A Deep Dark Call Page 12

  But years had passed and neither he nor Iancu had been set free. When he was young, Ioan had been certain he would just encounter her one day. Just like that, because it had been preordained by the stars. He had thought himself special, because the wolf was very strong in him and was impatiently waiting to emerge.

  But it was not long before he had lost his youthful dreams. The unsated hunger in his heart had made him become angry and jaded. When, years later, his mother had suggested a match with the suitable daughter of a noble family, he had acquiesced. He’d already understood that he was never really going to find the mate who would complete him. This was life, and life was harsh, as harsh as the winter weather of his country. So he’d married the girl his mother had suggested.

  He had hoped he might grow to love Sorana. She’d given him Alexandra. It had made him happy, and for a while he had truly believed it was enough. He loved his daughter deeply. Still, the wolf in him was clawing to emerge, sometimes ripping his mind apart with horrible pain. He supposed it was partly his fault that his wife had not been happy. He’d tried to be gentle and solicitous; his was not a sunny, tame temper, but for her, he’d attempted to make it so. For a while he’d even pretended to enjoy the same social circles she did just in order to please her. But it had been in vain. He had not been able to love her.

  Sorana was cold to him, afraid of him, maybe. She had asked him to agree to live separate lives, and he had agreed. She did not have maternal feelings for Alexandra, which had hurt him, but he had tried to compensate for it by being the parent that was there for his daughter. His wife spent much of her time in Paris, and he heard that she took lovers. People were so fond of gossiping. He supposed it was the fear of gossip that had really killed her, but he felt responsible for not seeing it sooner. She had died trying to get another man’s child out of her body. He blamed himself for not understanding how desperate she had been. He would have been able to stop her.

  And now he was making the same mistake. Lucy was afraid, and he’d left her alone to deal with it. Wolves did not love, he’d told himself when he’d understood that his true mate had really and unexpectedly come into his life. They did not really understand the concept of love. They just bonded. It was enough.

  He’d seen her walk into his home that night, this silver-eyed woman, with her luscious body, who looked nothing like a governess. He’d seen her that night and had instantly wanted to bury himself into her with desperation. Her scent had told him everything there had been to know. He’d dreamt of her before, but he’d not thought she was real. She was a silver wolf, a silver wolf walking into his life. He’d panicked at first, unable to believe that his dreams had come true.

  But he’d soon come to his senses and returned to claim her. She was his, of course. Forever. Wolves did not love—they just mated and bonded for life and it was enough. But people did love, and Ioan was not simply just wolf, and he could see what she was. She was a playful silver wolf, but also a woman. Passionate and quite brave. Intelligent, but sometimes quick-tempered. Quite sensible, but really stubborn. A woman who’d already been hurt, uncertain and afraid of embracing her wolf self. Truly as hungry for love as he was. And, for the first time together, last night they had not mated as fiercely as wolves. There had been gentleness and sharing that were unmistakably human.

  It was Christmas morning, but he let her sleep, knowing she was utterly exhausted. He placed the gift he had chosen for her on her pillow. He hoped that in time he could mend things between them. He’d failed her, and while he knew the wolf would be always and unquestionably his, it was not so easy to earn the woman’s affection. But it had already become important for him to do so, he realized now.

  Maybe this was what Dreamtime had been really trying to tell him. Maybe this was not just a wolf bond. Maybe it was more than that. That eclipse-like feeling inside him kept telling him so. She was not only his wolf mate—she completed him in a way he was only now beginning to understand. It was more.

  Chapter Ten

  Lucy woke to find an intricate gold pendant on her pillow. A Christmas gift from her husband, obviously ancient and extremely valuable. It held a bloodred stone. A ruby. Red like the blood scent she sensed on him.

  They’d found his wife in a pool of blood. Vicious, ugly rumors, he’d called them, and she suddenly understood how she’d wronged him by merely lending her ear to such things. The blood smell on him had not been human blood. The smell that clung on him was that of a clean kill. Prey. He was a hunter. Wolf. He was frightening and fierce, but always in control.

  She was probably losing her mind. How could he be a wolf? She sighed. Nothing made sense anymore, but there was one thing that she knew for certain. Last night’s dreams or whatever they were had made sure of it. He was her husband and he would never harm her. She saw now how she had hurt him by doubting this strange bond they had.

  She put the pendant round her neck. By accepting it, she felt that she was finally accepting something that had always been part of herself. Something she’d always denied.

  As she studied herself in the mirror, she saw something that had not been there before, a new spark in her eyes. You are my mate, he’d whispered in her ear right before she’d gone to sleep. His mate. He was saying she belonged to him.

  She smiled to herself. She did belong to him, in a way, just as he now belonged to her. But there was something else she was just beginning to understand. A different scent. A whisper in the wind. She did not fully want to think about it. But there it was. This morning she felt herself. Truly herself.

  It was Christmas morning and she was able to take part in Alexandra’s joy. Ioan had gifted her with everything a child her age could dream of, so Lucy was surprised when Alexandra came to thank her warmly for her present. It was insignificant—she hadn’t had the opportunity to buy anything—just a scarf she’d been able to knit. She’d always found knitting incredibly soothing, something that had been able to calm her restless nature, all those impatient, wild feelings she had within herself.

  “Thank you,” Alexandra whispered in her ear, as if she had received something beyond value.

  “It isn’t much,” Lucy told her, sorry she had not been able to get something more significant than this.

  “But it’s very pretty. And besides, it has your scent,” the child whispered, still pressing her cheek against Lucy’s.

  “How can you...?” Lucy began in astonishment.

  “Of course I’m also part wolf. Like Papa, and like you.”

  Lucy’s heart began to thump wildly. From across the table, Tante Sophie narrowed her eyes at them. “What are you whispering there, Alexandra?” she asked sharply.

  Alexandra quickly whispered in Lucy’s ear, “Don’t tell her. She doesn’t know.”

  Lucy could scarcely quiet her beating heart. Wolf. It’s the taint in the blood, her father had told her. He’d told her never to talk about her sharp sense of scent. He’d been displeased with her, with her recklessness and her wild behavior, with her inability to blend in. He’d made her feel confined, so confined. She’d attacked her suitor like a wild beast. Wolf in anger. Wolf in heat. Wild to mate, unable to think clearly ever since she had come to this place and to her true mate.

  Everything went still, and she remembered last night. Her body painfully changing—skin burning and becoming fur, hands and feet blossoming into paws and teeth into fangs. She remembered the joy of the hunt and the joy of mating. Wolf. Empress wolf, he’d called her. Her mate. Emperor Wolf.

  She was painfully jolted into awareness. She saw Tante Sophie narrowing her eyes at her and asking the child to leave them. She cast Lucy a sharp look. “The child seems to like you,” she said drily.

  Lucy did not answer. Tante Sophie sighed. “And my nephew seems quite taken with you.” She did not wait for Lucy to reply to this. “He has been very unhappy, you know, a restless soul. But I saw him this morning and, for the f
irst time in years, it seemed that he was almost content.”

  She shrugged, a wistful smile on her lips. “Thirty-three years ago, I begged my sister not to marry Ioan’s father. She was so sophisticated, so cultured, and Ioan’s father so...so wild. She did not listen to me, and was happy in spite of everything. Still, she had an untimely death. Ioan and Alexandra are the only family I have left.”

  She stared pointedly at Lucy, as if she was trying to make a decision about her. “That girl my nephew married... I was really the one to suggest the match to my sister. I was wrong.”

  “Were they unhappy?” Lucy asked.

  “Yes. They were ill-suited and they made each other very unhappy. She died in hideous circumstances, and somehow I blame myself for it.”

  It had been a violent death, Lucy could see, but she would no longer believe her husband had anything to do with it. “Did she kill herself?”

  “You could say so,” Tante Sophie said, a stony expression on her face. “She was carrying another man’s child, you see. Some Frenchman’s. When she came back to Bucharest, it was already showing and everyone was gossiping, since she’d lived apart from my nephew for more than a year. She came to see me, you know.”

  It was there, in the scent coming from this woman. It was guilt.

  “She came to tell me that she’d told Ioan. He did not care. They already led separate lives. A divorce was unnecessary from his point of view, as he had no plans of remarrying. He’d even told her he would not disown the child. A child is a gift, he told her, no matter who sires it. Still, she seemed troubled, guilty and unhappy, probably pining for the lover who’d jilted her. I did not comfort her. Instead, I told her she had brought only disgrace upon my family and herself.”

  “She tried to get rid of the child,” Lucy whispered.

  “She did. Ioan found her when it was too late.”

  Her husband had been the last person to look upon his wife and, of course, given the circumstances, vicious rumors had started to circulate. Lucy felt even guiltier for listening to the rumors, but her guilt was nothing compared to that of the woman in front of her. She did not try to offer empty words of reassurance; she understood too well that Tante Sophie could never forgive herself.

  “Will you at least try to make him happy?” the older woman suddenly asked, offering Lucy an olive branch.

  Mutely, Lucy nodded, and in the instant she did so, she understood that it was what she wanted—to make him happy and to receive happiness from him in return.

  She could not dwell upon it any longer. A voice jolted her alert. It was loud and the scent that came with it was unpleasantly overpowering. Where was her husband?

  She would not have believed it possible, but there was this stranger, entering her home, smelling of danger, stepping arrogantly in the hall. An ascetic-looking man in a monk’s robes, who smiled a fake smile.

  Tante Sophie rose to greet him and smiled warmly. Lucy could not hide her sudden anger.

  “Why is this man here?” she said, not caring whether the visitor could understand them.

  It was the ascetic-looking man who answered her question, bearing the same smile plastered upon his countenance. He spoke nearly perfect English. “Well, being a recent visitor to our country, dear madam, you probably do not know that it is customary for men of the cloth to visit and bless Christian houses around Christmastime.”

  Lucy almost narrowed her eyes at him. It was not true. She could smell the lie, as clearly as she could smell the danger that clung to him. Whatever he had come for, he did not mean well. This man had something to do with the dark priest in the village—the scent of the dark priest was hovering around him, faint, but still there.

  Tante Sophie clasped the man’s hands. She seemed genuinely happy to see him. “Father Daniel is the abbot of the monastery here. Everyone thinks him a holy man.”

  “That depends on what your definition of holy is.” Lucy heard a dry voice from behind her and did not need to be told that her husband was already there. She’d just felt his presence.

  Father Daniel did not lose his affable smile at the sarcasm. He offered a greeting in Romanian, which Ioan did not answer. She did not understand the conversation that followed, but it seemed that his aunt was chiding Ioan for his rudeness to the visitor. Lucy almost bared her teeth—she could very well understand why her husband wanted nothing to do with this man. The reaction he stirred in her was visceral.

  Ioan resumed the conversation in English. He spoke pointedly, plainly letting his visitor know that there would be no familiarity between them. “My wife should hear what you have to say. After all, it seems only fair that she should be apprised of the situation,” he said icily.

  Tante Sophie sighed. She seemed willing to appease her nephew but utterly embarrassed by his unwelcoming reception of the visitor. “I was the one who asked Father Daniel over,” she said in English. “This situation with the priest in the village spreading all kinds of lies about you has been going on long enough. I wrote to Father Daniel to intervene.”

  “You did wrong,” Ioan said curtly.

  He did not look at his aunt, however. His icy stare remained fixed on his visitor. Lucy suddenly felt the blood starting to thump in her ears. The monk should be afraid.

  The man ignored the pressure of the situation. He took a seat, although he had not been invited to do so, and started to speak in pleasant tones. His English, Lucy noted, was indeed almost flawless.

  “As the head of Valcele Monastery, I don’t really have formal authority over Father Parvu.” He seemed to be addressing Tante Sophie. “The rumors that have started circulating...well, it would have been possible to quench them if Boyar Marcu had behaved in a Christian manner, attending Mass and not indulging in pagan rituals. But, you see, one hears all kinds of rumors and one doesn’t like to see the good folk here reverting to pagan superstitions.”

  Tante Sophie sighed again, genuinely distressed. “Father, you surely know that I am a good Christian and so was my late sister. Well, Ioan’s father was always something of an atheist and so is my nephew, but I believe that in his heart, he—”

  Yet again, Ioan interrupted his aunt. “How and what I worship is no concern of Father Parvu’s or of Father Daniel’s.”

  Father Daniel shrugged. “Fine. However, I believe that your peasants should not be given a negative example, and as a spiritual leader, I feel that it is my duty to warn you.”

  “Warn me?” Ioan’s voice had become even icier, and Lucy could sense his mounting anger.

  “You should set an example. Attend Mass and show some genuine interest in religious matters.”

  Her husband gave a bitter laugh. “By interest, you mean a donation to the monastery?”

  Father Daniel again shrugged his shoulders delicately, but Lucy could clearly sense that it was money the man had really come for.

  “Of course a donation should be made. Our families have always contributed,” Tante Sophie interceded placatingly.

  Father Daniel seemed interested in this. “Of course, my dear madam,” he said. “Both families are old blood and the people know it. I will personally make sure that Father Parvu is kept in line. He is, after all, just a young priest, too eager in his zeal.”

  Ioan laughed again. He turned to Lucy, ignoring both his aunt and the visitor. “You see, around Christmastime, my father’s family always made a yearly donation to the monastery. The money was given to help the people in need on the lands that belong to the monastery.”

  “And it was always put to good use,” Father Daniel hastily added.

  Ioan continued to ignore him and spoke pointedly to Lucy. “It came to my knowledge that the people living on the monastery’s lands had received no help and that the money I’d been donating for years had been used for other purposes. These people are not my tenants. Had they been mine, they wouldn’t have lived in such bitter poverty.�
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  He paused, raking a hand through his hair. “Last year, I decided to give my donation directly to the head of the village, and not to the monastery.”

  Lucy immediately understood the situation. It was, of course, a money matter. Father Daniel had been displeased not to get his hands on the funds that he had previously touched upon. It had vexed him that the money went directly to the peasants instead.

  “It was last year that Father Parvu, the priest in my village, started to rant about my vile unchristian behavior and about the taint in my blood, and it has been going on ever since. But it’s worse than that. He terrorizes my own tenants, threatening he would not baptize their children or bury their dead unless they denounce my wicked ways. He’s been trying to stir trouble for some time.”

  And Lucy could see very well who had been behind Father Parvu’s religious zeal. Father Daniel had undoubtedly been the cause of all this. It was blackmail of the basest sort. No wonder her husband was so angry and disgusted.

  Father Daniel chose to speak. “You have my word that Father Parvu’s behavior will be reported to his ecclesiastic superiors.”

  “If, of course, I make an appropriate donation,” her husband said ironically.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Ioan, I will make the donation, only to settle things,” Tante Sophie cut in.

  It was then that Lucy found herself speaking.

  “No,” she said. “My husband is right. He should not give in to this kind of blackmail.”

  “And I shall not,” Ioan told her, yet again pointedly ignoring the others.