The she-wolf in the Tower

What she-wolves discuss

*Rapunzel*

My father and stepmother have apparently patched things up somewhat, but meals are merely cool instead of frosty.

“He still won’t bed me,” Layla confided during luncheon a few days later. my father was expected but didn’t appear.

I sigh. I dislike monitoring my father’s marital woes, but who else could poor Layla confide in? “The same problem? He thinks you’re shagging Gryphus in your spare time?”

“He says he believes me about Gryphus. But, as you’ve noticed, that doesn’t lead him to sleep at home.”

Just then Willikins enters with a small silver tray. “Oh good,” Layla said. “I expect it’s an invitation to General Rutland’s revue. Mrs. Blossom said she’d invite me to join her box.”

“A letter for Miss Rapunzel,” the butler says, delivering it to me. “A groom will return for your response tomorrow.”

I take the letter. It is a missive fit for an Alpha prince, written on thick paper that smells like sovereigns and sealed with a large blob of red wax.

“Is that from Montrose?” Layla asks, putting down her fork. “I suppose it’s acceptable for a betrothed couple to correspond, but my mother would have…”

She continues talking while I rip open the letter and read it. Then I read it again. ‘Husband your bed’ seems clear enough, though the man has delusions of grandeur. Ninety years old? I snort. Look at my father, and he’s only forty or so.

Montrose’s answer to my point about a mistress is exactly what any she-wolf would want to hear. But ‘pig’s gut’? How would that prevent conception?

It is the fifth and final paragraph that I reread repeatedly. My future spouse does have a sense of humor. I appreciate his sarcasm. In fact, it gives me a startlingly different view of my impending marriage.

“What does he say?” Layla asks, resting her head on her hand. “I have a terrible headache and can’t read, so just tell me.”

“He’s boasting that we’ll dance in the sheets until we’re ninety.”

She smiles, “He can’t be as stuffy as he appeared, then. In fact, he sounds perfect. As unlike your father as can be.”

I fold the letter and put it aside. It isn’t precisely a declaration of love, but since it’s the first letter from my future spouse, I intend to keep it. And to answer it. “Do you suppose perhaps you and Father could have a rational conversation to determine the points of discord in your marriage, and consider how to avoid them from now on?”

Layla raises her head enough to squint at me and then drops it again. “You sounded just as priggish as your father when you said that.”

“Really?” That Isn’t a pleasant thought. “I’m sorry.”

She sighs,“Talking doesn’t work for us. We communicate on a more intimate level. Which means we don’t communicate at all, these days.”

“On that front, do you have any idea what the ‘bawdy hand of the dial’ might signify?”

“Absolutely not. Your father would be unhappy to think your fiancé has written you a coarse letter. Montrose didn’t allude to anything improper, did he?”

I grin. “Are you saying I shouldn’t tell Father that the Alpha is promising the said dial is always set to the prick of noon?”

Layla picks up her head again. “He wrote the word prick? He wrote it down? In black and white? The prick of noon?”

“He did.” I open my letter and read it again. I’m starting to like it more and more. If only I hadn’t had that fever, I might have actually enjoyed meeting the Alpha. Now that I’m perfectly well, it’s vexing to think I might have charmed my future husband by being silent when that’s decidedly not my normal state.

At that moment the door opens and my father walks in.

“I apologize for my tardiness,” he states. “my Luna,” he says, as a footman places a linen cloth in his lap, “are you feeling quite well?”

“I have a headache,” Layla replies. “Jonas, that fiancé you chose for Rapunzel has sent her a rather lewd letter. I think he might be…”

“Not at all,” I cut in. “The Alpha prince of Montrose has written an entirely suitable response to a letter I sent him.”

My father narrows his eyes. “It was inappropriate for you to write the prince. If you desired information, I would have communicated my request.”

“Yes, but Jonas, would he have written to you about pricks and bawdy clocks?” Layla asks.

“What?”

Really, my father is very good at thundering that sort of question. “Montrose was making a point about his nationality,” I explain. “He writes that in Scotland the bawdy hand of the dial is always upon the prick of noon.”

To my surprise, the indignation drains from his face. “He’s quoting Shakespeare,” he says, picking up his fork. “A distasteful sentence spoken by a disreputable character, but Shakespeare, nonetheless.”

“I don’t understand the meaning,” I say.

“Naturally not. Such idioms are not within the purview of a gently-bred young Miss.” He puts down his fork. “I had in mind to mention to you, daughter, that you are likely to encounter a more boisterous atmosphere amongst the Scots than you are accustomed to.”

“So ‘prick’ is a boisterous word?” That isn’t precisely the adjective I would attach to it, but I’m aware that I lack all sorts of important knowledge when it comes to bedding.

“Don’t repeat that word!” my father barks. “It should never pass a females lips.”

Layla raises her head. There’s a touch of mischief in her eyes, the way there used to be in the early days of her marriage. “You’ll be disappointed to hear this, Jonas, but she-wolves quite regularly discuss that particular organ. Depending on the size of the organ under discussion, you might call it a dart, or a needle. Then there’s a pin: used only in truly unfortunate circumstances, of course. But one might discuss a lance.” She sweeps her hair out of her eyes, to better see if she’s getting a rise out of her husband.

And she is.

“This conversation is unforgivably vulgar,” the Alpha says, his voice grating.

“Sword, tool, poleax,” Layla adds, looking even more cheerful. “Rapunzel is to be a married she-wolf now, Jonas. We can’t treat her like a child.”

I groan silently. We’re spiraling right back to the same emotional morass. My father should have married a Puritan.

Luckily, there are signs of life in my fiancé. If I ventured into a spate of jokes about lances, I have the idea that he will laugh. Unfortunately, I might not understand his jokes, especially if he borrows them from Shakespeare. I don’t know much literature. I haven’t had time for it.

“What play is that quote from?” I ask.

“Romeo and Juliet,” my father says.

Perhaps I could take a quick look at the play before replying to Montrose. I’m not much of a reader, if the truth be told.

“Let’s change the subject. I feel truly ill. Do you suppose I’ve caught a wasting illness?” Layla asks. “Perhaps just a small one, something that would make me faint at the sight of a crumpet?”

“You…” The alpha catches himself.

I nimbly take up the conversation before my father says something he should regret, even though he likely won’t. “I’m quite looking forward to meeting Montrose again.” I could have sworn I see stark longing in my father’s eyes when he looks at Layla. But how could that be? He’s always criticizing his mate, picking at her for the kind of unguarded and impulsive comments she can’t help making.

“Naturally, I hope that you and the Alpha will be happy together,” my father says.

“And I hope you have babies!” Layla says. “Lots of babies.”

The silence that follows that sentence is so desperately tense that I find myself leaping to my feet and fleeing the room with little more than a mumbled apology.

Layla and my father certainly loved each other when they married, but then he began to criticize the very qualities he once adored. The worst of it is the sense of disappointment that hangs in the air around them.

Above all, Montrose and I have to avoid that sort of situation. A modicum… perhaps even an excess… of rational conversation is necessary.