Greyburn was their home. Braden’s home. She’d seen the change in his face when he spoke of it. Rowena didn’t want to leave London, and Quentin seemed indifferent, but Braden was eager to return to a place he loved.
What Braden loved must be very special indeed.
The trip was too exciting to be tedious. Servants had packed food and drink, and the seats were padded; the hours flew by as the train made its way past the tranquil farmland of the south, through fens and wetlands of the east, north to Yorkshire with its sheep-covered hills and moors. The land grew more rugged as the train crossed into Durham and then followed the coast to Newcastle.
Newcastle was every bit as ugly as London; smoke belched from high stacks, streets were narrow and dirty, and there were too many people crushed into small spaces. The air stank of a hundred clashing scents Cassidy couldn’t begin to name. She twisted her fingers together in the lap other uncomfortably proper traveling dress and prayed Newscastle was not their destination.
But after await and some to-do of transferring luggage to another train at the Newcastle station, and settling with much bustle and unnecessary fuss into a new compartment, the Forster party was on its way again. Inland and west from Newcastle, away from the crowds and the noise and the stench. Into a country that gave way, as the train curved north from the Tyne River, to wilder hills, bare and windswept, sheltering tapered valleys where trees huddled along the winding paths of the creeks the northern English called “burns.” Scattered farms stood lonely guard in the valley of the North Tyne, the river never entirely out of sight from the train window.
There was a peculiar similarity between this land and the one Cassidy had left behind in New Mexico. It wasn’t in the color of the earth or in the unfamiliar trees or the look of the sky; here it was green, like the rest of England. The very air had moisture in it, and heavy clouds scudded ahead of the wind.
But like the desert, Northumberland was wild. Once the city was left behind, it was as if people were only a tiny part of a place too big to be fenced and gentled and broken. Oh, there were stone-fenced fields, and patches of farmland, and sheep and cattle. But Cassidy could see hills as majestic and bleak as the mountains in New Mexico, where a person could run for miles and miles without meeting anyone.
“Ah,” Quentin said, after hours of uncharacteristic silence. “Ulfington at last.” He drew a pack of cards from inside his coat and began to shuffle them absently. “Not much farther now.”
Cassidy craned her neck for a better view of the approaching town. The train slowed, lurching and puffing like an old horse summoning up its last energy to reach the barn.
Ulfington itself was a collection of buildings running along two intersecting streets, with a jumble of oudying cottages along the edges. Cassidy could just make out a few signs hung from doorways, the spire of a church, people and horses moving along the cobbled streets.
“There is where we get off,” Quentin added. “There’ll be carriages waiting to take us to Greyburn.”
She turned to look at him. “It’s not here?”
“Oh, no. Braden couldn’t abide living so near a town full of humans—begging your pardon, Mrs. Smith—even if our ancestors had seen fit to build here.”
Isabelle smiled at Quentin in acknowledgment but said nothing. She seemed to like Quentin well enough, and was respectfully cordial with Rowena. But since they’d left London, she’d become more and more withdrawn.
Was it because she wasn’t one of them—not loup-garou? Braden paid no more attention to her than he did to the other servants, who were all human. Isabelle was going to a place that belonged to the loups-garous in a way London didn’t. Did that make her afraid?
The train pulled to a stop. Quentin stretched as far as the cramped quarters would allow, and Rowena clutched her small valise and stared straight ahead. Isabelle touched Cassidy’s arm.
“Well,” she said, “you’re almost at the end of your quest, Cassidy.”