Imprisoned at Werewolf Keep (Werewolf Keep Trilogy) (13 page)

‘We planned…’

‘Yes, well plans rarely work out the way they should. Just tell her and let her decide what she wants to do about it.’ The woman, arms filled with rose stem cuttings, stomped on through the kitchen and out into the hallway they had so recently traversed.

When she was gone
, Fidelia let her mind focus on her words at last.

‘What did she mean?
’ Fidelia sputtered, not quite sure what the outrageous termagant had meant by werewolves. Surely it was a derogatory description of their condition, not a statement of fact. Werewolves weren’t real!

But then she remembered the big bla
ck beast she had cuddled up to all night long. She had never seen a creature so large or ferocious before. And yet, it had seemed almost human in the way that it treated her. And those eyes. Those eyes had been so blue and familiar.

Oh goo
d heavens! She knew those eyes, had remarked on their brilliant blue, and had found herself drowning in them on more than one occasion. A naked man at her door in the morning after hearing howling the night before; a man’s bare footprints outside the cave. The pieces were fitting together now that she had been given the crucial piece of the puzzle

‘
Dee, do not jump to conclusions,’ Phil warned unsteadily, reaching out for her. But her voice seemed to come from a long way away, and the sunlit kitchen was going suddenly dark.

The last thing she registered before d
arkness claimed her completely was Phil’s panic.

Then there was nothing.

Jasper became aware of the uproar as he tried to settle to
reading one of the letters he’d picked up that morning. Mary came rushing into the library, her face flushed, her eyes darting around as if searching for someone.

‘Where’
s Byron?’ she demanded in a voice far louder than she usually used.

Jasper looked around the room, even though he knew his friend was not there. ‘What has happened?’

‘Charlotte told her and she fainted, hitting her head on the table as she fell,’ Mary threw over her shoulder as she hustled away.

Jasp
er didn’t need to ask who had fainted or what Charlotte had told her. He was on his feet and running before Mary had fully disappeared out the door again.

The journey from
the library on the second floor to the kitchen on the ground floor took far longer than he would have expected, considering he ran it like the devil was on his tail. But finally he reached the room and found the place packed with agitated people. Cook was wiping Fidelia’s face with a wet cloth. Phil was pushing the table out of the way, with the help of young Jamey. And Job stood in the open doorway that led to the garden, shifting from foot to foot, obviously trying to determine how he could help without getting in the way.

Jasper had no such concerns. He stormed in, swept Cook out of the way, and lifted his tiny woman into his arms as easily as if she was a life-sized doll. Then he s
trode out the door and headed for the room he knew had been allocated to her.

‘Jasper, be careful.
’ He didn’t bother replying to Phil’s directive. Every thought was on the woman in his arms, on her face, white and pasty, and on the red mark on her forehead growing larger with every moment that passed.

At the door to her room
, he hitched her into a better position so he could reach for the door handle. As he did so, Fidelia’s maid opened the door. Her look of distress was more than he could handle in that moment. Sweeping past Maude and her bleatings, he strode over to the bed and gently laid his burden down. Then he began unbuttoning the front of her gown.

‘Sir, you can’t be doin’ that!’ Maude exclaimed.

‘I am trying to get to these damnable stays, woman. Propriety counts for nothing in her condition. Do not hit me over the head with a tea tray. I am only doing what is necessary,’ he managed to get out.

‘Let me, sir,’ Maude said, a little less horrified now.

‘You can serve your mistress better by getting some ice water to put on this lump on her head. She hit it as she fell, so I am told. If we do not get the swelling down, she will have quite a bruise when she comes around.’

He tried not to think,
if she comes around,
but the thought, once there, was hard to uproot.

Methodically, he continued to unbutton the tiny impediments to his access. In the end, in frustration, he tore at the front of the gown and watched as the buttons popped off and flew in every direction. Then he pulled the gown off her shoulders as he held her upright with one arm, as gently as possible.

‘Let me,’ Phil said, coming to his side and working on the laces at Fidelia’s back. Once she had begun to loosen the restraints, he eased the rest of the dress from her body, leaving her wearing only her undergarments and the infernal stays.

‘You should not be seeing her like this,’ Phil said as she continued to work on the stays.

‘Do you think I plan to take advantage of her in this moment when she is unconscious? Please give me some credit,’ Jasper snapped, throwing the dress aside and starting on her laced boots and stockings.

‘I think she may be humiliated that
you have seen her in this state.’

‘I have seen her in this state already. Or close to it. Leave off bleating at me, Phil. I am not leaving her while she is like this. Where is t
hat damned maid of hers with that ice water?’

At that moment, Byron appeared in the doorway, Mary just behind him. ‘Is she all right?’

Not sure to whom the question was directed, Jasper decided to answer anyway. ‘She has fainted because of these stays,’ he swore furiously without regard for the females present, ‘and she has banged her head. I do not know if it is still a faint that keeps her out, or if it is the head injury.’

‘Will I send for a doctor?’

‘Let us see if she comes around. Where is Cook? She knows more about injuries than anyone.’

‘I do know something,’ Phi
l piped up. ‘I nursed my mother.’

‘This is not consumption,’ Jasper tried to restrain his anger, but it was becoming more and more impossible with the number
of distractions he was dealing with. All he wanted to do was gather the small woman in his arms and send them all away. She didn’t need all these people. All she needed was him!

‘Do not use that tone with my wife
!’ Byron demanded stiffly, moving into the room and towering above them like an avenging angel.

‘Do not concern yourself, Byron. He is distraught. It is understandable. We are all feeling that way.’ Phil finally removed the stays completely an
d threw them aside before standing up to go to her husband’s side.

‘I will not have…’

‘Not now, please. There will be time for recriminations later. Charlotte has much to answer for. She told her what they are, just like that. The shock of it brought on this spell.’

Jasper glanced up and glared
. ‘If anything serious comes of this, I will kill that woman!’

At that moment, Cook bustled in with the bowl of ice water. She sat down in the place Phil had vacated and directed him to lower his w
oman back down onto the bed. Dee looked as pale as the pillowcase beneath her head and he was struck anew with terror.

Cook put the bowl on the table beside the bed and then took up the unconscious woman’s limp arm. She felt for a pulse. Then she nodded, as if encouraged, a
nd began to apply the cold compress to the head wound as she had been doing in the kitchen. Maybe he shouldn’t have moved her. But getting her out of the stays seemed far more important, at the time, than bathing her forehead.

‘Is she going to
wake up soon?’ Jasper asked, tentatively now. If he had caused her more harm than good…

‘Yer
did the right thing gettin’ those whalebones off ‘er. She’s breathin’ natural now. If it’s simply a faint, she’ll come ‘round in a moment.’ Cook looked at him and smiled her encouragement. He couldn’t remember a time when Cook had spoken so kindly to him. It scared him more than Fidelia’s condition.

As if her words made it so, Fidelia moaned and turned her head to the side, as if trying to escape the cold on her forehead.

‘There now, Madam, just lay yersel’ still for me. We’re tryin’ to get this lump down,’ Cook told her warmly, as if speaking to a young child.

Fidelia’s lids fluttered and Jasper was relieved to see the storm-clou
d grey of her eyes once more. ‘W…What happened?’

‘Yer
fainted, dearie. Yer just fainted. Nowt to be bothered by,’ Cook assured her, pressing the cold cloth back to the injury.

Then
, as if her memories returned, Fidelia’s eyes opened wide in panic as she turned to search her surroundings. ‘You are safe, Dee. Stay calm,’ Jasper said, taking up her hand and rubbing it briskly between his. He didn’t know how much longer she would let him touch her. The rejection was close, he knew that.

‘You!’ It was accusation and question in one and he clung a little harder to her hand.

‘Dee, don’t think about it now,’ Phil told her, leaning over Jasper’s shoulder to get a better look at her friend.

‘Stop telling me not to think about things! This is not going to go away just because I do not think about it,’ Fidelia said testily, beginning to
draw her hand back from his.

‘Dee,’ Phil cautioned her again.

‘No, stop it. How many are there of you? You werewolves?’ she demanded of him, her gaze latching onto him fiercely.

‘
Most of us.’

‘Not you
, Phil?’ She dragged her gaze from him to look at her friend, pleading for the right answer.

‘No, of course not. And not Byron or Jamey, the young lad you have seen around her
e.’

‘Ev
eryone else is a werewolf? How…How can you have kept this from me? I could have been attacked like Rathgart was…’ She shuddered at the memory.

‘My wolf did not hurt you,’ Jasper said, pleading for understanding, for acceptance.

Fidelia brought her gaze back to his face, and he saw the moment she put the pieces together. Her eyes opened wide with shock and then their lids fluttered as she began processing the thought.

‘It was you, then. I thought as much. Did you know it would not hurt me? Were you sure when you came after me?’

Jasper looked away as he shook his head, and felt her fingers finally slip free of his. ‘Then you put me in more danger than I was already in with Rathgart.’

‘I could not
stay behind. I had to save you!’ he cried, jumping to his feet, unable to keep still a moment longer. Somehow, in the last minutes, the room had been cleared of all but Byron and Phil, himself and Cook. He fleetingly wondered where Maude had gone.

‘They say a bite or a scratch from a werewolf will turn someone into such a creature. Is that true?’

Defeated, he nodded.

‘So
, if that beast had even scratched me by accident, when he was scratching a flea, for instance, I might have been turned. Or will the kisses you gave me do it anyway? Are we all waiting until the next full moon to see if I turn into one of you?’ Her voice had risen to a screech, and she was shaking her head, trying to free herself of Cook’s cloth.

‘We do not think k
isses will do it. We think the contagion can only be passed while in wolf form,’ Phil spoke up, trying to take the focus of the attack away from him. Even though Phil was still angry with him for what he’d done, she was determined to defend him. It was so typical of her.

‘So if the wolf had
decided to bite me instead of help me…’ Fidelia shuddered. ‘Go away. Please, all of you, leave me. I need to think. I have to…think. Where is Maude? I need Maude.’ The last word was said on a sob as tears glistened in her eyes.

Jasper went to the door and looked for the old maid. He saw her hobbling toward him,
a tray of tea in her hands. ‘Your mistress needs you.’

Maude hurried even faster, and when she entered the room, Jasper left it. It did no good remaining when she obviously didn’t want anything
more to do with him. It was his own fault. She was justified in her anger, at the risk he had taken with her. Even being ravaged by Rathgart would have been a better alternative than being turned into a werewolf. At least the first would have an end. Being a werewolf was a lifetime contagion.

Shaking his head, he turned in the direction of his room. What he wanted now was a drink, more than a drink. He wanted to drink so much he lost consciousness. He wanted to forget everything that had happened in the last few days. Make it as if none of it had happened. The guilty pain was too much.

Sometime later, Byron came to his room and entered without knocking. Jasper was standing in front of his window, staring out at the afternoon sunshine.

‘You all right, old man?’ Byron asked, taking the bottle from his hand. ‘This does not help.’

This time, he hadn’t bothered with a glass. He had been taking long pulls directly from the bottle.

‘It does not hurt.’ He gave a little chuckle at his own wit. Yes, the alcohol was doing its job.
If he could make a banal joke at a time like this then he was definitely well on his way to being drunk.

‘She is in shock. Charlotte had no right to tell her tha
t way. She was bound to react poorly, under the circumstances. When she has time to think it through.’

‘She will be even more convinced I am to blame for putting her in dang
er. And she would be right. My God, man, what was I thinking, going after her like that? It was pure luck that the monster inside me did her no harm. He could have been like Bobby was with Phil. I could have torn out her throat!’

‘But you did not. Your wolf has had you
r best interest at heart from the start.’

‘’Ron, give over. It does not matter. The fact is
, I did not even consider the implications nor the danger to unsuspecting people in my path. All I cared about was getting to her. Whether it is the work of the wolf or my love-sick self, the end result is the same. I have broken every rule we have put in place. And I do not have any idea how to make it right. So please, unless you plan on putting a bullet in my head, go away and leave me to my thoughts.’

Byron nodded and
turned away, bottle still in hand. Jasper couldn’t even bring himself to demand it back. He just climbed to his unsteady feet and collapsed across his bed, hoping against hopes that he’d fall into oblivion once his stinging eyes were closed.