She refused to even acknowledge his preposterous suggestion and instead asked, “What did you do to Dominic Wolfe to make him challenge you three times?”
He snorted. “Nothing to warrant such persistence. But don’t cross us on this, Sister. We don’t want him as a relative through marriage. His death will remove any further demands the Prince Regent can make of us.”
She gestured to the door. He gave her such a vicious look for dismissing him that she thought he might use his fists on her to make his point. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done that.
But he was still scheming and in parting said, “As a widow, you will have your freedom, more freedom than family or a husband will ever give you. Keep that in mind, Sister.”
Her fondest wish! But not at the cost he was suggesting. Yet she’d lost her chance to learn something about the man they were sending her to. Robert knew him, could have told her something about him, but didn’t. She’d almost asked before the door closed behind him, but she’d never asked anything of him in her life and wasn’t going to start now.
It was ludicrous that the only thing she knew about Lord Wolfe was that he wanted her brother dead. She didn’t know if he was young or old, infirm, ugly, or even as cold and callous as her own family was. He could already be engaged to marry someone else, too, could be in love. . . . How horrible to think that his life was going to be turned upside down just because he’d wanted justice from her brother that he obviously couldn’t get from the courts. She already felt sorry for him!
When the coach stopped for lunch that day, they’d already traveled farther from Whitworth manor than Brooke had ever before been. By evening they would be out of Leicestershire! The trip to London was to have been her first long journey and her first time out of the shire. She’d been to Leicester and a few other towns around it, but those had been short visits that hadn’t required spending the night away from home. So she was determined to enjoy this journey despite what would happen at the end of it, and she spent much of that first day staring out the window at countryside she’d never before seen.
But she still couldn’t stop her thoughts and anxieties from churning. By late afternoon she got around to telling Alfreda about Robert’s nefarious suggestion.
The maid merely raised a brow, not showing the least surprise. “Poison, eh? As cowardly as he’s always been, that boy. He’d ask this of you but he wouldn’t do it himself.”
“But he fought those duels,” Brooke reminded her. “That took some bravery.”
Alfreda scoffed. “I’ll warrant he fired his pistol before he should have. Ask your wolf when you meet him. I’m sure he’ll confirm my guess.”
“He’s not my wolf and we probably shouldn’t call him that just because my parents did,” Brooke said, even though she’d been doing just that.
“Well, you might want to.”
“Call him a wolf?”
“No, poison him.”
Brooke gasped. “Bite your tongue, I would never.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would. I will if necessary. I won’t have you suffer at his hand, if he has a heavy one.”
Despite the subject, Brooke was comforted to know how far Alfreda would go to protect her from the stranger who was to become her husband.
Chapter Five
HAVING JOINED THE ANCIENT Great North Road that led all the way to Scotland, the Whitworth coach was making much better time the second day. Although the road was bumpy, Alfreda’s pet cat, Raston, didn’t seem to mind and purred on the seat between them. Raston had never been allowed in the house. He’d lived in the rafters of the Whitworth stable. Oddly, the horses had never been bothered by his presence. Alfreda had brought him food. The stableboys had given him more. Now Raston was fat and heavy to hold due to all those meals.
“Your father told the damned driver to make haste,” Alfreda grumbled when she was jostled on the seat for the third time that morning. “But this is too much. I don’t think Lord Whitworth wanted you to arrive in York before the Prince Regent’s emissary did. I will warn our driver to slow down when we stop for lunch today. They can go as fast as they like on the return trip.”
Brooke grinned. “But this is fun. I really don’t mind a bouncy ride.”
“You will tonight when you feel the aches from it. But I’m glad to see you smiling. You know you can be yourself now, laugh when you want, cry when you please, even lose your temper from time to time if you feel like it. Away from that house that choked the life out of you, you no longer need to keep your inner self contained, poppet.”
Brooke raised a black brow. “You’re suggesting I let this Prince-picked groom see who I really am?”
“You could. Why pretend with him?”
Brooke laughed. “I’m not really sure who I am anymore.”
“Of course you are. You are yourself with me and always have been.”
“But only with you, and only because you were the only one in that house who actually loved me.”
“Your mother—”
“Don’t defend her to me. She spoke to me only when she had to, or when my father and Robert were away and she was in one of her chattering moods. And even then she only wanted me to sit there and listen, not participate in a real conversation.”
Many times Alfreda had tried to convince Brooke that Harriet loved her. At times Brooke had thought it might be true. Occasionally, her mother would smile at her when no one else was around or stand in the doorway of the study watching her during a lesson with her tutor. Once, when Brooke cut her arm, Harriet brushed Alfreda aside to tend it herself. She’d even given Brooke Rebel, her most prized possession, for her thirteenth birthday. Yes, a few times Harriet had acted like a mother toward her, but Brooke knew what love felt like and what it looked like. She saw it every time Alfreda looked at her. She never saw it in her real mother’s eyes. Yet she knew Harriet was capable of love because she displayed it in abundance for Robert.
“She could be like two different people, Freda. Most of the time, cold and indifferent, and on rare occasions, caring and interested. Sometimes I thought . . . but if I’d been myself with her, I would have been caught in the crosshairs when she reverted to being as cold as my father. The hurt she caused me would have been so much worse if I’d allowed myself to hope it could be otherwise. But you—I wished so many times that you, not Harriet, were my mother.”
“Not as many times as I wished you were my daughter. But you are the daughter of my heart, never doubt that.” Then Alfreda cleared the emotion out of her throat and added more formally, “We know why you hid yourself from that unnatural family of yours. It was the only way to save yourself pain and abuse. Let us both hope those days are gone for good.”
“What d’you think will happen if Dominic Wolfe doesn’t like me and sends me back home?” Brooke wondered aloud.
“Nothing other than you will likely get that Season in London that you were promised, and soon after, some other husband. But there would have to be something very wrong with Lord Wolfe for him not to like you, poppet.”
“But he hates Robert and will hate me because of it.”
“Then he would be a fool.”
“He could be that anyway.” Brooke sighed a little forlornly. “I knew I would marry eventually, but I expected a courtship.”
“As well you should have.”
“To at least know my husband well before we reached the altar.”
“We have passed beyond ‘usual’ circumstances here. You could ask for a brief courtship, though. If your wolf is a good man, he might agree.”
“Or he could be as afraid of the royals as my family and drag me straight to the altar instead.”
Alfreda chuckled. “Which is it you want, to be turned away at the door or married straightaway?”
Brooke sighed again. “I won’t know until I meet him. I wish none of this had happened.”
“Take heart, poppet. This northern lord could be wonderful. The Prince Regent could be doing you a very
big favor.”
“Or Robert could have done me the biggest unplanned ill yet. Getting me stuck with a husband who could well repulse me.”
Alfreda tsked. “Then perhaps we shouldn’t speculate?”
“Perhaps not.”
On the third day of their journey, when they stopped for lunch, no one at the inn knew who Dominic Wolfe was. But they found out that the Regent’s emissary was traveling so swiftly that he was probably on his way back to London by now. Apparently, he was traveling day and night, merely changing horses when he could, and sleeping in his coach.
That night, they were only a few hours away from Lord Wolfe’s estate, but Alfreda refused to continue on in the dark. She wanted Brooke to be refreshed and looking her best when she faced the wolf for the first time. They took a room at an inn and Alfreda went down to order a bath for Brooke and to have food delivered to their room. When she returned, she had information about the Wolfe family.
“You aren’t going to like this,” Alfreda said with a dour look. “As if you already don’t have enough worries on your plate, this family you’ve been ordered to join apparently has a curse hanging over their heads, so I think now we need to hope you get turned away at their door.”
“What sort of curse?”
“The nasty sort, centuries old, a curse that has killed all the firstborns in each generation in their twenty-fifth year—unless illness or accident takes them sooner.”
Round-eyed with amazement, Brooke said, “You’re joking, right?”
“No, just repeating what the barmaid, then the cook, and then one of his own villagers who is visiting a relative near here had to say about Lord Wolfe’s family.”
“But we—I mean, I don’t believe in curses. D’you?”
“Not really. The thing is, poppet, many people do, including those who are supposedly cursed. If you are told you are going to die by a certain age, you might be more reckless with your life so the harm invoked by the curse ends up happening anyway. But I doubt the Wolfe heirs just dropped dead for no reason. Ask yours to explain when you feel comfortable with him.”
“I will. There’s obviously some simple explanation that the family just doesn’t bother to share, thus the rumor never got quashed as it should have.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“And maybe they like having such a rumor floating around—for some reason.”
“You don’t need to convince me, poppet. But it’s the ‘centuries-old’ part that worries me. That means this rumor has been around for a long time and has been kept alive because firstborns have died, and at least a few of them in their twenty-fifth year. That’s a lot of bad luck for one family to have if it is only bad luck.”
Brooke was scowling but she wanted to know what else Alfreda had heard about the Wolfes. “Was anything said about Dominic in particular?”
“He’s young. No one gave an age, but obviously he’s not twenty-five yet.”
Brooke rolled her eyes and accused, “You do believe in curses!”
“No, just a little levity on my part that obviously failed abysmally.”
“Robert mentioned that Lord Wolfe had a sister who died. The wolf might not even be the firstborn of his generation.”
“Which might be good news if we believed in curses, but a death is never good news. He could have other siblings your brother doesn’t know about.”
“Or be the last of his line and determined to get himself killed in a duel. I wish we knew more about him.”
“Well, there is another rumor, one even more absurd. They say he prowls the moors as a real wolf and his howls are the proof of it.”
Brooke’s mouth dropped open before she demanded, “Tell me that’s more levity?”
Alfreda grinned. “No, but you know how rumors get embellished every time they are passed along. They end up being so far from the truth that they are no more than wives’ tales.”
“Well, that rumor is obviously superstitious nonsense. A wolf man? Maybe they have an ogre living in a tower, too.”
Alfreda chuckled. “I don’t think anything would surprise me at this point. But there must be something unusual about the Wolfe family for these rumors to have started in the first place.”
“And aren’t wolves extinct in England now?”
“Indeed.”
“But they weren’t centuries ago when superstitious people started these ridiculous rumors,” Brooke said with a nod, making her point.
“I’m not arguing with you, poppet. However, because wolves are extinct, no one would believe they hear a real wolf, only an unnatural one. But if people really have heard howling, it’s no doubt just the cries of a long-snouted dog.”
Brooke huffed. “Well, you found out more about the Wolfes than I wanted to know. I think I will be most disagreeable when I arrive so I do get turned away at his door.”
Chapter Six
DOMINIC STOOD AT THE window in his bedroom watching the coach moving along the winding road in the distance. Sweat beaded his brow and dampened his hair. His whole body ached so it was hard to distinguish if his wound did. He’d been informed last night that a Whitworth had stopped at an inn only hours away. The message had passed through four people before it reached him, so which Whitworth it was didn’t survive the repeating. He hoped it was Robert Whitworth, come to finish this, but he doubted it. The man Prince George had sent had assured him that the Whitworths would comply with the Regent’s suggestion. Suggestion!
His blood still boiled at the manner in which that suggestion had been relayed and the blatant threats that had followed it. Yet the Regent’s emissary had been so disinterested. He didn’t seem to care how his words were received or what disastrous outcome would follow them; he was only doing his duty.
Gabriel Biscane stood beside him, not watching the coach approach, but frowning at Dominic instead. Not quite as tall as Dominic’s six feet, Gabriel, blond and blue eyed, was more than a servant and often took advantage of his status.
The viscount and the butler’s son had grown up together in this house. They were the same age and enjoyed the same things. No one was surprised that they became friends before their disparate social stations prevented it from happening. Dominic’s father might have broken up that friendship if he had lived beyond Dominic’s fifth year. His mother didn’t care. And Gabriel’s father didn’t dare. So Dominic and Gabriel now had a unique relationship that defied class distinctions.
“You need to get back in bed,” Gabriel was bold enough to mention.
“You need to stop giving me orders because you think I am presently weak. Did you send that letter off to my mother? I’d prefer that she hear about the Regent’s abominable demand from me and not the gossips, should word of it leak out.”
“Of course. This very morning.” Gabriel was supposed to be the valet, yet he had audaciously hired another valet for Dominic, leaving himself underfoot with no specific duties. Dominic had offered his friend other jobs that he might prefer, but Gabriel had done none of those, either. Gabriel finally said he would be a jack-of-all-trades, a servant of none. He didn’t actually give his current job a name, but he promised to be available for anything Dominic needed and expected a wage for that. And got one. Though Dominic had fired Gabe a number of times, Dominic knew he would have missed him if his friend had actually taken him seriously and left.
Gabriel shook his head. “I give good advice, not orders, so it wouldn’t hurt you to pay heed from time to time. Just don’t expect me to get your naked body back to bed if you collapse. I’ll fetch footmen to do it—”
“I’m not so weak I can’t cuff you.”
Gabriel sidestepped before he replied, “You are, but I won’t say another word, so don’t feel you need to prove otherwise—though truly, when you can’t get your own pants on . . .”
Sometimes it was just easier to ignore his friend, Dominic decided. Gabriel usually kept him in top form, with verbal and physical sparring, and Dominic usually welcomed both, just not since he’d come
home with this particular wound. The last one had been a scratch. This one was going from bad to worse.
He didn’t need a doctor to tell him that. He knew very well he wasn’t healing as he should be. He’d just regained some strength after losing a lot of blood when the fever started and was steadily sapping it again.
He had been a fool to come home to Yorkshire this time. He should have stayed at his London town house to recover after the last duel with Robert Whitworth. But he hadn’t wanted his mother to know how seriously wounded he was or for word to spread of how close Robert had come to killing him. He didn’t want Whitworth to know. He’d rather die than give him that satisfaction. Which could still happen. He still felt half-dead, but only because of the damned fever that he couldn’t shake off.
The anger wasn’t helping. Having to deal with the Regent’s threat and the enemy’s showing up at his door when he wasn’t at his best just infuriated him more.
Dominic told his friend, “Put her in one of the towers when she gets here, until I decide what to do with her.”
“I believe the decree given you was—marry her,” Gabriel said drily.
“Like hell I will.”
Gabriel lifted a golden brow. “So you’re going to refuse her?”
“I won’t have to. She will go running back to her family posthaste. The Whitworths can deal with the consequences of her doing that.”
“And how are you going to make that happen?”
“There are ways to scare off virgins,” Dominic assured him with a dark look.
Gabriel raised a brow. “Very well, but do I need to remind you that you only have one tower left that is even remotely habitable?”
“Then you won’t have trouble finding it, will you,” Dominic managed just as drily.