by T. S. Joyce
His nostrils flared slightly and he jerked his head to the side before pulling the horse from the road and into the surrounding woods. “Quiet now. Someone’s coming.”
Through the brush that hid us, a charcoal gray carriage with a two horse team rattled by, in a hurry for something. Minutes after they’d passed, Gable steered us to the road once again.
“What if someone recognizes me in Liverpool?” My heart was only just slowing down its pounding rampage. Hiding would always bring back memories of that night in the fog.
“You’ll have to keep your face down. Your lady will seep through your filthy dress from your posture and the angle of your chin. Slouch, look down, don’t meet anyone’s eyes, stay behind me. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
I don’t know what it was that inspired my utter belief in his words. Maybe it was that he’d been so good at killing all those men without so much as a pistol in his hand. Or maybe it was his unerring confidence on what would happen and when. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to lose this belief that everything would work out somehow.
Another cold chill ran through me at the thought of losing that confidence on a boat for six weeks all by myself. How would he keep me safe then?
His eyes were narrowed and studying me. “What’re you worryin’ over now?”
“Everything.”
“Mmm. Well, stop. You’re going to spook the horse.”
Chapter Five
Gable
Northwich had a seedy underbelly like every town with any size to it did. That’s where we wanted. It wasn’t hard to find it. I just followed the scent of bad booze, cheap cigar smoke, and nostril singeing floral scented perfume only a whore would wear. The underbelly was our ticket to invisibility.
I thought Lucianna would fall asleep eventually, but she’d worried herself until she couldn’t do much more that doze off for a few minutes here and there. Pained noises she held behind perfectly pursed lips told me she was hurting something fierce. She was strong and opinionated and didn’t show weakness in the face of adversity. There was no way in hell she’d milk her injuries in front of me. It just wasn’t her way.
I tied the horse off beside a trio of bays and pulled her gently from the saddle. Either she’d got clean over her fear of horses or she was hurting that bad, because she leaned heavily on the tying post and didn’t make a move at trying to run from the horses who snuffled at her dress.
“Wait here,” I said.
The pub looked promising but it may have been filled up for the night. If it was, there was no point in dragging Lucianna’s wrecked body in there for all to see. Predators could see weakness from a mile away and a place like this would be filled with them. “You got a room?” I asked a redheaded man behind the bar.
“You got money?”
I pulled out more than enough and scooted it toward him. “One that won’t get me robbed.”
His face paled when he looked into my eyes but I didn’t hide the dangerous intent. I would kill every last man who bothered us tonight. It had been a long day on the road. I’d had to keep my frantic wolf in check at the constant smell of Lucianna’s blood, and worry for her comfort had dragged me down to near exhaustion. No one would survive me in my current state.
“This much’ll get you a room in the back,” he said. “Third one on the left.”
“Much obliged.”
Lucianna hobbled through the smoke filled bar as smoothly as she could muster, and when we were finally to the room, she collapsed onto the filthy, bug riddled bed. She was pale as an apparition. Tiny drops of sweat dotted her brow and her hands shook badly, but under it all, she gave me a tiny, quivering smile that relaxed the animal in me just enough.
“Tomorrow won’t be so bad,” I promised, squatting in front of her. “It’s only a few hours to Liverpool and we’ll leave early in the morning so we’ll be there before mid-day. It’ll give us time to buy some provisions before you head out.”
Her chest heaved with the exhausting effort she’d given today, but she nodded. “I’m hungry.” I slid a glance to the door. Ruffians by the wagonload had watched her drag her body through the pub in front. I couldn’t pull myself away from her but I couldn’t make her leave the room again either. She needed sleep. What was I supposed to do?
I rifled through the pack Doc had given us. I handed her the rest of what we had. One apple, half of a baguette, and two thin pieces of dried beef.
“What about you?” she asked as her eyebrows drew up in a worried look. “What’re you going to eat?”
I shrugged her off. “I’m not hungry. Eat.”
“I can hear your stomach growling from here, Gable. A man your size can’t go two days without eating. Someone in the bar was eating a meat pie. Go get us one.”
I closed my eyes and lowered my head against the side of her knee. “I can’t leave you alone.” The words were an admission she wouldn’t understand. She didn’t know what I was or what kind of instincts were warring within me. Losing sight of her would be a physical pain to me now. A discovery that was both exciting and thoroughly disconcerting. The last thing I needed in my life was to be responsible for another human being, yet here I was, volunteering for the job to the cheers of the monster inside me.
“I’ll stand at the end of the hall where you can see me.”
“Luc,” I pleaded.
“Don’t. Let’s just do what has to be done. This won’t feed both of us after a day like today, and I can’t sit here and eat when I know you’re hungry.”
She sat up slowly and I offered my hand. Surprisingly she took it firmly in hers and leaned on me. God she smelled so good and felt so warm up against me. No one was looking, so I lifted her until her feet dangled a few inches off the ground and rushed her to the edge of the hallway before setting her down as gently as possible. I hesitated at removing my arm from her waist. It was so small, and it led to her hips and then to other places the animal parts of me howled to touch. I was losing my damned mind.
Jerking away, I said, “Call out if someone makes you uncomfortable. Drop your chin.”
I put our order in and paid, but couldn’t force myself to wait at the bar for the pie. I’d never had such an instinct to protect another human being and here I was, practically circling the tiny woman.
The pub was filled with late night patrons and an old Irish drinking song rang out across the room. Mugs of ale swayed and spilled, and a staggering man lurched and bumped into Lucianna. A snarl ripped through me before I could stifle it, and though the song was too loud for most of the patrons to hear me, she most certainly did. Her eyes went wide and still. I twitched my head in annoyance and stood between her and the too close men.
“Meat pie!” yelled the redheaded man.
“Meat pie,” a couple of the drinkers slurred in unison.
Weaving my way to the bar, I retrieved our dinner. By the time I made my way back to Lucianna, my wolf stretched under my skin to tear into someone. Literally.
“It’s too fast,” she said as I tugged at her arm.
I inhaled all of the rotten smells of the tavern and slowed. We’d left her cane in the room and she used the wall to steady her broken gate. For the thousandth time, I vowed to kill Ralston Bastrop someday. I didn’t want her singing his death chant, but I didn’t mind taking the fury and pain of waiting for it at all. Lucianna was mine and he’d hurt her. Every pained step she took was one less breath he’d take on this earth.
With the meal in one hand, I used the other to open the door for her. She placed her small hand upon my forearm and used me to balance. If she knew what her caress did to my insides, she’d never touch me again.
“Tonight’s the last night I’ll see you for a long time,” she said. “I want to eat on the floor with you.”
I nodded and tried to hide a victorious smile. She cared for me on some level. Despite the hideousness of my scars, she saw past them enough to dread an upcoming separation. “Loosen your dress first.”
Sh
e looked scandalized. “Why?”
“Because I can smell you bleeding from here. Give your injuries some air. Sitting down that deep is only going to irritate them in that tight dress.”
“Okay.”
“Here.” I set the pie on a small wooden bedside table and turned her shoulders until her back was to me. I loosened the laces one by one.
“About the rules—”
“I ain’t touching you inappropriately, woman. I swear it.”
“Are you sleeping outside again?”
I gritted my teeth. “No. This place isn’t safe for me to be leaving you alone like that.” I turned her to face me.
“Good,” she said quietly.
We set our tiny feast out on the sack Doc’s provisions had been packed in and ate in weary silence. The candle on the nightstand flecked shivering shadows across the beautiful planes of her face and when the food was nothing but crumbs, I stood and helped her up. She stayed there against my chest with an unfathomable expression lifted to my face.
Her fingers reached out and touched my unshaven jaw right over the scars. “When we get to Boston, will you shave your face?”
“Do you want me to?”
She nodded so slightly I would’ve missed it if I weren’t looking into the depths of her moss green eyes.
“You’ll never stop staring at the scars there if I shave,” I said. Her attention to them had bothered me more than it ought. At least when I was bearded, she paid more attention to my eyes.
“How can I get used to them if you hide them from me?”
She felt so warm and alive up against me. I’d give her anything in my power if she asked me like this. “Okay.”
I wanted to kiss her so badly. Her lips, fuller on the bottom and a soft pink, called to me like some siren song out at sea. And her standing here, lookin’ up like I wasn’t a monster and asking for pieces of me? Did she know I’d do anything for her? Did she even know the potent power she wielded over me?
She pulled away and apologized. For what, I didn’t know. I didn’t care about anything but the broken moment and the space between us. How could just a few feet feel like a canyon?
She took the pins from her hair until soft, pale tresses tumbled down her back, and then she washed her face. I tried not to watch, but I was a servant to the wants of my wolf. It had been years since I was human this long and my body revolted against it. I’d been sore for days and my blood hummed with the need to change but my wolf would get his body back soon enough. I had one more night as a human to protect her. He took over the responsibility tomorrow.
I lay on a blanket spread over the floor and turned away from Lucianna. As she lay in the bed above me, unable as I to find sleep, she said, “I’m scared about being alone on the boat.”
Her hand brushed my arm and automatically I reached for it and pulled it to rest across my rib cage. I pressed it in place with my arm and sighed. “If I thought there was any risk, I’d never leave you. You have to trust me on this. I promise you’ll be safe. When we get to Boston, I’ll buy you a pretty dress and we’ll eat a fine meal at a proper house.”
“What house?”
I smiled at the tattered forest green wallpaper that hung from the wall in front of me. She asked more questions than anyone I’d met but maybe that was because I wasn’t used to talking to humans anymore. “My parents live in Boston. I want them to meet you.”
She didn’t respond and after a while, her breathing deepened to the sound of sleep. Ma and Da worried over me an ocean away. A mother never stopped worrying over her boys and in six weeks, I’d be able to put mine at ease.
Physically, I was all right. I was alive. Ma would be happy to see me no matter how much of an animal I’d become.
****
Lucianna
I woke with a start as a rumbling growl echoed through my bones. The remnants of a dream of the foggy night shuddered through my consciousness. All I could remember were the blazing, icy eyes. Gable was crouched on the balls of his feet in front of me. I shouldn’t have been able to see him except candle light crept under the door and lit up his silhouette.
“What’s wrong?” I breathed.
“Trouble.” His voice sounded strange. Deeper. More fearsome somehow.
Shadows in the candle light under the door moved and the sound of boot prints slowly moved away. His bare shoulders glowed in the half moonlight of the window and I reached out before I could help myself. The tensed muscles under my hands relaxed and he placed a warm, strong hand over mine.
“Go back to sleep,” he said without turning. “I’ll keep watch.”
“Not likely.” I sat up. There was no possible way I’d be going back to sleep anytime soon.
“Fine, we can use the time to change your bandages then.”
If he was trying to scare me back to sleep it wasn’t working. “Fine. They’re dirty anyway.”
He turned with a look on his face that said he hadn’t in a hundred years expected me to okay him cleaning my injuries, but there it was, hanging in the air between us. I was too tired and too hurt and too stripped down to the barest parts of my heart to worry. Recklessly, I threw his words back at him. “I’m your woman, right? Who cares?”
He wore the ratty cotton pants of his peasant’s costume and nothing more, and as he stood to his full height, my gaze arched right along with him. The moon threw blue light and dark shadows across his illuminated collar bone. The left side of his chest was all taut muscle and shadowed indentations between tensed curves. One half of his abdomen belonged in some Greek painting and practically begged me to reach out and run my fingers down his skin.
I’d never taken to imagining Ralston without clothes on like some of the other ladies in society, but I’d bet my smelly dress he didn’t look like Gable.
My voice trembled as I stood. “No inappropriateness, remember?”
“Take your dress off,” he said in a voice that was as deep as it was commanding.
Okay then. I shrugged it off and clenched my eyes closed.
“Can’t dress your wounds through your shift, Lucianna.”
“Oh, right.” He turned as I shimmied out of it. The cool window air brushed against my skin and raised gooseflesh. I scampered to the bed and pulled a sheet up to cover my middle while Gable rifled through the provisions Doc packed.
My skin was so vulnerable to his gaze. Every rake of his eyes against my flesh burned and heat drove further and further into my cheeks. What had I been thinking? I was fully awake now and in control of my mental facilities again and here I was, sitting completely naked in front of a man. At this rate, I’d be a working whore in some tawdry cathouse in three weeks.
All the humor had left Gable’s eyes. Instead, a serious hunger lurked there that did nothing to calm my stuttering heart or the warmth that spilled into my center. He looked like he’d eat me right up, and I couldn’t seem to find anything wrong with it. How terrifyingly wanton I’d become.
The bed creaked under his weight and I closed my eyes as he tugged and pulled at the wrapped bandages. Three bullets had ripped through me and one had nestled into my hip bone. Seven half healed holes to dress. I didn’t know how I was still breathing. They’d managed to miss my organs and maimed muscle instead. Doc said I was a walking miracle. Maybe I’d feel the same when I could move without the cane again.
The bandages stuck to my skin and I gritted my teeth against any urge to make pained noises. Gable was a very brave man. I imagined he never even made a face when he’d sustained his injuries. His wounds were wide and deep and from the sadness that drifted from him, they’d likely cut straight to his soul. If he could survive whatever had happened to him, then I could get through a bandage change without a peep.
When the stiff, stained wrappings were removed and in a tidy pile on the floor, Gable moved from injury to injury, gently prodding them. Was he smelling them?
“Your stitches have busted on a couple of these and I don’t have a needle and thread to sew them
back up. The scars will be bigger and you’ll have to be more careful on the boat to keep them wrapped, dry, and clean.”
More scars. Goody. “Okay.” I was at a loss as to how I was supposed to change my own bandages on my back, but for the sake of sparing an argument in the wee hours of the night, I let it drop.
He re-bound me with a steady hand until he got to the one at my hip. The blanket covering had to go.
“I’ve already seen you, remember?”
“Yes, but it’s different when I’m conscious.” I clutched the sheet tighter and admitted, “No man has seen me, you know, under my clothes.”
A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth and his eyes held mine like they’d never let go. “No man but me.”
I threw my head to the side with a squeak and tossed the blanket away. He could bind the injury, but I didn’t have to watch his reaction to my body.
He was finished in moments and the blanket rustled against my skin as he pulled it slowly over me. “I don’t want to look at you until you want me to. It’s no fun if I’m stealing it.”
He handed me my thin cotton shift and turned his back while I slipped it over my head. I scrambled into bed and he lay down on the floor beneath me once again. I wanted to reach out like I had before and rest my hand on his side. My hand tingled with the wanting, but the coward in me had outgrown the brave. I clenched my hand until my nails dug into the palm of it.
“Are you mad at me?” My voice sounded very small even to me, but I was on the precipice of not seeing him for weeks and I didn’t want to spend the last night together with an unsettled feeling.
He turned with a slight frown. “Why do you think I’m angry with you?”
A thousand things swirled around in my head and none of them made coherent sense. It was like reading a page from my favorite book in a language I didn’t know. I shrugged miserably.
“Well, I ain’t.” He grabbed my hand in a move so fast, his skin seemed to blur. He pressed my palm against his lips and kissed it lightly before he rolled back over and gave me his back.