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“How can you be so sure about…us?”
“Because it is known in the soul.”
“Of the Shifter, but not the human.”
“I take your point,” he said, to her shock, “but your instinctual nature has begun to accept this match. You were anticipating my actions and emotions as early as our waltz, and if you release and let go of your inhibitions, you will know what I know, despite your lack of Shifter nature.” He drew her against his side, and she went willingly. He kissed her on the forehead. “We have our own traditions and nothing need be done in the conventional fashion. When we join, we will be connected in ways beyond any human ceremony. If you wish to forego traditional practice, we needn’t marry if you do not wish it.”
She elbowed her way out of his embrace and stood. “I will not be your mistress.”
He lay on the divan and displayed himself before her like a tray of delicious macaroons. “What of being the mistress of all you survey?”
“Do not play with words with me.” She thought of her uncle and his lies. “Words hold nothing for me.”
“I offer you everything.” He rose, and she could not move away.
“My independence is the natural casualty of this.”
“I wonder if you are confusing independence with authority.” He reached out and touched her face, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Only the queen enjoys greater authority than a duchess, only she has longer reach and greater influence. Were not these the very things you sought when you conceived the idea of establishing your stud?”
“Yes, but the responsibility of being a duchess, under these circumstances—”
“You would be responsible for all those horses. Why not add a few species to the list?”
She moved again, restless, and looked around the room that was bare of everything, of possessions, of even the simplest comforts. She shut the window; no need to let the elements have their way with the place, even if in all likelihood it was no longer hers.
“Having had such brief acquaintance with you—” A growl sounded behind her. “Alfie! Hush!” The hush that ensued was profound. “I cannot take what you have revealed lightly and must have…must have proof that my role here is all that you say.”I must have proof that I am not hallucinating, that this is not all in my mind, she thought.Proof that everything—everything—he says is true.
“Felicity.” Oh, galoshes, the sound of his voice speaking her name nearly had her falling all over him, crying,Yes, yes, yes, anything, anything at all!“We shall talk to my people. Tomorrow, together, you may ask questions to your heart’s content. From now on, you will receive answers.” He rose. “A carriage from Lowell Hall will have arrived. I shall make my way back in my wolfskin if that meets with your approval.”
“Yes, thank you.” It was far too late to make the journey back on Jupiter, and some time alone with her thoughts would not go amiss.
“Then until tomorrow.” He stood before the divan, handsome and virile and imposing, and yet for all that, vulnerable. “I assure you, without doubt, you are myvera amoris. I will choose no other. Ever. I ask that you choose me in return, of your own free will, out of your own desire. I await your decision.” He gave her his leg in a full court bow, as though she were the queen herself, turned, and left.
Eighteen
“So. The mum of Romulus and Remus was Laurentia. She was a wolf that was beloved by the Roman God Ares. He was all about the fighting, and his wife, Venus, she was all about the loving. But Ares changed Laurentia into a woman so’s he could love her, love her, and Venus changed her nature and was vengeful”—Mary Mossett bared her little teeth—“and she cursed the offspring of their union forevermore to beversipelles, to be caught between the fighting and the loving, the human and the wolf.”
Felicity began her investigation into the life and times of a ducal Shapeshifting pack with her little maid. “What a stirring tale, Mary. I wonder how this explains other species?”
“Oh, mum, sure there’s only all kinds of gods getting up to all kinds of shenanigans.” Mary looked happy enough for this to be so, without need for further proof. “We mice have no stories such as this, but I do adore it.”
“It seems unfair to punish the boys so.”
“Wellll…if they hadn’t got transformed, they’d not have the power and the heart to know their one and only mate. If Ares never woulda mated Laurentia, Venus wouldn’ta been so vengeful.” She bared her little teeth again. “But if they hadn’t a mated, then there never woulda been no Shifters…”
“I begin to comprehend the excess of conundrums in this world.”
“What it all comes down to, Your Grace,” Mary continued, “is that Ares was all the one thing, the strength, and Venus was all the other, the heart. And they didn’t meet in the middle. Maybe if they’d met in the middle, they’d have got some of what the other had? And he wouldn’t a needed ol’ Laurentia to make him feel soft and sweet.”
“Were the boys the first wolves who were also men?”
“Yes, madam, and then what happened was”—Mary perched on the edge of a stool—“the moon goddess, Diana, looked down upon the strife and took the boys away from that big mountain they was on and brought them to Rome, where she watched over ’em all their days. And when they did be needing wives, sure she only made sure they was both, woman and wolf, by such means a goddess could make anything she wanted to happen.”
“And must all human women who would wed a Shapeshifter become a, a wolf?”
Mrs. Birks came in carrying a tea tray. “Mary Mossett, are you sitting in Her Grace’s presence? Have you seen to changing them bed linens?” The little mouse jumped up and went to work. “Here you are, ma’am, here you are.” Setting down the tray nearby, the housekeeper poured Felicity a cup of tea. She took the seat Felicity indicated and fussed with the breakfast things.
“Now then.” Mrs Birks smoothed her apron over her lap. “I, myself, am a wolf and well placed to answer any questions you may have as to being mated to one of us, and also to, er, add to any knowledge your dear mother had time to impart before she left this earth.”
