SECRET OF THE WOLF By Susan Krinard

May slipped from the room. Quentin steered Irene toward the hall. She didn’t resist.

Stunned, Johanna comforted Oscar and got him working on his puzzle again. She went after Quentin and found him emerging from Irene’s room, his features devoid of expression. At almost the same instant, Harper stepped into the hallway. His movements were furtive, his posture crouched, as if he expected imminent attack. When he saw Johanna and Quentin, he straightened, though his gaze flicked this way and that, searching for some hidden threat.

“I heard yelling,” he whispered. “What’s going on?”

“Be at ease, my friend. Just a bit of a row in the parlor.” Quentin grinned. “Women on the rampage. Nothing you need worry about.”

Harper’s shoulders relaxed. “If it’s about ladies, I’d better stay out of it.”

“Very wise.” Quentin glanced at Johanna, who took his hint.

“I’d like to speak with you for a little while before you retire,” Johanna said to Harper. “I’ll come by within the hour, if that’s agreeable.”

“Yes,” he said. He retreated into his room, and Johanna shut the door. She tested the door to Irene’s room and found it barricaded, doubtless with a chair jammed against the inside knob. Well, there was no harm in leaving her alone for a while. It was probably the wisest thing to do.

Composing herself, she turned to Quentin. “What you said to Harper was inappropriate.”

“Why? Because I made the comment about women? It wasn’t so far from the truth.”

She flinched. “I should never have struck Irene. I’m well aware of that. It was inexcusable.”

“But understandable.” He was as serious as he’d been in the parlor, almost grim.

“No,” she said. “I am a doctor.”

“And a woman with feelings that can be hurt, like anyone else. Whatever Irene’s problems, she went too far.”

“You don’t understand. I haven’t yet been able to reach her, and until I do—”

“She struck you. That cannot be permitted.”

“The mistake—the misjudgment—was mine. In any case, you must not interfere.”

His eyes lit, turning cinnamon to flame. “I’ll always interfere if anyone tries to hurt you.”

“Not with my patients—”

He took both her hands in a grip both painless and unbreakable. “You watch over your patients with such devotion. Who watches over you?”

“I have never needed anyone to watch over me.”

“And what if it was not Irene but someone else who struck you?” he said between his teeth. “A man, capable of doing real harm?”

“None of the men here would hurt me. Certainly not Oscar, or Lewis—”

“How can you be so sure? Do you really think you know everything, Johanna?”

She stared at him, trying to make sense of this change in him. There’d been an inkling of it on the walk, and again in the parlor. He was behaving subtly, but noticeably, out of character.

“I know what I’m doing,” she said, in the calm tone she ordinarily used with distraught or manic patients. “Oscar has learned how to control his strength, and as you see he is not aggressive. Lewis reacted as he did because he lost his wife in a tragic manner; Irene’s song reminded him of it. I’ve always taken care with Harper. Are you suggesting I should be concerned about you?”

His pupils constricted in shock, and he let her go. “You think I’d hurt you?”

“If I thought you were a danger to any of us, I’d never have allowed you to stay.” She sighed and rubbed her wrists, though she’d hardly felt Quentin’s grip—not, at any rate, as pain. “I’ve seen how well you get along with May, when she would never trust anyone but me. Oscar likes you, and Harper has improved since you came.” She turned away, fighting a lump in her throat. “I should be very sorry to see you gone, but I must insist that you not attempt to interfere as you did in the parlor.”

Quentin’s breath sawed in and out like that of a large, angry beast. The small hairs prickled on the back of Johanna’s neck. Her instincts screamed for her to turn around and face him as she would a dangerous animal. A wolf.

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