Defiance at Werewolf Keep (Werewolf Keep Trilogy) (4 page)

She was better off with a bullet in her head.

'Lass, you canna hide from this. You need to talk to me, to us, so you can understand what you have to contend with,' said the body beneath her. She heard the voice as a deep rumble beneath her ear. It was the Scotsman, of course. She had known it the moment she awoke. Who else could make her feel as safe as a child in her mother’s arms? His brogue was more evident than it had been when they first met. It seemed to get that way when his emotions were roused.

'Might there be a mistake? Might I not be i
nfected?' She mumbled her question hopelessly, knowing there was no mistake.

'Unlikely
, lass. You have the symptoms. It's the only condition that makes you healthier because you have it. And you ken you are healthier?'

She nodded her head against his chest. 'But I don't want to hurt anyone. I could never do such a thing,' she whispered.

'Donna fash youself, lass, you willna hurt a soul. They donna let us. That's why the Sanctuary is so important. It protects us from ourselves, as well as others.'

'
You say us. Does that mean you’re a werewolf, too?'

'Aye lass, for ni’
on ten years. For me, it’s ne’er been a burden. I was always a bit of a beast before. I can accept my nature more than most. The more civilized the man or woman, the harder it is to accept the animal within. I saw many a beast on the battlefields of the Crimea, and they were just ordinary men. We who are infected just experience that side of our nature more completely.'

'I do
n’t think I had a beast inside me...before this.'

'Inste
ad of imagining a monster like the one in your nightmare, see yours as a playful kitten. Cats and puppies are beasts, too.'

For a moment
, Lily contemplated that idea. Could she identify kittenish qualities within herself? She certainly felt like a kitten at that moment, curled up on Will’s warm lap, languid and content. Did her werewolf
have
to be a craven beast that tore others to pieces?

'Have you killed anyone?' she asked, running her hand down the soft fabric of his shirt. She could feel the steel beneath, as chest muscles flexed at her touch.
What had driven her to such inappropriate behaviour? She had never before touched another person in this way. Not even her parents.

'Aye, I've killed my share. But none since I turned. I was spared that by the Captain
and ‘Ron. They found me shortly before my first full moon, having been on Claire’s trail for some months.

‘
She’d attacked a couple of people during that full moon, but I was the only one who survived. I came upon her tearing into a drunk, on my way home from a fight. I drove her off and I doona even think she broke my skin. But some of her slobber must have got into one of my open wounds from my bout. We weren’t sure if I was infected until I turned the first full moon after.’

‘How could you have driven such a beast away? In my dreams it is huge and fierce,’ she managed to get out
, as she breathed in his pleasing male scent.

‘The beasts
are scavengers, not predators. That's why so many were created by the war. They roamed among the dead and injured, so they say. But they’re easily driven off by a healthy man with a good heavy boot.' He didn’t speak for several long moments. 'And since that first full moon, I've never had the opportunity to hurt anyone, thank the Lord.'

'Will you make sure I...
I don't hurt anyone? Please, I would rather die than cause another harm.'

'I ken that
lass, and you won't. I promise you that.'

'What does it feel like...
to turn? Does it hurt?'

'Not hurt so much as discomfort. You don't feel your body cha
nge, you just sort of get light-headed and dizzy, feel sick in the gut, before you pass out. You donna have a sense of yourself in animal form. Can't think as a man. But when you come back there are flashes of images, senses. Memories. For me, those memories consist of pacing my cell and howling at a moon I canna see.' He laughed a little at the thought. Lily heard the sound as a deep rumble in his chest.

'Then
, as soon as the sun starts to rise the change happens again. You come to yourself slowly, like waking with a bad hangover. Sorry lass, you canna relate to that. You feel a little sick, headachy and wobbly, like you canna make your body work properly.’

‘I know what it’s like
to wake after a laudanum dose. It’s just like what you’re describing.’

Lily heard the rumbling chuckle under her ear and felt buoyed by it. Somehow
, she was able to make this man smile and laugh when it was apparent he had done little of it over the years. That felt good.

'Try not to get u
p too quickly or you get light-headed and fall down again. A few have damaged themselves that way. That's how the Captain died. He got up suddenly and then fell, hitting his head on the stone bench. Cut his head open and, though it wasn't much of an injury, he died from it. We thought it was from an infection to the wound. But that would’ve been unusual. Cook kens it’s more likely he had a bleed in his brain that even being a werewolf couldna fix. You can get a bit careless with things like that, bein' healthy all the time. We're not immortal. We can be injured and die, just like anyone else.'

'This Captain, you've spoken of him several times with great respect. He fell victim during the war?'

'Aye, one of the first. And he had enough foresight to see that something needed to be done about himself and others like him – something humane. Not wholesale slaughter. That just ends the lives of good men and women. And it doesna stop the spread for long.'

Lily lay quietly, taking in all she had learned. It was still the most horrific thing she had ever bee
n told. Worse than overhearing the physician giving her only a few years to live. Far worse. But somehow, knowing that this man, this rough Scottish, fighting man, with his calm and gentle ways, was just like her, made it bearable. If he could see it from an accepting point of view, maybe she could, too. As long as the monster inside her never hurt anyone, maybe she could live with it.

The gentle Scot brushed her hair back from her burning face. His skin felt cool against hers. Why was she hot? Normally she was cold. Even on the hottest days her body felt cold. But now it was warm. Her cheeks felt flushed. Was she running a fever? Why w
as she trembling, and why did her breath catch each time his fingertips stroked her face?

'Och,
Lass, I’m so sorry this has happened to you. So sorry. But the selfish part of me is glad. Else I never would ha’ met you.'

Astonished beyon
d words, Lily looked up into his granite face. The dark, hooded eyes of no fixed colour stared down at her with such intensity, as if they wanted to draw her in, draw her closer. They were inky whirlpools that sucked her in so that she began to lose all sense of who she was. There was just this man and his needs.

She didn't understand what he was doing until his lips touched h
ers softly. A feather's stroke. Yet it brought lightning with it. Unconsciously, she opened her mouth to the touch, inviting him closer. Wanting to taste him.

She had never been kissed before. Had n
ever been comforted by anyone but her parents. And yet it came so naturally, this intimacy. It felt like they had done this a hundred times before.

CHAPTER FOUR

Will deepened the kiss.
He had not planned to take this kind of liberty at such a vulnerable time. He had planned
never
to take such a liberty. However, they were alone, the others having gone to the dining car for a midday meal, and the intimacy of their position combined with the depth of their sharing had broken down his barriers.

A
s he had talked to this soft, shattered being, he felt something strange happening inside him. Something new. It was as if this fragile woman now held his heart in her hands and that, if she chose to do so, she could squeeze it until it burst. What's more, in that explosive moment of release, of death, he would be sublimely, deliriously happy.

What romantic nonsense was that? His heart was a stone. She could squeeze it all she liked
, but not even blood would pour forth from it.

Yet, how else did he explain what was happening to him?

When Lily had looked up at him, her pixie face flushed, violet eyes bright with wonder and trepidation, there had been no other choice possible. He had to kiss her lips. He had to taste her, as his other senses filled, overflowing with her. In those first tentative moments of touch and taste he had known that something monumental was happening to him.

But it wasn’t love. It could never be love.

Her inexperienced response set off an explosive charge deep in his gut. Moaning in helpless delight, he took what she offered, deepening the kiss, thrilled by her willingness to share such delirium with him. Though he fought it, his body responded and his arousal grew hard and throbbing. He groaned into her mouth as he shifted her so that he could draw her even closer.

This was lust o
f the most powerful and unrelenting kind. It drove all sanity from his mind. It drove his wolf to madness inside him.

T
he compartment door slid open and a feminine cough brought him down to earth with a thud. He pulled back from the fey being that held his stone heart in her trembling hands and scowled at the intruder.

'Will, I think this is not t
he time for such behaviour,' Fidelia said in a shocked little voice. She moved hastily into the compartment and shut the door behind her to give them privacy. 'You cannot think to take advantage of a woman at such a time. You are not a cad!'

Instead of clinging to what was his, he allowed the gentleman in him to come to the for
e. Reluctantly, he moved the young woman to the seat beside him. She held tight to his shirt, face buried against his chest. Was she ashamed to have been caught in such a compromising position with him? Did she hate him now for his beastly ways? It didn't feel like that, but he couldn’t be sure.

This was all
new and unexplored terrain for him. In the long-distant past, he hadn’t felt anything for the women he lusted after and bedded. He hadn’t cared whether they were ashamed or proud to have drawn his attention. Those women had one purpose and one only: Slack his hunger and ease his pain.

But this…
This felt different. Maybe age had tempered him. Maybe the wolf had changed him in some indefinable way. Maybe it considered this little woman his mate, as Jasper’s had considered Fidelia its mate. But that wasn’t love. That was just animal instinct. It meant nothing more than that.

'Please go and join Byron in the dining car. I will bring Lily
along shortly.' The tone in Fidelia's voice was enough to make Will cringe and do her bidding.

It wasn’t the
all-too-familiar tone of the upper class speaking to the lower class that made him react that way, a tone that had always left him feeling like he was less than the dirt beneath their highly polished boots. That tone would have had him lifting his chin and standing his ground. No, this cringe was for a tone that his mother might have used when she caught him stealing or fighting in the streets. Fidelia made him feel like a naughty little boy again.

Will
detached himself from the girl’s clinging arms and rose resolutely to his feet. Then, trying not to be swayed by Lily’s whimper, he left the compartment and strode down the passageway.

* * *

Lily's sense of self came rushing back at the first sound of Lady Horton’s scandalised voice. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment, her hands trembled with pent emotion she had no name for. How could she have allowed herself to be compromised in such a way? What would her parents think? What must this upper-class Lady, so doll-like and proper, think of her wantonness?

Fidelia
took the seat beside Lily and placed her gloved hands over hers. 'I am so sorry to have interrupted at such a moment. But I could not let Will take advantage of you. You know little of men, and he is a man of the world. He would misinterpret your need for comfort for something else. Something more basic.'

Lily closed her eyes and felt her face grow even more
heated. Could anything else this day go wrong? Now she had mistakenly invited the attentions of a man who would see a kiss such as they had shared as no more than a dalliance. It would mean nothing to him.

For her
, it meant everything. If it was possible to lose your heart in a kiss, then that was what she had done. And she was deeply mortified that this upright lady had been witness to it.

'You must think me a slattern to invite such advances,' she
mumbled, turning her face away to look sightlessly out the window. But her gaze snapped back to the widow’s when she heard the light, nervous laugh that greeted her statement.

'Dear Lily, no one could ever consider you such. You did nothing wrong. I know myself what it is to be carrie
d away by the kisses of a man. Up to six months ago, I would have been shocked and possibly a little envious of what I just witnessed. But since Jasper arrived, naked and blue with cold at my doorstep, I have had a much better perspective on the passions that can ignite between a man and a woman.'

Lily blinked back her shock. She could hardly imagine what it would be like to see a naked man at her door. She could not even imagine what a naked man looked like. She knew he would be different to her. But how different was a mystery.
Her mother had restricted her learning to areas she felt suitable for young ladies. Male physiology was not part of her curriculum.

'Jasper is a werewolf. I am not. He was so besotted w
ith me when we first met that he aided his beast to escape and came to find me. As a wolf, he sat at my hotel's back door all night and howled at the winter moon. He came to himself at dawn, naked and freezing to death. I had never seen a naked man before, though I had been married for two and a half years. He kissed me and I thought I'd found Heaven.

'But enough of me. I have made your embarrassment more i
ntense by telling you my tale. I seem to be a hopeless counsel to you. Every time I speak, I say the wrong thing.' Fidelia began to draw back her hands, but Lily gripped them and gave them a slight squeeze.

'Please, your counsel is most welcome. I am not used to female companionship. I am not used to any companionship beyond my parents. Everything that is happening is so shockingly new and unexpected. Forgive me if I have given you the impression that I am anything but grateful for your kindness to me.'

Fidelia smiled sweetly and squeezed her hands back. 'I have no idea how it must be for you. All this. But I do know what it feels like to not know if you are a werewolf or not. For a while there, I thought I might have been turned, and it confused me greatly. One minute I was terrified, the next, excited. I admit to disappointment when it was finally proved that I was not a werewolf. There seemed to be far more advantages to the state than disadvantages, as far as I was concerned.

‘As to what I just saw.
I do not know what to counsel beyond caution. Will is a rough and ready sort. Not a true gentleman. What his intentions are, I cannot say.

‘
Though I do not know him well, I do know he is well respected by those at the Keep. But he is also regarded as a loner, not a man who invites company. And you will quickly realise that, for him to be considered such, by people who are naturally averse to relationships, is saying something.

‘What I am trying to say
, in my inept way, is that I do not think he would make the best lover for a young woman such as yourself. Especially at this time, when you are so vulnerable and confused.'

Lily blushed and looked away
again. The idea of being Will’s lover was so unexpected and so impossible that it left her with a sick excitement in the pit of her stomach. Even though she had no idea what being a lover actually entailed, she was sure than someone like her would not possibly be of interest to someone like Will. There was nothing beautiful, charming or adorable about her. She was just a skinny, sickly spinster he had taken pity on for a short while. That made him kind, not a cad.

Lily realised that she
felt insulted that Fidelia saw Will as less than a gentleman, while she could see so much more in him. His gentle strength separated him from other men. His protective kindness was unlike any she had known before. To suggest that he would take advantage of her was a slur that she couldn’t allow, even when she had only just rebuilt the bridges with her lady companion.

‘
How can you say such things about a man who holds you in such high regard? Will may not have been born into the upper-classes, but that does not mean he isn’t a gentleman. A gentleman is measured by his actions, not his breeding. I have found him to be everything a gentleman should be, and I consider that you do him a great injustice by warning me against him, even though I know you do it from the best of intentions.’

Lily had delivered this speech while looking away from Fidelia, and so the silence that greeted the end of her words was pregnant with many possible interpretations. Finally, she had to turn to see what Fidelia’s reaction actually had been.

She saw a woman cast down, her face flushed with mortification, her eyes filled with unshed tears. When she saw Lily looking at her, she sniffed and tried to smile, but it wasn’t genuine. Lily felt as if she’d just kicked a friendly puppy.

‘Am I such a pompous snob? In this moment
, I see myself in the same light as I have often seen my mother. I beg your pardon. I meant only to protect you.’ Fidelia’s bottom lip trembled and she bit it.

‘Lady Horton, I didn’t mean to offend you. And you have no reason to beg my pardon. It is
Will who must pardon you, not I. From the way he spoke of you, I am sure he harbours a deep affection for you. That you think so little of him…’

‘That is not the case,’
Fidelia interrupted in genuine distress. ‘Oh, this has gone so terribly wrong. I wish Phil were here. She is so much better at explaining things than I. And you remind me of her, the way you stand up for Will.

‘
I was not so much warning you against Will as against men in general. They have needs that can turn even the most gentlemanly of them into cads.’

‘Was that the case with your Jasper?’ Lily
challenged her, and immediately wished she could just close her mouth and let it go. She didn’t want to hurt this little lady any more than she already had. But, each time Lady Horton tried to excuse her behaviour, it set her off again.

‘Actually
, yes it was. Jasper behaved abominably. He broke all the rules set up for humanity’s safety. He risked people’s lives, including mine, in his mindless need to be with me, to save me. He took me to his bed and then rejected me, for what he considered good reasons. But the sting of that rejection was the same as it would have been for any other reason. My Jasper was born a gentleman and always lived by that code, until I came into his life. So believe me when I say that this is not snobbery speaking, this is personal experience.’

‘And yet you married this cad? This man who made you his lover and then abandoned you?’

‘Yes. Because love drove him to do things that he would not have done otherwise. And love allowed me to forgive him. Not one of us is perfect. In my case, that is especially so. But Jasper is very close to perfection. Love just made him crazy for a while.’

Lily drew herself up in her seat and thrust out her chin.
‘You have nothing of the kind to be concerned about with Will. He does not love me. He will not be tempted to forsake his duty. What you saw here was simple kindness. That is all.’

‘That kiss was not kindness. It was lust. It was passion. Of that
, I have first-hand experience. There are burdens these people carry that you and I cannot possibly understand. It keeps them apart from others. It pushes normal human companionship away. It takes a great deal of determination to get under that aloof distance. And you do not need that challenge on top of the ones you already have to deal with.’

‘I thank yo
u for your concern, Lady Horton, I truly do. But you are mistaken. Will is not like your Jasper. And I am not a beautiful temptation, as you are. My heart is safe, I assure you. Lust is the last emotion Will feels for me…And if there is love of any kind, it is a compassionate love borne of a shared travail.’

Fidelia nodded sadly, finally giving up.
She stood and turned for the sliding door of their compartment. ‘Then I think we should join the gentlemen in the dining car. I for one and famished. I think it is because I am soon to see Jasper again. I am always hungry when I am with him.’