Werewolf fairytales

Like Eve in the rain

*Paisley*

Three hours later, I’m reconsidering my chosen profession. It seems impossibly exhausting and boring. Jonas had woken, cried for an hour or so, taken some water, and gone back to sleep. Then he woke up again, and cried again… but has fallen back to sleep just when I’m trying to decide whether he’s hungry.

I have unpacked my tiny bag in the room next to the nursery, and, during one of Jonas’s quiet spells, I brush and rebrush my hair, thinking all the while about Mr. Theodon. Theo, the princess called him. He has lovely eyes, rather brooding, as if life isn’t giving him what he wants.

That has to be because he’s a butler. He doesn’t seem like a butler.

Jonas whimpers from the nursery, and I hastily pin up my hair and go back into the room to soothe him.

I think my uncle would be quite pleased with the way the baby now looks. The pinched look is gone, which means that he has some water in him. What he needs now is more milk. And when I don’t instantly produce it, he starts crying again.

“I’m sorry, little scrap,” I murmur to him. “It’s going to hurt your tummy. But we just have to do it.”

I wrap him in a light blanket and wonder what to do. I haven’t the faintest idea how to find the dining room. By the time I open the door and head into the corridor, Jonas is wailing so vociferously that his face is purple.

A tall, yellow-haired servant with a nice open face is waiting for me. “Oh, thank goodness. What’s your name?” I ask over Jonas’s sobs.

“William, miss,” he says. “Mr. Theodon said I was to escort you to the dining room. It’s awfully easy to get lost in this castle.”

“It’s big, isn’t it?”

“Huge,” William says feelingly. “The time it takes just to bring the linens round about, well, you wouldn’t countenance it.”

We make our way down some stairs, through the portrait gallery, down the main stairs. “Shouldn’t we be going down by the servants’ stairs?” I ask.

He glances at me. “Not you, miss.”

I don’t know quite what to say to that, so I jiggle Jonas against my shoulder… which has no effect whatsoever on his wails… and follow William through the vast entrance hall to the dining room.

When I enter the room, I’m very relieved to find that it isn’t a cavernous formal space but a tidy little room with a table set for six. What’s more, Ella is the only person in it. She rises the moment the door opens and hurries toward us. “I wanted to come to the nursery, but my foolish husband forced me to wait for you here instead. How is he?”

“Just fine,” I say. “He’s hungry, as you can hear, but I think he feels a little better.”

Ella c***s her head. “You can hear a difference?”

“Yes,” I say, though in reality I’m not at all sure. Being a nursemaid is making me into a terrible fibber. “He’s saying he’s hungry, but not in pain.” I say it firmly, the way my father would say, England’s coast is undefended. A fact.

Ella reaches out and takes my baby. “There’s my sweetheart,” she coos. “I’ll just take him to my sitting room and feed him.”

She leaves, and I draw in a long breath and reach up to check my hair. I’ve pinned it on the back of my head, but it feels as if it might all tumble down my back any moment.

Just then the door opens, and Mr. Theodon enters.

“William left me here,” I say, feeling foolishly out of place.

“Where’s Jonas?”

“The princess took him to her sitting room in order to feed him. She’ll bring him back in a moment, then I’ll go straight back to the nursery,” I promise.

“You won’t,” he says, walking around the table and straightening a napkin. “You are eating with the prince and princess tonight.”

“I really shouldn’t…”

“A place for you has already been set,” he says, cutting me off. “We’ll be joined by Princess Sophonisba, the prince’s great-aunt, who will undoubtedly appear in an inebriated state, which is merely a hint at what will happen after she has had more to drink during supper.”

Another princess? I, plain Paisley, who have only rarely been out of Little Ha’penny, and never even to the city of London, am to dine with not one princess but two? “I couldn’t,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m just a nursemaid.”

“I forgot that!” he says. His eyes laugh at me. “You’re a nursemaid. I suppose you don’t know how to use a knife and a fork.”

I draw myself upright. “You may jest, Mr. Theodon, but I certainly do know how to use proper cutlery… as does every well-trained servant.”

“Are you well trained?” he asks cordially. “We never quite got around to that part of the interview.”

“Of course!”

He walks around the far end of the table and back toward me. “Do you know that there are a thousand things I ought to be doing at this moment?”

“I quite believe you,” I say. “Please feel free to attend to them.”

His dark eyes meet mine, and he c***s a mocking eyebrow. “I can’t leave new staff alone in a room with the silver.”

I suppress the urge to rebuke him, reminding myself that I am a servant… nothing more… before saying, as haughtily as I can manage, “Do be sure to count the forks after I leave the room.”

He takes a step closer. “You'd make an enticing thief. How did you hear of our need for a nursemaid, by the way? You simply appeared, and the footman I sent to Manchester hasn't returned.”

“I didn’t come from Manchester,” I say. His gaze makes my cheeks flush… a feeling Rodney’s never inspired. Though the thought of Rodney is dispiriting.

“Then where did you come from?” He moves closer, until he stands directly before me. Mr. Theodon wears a magnificent claret-colored livery with frogged buttons. On him, it looks less like livery and more like the uniform of the lycan Queen's Hussars. And, like them, he is broad-shouldered, muscular, and impeccably groomed.

I compose myself. “I grew up in a village nearby. When I heard about the baby, I thought I might be able to help.”

“You did?”

Perhaps he is more magician than Hussar. Something in his eyes makes me feel unsteady. “And I have helped,” I state, confident this, at least, is true.

“You are a mystery.”

“There’s nothing mysterious about me. I’m a very ordinary girl.”

“You can sing in Italian…”

I start to explain, but he raises a hand. “Ella told me.”

He is unlike any butler I’ve ever encountered. And he knows I am thinking this, because he gives me a slow, playful grin. I barely prevent my jaw from dropping. No one has ever smiled at me like that… not Miss Paisley, the future bride of a future Alpha.

Except… I am not a future bride anymore.

Without pausing, I raise an eyebrow, mimicking the innkeeper’s wife in Little Ha’penny… a she-wolf considered, by all accounts, somewhat disreputable. “Ella?” I say, my voice softening slightly. “What an odd way to refer to your mistress.”

For a moment, I fear I’ve overdone it, but his smile widens, sending a shiver down my spine. “Ah, but Ella’s not my mistress,” he says. “Not in the most important sense, at least.”

I blink, then frown. “You shouldn’t even suggest such a thing!”

He throws back his head and laughs. “A very young pigeon, aren’t you? A very, very young…”

“I’m not so young,” I retort.

“How old are you, Miss Paisley?”

“Twenty. Which is quite old enough for… for all manner of things.”

“Too old to debut,” he says. But I see through his playful banter.

“I wouldn’t know,” I say. “After my family’s fortunes declined, we never considered such a thing.”

“Ah, the fall,” he sighs melodramatically. “Ever since the first fall, it’s been downhill.”

“Are you talking about my family or Eve?” I ask, barely suppressing a giggle. “Because I’ve always thought poor Eve was more sinned against than sinning.”

“Why so?” he asks, leaning against the wall beside me. It is shockingly informal. A butler never… never… leans against a wall. Yet, there he is.

“Eve wasn’t responsible for the serpent’s tempting,” I say, my heart quickening. “She merely offered the apple to her companion, which demonstrated good manners, not to mention generosity.”

“I don’t think good manners excuse the trouble she caused,” Mr. Theodon observes.

“It’s true she should have avoided that particular tree,” I concede. “Still, no one ever seems to notice Adam ate the apple too. It’s half his fault.”

“I blame them both,” Mr. Theodon says. “Just think, if they hadn’t been so foolish, we’d all be living in Paradise.” He leans closer. “Very warm, I hear. None of this English rain.”

I don’t move, even though he is close enough to smell him. He smells delightful… lemon soap and something else, like the moorland wind. “I like rain,” I say, at a loss for anything more eloquent.

“You wouldn’t,” Mr. Theodon says, “if we were both wandering about in it, quite naked, without even a fig leaf.”

The silence hangs heavy.

Then, down the corridor, comes a thin, drawn-out wail.

“Ah, bollocks,” Mr. Theodon mutters.

The English expletive, delivered in such a velvety, accented voice, makes me laugh.

A smile spreads across his lips. “You’re not worried about Jonas’s survival, are you?”

I shake my head. “He’s crying because milk disagrees with him. It’s not life-threatening; his stomach will adjust.”

“Fancy yourself a doctor?”

“No, but anyone with common sense can see when a baby has colic,” I say. “It’s best to do nothing in such cases.” I hesitate.

“What?”

So I tell him, rapidly, about my fear of intussusception. “But I’m sure my uncle told me there’d be blood in his diaper,” I finish. “And there isn’t.” Jonas’s wails grow closer.

“It sounds like you’re right,” Mr. Theodon says. “Still, we need your uncle to examine the baby. Where is he? I’ll send a carriage immediately.”

“You couldn’t!” I gasp, horrified. “He would… no!”

“But he’s the best doctor you know. We need him.”