Castle of the Wolf (30 page)

Like Bearskin in the fairy tale, Fenris had grown claws that frightened people away. Yet underneath the ugly bearskin he was still a man, and his goodness shone through. Time and time again, Fenris had unwittingly given her proof of his good heart. Now she had to convince him it was time to shed the bearskin. And the claws.

She reached out to stroke his hair.

My wolf.

She remembered the old tale of the woman who made clothes for the wolf-man until he came to her hearth and put his head into her lap.
It’s time to come into the warmth, my wolf. Don’t you know it’s cold outside? But my house is warm and there’s a place for you there. Waiting for you.
Cissy leaned forward and pressed her lips to Fenris’s forehead. “Just as I’ll be waiting for you, my darling,” she murmured.

A sound from the door made her whip her head around.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,
gnädige Frau
,” Johann said, looking abashed. His face was gaunt, and the skin around his eyes smudged with fatigue. It reminded Cissy of the valet’s loyalty to her husband. For more than twelve years, Johann had served his master, and now he, too, would be worried about Fenris. She gave him a smile.

“It’s all right. What is it?”

He closed the door behind him and came nearer. For a long moment he stared down at Fenris. Something like pain flittered over his face. “He looks so…”

“I know.” Cissy clasped her hands over the book in her lap. “As if all his vitality has been snuffed out.” She swallowed hard. She remembered how he had moved in her arms that one night. How he had risen above her, dark and magnificent, his body brimming with energy. And so alive.

Dear God, so alive.

Cissy drew an unsteady breath. “It hurts to see him like this.” She blinked the moisture from her eyes before she raised them to his valet. He regarded her gravely, then surprised her by taking her hand and pressing it briefly.

“Don’t worry,
gnädige Frau
. My master has survived worse than this. And the doctor said he will recover soon, did he not?”

“Yes. Yes, you’re right.” She sniffed, then wiped the back of her hands across her eyes. “Of course.” She gave him a watery smile. “Why have you come, Johann?”

“
Gnädige Frau
.” He dropped to his knees in front of her. “Do you remember the other…
accident
?” He gave the word a peculiar emphasis. “The incident on the staircase?” He searched her face.

A slither of ice whispered over Cissy’s back. The accident which hadn’t been an accident. She bit her lip and nodded.

“You saw how the wood broke, didn’t you, my lady?”

“The break which wasn’t a break,” she said softly.

“No wood breaks that cleanly.” Johann’s gaze was intense. “Think about it,
gnädige Frau
. Wouldn’t it have been perfect: a lonely lane, a shying horse—who knows what might have spooked it?”

The candlelight danced over the walls and made strange shadows flicker in and out of existence in the corners of the room. Very slowly Cissy said, “A shot in the air leaves no trace. A simple accident. Accidents happen.”

“Whereas a shot into a man’s head or chest—”

“Doesn’t look like an accident at all,” she finished for him. She caught her breath. “Do you think…?”

Johann bowed his head. “With your permission, in the morning I would like to go back to the place where we found the master.”

She licked her suddenly dry lips. Who would want to kill her husband? “Go back? But a shot in the air leaves no trace…”

He looked up. “But a man standing on the muddy ground in the forest does.” He raised his brows.

A murderer lurking between bushes? Fenris’s daily tour of the land was well known, after all. If he had not survived the fall, nobody would have known of the shot. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.” Johann must discover the truth.

The valet stood and bowed his head once more. “Thank you,” he said. He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat. “There is another thing. I found this while taking off the clothes the master wore today.”

He held out a card, and Cissy froze. On the card, a little woman leaned nonchalantly against a green table, a secret smile on her lips.

The queen of spades
. The card she had given him when she had confronted him that time in his study, when he had claimed their night of passion had meant nothing to him.

Her hand clutched her throat. “Where…”

“He carried it in the inner pocket of his jacket.” The valet regarded her with kind eyes. “I thought it must be something precious to him.”

The queen of spades?

Precious?

Tears welled up in Cissy’s eyes. “Thank you, Johann,” she said huskily, and took the card from him. “Thank you. I will give it back to him.”

He searched her face, then smiled. “I thought you would,
gnädige Frau
. Good night.” With that, he bowed and left the room.

Cissy clutched the card.

Something precious.

Her heart pounded in her ears. With trembling fingers, she turned the card into the light and watched the hidden picture appear: the man who sat between the queen’s bare legs and licked her. Just like Fenris had done.

Something precious.

Cissy looked from the card to her sleeping husband. The wave of tenderness which swamped her was too much, too intense. Teats trickled over her cheeks. She cried a bit, then laughed and wiped the tears away. “My clever wolf,” she whispered. “So you’ve already come to my hearth and hoped I wouldn’t notice.” She sniffled. “You think you’re such a clever devil, don’t you? But I’ve found you out.”
And this time I will never let you go. You won’t be able to divert me with one of your silly smokescreens, either, no matter how much you should huff and puff. No, this time we are going to look at the heart of the matter.

Smiling, she threw the queen of spades a kiss, then opened her book and read until it was time to rouse him. Grumbling, he opened his eyes. When he saw who was leaning over him, his expression darkened. “Whatever are
you
doing here?” His glare was magnificent, yet his croaking voice spoiled the effect.

“Hm, let me see.” Cissy pretended to ponder while she fetched him something to drink. “You are my husband. You received a nasty bump on the head. Now you’re bedridden and need some loving tender care.” She turned to him and raised her brows. “Whatever do you
think
I’m doing here?”

Dark color splashed his cheeks. She decided to ignore the accompanying scowl, and held out the cup.

“What is it?” he asked suspiciously.

Cissy rolled her eyes. Really! You would have thought he was a boy of six, not a grown man. Outwardly, she smiled. “Chamomile tea.”

If possible, his scowl darkened. “Do you really think I’d drink something that looks like horse piss?” he snapped—or rather, croaked. He huddled into the bedlinen.

Cissy tapped her foot on the floor. The demon wolf was sharpening his claws again? It would do him no good. She narrowed her eyes and shoved the cup at him. “Drink it! Or do I have to hold your nose and pour the stuff down your throat?”

It gave her great satisfaction to see his eyes widen. It was an even greater satisfaction to watch him drink the tea, even if he kept muttering under his breath. When he was done and she had put the cup away, she sat down on the chair beside the bed once more. While she carefully smoothed her skirts, she watched him from under lowered lashes. The bedcovers had slipped down to reveal a large discoloration on his shoulder. Her heart clenched with a longing to put her lips there, to kiss it all better.

Taking a deep breath, she took the queen of spades from her book and held it out to him. “Johann found this in your jacket.”

He glanced at it. His eyes rose from the little queen to Cissy’s face. Abruptly he turned his head away, but not before she saw his expression, his desperate yearning and vulnerability.

The cords in his throat moved as he swallowed. “I must have found it somewhere, picked it up, put it in my pocket and forgotten all about it,” he murmured, still keeping his eyes averted.

Cissy stared at him. She looked down at the card, watched how the candlelight danced over its surface and revealed short glimpses of the queen and her lover. She looked back at her husband, at the angry bruise on his shoulder.

“You’re such a liar, Fenris,” she finally said.

“What?” He jerked around, coming half up on his elbow, and stared at her, his eyes a little wild. He breathed heavily, as if he had run for miles. But when she reached out to touch him, he flinched as if she would strike him.

“No.”

“Fenris—”

“
No!
” He fell back onto the bed and groaned a little as his body protested. “No.” He threw his arm over his face, shielding his eyes.

Cissy watched how his chest moved up and down with his harsh breath. She remembered what Johann had said:
“I thought it must be something precious to him.”

“You did not keep it by accident,” she said quietly.

He laughed, a painful, rasping sound, muffled against his arm. Or perhaps it had been a sob.

“Don’t you understand?” he asked. He took the arm away to look at her. “Why do you still not…” He paused, and his eyes glittered feverishly. “God! Don’t you know how
unworthy
I feel? The last woman I lay with was a whore, no less, because my betrothed…” He gave a bitter snort. “Ten years ago I last lay with a woman, and she was a goddamned whore. And even
she
couldn’t hide her disgust at the sight of my body.” Pain spasmed through his features, and he closed his eyes as if he could no longer endure the sight of her. “Don’t you know how I wish…how I wish…” His Adam’s apple moved convulsively. The desperation that laced his voice cut into her heart. “How I wish,” he continued in a hoarse whisper, “that I could have met you before this happened.” His fist struck the stump hiding underneath the blankets. “When I was still whole and sound—a man instead of a cripple.” His voice broke.

Cissy thought her heart would surely break, too.

How could he consider himself less than a man? That his body could repel her?

“Fenris…”

He gave a heartwrenchingly unsteady laugh. His face briefly contorted before he looked at her again. “That foolish King of Dwarves,” he whispered. “What right does he have to court the Fairy Princess?” Wetness clung to his eyelashes.

Dear God, why hadn’t she understood earlier? He was utterly convinced he was doomed to roam the ramparts of the castle like the beast in a fairy tale, without any hope of redemption.

Her eyes were stinging as she slid from the chair onto the bed. “Fenris…” She touched his shoulder, the crown of his head, desperate to soothe his inner torment. “Oh, Fenris, darling, don’t you see? Life is not a fairy tale. We are not kings of dwarves or fairy princesses—”

His expression hardened, and he twisted away from her touch. “And yet I will only drag you down into my darkness, and that I won’t do, Celia. I won’t!” His gaze roamed her face. As if he couldn’t help himself, his hand rose and he ran the back of his forefinger down her cheek. “Don’t cry, my sweet,” he whispered. “It is better for you. I have already wrecked the lives of my parents. And my brother… Do you know how close we once were? When we were still children, he always trailed after me like a little puppy dog…” He swallowed hard. “And then I went and destroyed everything. How I must disgust them.” His voice wavered. “I disgust myself. So it is only fitting, is it not, that I should have destroyed myself, too, and been shot into a cripple.” He stared at her, his eyes very green.

Cissy’s breath caught in her throat. “No, Fenris, no.” She leaned forward and cupped his face in her hands. “How can you even think such a thing? You don’t disgust your parents, and you most certainly don’t disgust me.” She shook her head. “Nothing could be further from the truth.
This
”—she put her hand on his wounded leg, squeezed it through the blanket and did not care that tears streamed down her face and dropped onto him—“has shaped you into the man you are today, the man I fell in love with. It doesn’t make you less. It makes you
more
. So much more, Fenris.”

He searched her face. “What did you say?” he whispered. Blindly, he groped for her hand. His fingers slipped into hers and clung. And more strongly: “What did you say?”

Cissy blinked away her tears. With her free hand she stroked his face over and over, wishing to erase his bewildered look. She leaned over him and pressed a light kiss onto his forehead. “I love you, Fenris. I love you very much. I want you very much. There hasn’t been a day in the past months when my body didn’t long for yours.”

He stared at her for a long moment, then his eyes filled with tears. Reaching out to her like a drowning man might, he turned over until his head came to rest in her lap. Then he broke down. Cissy slung her arms around him while violent sobs wracked his body. She stroked his hair and back, rubbing softly between his shoulder blades.

“Hush, sweeting, hush,” she crooned to him. “Everything will be all right.”

He tightened his arms around her waist and held on to her as if she were his anchor in a stormy sea. And indeed, a terrible storm raged in him as all his pain and despair, all his insecurities burst forth for her to see. Yet her loving touch and voice had the power to lead him through the storm into safe harbor.

When he finally calmed down, he turned his head a little to the side. “God knows I’m not good enough for you,” he said quietly.

“Hush!” Cissy lightly clapped his arm in admonishment. “What rubbish you talk, dearheart.” She leaned over him, sheltering him with her body. She kissed his hair, his temple, then put her cheek on his head, mindful of his bandage. “Don’t you know you’ve been my hero ever since you rescued me from that bat?” she said lightly.

He gave a choked laugh, just as she had hoped. “Oh yes, let’s not forget the bat. Does it count for killing a dragon, do you think?”

“I’m sure it does.” She smiled against his hair. “Bats have wings, don’t they?”

He laughed again, then drew his arms from her waist and turned onto his back. Cissy straightened to give him room. With his head still resting in her lap, he looked up at her, his face for once stripped bare of all masks. A rush of tenderness filled her with warmth, and she gently wiped at the traces of tears on his cheeks. He took her hand and placed a kiss into her palm.