He was Matthew, not Matthias. Not her gentle knight. He was not even human.
But he wasn’t laughing as he reached her, nor was there condescension or contempt in his green eyes. “Mrs… Mrs. S-smith,” he said. “I beg… your pardon. I should have explained—”
“What?” she said., “That your little masquerade was all in fun? Well, I cannot chide you, Mr. Forster. I, too, have been exposed as a fraud.”
His gaze dropped to the ground between his feet. “M-Matthias told me of you. But he c-can’t be here today. So I came.”
She stared at him. One of them was surely mad, and she was all too much aware other own sanity. “But you are—”
“Your friend, Mrs. Smith. I w-wish to be.”
She set aside her own misery and tried to make sense of his words. She knew he was Matthias; she had been too much with men not to be sure of that. This was no matter of identical twins.
But if he was Matthias, why did he refer to someone separate from himself? His patterns of speech, his demeanor, even the way he held his body were completely different from Matthias’s. He was not playing a joke on her now—or, if he was, he was the greatest actor in history.
She had thought Matthias a little crazy with his fantasies of Reivers and border battles. This was something else entirely. Could one man be two people at once and not even know it?
“May I sit d-down?” Matthew asked.
Isabelle was beyond despair or incredulity. She gestured to the grass, and he sat, loose-limbed and clumsy.
“Thank you,” he said. He pushed a hank of untidy iron gray hair away from his forehead. “You see, I first f-found Matthias when I was very much in n-need of a friend. He once kept me from… a t-terrible mistake when I w-was in disgrace. I know what it is to b-be an outsider.”
“An outsider,” Isabelle repeated.
“Yes. Y-years ago, I w-was to marry a woman chosen for me by m-my father, Tiberius, who was earl then. You came with Miss H-Holt, so you know h-how we Forsters do such things.”
“That is one thing I do not know.”
“T-Tiberius started the tradition of arranged m-marriages among us—among all the werewolves, to s-save our kind. He called his plan the C-Cause.” He gave the word unmistakable emphasis.
Isabelle labored to absorb his explanation. The topic of arranged marriages made her think of Braden’s former wife. Had that, too, been arranged? She had been unable to learn anything more of importance about Milena, not even from the most loose-tongued servants—which was not saying much, at Greyburn.
“The Cause,” she echoed.
“Y-yes. My marriage was to be p-part of it.” He laughed shortly. “But it was called off, because I was not g-good enough. My blood was not pure. I could… couldn’t Change.”
Isabelle opened her eyes. “You could not become a wolf?”
“No.” He ducked his head. “I f-failed. I was of no use to the Cause. My f-father did not wish me to be n-near him. So I have lived away from Greyburn ever since. M-Matthias was m-my only friend. He stopped me, w-when I would have k—” He flushed. “He m-made me see the reason to go on living.”
Good Lord. Isabelle put the puzzle together in her mind. Matthew Forster was like Cassidy, unable to Change into a wolf, and it had led him into a profound despair—profound enough to make life unbearable.
Then Matthias had appeared. A man at peace with himself, eccentric and solitary but happy to be so. A man with the resilience to find joy in life, who had nothing to prove to the loups-garous of Greyburn.
When they’d first met, Matthias had told her: “Ye need not fear me, Lady. I ken, as ye do, what manner of men the Forsters be. But you’re nae one of them.”
Matthew Forster was one of them, and yet outcast. And so Matthew Forster had become someone else. Someone human… and unafraid. Was that so very different from what she herself had done?
He was Matthias. Sitting here with him now felt almost the same as when she and Matthias shared quiet moments overlooking the peaceful valley and grazing sheep, in perfect harmony with each other, needing nothing and no one else in the world.