With a cry of frustration, Cassidy ducked under the water. She stayed submerged until her lungs ached, and then came up, twisting her wet, heavy hair between her hands. She found the soap and used it mercilessly on every corner of her body, and then ducked again to rinse until she’d scrubbed herself bright as a new penny.
By the time she’d dried with the towels left on a rack by the tub, her mind was made up. As painfully embarrassing as it would be to admit the depths of her ignorance, she had to tell Braden that she must be taught how to Change. He would find out sooner or later, and then she’d seem deceitful as well as stupid.
She crouched before the fire, untangling her hair with the ivory-handled brush left for her on the dressing table. There was one good side to this; if Braden taught her, then she’d get to be with him even more. Maybe she could recapture the familiarity of their run in the woods. Maybe that was only the beginning, and when she finally learned to become a wolf…
Her vision snagged on the memory of a name she’d heard only once. Milena, Braden’s wife.
Milena must have been loup-garou. She and Braden were two of a kind, able to run together as wolves with nothing, to stand between them. What memories did Braden have of his wife? What was she like, and how had she died? Why did he never mention her?
More than mere curiosity urged Cassidy to find the answers. Rowena had started to talk about Milena. She was the one to ask.
Cassidy shrugged into her second-plainest dress, one she hoped wouldn’t offend Rowena, and pulled her damp hair back with a piece of ribbon. Her sense of time told her that it was well past ten. The sky outside her window was too dark with clouds for stars to show, but lamps still burned in the corridor when she left her room to find Rowena’s.
Rowena opened the door before she could knock. “I thought you might come,” she said. No one seeing her now would believe that she’d been weeping only an hour before. She looked Cassidy over without comment and stepped back. “Please.”
The room was not unlike Cassidy’s, but it was exquisitely feminine, an extension of Rowena’s taste and delicacy. The object that most dominated the chamber was not the beautifully draped bed nor the highly polished dressing table with its tall framed mirror. Hanging on one wall was a life-sized portrait of a woman dressed in a striking, fur-trimmed gown. Her hair was a gold so pale as to be nearly white, and her tilted eyes were black. Fine, tapered hands rested in her lap just above the bottom edge of the painting, fingers glittering with rings. Her body was lushly curved. She was stunning, beyond any image of beauty Cassidy had seen in life.
“Milena,” Rowena said. She moved to stand beside the portrait, pride and possession in her carriage. Compared to the woman in the painting, she was merely lovely, but she didn’t seem to fear the comparison.
Cassidy simply stared. So this was Milena. The grace of her name didn’t do her justice. Her face had a delicacy that hinted of mischief, and yet never lost its noble bearing. Cassidy knew she must have been a great lady—as great as Braden was a lord.
It was no surprise that Braden wanted to marry her.
“She came from Russia,” Rowena said. “From a great family of landowners. She came to Greyburn as a stranger, but she made herself loved for the six years she was with us. She was the perfect lady.”
Such a compliment from Rowena couldn’t be easily earned. “You were good friends,” Cassidy guessed.
“We were like sisters.” Rowena looked up at the sweetly smiling face and raised a hand as if to touch the frozen fingers. “She made life at Greyburn… tolerable. Her warmth, her charm, her grace—no one who saw her could fail to love her, except—” She bit her lower lip. “We hid nothing from each other.”
Cassidy’s mind painted a picture of two blond heads bent together, speaking in cultured voices of ladylike things. It was impossible to imagine herself in that scene. No wonder Rowena was cold to Cassidy, if Milena was her ideal.
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