“You’re mad.”

“Shrewd is the word. Your beloved aunt was a mirage. She didn’t want you. Nobody wants you . . . but me, my dear. I’ll care for you like my finest treasure. I won’t even punish you for running away from me in London. Instead, you’ll be waited on by a dozen maids. You’ll have a coach and four and be mistress of a house as big as Blenheim or Chatsworth or any of the nobs’ finest. Duchesses will kneel for your favors, dukes will kiss your slippers, and maybe the prince regent himself will wipe your pretty ass. It’s there for the taking.”

“Branston was a fool to entangle himself with you.”

“I’ll agree the man had the business acumen of a brainless slug. It’s best he’s dead. You should be pleased I killed him. Left under his care, you’d never have amounted to anything more than a third-rate fortune-teller in a fourth-rate circus, but with me . . .” He rose from his chair to cross to her side. Lifted his hand to touch her hair, her cheek. “With me, you’ll rise to the rank of queen.”

She refused to flinch. Instead she raked him with every ounce of dripping contempt she could muster. “Queen of the stews,” she spat. “I don’t care how you pretty yourself up, you’re still naught more than the stunted offspring of a hedge whore and a rat catcher.”

The slap knocked her to the floor, her cheek on fire. He stood above her, his scar white against the red of his face. “Your brother wasn’t wrong about one thing. He said you needed a strong whip hand.” He grabbed her by the arm, wrenching her to her feet, his breath hot on her face. “What’s a few words when we’ve a lifetime ahead of us?” He dragged her toward the bed. “I’ve a mind to shove myself between those sweet thighs. By the time I’m done, you’ll be begging for my touch.”

She dug in her heels, but he slapped her again before he shoved her down on the bed. Panic skittered cold across her skin. She couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t breathe. Her gaze locked on his white-lipped mouth, the hunger in his eyes.

“Take the gown off or I’ll cut it off you,” he hissed, pulling a blade from his waist.

She fumbled with clumsy fingers at the buttons and tapes. Slid free of the muslin, chin up and unashamed. Time, she needed time. If she closed her eyes and lay very still, perhaps he would finish with her quickly and leave. She would think of the friendly glow of a cookfire and laughter over a shared jest, quiet conversations and delicious kisses. Corey might have her body. He could not steal her memories.

He knelt over her to fondle a breast. Pinched her cruelly. Held her chin tight as he forced his tongue into her mouth, his breath sour. “Did St. Leger take you as man or beast? Did he mount you like a dog? Did he fuck you hard and fast like I will?” His face grew flushed with arousal as he shucked off his jacket and loosed his breeches. A rigid cock sprang purple from a thick bush of hair. “You do what I want when I want it or I’ll make you hurt, Callista. If I can’t have your respect, I’ll have your fear.”

Callista’s expression hardened to marble, her blood as cold as ice water.

A knock at the door slammed her heart into her throat. “Corey, sir,” a voice called through the crack. “All’s ready.”

“Right.” Corey rolled away from her and out of bed. He fastened his breeches and pulled his coat back onto his shoulders. “Our pleasure will have to wait. Duty calls.”

“You won’t win, Victor. David will find me.”

Corey’s leer became a smile of wild-eyed triumph. “I’m counting on it.”

* * *

He slipped free of the concealing shadows in a flash of speed, slaver dripping from his jaws, muscles wired taut as they ate the distance to his prey. A man guarded the main door armed with knife and musket, but his attention was all for the gathering storm clouds, their bellies slashed with green lightning.

It was an easy thing to take him unawares. A crouch, a leap, and the man dropped with a spine-snapping blow to his chest, his neck ripped wide. The wolf lifted his head to the wind, blood sliding hot down his throat. The doors opened, men tumbling like spillikins onto the gravel. They stank of sour wine and stale sweat. A silver dagger swiped down to tear into his shoulder. Another slashed at him with a blade of steel, its bite twice as sharp. It took David in the haunch. He yelped and danced away, leaving a blood trail behind.

He heard the cocking of the pistol before it exploded with smoke and flame, avoided the crush of a bullet into his skull with a wild leap that nearly pulled his shoulder from its socket. The man with the dagger was quick and cunning. He ducked beneath David’s reach, the knife falling again. David twisted away before it could slice his stomach open, but all the time he felt his strength failing. Withdrawal from the draught had left him weak and feverish, and the curse’s reemergence meant a slowing of his mind, a sickening of his body. Blue and silver flames rippled at the edges of his vision. The curse rose from the same well as the wolf. And every moment he delayed was a moment lost.

David growled, his fangs dripping with blood as he shook off the illness and surrendered himself completely to instinct and bloodlust and a savage brutality. Ignoring the jagged rake of the blade and the silver burning his flesh, he sprang. Felt the crunch of bones as he bit down, the screams and useless flailing as the man scrabbled to free himself, and the final wrench that left him armless and bleeding his life away. The wolf lunged again, his claws tearing into another man’s stomach, spilling his entrails, shredding the man’s face and then his chest. Corey’s third hireling sought to run, but the wolf brought him down, snapping his neck, smashing his skull.

Were these all the protection Corey boasted, or did the house hold more of the same, the wretched refuse of every stew and thievers’ den from London to Fort William?

David’s stomach rolled while his head pounded as if a spike had been slammed between his eyes. Blue and silver flames leapt, crackled, torched him from the inside out. He took a step and then another, but the wolf’s strength left him.

He fell to the gravel, the pain as intense as the ripping free of his signum, the curse infecting his mind, burning away his powers like acid on steel. A hot wind curled around him, the air beating like wings against his muzzle, his paws. He couldn’t breathe lest it singe his lungs. He squeezed his eyes shut. And waited.

“Here’s the little mouse now. Just in time for my big day,” a voice sneered.

Rough hands gripped David. A heavy knobbed cane descended in a blur. A white light exploded behind his eyes.

Callista! he shouted.

* * *

She was wed.

A ring and a few mumbled words by a bought priest, and she’d chained herself to Corey forever. Anything to stop his men from hurting David. She’d been brought a lock of his guinea-gold hair first. Then a bloody fingernail. Finally a finger.

She’d surrendered, retching up her breakfast, dry gulping sobs tearing raggedly up her throat.

Corey had come to her, proud as a peacock, and the marriage had been performed. Thankfully, he’d left straight after, and she could only wait in half-panicked frustration as the hours ticked past.

Circling the bedchamber, she paused at the window. No escape there. Far too small for her to climb through, and the only way was down—far down, over the sheer, knife-edged cliffs to the gray-green sea below. And if they caught her attempting to leave, what would happen to David? Bile curdled her stomach. She knew all too well.

The door opened, and Corey entered, dressed as if he were preparing for war, with a pistol and a sheathed dirk at his waist. He motioned to a wiry man, his shaved head and stubbled jowls giving him the look of a belligerent mastiff. “Bring her.”

They climbed two sets of stairs to a narrow wooden door leading to a wide bricked parapet and a low, crenellated wall running the length of the house. The sea churned and growled below, the cliffs a tumble of jagged rocks and broken boulders. This morning’s sun had given way to heavy clouds licked black with storm shadows. The wind flapped at Callista’s skirts and tore the pins from her hair as it shoved her unwilling toward the wall. It wouldn’t take but a quick wrench to escape her captor. A few steps to the edge and she’d be free.

She glanced down at the foaming surf and the wild spumes of icy spray and knew she’d never be able to do it. Not while David lived. Not while there was still a chance. Killing herself was the coward’s way. And the weeks past had proved her no coward.

A table had been set in the middle of the walkway. Beside it rested her box. Upon it stood her bells. Corey’s smirk grew.

“This is madness, Victor,” she pleaded. “You’ve more wealth and power than half the nobility already. What more could you want?”

“I want those nose-in-the-air toffs with their high breeding and their ancient pedigrees to admit that I’m just as good as they are. After that, I want them to fear me and know their lives depend on my goodwill. A wrong word, an ill-thought whisper, and I’ll make them wish they’d never been born.” He motioned to the bells. “Open the door. Open the door and summon me an army.”

“I won’t.”

“You will, my dear, or I’ll slice off another finger. He has nine more he doesn’t need.”

She glanced to the door where her bribed coachman stood with a pistol to David’s temple. He knelt upon the bricks, head bowed. Blood-spattered and shoulders hunched. She couldn’t see his face. Afraid she wouldn’t want to. Not after the hours he’d spent with Corey. Not after the sight of his finger laid on a bed of velvet as a bridal gift.