TOUCH OF THE WOLF By Susan Krinard

She obeyed, this time, without argument. Aynsley appeared in the hall, and Braden had him send a footman for the housekeeper and a blanket. Cassidy would require dry clothing and a bed prepared for her, possibly food as well. The rest could be settled at Greyburn.

Everything would be settled, once and for all, at Greyburn.

He led Cassidy into the library and pulled a chair up to the fire. “Sit,” he ordered. She did so, her intent silence suggesting that she was fully engaged in observing her surroundings.

Mrs. Fairbairn appeared and Braden gave her the necessary instructions. He could feel her curiosity, but she knew better than to linger and stare at the unexpected female guest.

“Was that your mother?” Cassidy said.

Cassidy Holt had an unwelcome habit of asking astonishing questions. “That,” he said, “was the housekeeper, Mrs. Fairbairn.”

“Oh. She looks very nice.”

“She is an efficient servant.” He unfolded the blanket Fairbairn had given him and shook it out. “You’re soaked through, cousin. Wrap yourself in this. Mrs. Fairbairn will have the maids prepare your room.”

Cassidy sprang up from the chair, dodging the offered blanket. “Please don’t go to any trouble. I can sleep anywhere. Right here would be fine.”

“I trust you had a room of your own at your uncle’s ranch.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “but I often slept out in the desert with the vaqueros. I don’t need anything special.”

He tried to picture her bedding down among a rough lot of human males, but his imagination balked at the idea of it. What kind of life had she led since the death other parents? She dressed as a boy with little self-consciousness, and she spoke her mind without any sense of decorum.

Yet he knew she was untouched. He would swear to that on the Cause itself. There was nothing hidden about her, no dark secrets or dangerous complexities; she was as obvious as heather on the moors.

“How you lived in America is unimportant,” he told her. “Here you will have a room of your own, and a maid will see to your needs. Have you dined this evening?”

“Ay Dios! I don’t think I could swallow a bite.”

Doubtless that was some American oath learned from the ranch hands, those vaqueros of hers. Braden was momentarily distracted at the thought of Rowena’s reaction to such language and behavior. Rowena believed that she could turn her back on her werewolf blood by playing the perfect lady, as if the two identities were incompatible.

Braden knew better. The werewolf kind had been natural aristocrats since the beginning of history. They rose easily to positions of power. They were superior to ordinary men in every respect, and that superiority was evident in all they did.

Of course there were exceptions. There were loups-garous who broke the unwritten rules by which were-wolves had coexisted with man for centuries. They were criminals, to be cast out and punished.

But they were rare. Rowena’s refusal of her heritage was worse than foolish, it was madness. The Greyburn Forsters lived in a world of order and control, a perfect balance between wolf and man.

Whatever Cassidy’s upbringing, she must learn to adjust to Forster ways. She would never enter human society—Braden wouldn’t make that mistake again—but discipline and duty would temper her immoderate behavior.

Braden draped the neglected blanket over the back of the chair and sent a footman to check on the housekeeper’s progress. Even now, when Cassidy was quiet, absorbed in her thoughts, he was disturbingly aware other.

And why not? Her arrival had changed everything. Quentin was long overdue for a mate. What better choice for him than William Forster’s American granddaughter?

Cassidy interrupted his thoughts with a whisper of off-key song, her scent enveloping him like a shaft of sunlight. For a single mad instant, his mind was filled with an impossible image: this artless girl at his side, not Quentin’s; his mate, taken in the name of the Cause, sharing his bed, lending him light without shadow and a taste of simple happiness…

He ruthlessly shut off that thought. His part in the Cause had been settled three years past, and it did not include mating again. That path was forever closed. He’d proven himself unworthy because of unpardonable imperfections, and he could serve the Cause only if he held to his vow.

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