The Passion (26 page)

But Alexander, instead of rising to his own defense, merely smiled. "Yes, isn't it?"

And there it was: a storm quickly risen and just as quickly gone, sublimely typical of the mercurial temperaments of their kind. Tessa, however, who understood neither the argument nor its unlikely resolution, could not forget so easily.

When they linked arms to continue their strol , Tessa turned to go back to the house. They did not even notice she was gone.

Chapter Twelve

Tessa was a familiar sight around the grounds and wherever she went she met with an attitude which, while it was far from deferent or even welcoming, was at least tolerant. Perhaps if she had been able to appreciate how truly unusual—even outrageous

—it was that she be al owed within the gates at al , she would have been more understanding. As it was, she was constantly on her guard, and never completely comfortable unless she was with Alexander or Elise.

It was the same in Alexander's house, of course.

The difference was that there were human servants there and human tradesmen and human associates of Alexander's who visited regularly, yet they only made Tessa feel more isolated. None of them shared her secret. None of them would understand

—or perhaps even believe her—if she shared it with them, and she had long since realized that she would never tel anyone else. To tel a secret, her mother used to say, diminished both the secret and the tel er. Tessa understood at last what she had meant… and, oddly enough, she thought she understood why her father had kept his secret from al except a wide-eyed child who was too young to know the difference between truth and fairy tale.

The result was that Tessa was not only alone but lonely. She had no friends, no confidantes, no one with whom to explore her feelings or share her confidences or from whom she could seek advice.

When she was with Alexander none of that mattered. He fil ed her hours with such chal enge, such excitement, that she could not imagine wanting more. But when he was away she felt her isolation acutely.

If asked whether she was happy at the Palais Devoncroix, she would not have given an unqualified yes. She was awestruck, fascinated, humbled, intrigued. But she was also often uneasy, always uncertain, sometimes even frightened. She would never get used to sights such as she had seen that afternoon—the naked man and the wolf running across the tennis lawn. Nor could she grow accustomed to the guards who ceremoniously accompanied Elise everywhere she went, often in wolf form. The otherworldly beauty of the guests at the Palais, their odd behavior, their narrow-eyed gazes, their habit of speaking of her as if she weren't there… al of it combined to remind her she was an intruder on perilous ground.

Yet she did not want to be sent away. She did not want to be left at the Lyons house without Alexander. She did not want to be left alone again in a strange place with nothing but the company of creatures who found her alternately amusing and annoying and who remained as baffled by her as she was by them. She did not want to be dismissed in the way one would send a child to bed before the adult party started.

She spent the afternoon preparing her arguments.

Alexander, she knew from experience, could be intractable when he had made up his mind, but Elise was more reasonable. Whether this was a difference between male and female or a simple quality of leadership, she did not know, but she
did
know it was in Alexander's best interests to please his queen. It remained for her, then, only to persuade Elise to speak more strongly on her behalf.

Tessa LeGuerre was twenty years old, and human.

Life was very simple to her.

Only on rare occasions did Tessa dine alone, for if Elise wasn't making a point of showing her off before guests, Alexander joined her, claiming that to dine alone was an affront against the very nature of civilization. There were times, however, when the protocol that governed them, odd as it sometimes seemed to Tessa, required that both Alexander and Elise be present for a function at which Tessa was not invited. She was proud to display what she considered a very mature and forgiving attitude on those occasions.

She was bitterly disappointed that night, however, when Alexander sent late word by a very smug and deprecating Gault that Tessa was to have supper in her room. If there was an apology or an explanation accompanying the message, Gault did not share it.

Nor did he deign to satisfy her repeated questions as to how Alexander was otherwise occupied, although it was clear he knew, and he upbraided her sharply for her curiosity—something he never would have dared to do in Alexander's presence.

To her credit, Tessa did not deliberately plot to be disobedient. Alexander's comment about her being an "embarrassment" to Elise stil stung more than she liked to admit, and she wouldn't have intentional y done anything to prove him right. She assumed Elise had important dinner guests and Alexander was busy either entertaining them or trying to impress them—two occupations to which werewolves seemed to devote a great deal of energy. Now, when she needed al of Alexander's goodwil , was not the time to annoy him by making a fuss because he left her to dine alone.

She waited until her tray was brought up and the dishes laid out on the smal table that was set in the curtained alcove of the window embrasure. She nibbled at the bread, stirred the consomme, broke the fish into pieces with her fork. She drank half a glass of wine, and tasted the chicken. She parted the curtains to look out upon the dark summer garden.

Only it wasn't entirely dark. A clear third-quarter moon was bright in the sky, reflecting shades of royal blue in high-floating clouds, dancing off the cascading fountains and shimmering statuary. The night-blooming plants were woven throughout the garden in an intricate, complex pattern which, Alexander had told her, was designed to appeal to werewolf senses and which could be ful y appreciated only by them. The alabaster blossoms were lush and fragrant amidst the green satin foliage. Almost any time of the night Tessa could expect to find the garden occupied by admirers, most of them in human form but occasional y in wolf. For this reason she never ventured into the garden alone after dark.

But tonight the garden was deserted.

Tessa rose from the table and pul ed the curtain back, searching the landscape. Al was stil . She unlatched the window and stepped outside.

She stood close to the window for a time, the light from the room spil ing out to il uminate the night around her. The ground was spongy beneath her slippered feet and damp with dew. Jasmine scented the air. In the distance she heard something faintly, like the cal of a bird. Nothing else stirred.

And then she heard a voice. "Elise!" It was Alexander's voice, and he was laughing, just beyond the garden but not too far away for Tessa to feel the relief of recognition. She stepped away from the window and started down the moonlit garden path.

A shape streaked past her, cutting a diagonal across her path, causing her to shrink back with a cry choked off in her throat. It was a blond wolf, sleek and powerful and fast—so fast that Tessa barely recognized the form for what it was and then it was gone, exploding into the shadows only to appear a moment later caught in the glow of moonlight as it was about to spring over a high hedge. Muscles rippled, limbs stretched, fur glistened as the wolf seemed poised for just a moment in mid-flight, caught between heaven and earth upon the wings of the moon. And then it was over the hedge.

On the other side of the hedge there were voices, muted exclamations and sounds of revelry. And then there was another sound: a howl, a cry of power and passion and absolute triumph. The voices were drowned out by the wolf cal , while from the deep woods and far meadows, the hil s and val eys of far-off countryside, there came an echo of answering wolf cries. Far away, farther away, closer now and closer stil . The pack was coming home.

Tessa's instinct was to run, to turn back toward the light and flee frantical y toward it. Yet for those few seconds when terror had her in its grip and she might actual y have done so, she couldn't move.

And then the thril descended on her, the sound of that cal , so close, so fierce, so powerful. Alexander was behind that hedge. Had the cal been his?

As she stood there, uncertain and undecided, there was an explosion of movement and laughter, and before she could react they burst into the garden—

four or five of them, naked, playful, tumbling and chasing one another like children. At the forefront was Elise.

Tessa had never before seen a naked woman. And of al the shocking, incredible things she
had
seen in the past year—that she had seen this night alone—

this seemed the most appal ing. Elise, the graceful, regal queen, the masterpiece of composure and dry wit, without her clothing was long-limbed, svelte and tight-muscled, her body as slim and hairless as a child's. There was no softness around her abdomen or her waist; her buttocks and thighs were firm. Her hair cascaded in wild disarray around her shoulders and down her back, catching in the sweat on her face and breasts. Naked as she was, her power was a primal thing, fiercely seductive and blatantly confident, and Tessa knew without another moment's thought that the blond wolf who had streaked by earlier had been none other than Elise Devoncroix.

It al unfolded before her in a flash of voluptuous abandon, a portrait of hedonism spun on moonlight and bare flesh. Elise outraced the others by no more than a body's length, but it was clear she could have doubled the distance had she wanted.

Alexander was closest behind her and in an instant, with a mighty spring, he dove for her feet, catching her ankle, dragging her to the ground. She gave a high squeal that was more delight than alarm, a singularly human sound of girlish fakery, and they rol ed over and over in the soft grass, naked limbs entwined, laughing, gasping.

Another male caught up to them and launched himself at Alexander. The three of them became a tangle then, wrestling and rol ing, and the sounds that came from the melange were only semihuman

—throaty growls and grunts and half-verbal snaps of warning and victorious laughter. Alexander pushed the chal enger away and he began to wrestle with another male. Elise made as though to run again, but Alexander caught her by the waist and, stil on his knees, drew her to him. He pressed his face into her abdomen and she caught up handfuls of his hair, laughing like a child as she lifted them to the breeze and let them fal about his shoulders again.

And that was the tableau Tessa would carry with her for a long, long time. Alexander, naked in the moonlight, broad shoulders glistening, lustrous hair ruffled by the breeze, his hands cupping Elise's perfectly formed buttocks, lifting his face in laughter to hers. Now she wrapped one leg around his neck and now he dragged his tongue up the length of her thigh, burying his face in the apex of her legs as though to drink in the scent there. She laughed and spun away from him but circled him again and, dropping to her knees behind him, playful y sank her teeth into his shoulder. He caught her hair and turned to face her, and she framed his face with her hands and looked long into his eyes. Alexander held her gaze. She smiled and their faces came together, not kissing, merely nuzzling. Then Elise dropped her head to his lap and, her eyes glinting up at him wickedly, took his genitals into her mouth.

And then someone exclaimed, "This is precisely why we should not al ow humans at the Palais!"

And after that one voice broke the spel , everything seemed to Tessa to move in slow, jerky motion, to be distorted and out of step, like silhouettes cut from the fabric of another reality. Alexander glanced at her mildly and remarked, "It's only Tessa."

Another voice said, "I suppose this means we'll have to kil her. What a pity. I was just becoming accustomed to her scent."

Laughter.

Elise said, getting graceful y to her feet, "Don't frighten the child. We shouldn't have been in the garden. And that, I think…" She gave a flirtatious toss of her head toward Alexander. "Was not my fault. Come, I smel mutton. Are we starving?"

There was more babbling, more voices, more movement. But Tessa did not remain. She turned and stumbled back up the garden path, through the window and into her room, then blindly into her dressing room where, she col apsed on the floor and began to vomit into the basin.

Alexander came to her an hour or so later. He was sleek and wel groomed, the satiny hair with its blaze of platinum brushed to a soft sheen about his shoulders, his strong lean body now covered by a ruby smoking jacket and light woolen trousers. But Tessa could see the shape of his legs through the trousers, and smel the musk of the night on his skin.

Tessa had bathed and changed into a freshly pressed flannel nightgown, and the chambermaid had been in to clean the room and remove the supper dishes. Nonetheless, Alexander paused when he entered the room, his nose lifted to the air, and sniffed. "You've been il ," he observed. "Was the fish bad? I'll have someone speak to the chef."

Tessa turned away. Her voice was dul as she replied, "I'm not il ."

"Nonsense! You're as white as marble and just as cold." He came over to her, his voice softened with concern. "Eh,
chérie—"

She jerked away and crossed the room quickly when she felt his hands rest upon her shoulders, and his murmur changed to an exclamation of impatience. "What a bothersome girl you are! Now what are you brooding about?"