Master Wolf

by Joanna Chambers

  “Well?” Marguerite prompted, her interested tone dragged him back to the present. She was far too sharp. Saw too much.

  Drew thrust the image of Lindsay from his mind. “I like art,” he said decisively. “I can’t get excited about waistcoats, but my art collection is bursting at the seams.”

  Marguerite considered that. “As annoyingly high-minded as that is, I have to admit that collecting art qualifies as a worldly pleasure. I shall have to allow it.” She sighed, as though disappointed, and drew out an ornate enamel box, which she opened with a flick of her thumb. “Dragée?”

  The box was full of little sweets, all huddled like tiny birds’ eggs of palest blue and yellow and white.

  Drew smiled. She did so love her luxuries.

  “No, thank you,” he said. He was not fond of sugary things. Most wolves were not, but Marguerite was never typical. In many ways she reminded him more of a cat than a wolf, with her sleek, glossy beauty, love of comfort and utter contrariness.

  Shrugging at his refusal, she selected a pale blue dragée and popped it into her mouth, snapping the tin shut and turning her attention to the window. The coach was moving slowly through the city streets and would likely continue to do so for at least another hour, until they finally left London behind and were able to start covering some distance.

  After a while, Marguerite said, “As much as I love cities, crawling through the streets by coach is extremely tiresome. There are so many humans, don’t you find? They are very annoying when you are trying to get somewhere. It would be easier, would it not, to just run in our wolf forms and let the luggage follow?”

  Drew’s wolf tugged at him, liking the idea. He ruthlessly kept his shifts to the full moon, when it was impossible to resist, but shifting now was a tempting alternative to being cooped up in a carriage for days on end. He preferred to spend his time with Marguerite in their wolf forms. The human Marguerite was quixotic and often incomprehensible, but in her wolf form, she was all clarity and strength. Direct as an arrow and a steady, soothing presence.

  Altogether easier by far.

  Glancing up, Drew found she was watching him curiously.

  “I was speaking hypothetically,” she said. “But you seem to be quite attracted to the idea. If so, I am pleased to hear it. As you know, I do not approve of the way you restrict your shifts.”

  He did know. She had told him many times that he needed to get to know his wolf better and that shifting often was the best way to achieve that. And while he did not agree with her, he could see the sense in agreeing to an additional shift on this occasion.

  “Perhaps we could manage one night-run during our journey?” he said.

  Marguerite was silent for several more moments, then she nodded. “Yes. If we wait until after York, perhaps? We should be able to safely run then.” She sent him a glinting smile. “Can you bear my company in the meantime? In this form?”

  “Very easily,” Drew assured her, not entirely truthfully. Although his wolf liked her proximity, she was like a burr on his fur too, a steady constant abrasion, reminding him always of things he’d rather ignore.

  Lindsay, mostly.

  “Good. We have much to discuss, though we do not need to do so immediately. Time is one commodity we will have plenty of on this journey.”

  Drew’s stomach sank. Was this the conversation he had been dreading? The lecture Marguerite delivered to him every few years about why Drew needed to forgive Lindsay for transforming him and accept his role—as she saw it—as Lindsay’s mate?

  “I’m not sure what we have to discuss,” he said carefully.

  She eyed him for a moment, expressionless. Then she said, “I am talking of the parts we will play when we reach Edinburgh, mon cher, nothing more.”

  Drew relaxed. “I see.”

  “You will be posing as my husband—Mr. Niven, is your new surname. You may keep your first name.”

  He raised a brow, amused. “Thank you.”

  She nodded graciously. “You’re welcome. Madame and Monsieur Niven met three years ago in Italy—Madame had vowed never to wed again after the death of her first husband, Signor Giordano, but the moment she saw the extremely handsome Monsieur Niven she developed une grand passion. As he did for her. He violently begged her to marry him. At first she said no, but when he threatened to kill himself, she agreed to break her vow to Giordano.”

  Drew’s lips twitched. “That sounds—very dramatic.”

  “The marriage is… stormy”—she grinned at him—“at least on Madame’s part. Madame Niven is a beautiful harpy, given to passionate tantrums at inopportune moments.”

  “That will be entertaining, I’m sure,” Drew murmured. “And a useful distraction, from time to time.”

  “Quite so,” Marguerite confirmed. “Francis and I frequently use it as a device. In my experience men are strongly disposed both to underestimate women and to accept it when they behave irrationally. Consequently, even afterwards, when they know something has gone awry, they rarely question the genuineness of how they saw me behave.”

  Drew eyed her curiously. She was smiling, but there was a touch of bitterness in her tone.

  “Speaking of Francis,” he said, “Why is he not playing the part of your loving husband?”

  “Unfortunately, Francis visited Lindsay in Edinburgh last year and is known to a number of people in the city as a married gentleman from Lancashire. He remains in Paris for now.” She sent him a speaking look. “He is monitoring Duncan’s whereabouts. If it appears that Duncan is heading back to Scotland, Francis will leave immediately to bring us the news.”

  Well, that explained why Drew was being roped into this particular mission. It was not the sort of thing Marguerite usually asked of him.

  “It sounds rather complicated,” Drew said. “All the playacting, I mean.”

  Marguerite shrugged. “Do not worry. Francis and I do this sort of thing all the time. Just do as I say and all will be well. For the most part, your job will be to appear to be the devoted husband, indulging your spoiled wife’s every whim. You can do that, yes?”

  “I think I can act the part of your faithful slave,” Drew said. “They’ll take one look at you and understand perfectly well why a man would pledge his every waking moment to fulfilling your whims.”

  Marguerite stuck out her tongue at him. “Stop that now. I know you do not find me beautiful.”

  “Of course I do,” Drew protested. “I may not want to bed you but that doesn’t mean I don’t find you exquisite to look at. If I found a painting that did you justice, I’d certainly hang you on my wall and I can’t say fairer than that.”

  She laughed. “Are you calling me a work of art?”

  He blushed a little at being teased, giving a careless shrug to hide his embarrassment. “You know you’re a goddess,” he mumbled.

  Oddly, her laughter died and she looked suddenly sad. “A goddess, am I?”

  He didn’t know what to say then, how to make her happy again. All he had to offer was the truth and he gave it to her, unflinchingly. “You are incomparable, Marguerite. Don’t pretend you don’t know it.”

  “No,” she said. “I know what I am.” Then she turned her head to gaze out of the carriage window at the urchins and pedlars thronging the streets.

  And after a moment, Drew did the same.

  Chapter Four

  They travelled surprisingly well together.

  Drew had not spent much time alone with Marguerite before. On the few occasions he had, the experience had involved being shown into her presence, subjected to a silent penetrating gaze for several minutes while she seemed to read his mind, then being closely questioned before she concluded the interview with a brief, stern lecture regarding his shortcomings. In particular, his solitary ways and avoidance of Lindsay.

  Not on this journey though. He spent the first two days perpetually on edge, waiting for her to turn that familiar forbidding stare on him, but it never came. In fact, she made no mention of
Lindsay at all, and in the end it was Drew who, one night as they dined in the best parlour of the inn they were staying in, finally broke the silence on the matter.

  “Does he know I’m coming?”

  Marguerite, who had been devouring a hearty portion of beef and potato pie with peculiarly elegant gusto, set down her cutlery and met his eyes. “Does who know?”

  Drew suppressed an impatient sigh. She knew very well of whom he was speaking.

  “Lindsay.”

  Marguerite leaned back in her chair, and for several moments she was silent, giving Drew ample time to notice how hard his heart was thudding in his chest.

  At last she said, “I did not know for certain you would come until we spoke, so no. I did not want to tell him I would be asking you without being sure what your answer was.”

  Drew’s heart sank. “So, he has no idea I’m coming with you?”

  “Do not worry,” Marguerite said a little testily. “He will not bother you. He swore off pursuing you years ago, and you should know by now you can trust his word.”

  “I’m not worried,” Drew bit out.

  She raised a brow. “Then what is the problem?”

  Drew frowned. “It feels”—he broke off, searching for the right word—“It feels unfair. For me to turn up on his doorstep without warning, I mean.”

  Unfair didn’t exactly do justice to the complicated tangle of feelings swirling inside him, but it would have to do.

  “Why is that unfair?” Marguerite asked. “You did not promise to stay away from him.”

  “Well, no, but the last time we saw each other…” Drew’s mouth dried up, remembering.

  “You are not seeking him out. You are just following orders. My orders.” Marguerite picked up her cutlery again, turning her attention back to her dinner. “I will make him aware of that. He will understand.”

  She was right, but it didn’t matter. All Drew could think about was that last night in Venice. Twelve years on and he remembered it as though it was yesterday. He could picture Lindsay now, his elegant body negligently sprawled over the velvet sofa, a beautiful boy in his lap. He’d been dressed for a masquerade, a black mask covering the top half of his face, his hair coming loose from the queue at the nape of his neck—unfashionable to wear it so long, even twelve years ago, but Lindsay was nothing if not his own man.

  Later Drew had stripped that costume away, threaded his fingers through Lindsay’s long, dark tresses, entered his tight, willing body.

  He hadn’t realised then that it would be the last time.

  “I may not be able to free you, Drew, but I can, at least, stay away from you from now on.”

  Drew glanced down at his nearly full dinner plate and pushed it aside, causing Marguerite to glance his way again.

  “You really should eat,” she said. “We are getting closer to the full moon. It is easier to control your wolf when you are not hungry.”

  “I’ll eat later,” he muttered.

  She gave a small sniff. “You are always peevish when we discuss Lindsay.”

  Irritated, he snapped, “That’s because when we discuss him, you usually spend most of the time telling me off for my behaviour towards him.”

  Now she raised both brows at him.

  Sighing, he admitted, “Apart from this time.”

  “Quite so,” Marguerite said. “Though, for what it is worth, I still believe you are an idiot. It is perfectly obvious that you belong together. Your wolf knows it, even if you do not”

  Drew sighed. This was an old argument. “My wolf is a slave. That is the nature of the bond.”

  Marguerite pressed her lips together. “You are very dramatic,” she said. “With your talk of masters and slaves.”

  “Perhaps. But you cannot deny that, at the very least, the bite creates an unequal bond,” Drew continued. “If Lindsay says ‘come’ I have no choice but to come. Or ‘run’ and I run, or ‘eat’ and I eat. That is not my idea of how mates are, with one all-powerful and the other a mere puppet. How can it be?”

  “But he does not say ‘come’ or ‘run’ or ‘eat,’ does he?” Marguerite said fiercely. “He does not treat you as a slave because he knows better than anyone how that feels. He was Duncan’s prisoner for forty years.”

  “I know, and yes, his master was cruel. Mine is kind,” Drew replied. “But a yoke is still a yoke, no matter how lightly it sits. The fact is, I have no will of my own with Lindsay, and that reduces me.”

  “It need not be like that,” Marguerite protested. “I never felt that way with Alys.”

  “Did you consider yourself her equal?”

  She opened her mouth to answer, then seemed to consider and closed it again.

  No, he thought. You didn’t.

  Marguerite sighed then and pushed her own plate aside. “Ah well, it no longer matters, does it? He has long since accepted that you are not destined to be together. That’s why I have not troubled you about him for a while. If that is how Lindsay feels, who am I to contradict him? He knows his own heart.”

  It wasn’t a surprise—in fact, it was all of a piece with what Lindsay had said on that last night in Venice. Yet it felt like something new. A revelation even. A part of the puzzle of Lindsay Somerville that Drew had not understood till now. He hadn’t known, on that fateful night, how seriously Lindsay had meant his promise. He’d expected him to turn up, sooner or later. Maybe after a year, or two. But twelve years had passed with no contact at all, and wherever Drew went, Lindsay would make sure not to be there. Thinking about that made Drew’s heart seize like a clockwork mechanism wound too tight.

  “I do not want to cause him unnecessary distress,” Drew said at last, his voice low. He had never wanted that. Well, not since the first days after his transformation, when he had, admittedly, been furiously angry and oddly grieved too, as though the man he had once been had died after all. Since then, though, he’d just wanted… to be free.

  “I want you to free me. I want to stop craving you...”

  Drew had caused Lindsay distress that night, no doubt. And on a score of other nights besides. A slave he might be, but he had never been entirely powerless, not as far as Lindsay was concerned. It was, however, a power he had never relished. In an odd way he hated his power almost as much as his powerlessness.

  “Lindsay will be fine,” Marguerite said now. They were empty words, and they both knew it, but Marguerite had that determined look on her face that Drew had come to recognise over the years. The set look of a leader who had made up her mind and was not to be shifted.

  “He will understand,” she added curtly. “For now, our priority must be our mission: we are there to retrieve the skeleton and to keep our eyes open while we are about it. It will soon be done and then you may return to your life in London, where you will have peace again.”

  Yes. Maybe, one day, he would have that.

  For now, it still eluded him. Ever since his transformation, he had carried inside him a nagging want that did not belong to him: his wolf’s yearning for its master. Over the last number of years, as his control over his wolf had grown, that ache had begun to lessen. It was still there, persistent and niggling, but perhaps one day it would vanish completely. And then he really would be free.

  Perhaps then he would have peace.

  They approached Edinburgh from the east, passing through Portobello. Drew gazed out of the carriage window at the pale lonely stretch of the sands as the last of the wintry daylight dwindled away over the horizon.

  “It is so cold here,” Marguerite complained.

  “It’s no colder than Newcastle or Berwick,” Drew replied mildly.

  “Well it feels colder,” Marguerite muttered, pulling the carriage blanket tighter about her.

  Drew chuckled but she was right. On days like this, with that damned Ha’ar lingering persistently, Edinburgh was cold enough to freeze the blood in your veins.

  After a few decades away from Scotland, Drew should probably have been feeling quite as m
iserable as Marguerite, but the truth was, he felt the oddest stab of nostalgia even as the dank cold penetrated all the way to his bones.

  Marguerite had rented a house in a new part of town: Rankeillor Street. The street was at the edge of the city and still being built, and Arthur’s Seat and the King’s Park were close by.

  “We will be able to run easily,” Marguerite had said with satisfaction.

  From Portobello, their coachman took the road to Duddingston, then headed for Peffermill, where the countryside began to give way to occasional houses. Just the odd one or two at first, then a clump of them here and there. And then, quite suddenly, they were driving up to the city’s new frontier.

  When Drew had last been in Edinburgh, he had known every inch of this city. As an architect, he had been instrumental in the redesign and rebuilding of the capital of Scotland virtually from scratch. At that time, efforts had been concentrated on building the New Town, to the north of the Castle, but now the new building work had spread all the way over here, to the other side of the city.

  As the carriage slowed, Drew took in their surroundings. They had stopped outside a substantial house at the completed end of Rankeillor Street. Great hulking shadowy structures squatted further down the road, like hunched gargoyles in the night.

  The newness of these houses was obvious from the pristine, light sandstone walls. That sandstone would darken in time—it didn’t take long for the filth sputtering out of the rows of chimneys lined up on the roofs to darken the surrounding buildings—but for now it was sharp and bright.

  As Drew and Marguerite climbed out of the carriage, the door of the house opened. A woman stood there with a candle. She stepped forward to greet them, a young man following in her wake. Drew recognised them both from the house in Amsterdam. They were two of Marguerite’s most trusted servants—she must have sent them on ahead to prepare the house.

  “Greta,” Marguerite called. “Good day to you. And Marcus.”

  “Madame,” the woman said with a brief curtsey. She bobbed at Drew too. “Sir.”