Werewolf fairytales

A pirate in his home

*Fenrir*

I keep telling myself that I won’t recognize my own mate. There’s something swashbuckling about that notion, I think, something that takes the edge off the way I feel. Not that I can put into words precisely how I feel, other than that my stomach gets this rocky only in the most choppy of seas.

By the time my hired carriage trundles up the rather long road that leads to my house… a house I’ve never seen but had apparently acquired eight years ago… and finally stops, I would describe myself as irritable. Pirates don’t have nerves, damn it.

Out of the carriage, I adjust the ruffled linen at my wrists. I have dressed particularly magnificently, in a coat of Prussian blue with silver buttons. My breeches fit like a glove, and my boots are made by Hoby. Inasmuch as I have to limp in the door, I reckon I might as well look as good as possible doing it.

It seems I own a comfortable, sprawling mansion, which stands on a small hill looking over Somerset countryside. Its mellow brick has weathered to a rosy orange. In the distance, I can see fruit orchards and fields spreading out to the sides. It’s a working farm, then, not the pack of an idle man. It’s large and imposing, but not extravagantly so. As unlike the house I grew up in… the country estate of a hogh Alpha fiercely aware of his place in the hierarchy of the peerage… as could be imagined. This is a house designed for a family, though of course that is not the case.

Maybe Daisy has brought her family to live with her? I vaguely recollect that she has a great number of siblings. Merchants generally have many children.

Shark comes around the carriage, holding my cane. “Would you like me to summon the butler so he can have you carried in on a litter?”

I glance at him. “Stuff it, Shark.”

Doesn’t it say it all that I can’t make it to my own bloody front door without a cane? For all its mahogany topped with a dull ruby, and hiding in its innards a vicious blade, in the end it’s an old man’s stick.

Pride goeth before a fall, I think, hobbling toward the front door. And damn it, I have been proud. I’ve racketed around the world, collecting pirate’s booty and investing it. Rather surprisingly, money makes money. It turns out that timber makes money, as does spice, and birdcages, and whatever else Fennec and I felt like picking up and shipping to a different part of the world.

But then a pirate slit my cousin’s throat and almost killed him, and the same man slashed my thigh. And James realized he was still in love with his mate, and decided to return to England. There is no such realization in store for me, since I have known my wife for precisely one day. But I do know that a pirate with a game leg is a soon-to-be-dead pirate, which is just as important an insight.

I’ve come home because I can’t think of another bloody thing to do. I have traveled the world. I have made a fortune eight or nine times over. Nothing left but waiting for the grave, I think grimly.

As I stump my way to the bottom of the steps, the front door swings open. I straighten, expecting a butler to materialize, but the shadowy entryway appears to be empty.

I glance at Shark with a raised eyebrow. Shark fits into the sleepy green landscape around us about as well as a mastiff at a tea party.

“Best not go in,” he says now. “Might be an ambush.”

I snort and haul myself up the steps. If my leg doesn’t improve, I’ll probably find myself killing people just to relieve my own irritation.

The entryway is deserted. It’s large and gracious, with a marble staircase that curves gently up and then to the left. Not bad, I think. But where on earth are the servants?

A noise comes from somewhere behind us, just a scrabble. We haven’t been retired from the sea long enough to dull our reflexes; Shark draws his dagger in one smooth movement, swinging about to put his back against the wall. I fling the door shut, poised to unsheathe the blade concealed in my cane.

A small boy has been crouching behind that door. A boy clutching a wooden sword and wearing an eye patch.

After fourteen years at sea, I know a pirate when I see one. This one’s visible eye is wide, and his chest rises and falls with gusty breaths.

I haven’t been around children much… ever. I stand staring down at the boy for a moment before I snap, “For the Goddess sake, Shark, put your blade away.”

The boy can’t be more than five or six, and he’s clearly scared out of his wits. But his lips firm and he pushes himself to his feet. His knees are scabbed and smeared with dirt, but he’s obviously well-born.

“Mama won’t want you here,” he says, just as I’m trying to figure out whether I should say Ahoy, mate.

“But we’re pirates,” I say, suppressing a grin. “She must like them, since she has you.”

Cautiously, the boy slides an inch or two to his right, obviously planning to make a run for it.

I jerk my head at Shark, who steps back. But the child doesn’t move any further. He’s a brave little thing.

“Where’s your butler?” I ask.

“We haven’t got one,” the boy replies. “We don’t need one, because no one comes to call except our friends.” His eyes narrow a bit. “You aren’t friends, so you shouldn’t be here.”

There must be some mistake, I think. Is the address my agent gave me incorrect? Though that’s hard to understand; I can see the card in my mind’s eye: Arbor House, Somerset.

“Is this Arbor House?” I ask.

“No, it isn’t!” the boy shouts, and then he runs full tilt, disappearing through a door at the back of the entry.

“We’ve made a mistake with the address,” I say, somewhat relieved. “The child’s mother can give us proper direction so we can find…”

I break off. Shark is regarding me with a distinct trace of pity in his eyes. My next words are unrepeatable.

“I was sitting on the box, you see,” Shark says. “I seen the sign, clear as can be. It said Arbor House.”

I feel as if someone has given me a kick in the stomach. It seems…

“It’s not as if you kept yourself pure as a lily,” Shark says, interrupting that thought.

“Keep to your place, for the Goddess sake,” I say with a scowl.

Shark shakes his head. “You was having a fine time; she’s got the same right.”

“I don’t see it that way,” I say tightly.

“Yer title doesn’t give you the right to be an ass.”

I shoot him a look, and Shark finally shuts up. I’ve allowed my men wide latitud… but in the end I, and I alone, am captain.

I limp across the entry and push open the nearest door, discovering an empty sitting room. It’s rather lovely, hung with watered silk and a painting of the Thames that’s as beautiful as any I’ve seen.

But there are also piles of books, and a group of soft chairs before the fireplace where a chessboard lies waiting to be used. Someone has tossed embroidery to the side, and a piece of knitting has fallen to the floor.

Even more telling, a toy ship lies on its side, surrounded by a scatter of tin soldiers. The ship is flying a tiny Jolly Roger.

My mate has moved on.

“She can’t have married someone else,” I mutter, half to myself. “I would know. Pettigrew would have told me. She’d have to declare me dead.”

“No sign of a man,” Shark says from my right shoulder. “The little one and herself, I’d guess. No pipe. No brandy.” He nods toward the side table. “That’s sherry.”

“Don’t spit,” I say. “Spitting is not allowed in a gentleman’s house.”

“I wasn’t going to spit,” Shark says, offended. He’s spent the last two months soaking up all the information he could from a sailor who had once worked in an alphas residence. “I’m just saying that yer missus has got a child, but she don’t… doesn’t… have a man.”

Or she hasn't brought him into the house, I say through clenched teeth.

I back into the hall again. The next two doors open, respectively, into a dining room and a small, very feminine sitting room.

The fourth door… the one the boy fled through… opens, unexpectedly, into a courtyard shaped by two backward-extending wings of the house. It's charming, paved in uneven bricks, with a couple of trees providing shade. On the far side I can see a broad lawn spreading down to a lake.

"There he goes," Shark says, laughter rolling in his voice.

A small figure is tearing down the hill, his legs pumping. At the water's edge, there's a flutter of white skirts and a parasol.

I step forward into the courtyard but immediately realize I can't walk to the lake. By the time I reach the bottom of that hill, I'll be sweating and shaking. My leg is already throbbing, thanks to the steps leading to the front door.

"You can sit over there," Shark says, jerking his head toward a table with a crowd of serviceable chairs. It stands to the side of the courtyard under the shade of a spreading oak tree. I sink into a chair with a sigh of relief.

For some time, nothing happens.

We sit and listen to birds singing. At sea, the ship is accompanied by seagulls' wild shrieks. By comparison, these birds sing Mozart arias, speaking to each other in trills and tremolos, performing elaborate courtship dances on the branches over our heads.

Minutes pass. Apparently, Daisy has paid no heed to the boy, who by now must have told her that pirates have taken over the house. You can hardly blame her for ignoring his nonsense. Yet it isn't safe to have a house open like this, a house without, as far as I can see, any male servants. What if robbers stop by? Marauders?

After a while I can't take it any longer. "See if she's coming," I growl at Shark. "And if she isn't, step down the hill and ask her if she would be so kind as to greet her husband."

Shark walks over and looks toward the lake. "She's coming up the hill," he says. Then: "You never mentioned your missus was such an eyeful."

I narrow my eyes, and Shark shuts his mouth, retreating to a chair.

I should probably send the man off to the servants' quarters, except there don't seem to be any servants. And Shark would undoubtedly send the cook into hysterics if he strolled in without introduction.

I sigh and pound my aching thigh again. Shark has no need to remind me that Daisy is beautiful. Her face is pretty much the only thing I remember about our wedding night. There I was, all of seventeen years old and skinny as a twig, whereas she was an older she-wolf of twenty: exquisite, shapely, utterly beautiful. Terrifying.

The outcome was hardly unexpected.

I left a virgin wife behind, though it appears she hasn't stayed that way. The wave of anger I feel is unfair to her, and I know it. A man can't leave for fourteen years and expect his wife to remain faithful.

Though wasn't Penelope faithful to Odysseus?

Odysseus probably satisfied his wife before he took off for war. Likely gave her some children. I read Homer's tale so long ago that I can't quite remember.

Still, I never imagined that my wife might take those unconsummated wedding vows as lightly as I myself had. That she might have a child. A son. A boy who will inherit my title and be Alpha someday.

I stayed at sea for years precisely because I loathe my father's obsession with titles, High packs, standing, et cetera. I can't start caring about that claptrap now.

Where the hell is the boy's father? The pirate is a smart, scrappy little fellow who likely hasn't been told he's a bastard. He will learn that later, in school.

Actually, he won't, because the pirate isn't illegitimate. He was born within the bounds of marriage; in fact, he stands to inherit a pack. My mouth tightens.

A smaller version of myself in more ways than one.

"You'd better not swear like that in front of yer wife," Shark observes. "She won't like it."