out. Much of this is new to me as well, and it’s difficult to speak about. I have never done with anyone but Mills, and the doctor.”
“All right, go on, then—explain,” she said, folding her arms beneath her bosom, “but I may as well tell you, I think you’re quite addled.”
“Before I was born, my father served in India, where he was bitten by a wolf,” Nicholas began. Her eyes were riveted to him, and he started to pace, taking sips from the snifter. “Your father was stationed with him out there, and it was he who killed the wolf that attacked, and he who saved my father’s life. When I heard that the daughter of Father’s comrade-in-arms, as it were, had been imprisoned for debt, I pressed my suit immediately. Had I known of your distress beforehand, you never would have gone to Fleet Prison.”
“So it was a philanthropic venture, our union?”
“Partly that, and partly what I’ve already told you, that I wanted to marry to put paid to the hounding of the ton. Then, too, I was so terribly lonely, Sara. I had hoped that our arrangement would ease that somewhat, and dared not even begin to hope that Dr. Breeden might be able to help me find a way to live a normal life. But all that was before I met you. Now, it’s quite something else.”
“What ‘else’ is it, Nicholas, exactly?” she murmured.
“My God, don’t you know I’m in love with you?” he said. “You’ve stolen both our hearts . . . mine and Nero’s, don’t you know that? Couldn’t you feel it in my arms in that bed?”
“I thought I did,” she said. “I hoped I did, but we are not discussing that here now. You need to trust me with the rest of this—whatever it is—before we address that issue.”
“Of course,” he responded. “Forgive me. Father’s wound would not heal, and he was mustered out. I never knew him, Sara. He died, of complications related to the wolf bite, while I was still in my cradle. Mills was his valet as well, and he nursed Father, but Father distanced himself from Ravencliff at the end. He died alone abroad, and my mother never recovered from the loss. She passed when I was twelve. It was then that my . . . condition came to light.”
There was nothing in her face, and he went on praying she would keep her word and hear him out. “Whenever I am angry, overly excited . . . or aroused,” he went on, “I change into the form of a wolf—the wolf you know as ‘Nero.’ I cannot help it, or prevent it happening, but I always have fair warning—enough time to shed my clothes before the change occurs. The trouble is, while I can feel it coming on, I cannot control it. Dr. Breeden has been trying to help me do that, since there is no cure. That is what was going on when you came in on us with this deuced dressing gown. He was attempting to speak to my subconscious mind, just as Mesmer did with his patients.”
“A . . . werewolf?” Sara breathed. “Is that what you’re telling me you are? I thought werewolves were nothing more than fiction—made-up tales to frighten children!”
“No, Sara, not a werewolf, though that’s what I thought, too, until Dr. Breeden diagnosed it properly. It seems I am what is known as a shapeshifter. Werewolves are shapeshifters of a sort, as well. Anyone with the ability to transform would fall into that category, according to Dr. Breeden. But the were-wolf is a different entity entirely—in a class all its own. An evil, predatory entity at the other end of the spectrum of creatures with the ability to take on other forms. And like yourself, I’d always believed such beings were creatures of myth.
“As near as we can tell, my father passed the condition on to me when I was conceived. We don’t know what the wolf that bit him was, or what he passed on to my father. He’s taken that to his grave, so all we can do is try to deal with what exists in me.”
“I . . . I thought that what I saw down in that passageway was some clever sleight of hand,” Sara murmured, “some trick of the mind, but you’re serious! You actually believe that you and Nero . . . !”
“We are,” he said at her hesitation. “Now do you understand why it had to be a proxy wedding, why I cannot leave Ravencliff—even to marry? Can you imagine what you just saw happening on the dance floor at Almack’s, or in the middle of Hyde Park one Sunday afternoon? Now do you see why I want no heirs to pass this nightmare on to, why I dared not risk consummating our marriage? That almost happened anyway, and I changed right after I left you. I barely made it to the master suite before it happened, and they locked me in the dressing room, until Nero chewed through the door panel and came back to be sure you were safe. Then you shut me, or rather Nero—it’s so difficult for me to separate us—up in the alcove chamber, where he stayed until just now. The minute I saw that you were safe I changed back. Unfortunately, you were there when it happened. I never meant for you to find out in that way.”
“Are you saying that you changed because of what nearly happened betwe
en us?”
“That, and finding Nell, but what nearly drove me mad was learning that the wolf that killed her had been visiting you, and that you thought it was Nero. I knew you were in danger, and I couldn’t change back to protect you. I was too overset to calm myself and let the change occur.”
“Where did that other wolf come from, Nicholas?” she murmured.
He hesitated. Did she believe anything he’d told her thus far? There was no way to tell. That face would be perfect in the gambling hells; no one would ever guess her hand. He heaved a ragged sigh, stopped pacing, and set the empty snifter down. He hadn’t even realized he’d drained it until he tried to take another swallow. If she didn’t believe what had gone before, she would never believe what he was about to tell her now.
“Do you remember the night that Alex came into your room and nearly raped you?”
“That’s not something I’m likely to forget,” she said.
“Nero bit him, didn’t he? And then Alex got his pistols and shot him in the shoulder. What did you find when you entered my suite several days later? That’s right,” he said to her gasp. “You found me recuperating from a shoulder wound.”
“But there were two shots fired!”
“The other missed,” he said succinctly. “I ought to know, I was there, and I was fortunate. Alex held the record at Manton’s Gallery several seasons ago. He’s an excellent shot, when he’s sober.”
Sara gasped again. “That’s how you knew he told me himself that he assumed I’d left the door ajar for him! You . . . or rather Nero, heard him say it.”
Nicholas nodded. Was he gaining ground? He hoped so, because the next words out of his mouth were either going to prove his position, or damn him as a bedlamite in her beautiful eyes.
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