“Well, that’s easy to tell,” the young man told her, looking as if it was anything but easy to say. His expression was profoundly unhappy. “This is Redbuck Manor, I’m Duke Sebastian, and you are here because I am afraid that I am the werewolf that bit you.”
4
BELLA STARED AT HIM, AT FIRST SUSPECTING HIM OF A very bad joke. He, in his turn, watched her with a wary expression in his grayish-green eyes. His dark hair was a trifle long, but he carried himself well. After a moment, it was clear that this was not a joke, that he was entirely serious. And he seemed entirely sane.
Indignation bubbled up inside her.
Her ankle throbbed as she stood there and stared at him, waiting for him to say something else, because she was completely unable to speak right now. More than anything at this moment, her mind was a welter of emotions.
Her initial impulse was to seize something and beat him senseless. Fury was her first emotion, fury at him for attacking her in the first place, fury that he was still free to run about his woods when the King obviously knew what he was and that he was a danger to others, fury at the King for sending her here — why? — fury at the situation itself.
I will not lose my temper, she told herself, clenching both hands at her sides until her nails bit into her palms. It won’t do any good. Bella had had plenty of practice in keeping her temper, given that Genevieve was incapable of controlling her own, and she employed every bit of that willpower now.
“Erm,” the young man said, diffidently, “I’m horribly, horribly sorry. This should never have happened. I’m supposed to be locked up over the full moon, and I’ve never gotten out before. I don’t know what went wrong. Eric has strict instructions… I was in the special chamber long before sunset, and I remember hearing the bars drop into place. And then the moon came up, and the change started as it always does, and well, the next thing I knew, I was waking up, lying in the kennels, outside, where I wasn’t supposed to be.” He pushed his spectacles up on his nose, nervously. “I don’t know if you believe all this, but I swear it’s all true. And I didn’t know I had bitten anyone until the King’s messenger arrived an hour ago to say you were being brought here and to tell me what to expect.”
Bella took a deep, deep breath. “My ankle hurts where you bit me,” she replied forcefully and resentfully. “I was abducted from my bedroom by the King’s men. I haven’t even had a glass of water, much less breakfast, I am hungry and thirsty and — ”
“And I beg your pardon!” the young man said, looking even more hangdog. “That last, at least, I can do something about. Please, follow me. I’ll try to explain more when you are feeling comfortable.”
When she hesitated, looking at the trunks, he added, “The servants will take care of those. Please, if you have gone this long without food or drink…” His voice trailed off, as if he had no good idea of what to say next. They stared at one another for a long and uncomfortable time.
A more charitable — or perhaps impartial — part of her noted that he didn’t look much like her mental image of a Duke. His hair, a sort of streaky brown, was a bit shaggy and unkempt. She really never thought of spectacles and noble together. Spectacles were something scholars wore. His brown tunic, shirt and trousers, while certainly quite good, were not anything special — no gold, no braid, not even any trimming. He was someone she would have taken for a scholar, actually.
His features were even, but not especially handsome, and in this Kingdom at least, most of the nobles were dazzlingly good-looking. There was none of the unconscious arrogance in his expression that she was accustomed to see in the few nobles she had met. All of the girls that the twins associated with, for instance — one and all, they carried with them an air that said,
She considered this. The situation was not going to change, no matter what happened in the next few hours. And without knowing everything involved here, there was no way that she could change it.
And her ankle hurt, and she was, frankly, starving. She raised her chin. “I doubt very much that the so-called pleasures of your table will sway me in any way, Duke Sebastian, but if someone doesn’t tell me exactly what is going on here in the next half hour, I will see to it that your scale model of a duchy becomes annexed by His Majesty and given to my father as a garden.” Just how she was supposed to accomplish this, when she was being held far from everyone, she hadn’t a clue, but he looked as if he believed her.
“Fair enough,” he said. “Please follow me.”
He led her through the doors he had just entered the room by, which led to a very long passageway. More fortifications; this was plain, heavy stone with no other entrance than the one they had used, nor exit but the one at the end of it. There were slits in the walls and holes in the ceiling — another murder-hole, in which invaders could be trapped while the defenders shot at them through the slits and poured boiling liquid or molten lead on them through the ceiling. It was lit by torches in hand-shaped sconces. Rather unnerving.
He led her through the door at the end, and once again, it was as if these rooms belonged to an entirely different building.
To the right — well, she didn’t get a chance to look at it, because it was the room to the left that caught her attention immediately.
The two rooms must have stretched on either side of the murderous passageway. The room to the left was a sumptuous dining room, hung with tapestries of hunting scenes, and beautifully lit with more lamps. But that was not what caught her attention; it was the delicious smells wafting from the many dishes waiting on one end of a very long banquet table.
There were just two chairs there, neither one placed at the head. She limped toward the nearest; he hurried his own steps so that he could pull the seat out for her before taking his own.
If she had been asked to name every single food she liked most at breakfast, she would have found them here. Her stomach didn’t growl, but it did remind her forcefully that she hadn’t eaten since last night.
Since there didn’t seem to be any servants — which was odd, but perhaps understandable, given that the master of this place was on occasion a slavering beast that might turn them into bloody shreds — she helped
