Compelled by Love (Kendawyn Paranormal Regency) Page 3

“I’m Alice. I found--”

  “I remember,” he said. His voice was gravelly, this time from disuse rather than pain. She handed him a glass of water.

  “I can’t call for a servant,” Alice said in regret. She had nothing for him. “We’re pretending I’m ill to hide you.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said.

  They stared at each other as moments passed. If he remembered, did he remember it all? Did he remember her saying how lonely she was? She hadn’t thought he would when she talked to him while they were alone. Did he remember her reading that novel about the couple who fell in love in the mortal realm, lost each other, and then returned to Kendawyn to find each other again? She had so much to say, but no idea how to say it. I’m so glad you’re well. But sad, because you’ll leave and my life will feel empty. You’ve been mine, these days.

  Why did you have to show up and make me realize that there is more to this world than novels and not doing needlework?

  Please be all right. Please don’t let my terrible magic skills have injured you.

  “I’m Alice Barnett,” she said. “My cousins and I have been taking care of you.”

  “Hugh,” he replied.

  She noticed the lack of a last name and felt hurt. Didn’t he trust her? At all? But his hand reached out and took hers. He lifted her fingers towards his face. Warm lips pressed against her palm, and his voice was gravelly as he said, “Thank you.”

  Silence grew long again before he asked her to read to him.

  She did until the sun rose, and as it did, he drifted off again.

  They had two more nights of talking before he started to wake during the day. She felt that he’d been taken from her again as Mrs. Slate jabbered at him and Mariah exclaimed over him. Before today, he had been mostly hers. Now instead of yellow eyes, his eyes were dark brown. The wolf in him had faded to the back, and she missed the beast who’d needed her so.

  The first day that he was fully himself, he said, “I need to send a letter.”

  The time of being needed was coming to an end. Alice tried not to grieve.

  She hid her scowl and her sadness as she gathered her writing desk and settled it over him.

  She wanted to be angry. To demand a last name. A thank you.

  Something.

  Something else.

  Something more, or at the least, something different.

  Something that didn’t mean he was leaving. Was it him that she would miss so much? Or being needed? Was it him? Or perhaps the fact that once he was gone the aloneness loneliness would come back full-tilt.

  She watched him write the letter, and it felt as though he was racing from her.

  Something, she thought, had to change. Something must change in her life after he left, but when she thought about what, she didn’t know what to do. A sea-side cottage would be no less lonely, and she wouldn’t have Mariah or Algernon and the feeling of family. Perhaps she’d travel. Go to the Mortal Realm. Or take a long visit to the sea or the lake country.

  She sighed as he sealed his letter.

  She wanted his last name. She held out her hand for his letter.

  He took her hand instead. He lifted it, turned it over, and gazed at her palm before he met her gaze again. There was a hint of yellow in those brown eyes as he almost growled, “Thank you.”

  She nodded.

  And then he kissed her fingertips.

  She couldn’t contain her shiver. His lips were warm and unexpected against her fingertips. She’d never realized how sensitive fingertips were until she felt his lips against hers.

  The fingers of her free hand dug into her skirt as she tried to contain the sudden rush of her breath.

  “Will your cousin deliver this for me? He’d need to do it personally. Do you think that he could come up with a reason to go to Lyndone?”

  She nodded.

  Algernon often went to Lyndone. He’d go up for a few days, spend some time with his brothers, bring the children back presents and exotic candies.

  “Would you ask him to come to me?”

  There was such a ring of command in his voice that she was surprised. He was, she thought, a man used to ruling.

  And being obeyed.

  She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. After all, everything about his clothes, that missing signet ring, bespoke high ton.

  She sent for Mrs. Slate, who brought Algernon.

  The two men spoke quietly and then Algernon left. He left that very day. As he rode away, Mariah and Alice watched him from Alice’s sitting room window.

  “Who do you think he is?” Mariah asked.

  Alice shook her head. She didn’t want to admit how offended she was that Hugh didn’t answer that unspoken question. He did it deliberately, of course. He was being hunted, he’d been shot, he couldn’t be sure of anything. She’d have thought after their long conversations and the time they’d spent reading together, and how she’d played for him that he might have told her.

  Algernon, Alice thought, knew. He must know more if he was to deliver that letter.

  Which meant that Hugh didn’t trust her.

  It hurt.

  It must have been his wolf that trusted her. That had needed her. The wolf was gone, and the man was back, and she found that she was unspeakably sad about the change.

  “Would you play for me?” Hugh asked. He’d been pacing, and she’d gotten too comfortable in her bedclothes and robe around him. She considered for a moment, but found that she didn’t want to say no. She wanted to lose herself in her music.

  Mariah was downstairs with visitors, and the servants had been told that Alice was in bed with a chill and a sore throat. But since it had been a week, they must have assumed that she was never leaving her room again. She’d played often enough the last week that the servants would not be surprised to hear the strains of the violin-cello.

  She didn’t answer him, just got the instrument and tuned it. She lost herself almost immediately in the notes. She loved playing, but it was an extension of her emotions. She was feeling sad and lonely and lost, and the strains of the music swelled and fell with her thoughts.

  His hand fell across the back of her neck as she played, but it didn’t stop her. She needed something. Something more when he left. He’d filled this hole in her, and she missed him already. She missed the way his eyes glinted when she entered the room. She missed how he told her stories of his childhood with his mass of cousins and his brother.

  She missed him.

  Already.

  His fingers tangled in her curls, digging through them in a way that was entirely inappropriate, but he was more to her than a random man with no last name. Perhaps she was to him as well. She let him play with her hair, while she played for them both.

  And then the door opened. They looked together, almost guiltily, towards it, expecting to find Mariah or Mrs. Slate.

  But they didn’t.

  “Alice dear, I couldn’t leave without see--” Mrs. Smythe-Anderson’s gasp was long and loud. But her eyes were victorious as they took in the scene.

  “Oh, goodness,” Alice said, jumping to her feet. Her violin-cello was grasped in her hands, but there was no way that Mrs. Smythe-Anderson hadn’t seen Hugh’s hand in her hair. The way he’d touched her almost possessively. It had been inappropriate, but it hadn’t meant what that woman’s eyes saw.

  Those cruel, little eyes narrowed as Hugh’s hand settled on Alice’s shoulder. Together they faced Alice’s enemy. But Alice was wearing bed clothes. He was wearing an old shirt of Grandfather’s and a ragged pair of pants. They were steps—steps!—from her bed.

  “Well,” the word was a knife, sharp and dangerous, “I never!”

  “Oh, goodness,” Alice said again stupidly. She looked up at Hugh. Saw his eyes narrow and then an instant resolution, and she shook her head helplessly.

  “No,” she told him. But she knew it was too late. They’d been caught together, inappropriately dressed, in her bedroom. She was unquestionab
ly compromised despite the fact that they’d been in all innocence. Society demanded that Alice was a ruined woman if they did not wed. If they didn’t respond to that demand—there would be no future among her class for Alice.

  Even her family would be forced to turn from her—even if they didn’t abandon her privately.

  “Agatha!” Mariah’s anger was clear from the sitting room. Her step, usually so quiet, was sharp clicks against the wood floors of Alice’s rooms. The body of Mrs. Smythe-Anderson tensed and then her gaze narrowed. Alice could practically see her bristle.

  “Well I never!” She said again. Her shoulders snapped straight and dagger sharp. She looked over at Alice and Hugh, and then her lips curled viciously.

  “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such terrible manners, my dear,” the deep voice of Hugh cut through the shrill tones of Mariah and Mrs. Smythe-Anderson.

  It was the ‘my dear’ that cemented Alice’s fate. She shook her head at him, but he nodded.

  Just the once.

  “It was so kind of you to let me visit you, and then of your family to care for us both as we’ve been so ill, and then your sick room is invaded by a random woman.”

  “Invaded! Random!” Mrs. Smythe-Anderson spun around and arrayed herself like a battleship preparing for an assault.

  “I assure you,” Hugh said in bored tones, “that my family would be shocked that the residents of this village of theirs act in such a way.”

  Of theirs, Alice thought. She stared at him. Wolfemuir owned this area. The Wolfemuir pack was…they were…they were high nobility.

  She was country gentry.

  She shook her head helplessly. She could not, would not.

  She would not be the woman who trapped one of the Wolfemuir into marriage.

  He nodded once.

  Mrs. Smythe-Anderson did not catch what Alice had. “You two are the most disgraceful, unwholesome, shocking, simply shocking. I…I…I…Well! I never!”

  “Enough,” Hugh snapped and his tone brooked no nonsense.

  Mrs. Smythe-Anderson’s mouth jerked closed.

  “I and my fiancé are ill, so I will ask you to remove yourself before I remove you.”

  “Well I never!”

  “Yes, yes, we know that you’ve never,” Hugh said. “However, I would remind you to exit this home and ensure that you leave your rumor-mongering behind you. What are you? Some country parson’s wife?”

  Mrs. Smythe-Anderson stared at him, shocked at his commanding tone. He cleared his throat when she didn’t answer.

  She nodded once.

  He stepped closer, threatening in every aspect of his voice and posture. “I am sure my cousin the duke will expect that you treat his future cousin well.”

  The gauntlet had been thrown. It was one Mrs. Smythe-Anderson could not afford to pick up.

  She could contain herself or her husband would be without his work.

  “Well I--”

  “Go,” Hugh said.

  Alice didn’t see either her cousin or the rector’s wife leave. “Your cousin the duke?”

  He nodded.

  “Hugh Knighton?”

  He shook his head and said, “Darcy. My mother was the Knighton.”

  So he was from a female line of the Knighton’s. He was still one of the duke’s people if Hugh could claim the Wolfemuir.

  “I am not marrying you.”

  She couldn’t possibly.

  But she must.

  They were trapped. She’d trapped him. Well, she hadn’t trapped him, but she would not be part of that family. There was no place for her there. She was a minor mage in a barely gentry family. She and her cousins scraped by together, living a quiet life. He was…he must be one of the most pursued bachelors of every season for the last century.

  “I cannot marry you,” she said lamely. She did not want to be that woman. For the rest of her thousand years of life, she’d be the woman who forced a member of the Wolfemuir pack into marriage.

  “Oh, I assure you,” he said fiercely, the growl back and his eyes pure yellow, “you are most certainly marrying me.”

  She shook her head helplessly as he lifted her hand and kissed her palm this time, letting her feel his teeth. Shivers racked her, and she didn’t try to hide them. She wasn’t sure if they were from him, his lips, and his teeth, or her fate and the certainty that all of her possible futures had been snatched from her and been exchanged with someone else’s.

  She didn’t bother to hide her pacing. She walked back and forth, back and forth in her sitting room. Now that everyone knew he was there, she’d kicked him out of her room. He’d laughed at her and told her to pack and replace the garments he’d bled all over.

  “Send me the bill, my dear.”

  She’d stared at him, shocked. She would most certainly not…but then he’d laughed when she’d narrowed her eyes.

  She’d started to march to the dress shop, but Mariah had come rushing out, saying they were taking the carriage.

  “I am not,” Alice declared. She found her hands on her hips rather than placed them there, remembering her mother doing that more than once when Papa had infuriated her, and then she was overcome with sadness.

  How Papa had loved Mama.

  How Alice wanted to be loved.

  She did not want a marriage of convenience. He never would have chosen her. Not ever. His honor demanded he marry her, and he was putting forth a good face that he wanted her. But how could he?

  “Alice!” Mariah said.

  “I have never, ever--” She was going to say taken a carriage to the little town, but Mariah cut in.

  “Alice,” Mariah’s voice was gentle.

  Alice’s eyes were, she thought, permanently narrowed. Perhaps she was overreacting to some imperious order to take a carriage now that she was marrying into the Wolfemuir. She was going to have a wrinkle between her brows put there by that wolf and his expectations.

  “Alice,” Mariah said again when Alice frowned. “We don’t know who shot Hugh. It’s safer.”

  Alice stared at her cousin and then deflated. She marched to the little, white bench on the green instead of to the dress shop.

  She sat down. Her cousin sat next to her, almost gingerly.

  “I can’t marry him.”

  “Of course you can marry him.”

  “I can’t,” Alice said. “I--”

  “It’s not what you wanted. You deserve him to throw himself at your feet and beg you to love him. Not to be coerced by that…that…woman. But Alice…”

  There was so much to say. But Alice, you’ll alienate our class, all of our friends, you’ll destroy your life here. You’ll ostracize yourself. Alice, I know you like him. I know you could love him. You can’t get him out of your mind now. You won’t have to mourn him, once he leaves, if you go with him.

  Mariah, however, was kind enough to say none of those things. She took a gentle hold of Alice’s hand and said nothing at all.

  “What would Papa say?” Alice sighed, staring into the trees where she had once played, where she’d found a bleeding werewolf, where she’d rescued him and, perhaps, destroyed her life.

  Mariah went with Alice when she rode in the carriage to the dress shop. Mariah said nothing when Alice bought a new shawl, the one she’d been coveting for some time, remembering how Hugh hadn’t told her his last name. In fact, he’d never properly introduced himself. He’d told Mrs. Smythe-Anderson his name. And then, Alice bought a pretty gray shawl as well. Mariah didn’t raise her brows when Alice purchased the prettiest and softest petticoats, and Mariah said nothing when Alice began randomly throwing ribbons and silk stockings on the pile. When they left, Alice wasn’t even sure what she’d purchased, but she knew that she didn’t feel better.

  And when they returned to her home, she found it invaded.

  The Rhys and Henry from Hugh’s stories had arrived. Rhys Knighton, Duke of Wolfemuir, was huge and imperious, and he hugged Alice tightly.

  “Thank you, kitte
n, for my cousin. I am ever in your debt.”

  She didn’t even know how to reply. He called her kitten, for which she’d like to remove a limb, and he was so heartfelt when thanked her for Hugh’s life. She didn’t have to reply though. She was lifted and spun in a circle by a piratical version of Hugh.

  All three men were almost interchangeable in looks, except the leadership that Rhys reflected made Hugh’s imperious ways seem like gentle requests. Even though Hugh and Rhys looked less alike than Hugh and Henry, Hugh’s brother was the most different of the three. Rhys and Hugh were commanding noble gentlemen. They expected to be obeyed, but they couched their requests in manners.

  Henry, instead, carried a constant devilish air. He was dressed half as a pirate and half as a gentleman, brandishing a limp, gold hoop earring, and wicked smile daring anyone to tell him that it was not apropos. The other half was typical of the dashing gentlemen of the ton in a perfectly fitting coat cut by a master tailor, a crisp white cravat, and riding boots that molded to his legs. He moved energetically, despite his limp, and he walked with a rolling gate that seemed to belong on the deck of a ship rather than the shining floors of a country house.

  Alice had no trouble identifying the dagger at his back, but he wasn’t trying very hard to hide it. Henry kissed both of her cheeks with sloppy kisses and said to her, “Welcome to the family, Sister. I demand to be your favorite.”

  He kissed her again and squeezed her more fervently and with less over-enthusiasm as he added, “I am ever your servant, for this brother of mine is the only reason I yet live.”

  She froze, met his eyes, realized he was speaking true, and she said, “I could do nothing else.”

  None of the men bothered to counter her, though, of course, most young ladies would have done very much less.

  Another man, clearly related, spoke from the doorway. “Hugh always was the one who decided to lead the way.” This man was slightly lighter in coloring but had the same build as the rest and there was no question that they were related. Before Alice could ask what the man meant, he stepped closer.

  “I am Oliver.” She found herself looking into blue eyes rather than the dark brown of the other three.