The Heart of a Wolf

Jude Knight

Published by Titchfield Press

Copyright 2016 Judith Anne Knighton writing as Jude Knight

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, except for including brief quotations in a review.

Cover images: The background is Virginia House front façade, by Jennifer M. Guild, Media Relations Specialist, Virgina Historical Society, available under a Creative Commons licence. The image has been flipped.

The wolf’s head is from Wallpaper craft and is called Wolf Wallpaper.

ISBN: 978-1523220458

Dedication

To my readers, and especially to the winners of made-to-order stories who gave me the specifications for this and other short stories.

Table of Contents

1      1

2      5

3      10

4      17

5      21

6      26

Bluestocking Belles      32

Published books      34

Coming in 2016      38

Connect with Jude Knight      43

1

Sebastian drove the horse hard. The best the posting inn had to offer, it was still a poor specimen compared to those in his own stables, but even his best stallion could not have outrun the temper that burned within.

Nathaniel dead. That Woman’s husband with him. And Sebastian left with a letter from his brother, hand delivered by a solicitor so that Sebastian could not consign it to the fire as he had all its predecessors. And with it came a charge he wanted to repudiate with all his considerable power. Responsibility for the protection of That Woman and her brats? How could Nathan demand that of him, given what she had done?

But the letter claimed she had been innocent all those years ago. He stiffened in denial, and the horse responded to the sudden pressure on its flanks with a burst of desperate speed, struggling up the hill that lay between him and his goal.

No. He knew what he had seen: his betrothed, barely out of the schoolroom, her virginal white dress crumpled and pulled down from one shoulder, her hair disordered and her face white with the shock and strain at being discovered. Jeremy Harris, Nathan’s tutor, in worse disarray, hastily rebuttoning his fall. And Nathan, the greatest betrayal of all. His beloved brother interposing his body between the guilty couple and Sebastian, stammering something Sebastian could not hear because of the roaring of the beast.

The beast stirred within him now, restive at the thought of at last having power over the woman it had claimed long ago. She had been ten years old, and he a young man of twenty, but the beast within had recognised something that only those of the old blood could detect; like calling to like. She carried the magic. He had, then and there, negotiated with the baron her father, and carried her off as his affianced bride to be raised with his own brother.

Seven years of patiently waiting for her to grow, lost in one evening. Had it not been for Nathan, he would have killed them both: Isadora and her lover.

He took a deep breath, fighting to reassert his iron control; the horse was near to outright panic, and he had no wish to destroy an innocent animal.

“Easy, fellow. Easy,” he crooned. To himself or to the horse, he hardly knew. He would need to calm himself before he could exert his will in the other gift bestowed by the old blood. Though, in truth, the ability to control the minds of others was a characteristic of his beast rather than a separate ability.

It surged over the hill, and there below he could see the remote estate to which the guilty couple had fled, taking Sebastian’s only brother with them. No more of these thoughts. He turned the horse to follow the winding path down to the flats, encouraging it to slowly easy its speed, and he was halfway down the hill before he had attention to pay to the scene below.

The sounds of which he had barely been aware—the screaming of a mob out for blood—were not his own angry thoughts, but came from the valley. There. In the distance beyond the house. People on horseback followed by others on foot, all pursuing… what? Too big for foxes. Dogs?

He leaned a little of the beast into his nostrils, and the scent carried on the wind told him the whole story. Wolves. Two juveniles. Wolves in England in the 19th Century. And wolves, furthermore, that reeked of the old blood. It could mean only one thing.

His body had reacted before his mind, his heels spurring the horse into one last effort, plunging madly down the hill, over a fence, across a ditch, up a haha, and across the lawn towards the house.

The wolves had a one hundred yard lead on their pursuers, and as Sebastian closed on the house from the front, they approached from the side. A howl from the mob almost drowned the sound of several shots. What were the fools thinking, to fire on the house? One of the wolves faltered as the other leapt for a window, then the laggard followed. Sebastian pulled his horse to a trembling stop and took the steps to the main door of the house in a leap, crashing inside and pushing past the servant who tried to stop him, backing the physical shove with a mental push and a ducal glare.

He did not need to ask which room. The middle of the three doors to the right side of the entrance hall reeked of the old magic. Sebastian burst into the parlour beyond and stopped.

It was her. That woman. Isadora Harris. The traitor bride and widow of the traitor tutor. He noted at a glance that she had more than fulfilled her early promise of great beauty, but most of his attention was on the two with her. One was a boy of eleven or twelve whose naked body bore clear signs of neglect and abuse: the coppery brown skin stretched over protruding bones, new bruises and whip cuts layer upon layer over the scars of old. The other huddled at Isadora’s feet, a young she-wolf, her amber eyes glazed with pain, blood matting the fur of her shoulder.

For a moment, the three froze in a tableau, Isadora’s hands out to comfort and protect the ill-assorted pair. Then all changed before his eyes. The boy was suddenly well fed and clean, dressed in a sturdy suit of nankeen, his skin several shades lighter and his nose and lips narrower. And where the wolf had been, a girl sat at Isadora’s feet, her long black hair in a plait down her back, her modest school-girl dress the same shade as the amber her eyes had been an instant before. They were brown now, but still fixed on Isadora with the same silent plea.

2

He had come. Sebastian Marrock, the high and mighty Duke of Bleidrich. Lord Pomp and Arrogance himself. After ignoring all of Nathan’s other letters, when it was too late to make peace with his brother, he turned up at their door. And at just the wrong moment, too, when the mob she could hear outside was beginning to invade her house, in search of the children she would die to protect.

Isadora had no time for His Self-Righteousness at the moment. She focused all of her awareness on what she wanted the intruders to see, pouring her life energies into an illusion that would fool them as long as she could keep them from touching. It wasn’t a true change, but it would serve.

“Be still, Mei Ling,” she told her adoptive daughter. As far as she could see, the bullet had just grazed the skin. She hoped there was no deeper wound, for she must repel the invaders before she could check the injuries—Mei Ling’s and those of the stranger Mei Ling had rescued. “Don’t move, young man. Let me get rid of those who pursue you, and then we shall talk, yes?”

The boy, his eyes wild, looked up from the suit of clothes that had suddenly appeared on his body, and considered her gravely, then darted a sideways look at the duke before nodding, warily.

She could not answer for the duke. Nathan had been certain his brother would welcome the little tribe he and Jeremy had gathered in their travels: twenty-three girls and boys—twenty-four now—whose remote ancestors had bequeathed them the power to change into wolves and had thereby placed them in great danger when the power came on them of a sudden, and the ungifted around them sought to kill what they did not understand.

But the Duke of Blindness had been quite clear when he had plucked her from her home as a child. He had sifted the nobility, looking for a bride whose blood called to his, starting with his ducal peers and moving down the ranks until he found her near the bottom of those whose existence he deigned to recognise.

The children Nathan and Jemmy saved had been found among the poorest of the poor; people who were beneath His Gracelessness’s notice.

Surely, even if he would not claim them as pack, he would not throw them to the mob that was tramping down her hall, arguing loudly with her butler?

The door crashed back against the wall, and several men tried to struggle through the frame at once, all shouting invective until the duke shouted, “Quiet!”

The boy flinched and Isadora tightened her hand on his shoulder.

“How dare you! How dare you break into a lady’s home, abuse her servants, shoot at her windows, damn you! I should have you all taken in charge!”

The angry duke was a magnificent sight, Isadora could concede when the anger was not addressed at her, and it was working on its targets, who had shrivelled at the duke’s onslaught. She recognised them, had done business with most of them: Mr Mason, the baker; Mr Williams, one of the most prosperous small-holders in the district; Metcliffe, Master of Hounds to the squire; and over their shoulders the Rev’d Clarkson, three more farmers, and several other merchants and tradesmen of the town, all looking awkward and shamefaced as the duke continued his tirade.

She did not know the man who was now pushing his way into the room, a small wiry man with tiny mean eyes and the sharp face of a weasel. His voice, truculent and defiant, betrayed his uncertainty where the words didn’t. “I dunno ‘oo you be, and I don’t care. I wants my boy, and I seen ‘im jump in that there window. So ‘and ‘im over and the other one wot stole ‘im.”

Isadora opened her mouth to argue, but shut it at a glare from His Gracelessness. Very well. She would leave it to him. He seemed, at least, to be taking their part.

The duke lowered his voice, and the resulting low calm tones were somehow more terrifying than his shout, a sort of angry purr. “I am, you ill-mannered cur, the Duke of Bleidrich, guardian of the children in this house, and the betrothed of Lady Isadora, the lady you are so offending with your dangerous and insane pursuit. A boy, you say?” He edged his words with contempt, and the Rev’d began to inch away towards the back of the crowd. “I saw a pack of heathen savages after a pair of foxes, or perhaps dogs. I saw no boy.”

“Not dogs,” the man told him, standing his ground. “The boy turns into a wolf. I seen it myself, many times. These people. They seen it too.” He turned to his allies. Several had slipped away from the rear, and none of the others would meet his eyes.

“Ah, I see,” the duke said, raising his chin, his nose, and a pair of lofty brows in lordly disdain. “A showman, I take it?” This was addressed to Williams, who looked to his fellows before admitting, “Yes, my lord. ‘E is. Not from around ‘ere, my lord.”

“The usual form of address is ‘Your Grace’,” the duke explained, not unkindly.

Isadora was pouring all her strength into holding the illusion, but a small part of her mind noted and appreciated how he was playing this crowd.

“Your Grace,” Williams repeated, humbly.

“I see your game,” the duke told the showman. “You have some trick for switching the dog and the boy to gull money from our good people here. And then your dog escaped and you saw the chance of some other scheme, I do not doubt. Well, I have no problem with you recapturing your poor animal. But not in this lady’s house. You can see for yourself, there are no dogs here.”

“It ain’t none of it true,” the showman insisted. “The boy turns into a wolf. And I seen ‘im myself jump in that there window.”

Isadora had never realised what a showman the Duke of Bleidrich was. With a long-suffering sigh, and a look of commiseration at Williams, he turned to Isadora. “My lady,” he said, his voice heavy with patience. “Did you perchance see a dog, or a wolf, or any other kind of animal jump in the window behind you?”

“I did not,” said Isadora, truthfully, since her back had been to the window all along. For good measure she added, “No one has been in this room this last hour but myself and the children, until you and these gentlemen arrived.

The duke turned back to his audience, which was significantly smaller now, most of those who could not get into the room having made their escape. “There you have it. Good day to you. I suggest the beasts must have slipped along the side of the house and will now be well on their way to the next county.”

With bows, and apologies, and much muttering from the showman, the remaining villagers took themselves off.

As soon as she heard the front door shut behind the last of them, Isadora let slip the threads of the illusion, and sat back against her cushions, her eyes shut, momentarily limp with exhaustion.

3

Sebastian followed the mob out into the hall and watched as they left, one by one, using a touch of the coercive power that was his gift to speed them on their way. The servant closed the door almost on the heels of the sullen showman, who was being assisted from the premises, none too gently, by two of the local people.

Sebastian turned from the door and beheld riches. Spread down the stair, in a variety of sizes and colours; boys and girls; every skin tone from palest English cream to ebony black; the youngest perhaps seven or eight and the oldest in his mid-twenties. They all bore the tempting odour of the old blood. And—except for the youngest—every pair of eyes fixed warily on Sebastian was silver, amber or deep emerald, the tell-tale sign of one who had changed.

“I leave you my treasures, Bastian,” Nathan’s letter had said. “I have made you guardian of the younger ones, but you will want all of our children and won’t care a bit where they come from.”

All of them. A score or more, and Nathan was right, too, when he said that Sebastian would not care about their origins. Sebastian had read that wrong, had assumed Nathan was making him guardian of Isadora’s children, had jumped to scandalous conclusions about the relationship between Nathan, Harris, and Harris’s wife.

These children were too old and too diverse for Isadora to have birthed, and if they came from the sewers and gutters of all Europe, Sebastian did not care. They bore the old blood. More, they were strong enough in the blood that they could change. Treasures indeed.

His fiercely possessive grin broke the tableau, the oldest of the young men moving through the crowd on the stairs asking, “What has happened? is it Mei Ling?”

Sebastian, recalled to the young wolf’s need, made for the parlour, reaching the door just ahead of the young man and the servant, but they followed hard on his heels as he entered the room, and the youngest child, a little Asian boy, squirmed through their legs and under their arms to throw himself beside the wolf.

“Mei Ling!” he cried, then looked piteously up at Isadora. “Mama? Is Mei Ling dead?”

Isadora was half-fainting on the couch, so drained of colour and energy that a thin tracery of blue veins showed on her drawn brow, but she roused at that, saying, in little more than a croak, “Just tired, Ping Ping.” The wolf, too, made an effort, opening her eyes and whimpering a little, so that the boy lay his head on the floor beside hers and cuddled into the soft fur.

Sebastian had seen exhaustion such as Isadore’s on those who had spun their own life reserves into whatever magic was their gift. “Bring food for your lady, and a nourishing drink,” he commanded the servant. I will see to the girl; Mei Ling, is it? And this other?” He looked his question to the young man from the stairs. The others seemed well cared for—nourished, not visibly abused.

“Beef tea, Barrett, and some of the meat pie. Perhaps some biscuits,” the young man commanded. “Clara, fetch a blanket for Mei Ling, and a medical kit to see to her wounds, and those of the stranger.” Sebastian almost said he had no wounds, but the stranger was the naked boy, of course.

His commands given and swiftly obeyed, the young man addressed himself to Sebastian. “I do not know who you are, Sir, but I can care for those in my charge.” He met Sebastian’s glare, his only sign of unease a tension in his neck and flaring of nostrils.

Such courage deserved to be rewarded with an introduction. “I am the Duke of Bleidrich, guardian to these children by my brother’s charge, and King to them and to you by my blood and my power.” He threw a little of his coercive will at the impudent fellow, and was perversely pleased when the only response was a slight waver in the voice that said. “I am Christopher Harris, Your Grace, tutor to these children.”

A relative of the infamous Jeremy Harris, Nathan’s tutor, who had stolen the affections of Sebastian’s bride and Sebastian’s brother? Or another rescuee? Time enough to explore that question later.

“The boy looks to have taken no new hurt, but these cuts and bruises will need care. Lady Isadora will recover with food and sleep. Let me look at this young lady.” He knelt beside the wolf, and she turned her pain-hazed eyes trustfully to him. “Do not be afraid, Mei Ling. I need to see if the bullet is still in the wound, and if there are other injuries, but I think you are more tired and frightened than injured.” He went on talking as his hands gently smoothed over the wolf’s pelt, and felt around the wound, mostly to calm the boy Ping Ping, who was soon leaning against him and watching his eyes as he spoke.

Around him, he was aware of others moving in and out of the room. Isadora was helped to sit up on the couch, propped on cushions, and one of the girls sat feeding her sips of beef tea from a spoon until she had recovered enough to take a little biscuit. A group of boys had wrapped the stranger in a blanket and led him away. Young Harris squatted on his haunches next to Sebastian, passing whatever was needed: a bowl of water and a cloth, a towel, a bandage. Thankfully, the wound was just a graze, and he did not need to remove a bullet.

“A dressing would be easier, Mei Ling, if you take your human form,” he coaxed.

“Not in the same room as all you men,” Isadora told him, scornfully, her voice sounding slightly stronger.

Ah. Of course. When she lost the fur of her wolf form, Mei LIng would be naked.

“We will take her now, Your Grace, Chris.” Clara had organised the medical supplies Harris had asked for, and was now waiting with a makeshift stretcher: a pallet covered in a blanket, with a girl on each corner to carry it.

Sebastian shook his head when Harris went to lift Mei Ling, performing that office himself, settling her tenderly on the blanket and rubbing a wondering hand over the miracle of her wolf’s head. “Be at ease, little one,” he told Ping Ping. “Your sister shall be well.”

The little boy trotted off after the stretcher crew, and Sebastian was free to turn his attention to Isadora. She had recovered enough to be eating ravenously. He had seldom seen anyone so drained and he was pleased to see her skin less stretched over her bones, the colour returning to her face.

A memory assailed him. This same woman, ten years younger, but in the same state of exhaustion, half drooping, held up by Harris on one side and Nathan on the other. On the night of their betrothal ball, at the scene of her disgrace. At the time, he’d thought her afraid and embarrassed, but that extreme a reaction? In one who defied him and left that same night? Had she cast an illusion that night, and if so why? And of what?

A knock on the front door had him reaching for his sword stick. Harris moved to his right shoulder and another younger man to his left sending a surge of pride through Sebastian. They acknowledged him as their king whether they knew it yet or not.

He gestured the stand-down when he heard the voice at the door. Thomas, his secretary, cousin, and sometime valet, when travel meant they needed to make do. Thomas was not able to change. The old blood in him manifested in one gift, and that a small one. Where Sebastian could smell a difference in those who bore the old blood, Thomas could see it. A light, he said. An aura around all living things, and those of the old blood shining more brightly than their merely human fellows. Thomas could even predict with considerable accuracy which gifted youngling would succumb to the change after they reached puberty.

A small gift, but very useful. Thanks to Thomas, Sebastian knew that none of his daughters would change. The blood was thin in them as it had been in their mother, his cousin Greville’s daughter, Alice. But with Isadora gone, he had been desperate to produce offspring to lead his pack, and perhaps if he wed each of the girls to one of the few changers he had left, he might yet breed a grandson who could be a true Duke of the Wolf Kingdom, which is what his title meant in the tongue of the people who once ruled this land.

Or, he thought, as he smiled his satisfaction at the tired woman glaring resentfully at him from the couch, perhaps he could return to his first choice. For he was now a widower, and she a widow. Further, he had already claimed her as betrothed in front of witnesses and she had not gainsayed him. In some places, that would be enough to bind them for life.

Thomas entered the room, his mouth agape. “This place shines like the sun, Your Grace. The auras, they…” he stopped, abashed at the room full of people.

“Lady Isadora, allow me to present my graceless cousin Thomas Maddock. Harris, my cousin Maddock. Harris is Lady Isadora’s lieutenant, I collect, Thomas. Come. Let us leave my lady to her rest. Harris, would you be good enough to take us to the schoolroom and introduce us to the rest of my wards. And tell me their names and ages as we go, if you please.”

4

The Duke of Arrogance did not ask questions. He made pronouncements, and those around him scurried to please him. The room emptied, and Isadora could hear Christopher answering the duke as they climbed the stairs.

She should be pleased that he had so readily accepted the children. Instead, she felt a vast, weary resentment. Relief, yes. The locals had become more and more suspicious of the growing family at the big house. And today’s incident would raise the level of hostility even after Bleidrich’s intervention. If the duke had not arrived, they might now all be dead or fleeing.

But the debt made her resentment greater. Why could he not have come earlier? Ten years! Ten years of letters from Nathan and silence from his brother. Ten years of comforting her best friend in the world, and abetting his every effort to realise the duke’s vision without any acknowledgement or assurance that the duke would be pleased.

Chris had been the first, rescued from a lockup in a village they stopped at on their way into exile after the disaster that her betrothal ball had become. The change had come upon Chris without warning, when all memory of the old blood had been lost in his family. Every time he lost his temper he slipped into wolf form. He would have been shot before Nathan and Jemmy could buy him free, if the county constable had not been a rationalist who refused to believe his own eyes.

Slowly, person by person, their band grew, until Jemmy and Isadora were as enthusiastic as Nathan in the search for those rejected from their families, their communities, when the change came on them. The children of workhouses, farmyards, slum tenements; young traders and farmers and servants; travellers and fishermen—all surprised by the consequences when two random descendants of straying young wolf warriors chanced to meet and chanced to concentrate the ancient inheritance in the bloodline.

Go away! she wanted to scream at His Ungraced. You didn’t care about your brother while he lived. You cannot take the children now!”

But fortunately, she was too tired to argue. For he would take the children, whether she objected or not, and they would be better off if he did. Damn the man to perdition and back.

She let her eyes close. Best that she sleep. Undoubtedly, His Child-Stealing Impudence would be back, and she needed her strength to deal with him. She barely stirred when they moved her to her bed; when her maid removed her dress and jumps, and slipped a nightrail over her head; when her adoptive daughters tucked the blankets around her chin and kissed her cheek.

She slept, and woke, and ate, and slept again. Vaguely, she remembered this bone deep exhaustion. She had lost most of the carriage ride that had been their flight into exile, sleeping off the effects of the illusion that had saved Nathan and Jemmy.

Clara was beside her when she finally woke refreshed. From the light in the room, it was late afternoon. Clara looked up from the breeches she was mending—a houseful of boys makes for a powerful lot of mending—and smiled. “You are awake at last, Dorrie. Uncle Bastian said it would be this evening. He said to tell you that he left it to your judgement whether you came down to dinner or had it served to you here.”

Uncle Bastian? And giving orders about her dinner? Well, not orders, precisely, but saying he would leave it to her judgement was bad enough, implying that his judgement would prevail but for his oh so gracious condescension.

Clearly, he had wormed his way into her children’s esteem while she had been asleep, and now he would think to run her household. He had called her Lady Isadora, his betrothed, she remembered. Well. She would soon disabuse the pompous arrogant numbskull of that notion.

But her head swam a little when she went to sit up, and she would need to be at her best to deal with the Duke of Presumption, especially in front of the household he had clearly seduced to his side.

“I will eat here, Clara,” she told her foster-daughter and friend, “and will come down to breakfast tomorrow. Now tell me about Mei Ling and the boy she rescued.”

5

Isadora was awake, and looking well, Clara said, but would eat in her room. Sebastian had expected it, but still felt a crashing sense of disappointment. His long anger was dissolving in bewildered embarrassment. Everything he had learned since he arrived in the house a day and a half ago confirmed his sense that he’d made a fundamental error ten years ago and compounded it ever since. He had been wrong, and he hated being wrong.

He still did not know what had really happened the night of his betrothal ball, but he no longer doubted those few casual words in Nathaniel’s letter: “…and you will not deny your protection to my dear Dorrie, for you know she was an innocent in all this.”

He would deny Isadora nothing, but he still needed to understand, and she was the only person who could explain. His own stubbornness and the accident that took Nathan and Harris had robbed him of the other two who knew the whole story.

He left the younger people to their conversation and made his way up to the suite assigned to him. The Master’s room, Barrett had told him. Nathan’s or Harris’s? It hardly mattered, and he hadn’t asked.

Isadora’s room was on the same floor. No connecting door, oddly, and down a short passageway. He found himself outside the door, told himself someone should check to see if she had everything she needed. Nonsense. He just wanted to see her.

She was sitting on the window seat, looking out into the garden, but she turned and glared as he entered the room.

“You should not be here.”

“I needed to see for myself that you were recovered,” he explained, oddly uncomfortable.

“Well.  You have seen. You can go.”   And she turned back to the window, muttering in a voice that was meant to be too low to hear, “Because far be it from His Grace the Duke of Omniscience to believe anyone else’s witness.”

His hearing was unusually keen, even in human form. “The duke is not nearly as all-seeing as he once thought,” he told her. She had a right to an apology, but he would like some idea of the size of his offence before he offered it.

His unusual humility met an unexpected response. She whirled back and advanced on him, high spots of colour on her cheeks and her eyes bright. “I am so, so angry with you, Your Grace.”

He backed up a step, wary, though not unaware of how magnificent she looked in her rage.

“I am sorry?” he offered.

“Ten years! Ten years, Bleidrich. He loved you so much, and you ignored him for ten years. He lived, breathed, worked to find children who could make the change to wolves—children whose bloodlines we had lost; whose existence we never suspected. He did it all as a gift to you and you did not so much as acknowledge a single letter!”

One tear escaped to spill down a cheek, and she brushed it away impatiently. “He loved you till the day he died, and he died knowing you had not forgiven him. How could you, Bleidrich? How could you?”

Sebastian had no defence. Saying he had thrown the letters unread onto the fire would just compound his sin. Even without all that he’d heard from Christopher Harris about Nathan’s plan, the evidence of his brother’s commitment to Sebastian’s dreams of restoring the former glory of the pack shone in this house and the children collected here. And thanks to Sebastian’s own stubborn pride, Nathan was gone beyond gratitude and reward.

“I am so sorry,” he said again. Inadequate, but sincere.

Perhaps Isadore heard the sincerity, for her voice was just sad when she replied. “Sorry does not fix it, Bleidrich.”

“You used to call me Bastian,” he said. He pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and used it to wipe her eyes, rejoicing when she did not flinch from his touch or slap his presumptuous face.

“No I did not,” she retorted. “Nathan used to call you Bastian. I was so overawed by you I could not fit two words together in your presence, and I used to call you nothing at all.”

That was not how he remembered it. She had lit the schoolroom with her presence, enchanting him with her questions and her comments, until he had needed to invent reasons to visit other estates least he take to haunting his underage bride like a lovesick fool.

“I am not your betrothed,” she announced. So she had heard that, had she?

“You could be. You should be.” She must be. Losing her again would kill him. He would haunt her in earnest then.

She shook her head, though. “Do not be ridiculous, Your Grace. You cannot marry the woman who cuckolded you in the library with the schoolmaster on the night of her betrothal to you. You would be laughed out of Society and I would never be received.”

“That is not how they remember it,” Sebastian told her. “No-one who saw you in the library that night remembers a thing, and no-one remembers that we were to be betrothed. All anyone knows is that the girl I brought into the house as a companion to my brother married the schoolmaster and moved to another town.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You tampered with their memories?”

“That very night, to start with. No-one left the library or the ball with any idea that anything had happened that shouldn’t. I slept for two days, after. And when I could function again, you and the others had gone, fled that same night, Greville told me. He’s the only one who knew what really happened; what we thought really happened.”

Isadora’s eyes widened at that. “But Greville said you banished us. That you would not see us; never wanted to see us again. Nathan told him I was too ill to travel, that I was innocent and you would understand all when you read Nathan’s letter, but he insisted they take me with you.”

Sebastian was silent for a moment. Greville had been his father’s closest friend and Sebastian’s most trusted counsellor. Sebastian’s last command before he took to his bed was to Greville: Keep them here. I want to question them. There must be an explanation. But he woke to find those he loved best in the world had added abandonment to betrayal, and he had been angry ever since. Now, the reversal in his understanding sent his mind reeling, and he took a deep breath as he recovered his balance.

5

Isadora, too, was lost in memories of the past. “Nathan was sure you would send for us, or at least for me, once you read the letter. But at last, when we didn’t hear, and when two more letters went unanswered, I married Jemmy.” She could not continue to live with two men, neither of them related to her. And where else could she go?

“I never got the letter, Isadora.”

She responded to the world of hurt and bewilderment in his eyes, taking both of his hands in hers to comfort him. “Oh Bastian, I am so sorry. Greville never thought I was good enough for you.” He had been opposed to her installation at the castle, and argued long and hard against the betrothal.

Sebastian nodded, sadly. “He thought I should marry an earl’s daughter, at least. Or his own.”

And in the end, he had.

“Ah. Alice. I am sorry for your loss, Bastian.” She was sorry for Sebastian’s pain, though Alice Greville had taken her father’s part, looking down her pale aristocratic nose at the interloper, saying the courtesy title “Lady” with near audible quotation marks until Sebastian informed Greville that his daughter was in want of manners.

“Poor Alice,” Sebastian said. “I tried to be a good husband; I think I was, at least, a dutiful one, but…”

He tugged Isadora’s hands, so that she fell against him, and when he wrapped his arms around her, she hesitantly slid hers around him, thrilling to the hard muscle she could feel beneath her hands.

“The heart of a wolf is a loyal organ, Isadora. I gave mine away when I was twenty. I handed it into the keeping of the woman a ten-year-old would become, and it is yours while I have a breath in my body.”

Isadora burrowed her face into Sebastian’s chest, afraid to meet his eyes in case it was all a mistake, or one of the dreams that had plagued her lonely nights these ten years.

He continued, his voice low and urgent. “I want you for my wife, for my mate, for my duchess. Marry me, Isadora. I don’t care what happened that night. I don’t care what was between you, and Nathan, and Harris.”

She drew back at that, surprised. “You really do not know? Greville said nothing? You read none of the letters?”

“Only the last; the one that brought me here. I am sorry.”

“I was only seconds ahead of you to the library, you numbskull. What you thought you saw was an illusion.”

“Yes, I had figured that out. Ten years too late, but I realised when I saw you cast the illusion to protect Mei Ling and the boy. But what was the illusion to cover? That, I don’t know.”

“Nathan and Jemmy, of course.” No understanding in the amber gaze. “You never knew? You didn’t realise that Nathan preferred… men?”

She saw him fit the pieces together, caught the flare of anger when he leapt to the wrong conclusion. “His tutor seduced him?”

Isadore snorted, an inelegant and richly contemptuous sound that the elegant Alice would have died rather than make. “Not likely. Jemmy said he was in a position of trust, and Nathan was too young to know his own mind, and Nathan would get over it and find a nice girl, and all sorts of nonsense. Nathan was desperate, because you had said he was ready for university and you were sending him away after the wedding. He… well. Never mind the details.

“But when you asked all those people to the library to see the portrait you had done of me when I was twelve? I couldn’t think how to stop you. I could only race ahead of you and try to make them see something they would believe; something that wouldn’t get Nathan and Jemmy hanged.”

She waited for his anger to flare again, oddly unafraid, confident that he would never hurt her. But he surprised her by ignoring most of the story. “I did not know your gift was so strong, my love,” he marvelled.

“Neither did I until I called on it and it answered my need. But I was very sick after. I only know about Greville because Nathan told me. Bastian, you are sleeping in the Masters’ Room. Did you not wonder why they shared?”

He gave a wry twist of the mouth. “I had the apostrophe on the other side of the ‘s’, my love. I wondered which of the two was master and slept there. It never occurred to me it was both.”

He looked away for a moment, searching for words. “Isadora, are any of the children here yours?”

She heard what he didn’t say, and lightly punched his shoulder next to where she had once again nestled her head. “No, you cocklebrain. Jemmy was not interested in me, and—before you ask—neither was Nathan. They had eyes only for one another.”

“Then I yet have a chance to win your heart, my dearest love?”

Did the Duke of Denseness really not know? He held himself stiff, as if heaven depended on her answer, and she could not resist. “No, Bastian. I lost it long ago.”

“Ah.” That was all he said, but Isadore felt his sense of loss as if it were her own, and hurried to reassure him.

“The heart of a wolf is loyal,” Isadora reminded him, “and mine was given when I was a lonely girl of ten, a neglected and unwanted daughter being raised by servants. A golden prince rode in on his steed and saved me, and carried me off to be a princess. I loved him then, and through all my great anger, Bastian, I have loved him ever since.”

“You love me?” But he gave her no chance to reply, swooping on her lips and greeting her unskilled but enthusiastic response with a joy that quickly flared into something more possessive and thrilling.

She was reeling by the time he reluctantly pulled away. “I had better go, my love, or this will end in your bed, and we are not yet man and wife.”

“You want to stop?” She could not believe it. After all the time they had wasted, he wanted to stop?

He was shaking his head ‘no’ even as he explained. “I have waited ten years, and seven before that. I can wait another week for a special license.”

Isadora moved back into his unresisting arms and reached for a handful of hair on either side of his head to pull his lips back down within reach of her own. “You, Your Grace, are a nincompoop. I have waited ten years, and seven before that. And if I have to wait another five minutes, it will be too long.”

He had told her once that a wise man, and a wise wolf, knows when to fight, and when to surrender. Her Bastian was very wise, for he argued no more, but simply reached behind him and locked the door.

And the waiting was over.

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Bluestocking Belles

The Belles are seven very different writers united by a love of history and a history of writing about love. From sweet to steamy, from light-hearted fun to dark tortured tales full of angst, from London ballrooms to country cottages to the sultan’s seraglio, one or more of the Belle’s will have a tale to suit your tastes and mood.

The Belle’s blog, The Teatime Tattler, publishes at least twice weekly, with exclusive news, interviews, and scandals set in and around the Regency.

The Belles have committed to publishing at least one box set per year. Proceeds from some of the Belles’ joint projects go to the Malala Fund, to support education for young bluestockings around the world.

Find the Bluestocking Belles online:

www.BluestockingBelles.net/

Friend us on Facebook:

www.facebook.com/BellesinBlue

Follow us on Twitter:

@BellesInBlue

Malala Fund

The Bluestocking Belles have chosen the Malala Fund as the charity we support, and to which we donate communal royalties. Periodically, we take on projects intended to directly support this cause, which exemplifies our personal values and intentions: the right of girls and women to do whatever they choose with their lives.

For more information about the Malala Fund and the founder, Malala Yousafzai, winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, go to  www.Malala.org

Holly and Hopeful Hearts

When the Duchess of Haverford sends out invitations to a holiday house party and a Twelfth Night ball, those who respond know that Her Grace intends to raise money for her favourite cause and promote whatever matches she can.

Seven assorted heroes and heroines set out with their pocketbooks firmly clasped and hearts in protective custody. Or are they?

Jude has two stories in Holy and Hopeful Hearts: A Suitable Husband, and The Bluestocking and the Barbarian. They will be published as stand-alone stories in 2017.

Jude’s published books

See the excerpts page on Jude’s website for first chapters of all the following stories. http://judeknightauthor.com/excerpts/

Candle’s Christmas Chair

When Viscount Avery wants a chair for his invalid mother, he finds that the best invalid chair maker in Bath is Minerva Avery, who has been haunting his dreams for three years since she rejected his courtship. He has until she finishes the chair for his mother to convince her to change her mind. If he says it with flowers, will she understand?

Min is a carriage-maker’s daughter, educated beyond her station. Once, she dreamed of stepping into the fairy tale world of the ton, only to have her dreams crushed when she found the handsome guardsman was courting her for her fortune. Now the man she cannot forget is back, handsomer and more charming than ever, and he seems determined to raise those false hopes all over again. But she only has to hold out until she finishes the chair he has commissioned.

Farewell to Kindness: Book 1 of The Golden Redepennings

Hidden from the earl who hunts them, Anne and her sisters have been accepted into the heart of a tiny rural village. Until another earl comes visiting.

Rede lives to avenge the deaths of his wife and children. After three long years of searching, he is closing in on the ruthless villains who gave the orders, and he does not hope to survive the final encounter. Until he meets Anne.

As their inconvenient attraction grows, a series of near fatal attacks draws them together and drives them apart. When their desperate enemies combine forces, Anne and Rede must trust one another to survive.

A Baron for Becky

Becky is the envy of the courtesans of the demi-monde - the indulged mistress of the wealthy and charismatic Marquis of Aldridge. But she dreams of a normal life; one in which her daughter can have a future that does not depend on beauty, sex, and the whims of a man.

Finding herself with child, she hesitates to tell Aldridge. Will he cast her off, send her away, or keep her and condemn another child to this uncertain shadow world?

The devil-may-care face Hugh shows to the world hides a desperate sorrow; a sorrow he tries to drown with drink and riotous living. His years at war haunt him, but even more, he doesn't want to think about the illness that robbed him of the ability to father a son. When he dies, his barony will die with him. His title will fall into abeyance, and his estate will be scooped up by the Crown.

When Aldridge surprises them both with a daring proposition, they do not expect love to be part of the bargain.

Hand-Turned Tales

Dip in, and try my writing for free: four very different tales with a variety of heroes, heroines, villains, and settings.

In The Raven’s Lady, Felix returns home in disguise after 13 years. He plans to catch a smuggler then take up his viscountcy. He does not expect the smuggler to be Joselyn, his childhood sweetheart. (Short story: 5,500 words)

In Kidnapped to Freedom, Phoebe is stolen away from her plantation by a handsome masked pirate. But all is not as it seems. (Short story: 5,100 words)

All that Glisters is set in New Zealand in the 1860s, a time when gold miners poured into the fledgling settlement of Dunedin. Rose is unhappy in the household of her fanatical uncle. Thomas, a young merchant from Canada, offers a glimpse of another possible life. If she is brave enough to reach for it. (Short story: 13,000 words)

The Prisoners of Wyvern Castle is a gothic historical romance set in the world of my novels and novella. Rupert has been imprisoned by his wicked sister, and forced to wed. His new wife, Madeline, has likewise been threatened into saying her vows. Forced into marriage, they find love, but can they find freedom before it is too late? The Prisoners of Wyvern Castle is a prequel to Revealed in Mist. (Novella: 23,500 words)

Gingerbread Bride

Lieutenant Rick Redepenning has been saving his admiral’s intrepid daughter from danger since their formative years, but today, he faces the gravest of threats–the damage she might do to his heart. How can he convince her to see him as a suitor, not just a childhood friend?

Travelling with her father’s fleet has left Mary Pritchard ill-prepared for London Society, and prey to the machinations of false friends. When she strikes out on her own to find a more suitable locale to take up her solitary spinsterhood, she finds adventure, trouble, and her girlhood hero, riding once more to her rescue.

Gingerbread Bride is a novella in The Golden Redepennings series

Revealed in Mist

Prue's job is to uncover secrets, but she hides a few of her own. When she is framed for murder and cast into Newgate, her one-time lover comes to her rescue. Will revealing what she knows help in their hunt for blackmailers, traitors, and murderers? Or threaten all she holds dear?

Enquiry agent David solves problems for the ton, but will never be one of them. When his latest case includes his legitimate half-brothers as well as the woman who left him months ago, he finds the past and the circumstances of his birth difficult to ignore. Danger to Prue makes it impossible.

Coming in 2017

A Raging Madness: Book 2 of The Golden Redepennings

Ella survived an abusive and philandering husband, in-laws who hate her, and public scorn. But she’s not sure she will survive love. It is too late to guard her heart from the man forced to marry such a disreputable widow, but at least she will not burden him with feelings he can never return. She prays he will learn to tolerate her.

Alex understands his new wife never wished to remarry. And if she had chosen to wed, it would not have been to him. He should have wooed her when he was whole, when he could have had her love, not her pity. But it is too late now. She looks at him and sees a broken man. He hopes she will learn to bear him.

Locked in a marriage of convenience, Ella and Alex soon discover they are more well-matched than they thought possible. But then the couple’s blossoming trust is ripped apart by an enemy determined to destroy them both. Two lost souls must together face the demons of their past to save not just their one hope of love but their very lives.

Concealed in Shadow

The story of Prudence and David continues in Concealed in Shadow.

When Prue disappears with David’s half-brother, he is determined she must have met with foul play, whatever interpretation Aldridge might put on it. But finding her again may mean choosing between his country and his woman.

Here are the first three paragraphs.

***

The ship had been at harbour for four days now, after a stormy passage from London. The sailor who brought their daily allocation of food and drink would not answer questions, but Prue guessed they were docked somewhere in Ireland. Certainly, the polyglot shouting that filtered into the ship's hold had been flavoured these last few days with the musical lilt of Gaelic, and of Irish-intoned English.

She and Gren were shackled to the same wall bolt, with enough play in the chains that they could reach the narrow bed, the bucket that did for amenities, and the food and drink their jailors periodically sent.

They had not seen those jailors since the day of their capture. Were Wharton and Jo Palmer still aboard? Had Aldridge raised the alarm? Would David be able to find trace of them? Prue fretted away the long hours wondering.

A Suitable Husband (first published in November 2016 in Holly and Hopeful Hearts)

As the Duchess of Haverford’s companion, Cedrica Grenford is not treated as a poor relation and is encouraged to mingle with Her Grace’s guests. Perhaps among the gentlemen gathered for the duchess’s house party, she will find a suitable husband? Marcel Fournier has only one ambition: to save enough from his fees serving as chef in the houses of the ton to become the proprietor of his own fine restaurant. An affair with the duchess’s dependent would be dangerous. Anything else is impossible. Isn’t it?

The Bluestocking and the Barbarian (first published in November 2016 in Holly and Hopeful Hearts)

James must marry to please his grandfather, the duke, and to win social acceptance for himself and his father’s other foreign-born children. But only Lady Sophia Belvoir makes his heart sing, and to win her, he must invite himself to spend Christmas at the home of his father’s greatest enemy.

Sophia keeps secret her tendre for James, Lord Elfingham. After all, the whole of Society knows he is pursuing the younger Belvoir sister, not the older one left on the shelf after two failed betrothals.

With Mariana Gabrielle

Never Kiss a Toad

[A Victorian romance continuing family stories begun in the various Regency books of Jude Knight and Mariana Gabrielle.]

David "Toad" Northope, heir to the Duke of Wellbridge and rogue in the mold of his infamous father, knows Lady Sarah "Sal" Grenford, daughter of the once-profligate Duke of Haverford, will always hold his heart.

But when the two teens are caught in bed together by their horrified parents, he is sent away to finish school on the Continent, and she is thrown into the depths of her first London Season.

Can two reformed rakes keep their children from making the same mistakes they did? The dukes decide keeping them apart will do the trick, so as the children reach their majority, Toad is put to work at sea, learning to manage his mother's shipping concern, and Sal is taken to the other side of the world, as far from him as possible.

How will Toad and Sal's love withstand long years of separation, not to mention nasty lies, vicious rumors, attractive other suitors, and well-meaning parents who threaten to destroy their future before it has begun?

(Never Kiss a Toad is being published one episode at a time on Wattpad, and will be published complete as an ebook later this year or early next.)

Connect with Jude Knight

Jude Knight writes stories to transport you to another time, another place, where you can enjoy adventure and romance, thrill to trials and challenges, uncover secrets and solve mysteries, and delight in a happy ending. Meet strong determined heroines, heroes who can appreciate a clever capable woman, villains you’ll love to loathe, and all with a leavening of humour.

Follow Jude on Twitter: @JudeKnightBooks

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Table of Contents

Candle’s Christmas Chair

Farewell to Kindness: Book 1 of The Golden Redepennings

A Baron for Becky

Hand-Turned Tales

Gingerbread Bride

Revealed in Mist

Coming in 2017

A Raging Madness: Book 2 of The Golden Redepennings

Concealed in Shadow

A Suitable Husband (first published in November 2016 in Holly and Hopeful Hearts)

The Bluestocking and the Barbarian (first published in November 2016 in Holly and Hopeful Hearts)

With Mariana Gabrielle

Connect with Jude Knight