Defiance at Werewolf Keep (Werewolf Keep Trilogy) (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

'Are ye well
, lass?' Will McMasters asked Lily as he helped her up from the platform into their First Class carriage the next morning. He had been worried about the pale, elfin woman from the moment he'd met her. She had that fragile air of the long-term invalid. His mother had been just the same: Peaceful and brave, but weighed down by the rigors of life.

Those rigors had taken his mother before her time. He wondered what the new rigors of Miss Lily's life would do to her. He had seen strong men wither and die under the onslaught of th
eir condition. And it was not an ailment of the body that laid them low, but rather of the heart. It could destroy the lives of otherwise strong men. Men who did not have the fortitude to bear the burden of what they’d become.

Like the fool who had escaped his ke
epers three weeks earlier.

He’d been on-route
from Italy to the Sanctuary in Yorkshire when he’d panicked and escaped his travelling companions. They’d hunted for him for the week before the full moon and had only called in the Special Task Force attached to Scotland Yard when it was apparent they would not get him to safety in time.

The Task Force tried
, wherever possible, to capture, not kill, the werewolves they found. But this man had been unlucky. His wolf attacked the young lass Will was now helping onto the train, and the Constable had no alternative but to shoot.

It could happen to any of them. It could even happen to this sweet
, young woman with the compelling violet-coloured eyes.

'I am well, sir, thank
you. Will my lady companion be here shortly?' For a split second longer than necessary, Lily left her tiny hand in his. It seemed too short a moment for Will. Her hand felt good, sheltered in his. He had the sudden, almost overwhelming desire to hold onto it forever.

That urge
shocked him. He was a loner, not comfortable in the company of others. Even as a child, he had kept people at arm’s length. That tendency had increased after his mother’s death left him a homeless orphan on the streets of Glasgow at just ten years of age. Yet, here he was, feeling an unexpected urge to keep this young woman close. Not just for the time it would take to slack his sexual urges, but for the rest of his life. And though the feelings washing over him had a sexual edge that he recognised easily, the larger, more all-encompassing need to protect was totally new to him.

Not that he hadn’t spent a lot of his life protecting others. During the Crimean War
, he’d protected many of his comrades-in-arms, who fell afoul of the Turks. He’d also protected his employers from their enemies when he worked as a Minder. That was before he took up pugilism, which had made better money and was a lot less boring.  And even now, he protected, working to keep his kind from causing harm to the rest of humanity.

But those kinds of protection were different somehow. The need to hold and protect hadn’t been personal. It had been a duty
, not a desire.

He shook his head to clear his thoughts and tried to refocus on her question. What was it? Oh, yes, she was asking about her companion.

'Fidelia will more than likely cut it very close. She’s rarely on time. But no man can fault her for it, as she’s such a sweet lass. I ken you’ll like her.' He found himself grinning up at the fey woman, entranced by the soft pink lips that she bit nervously at every opportunity. It was the only sign that gave away how overwhelming all this must be to her. An invalid her whole life, being suddenly torn away from the safety and familiarity of her home and loved ones must be devastating. And yet she hid it well, behind her poised and lady-like demeanour.

Except for that lip.

Although Will smiled more often since Philomena Carstairs came to Breckenhill Keep a little more than a year ago, it still felt odd to do so. Sometimes it felt as if his cheeks creaked from disuse when he forced them into a grin. But, in this moment, the urge to split his face in two and beam at her was uncontrollable. And it made him feel light and giddy, like a teenage boy falling in love for the first time.

In love? Hardly
. He lusted after this fragile beauty, and wanted to protect her from the hardships she had yet to face, but he didn’t love her. He was incapable of love. Any feelings of that kind had died with his mother, so long ago now that he could barely remember what it felt like. Painful, he knew it was painful. His emotions had always been too volatile back then, washing over him suddenly, threatening to do him in with their agonising intensity. When his mother died, he discovered something worse than the painful love he felt for her. He discovered the agony of grief and loss that followed naturally from that love.

No, he didn’t love this little waif. He would never let himself love anyone again. This was just a pleas
ant divergence from the monotony of his life. She was a pretty novelty he wanted to explore. Not sexually, of course. None of them had sexual relationships, though the urge was probably greater now than it ever was when they were human. But the dangers of sex were too great to consider.

Or they had been, up until Jasper Horton met Fidelia Montgomery. And now
, for the first time in their history, a werewolf was married to a human. Happily married, from all indications, and there seemed to be no ill-effects from their union. They even knew that any child borne to them would be free of the infection. But that had been a recent discovery, and none of the rest of the denizens of the Keep had felt like testing out that discovery.

Because it wasn’t just fear of the unknown that kept them insulated from others, it wa
s their own self-loathing, the innate belief they didn’t deserve the kind of happiness humanity experienced. They were monsters, separated from humanity by their contagion and the things that contagion had made them do. And monsters didn’t deserve pleasure.

That was certainly the case for
him. There would be no sexual pleasure, not even with this delightful young woman who looked at him with such perplexed adoration, as if she couldn’t quite work out why she was drawn to him. And she was drawn to him, as much as he was to her, he could scent her attraction as surely as he had scented her presence the moment he’d walked into her parents’ shop the day before.

But unlike Jasper, he wasn’t about to let that attraction take over his good sense. He wouldn’t b
reak all their rules to be with a woman, risking others’ lives in pursuit of her. No, Will was made of sterner stuff than that. Duty was everything to him. It was the core of his identity. It made his life meaningful and gave it purpose. Love simply distracted a man from his course, like the sirens distracted Ulysses. He would not succumb to the siren’s call.

But he could enjoy
her company. There was no harm in that.

* * *

Lily smiled down at the man who had accompanied her to the station, fighting a momentary pang of uncharacteristic jealousy. Why should it matter to her that this gentle ruffian thought highly of another woman – this Fidelia Horton? He was nothing to her.

But her
eyes lingered on him, just as her hand had lingered in his of its own accord as he passed her up into the train. She took in everything about him as if exploring a delightful gift she was unwrapping. His dark, expressive eyes twinkled up at her, fringed by impossibly thick, dark lashes. That broken nose, which had once been long and straight, added character to his otherwise regular features. His skin was tanned brown from years in the outdoors, and there were wrinkles around his eyes and mouth that were likely formed by squinting and grimacing rather than from laughter, even though he was grinning mischievously at her in this moment.

His dark, grey-
streaked hair was overlong and shaggy, and she had the oddest desire to run her fingers through it, to see if it was as soft as she imagined. And he was broad-shouldered and muscular. With one foot on the train step and the other still on the platform, he looked strong enough to hold the train in place until he was ready for it to leave. She stifled a giggle at the whimsical thought.

She tried to think of something else to say. She wanted to keep h
im talking. His lilting Scottish accent was a pleasure to the ear. It was not strong, so she assumed he had spent many years away from his homeland, but it was there. And it pleased her to listen to it spoken in such a gruff baritone.

But no new topi
cs of conversation came to mind and she realised she could hold the moment no longer. With a little sigh of regret, she forced herself to turn away and move into the train compartment.

S
he had never travelled before. In fact, she had never left her home before, except to go to the doctor’s at the end of the street. It had never bothered her, this enforced captivity, for she had always had her imagination. While trapped in her bed, body racked by one illness or another, she had travelled the world in her mind. Not only the world, but time itself. She had explored Ancient Egypt and Rome, had travelled the Silk Road and the Congo.

For all that, it was exciting to be taking her first real journey. Had her parents not been left behind to worry about her, it would have been the most thrilling moment of her life.

But she was concerned about her parents, most especially her father. He had been so angry after the men had left the shop the day before that Lily had thought he might suffer apoplexy. She'd had to call her mother to help calm him.

For hours
they talked, circling around and around the problem until her Papa had finally given in to the inevitable. Her Majesty’s laws must be obeyed. And it wasn't as if they could just pack up and disappear. All the family's money was tied up in the business. They had nowhere else to go.

So
, with red eyes and a tense grimace, her father said his goodbyes that morning when the men had come to collect her. And though it was her mother who had cried and hugged her like she would never let her go, Lily knew that it was her Papa who would be the one to miss her most. If she didn't come home soon, she knew his heart would break without her.

To keep her mind off her worries, Lily
removed her bonnet, pulled out a book from her reticule and sat down on the velvet seat next to the carriage window. It was like sitting in a luxurious parlour, ornate and carpeted. Even the windows were curtained in heavy brocade.

The grey-
haired Scot sat across from her and looked at her book. It was a small volume of poetry by Christina Rossetti, titled 'The Goblin Market and other Poems'. There was a picture of a reclining, embracing couple on the front which seemed to rouse his curiosity.

'Lovers?' he asked, nodding at the cover. Lily looked at the front of the volume and laughed.

'I do hope not. They are sisters. The one falls foul of the Goblin Men's forbidden fruit and the other faces the same temptations to save her sister's life,' she explains.

'And that is an etching by Miss Rosetti’s
brother Dante, if I'm not mistaken,' interrupted a doll-like woman who had just entered the compartment so quietly that neither Lily nor Will had noticed. 'I do so love Rossetti’s paintings. So vivid and alive! So sensual. I used to see them as unrealistic...' The young, blonde-haired lady was lost for a moment in revelry as she removed her hat, and then sighed deeply as she sat down, her porcelain-fine skin colouring a pretty pink.

'But no more?' Will queried, a playful smile
transforming his rough features into something close to handsome. Lily felt jealousy tearing at her insides again. She had no chance of competing with this beautiful, elegant woman for Will’s affections.

The lady fluttered her eyelashes at him and sat down next to Lily.
'Now I see his painting as a perfect replication of Passion's true perception.'

The tall man called Byron Carstairs was the last to enter the compartment and he seate
d himself next to Will. 'Ah,
Grand Passion
! You and Phil amuse me with your enthusiasm for the concept.'

'I would think that
, as Philomena’s Grand Passion, you would be less amused and more grateful for her adoration.'

Byro
n laughed and shook his head. 'Darling Dee, I am eternally grateful for my wife's adoration, whatever you two wish to call it. As I imagine Jasper is, to be the subject of your adoration.'

'Much to his total bemusement,' Will added.

'Bemusement?' Fidelia asked in mock horror.

'That anything as ravishing as you could make him the subject of her adoration.'

'Oh yes, well, Jasper still cannot get over his fixation with the beast. To him, it is all he is. To me, it is a tiny part, only. I love the whole being. He has trouble understanding that.'

Byron cleared
his throat to put an end to the subject.

Beast? This mysterious Jasper was f
ixated on a beast? Whatever did she mean
?

Bu
t at least it appeared as if the lady’s affections were engaged elsewhere.

'Enough
idle prattle. Let me make the introductions. Lily, I would like you to meet Lady Fidelia Horton, the new wife of Jasper, Earl of Barringford, one of our long-term residents. Dee, may I introduce you to Miss Lily Farnsworth, our newest resident.'