Ulrich stepped after her, bracketing and shielding her figure with his bulk, hiding her vulnerability from the eyes of others. His brother warrior, protecting his love’s unprotected back. As it should be.
Channing said, “Mrs Iftercast, take your cousin away from here.”
Mrs Iftercast nodded, still disgusted with Mrs Wigglesworth, but they had all come in the Isopod together. They must leave that way.
Mrs Iftercast was made of solid stock. “Come with me, Mrs Wigglesworth, and I will return you to your hotel. Theodora, stay with Faith. You, sir, Major Channing, I expect a formal announcement in the Times for tomorrow.”
Channing grinned. He had thought Mrs Iftercast quite silly, but there was iron in her.
“Of course.” He nodded, arrogant and regal. She is mine now. Curious that his reluctance to remarry was so easily put aside when his Faith needed him. Needed rescuing from her own family. He had realized it must be bad. Not only her childhood growing up amongst such people, but the way they treated her after she fell from grace. The apparently unpardonable sin of exploring her own passion.
Even if I fail her in marriage as I failed my first wife. Even if I am not strong enough for this. She will have the pack. She will have my pack. I can give her that. They will take care of her if I cannot. He looked at Ulric; his pack-mate’s face, so impossibly handsome, was furrowed in concern even as he scanned the crowd. On guard for further attack.
But the crowd was with them. They either did not care or, more likely, did not believe the strange older American woman who had hurled abuses at Miss Wigglesworth.
Miss Wigglesworth was the toast of the town. London had adopted her. She was their American! How dare another American threaten her? She had taken it upon herself to tame one of the most untamed werewolves in all the ton. It wasn’t as if Channing had ever been considered eligible. She was welcome to him, no one else wanted him, and they were happy to have her. A Channing tamed by an American was better than an untamed Channing.
Besides, while it made for an embarrassing scene to witness, it was also particularly juicy gossip. Not the least of which being that everyone who was present at the National Gallery that evening knew now that the one werewolf who’d sworn never to marry (well, never to marry a second time, for those whose memories were long enough) was actually engaged.
Faith had never suffered through anything more mortifying in her life. After Kit and the discovery of the full repercussions of her indiscretion, things had been very, very mortifying. Her mother had been privately cruel, her temper had flared even more than was normal, but she had never publicly shamed Faith before. Faith supposed that in Boston, her mother cared, while in London she did not.
Then to have Mrs Iftercast and Teddy come to her defence, and Channing come to her rescue. Now to find herself engaged! Why, it was as if successive waves of different emotions crashed over her, buffeting her, until all she felt was saturated, shipwrecked, and gasping.
She awoke from the deluge to find herself still curled against her werewolf. His arm, strong and sure, was around her. His scent, wild and masculine, was all she could smell.
“Ulric,” said Channing, “clear us a path. Let’s get our girl out of here.”
Faith found herself moved carefully through a hushed crowd, out of the gallery, and through other showrooms until they were in some small forgotten part of the museum.
“Shut the door, Miss Iftercast.”
“But, sir!”
“A moment alone with my betrothed is all I ask. It will not be long enough for me to ravish her, I promise.”
The door closed.
Faith said, with confidence learned from her own mistake, “It doesn’t take all that long.”
Channing snorted. “It does if you do it properly.” Cool fingers pressed her chin up. “Lazuli, look at me.”
“My eyes are all red.”
“Your eyes are beautiful and you know it. Here, blow.” He pulled out a handkerchief, and Faith made it soggy and tried to repair herself a little.
“So, you won,” he said.
“This isn’t exactly how I wanted it to go.” Faith trembled. They had had such a game going between them, and now it was all over and she had trapped him into marriage, because he had a kind heart and he pitied her.
She took a deep, shaky breath. “I owe you an explanation, Major.”
“I think you may call me Channing now that we are engaged.”
She was arrested. “What’s your first name?”
“That is.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Channing is both my first and last name, because my parents thought they were being particularly cheeky or because they were idiots. I don’t know, I never asked them. They died in an experimental yeast fermentation accident when I was three.”
She blinked. “There’s so much I don’t know about you. And there’s so much you don’t know about me. I should tell you. I must tell you, now, before this engagement is made public.”
He quirked an eyebrow.
“Fine, before it’s made any more public.”
“I know the worst of your sins, my Lazuli.”
“No.” She marshaled her courage. “You don’t. That wasn’t the whole of it. Otherwise, I would have contradicted Kit’s boasting. I could’ve lied. Werewolves have so little standing in Boston, and Kit was only a claviger. He could’ve said I flipped my skirts for him, and I could’ve denied it, truth or not.”
“That is not your style.” He had such confidence in her.
“No, it’s not. But you’ve seen my mother. She would’ve hidden me away, kept me trapped in my room, stopped me from saying anything, and denied it all publicly. In fact, that’s exactly what she tried to do. But it wasn’t possible, you understand?”
He stopped breathing and drew away from her.
Faith’s skin went all over tight and tingled with fear. But she would do this. She owed him honesty. She owed him all her truths. He might keep his own past hidden from her, but she would not be so reticent. If they were to have anything together, it must be based on honesty.
“What happened?” She knew that he did not want the truth, but he asked because she needed him to. Faith loved him for that.
“There was a child.” She flopped her hands open in a helpless gesture. “It only takes one time, did you know that? Well, I didn’t. But apparently, only once.” She gave a humorless little laugh. “Lucky me.”
He closed his eyes, clearly horrified. “What happened to the baby, Faith?”
He is no longer calling me Lazuli. She swallowed, her throat parched.
He grabbed her shoulders, pressed her back so she must lean into his hard hands or fall. His gaze was impossibly cold and fierce.
“What did you do to it?”
Faith understood, then, some small part of his past. Not all, of course; he would have to tell her the rest. But she understood the signs of betrayal in others; she had felt it so often herself. “Channing, I’m not her. You know that, don’t you?”
“What. Happened. To. The. Baby.” A small shake each time.
“I lost it. Late in the pregnancy. Too late, they tell me. I wonder sometimes if the baby knew, somehow, that it wasn’t wanted. So, it rid itself of me.” She looked away, closed her own eyes. “There was a lot of blood. They wouldn’t even tell me if it was a boy or a girl.” She hated describing it. She wanted to shove the memory back where it belonged, locked away as if in the smallest corner of the bottom drawer of her specimen case. A deadly little treasure, like a chunk of cinnabar, that she knew was there, that she had collected, but that would destroy her if she took it out and handled it, dwelt upon it.
He made the funniest sound then, a lost whine-whimpering, and drew her back against him. Arms gentle. But she didn’t deserve comfort, so she pushed away, forced herself to go on. I’ve got to get this all out now, or I won’t have the guts to do it later.
“No,” she said, “Let me finish.”
“No more,” he begged.
She overruled him. “It damaged me. The baby damaged me, tore me open. Inside.” She took a little sip of air. Almost there now. “The surgeon – they had to call him to stop the bleeding – he said… He said I could never have another. Even if the seed took, I’d likely die in the attempt.”