The Passion (23 page)

Elise turned to me and observed with soft admiration, "What a loyal creature you have in her, Alexander! One must assume that any werewolf who can inspire that kind of devotion is deserving of further attention, don't you think? And what a perfect little mimic she is, although…" And she turned to Tessa with a kind smile. "I do believe you may have left out one or two points, my dear. Like the way Denis Antonov teased his brother so mercilessly for being a human-lover and mocked him without words when he refused to put on the cloak of the Brotherhood." This last she said while looking straight at me. Her voice was quiet and gentle with sympathy. "And how, despite al of this, his heart was broken to be driven from his brother's house and betrayed in the night."

I got slowly to my feet. There was no disguising my heartbeat from her now, or my breath or the myriad of emotions that flooded every pore: astonishment, relief, wonder, dread—shock. "And so, mademoisel e." My voice was oddly hoarse, and tight in my throat. "You knew my story al along."

And waited to see if I would tel it
, was the unspoken ending to that statement. This was her test of loyalty to me. Had I passed or failed?

She rebuked me mildly. "I would be a poor queen indeed not to be concerned when the movements of one who bears my name take him into the enemy camp. You're a loyal Devoncroix and an honorable werewolf," she told me, "but I knew that already.

What I did not know was how trustworthy you were

—or perhaps I should say, I did not know how much you trusted me."

She smiled, and stood. I went forward quickly, offering my hand as she descended the two steps.

"Fortunately for you, your human friend has spared you the necessity of answering that question. But I would like to hear it anyway." She held my gaze, and although there was nothing more than mild curiosity in her own, it was a powerful thing. "Would you have told me, Alexander, if she had not?"

I dropped my eyes. "I didn't want to offend you," I said. And I added, because honesty was what she had asked for, and what she deserved, "And I didn't want to risk my status."

She touched my face, directing my gaze to hers.

She searched my eyes. "Yet you could have stopped her from speaking."

I managed to smile. "No, mademoisel e," I said. "I could not."

Tessa looked from one to the other of us anxiously."Did I do something wrong? Was it a secret, monsieur? You didn't tel me so."

Elise removed her fingers from my face and left a pleasant tingling where they had touched. As difficult as it had been to hold her gaze a moment ago, it was now that hard to look away. But I managed to do so, long enough to reassure Tessa.

"No,
chérie
, you did nothing wrong."

And I saw from the smile on Elise's face that I had spoken the exact truth. She extended one hand to Tessa, and the other she slipped under my arm.

"Come, we'll be a party for luncheon, just the three of us. Tessa, I like you very much and want you to feel free to visit me any time. Perhaps now, if you're not too occupied with other matters, you both wil stay some days and help me entertain my guests.

What a lovely summer we'll al have together."

And that was the beginning of the best time of my life. And the worst.

PART FOUR

LYONS, FRANCE

Spring, 1898

Cleverness, in a human, is not necessarily a desirable trait

—AMADEUS SINGLETON, WEREWOLF 1763

Without passion man is a mere… possibility.

—HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL, A HUMAN 1882

TESSA

Chapter Ten

During that long, lonely and sometimes frightening winter while Alexander was away, Tessa had thought more than once of simply leaving the house in Paris. No one would have stopped her. Certainly no one would have been sorry to see her go. But had she left she would have been just another human looking back on a life that might have been, and she thought nothing could be more unbearable than that. So she waited, and she watched, and she learned.

And what she learned was both useful and incidental, fascinating and tedious. She learned, for example, that Mme. Crol iere, for al her sternness, could be gotten around if asked about her family.

She learned that the raising of the young was afforded the highest priority among their kind, requiring the dedicated attention of both parents for the first fragile months of life and involving the entire pack as the child grew. She learned that werewolf gestation lasted only six months, and that females were fertile wel into their seventies and often mothered a dozen children or more, although rarely did pregnancies occur closer than three years apart

—age three being the year that children were considered mature enough to care for themselves sufficiently that the parents could turn their attention to the raising of another. She learned that the mating bond was the one association that was impossible to break, and that it lasted, in tenderness and affection, for a lifetime. And she learned that Crol iere was mated to Poinceau.

When Tessa expressed her astonishment over that revelation, exclaiming that she never would have guessed, Mme. Crol iere tapped her head in a superior fashion and replied, "There is no need for you to know, human girl.
We
know."

She was told that they often lived to be one hundred fifty years old, although she didn't entirely believe it.

When one half of a mated couple died a natural death by disease or old age, the other spouse usual y fol owed within a few hours or days. She learned, too, that infants were born in wolf form to a mother in wolf form, and retained that form until they were six weeks old, at which time they began to change spontaneously from wolf to human and back again. It was always an exciting time for the family and friends to see which human characteristics the infant would possess, and much boasting was done about how early the child began to change, or with what frequency.

The children developed quickly, walking with confidence before age one and mastering the art of language by age two. Most of those famous personages in history designated "prodigies" by humans, Tessa was given to understand, were in fact werewolf—something else she was not entirely certain she believed.

Once they learned to control the Change at wil , which happened around the age of three, they spent a little over half their time in human form. It was common, although by no means required, to sleep in wolf form. It was, however, considered the height of bad taste to display oneself in wolf form before humans, and they never, if it was at al avoidable, al owed a human to witness their Change.

She learned that they were exceptional y vain, and never lost an opportunity to point out their innate superiority. When she witnessed Marcel the stableboy snap the spine of a snake which had been bothering the horses, she demanded to know why he didn't simply find a pistol and shoot the thing. He replied disdainful y, "I have the advantage over every other creature on earth as it is. Only weakling humans need weapons."

Although the werewolves in whose care Alexander had left her took their responsibility seriously and were for the most part cooperative in answering her persistent questions, many of the details of their existence Tessa gleaned by accident, by extrapolation and by deduction. The things she wanted most to learn—the mechanics of their ability to change from one form to another, how it felt and what precipitated it and what they thought while changing and what parts of themselves transferred from one form to another and how they came to possess such a miraculous ability—these were questions that remained forever unanswered, and gradual y she came to understand that the questions themselves were considered rude and intrusive. Eventual y she stopped asking.

She learned that they were extremely facile with tools and mechanical devices of al kinds; even the youngest of them could glance at a device once and immediately understand how it worked, then disassemble and reconstruct it to work more efficiently in a matter of mere minutes. They were fascinated by gadgetry and were constantly seeking newer, easier and faster ways to accomplish ordinary tasks.

She learned they were gregarious, loyal, fiercely protective of their own, unexpectedly playful, possessed of a dry wit and a sharp—if ofttimes selective—memory. And Tessa learned that, despite their almost uniform contempt for her and al her kind, they found her presence among them stimulating, even chal enging. They loved a chal enge, and the hours they spent debating among themselves as to who should be responsible on any given day for her entertainment, education or care helped enliven a dul dark winter. Tessa learned she had little to fear from them, and much about which to wonder. Yet she knew she would never, no matter how much she learned, be completely at ease among them—or welcomed by them.

The winter spent in the tutelage of werewolves prepared her wel for the spring at the Palais—if anything at al could be said to have prepared her for this, the strangest event of her life thus far. They enjoyed the hospitality of the queen for six weeks, and it was a grand mélange of the bizarre and the magnificent, during which Tessa was paraded out like a monkey on a string at every event to be petted and fawned over, scrutinized and queried. At first she resented the arched eyebrows, the ritual circling, the rude stares and critical observations—

for the werewolves who visited the Palais were justifiably haughty and aristocratic in the extreme.

But then she recognized the display for what it was.

Elise, by presenting her at every official function and to every important guest, was making it known that she, Tessa LeGuerre, a human, was under the protection of the queen. This not only made her an exceptional human, but, because of her association with Alexander, raised his status in the eyes of others of his kind.

What she did not know—not then, at any rate—was that Elise was making another statement by displaying the human girl who had come under her favor, and that by doing so she was serving her own purposes far more than Tessa's.

The Palais was a vast and endlessly enchanting place, with every conceivable luxury and modern convenience, and Tessa never grew tired of exploring it. There were bathing rooms in which water was warmed without the aid of a flame and fil ed marble tubs large enough to accommodate several people at a time. There were electrical y operated lamps in almost every room which responded to the touch of a hand, and when Tessa, big-eyed but trying desperately not to reveal her lack of sophistication, commented upon the ingenuity of Mr. Edison (whose name she had only incidental y read in a newspaper), Alexander and Elise exchanged a knowing look and burst into laughter. "Yes, indeed, Mr. Edison," Alexander repeated and raised his glass with twinkling eyes, giving her to believe that Mr. Thomas Edison had very little to do with electrical lights at al and that she was quite the ingenue for thinking he did.

One of the last places to be explored was the art gal ery on the third floor. There were many breathtaking works of art scattered throughout the palace, for a love of color, form and the intrinsic sense of completion that make a work of art great was, Tessa had learned, something al loups-garous had in common. The most impressive pieces were, however, grouped together in the gal ery that ran the length of the third floor and encompassed, by means of a set of tal spiral staircases, the whole of the fourth floor. This upper gal ery was almost overwhelmingly immense, but was divided into several smal er rooms by heavy double doors. The doors to some of those rooms, farthest toward the end of the gal ery, were kept closed due to the fragility of the very old paintings.

It was common to see werewolves strol ing through the gal ery singly or with others at any time of the day or night, gazing at the paintings, sitting before them in profound meditation, or merely casting pleasured glances toward the canvases as they strol ed, seeming to take some kind of deep comfort from merely being surrounded by art. No one ever explored those back rooms, however, and while the doors were not locked—Tessa had noticed there were no locks on any of the Palais doors—she had been told that they were opened only on special occasions or to admit technicians specifical y trained in the cleaning and care of old paintings. Those were, of course, the only rooms in the gal ery Tessa was interested in seeing.

There were no electric lamps in this part of the house, for which Tessa was grateful. She stil found the devices intimidating. She left the gal ery door open long enough to strike a match, glancing behind her to determine whether anyone would stop her.

The corridor behind her was empty, but she had learned long ago that the evidence of the eyes meant nothing where these creatures were concerned. Someone might have heard her, or smel ed her passage, and even now be rounding a corner to forbid her entry. She wasn't afraid of them

—after al , Alexander was most insistent that she improve her education in the arts and was constantly questioning why she did not take advantage of the opportunities afforded her here—

but she didn't like to be scolded, and she didn't want to do anything that would lower Elise Devoncroix's opinion of her. So she waited, and watched, but the corridor was empty. She justified that as permission to enter.

One by one she lit the gas lamps, and one by one the portraits came to life. They were al portraits, and they were al magnificent, and gradual y Tessa came to understand that they al had been painted by loups-garous. Handsome men, comely women, and except for their beauty, not so different from those in the family gal ery of any other aristocratic house of France. Not so different, that is, until one noticed the wolves.