Lucy slept away the better part of the day. By the time she awoke, feeling moderately refreshed, the outside world had turned dark. Mrs. Romany had made her a delicious meal and had sat with her while she ate before helping Lucy into the adjoining bedchamber, which was significantly more feminine in décor. The old woman quietly knitted, her gnarled fingers managing the needles with an ease that spoke of years of experience. She told Lucy that she was employed year-round at the lodge, along with a butler, Poole, and a skeleton staff of ’tons. Beyond that, she didn’t say much, and Lucy enjoyed the comfortable silence.

She hadn’t seen Miles since earlier that morning when he’d brought her a cane from his father’s study. The dinner hour had come and gone, and she’d self-administered some medicinal herbs from a stash in her suitcase. The medicine blunted the harsh edges of the pain, and she felt her flagging energy return by degrees.

After seeing Lucy settled in for the evening, Mrs. Romany had told her she would be in her own room down the hall. Blackwell had also told her that he had business to see to, though when Lucy had asked him what sort of business he conducted at night, he’d completely ignored the question.

Mrs. Romany had lit the lamps in the chamber, drawn the curtains securely against the windows, and built a cozy fire. The old woman cared for every detail that Lucy could have requested, and she snuggled under the covers with an odd sense of contentment. Her eyelids drooped, and she nodded off, hoping to be in possession of a clearer head come morning.

Lucy slept for several hours before she awoke with an urgent need to use the latrine. A quick check of her pocket watch showed that it would soon be dawn, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to wait for Mrs. Romany’s assistance to travel to the outhouse.

Gingerly swinging her feet to the side of the bed, she slid to the floor, balancing the brunt of her weight on her left foot and her cane. Not bothering to dress, she simply took her heavy cloak, which had dried by the fire, and swung it around her shoulders with a gasp of pain.

She shoved her left foot into a boot, but not her right, and then grabbed a pair of galoshes that she fitted over both feet. She made her way to the landing just outside the door. To her immediate right was a staircase leading down to the main front hall.

Navigating the stairs took some time, and she was breathless when she reached the bottom. The silence in the lodge was pronounced. Given that the lodge wasn’t a household full of people, there was no need for bustling staff seeing to their morning duties. Crossing to the heavy front doors, she slid back the dead bolt and swung the door open against the protesting hinges and her protesting torso. Pausing only to lift her hood into place, she stepped out into the falling snow.

Making her way carefully down the stone steps, she turned and looked for the path in the snow that Miles had shoveled earlier. Of course the path was again hidden beneath a blanket of white, and she shook her head as she began picking her way through the snowdrifts. The snow slid into her galoshes and trickled down to her feet in cold rivulets that had her shivering.

The sky was just beginning to lighten by the time Lucy stepped out of the outhouse to begin her return to the lodge. A low-pitched growl sounded to her left. She spied movement not twenty yards away in the trees that surrounded the building.

It was the same enormous black wolf she had seen before. She would know it anywhere.

Cursing the fact that she’d ventured outside without her ray gun, she inched her way back to the outhouse door, wondering if the structure would hold in the face of a wolf attack. It hadn’t seen her yet, but before she could hide, the wolf howled and arched its back. The creature’s spine, its legs, even its ears seemed to swell and recede as the wolf again opened its mouth and issued a wretched cry.

Horrified, she stood stock-still as before her very eyes the wolf’s fur began to disappear, its hind legs extended, and with a loud series of cracks, the wolf shifted into the shape of a man. Leaning heavily on her cane and bracing one hand against the outhouse, she opened her mouth to scream but couldn’t make a sound.

The man—she would know him anywhere. She wondered why she hadn’t put it together the night before when she’d had a good look at those mesmerizing ice-blue eyes the wolf had possessed.

Miles braced his hands on his knees and coughed, spitting something and wiping his arm across his forehead.

She barely registered the fact that he was naked—had been too stunned to notice anything but the fact that Blackwell was a predatory shifter—and she blinked against the swirling snow, watching as he reached into a metal box on the ground and pulled out breeches and then shrugged into a white dress shirt. He had just finished putting on his boots and was donning his overcoat when he looked up and saw her.

“Lucy!”

Miles began running toward her, and she felt light-headed. She turned to escape—to anywhere, really—when she remembered her battered ankle and nearly collapsed from the pain of stepping down on it.

Miles grew nearer, and she put out a hand in a feeble attempt to ward him off. Her head spun, her body ached, and she realized she would never make it to the lodge before he caught her. It didn’t mean she wouldn’t try, and in a full-blown fit of panic, she began running for the lodge, ignoring the pain that lanced through her ankle and up her leg, robbing her of breath and all rational thought.

“No!” Her voice was a shaky wail as Blackwell easily overtook her. She shoved at his torso with her broken and bandaged left wrist, her breath driven from her by the stab of pain that erupted from her side at the defensive movement.

“Lucy, stop. You’re hurting yourself.” Miles grasped her upper arms. Pulling her close to his side, he began walking toward the lodge, and to her dismay, she felt her knees give way beneath her. She couldn’t draw a decent breath against her bruised and cracked ribs, and she cried out in a swirling mass of fear, anger, and white-hot pain.

Before Lucy knew what he was doing, Miles had scooped her into his arms and carried her across the distance to the lodge. Once on the porch, he opened the door with the hand that braced her legs. He kicked the door closed behind them, and he carried her up the stairs and into her bedchamber.

Lucy was robbed of breath, of sense, of coherent thought. Miles set her gently on the bed and stepped back, watching her as though he expected her to bolt at any moment. She stared at him, trying to reconcile what she’d witnessed with the man who stood before her.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she finally asked. She would not cry. Most assuredly, she would not cry.

Miles cursed and bent to remove the galoshes from her feet, moving very carefully with her right ankle. “It isn’t exactly the thing one goes about advertising,” he said as he unbuttoned her cloak and pushed it down off her shoulders.

He left her sitting on the bed and made his way to a sidebar where he retrieved a flask of brandy and a glass. Pouring two fingers’ worth of liquid into it, he handed her the glass. “Drink it,” he said when she hesitated.

“I don’t drink.”

“You do today.”

Perhaps she was dreaming. Nothing seemed real. The world was slightly off-kilter, and she couldn’t reason her way to find the fix. She took a sip and tried not to cough as the liquor burned a path to her stomach. Handing him the glass, she shook her head when he tried to press it back into her hand.

“I want my wits about me,” she said, wiping a hand across her mouth, “when I verbally tear you limb from limb.”

 

Miles closed his mouth as he studied the woman before him with a fair amount of shock. She was angry? The moment he’d shifted and seen her standing outside, his heart had stuttered alarmingly. He must have carried her into the house and up the stairs by sheer will. His heartclock still worked at a furious pace, and he took a deep breath to calm himself.

“What could you possibly have been thinking to keep such a detail from me?” she asked, eyes narrowed.

“I wasn’t aware you needed to know.” He reached behind him for a chair and sat beside the bed.

“What is it?” Her eyes widened, and she slipped off the bed, her breath escaping in a rush as she wrapped an arm around her midsection. “Are you ill?”

He waved his hand at her. “Now I shall have to put you back into bed.” He caught his breath, relieved to finally feel the heartclock regulate itself.

“You’re quite pale.” Lucy placed her palm alongside his cheek.

He flinched involuntarily, thoroughly and completely baffled. She had run from him in terror but was now angry and apparently no longer afraid of him. “I do not understand you, Lucy Pickett.”

She frowned and turned his face one way and then another, as though she were an examining physician. Finally dropping her hand, she studied him for some time with an expression that gave nothing away.

“How many people know about this?”

He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“How many? And have you run afoul of anyone on the PSRC?”

He sighed and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Possibly.”

Lucy folded her arms across her chest and leveled him with a stare that was only slightly diminished in its impact by a wince. “Who knows about this?”

“Oliver, Sam, and Daniel. And one other. Possibly two.”

“Aside from me?”

“Yes. Aside from you.”

“And who would these others be?”

He shook his head. “I do not know. Someone has discovered it, however, and has become rather a nuisance about it.”

She cocked a brow. “Someone who is sending you notes?”

He shrugged.

“Blackmail?”

“Not yet.”

She studied him for another moment and then sighed with a brief eye roll. “And you’ve not confided in your brother. Your heir and the one person who likely cares more for you than anyone on earth.”

“What would you suggest I say to him?” He felt his anger rise. “I am an aberration, a flaw in the family gene pool.”

She narrowed her eyes a fraction, and he realized she held his future in her hands. What she chose to do with the information she now had could mean his doom. “I insist you allow me to help you.”

He bit back a quick retort and instead looked away, focusing on the bedside lamp as though it held something of interest. “Why? I saw your initial reaction, your recoil. I am more beast than man.”

“It’s true, I was horrified from the shock. And you would blame me for that? I, who have never once shrunk from your presence? Who have enjoyed your company? You lied to me!”

He whipped his gaze to hers. “I never lied to you.”

“A lie of omission is no less heinous than one of commission. For the love of heaven, I watched as a wolf transformed into . . . you. I’ve never witnessed a complete transformation, and you would judge me harshly for reacting in fear?” She paused, studying him. “How did I come to be in your room after my fall down the ravine?”

“I’m not entirely certain.” He pinched his lips together. The woman would pry for every detail when he was accustomed to sharing with no one.

Lucy put a hand to her throat and traced her finger along a particularly red, angry-looking mark. “You pulled me up the side of the ravine by my cloak. As a wolf.”

“I don’t know.” Miles studied her for a moment. Her dark hair hung around her shoulders and framed her face in curls he knew firsthand to be softer than satin. Her deep, cobalt eyes locked with his, and he felt his mouth go dry. “Do not ask me for things I cannot explain.” His throat ached with longing for absolution and a physical desire that was rendering him short of breath.

Lucy shook her head. “Has the world been so horrible to you, then? Are there none aside from your friends who wish you well?”

His lips twitched. “Perhaps I do not deserve it. And not from one as beautiful as you.”

She flushed and chewed on her lip, likely trying to eliminate the smile that threatened at the corners of her mouth. The light coloring on her cheeks, however, stood in contrast to the pale state of her complexion.

“You must rest,” he murmured, rising from the chair. Forcing his arms to innocently lift her back onto the bed, he restrained himself from taking her face in his hands and kissing her senseless. “Your reputation may be in serious need of rescue when you return. The family all know that Mrs. Romany is in residence here, but . . .” Miles shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “You did say that only Mr. Clancy and Martha Watts know where you are?”

Lucy nodded. “I told everyone else I was going to London. If it becomes necessary, Kate will tell the world I was with her and Jonathan in Bath. I am not concerned.” As she shifted against the bedding and angled to move beneath the fluffy duvet, a small groan escaped her lips.

Miles lifted the blankets as she settled down into the bed. “Lucy, I am so sorry,” he said. “This is my fault.”

“No.” She shook her head against the pillow. “You were exactly where you ought to have been. I intruded.” She yawned. “I apologize that I am still so fatigued. I ought to be up and preparing for the day.”

“You had quite a nasty shock, not to mention the fall. Besides, there’s nobody about to entertain. Rest for a few hours. I will have Mrs. Romany see to a decent breakfast.”

She leaned up on one elbow, gasping at the movement but looking at him with widened eyes. “You have been awake all night long, and here you are making breakfast plans. You should rest as well.”

He carefully kept his expression blank as he put his hand on her shoulder, gently exerting enough pressure that she settled back down on the pillow. She had seen him shift from a predatory state and now acted as though she’d witnessed nothing out of the ordinary. She was likely the only woman in all of England who could manage it. His hand seemed overly large against her petite frame, and he tightened his jaw. He still wasn’t convinced she would be safe around him. In either form.

Allowing himself one small moment of self-indulgence, he traced his fingertip down her cheek. He desperately wanted to kiss her. “Rest.”

“Miles, I feel awful—”

“Say that again.”

She frowned. “I feel awful that I’ve encroached on your privacy, but it really was necessary to tell you—”

He shook his head. “Not that part. The other part.”

To her credit, she was quick. Her confusion cleared, and she locked the depths of her blue eyes upon his face. “Miles.” She whispered it, the sound traveling like soft fingers down his spine.

“Yes. That part.” He watched her for a moment longer and finally turned and left the room before he did something entirely foolish like brush a kiss across her forehead.