Master Wolf

by Joanna Chambers

  He stepped forward, closing the gap between them, till only inches separated them. “I’ve missed you,” he whispered. “Four years, Drew. Four years. And in all that time, you never wrote to me, never sent word. Never asked me to return to you, or to receive you. Nothing until today, until this moment.”

  Drew shook his head. “I did not come to see you. I am not even here on my own account, only because Francis—”

  Lindsay said hoarsely, “Stop saying his name. Please, Drew…”

  “Why?” Drew whispered.

  Lindsay didn’t answer. His eyes had dropped to Drew’s lips and Drew found himself leaning towards him, as though tugged in by an invisible thread.

  They were so close, Drew could feel Lindsay’s breath against his lips. Could see tiny flecks of amber in his dark eyes.

  “Lindsay?” he breathed, and their lips grazed, ever so softly.

  Lindsay groaned, and caught Drew’s mouth with his own, sucking sweetly for a moment then pressing their mouths more firmly together.

  Drew gave a muffled groan of his own, breathing in Lindsay. His scent engulfed Drew fully, wonderful and overwhelming all at once. And God, but his lips were warm and supple against Drew’s and he was so eager in Drew’s arms, almost whimpering now, as Drew took control, sliding his tongue into Lindsay’s mouth.

  Drew felt drenched by him, his every sense brimming over with the scents and sounds and tastes of Lindsay. It was only when he felt his beast begin to rear inside him, that he tore his mouth free, framing Lindsay’s face with his hands and staring into his eyes as he gasped in an effort to regain his breath.

  Lindsay whispered urgently, “Come to Ghent with me. Please?” And for an instant, all Drew could think was Yes, yes I will go anywhere with you.

  And then the door flew open and a feminine voice said, “Lindsay, Blaireau informs me that you—Oh!”

  The woman’s scent burst over Drew all at once. Violets and astonishment and… oh Christ, she was a wolf! With mounting alarm, he realised he was about to meet Marguerite de Carcassonne.

  He turned around to find himself looking at a dainty beauty. Her blue gown was trimmed with blond lace and the blue cap artfully arranged over her dark curls was decorated with a very large red ostrich feather. Red, white and blue. A luxurious nod to the new Republic, he inferred, remembering Lindsay’s reference to patriotic emblems.

  “Monsieur Nicol, I presume?” she said tartly.

  The waves of power emanating from her were unmistakable and he found he could not meet her gaze, so he bowed, saying, “Yes, Madame de Carcassonne.”

  When he straightened, Lindsay had moved past him to greet her.

  “I do not like this feather, Mim,” he said lightly, as he bussed her cheeks and nuzzled into the dark cloud of her hair. “This red is very lurid.”

  “You know you are not permitted to call me that absurd name,” she said crossly. “And I know you are only doing it to distract me.” She turned her gaze back to Drew. “And so, Mr. Nicol, we meet at last. I have been waiting some time for your visit—as has your mate.” She glanced speakingly at Lindsay.

  “Marguerite,” Lindsay said, his tone warning. “Do not—”

  “It’s all right,” Drew said. “I should have come before now to pay my respects to you, madame. My apologies I did not do so before. I have had some… difficulties gaining control of my wolf which have made travel impossible before now.”

  “Well, what are you to expect when you stay away from your mate?” she replied tartly. “How do you think you are to learn how to manage your beast without him?”

  “Francis has—”

  “Francis is not your mate!” she snapped. “His beast cannot settle yours when it is agitated or make your shift easier.”

  As Drew’s face warmed under her angry gaze and his beast cringed at her disapproval, his human mind considered her words. Would Lindsay’s presence really have made his first years as a wolf any easier? Or would it just have indoctrinated him more effectively?

  Lindsay interrupted. “Marguerite, there is something I—” But she spoke over him.

  “And what about Lindsay?” she demanded of Drew. “You are not the only one who has struggled, these last few years, you know. He has suffered a great deal from your separation. Do you have any idea how hard it is for a maker to be estranged from his own made wolf?”

  “Marguerite,” Lindsay tried again, his tone agonised. “Listen—”

  She ignored him, her gaze still intent on Drew, who felt as though her words were flaying his flesh from his bones.

  “Francis should not have indulged your nonsense,” she said. “It was a foolish mistake and—and anyway, where is Francis?”

  “That is what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Lindsay said in an exasperated tone. “He is with Duncan. That is what Drew has come to tell us.”

  “What?” she cried, her gaze flickering between them.

  Lindsay told her the rest quickly, with Drew filling in details when called upon to do so.

  Drew’s scolding was forgotten after that as Marguerite became all business, summoning Blaireau to the parlour to begin making arrangements for Lindsay’s and Wynne Wildsmith’s swift departure. She sat herself down at the escritoire by the window and pulled out a sheaf of paper while Blaireau pulled up a chair beside her.

  “Go and get ready,” she told Lindsay as she dipped her pen in the inkpot. “And pack lightly. All the papers you need will be ready in an hour.”

  Lindsay nodded and left, and Drew, unsure what else to do, followed him.

  When the parlour door closed behind them, Lindsay turned. They stood facing one another in the corridor and it seemed to Drew that Lindsay’s words from earlier still hung between them, waiting for Drew’s answer.

  “Come to Ghent with me…”

  “I can’t come with you.” Drew said at last.

  Some light in Lindsay’s eyes dimmed at these words and the scent of his despair filled the air. Drew felt as though he was choking on it.

  Lindsay raised a hand, as though to touch Drew’s face, only to check himself and let it drop again by his side.

  At last he said, “You’re wrong when you say this isn’t real. I felt it before I ever bit you.”

  “Felt what?”

  Lindsay swallowed. “This. Love.”

  Drew’s heart twisted painfully. “Love,” he said. “Is that why you bit me? Why you turned me into a monster? Because you loved me?”

  “You’re not a monster,” Lindsay said in a low, driven tone. “No more than I am, or Francis is, or Marguerite.”

  Drew shook his head. He felt strangely gutted. “You’re not even sorry, are you?”

  Lindsay met his gaze steadily. “I’m sorry that you hate me,” he said, “But I’m not sorry I saved your life. What was I supposed to do? Leave you there, bleeding to death on the floor?”

  Drew shook his head. “You did not ask me,” he said, then thumped his fist against his chest. “And now I have this beast inside me that fights me constantly. And I don’t want it, Lindsay. I don’t want this beast and I don’t want this God-damned bond that makes me feel like a slave!”

  The door of the parlour opened then and Marguerite de Carcassonne stood there, her lovely face tight with anger. Without prelude she said, “Enough of these arguments. Lindsay, you do not have time to waste. Go and pack and fetch your Mr. Wildsmith. And as for you”—she pointed at Drew and narrowed her gaze—“You can come with me, Mr. Nicol. It is time we got to know one another a little better.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The present

  * * *

  Edinburgh, November 1820

  * * *

  “What did you find in Muir’s office?” Drew asked Marguerite once they were back in the carriage.

  Marguerite reached inside her reticule and pulled out a letter. She handed it to Drew, but when he went to unfold it, said, “Look at the seal.”

  The seal was broken, but when he matched up the edges
he saw the design that had been pressed into the warm wax.

  Three ravens’ heads.

  “It’s from a member of the Order?” He met Marguerite’s gaze. Her black eyes gleamed with excitement.

  “A Mr. Bainbridge,” she said. “Another of the potential buyers.”

  Drew opened out the letter then. It was brief and to the point, informing Muir of his expected arrival time—several days ago—and confirming an appointment to see the skeleton yesterday.

  “Wynne should be able to track him down from this,” Marguerite said.

  Drew wasn’t sure whether she meant using his human ingenuity—which was considerable—or his witchcraft, and he didn’t ask.

  When they got back to Rankeillor Street, there was a note waiting for them from Lindsay, with a pair of vouchers for the Assembly Rooms that evening enclosed. It informed them that the leader of the Town Council, a Mr. Begg, would be in attendance and Lindsay would introduce them.

  “Excellente!” Marguerite pronounced, well satisfied.

  “How serendipitous,” Drew said. Was it too convenient? Drew was wary of any good fortune that seemed to fall into his lap.

  Marguerite shrugged. “Edinburgh is a small place, and Lindsay is well placed to introduce us to the most influential people. Even so, we are making unexpectedly good progress considering we have only been here one day. At this rate, I will have you back in London in a fortnight!”

  Drew smiled tightly.

  “We will charm this Begg,” she went on, grinning. “Charm the very stockings from his legs! We will dress our best.” She sent Drew a severe look. “Both of us, if you please. One never knows in what direction a man’s lusts swings.”

  Drew gave a dry chuckle. “I will do my best, but I have to point out that unlike yours, my clothes are all the same really.”

  “Pshaw! As though you need fine clothes to be noticed with your looks! Besides, I will look down my Parisian nose at everyone and you will be the worst sort of snooty London gentleman. We will flash our money in a vulgar fashion and allow this Begg to begin dreaming of a great prize. And I—or you—will flirt if he seems susceptible to that.”

  “Flirt?” Drew said. “I wouldn’t know where to begin!”

  “You could try smiling occasionally,” Marguerite said airily. “Instead of glaring all the damned time.”

  “I don’t—”

  But she was already moving on. “I will wear my new garnet-red gown. It is beautifully daring and I am ravishing in it.” She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Not that you would notice, mon cher.”

  “On the contrary,” he said. “I appreciate all forms of beauty.”

  The carriage was slowing now, the short journey almost done.

  “I am sure you do,” she said. “And I think you would want to fuck me about as much as you want to fuck that little china shepherdess in your parlour in London.”

  Drew gave a bark of shocked laughter. The carriage had stopped and the groom was opening the door.

  Marguerite laughed too as she turned away to step lightly down, calling over her shoulder. “I have you there.”

  He couldn’t argue with that, he thought, as he followed her out of the carriage and into the townhouse. Over the last thirty years he’d come to terms with that much at least: that he had never and would never truly desire women. Strange to remember how impossible that had once been to admit. Something that would mark him out from the rest of humanity, a morally corrupt deviant. When he had finally been seduced by Lindsay at the grand old age of five-and-thirty, he had felt as though he had taken a step into the fiery pit of hell; as though allowing this beautiful, captivating man to suck his cock had changed the fabric of his universe.

  Christ, but he’d had no idea then just how much Lindsay was going to change his universe. He almost laughed now to remember how twisted up with misery and anxiety he’d been over Lindsay’s seduction, unaware that there was something else Lindsay would do to him that would bring about a far more irrevocable and profound change to Drew’s life.

  “We will dine at six,” Marguerite informed him once they were ensconced in the parlour. “We need to eat well—it is full moon and we will need the reserves later.”

  Drew sighed. He would have to shift again tonight, allowing his wolf to ascend for the third time inside a week.

  “Do not fight it,” Marguerite advised, correctly guessing his thoughts. “You make too much of shifting. You and your wolf are one and the same, two sides of the same creature. When he does things you do not like, consider this: he is only playing out your own desires.”

  Drew shook his head. It was difficult to contradict a wolf as powerful as Marguerite, but he felt strongly about this.

  “You and your wolf may be as one,” he said. “But that is not true of me and mine. I did not want him and we have ever been at odds, since first he emerged. Before then even.”

  Marguerite sniffed, unimpressed. “He is probably angry at you, and well he might be. You had a gift, Drew. A devoted mate who wanted to make you his world, who—”

  “Don’t call him that,” Drew ground out. This was an old argument, one that played out between them every time they saw one another. “His wolf is my wolf’s master, that is all.”

  Marguerite made a sound of frustration. “You are blind—wilfully blind.”

  “On the contrary, I see the nature of the bond for what it is,” Drew argued. “Once the maker’s wolf causes the transformation with his bite, the made wolf is his to compel as he chooses. He is a master, not a mate. A mate would be an equal, not someone who—”

  “Silence!” Marguerite snapped, the sharp scent of her anger spiking.

  Drew pressed his lips together.

  Marguerite glared at him. “I do not think you know Lindsay at all. The things you say!”

  Drew’s face heated and he felt suddenly ashamed. When he spoke of his hatred of the bond, and his uneasiness with his wolf, he forgot himself sometimes. “I didn’t say that Lindsay uses his power against me,” he said awkwardly. “Only that, if he did, there would be nothing I could do to stop him.”

  Marguerite sighed heavily and dropped into a chair, her rage seeming to seep away. “I swore I would not discuss Lindsay with you this time,” she said. “And I have broken that promise.”

  “You made no such promise to me,” Drew said awkwardly.

  She offered a rueful smile. “I promised myself.”

  After a short silence, Drew said, “I think it may be different for all of us, you know—makers and made wolves. I think it may depend on what lay between each pair before the bite was given, and why the maker felt the Urge in the first place.”

  “This sounds like an interesting conversation,” said a new voice from the doorway.

  It was Wynne. He must have just come in. His high-crowned hat dangled from one hand and he carried an ebony cane in the other. Drew’s wolf circled unhappily within him at not having scented the newcomer, and Drew wondered again why Wynne used his magic to mask his scent.

  “Wynne,” Marguerite said, a little tightly. “This is unexpected.”

  “Mim,” Wynne replied and bowed, his gaze steady on her.

  There was some tension between them, Drew discerned. He could scent it from Marguerite’s side, something unhappy and ill at ease.

  Wynne strolled into the room and sat down. He smiled at Marguerite. “Aren’t you going to offer me some tea?”

  “Not until you tell me why you are here,” Marguerite replied tartly.

  Wynne raised his brows. “I wasn’t aware I needed a reason to call but if I’ve misstepped…” He set the tip of his cane on the floor and made to rise.

  “Oh, sit down,” Marguerite said irritably. “Since you are here, you may as well stay for dinner.”

  Wynne smiled, seeming amused. “Thank you,” he said. “I will accept your gracious invitation.” Then he sighed and added, “Lindsay rarely eats with me these days.”

  Drew’s gut twisted. “He’s too thin,”
he said. “He can’t be eating enough.”

  “He says he’s not hungry.” Wynne said. “And these days he keeps to his rooms for his meals. His appetite is very poor and I irritate him with the way I badger him to eat.”

  Drew couldn’t think how to respond to that. The thought of Lindsay not eating enough troubled him deeply and set his wolf to anxious circling. He felt it pressing at his edges, wanting to be let out to go to Lindsay. To satisfy itself as to Lindsay’s well-being,

  His thoughts were interrupted by Marguerite’s voice. “I actually have something to show you, Wynne,” she said, opening her yellow silk reticule and fishing out the pilfered letter. “We have just discovered that the author of this letter has recently arrived in Edinburgh. He is one of the White Ravens and is also after the skeleton. Do you think you could scry to find out where he is staying?”

  Wynne stretched towards her, taking the letter from her fingers, then leaning back in his chair again to study it. He turned it over in his hands, examining the seal and handwriting, before opening it up and quickly scanning it.

  “I can do better than that,” he said, glancing up. “I can introduce you to this gentleman this evening. Mr. Bainbridge will be at the assembly.”

  Chapter Twelve

  After a hearty dinner, Wynne took his leave to return to Albany Street to change for the assembly.

  Drew bathed and donned his usual soberly elegant black clothes before returning to the parlour to wait for Marguerite. When she appeared she was quite as ravishing as she’d promised in her low-cut garnet gown. A simple ruby pendant rested between her snowy breasts and matching ruby drops trembled at her ears. Her dark, glossy hair was simply styled, the knot of curls at the back of her head looped with fine gold ribbon.

  “You look very lovely, my dear,” Drew said, bowing over hand. He was using his devoted husband voice, which made Marguerite laugh.

  “You can save that until we have an audience,” she told him. “Come on.”