Werewolf fairytales

He hates it

2,5 years later

*Colin*

Fred snorts. "If you don’t fall for Lily, you’ll be the only man for miles around who hasn’t."

“She can’t be sixteen,” I say, raising an eyebrow.

“She’s fifteen, the same as I am. She was swanning about Bath in July, flirting with anyone in breeches.”

“Are you hoping she’ll wait for you?”

Fred scowls. “She’s still a horror, if you ask me. I like Grace better, but she’s older than me.” The sun slanting low through the carriage windows catches Fred’s cheekbones and his wildly curling hair, and I think that my brother… especially after he grows into his ears… will be as likely to cause swooning as Lily.

Not that Fred cares. He wants to be an astronomer, and because our parents are quite unconventional in insisting we learn more than how to dance a reel, he spends his time studying planetary motions and the like.

“So what else has changed at home?” I ask, settling back into my corner of the carriage. I feel a bone-deep sense of happiness at the idea of spending a few days at Arbor House.

“Nothing,” Fred says, turning a page. “Alastair made a fool of himself over Lily in December, not that she paid him any mind. He’s had a hopeless infatuation for years now. It was embarrassing to watch.”

“I find the idea of Lily as a heartbreaker extremely hard to imagine,” I say.

“She’s the biggest flirt in five counties, that’s what Father says. Though he likes her.”

“He does?”

“Everyone does.” Fred thinks about it for a moment and then offers, “I think because she’s so pretty, but at the same time, she makes you feel comfortable to be talking to her.”

“A very wise assessment. Is that enough to make every young man in her vicinity fall in love?”

Fred rolls his eyes. “She’s the daughter of an Alpha; everyone knows she has pots of pirate gold for her dowry; and she’s bigger in the front than most girls her age.”

“That would do it.”

“She’ll love you. She’s up for a challenge.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that. At an assembly, she likes to line up all the eligible men and knock them down like ninepins. You weren’t around this year, so she hasn’t knocked you over yet. I’d say that you’ll be desperately in love with her by the end of the first day.”

“Why should I be at risk, since you aren’t?”

“It depends on whether you remember what she’s really like. I shall never forget.”

“And that is?”

“Horrid. Frogspawn horrid.”

I nod. “She might well have changed, though.”

“You never know who you’re really talking to,” Fred says darkly. “You wait. Lily looks as sweet as pie. But underneath? Frogspawn.”

*****

“Are you truly only fifteen years old?” I ask, a few minutes after being charmed by an utterly engaging young lady, who has her mother’s elegance and her father’s looks. “And are you sure that you are Lily?”

She throws me a sparkling glance. But as a dashing young lieutenant encounters many a sparkling young she-wolf, I just grin back at every minxlike look she gives me from under her lashes, until she bursts into laughter.

“Yes, do give up,” I say, answering her unspoken comment. “I know that you have ambitions to be the most sought-after young she-wolf on the marriage mart, but I’m not available.”

Lily’s face, lit with honest laughter, is so much more seductive than her flirtatious glances that I actually feel a flash of attraction. “I shall be,” she confides. “Mother only allowed me to go to select events this year, but next spring I shall make a proper debut.”

“In London?”

“Of course. Grace will be coming as well as she hasn’t debuted yet. Mother is throwing the town house open and there will be a ball held in our honor…” She chatters on and on, but I don’t listen. I just relax into the tinkling prettiness of English conversation. It feels so far from the powdery, red smell of cannon smoke. The way bright red blood falls to the deck and seeps between the boards.

With a start, I pull myself back together. This year, for some reason, I’m having trouble leaving the fighting behind on board ship, where it belongs. I need to buck up and be a man.

“All right,” Lily says, tucking her hand through my arm. “I can tell that you’re not listening.”

“Forgive me,” I say, wondering what I have missed. Her smile is so impish and yet delightful that I smile back, despite myself.

“You are finding me utterly tedious, and why shouldn’t you?”

“I find you delightful.”

“Pshaw!” she says, laughing. “You would have been my first beau in uniform, but I suppose I shall meet some others in the spring. A lieutenant! We’re all so impressed, Colin. Father said that he thinks you’ll be an admiral before you reach thirty, at this rate.”

I make myself smile. “I don’t see Grace anywhere. Will she be joining us?”

“Oh, she’ll be down by the lake,” Lily says. “Probably writing you a letter. Do go see her.”

*Grace*

I am indeed down at the lake, sitting under a willow and working on a portrait of my brother, Brandon. I hear a “halloo” and a lot of shouting behind me, up the hill toward the house, but I don’t move. With so many children milling about, there’s always some sort of excitement brewing.

I have discovered that putting tiny flecks of red where someone doesn’t expect to see them gives depth to a piece of clothing, no matter how tiny. I realize it after putting my face as close as possible to a portrait by Hans Holbein in the gallery.

Holbein’s portrait is of one of my ancestors, a stuffy, bejeweled Alpha. Mine is of a naughty boy, but the effect is the same.

I am so intent on painting that I am unaware someone is approaching until a hand comes down on my shoulder, and a big body comes between me and the water glinting on the lake.

It’s Colin.

I look up at him without a word, cataloguing… the way I always do… the curl of his eyelashes, the deep blue of his eyes, his high cheekbones. The way his thigh muscles bulge as he squats before me. The way his shoulders seem much wider than they have been the last time I saw him. Just like that, my heart begins beating so quickly that I feel a bit dizzy.

“Hello there,” he says, smiling at me. “How’s the best correspondent in the world?”

My cheeks flood with color. “I’m fine. I’m so happy to see you home safe, Colin.” I look him over. “Without an injury. It’s just marvelous!”

“Yes, well,” he says with an odd flatness in his voice. “I’m lucky enough to have all fingers and toes accounted for. What are you painting?”

“I’m making a portrait of Brandon.” I frown down at my paints, trying to figure out what’s wrong with Colin’s voice. Surely it’s a good thing not to be injured?

“Brandon is not my favorite progeny,” Colin says. “You are, darling girl, with all those wonderful letters. There were times when I would have gone stark mad but for thinking about the stories you told me.”

“Are you still blockading the slaver ships?” I ask, wishing that I could think of something clever and funny to say.

Colin sits down next to me. “That I am, Grace. That I am.”

We sit for a while and look out at the lake.

“And do you still hate the fighting part?”

“Your letters help.”

“Do you ever read poetry?” I offer. “Maybe that would help as well.”

He throws me a glance that warms me down to my toes. “You’re overestimating me, Grace. I’m no good with words. I tried to write you back, you know. I sat there and I couldn’t think of anything to say because it was all…” He stops.

“If you hate it that much,” I say, after a moment, “you must leave the navy.”

His jaw tightens. “I can’t give it up. It’s the only thing I know how to do.”

“You could learn something else. There’s no point in doing something you loathe so much.”

There’s silence.

“You do loathe it, don’t you?”

He says nothing. Colin answers my letters so rarely that I find myself reading the few lines he writes over and over. Yet it feels to me as if his anguish stretches all the way from the coast of Africa to England.

“Does your friend Philip Drummond hate it as much as you do?”

“No.”

“What’s Philip like?”

“Much more cheerful than I am,” Colin says, shooting me a glance from under his lashes. “He likes excitement.” A little shudder goes through him.

I see that with a sinking heart. “You must resign your commission, Colin. Your father could get you out.”

“There’s no way out, Grace. Not without dishonor.”

“Dishonor is better than death,” I insist. Rather than look at him, I stare at the drying paint on my brush.

There’s more silence, the only sound the lapping of lake water. “They’ve all died around me,” he says, finally. “Everyone but myself and Philip. They call us the golden twins, because no matter what happens on board, we walk off without a scratch.” He reaches out his hand before us. “Not even a scratch, Grace. Do you see that?”

I think it’s the most beautiful hand I’ve ever seen: large and indubitably male, a strong hand. It bears no resemblance to the pampered hands of the boys I’ve met. “I am glad to see you haven’t injuries,” I say, giving it emphasis.

“It’s a curse.”

A big black swan drifts up to shore. “Don’t look him in the eyes,” I warn. “He’s cross most of the time. Your father says he’s a devil in disguise. If you meet his eye, he’ll get out of the water in order to snap at our toes.”

“As you told me in a letter,” Colin says, smiling his lopsided smile. “I take it this is Bub, short for Beelzebub, the Prince of Darkness himself?”

“Why is it like a curse to walk out of a battle unwounded?” I ask. It has to be asked, even though my stomach clenches into knots at the idea of Colin’s being wounded.

“There’s all this smoke, and when it clears, the men are dead. All around you. Or crying.” His voice is hollow and utterly calm. “Dying men cry for their mothers, Grace. They do. There’s nothing you can do for them, but make promises you can’t keep.”

“That’s awful,” I whisper.

“You must wonder why I don’t write you more often. I’m not good with words. I use up all I have, writing those mothers.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. And then I come up on my knees, put my palette to the side, and pull at him until my arms can go around his shoulders. “I’m so sorry.”

He resists for one moment, and then gives in, arms going around my waist, holding me tightly against his big body.

It’s a moment I never forget. The sun is hot on my back, and because I’m on my knees, and he’s seated, my head is slightly above his. I try not to think about the fact that his shoulders and his back are muscled because he is hurting. Even if there aren’t any wounds on the outside, he is injured.

After a while, he pulls away and looks at me. His eyes are the dark blue of the ocean just at twilight. “You are quite special,” he says, his voice deep and low. He puts a finger on my lips.

I feel that touch to the bottom of my toes.

Then he stands. “Would you like to return to the house now, Miss Grace?” He holds out a hand to me.

I accept his help and stand, trying to figure out what it all means. I love him. I feel it in every part of my being. It would break my heart if he died; I might never recover.

But I can’t say that to him, and he doesn’t seem to share my feelings.

“I understand that you and your sister are to debut next season?” Colin’s voice has turned coolly pleasant, the voice of a family friend.

Does he like me? Does he care at all?

When he leaves a few days later, I still have no idea. So I take up my pen and begin a letter to him about the escapades of the two youngest Garous, who have decided to run away from home. I write nothing about myself, or the golden twins, or the curse.

He doesn’t reply to my next two letters and sends only a note after the third. From the cursory letters he sends, I have the feeling that he skims mine and tosses them aside. And yet, stupidly, I can’t stop writing and rewriting my descriptions, sometimes staying up all night working on a miniature watercolor to slip into a packet. I have always signed my letters, From Arbor House… Miss Grace. But one night in a fit of rebellion, I changed my signature. Your friend, Miss Grace. He sends one of his infrequent replies to that one. It’s only three lines long, but I take it as a sign he approves.