Faith suddenly knew. “Major Channing was looking for these, wasn’t he, when he pulled aside my specimen case? I thought it was his fierceness that scared you, but you had these with you all along. That’s why you were so nervous.”
Minnie nodded. “Yes, miss. Lucky for me, the higher the rank, the more likely they are to forget servants are people, not property or furniture.”
Faith winced. “I take it you failed to deliver to Papa’s associate. Why?”
Minnie grimaced. “I thought I could sell ’em myself. Turn a tidy profit, use the money to emigrate to Europe. I didn’t know how hard it is to fence bullets in a foreign land, especially when one is only a lady’s maid.”
“Did you take the work with Mrs Honeybun in an effort to pursue this illicit activity?”
Minnie hung her head. “Yes, miss, in part. I mean, I do like it. The money from the sale would have gone into me starting my own dress shop. But it’s too hard for someone like me to sell something like this. I’ve never done it before, miss. Please believe me.”
Faith could understand wanting independence. She could understand hating the supernatural set. She didn’t blame Minnie.
“We’re all sinners, Minnie, in some form or another. But why confess now?”
“Your father wants his bullets back. And he didn’t ask nicely.”
Minnie pushed at her cap, revealing what she’d been hiding under it. One of her eyes was dark and swollen. She’d clearly been beaten.
“Mrs Honeybun yelled for lawmen and he ran. But he’ll return.”
Faith nodded. “You’re safe here tonight, I think. The Iftercasts have taken against my parents, thank heavens. I don’t know what we did to deserve the care of such nice people, Minnie.”
“True, miss.”
Faith patted the counterpane, and Minnie put the bullets away and came to sit next to her. Still trembling a little.
“And tomorrow, miss, what then?”
“Did you hear that I’m engaged, Minnie?”
“No, miss. Felicitations?”
“To a werewolf.”
“The grumpy one from after we landed, who you yelled at?”
“Yes, Minnie, that’s him.”
Minnie gave a small smile that might have been approval. “Very good, miss.”
Faith said, “Here’s what I think we should do…”
Channing believed that Biffy would come to talk to him about his hasty choices, but it was Lyall who found him.
Channing was in the library of Falmouth House, his favorite haunt when he must be at home. Which wasn’t often but, he supposed, with a wife, might become more frequent in the future. He’d claimed one of the small tables for his desk, and most of the rest of the pack left him be. Children were not allowed in the library. Not until they could actually read.
He was examining a set of shelves in the brightest corner of the room. Or what would be the brightest corner, with the curtains open and the sun above the horizon.
The shelves were sparsely populated with only the cheapest of volumes. Book spines were too likely to fade on these particular shelves, since the staff had orders to open all the downstairs windows in the summertime and to draw the curtains year ’round. Just because werewolves could only be awake at night did not mean they allowed a gloomy, cheerless, stuffy habitat like that of the vampires.
After long consideration, Channing began removing those few books that were on the shelves and rehoming them elsewhere in the library.
The London Pack didn’t boast a particularly vast book collection. In fact, it might be called embarrassingly petite. Channing thought that he ought to put a concerted effort into improving it. It had dwindled considerably since he joined the pack. Most of the political, historical, and technical manuals had migrated to BUR over the last half century. A great many books had been abandoned by the pack in the library at Woolsey Castle when they’d been forced to relocate to London. They were now the property of the resident vampires. Once a hive got their fangs into something, it was easier to buy another than demand it back.
“What are you doing, Channing? Cataloging?” Professor Lyall came into the room.
“Oh, it’s you. No, reorganizing.”
Lyall watched him for a moment. “You have plans for those now-empty shelves?”
“I do.” Channing was churlish. “I trust you don’t object, Beta?”
“Depends on the plans.”
Channing did not answer the unasked question. “Lyall, what do you want?”
“I understand you have sealed the deal with Miss Wigglesworth.”
“Faith. Yes. You’ve come to put me off?”
“Certainly not. Biffy approves. You know the rest of the pack all like her very much. Those who have met her, at least. I think she’ll fit in well here. And we will, of course, look after her should you run away.”
“You think that likely, do you?”
“The odds favor it.”
“You haven’t much faith in me.”
“Channing, I’ve known you for a hundred years, give or take a decade. You’ve never kept a woman for more than a few hours, let alone the span of a mortal lifetime. Frankly, I do not know what to expect. Up until this moment, you were nothing if not predictable in your loneliness.”
“She needs us rather badly.”
“Yes, I know. It does not have to be you who marries her.”
“Yes, it does.” Channing’s lip curled and he bared his teeth.
Lyall rolled his eyes at this display of possessiveness. “You’re sure you’re good enough for her?”
“Most assuredly not. But she seems to think so, and I want to try for her sake.”
Lyall gave a tight little sigh. “Channing, you must tell her about Odette.”
“I know.”
“And Isolde.”
“Don’t say that name.”
Lyall stood before him then, stopping him from pacing and fiddling with books and shelves.
Channing nearly walked right into him.
Lyall didn’t flinch – small, sandy-haired, self-effacing and urbane, infinitely powerful. A great deal stronger than Channing in every way. His enemy, his friend, his stabilization over the decades. There was so much time shared between them that they had become two thirds of a whole. Two thirds unchanging over the course of three Alphas now.
Channing remembered his howler training from when he’d first been metamorphosed. He thought on it often. The balance of the pack, the rule of three. Alpha for the head, evolving, shifting, holding too many tethers, burning brighter than the rest of the pack until he snuffed himself out in madness. Beta for the heart, beating a steady rhythm of care, love, resilience, ever steadfast. Gamma for the strength in arms, the warrior, the challenger, the weapon, to remind the pack of what they really were – hunters, trackers, fighters. To remind them to survive first.
Lyall stepped close, placed his hands to either side of Channing’s face, and breathed with him. Beta calm. Balance and focus. Lyall – my opposite in all things. What the Beta gives to the pack, the Gamma takes away. Challenge to support, fight to acceptance, peace for a time, until challenge comes again. The cycle of the wolf.
“Channing.” His Beta’s voice was mellow. “If she is in love with you, and I think she is – although you can’t have made it easy for her, poor little thing – then she deserves to know all of you.”
Channing could not deny this. Faith had spread herself raw and tenderized before him this very evening, cut herself open like fresh meat. He had craved her before he knew all her story, and now? Now he hungered for her, ravenous, and it was just possible he loved her a little. Even a lot. Which was truly terrifying.
“If you want to keep her for yourself – and I think you need to keep her – she has a right to know all of it.”
The next day, during early evening visiting hours, no one was surprised to see Mrs Iftercast, Miss Iftercast, and Miss Wigglesworth call upon the werewolves of Falmouth House. Or, to be precise, since the sun was not yet down, they were visiting the daylight support staff and clavigers of Falmouth House.
Everyone had heard the wildly romantic and mildly horrific story of the gallery the night before. More important, it was now understood and officially reported that Miss Wigglesworth had netted herself a werewolf. The fact that it was Major Channing was a surprise only to those who had not been watching his deranged courtship of her over the past few months.