If only his eyes were yellow, and not dark, he would be a man worth mating. Her pack leader had made that clear, as he’d taught her how to cast off the wolf and pretend at being human. There were some few of their people wise enough to put aside the beast in a world growing increasingly cruel to wolves. Some few who had become as Markéta now was, wearing sheep’s clothing in a rather literal sense. Not that her ball gown was wool: it was summer and warm, but she had more often made a dress of what she would have once considered a meal than she liked to think.
It struck her for the first time, as she gazed at Master Radcliffe, that her years were limited. Even with whole seasons spent as human, she might not extend her lifetime beyond two or three times its natural length. She would be dead by thirty, and long since too old to breed by then; that was a duty that should be given over to her daughters as she aged.
Daughters she might never have, if she couldn’t find a mate of her own breed. The pack leader hadn’t told her what to do, should that come to pass. Die alone, without a pack and family of her own, or risk all on a human? Wolves, like humans, largely mated for life. It would be impossible to take a human mate without telling him the truth, even if she were willing to remain human and bear one cub at a time through a pregnancy that lasted most of a year, instead of a blissfully short two months.
The forest and its hunter threat sounded suddenly far more appealing than it had since the day her pack had died. A short and savage life, to be sure, but a simple one too, without the complications of society or the difficulties of cross-breeding. Some of those thoughts were perhaps reflected in her gaze, because Radcliffe stepped forward, a question in his pose.
For the first time in her own memory, Markéta stepped back, avoiding the confrontation of entanglement.
Radcliffe hesitated, surprise and disappointment marking his stance. Before she could speak, another man’s voice said, “Master Radcliffe. Miss Alvarez.”
Her name had a crack in it, wide as a board; her second suitor was barely a man at all. She had been introduced to him earlier in the season, at another ball so crowded his scent was indistinguishable from the masses even when they had danced. Twice, if she recalled; he was handsome enough, and struck her as a man who would spend his life doing her bidding without ever wondering why. Thomas, his name was; the young Master Alistair Thomas. His father and his fortune were of note, and those combined with his affable nature made him the apple of many a young lady’s eye. It would not endear Markéta to her competition that he had come to the gardens seeking her.
She regretted her retreat from Radcliffe already, and all the more as he took a discreet step back, appointing himself the position of elder and guardian with that single move.
“Miss Alvarez,” Thomas said again, then stopped, evidently flustered by her silence. Markéta curtsied toward him, letting the action take her a half-step nearer Radcliffe. The older man’s posture improved very slightly—there was no room for improvement beyond that; he stood straight and tall as a youth already—and Thomas managed to falter again, even without moving or speaking.
“Master Thomas,” Markéta said. “Do you find the gardens to your liking?”
“Gardens?” He blinked, as though unaware of his surroundings until she mentioned them, then rallied with a smile that understandably set hearts a-flutter. “Truly, Miss Alvarez, their beauty diminishes into nothing when such a flower as yourself stands among them. I should hate to take you from your company,” he added, all polite form that had nothing of truth in it. His expression took Radcliffe in, weighed him, and dismissed him as too old and probably too poor. “But perhaps when you return to the ball you would care to dance.”
He irritated her, for some reason. For dismissing Radcliffe, for intruding on the moment she and the older gentleman had shared. It would never do to scold him for his behavior, but there were other ways to make displeasure known. Markéta turned her gaze full on Radcliffe and spoke as clearly as she ever had. “I should like that very much.”
Thomas was affable, perhaps, but not a fool. He stiffened and took one sharp step in retreat. “Then I shall see you inside.”
Markéta nodded, a cool smile already in place as a breeze carried the scent of his tension to her. Black, tarry, thick: a familiar smell strong enough to taste, lingering at the back of her throat. Her remoteness scampered before shock and an upswell of anger. She ought not have mocked Thomas for the break in his voice, for it was hers now, shrill and unattractive: “Do you smoke, Master Thomas?”
Surprise splashed across his face. “I can’t say that I do. What—” Clarity rolled after surprise, and he bent his head to sniff at the shoulder of his coat. “My father’s tobacco. He’s only just back from France, so perhaps I’d have not smelt so strongly of it when first we met. My apologies, Miss Alvarez, if it offends you.”
“It’s . . . ” Markéta closed her eyes, willing away the memory scent brought, though in truth it was her nostrils that needed closing; vision would never offer her as much information as odors could. A moment passed before she looked on the young man again, ready to trust her voice. “It’s an unusually pungent breed of tobacco, I should say. I imagine I’ve encountered it before. Your father hunts, perhaps?”
Delight lit Thomas’s smile. “He does. Are you a hunt enthusiast, Miss Alvarez?”
“I have an unusual interest in hunting.” So softly spoken, eyes downcast, anything to keep the words from the wild honesty they were. It had been so long, so long since she had taken to four legs and chased rabbit and deer; since she had used her senses and her body the way they were meant to be used. And there was more besides, threat in the softly spoken admission; threat which dull human ears couldn’t be permitted to hear.
Nor did Thomas hear it, his zeal entirely for the topic he believed at hand. “How splendid. That is, in fact, why Father’s been to France. He hunts there; the sport here has grown weak, with the eradication of wolves.”
“Come,” Radcliffe said abruptly. “There have been no wolves in England for centuries, Thomas. Watch your tongue; you’ll alarm the lady.”
“There have been a few,” Thomas corrected, but without aggression. He kept his eager eyes on Markéta, not so much as challenging Radcliffe with his gaze. “It is the story put about that there have been none, but there were, indeed, packs left roaming until only a few years ago. They are startlingly canny, wolves, and seem to go to ground for years at a time. But my family has hunted them for generations, at the throne’s behest. Here, in Scotland, in Wales, even in Ireland, and now in France because there’s nothing left to hunt in the isles.”
“I do not believe it.” Radcliffe huffed, and Thomas finally looked away from Markéta, patience in his bearing.
“Perhaps you would like to visit our manor, Master Radcliffe. There my father keeps pelts from all his hunts, and you will see the newest of them has hardly had time to let dust settle. He prefers the alpha male, but in his last English hunt that beast escaped him. It was old, though, and will have died since then, and he has its mate’s fur instead.”
“I should like to see these furs,” Markéta said distantly. “If I may be so bold as to invite myself along, Masters Radcliffe, Thomas?”
Smugness rushed through Thomas’s posture and scent, and the glance he threw at Radcliffe was triumph embodied. “I shall have my coach fetch you on Thursday next, if it suits?”
“That will do,” Markéta whispered. “That will do very well.”
She wanted so very badly to shed her human form and hunt the hunter. For almost a week she’d waited, keeping herself confined in her townhouse, because to leave was to invite temptation. Even cobbled streets and the sour wind carrying civilization’s stench through the city was close enough to wilderness when she had the temptation of a hunt at hand.
It was temptation she could not risk. The thinking part of her—the part her pack leader had tried so hard to develop—recognized that. A wolf wouldn’t go unnoticed in London’s streets, and even if by chance it should, she dared not meet the hunter who had destroyed her family in her lupine form. His gift was killing wolves. Her only chance lay with striking as a woman.
So she paced before the windows until the servants blushed with discomfort; a well-bred young woman did not stare into the world so hungrily, as if waiting to invite it in to ravish her. As if waiting, she thought, to be loosed on it, so she might savage it. It was preposterous, playing the role of a maiden fair, dressed in soft white muslin and pointed shoes. She would have herself barefoot in red and black, the colors of blood and death, but no, no, no. She had to think, keep her mind clear; the man she went to see would be her family’s murderer, and she the only one left to seek vengeance.
“Mum.” The housemaid’s voice stopped Markéta’s stalking. She swept up her cloak, adjusting it crookedly over her shoulders and throwing off the maid’s attempt to help. The girl’s words followed her, their information already imparted by her arrival in the parlour: “The carriage is here, mum . . . .”
