There might have been others who saw her, fleeing wild as a lunatic in her underclothes, but they meant nothing to her. The landscape passed by in a blur of shape and color. She ran without destination or purpose, away from Greyburn, over the park and the fells and past copses of trees and low stone fences.
All the world was reduced to the pounding other heart and the burning air in her lungs and the rhythm of running feet. There came a moment when even the scant clothes she wore weighed her down like chains; she paused just long enough to tear them off.
Naked, she leaped, and as she began to fall she felt a new abyss open beneath her. She twisted sideways to avoid it, and her body Changed.
Like water flowing from river to sea, like the gentle shift of seasons, like a chrysalis turning into a butterfly, she made the transition with ease and joy. Two legs became four. She hit solid ground again, graceful and sure. Wind rushed through the lush blackness of her coat. All of life opened up to her: every sound was music, every scent intoxicating.
She was wolf, she was magnificent, she was one with all of nature.
She was loup-garou. She was whole, and free, and she would never need anything, or anyone, again.
An hour passed, perhaps two, before Braden emerged from the dark citadel of his own mind and found Cassidy gone.
He listened for her. The house was as silent as a tomb.
They were all gone, now. All he heard was the uneven pop of raindrops on the window.
Braden moved mechanically to the door, his foot catching on cloth. The remnants of Cassidy’s garments, scattered about the room in testament to her final rebellion.
“I made myself believe that you could learn to care about something besides the Cause. I even believed I could love you.”
He kicked her torn petticoat out of his way and walked, as carefully as a crippled old man, down the corridor of the family wing. Not even a housemaid troubled his solitude. He passed by Cassidy’s room with only the slightest stumble and paused at the door to Isabelle Smith’s chamber.
Like the rebuke of a tenacious ghost, Isabelle’s accusations came back to haunt him. No disdain for her humanity, or her shame, could shield him from them now.
“… your motives are no more pure than those of any man who would use a woman as I was used… You Forsters have great skill in twisting everything to your own advantage, especially the vulnerabilities of those you would rule. If Cassidy fails, will you exile her as well?”
How clairvoyant those words have been. He had cast her out, as surely as if she’d been a human servant guilty of betrayal. He’d done it with a few cruel phrases, destroying the last of her innocence and the fragile shield of her self-deception.
What else had Isabelle said? ” ‘The best laid schemes o’ mice an men gang aft a-gley.’ ”
Braden Forster was neither mice nor man, but he found little consolation in that fact.
He left Mrs. Smith’s door and passed several others that led to vacant, long-unused rooms. Quentin’s door stood half-ajar just beyond them. His brothers scent was even fainter than Rowena’s had been. The place had an air of desertion; Braden knew with a sudden certainty that Quentin would not be returning any time soon. He, like Rowena, had fled Greyburn.
One betrayal upon another. Desertion. Loneliness more profound than any Braden thought he had mastered. He had driven them away.
He wandered aimlessly about the room, making no attempt to avoid the unfamiliar furniture. His body hardly felt the bruising impact of each obstacle he struck.
In the end his nose led him to the locked cabinet in the corner. The stench of Quentin’s liquor, his poison, was unmistakable. Braden tore the door off its hinges and pulled the bottles out one by one. He opened the window and raised the first bottle high.
“If you’re not careful,” Quentin’s voice mocked him, “you’ll find enough business, related to the Cause and otherwise, to keep you from ever knowing your wife. And I don’t think she’ll consent to remain in your shadow. “