Telford appeared in the doorway. “Is there anything you wish, my lord?”
Braden sat down again, ignoring the consequences of his ill-timed movement. He’d dismissed his valet hours ago; typical of the man that he would stubbornly disobey orders and remain on duty while his master sat out the storm.
“Go to bed, Telford,” he said. “I know my way up to my own room.”
Telford took a few steps into the library and paused. “A book, my lord? The Origin of Species, perhaps?”
Braden shook his head. The valet was one of the few Greyburn servants who would take the liberty of even such mild disobedience. Braden permitted it; without Telford, there would be occasions when he was truly helpless in spite of his keen senses and instincts.
Those senses tracked the valet as he moved across the room and knelt beside the shattered objet d’art.
“Was it valuable?” Braden asked.
“A rather unattractive object, my lord, and thus of little consequence. I cannot imagine where it originated.”
Rowena would hardly appreciate such a comment. Telford was a connoisseur of beautiful things—beauty Braden could no longer appreciate.
Thunder vibrated the window. Braden pulled his attention away from the storm and deliberately leaned his head back against the chair.
“Leave it, Telford. I wish your opinion on another matter.”
“At your service, my lord.”
“You observed the young lady who just arrived—my cousin, Miss Holt.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Describe her to me.”
Telford cleared his throat. “She is… American, my lord?”
“Yes.”
“Then perhaps… one mustn’t consider English standards when offering an opinion—which is, of course, entirely irrelevant to the—”
Braden turned his face toward Telford. “Do you find her hideous?”
The valet’s scent announced his unease as decidedly as a shout. He wouldn’t lie to Braden. Few humans lied successfully to a loup-garou. “She is… unusual, my lord.”
“How?”
“If you will permit plain speaking, she is a…” He coughed again. “A ragamuffin, my lord.”
The corner of Braden’s mouth twitched. “And apart from her conduct and clothing?”
“Her hair is very thick and black, my lord, and curling. It falls to the middle other back.”
He could still feel the lush weight of it. “And her figure. Is it well-formed?”
“It was somewhat difficult to tell. She is quite tall.”
“Her eyes?”
“Nondescript. Her skin is rather… tan, my lord.”
That would certainly be a mark against her in Telford’s view—and Rowena’s. “She lived in a warm climate,” he said, and wondered why he defended her to his own valet. “I take it you find her less than beautiful?”
“I would never presume.”
Braden remembered tracing her features, feeling the strength and stubbornness in them. So she wasn’t a beauty. Her looks were of no significance—least of all to him.
The storm was fading now, the thunder more distant. Lightning no longer burned inside his skull. His heart beat at a normal pace, and the chill had been replaced by an unaccountable warmth.
He dismissed Telford, rose, and started for his room. When he reached the third floor, he found himself stopping dead in the hallway, as if he’d encountered an unexpected wall.
No wall, but something far more ethereal. Sagebrush and sunlight, cattle and cactus. Cassidy, asleep in the guest room. He could hear her steady breathing through the door, the deep sleep of exhaustion. Or unalloyed innocence.
Only minutes ago he had almost regretted that he could not see her face as Telford saw it—meet the gaze of those “nondescript” eyes, no doubt as full of contradictions as the girl herself.
But his impediment was a blessing. It was an effective defense against intrusive emotion, an invisible protection from the dangers of intimacy, a shield neither human nor werewolf could penetrate. Least of all Cassidy Holt.
He turned away and walked slowly to his room.
Four
“Miss?”
Sunlight flowed like honey across the bed, and Cassidy finally opened her eyes. She’d been awake since well before dawn, basking in the knowledge that she was home.
Home. But this was not the tiny room off the kitchen at the ranch, crowded by her lumpy bed, three-legged chair, and the tilted shelves holding her precious books. There were no cows to be milked, cattle to be worked, weeds to be pulled.