Taming Red Riding Hood
Lidiya Foxglove
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Fairy Tale Heat Series
About the Author
Prologue
Agnar Longtooth
WANTED ALIVE
By order of King Brennus
Adult white wolf aged 30 or so years, originally of the Longtooth family, of the Stone Hollow clan
Last seen where the river Ayl meets the sea, believed to be dangerous, particularly to the fair sex, and may be seen hunting the blue stag
REWARD OFFERED: 50 Gold
I stopped dead in the center of the street. The parchment was fresh, pasted to the side of the tavern, right in the center of town.
The parchment must have come on one of the latest ships, bearing news and goods from the capital. I walked into the tavern, a place I rarely ventured. Men slid their eyes toward me, but in this peaceful town, no one gave me trouble, not even the drunks. Pennarick had welcomed me, as much as any human town could.
I walked up to the bar. “Mug of ale, please.”
“I don’t see much of you, Professor Wolf,” the bartender said. He called me that, not that I was a real professor. I hadn’t even studied at the academy. But Pennarick was somewhat of a backwater, if a wealthy one. “I suppose you’re wondering about that sign. Have you seen the white wolf?”
I supposed I was rather transparent. “No…but I don’t go into the woods much.”
“Aye, you’re a strange one. But that’s all right. We don’t mind strange here.” The bartender half-spoke to one of the other men at the bar, who raised his mug to me with a chuckle.
“If he’s a wolf, I’ll believe it when I sees it,” the man said, his words slurred but cheerful.
Most of the men in the bar were dockworkers and laborers, a little grubby—I could smell their sweat thick in the air—in shirtsleeves and patched trousers. I had come from giving an afternoon science lesson to little Robert Powers, who was too sick to attend school, and I was still carrying my bag of books and lesson plans, dressed in a dark gray wool frock coat, vest and cravat that was appropriately scholarly. God knows how I looked to them. I couldn’t hide my golden eyes.
“What did this wolf do that King Brennus himself is after him? ‘Dangerous to the fair sex’?”
“I’ll tell ya what I heard.” A sailor abandoned a half-hearted card game and sat down next to me. “And ya might want to lay low when ya hears it. They aren’t thinking too kindly of wolves in elf country now.”
“They never are,” I said dryly. Pennarick was a human town, and somewhat isolated by forested hills, but we were still in the country of the wood elves.
“Brennus had brought his new bride back to his cabin retreat and these two wolves kidnapped her. Princess Bethany of Lainsland. She’s a pretty one. They killed a few of his men, too. I heard he got to the princess in time before anything untoward happened—“ He leered a bit, lingering on untoward. “But they say that the forest itself spoke to him—being an elf and all, you know—and told him there’s a third brother and he’s the worst of ‘em all.”
“And this brother…hunts the blue stag?”
“Aye. A big great white wolf, mean old bastard who hunts alone, with the sharpest teeth in the forest. I’d be careful if I were you.”
“Yes…” I took a long drag of my drink. “It sounds as if I’d better.”
Chapter One
Fersa
I did not like carriages. The last time I was in one, it was to take me away from my slaughtered family, and on to the damned work house. Today, the rattling and jolting of the wheels jangled my nerves and brought me back to that horrid time three years ago. The elves had killed my mother and the rest of my clan, sparing only the children. They swept in, their horses pounding through our camp, shooting arrows at the adults and snatching up the children. I was barely fifteen and scrawny, the oldest child they left alive. I had retched more than once in the carriage then.
It was my one way of rebelling against a horrifying situation. I couldn’t fight back. I could just make myself unpleasant.
On this journey, I managed to keep down the contents of my stomach. I wanted to think I was stronger now than I was at fifteen. But I think the only thing that really made it better was that I was dressed as a fine lady now and I didn’t want to soil my clothes or shame myself in front of my new family. I was going on to something better—hopefully.
I was scared out of my mind.
Father.
I had never known the man. He was a human, and my mother loved him, but they couldn’t be together because she was of the wolvenfolk.
My opinion of him had never been very good. Who gave a damn if he was human and she was wolvenfolk? If he loved her, he should have found a way. But he didn’t. She stayed with her clan and I never had a father. When I was in the work house, however, he was the only hope I could cling to. I knew he lived in Pennarick, a little town to the north, but I had never learned to write and in the work house I couldn’t find anyone I could trust to send a message for me, not until Ellara came and helped me escape. She got a letter to Pennarick, and received a long letter back.
I had it tucked in my bag, although I couldn’t read it. It smelled of perfume. My father had a new wife and she had written the letter back. It was friendly, I guess, but I didn’t trust it. What lady wanted to take in her husband’s half-wolf whelp? She was going to hate me, and I was going to hate her; I already knew that much. They already had other children, three boys ages five, six, and eight. Lord! I would have to keep my head down, that was for sure. Maybe he would like me a little, this unknown father of mine, Mr. Douglas Rafferty, but I had little hope for Mrs. Rafferty.
Ellara tried to give me a few “tips” before I left. Try not to growl at anyone, or say ‘fuck’ or ‘bloody’ or ‘shit’ or anything else. Don’t eat too fast or with your mouth open. Don’t turn cartwheels unless you’re alone!
Well, no shit, Ellara. Easy for her to say. She might be half-goblin but she was raised like a proper elven girl. I was raised like the animal I was.
My head raced over all this the whole journey until I thought I’d go bloody mad.
It took a number of days to get there, long days of jolting travel through the forest of Mardoon and sleeping in roadside inns, but before I was ready, the land opened up before me to the green fields surrounding the northern sea, and we passed handsome estates and tidy cottages and then came into the town of Pennarick itself. It was small compared to the elven capital I had just left, but prosperous because the original denizens were very skilled craftsman, and the town had ships in the harbor and macadam pavement and shops with glass windows and churches with tall spires. The trees had shed their leaves and the sky was gray, but the ladies strolling the streets wore brightly colored cloaks and fetching hats tilted above their curls. Mardoon was the territory of the wood elves, but Pennarick was largely a human settlement. A religious colony escaping persecution had settled there three centuries ago, and as they were peaceful people who imported goods around the realm and paid their taxes, the wood elf king was happy to leave them be.
Ellara told me all this before I left, and I think she meant it to make me feel
better. They sound like gentle, well-to-do people with generous hearts, she said. I think it sounds as ideal as you could hope for.
I think I would have felt much better if my father was a rough, working man who cursed and spat and expressed affection with a rough clap on the back. I was used to hard people. I was none too gentle myself. Gentle people? What was I to do with them?
But since it had to be this way, I certainly was glad I had a private coach. It made me look like I was somebody. I can’t lie and say I didn’t care about being somebody, after all those years in the work house, getting sneered at by the bitches who ran the place. When I dared to dream, I thought about all the things my father might give me. Fancy hats, necklaces, silk stockings, chocolates, music boxes, tea cups, fans… In my head, I listed every nice thing I had ever heard of anyone owning, each one with a little punch of, That’d show ‘em.
We pulled up to a grand house right in town, set back from the streets with a fancy rich-people garden in between the fence and the door, all symmetrical trimmed hedges. The house was painted gray-blue like the sky, and had two big bay windows jutting on either side of the grand, column-flanked entrance. As we approached, the door opened and people started coming out and standing on the steps, one after another. There was a lady in wide skirts and a man in a frock coat and three little boys, waving at our approach, lace ruffled sleeves fluttering. I guessed that the rest were servants. My gloves were shaking at this point. The coach trotted up to the entrance and the coachman opened the door and offered his hand.
“Miss Fersa,” he said, announcing me. I felt flushed head to toe, and it didn’t help that I had no real last name to announce. Wolvenfolk had clan designations rather than last names, and I suppose I couldn’t claim to be a Rafferty yet.
The man and woman walked down the steps together. She was perhaps ten years older than me, petite and pretty in floral-printed silk. He was middle-aged and handsome with thick black hair just like my own. He bowed. She curtseyed.
I clutched my stomach as my body betrayed me with a wave of dizziness and nausea.
C’mon, you little whelp, don’t get sick now. I forced a smile.
“Fersa, my dearest. Words can hardly express how glad I am to see you,” the man said. “I’m not sure how much your mother told you about me…”
“Father,” I said, the word very awkward in my mouth. I tried to curtsey myself. Was it a good curtsey? I couldn’t have told you. I hadn’t a bloody clue what a good curtsey looked like, but I wasn’t clumsy, at least I could say that much.
“When you were born, I wanted to take you in,” he said. “But she insisted on keeping you with her, and I realized a wolf clan might be a better place for a wolf girl. I would have sent you letters and gifts, but…there was no address. And I heard you never learned to read.” I realized his tone actually sounded regretful. “I was always sending inquiries about the clan, trying to see how you fared. When I lost track of you, Katherine can tell you how distressed I was.” He squeezed his wife’s shoulder.
“Very distressed,” she said earnestly.
“I’ve been trying to find you, these past years. As soon as I got your letter, well, I nearly wept with relief.”
Wept? What kind of a man weeps over a thing like that?
“I want you to know that you’re safe here. You will have everything you’ve ever needed and a great deal more. You’re my daughter as much as the boys, here, are my sons.” He patted the head of one of the unnaturally polite little creatures standing beside him. “You’ll never have to work again, needless to say, and you will finally have a good education. Don’t hesitate to tell me if anything distresses you in the least. I have a lot to make up for.”
Katherine suddenly walked up to me and kissed my cheeks. “I’m so happy to finally meet you,” she said. “You must be so tired and flustered, and worried as to whether you’d be welcomed here, and I want you to know that we all welcome you with all of our hearts.”
I actually flinched back when she came at me, and then I felt more awkward and ashamed than ever.
I might’ve spent the past few years in a girl’s body, but at heart, I felt like a wolf. I had a wolf’s instincts. If someone came at my face, I felt threatened. In the work house, it was perfectly natural to feel threatened and follow animal instincts, because all of us were hardly treated better than animals to begin with. My pulse was racing with the tension of trying to behave like a lady.
“Th—thank you,” I said.
Father put a hand on my shoulder and urged me up the stairs. “I want you to meet the boys,” he said. “This is Thomas, the eldest; Francis; and the little one is John.”
The boys were all perfectly tidy and well dressed and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for them. I had spent my childhood running through the woods, sometimes wolf and sometimes girl, depending on what we wanted to do, and not a stitch of clothes on. They all looked at me curiously, John with a broad grin. I wasn’t sure if I supposed to curtsey to children, so I just grinned back.
“Come in,” Katherine said, taking my arm. “We have luncheon waiting for you. It’s simple, cold cuts, I’m afraid, since we didn’t know when you’d get in, but we’ll have a hot meal tonight.”
She led me through an entrance hall that was bright from tall windows, with a gold chandelier above my head and a staircase sweeping upstairs and polished wooden floors with carpets. I was glad I’d spent a few weeks in the Palace of Waterfalls with Ellara before I came here, or else I’d be too gobsmacked to speak.
Then again, I hadn’t spoken much anyway.
“I’ll take your cloak,” one of the footmen offered. He pulled the ribbon at my chest loose before I said a word, and whisked the red wool away.
“A lovely cloak it is, too,” Katherine said. “Did the elves give it to you?”
“Yes, madam.” I stumbled on the word, unsure how to address her.
She laughed faintly but didn’t correct me. Maybe she didn’t know how I should address her either. “How kind of them. It’s a very nice dress, too, but of course you shall have a whole new wardrobe, now that you’re here.”
I don’t think my dress was really nice at all, compared to hers. Hers was a light, airy confection with a thin shawl, despite the chilly air, and no wonder, because the fires were blazing in the dining hall. And she obviously had a corset and layers of ruffled petticoats and all that rot, while I was just a drab little thing dressed in brown and green that fell straight on my body. Not that I wanted corsets and ruffled petticoats. I didn’t. Not one bit. It looked very uncomfortable.
And yet, I also did. I wanted to fit in. I hadn’t fit in since my mother died, and I ached for it beyond all reason.
In some ways, it was a lucky thing I’d spent time in the work house, where I had to learn to eat proper with a knife and fork, and that I’d had a little time in the Palace of Waterfalls to get used to fancy people. The dining room was filled with a table with seating for twelve, and already set with dishes of cold meats and cheeses and various salads and relishes. All the dishes and china were painted and edged in gold.
Father sat at the head of the table, and I was offered a place beside him, opposite Katherine, with the boys around us.
“I already have your tutors arranged,” he said. “You’ll begin tomorrow. We’ll just ease into it with the basics of reading, writing, arithmetic, music and dance.”
“Fersa can’t read?” John asked. “But I can read. She’s big.”
“No one taught her to read,” Katherine said, patting his head. “But I’m sure she’ll be a quick study. You’ll have to work hard to keep up with her.”
Lord, I hoped so. That was the basics? “Just one person’s going to teach me all that?”
Katherine looked at Father pointedly and he nodded faintly to her. “And diction,” he added.
“Diction,” I repeated. I didn’t even know what that meant.
“How to speak like ladies do,” Katherine said.
“Mr. Benton will
be your music teacher, and Mr. Eldridge will be your dance teacher, and for speech, reading, and writing…we shall try this Mr. Arrowen.” He shrugged.
“Try?” I asked. “What’s wrong with Mr. Arrowen?”
“He’s from away,” he said. “And I’m not so sure about him. He just came to town recently and we don’t know his family. I’ve never met the man. However, he was the best I could find on relatively short notice. And the Powers family speaks well of him.”
“Aren’t I ‘from away’?” I asked.
Father grinned. “Well, we know your family. We’ll keep an eye on Mr. Arrowen and if he doesn’t suit we’ll have to send for someone in the city.”
“Why doesn’t Fersa go to school with us?” Thomas asked.
“Fersa is too grown up to go to school,” Katherine said. “You, young sir, have many years of study ahead of you. But Fersa has to know everything very quickly so that when she gets married, she won’t be ignorant of the things a young woman should know.”
“Is Fersa going to get married soon?”
“Who knows?” Katherine said. “Plenty of handsome young men around.” She winked at me.
Oh, bloody hell. This was too much. Tutors and handsome young men. My cheeks warmed. No men at the work house. My dreams of what a man might do to me, if I could only get my hands on one, got quite intense at times…when the heat came on me. Sometimes I heard the alley cats yowling outside and I thought, You and me both.
I’ll say one thing about the work house: it held the dregs, and the haughty elven women who ran the place reminded us every day that we were the lesser races. There’s a weird kind of pride that comes from that. I knew I wasn’t any lesser than some stupid elf who ran a work house, and I was as good as any of the other girls there, too.
Taming Red Riding Hood Page 1
