WolfeBlade: de Wolfe Pack Generations

by Kathryn Le Veque

  Andreas took her to an inn he had stayed at on his very first night in London. He and William and Tor and Theodis had been so thrilled to finally be in London that they’d bypassed Lothbury House on that first night and opted for the food and excitement of a tavern, only this particular tavern hadn’t shown them much excitement.

  It had been downright boring.

  Someone had recommended the place called The Fox and The Wolf, and they’d taken up seats in the common room and were treated to a spectacular meal. The place had been full of people, but a much more respectable level of clientele than most inns in the city had, and there had literally been no music, no dancing, no entertainment. Just food and perhaps the softest bed Andreas had ever slept in. The visit hadn’t been a total waste, but it had been unspectacular, so he thought a place like that might be just the thing for a woman who had just suffered a harrowing visit to Gomorrah.

  A woman he couldn’t seem to let out of his sight.

  They moved out onto a main road that had stone paving on it as part of a drainage system. There were expensive homes on this street and those with wealth tended not to like shite in the streets, so Andreas knew where they were in spite of the fog and knew exactly where he was going. He continued down the avenue for a short distance until he came to a small and cramped alleyway. I was quite dark except for a single torch about halfway down the alley.

  Andreas aimed for the torch.

  The Fox and The Wolf was a two-storied establishment on that cramped alley and crammed in between other buildings. The first floor hung out over the alleyway by at least a couple of feet, as was common with most buildings built around this time to maximize the interior space. The upper floors were always wider than the lower floors. He knocked on the door, several times, before it was finally opened.

  The innkeeper, evidently recognizing Andreas, opened the door to admit them before shutting it behind them and bolting it.

  Being that it was very late, the common room was cluttered with sleeping bodies. There were people strewn across tables, on the floor, and some of them were simply sitting in chairs leaning against the wall. The fire in the hearth burned low, giving off a little light into the chamber as Andreas spoke to the tavernkeep about procuring some food and a place to eat it. The tavernkeeper didn’t have a problem warming up some food for them, but somewhere to sit and consume it was another matter altogether.

  He indicated the common room, which was nearly full at that point of snoozing patrons, and he suggested using one of the rooms that hadn’t been rented for the night. Often, travelers would sleep at the table they had eaten at, thus avoid paying for a bed – leaving sleeping chambers empty.

  Gavriella heard the tavernkeeper suggest that they rent a sleeping room where they could eat their meal and, suddenly, she wasn’t so willing to trust him anymore. A chamber with a bed? With a door he could shut and prevent her from leaving?

  She wondered if this had been his intention all along.

  Suddenly, she was feeling frightened again.

  As they discussed the cost of such a thing, Gavriella was already backing towards the door. She reached the panel and tried to unbolt it, but the bolt was old and heavy, and she had to jiggle it for it to come loose. By that time, the man she knew as Wolf was directly behind her.

  “Where are you going?” he asked softly.

  She couldn’t get the door open quickly enough. Her fear, her rage, was blooming in her chest again. Perhaps now more than it ever had. Whirling around, she pressed herself flat against the door.

  “I heard you speak to that man about renting a bedchamber,” she hissed. “I am not going into a rented bedchamber with you. I do not know what kind of woman you think I am, but I will not be seen as… as an easy target.”

  He was a bit taken aback by her outrage. “An easy target? For what?”

  “I did not come here with you to warm your bed!”

  She raised her voice, partially rousing a few people who were nearby. They lifted their heads, yawning and groaning, and she looked around in a panic, thinking she’d just awoken everyone. They would be angry with her. Frightened and furious, she turned for the door again yanking on the bolt until it opened. When he tried to help her or stop her – she wasn’t sure which – she slapped his hand as hard as she could. She finally jerked on the door, throwing it wide and rushing out into the night.

  As the woman bolted outside, Andreas followed, genuinely surprised at her reaction, but given that he was speaking to the tavernkeeper about renting a chamber, he supposed he didn’t blame her for being suspicious and angry. There was part of him that absolutely understood why she’d fled in terror.

  “My lady,” he called to her as she ran into the fog. “Please come back. It is not as it seems. There are no tables for us to eat at. Renting a chamber would allow us a space to do that – eat!”

  The fog was swallowing her up. “I will not be tricked,” she said. “The last time a man asked me to trust him was… oh, it does not matter. I’ll not let you touch me! Never again!”

  She disappeared into the mist. Andreas watched her go, wondering if he just shouldn’t let her alone this time. He’d tried so hard to be kind and polite, so hard to be chivalrous because he thought it was the right thing to do, but she had fought him at every turn. She hadn’t believed him from the beginning; that much was clear. She had looked at him with such suspicion that, in truth, his pride was starting to take a beating. He done everything he could to be trustworthy and courteous, but it wasn’t enough. Kitten, or whatever her real name was, wasn’t the trusting sort.

  She was suspicious of everything he did.

  He could have been offended, but he ended up just feeling pity for her.

  As he had told her, however, he felt some sense of responsibility towards her. She was a woman, alone in a dangerous city, and he simply couldn’t turn his back on her. He wondered why she was so incredibly mistrustful because it seemed to him that it really had nothing to do with him at all and everything to do with something she surely must have experienced in her lifetime. He’d never met anyone who was that suspicious who didn’t have a good reason behind it.

  Before she’d run from him, he could see terror in her eyes.

  There was something more to her fear.

  A few moments after watching her red dress fade from sight, he followed.

  No, she didn’t know where she was going.

  All she knew was that she had to get away.

  The fog had thickened as she headed back the way she thought they had come, but it was so misty that she couldn’t really see anything but the occasional public torches. There was a night watch because she could hear them calling to one another, distant voices in the fog.

  Even so, the streets of London were treacherous.

  Everything in London was treacherous.

  Gavriella had never felt so lost or alone in her entire life. At least when she was at Falstone Castle, she was surrounded by people she knew, servants she had grown up with and friends from the small village that was near the castle. She was content there, living a bucolic life, or at least she had been until the events of last year.

  That had changed everything.

  She no longer felt safe. She no longer felt anything. As she stood there shivering in the mist, she realized that this moment was symbolic of what her life had become – dark, dreary, miserable.

  There was simply no hope.

  She could return to The Asher and face her cousins. Maybe they would care that she’d run off, maybe they wouldn’t. She was coming to hate Aurelia for dragging her out on this night and taking her to that horrific place, and here she was, wandering in the night and looking for the only home she knew in London, only it wasn’t her home.

  It wasn’t her anything.

  In fact, she had nothing.

  The knight, the one who called himself Wolf, had been kind to her in the midst of her despair, but she realized it had only been a ploy to get her into his bed. And like
a fool, she’d fallen for it. She had been coming to appreciate him in the slightest, and even trust him a little, but that had all been summarily dashed when she realized what he’d been up to. Now, all she could manage to feel was stupidity.

  Desolation.

  Gavriella de Leia had reached the bottom.

  The tears began to come. She was so very weary, at the end of any semblance of patience she’d ever had for herself. Patience in her situation, in what life had brought her. She’d tried to remain pragmatic, to hope that something better was on the horizon, but she knew nothing was. She was damaged goods now, relegated to being a companion to a scandalous cousin and a victim to a man who had just wanted to seduce her.

  God, why had she trusted him?

  Everyone in her life had failed her.

  Now, the knight who swore he was honorable had failed her, too.

  Gavriella was wet and cold and hungry, and her left arm hurt where they man had yanked on her. Cradling her arm against her body, she turned around and began to walk. She didn’t know where she was going, but she began to walk. Tears streaked down her cheeks and her thoughts were those of utter despair.

  Still, she walked. And walked.

  Mud coated the bottom of the pretty red silk and covered her slippers. The tears turned into sobs and as she walked, she wept over everything her life had become. Tears she’d held off, trying to be brave, had found an outlet. She found herself hoping an outlaw would come out of the shadows and put her out of her misery.

  Surely what awaited her in the afterlife was better than the cesspool of grief her life had become.

  After what had happened last year, no decent man would want her now. She could not hope for an advantageous marriage. She couldn’t even hope for a simple but honorable knight, like the man who called himself Wolf, to marry. A decent man who would overlook what had happened to her. A decent man who might even care for her.

  But she realized that she wasn’t worth caring for.

  No man had a shred of respect for her.

  Gavriella had no idea how long or how far she had walked. Her life was swept up in misery that was consuming her as a blaze consumes kindling. She was freezing cold and wet from the fog, her long blonde hair saturated with mist. She wept and walked, not focusing on anything in particular, until she came to the shoreline.

  She’d ended up by the river.

  The river…

  Gavriella looked off over the fog-bound waters of the Thames. She couldn’t see much because of the mist, but she could see enough. The cold, silent river was beckoning to her. It seemed peaceful there, far from the hell she had endured this past year. Perhaps that dirty river was her salvation from her living and breathing hell.

  Perhaps it was her only way out.

  God forgive her.

  And with that, she climbed down from the street and onto the narrow, rocky riverbank. Her first step into the water was freezing, but it didn’t matter. She took another step and another. The river was smelly and icy cold. It had a nasty, slimy bottom, but still, she continued to walk into the water until she took one step too far, slipped over a ledge, and went right into a hole.

  Freezing, blissful death awaited, or at least she thought so until she held her breath so long that she needed air, but all she managed to suck in was a mouthful of water. Panic filled her. Perhaps this wasn’t the peace she had hoped for. Perhaps she wasn’t brave enough to withstand the pain before the calm overtook her. She started to thrash, but unable to swim, she gulped in more water.

  Daggers filled her lungs as everything gradually turned to black.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The village of Deadwater

  “You are the physic in this village. You would know if a child was born.”

  Two heavily armed knights, father and son, had shoved their way into his cottage this morning. As a soft mist had embraced the rolling hills of the border, men armed for war had charged into the village and had come straight to the physic’s cottage. They’d slapped around the old couple, the man and his wife, before tossing the wife in a corner and shoving the old man into a chair.

  Now, they stood over him, posturing threateningly.

  But the old man didn’t flinch.

  “Not everyone summons a physic for the birth a child,” he said steadily, even though there was a trickle of red coming from the corner of his mouth. “Midwives are summoned most often.”

  The younger of the pair, a nasty brute called Nicholas by the older man, glared at him. “But you are summoned to care for the people at Falstone Castle, are you not?” he demanded. “The child would have been born at Falstone to Merek de Leia’s daughter.”

  The physic blinked as if surprised by the information. “I did not hear of a child born there, nor did I attend it.”

  “Who is the midwife around here?”

  “My wife is, but she did not attend the birth, either.”

  The pair immediately turned their venom on the old woman, who cowered in the corner.

  “Well?” Nicholas demanded. “What do you have to say about all of this?”

  While the husband was quite brave, the wife was a sniveling mess. They’d struck her on her round cheeks, frightening her more than they really injured her, but she was terrified. She put up an arm as if to shield herself from them.

  “I did not attend a birth at Falstone,” she said, her voice quaking. “But I did hear that two children were born there this past spring. I did not attend either one.”

  Nicholas looked at the older man. “One of them has to be it, Father,” he muttered. “She would have given birth sometime in April.”

  The older man eyed his son before running his fingers through his graying hair. “The merchant who passed through our lands a few months ago confirmed that he saw de Leia’s daughter with child, so we know that she conceived,” he muttered, keeping his voice down so the physic wouldn’t hear him. “But if the midwife knows nothing about the birth, we should send her to find out. It is her duty, after all, to tend the women and infants in this area. An inquiry to Falstone would not be out of the ordinary.”

  Nicholas liked that idea. Ever since he’d cornered Merek de Leia’s daughter in the village those months ago and molested her in a nearby livery with his hands covering her screams of pain, he knew he’d done everything a man does to beget a child. He filled the woman with his seed and told her if she spoke of his assault that he would return to kill her. But he also told her that he would come for that child when it was born, so she had to know he’d be coming. He never gave his name, and he was certain she didn’t recognize him, so there was no danger of association with the House of de Soulis. That was key. The child, if it had been born alive, would be at least three months of age by now.

  And he wanted it.

  He returned his attention to the woman.

  “You will go to Falstone and inquire about the women who have given birth,” he said in a threatening tone. “You are the midwife – it is your duty to tend to the health of the women and children in Deadwater and beyond. I want you to go to Falstone and find out who gave birth there. You are to find out everything you can about the infants and do it quickly, because I shall return soon. If you do not have any information for me, there will be consequences.”

  As the old woman continued to cower, now with confusion added to the mix, the old physic spoke up.

  “My lords,” he said evenly. “I do not know what this is all about, but if you tell me, mayhap I can help. Am I to understand that you are looking for an infant born recently at Falstone?”

  The older man turned his attention to the physic. “The daughter of Lord de Leia gave birth sometime in the spring,” he said. “We are looking for that child.”

  Harman the Wise was the old physic everyone within a fifty-mile radius of Deadwater used to cure ills, diagnose ailments, or otherwise assist with the good and bad humors of the human body. He knew everyone and everything in these parts, including events like births and deaths, and eve
n madness. He knew the comings and goings, and he knew the families.

  And that was why he was trying not to show his fear.

  Even though the men hadn’t given their names officially, the mention of the son’s name and the father-son relationship caused him to suspect who they were. Moreover, their soldiers weren’t bearing any tunics, but the horses they had ridden had brands on the rump. He could see them through the open door.

  He’d seen them before, in times past.

  He knew the de Soulis family.

  Wicked to the bone.

  He had heard about the incident last year when the daughter of Merek de Leia, Lord of Falstone, had been cornered by a group of unidentified knights. The lovely young woman had been in the village with a pair of her maids, visiting the merchant who imported silk thread, when she was set upon her.

  As the story went, because Harman had not witnessed it personally, Lady Gavriella de Leia was caught off guard by the men. When they’d grabbed her and spirited her away, she’d never even made a sound. Everyone knew Lady Gavriella and everyone loved her, and there had always been such peace in Deadwater in spite of the fact that it was on the Scots border, that any kind of violence was unheard of.

  And that’s what her attackers had been counting on that.

  News of the terrible incident spread quickly. Lady Gavriella hadn’t know her attackers and that she had seen the only identifiable thing they had – a brand on one of the horses. She’d drawn it for her father, which told the man all he needed to know.

  The brand for Hell’s Guardhouse.

  De Soulis.

  It was the same brand that Harman saw now through the open door. Those from the castle known as the Hell’s Guardhouse usually didn’t venture over to Deadwater. They kept to themselves, spreading their filth over the villages closer to them. The father and son pair were known as unfair lords, harsh and terrible, taxing their vassals into starvation to fund their coffers, yet the castle itself was strangely in disrepair. The fear was that they could no longer squeeze blood out of their vassals and had somehow turned their sights on Deadwater and even Falstone. They’d come into Deadwater and had caught Lady Gavriella off guard.