Face the forest alone, when Mowbray and his Guardians might be out there, hunting her, or take her chances with Ezra, Tej, and Rhys? At the least, it would keep her fed and relatively safe for the next few hours.
She would decide what followed when the time was upon her.
7
It was a simple meal of roast rabbit and foraged greens and berries, held in broad leaves. No tea. No pastries or toasted bread with coddled eggs. Even so, it far outpaced any breakfast Jessica had ever had in her cramped little rooms, or the coffee house down the road. For one thing, she wasn’t alone as she ate. Typically, she usually endured miserly solitude. Even though they didn’t speak during their meal, the silence held no strain or awkwardness. The men seemed content to simply be, and she could be with them.
She sat beside the fire, gnawing on a bone with as much delicacy as she could manage, given that she was ravenous and napkins were in short supply. Ezra, Tej, and Rhys sat on the other side of the fire. They concentrated on their meal with the focus of hungry men in their prime.
She kept sneaking glances at them, at all of them, watching their teeth sink into the meat, or their fingers plucking some cress or a wild bilberry and popping them into their mouths.
“Surprised we take our meat cooked?” Tej asked wryly, catching her staring.
“She thinks we’d eat like wolves, too,” Rhys noted. “All slobber and fangs.” His tongue came out to carefully lick his fingers.
“I believe no such thing.” She ran her hands over the grass to clean them. “Though the setting and the company are unfamiliar to me.”
“Little experience breaking your fast in the woods with a trio of highwaymen,” Tej said.
“Who are more than ordinary highwaymen,” she added.
At this, Tej merely shrugged. “Is there any such thing as an ordinary highwayman? We’ve all got tales.”
“And you?” she pressed. “What’s your tale?”
His eyes flashed dark and cautious.
“I’ve proven that I’m not aligned with the law.” Quietly, she said, “Not anymore.”
“Tell me, then, what you are aligned with.”
She looked down at her hands. They were capable hands, not a lady’s, able to speedily load and fire a pistol, or form a fist and punch without fear of breaking her bones. She dressed herself without the benefit of a maid, and paid for her own lodgings and food, dependent on no one but herself.
“Survival,” she said after a moment. “I’ll do what I must to ensure it.”
Tej raised one of his thick eyebrows. “Including turning in three highwaymen for a reward?”
“If money was my concern,” she snapped, “I wouldn’t be here with you now. With any of you.”
She looked at each of them in turn: Tej, watching her guardedly; Rhys, contemplatively gnawing on a bone, offering little of his own thoughts; and Ezra, with the glint of wary humor in his eyes.
“I left that path,” she went on. “But the road ahead is unknown and covered in brambles. Apologies if I’m not quite agile with an answer as to what lies ahead for me.”
Tej stared at her for a long while. Then, “My father, Jayesh, is a lascar. He was a lascar. After a time, he decided to stop sailing and settled down to raise a family in Portsmouth. We—my father, my mother Sarah, my sisters Nitya and Meera—ran a woolen-draper shop together. It was hard work, and they did their best to provide for us. The shop did well enough. There was always plenty to eat, and new clothes, and the family around the supper table. We were…happy.”
“What changed?” she asked softly.
“I did.” His voice was tight. “Lycanthropy starts as a boy is moving into manhood. My family didn’t know what was happening to me. I didn’t either. But it was terrifying, and they did their best to protect me from those who wouldn’t understand, and hurt me. Already we had to tread with some degree of caution, because of the color of my father’s skin, and my sisters’ and mine, as well. But when I began to change into a werewolf, it made us into targets. I endangered us.”
She shot glances toward Rhys and Ezra, who listened to their comrade with quiet but attentive expressions.
“What happened?” She spoke carefully.
He spread his hands. “I ran. I ran to keep them safe. The years after that…” His gaze turned even more distant. “Dark ones. I was always…” he swallowed, “…chased by guilt, that I had left my family. But I did what I had to in order to survive, and to protect them. So, I stayed away. And it was a hard life. When you spend a night a month in the form of a giant wolf, you can’t stay anywhere too long, lest anyone get suspicious. Finding regular employment…it’s a challenge.”
“So, you turn to crime,” Jessica said without judgment.
“It’s what some werewolves must do to feed and clothe and house ourselves,” Tej answered.
