STEP FIVE

Become the Social Butterfly He Wants to Catch

Faith was enjoying her evening, the looming presence of Major Channing notwithstanding. He seemed to swoop in at odd times, presenting her with a glass of punch or distracting her from her conversation by glowering fiercely. She noticed that if she paid any one gentlemen too much attention for too long a time, the major would make himself known. Then he would disappear and ignore her once more.

It was sublimely aggravating. Like being desired by a very large mosquito.

He did not ask her to dance a second time.

After several hours of this sporadically irritating attention, she realized that he was worrying at her, trying to flush her out of her den, as hounds would a fox. She would have none of it and put a concerted effort into enjoying herself and avoiding him.

“What is he about?” said Teddy, annoyed on Faith’s behalf. “Mr Nightingale was going to ask you to dance, I know he was. And he has four thousand a year and an estate in Devonshire. He’s a most advantageous match. His family might not countenance an American, but if you continue to curry Lord Falmouth’s favor, they might make an exception in your case for the supernatural alliance afforded by the association. The major cannot be genuine in his interest, can he? He never pays court. Why does he keep running them off like that?”

Faith found herself smiling. “Well, I’m fine with it. I don’t think I’d make Mr Nightingale a very good wife.”

Teddy was shocked enough to snap her fan closed and lean forward. “Cousin, you grossly undervalue yourself!”

No, I don’t, thought Faith. For while Mr Nightingale’s family may rise above my lowly American state, they could never rise above my other deficiencies of womanhood.

She dared not say it, but in his way, Major Channing was doing her a service. She had no desire to secure any mortal gentleman’s full attention. She did not consider herself available to a wholesome, proper husband, no matter how kind his words or genuine his interest. She was, after all, soiled goods. No decent man should want her and she was not about to ruin any man’s life with her affection. Werewolves were another matter.

But there were only the three werewolves present at the ball. Lord Falmouth was unavailable, and Major Channing was impossible, and Professor Lyall… well, Professor Lyall was interesting.

Faith danced one dance with the London Pack Beta. She found Professor Lyall relaxed and, if not overly scintillating like the Alpha, at least not cold and fierce, like the Gamma. In fact, the good professor was oddly restful and accommodating – for a predator.

He mentioned the major, but only insofar as to say, “I should warn you of his nature, Miss Wigglesworth, but I suspect that is part of the appeal.”

“I haven’t any designs on Major Channing, I promise. Despite whatever he’s said to you.”

“That may not matter.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“That may not matter either.”

Faith wondered if she could make delicate enquiries after other members of his pack. After all, he should know of any suitable, well, suitors amongst the ranks. But she was frightened to be on the receiving end of one of his sardonically raised eyebrows.

Professor Lyall was overly enigmatic, but she ended up liking him. They talked of rocks (despite Mrs Iftercast’s warning) and he had a scientist’s appreciation for her enthusiasm. He himself was more interested in animal husbandry, although the moniker of professor was honorific rather than descriptive. While their particular intellectual pursuits did not intersect, their spirits of inquiry were well matched.

He left her, after their dance, feeling enriched for the brief encounter and somewhat saddened that it was not he who set her pulse racing. For if any werewolf were to make a fine husband, it would be Professor Lyall.

But while Faith had been given a task by her family, a match to make and future to secure, she had her own agenda. She would marry a werewolf if she must, but she knew enough to wish for something more than complacency in a match. There would be no children, no growing old together. Knowing this, Faith wanted what she was not supposed to want at all and should know even less about. She wanted what had nearly destroyed her.

She wanted passion.

Faith danced twice with Alpha Biffy, Lord Falmouth. He was a most excellent dancer, to the precise step and not beyond. Not very imaginative, but then, he couldn’t be anymore. The last of his mortality had taken with it most of his creativity, or so most physicians believed. Only his lovely hats now remained. Nevertheless, she enjoyed his dancing. Biffy made her laugh with his pithy commentary on the gathering and did not mention Major Channing at all.

When their second dance was over, Major Channing came once more to loom next to her, saying nothing. Biffy bowed himself away with a knowing smile.

“Your Alpha doesn’t seem very fierce,” Faith commented at last, genuinely interested but also desperate for something to say. Of course, what she was really saying was, I understand that he isn’t for me. And I’m not for him. He’s too much a dandy and not enough a danger.

She tried not to sound at all disappointed.

“Fierce? No. He does not need to be. That is what I am for.” Major Channing left her again, looking reassured by their brief exchange and a little smug.

Only one incident marred Faith’s enjoyment of the festivities. It was heralded by a slight hush about the room. Faith raised her head to find her card seized without ceremony and signed by the vampire, Lord Ambrose. He gave her a nod and then drifted away, only for her to discover that he had demanded the dinner dance.

During the course of their subsequent reel, she was given cause to suspect he looked upon her as the dinner.

“You are quite the excitement of the evening, Miss Wigglesworth.” The vampire spoke gallantly as he led her into the pattern. He was very stiff in his movements.

“I assure you, sir, it’s a big surprise to me, too.”

“Is it indeed? I suspected it to be, in fact, by carefully crafted design. Lord Falmouth has taken an interest. Your attire reflects his taste and not inconsiderable influence. Do you deny it?”

“I’m honored by the smallest scrap of his attention.”

“Yes, he has that effect. You know he could have been one of ours had Lord Akeldama not bungled his household management? Such a tragedy.”

Faith thought of Biffy and the way he looked at his Beta with eyes that shone. “I think he’s good where he is. And your comments to a stranger on the matter might be considered impertinent.”

“You dare to reprimand me over a breach in etiquette, as though I were a schoolgirl?”

“You are gossiping like one,” Faith snapped back, daring a cheeky smile.

Lord Ambrose started at that. A spider who thought he had caught her in his web, only to find the web itself shaken and disrupted.

He leaned in, too close but still the correct distance to whirl her around the floor. “You are a ripe and ready young thing. Bold. Is it the American upbringing?”

“Maybe.” Faith thought it probably paid to be cautious with vampires.

His smile was both pointed and pointy.

Their reel ended, and Faith was profoundly grateful for the short and invigorating nature of a dance that prohibited too much intimate talk. Then she was horrified to remember that this was the dinner dance and he was shortly to find her a plate and keep her company while she ate.

Lord Ambrose led her from the floor. His touch was cold. He seemed some marble god of old somehow squeezed into the confines of polite society.

“I see why the werewolves like you.” It might have been a compliment.

“Do you indeed?” said a mellow voice, all the more threatening for its calmness.

Major Channing was back. He moved in a delicate but firm motion, and Faith found herself neatly separated from the vampire. The werewolf now stood between her and Lord Ambrose.

Lord Ambrose hissed, surprised and snakelike. “That was the dinner dance.”

“You signed for it without request. I watched you. Regardless, she is American. She knows not what she offers, to dance the repast reel with a vampire.”

“Ignorance of social rules does not pardon her blunder.”

“You’re crabby because you’re hungry. That does not change the fact that this one was my prey from the beginning.” Channing’s tone was beyond mocking.

Lord Ambrose looked highly affronted. “You cannot have a prior claim to this lady.”

“I saw her first,” answered Major Channing, sounding not unlike a child with his favorite toy.

“Never doubt, wolf, that we make the rules here. Have you offered her a claviger contract?”

“Stand down, blood-sucker.” Channing sounded every inch the soldier.

Faith looked between the two posturing predators. “What about what I want?”

The two men looked at her, startled.

She turned to Lord Ambrose. “No thanks for my part, in either regard. I don’t want to be your meal for the evening, nor your indentured drone for the year. I’m not creative, even if I were interested in metamorphosis. Which I’m not. Besides, as a woman, my chances of surviving a bite are tiny. Frankly, I don’t like those odds and I find the idea of immortality off-putting. Although you honor me with your consideration.”

She added that last bit because he was, after all, a vampire and an aristocrat. It wouldn’t do to cause offense.

Channing grumbled. “He should have put it in writing.”

Faith knew little about vampire drones and only slightly more about clavigers. She had once spent too much time with a claviger, but Kit had been cagey about the details of his service. She knew they provided daylight protection for their supernatural masters and that they worked to curry enough favor and show enough potential to be turned immortal. Vampire drones, Faith felt, probably had it worse, since they were also food.

Had Lord Ambrose’s demanding the dinner dance meant something more significant than his fangs in her neck?

She gave Channing a questioning look.

He answered her. “It’s not done simply to spout it out like that as a verbal insistence. The invitation to dine on you, I mean to say. And signing your dance card is underhanded. You know, Ambrose, that it won’t hold up in court.”

Lord Ambrose looked faintly embarrassed. “Well, you would go and get all territorial on me. Can’t have that.”

Channing arched a brow. “I am not interested in her as a claviger, either, my good man.”

“No, I didn’t really believe you were.”

Channing snorted, leaned back, and crossed his arms. But he did not shift his protective stance between the two of them. Faith wondered how closely he’d watched them dancing.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you always cause a scene, Major?”

“Always. It’s why they don’t let me out much. I’m badly mannered and indifferent to society’s mores.”

“He’s a depraved old bounder. Why do you even pass the time of night with such a fellow, Miss Wigglesworth? A lady of refinement such as yourself.” The vampire looked at her, but he did not expect an answer. It was all said to cut Major Channing down.

Faith grabbed the opening he had given her, nonetheless. “Honesty has its appeal.”

“I very much doubt that. Especially in his case. You recognize his prior claim, then?”

Faith wished she fully understood the undercurrents here. But despite his aggravating ways, she felt safer throwing in her lot with Channing than Lord Ambrose. At least Channing came with a Biffy attachment. And while werewolves took wives, vampires did not. The blood-sucker’s game was much deadlier and more permanent.

So, she said, “I do.”

Major Channing’s eyes went from cold chips of icy indifference to pale blue flames of victory.

Lord Ambrose gave a curt little bow to Faith and, ignoring the werewolf, left them both.

Major Channing looked down at her, once more cool and contained. “He smells of rotten flesh and the long dead, and after that dance, so do you. I hate it.”

Faith winced. “Well, it’ll wear off eventually. It was a pretty short dance.”

He grunted.

Faith was curious enough to be unguarded. “What do I normally smell like?”

“Plum pudding soaked in brandy,” he answered promptly, “heady and rich with raisins.”

“Raisins! I smell of booze and raisins? I…” Faith lost her words at that. She glared at Major Channing, who was looking amused by her show of temper.

“I believe I’ll find my own way to supper, sir. Go away and pester someone else. Raisins indeed!”

Major Channing, mouth twitching with what could only be a repressed smile, drifted away, quite pleased with himself.

Faith’s life became a whirlwind of entertainments and petty obligations after that. She and Teddy were the talk of the ton, to be found in most drawing rooms, paying calls and receiving them, and everything that came after.

The papers described Miss Wigglesworth as effervescent yet sanguine in a manner that was part insult, part admiration. Brimming with American nerve, they said. Faith decided to take this as a compliment. Apparently, half of London’s eligible bachelors decided to take it as a ringing endorsement. Although it was possible they also thought she was wealthy. Americans had that reputation, too. Whatever the cause, the result was that the sitting room of the Iftercast house swelled with flowers from eager swains; there was even, unfortunately, some poetry.

“This one is an ode to my eyes, which are compared in one breath to sapphires which is then rhymed with camp-fires and in the next breath to fish eggs – which can’t be complimentary.” Faith put down the missive and looked at Teddy, who was red-faced in an effort not to laugh. “Can it?”

“I am certain he means to compliment.”

“Well, then, the pen does him no favors.” Faith, it must be said, was equally uninterested in the flowers. Botany, after all, was not her field of scientific focus.

Teddy, being Teddy, was pleased with her cousin’s success and not nearly so envious as Faith dreaded she might be. Maybe it was in Teddy’s nature to be generous of spirit, or maybe it was that one of the bouquets (a small modest one, containing mainly beautiful purple alfalfa flowers) was from young Mr Rafterwit. The sweetly bumbling Mr Rafterwit was a barrister of sufficient means to satisfy Mrs Iftercast, sufficient connections to satisfy Mr Iftercast, and sufficient horses to satisfy Teddy.

“He’s very sporting.” Teddy smiled over the purple blooms.

“Good, you won’t get any poems.”

“He keeps a stable of twelve horses in the country with a dear friend, for the purposes of breeding to race and to jump. He had a flyer in Ascot two years ago.”

“And his character?” pressed Faith, because there was more to life than horses and pecuniary advances and connections, even if they came with alfalfa flowers.

“He’s very quiet.”

“Well, that should suit you.”

“Oh?” Teddy laughed.

Faith blanched. “I didn’t mean it like that!”

“Bah. I know I am a chatterbox. But I meant to imply that he is quiet when I meet with him. It is difficult – at a ball or even a dinner – to fully comprehend a gentleman’s character, don’t you find? I hardly feel I know him at all.”

Faith nodded her agreement. It was challenging.

Throughout the course of the many balls and dinners over the past month, Faith had met and conversed with countless gentlemen. She had even met one or two more of the London Pack. Both proved to be large and charming, and were probably admirable prospective husbands for a soiled, if pretty, American with a substantial rock collection. Except, Faith did not feel she knew them at all. She certainly did not feel anything like the fire of personality that scorched her whenever she was in Major Channing’s presence.

Of him, strangely, she knew a little. He did not even pretend to civility. Instead, he jumped directly into the meat of intimacy whenever they conversed, in a way Faith ought to have found shocking but instead found invigorating. She seemed unable to stop thinking about him and had come to crave their increasingly ridiculous banter.

“Why do you like rocks so much that you feel compelled to defiance and defence of them, my Lazuli?” He sat next to her at a supper party, eating raw liver from a cut-glass bowl while she sipped soup and tried not to splash.

Faith felt a little thrill at the possessiveness in the name. She willfully ignored it, of course, whenever he used it, but she liked that he’d given it to her – special. As if she mattered to him.

Faith had been conversing with Mr Koverswill, on her other side. Mr Koverswill had severe hair, pronounced ears, and an eye for trends. He’d told her (in confidence) that hair muffs were due for a resurgence. Faith had been moved to tap his wrist with her fan and tell him that the very idea was hair-raising. Mr Koverswill was utterly charmed by such forthright American wit. But then the hostess demanded his attention with some question about shawls, and Faith was left abandoned without conversation.

Channing had drawn her attention back to him, saving her from awkward silence with talk of geology. Not that he needed geology to get her attention. Faith always seemed oddly aware of him. Tonight, the moment he walked into the drawing room before dinner, the hairs on the back of her neck had tingled. Also, he tended to be near her if possible. She liked it, both his nearness and her awareness of it.

There was no question he would sit next to her at dinner. The hostess had arranged it and been smug about it. Everyone wanted to watch Major Channing attempt to court society’s newly minted American sensation. Faith didn’t mind. London’s efforts to amuse itself at Channing’s expense only increased the frequency of their encounters.

“Does hiking after specimens make you feel free of societal constraints?” His eyes were focused on hers and he seemed genuinely interested.

Faith was drawn into remembering her strolls about the countryside back home, collecting and exploring, and her one trip westward under the liberty and vastness of the Colorado skies. She had always insisted that whenever her family traveled, they must stop in places they would ordinarily never consider except for her enthusiasm for the landscape. And then she must mitigate their exasperation at her continued delays.

She tried to explain her fascination. “Rocks represent so much time and space, so much history. Yet they’re so solid and unchanging themselves.”

“You are attracted to ancient things,” he concluded.

I’m attracted to hard and sharp and immovable objects with predictable characteristics, she thought.

He regarded her closely. His eyes traced the memory of freckles on her nose, when she’d spent too much time exploring under the hot sun. Faded now. “We are not all so static as that. Some of us are sitting in the wrong time and place, even though we appear to walk about in this one. And some of us like change too much. We revel in the mayflies of life, for all we are stuck with mere existence ourselves.”

He’s telling me that he is not that kind of immortal. He’s not a rock for me to collect. He’s not steady and he’ll not be constant.

She wondered why he was being so obvious in his interest if it wasn’t genuine. She wondered if his intentions were honest. Was he chasing her in order to catch her or merely to keep others away? If he caught her, would he keep her? And do I want that or am I also just enjoying the chase?

Mr Koverswill returned his attention to her then. “Oh, Miss Wigglesworth, are you a lover of history of the ancient world as well? I have recently returned from Rome.”

“Italy? Was it everything you hoped?” Faith knew well how to keep a gentleman engaged. The young man puffed up under her regard. She felt Channing, on her other side, relax back in his seat, watchful.

Mr Koverswill put down his soup spoon. “A strange place. No supernatural creatures at all. No offence, Major Channing.”

“None taken. You are wrong, of course.”

“Am I indeed?”

Faith could not help but be surprised. “He is? I thought Italy was confirmed anti-supernatural.”

“Merely because they do not like us does not mean we are not there. I visited recently myself.”

Mr Koverswill cocked an eyebrow. “Indeed, sir.”

Channing frowned; Faith wanted to reach out to smooth the lines off his forehead. “Perhaps not so recently – about twenty years ago.”

“Were you there as a tourist, too?” Mr Koverswill asked.

“No. I was there to kill someone.”

Mr Koverswill blanched.

Faith felt oddly proud. “What other reason could anyone have for visiting Italy?”

“And did you succeed?” Mr Koverswill asked, a tad injudiciously, Faith thought.

“Of course. Gave me terrible indigestion.”

Faith giggled. She couldn’t help it; poor Mr Koverswill’s face was priceless. “You can’t go around just eating Italians, Major. No matter what their belief system.”

“Can you think of a better reason?”

Faith couldn’t help it; she ought to focus again on Mr Koverswill, but ribbing Channing was so much fun. “Never say you’re an idealist, Major?”

“No, I simply don’t condone mandates demanding species extermination. Especially not if it is my species.”

“There, you see, Mr Koverswill?” said Faith in a desperate attempt not to keep ignoring the poor man. “It’s nothing personal. Major Channing is just grumpy about his politics.”

Channing laughed – a brief bark that was half surprise at his own amusement.

From across the table someone gasped, at which juncture Faith realized all attention was on them.

“Aren’t we all, Miss Wigglesworth?” The hostess wore a pleased smile, her eyes glittering with appraisal. “Aren’t we all?”

Miss Wigglesworth was described in the papers the next morning as remarkably poised for her age, mistress of witty repartee, and capable of amusing even werewolves on occasion.

Mr Koverswill sent ’round a beautiful bouquet of hothouse orchids.

“He has six thousand a year,” said Teddy.

“Major Channing has been to Italy,” said Faith, not really seeing the flowers.

Teddy, confused, agreed readily enough. “Yes, well, does that diminish his suit? He was in the army for a good long while, and Italy isn’t that bad. Is it?”

Faith could see Channing as a soldier. He commanded easily, and he was cold and tough. “He hasn’t sent me any flowers.” This was more annoying than it should be. But also, she knew Channing would never want to be one of many. So, why would he send flowers?

“Do you think that has something to do with Italy?”

Faith giggled. “Oh, never mind Italy.”

Teddy blinked at her. “I never have minded it. You’re the one who brought it up.”

“Where are we off to today?” Faith asked the most distracting thing she could think of.

“Oh! Well. There’s a picnic...” And Teddy was off.

There was a picnic. It was outside in the full sun, so Major Channing could not join them. No werewolf could.

Faith missed him. She missed his presence, his constant challenge, the way he sometimes affected her breathing, and how she sometimes caught him watching the pulse at her throat.

She dressed with care that evening. Even though it was a gown she’d worn before, he hadn’t yet seen her in it. She suspected he would be at the small private ball that night. Hostesses had started inviting him whenever they invited Faith. It was a kind of game amongst them.

The werewolf who’d once been nothing but absent from the social scene was becoming ubiquitous. But only if Miss Wigglesworth was also there. Now every hostess was eager to host the event at which the inevitable engagement was announced. It was true other men courted her, but her attention was nearly as marked as his.

Faith knew she ought to hide her regard. It was too bold. But the ton seemed disposed to humor her as confident as opposed to rash. And Faith had started to hope that Channing would not ruin her. That this werewolf could be trusted. That his intentions might even be honorable.

So, when he was at the ball that night and took the very first waltz, she let herself dream a little.

“Why will only a werewolf do?” he asked, as he twirled her expertly around the floor. “Are you frightened of true human affection, or is there something you find lacking in mortal men?”

It was a bold question, but Faith was tired of dissembling. She liked this too much. She liked him too much. “It is not something lacking in them so much as myself.” She leaned into his impossible strength as if he might lift her up and spin her into flight.

“You are either falsely modest or sinfully devalued,” he concluded.

I am exactly what I deserve to be, she thought. And I will make the best of it.

“My mother thinks a werewolf would be good for me.”

“And you always do what your mother wishes?”

“Almost never, actually. I’m trying to be biddable for a change.”

He chuckled and then sobered. “I don’t think I’d be very good for you.” He looked worn and sad.

“And why is that?” she wondered, no doubt surprising him with her American directness.

“Your eyes are so blue, my Lazuli,” he said, looking into them, avoiding the question.

His were cold chips of ice. She thought of glaciers and how they carved through rock, and how ice had remade North America to its preferences. She considered the flat, barren plains that glaciers left behind, the fine till and the soft clay, and the wide emptiness of their absence.

I should like to be happy but I will settle for content, she concluded, wondering if this man with his cold eyes could give her either of those things. Wanting him anyway.

Around them, matrons watched and approved – another werewolf settled could only improve London’s reputation. Mothers watched and regretted that they had not tried harder to secure Major Channing for their daughters, for who knew he could be such a gentleman? The occasional vampire shook his head at the state the country was coming to – really, an American? The occasional werewolf bit his lip and wondered, seeming afraid. Faith wasn’t sure whether they were afraid for Channing or for her, the girl who clung to him and leaned back, so very trusting, feeling free in his arms.

He sent around a note the next morning, saying a scientist friend of his would provide her a letter of introduction to The Royal Geographic Society.

Was she interested?

Of course she was.

He added that there was a lecture next Thursday on local clay deposits and sedimentary formations.

Would she like to attend?

Of course she would.

She wrote back with evident delight in every stroke of her pen but added that her cousins would have to accompany her, as chaperone.

At the lecture that Thursday, they sat next to each other. Not touching but wanting to. She had no doubt that she confused him greatly with her obvious amusement when the lecturer referred to a paper written by a Mr Horner Carne.

I did not know my writing had made it across the pond.

“What amuses you so, Lazuli?” he whispered, away from Mrs Iftercast’s hearing. “Do you know this Mr Carne?”

“In a manner of speaking.” She was coy.

“You smell delicious,” he replied.

Two days later saw them, once again, attending the same informal gathering. The kind that involved a hundred individually designed teacakes and a small circus performance. Faith had learned to be wary when the invitation said informal gathering.

“And how are you this evening, Mr Horner Carne?” he asked, drawing her into a corner of the room, while everyone else was playing parlor games. (The circus performers were now swilling sherry and bantering with the host over cards. Channing waved at one of them but did not stop to chat once he saw Faith.)

“You’ve found out my greatest secret,” she teased. Not at all afraid he might expose her. He had nothing to gain from such a petty act.

“I must admit, I tried to read your papers and found them impossible to get through.”

“They are dry, aren’t they?”

“No! It was my ignorance, not your style. I could tell it was you from the tone of voice alone. I did not know geology could be so witty.”

“And I did not know you could flatter with such tact.”

“Only by accident,” he admitted ruefully.

She threw her head back and laughed then, charmed by his disgruntlement. She noticed his icy gaze spark against her exposed neck and gloried in the thrum of awareness.

Heads turned at the joyful sound. The expressions were, mostly, approving. A few gentlemen looked disappointed. The young circus performer, whom Faith assumed must be a claviger to Channing’s pack, stared at them with undisguised interest.

Faith stopped laughing and lowered her chin.

Channing’s blue eyes returned to her face. “How goes the hunt? I have heard nothing from my pack on the matter of an engagement. Have you found yourself a nice loner with whom to flirt? They are not as stable as the rest of us, you know.”

“Someone keeps interfering,” she said sharply, more hurt at his asking than annoyed by his behavior. “Others are interested, but they’re not werewolves. I’m set on this path and I’m not supposed to stray.”

“Yes.” His eyes were no longer on her but on the rest of the party, cautious, as though they were the enemy. “You want to please your mother.”

Faith flinched. “Werewolves, I begin to suspect, are territorial.” It was an accusation. You tell the world I’m yours, but you don’t make it so. No offer. No declaration.

“It is true that none of my fellows will approach while I am here with you. But neither would any mortal gentleman. This is not because I am a werewolf, but because I am a scoundrel who has called men out for less. And that is not tied to my immortal nature, either, I assure you.”

Faith was hurt by the implication of his indifference, so she was injudicious with her words. “Why must you ruin this for me? Your attention is too marked and my reputation will suffer.” Faith knew she sounded plaintive, but she was also frightened. She was afraid he would take this as his opportunity to run. For all she resented his reluctance to commit, she craved his company.

“You believed it would be easy?” he scoffed, and she thought maybe he didn’t even know himself why he felt compelled to pursue her. To seek her out.

He bent slowly, giving her time to flee. When she did not, he nuzzled her neck and tasted her there. Lightly and with only his lips, but she knew his teeth were eager and her pulse beat extra hard in an involuntary temptation.

“They keep sending me flowers,” she said to distract him and to remind him that there were others interested. That they were not, in fact, alone at this moment.

“Do they indeed?” He did not look pleased to know he had competition. Maybe this really was nothing more than a game to him. Maybe he didn’t think of her at all when they were apart.

Except that the next day he sent her rocks by special courier – a geode of purple to rival Teddy’s now wilted alfalfa, and a growth of rose quartz, palm-sized and lustrous. She set the geode next to her bed and stroked it before falling asleep, as if it were a pet, or the head of a great white wolf.

She learned that night, when he never showed up at the theater, that Major Channing had left London on urgent business and no one knew when he would return.

London hostesses understood werewolf business obligations. And while they were not pleased at being denied the pleasure of a declaration, they still invited Faith and, by default, the Iftercasts to their gatherings. And Faith still went.

It was, oddly, lonely without him. She was surrounded by eager swains, fashionable gentlemen who wished to bask in the glow of London’s favorite American, Lord Falmouth’s original. Many a young man was eager to take advantage of Major Channing’s absence. They were curious, too; what had such a werewolf seen in her? What about this girl had captured the attention of such a confirmed recalcitrant reprobate?

Faith did her best to meet social expectations. To be vivacious and sparkling even though she felt lackluster. Conversations with other men were so much more stilted, so much less intimate. She missed the way Channing held her when they danced together, slightly too close, slightly too hard – as if he could not stand to let her go. As if she could lean back in his embrace and they might spin and spin until they untethered from the earth and flew.

There was some speculation when he abandoned her without solidifying the deal. Had she lost him? Had he been toying with her and deluding them all? The ton did not like that possibility at all. So, naturally, it was much discussed.

Faith suspected that they would side with her if it came to light that he had played her false. It made her a little sick to even think of it. But London had adopted Miss Wigglesworth, and they would not take kindly to Major Channing mistreating her. It was so much the opposite of Boston, it almost made her cry. That these strangers would give her the chance that had been withheld by her own people, by her own family.

Oddly, she felt a strange sympathy for Channing. Even as one week stretched to two and he remained away from her. Even as she doubted him. London was so very eager to blame him. To see Faith as the wronged party. They had probably doubted him from the start. They would not be surprised if he abandoned her, but they would not forgive him for it.

And yet, this is his home.

He is as mistrusted and as unwelcome here as I was in my mother’s house.

It made Faith terribly sad for him, and angry at herself that she could not stifle her own compassion. Even as he stayed away from her. Even as it became evident that he would repeat the past. Another werewolf betrayal.

“Where have you been?” she asked, after three whole weeks without seeing him. Not even at the hat shop, and she had visited four times. I missed you, she felt, behind the words, and tried not to let that show. And I own far too many hats now. Thank goodness Biffy had taken to simply gifting them to her.

“Hunting deadly little creatures of American make.”

“I’m not deadly.”

“I was not hunting you.”

“Did you catch them?”

“They are still at large.”

Faith nodded, wondering if there was some connection to the embarrassing scene on the embarkation green when she’d first met him. Wondering that he could cut her off so completely. Wondering if this thing that was nothing between them had ended.

“Will I see you at the Brophys’ ball?” she asked. But what she meant was Are you letting me go?

“I returned to town with nothing but that in mind.” He was, as ever, all sarcasm and indifference, but his eyes were hot, as though he wanted to eat her up; she knew the truth in that moment. He wanted her very badly indeed. He had tried to stay away and failed.

I could have you, she thought. If I wanted to try a real werewolf.

“Will you save me a waltz?” There was something in his tone that suggested what he really meant was Are you letting me go? His eyes begged, even as they watched the pulse in her neck.

“You may have the dinner dance,” she replied, and meant it this time. She knew exactly what was offering.