Cassidy stepped onto the soggy road before she knew what she was doing. Someone in the wagon gasped. Telford turned in his seat, checked the horses, set the brake, and jumped down.
“Countess!” he said, snatching a loose blanket from the back of the wagon with hardly a glance at its staring occupants. He hurried toward her and, averting his gaze, wrapped its damp folds around her. “What are you doing here?”
He knew better than to ask why she was naked—but he also knew she wasn’t supposed to be able to Change. “It’s a long story, Telford,” she said wearily. She looked at John Dodd, who gazed at her without recognition or hostility or fear. “Why are you here, with him?”
“Lord Greyburn released him.” Telford’s thin face was very grave. “I know you judged the earl harshly for his treatment of Dodd. But he would never have done him permanent injury.” He lowered his voice. “Sadly, the man’s experiences… damaged his mind. The Russians would have taken little care to preserve it beyond its use to them. Lord Greyburn believes he will heal in time, with rest and proper care.”
Cassidy remembered Braden’s fury with the footman. How could he have gone from such violence to concern for a mere human? “Who are the other people?” she asked.
“Dodd’s family—the mother and sister and brother he was supporting. Lord Greyburn has made arrangements so that neither Dodd nor his family will ever want for anything as long as they live. He’s given them a fine farm in Yorkshire, and a regular income—even a doctor’s care until Dodd has sufficiently recovered.”
“Even after… what he did?” she said.
“Even so, my lady.” He studied her face. “He asked me to see them to their new home. I suspect that upon my return, I shall be looking for a new position. He will not require my services any longer.”
“You’re wrong. He’ll need you, if he needs anyone. I’ve left Greyburn.”
No surprise showed in his expression. “Lord Greyburn spoke little to me before our departure, but I knew—” He stopped and sighed. “My lady, I tried to explain to you, once—”
“I remember. You said you believed that I’d made a change in him. But I know more about what he was like before I came.” She shook her head. “I thought he… cared enough to understand what I had to do. And I had to do it, Telford.” She pulled the blanket tight about her shoulders and stared at her bare toes. “But he told me that he married me for convenience. He didn’t know what else to do with me, because I wasn’t any good for his Cause.” She laughed. “I actually thought he could love me.”
“But you love him.”
She wanted to deny it with all the newfound anger and power and independence she’d found within herself, but even now she didn’t know how to lie. “Yes,” she whispered. “But it doesn’t make any difference.” She met Telford’s gaze. “I’m going to have a baby.”
His skin flushed bright red. “You are—”
“Braden told me he wasn’t able to sire children. But he did.”
Telford paced several steps away and back again. “Do you know what this would mean to him?”
She spread her hand across her stomach under the blanket. “I want my baby to be loved, Telford.”
The people in the wagon were very quiet, watching. A bird called from the nearest tree. Telford passed his hand across his face and closed his eyes.
“You think him incapable of such emotion, my lady. He is not. In the past—”
“I know all about Milena. He didn’t even love her. She was just someone to make children for the Cause.”
Telford opened his eyes and held her gaze. “Lord Greyburn lets you, and everyone else, believe that, Countess. To admit the truth would be to accept that he made mistakes, that he was weak. Weak enough to be human. Whatever he may say, my lady, the loups-garous are partly human, and for him that means unacceptable frailty and imperfection.”
“But why?”
“His grandfather, the former earl of Greyburn, drummed it into him from childhood. Tiberius Forster was not a kind man. He despised humans, and those loups-garous who chose to live as human, including his own sister. He ruled Greyburn with an iron fist and molded his grandson in his own image, to be his heir in the Cause. The current earl learned through cruel discipline that duty to the Cause supplanted all other interests.