The Bride of Time (29 page)

“There now, gentlemen,” Giles said buoyantly. “This should satisfy your insatiable lust for my blood. If that will be all, you may go round to the stables and tell Able I said he is to help you.” He offered a crisp bow, leading Tessa out into the corridor, stopping at the door. “Again, please accept my sincere condolences on the death of your father, Mr. Forsythe.”

“This ain’t quite put ta rest, Longworth,” Stokes said, stomping out into the hall. “You ain’t fooled me. Some-thin’ untoward is goin’ on out here, and you can bet we’ll be back. Meanwhile, the men o’ the Watch will be patrolin’ hereabouts, just so’s ya know, and they’ll be armed with silver balls in their pistols…just in case.”

“Far be it for me to dictate how you waste your time,” Giles said. “But for now, gentlemen, I have wasted all I care to waste of mine. Good day.”

Chapter Twenty-three

Giles was holding Tessa so close in his arms she could scarcely breathe. It didn’t matter. Those arms were warm and strong and welcoming, and in that one glorious moment in traitorous, benighted time, nothing else mattered.

He had taken her to her rooms so she could change, but thus far he hadn’t let her go long enough to do it. Threading his fingers through her hair, he raised her face to his and covered her mouth in a fiery kiss that stole her breath away, drawing her lips after his as he leaned back and deeply searched her eyes.

“How can I ever forgive myself for what I’ve done to you?” he murmured, crushing her close again.

“I…I’ve lost my hairpins,” she said.

“I shall buy you a cartload of hairpins,” Giles said, showering her face with kisses.

“I think it happened when I turned into the wolf in that dreadful jail down ’round Old Bailey.”

“
Jail?
What jail? Tessa, what happened to you? Where did you go? Able and I searched everywhere for you for weeks.”

“I was there…right there where you were, Giles, but in my own time. I saw Master Monty and ran after
him, and the next thing I knew I was running down the street straight for Poole House, the home of my former employer. I collided with a bobby in front of the very gate, and Mrs. Poole came running down the steps and had me jailed, to make an example of me before the other servants.”

“They jailed you?”

Tessa nodded. “When they saw my fine clothes and the ring, they were convinced I’d stolen those, too. I hadn’t anything so fine when I was employed there. They’re gone, Giles…all the fine things you bought me. The ring, my beautiful fur-trimmed pelisse—everything.”

“That doesn’t matter. Things can be replaced. You are here in my arms again. That is all that’s important now. I never thought I’d see you again. I thought you were lost to me forever in one of those damned time corridors. How were you able to come back?”

“I changed into the wolf when the moon waxed full and broke through the window in the jail. I ran and kept running until I came across your wolf out on the moor. I don’t presume to understand it. Moraiva says I have the favor of the keepers of the lay line gates. I have always had that. It is how I came to you in the first place.”

“A gift that I unfortunately do not possess,” Giles said dejectedly.

“You will—you must! Moraiva says it is the way that we can undo all this here.”

“How?”

“I do not know yet, Giles. She means to help us, and I feel so dreadful. I attacked her when she was trying to tether me in the wagon. I became the wolf and
bit
her! There are four of us now. She said there was a way to reverse it for us, but…”

“Shhh, there’s nothing to be done about that now. Something happened out on the moor since I saw you last that could have repercussions…”

Tessa had sensed something untoward from the moment she entered the Abbey, something that sent cold chills racing along her spine. “Who were those men when I came in? What did they want?”

Giles let her go and raked his hair back roughly. “Men from the Watch,” he said. “John Stokes and Royal Forsythe. Forsythe’s father came ’round here late yesterday demanding to see the child. The servants in this house have been spreading tales, and the Watch seems to think I mean to murder the boy. Forsythe and I had a dustup over it. I all but put him out bodily. The short of it is: he left here at moonrise. Monty and I both shape-shifted as he was leaving, and one of us killed him out there. Of course, they think I did it.”

“Oh, Giles, my God. No!”

He took her in his arms. “We are not responsible for what we do when the curse takes over, Tessa, just as you are not responsible for biting Moraiva. We are victims, just as those who suffer us when we become ravaging wolves.”

“What are we going to do?” Tessa pleaded.

“We have one more night to get through this cycle,” he replied. “The moon won’t wane for still another night, and the pull has been growing steadily stronger. It used to be just two days at the moon’s height, with an unstable day before and after. Now it’s three. It is changing. The periods of transformation are lengthening. The occasions of the wolf surfacing, at least in myself, are becoming more frequent. Who knows where it will end.”

“But what can we do?”

“Right now, I’m going to have your tub filled. Foster filled mine before the gudgeons from the Watch arrived. It must be icy cold by now. I need to have a word with him. Arrangements must be made for us all before nightfall, and I need to put the fear of God into the servants
in this house. I ought to sack the lot, but then the rumors would really abound. Once I have seen to all that, I will return and we will talk, Tessa. I would like to here more of Moraiva’s plan to see us out of this.”

Tessa scarcely heard. Her conscience was gnawing at her. It would no longer be denied. He’d warned her of the dangers they were facing. He needed to know about the fire.

“Giles,” she said, calling him back from the threshold. “There is something I haven’t told you…something you need to know…”

He strode back into the room and took her in his arms, his hooded gaze lingering on her face, and he kissed her deeply, molding her body to his until the bruising bulk of his arousal leaned heavily against her. Slowly, reluctantly, he leaned back, his hand buried in her hair, his glazed eyes flashing over her from head to toe.

“My God, but you are exquisite,” he murmured. “How fetching you look in that costume, with your hair loose and wild like a Gypsy.” He let her go reluctantly and made a dash for the door. “Do not tempt me, little vixen,” he called from the threshold. “You are a distraction I can ill afford until I settle things in this house. Then you can tell me anything you wish, my love, so hold that thought.”

“It’s going to happen again to night, I can feel it,” Giles said, stepping out of his bath into the plush towel Foster held at the ready. “How we’ve managed to keep it from the others is thanks to you, I know. I also know it can’t last, old boy. It isn’t just Master Monty and myself any longer. I accidentally infected Tessa, and last night, she infected Moraiva. There are four werewolves on the prowl here now that we know of, and there are bound to be more.”

“What’s to become of us, sir?”

“Moraiva says there is help for it. I do not know the particulars yet.”

“I spoke with the guards from the Watch,” Foster said. “I told them you were here at the Abbey last night. They will be back to speak with the others. I fended them off, telling them the rest of the staff was too busy preventing storm damage to be assembled, but that won’t keep them at bay for long, sir.”

“When they come back they’ll likely bring a rope, Foster.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but what really happened out on that moor last night? Did you…?”

“I don’t know,” Giles said. “I never remember what occurs when the wolf takes me. One of us—Monty or myself—tore that poor gudgeon’s throat out last night, and we have one more night of this horror before the moon again begins to wane. And of course it will wax full again. Please God an answer is found before that time comes, old boy, because I cannot live like this much longer. Not like this!”

“What would you have me do, sir?”

“Assemble the staff in the salon. Seat them, and wait. I will join you directly. First, we make an end to the gossip going ’round before it gets me hanged. Let us begin with that.”

The valet shuffled off, and Giles dressed himself. There was no time to stand on ceremony. He had no idea how severely the curse would take him come moonrise, and much had to be accomplished beforehand if he were to put this month’s nightmare behind him.

Lottie and Lettie, Rigby and Evers, Cook, Dorcas, even Effie from the scullery were on hand with Foster when Giles reached the salon. Able and Andy were not among them, having been pressed into service by the guards from the Watch to help remove the body from the drainage ditch. Giles would address them separately
once they returned. The real culprits, he was certain judging from the guilty look on some of their faces, were among those seated before him now.

Hands clasped behind his back, Giles strode into the room and began pacing the length of the Aubusson carpet between him and the sea of anxious faces staring up in rapt attention—and not a little apprehension—as he began to speak.

“I should sack the lot of you,” he began, enlisting his most formidable scowl. “I have not dismissed the notion. Have I not been good to you over the years?”

A rumble of out-of-rhythm
yes
es responded.

“Do I not pay you handsomely?”

Again the yeses rumbled through the salon.

“Then why do you repay me with treachery?”

Silence.

“Which one of you is responsible for the
on-dits
circulating through the parish? Come, come, I haven’t got all day here. Speak up, because if you do not, it’s going to be the worse for the lot of you.”

The rumble grew louder. Now he was getting somewhere. The bristling servants were casting accusing looks amongst themselves. He didn’t expect anyone to admit to spreading gossip. He needed to frighten them enough to prevent the tales from continuing.

“All right,” Giles said. “I see that this is going to be difficult. It’s admirable that you do not wish to implicate your fellow servers. I respect that. But let me tell you what your flapping jaws have done. One or more of you has carried tales of the goings-on in this house. That would not have been so serious if the tales you carried had any basis in truth, but they do not. Your foolish, hurtful imaginings may have just put a noose ’round my neck.”

Milling voices crescendoed into a virtual uproar, which Giles allowed to reach fever pitch before ending
it with a booming response. “Silence!” he bellowed. “You are guilty, one and all! What? Do you think I’m blind? You should see your faces. Some more so than others, I’ll grant, but you may well have ruined me with your gammon. You are entitled to absolutely no explanations, but just to set the record straight: I did not murder my wife and her lover. I do not keep Master Monty in chains. I do not tramp whores in and out of here for the purpose of bed sport—they are my models. Employing them to model for me keeps them
off
their backs for a time, and it puts a decent, honest wage in their pockets….”

A chorus of gasps replied to that. Yes, he was definitely getting somewhere. “I did not rush into marriage with Miss LaPrelle, now Mrs. Longworth, to some evil purpose. I was cuckolded, my generosity and good nature maligned and abused, and I was taken for practically every haypenny I possessed by a designing woman. Having finally met a different woman who could love me as a woman should love her husband, I saw no reason to prolong my agony. I married her. Contrary to your latest
on-dits
, I did
not
do her in, in London. She is upstairs in her apartments as I speak. It was Master Monty running away that separated us.

“I haven’t done for him, either,” Giles continued. “He is in his rooms until I see fit to have him come amongst us again without destroying valuable objects in this house. The boy has a condition of the blood inherited from his mother that makes him behave in a shocking manner at times. The episodes seem more frequent when the moon is full, as is the way with many mental illnesses, and since there seems to be no cure, confinement—for his own good, as well as the good of all in residence—is necessary in these instances.”

Another rumble of discordant sound rippled through the gathering, and Giles stopped and faced his staff,
arms akimbo. “Last, but certainly not least,” he went on, “you are all aware that Henry Forsythe of the Watch came by yesterday to examine the child that one or all of you has said I’ve chained in a dungeon here, and God alone knows what else. Forsythe was found dead on the moor this morning. He never reached his house hold after speaking with me. As result of the tales you’ve carried, I am suspected, and may well hang for the act of some vicious animal. Have you any idea what it is that you’ve done?”

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” Cook spoke up, her fat round cheeks turned crimson. “It weren’t me!”

“That is commendable, Cook,” Giles said above the rumble leaking from the others. “Silence, all!” He waited until the surly monotone died down. “Since it’s clear I am about to have a chorus of ‘not me’s’ from you, here is what shall be: If one more word is uttered by any one of you, all will suffer. I will sack the lot. If I am carted off to Tyburn over this, the same holds true. Meanwhile,
none
of you will venture beyond the green baize door in the servants’ quarters unless you are summoned by myself or the mistress of this Abbey. Your privileges to roam free in this house are hereby cancelled until further notice. I do not care if the dust collects to the ceilings. Anyone who does not wish to abide by these new conditions may leave forthwith. Have I made myself plain?”

A low rumble of “Yes, sir,” replied, and after a painfully long hesitation, Giles said, “Very well, then, carry on. Remember…not one word out of any of you, or you condemn the lot! Do not think to put me to the test.”

Chapter Twenty-four