How To Marry A Werewolf (Claw & Courtship, #1)(48)

Faith hesitated and then put her hand out, resting it on the lapel of his robe. “You brought me into the library for some particular reason?”

“Oh, yes, that.” He tilted his head down, like a naughty schoolboy. “I thought, perhaps, these here, for you.” He gestured casually behind himself with one hand.

Faith blinked; there was nothing there other than empty shelves. “They’re very nice shelves, but is this your library to give?”

Channing chuckled, embarrassed. “Ah, yes, I mean to say, the space on the shelves.” He came over all gruff when he was embarrassed; it was cute. “For your rock collection? The, erm, minerals and such. We could line the shelves with velvet if you like? Put glass doors over the front. Anything you think necessary.”

“Oh!” said Faith, and then again. “Oh.” She looked at the shelves reverently with new eyes. “They’re beautiful.”

He snorted. “They are only shelves.”

She whirled on him. “How dare you be so perfect?”

She could see her rocks there. She only had enough, right now, for one small corner, lined in black satin maybe, to showcase them in all their simple beauty. She might make up little white labels; maybe someone in the pack knew calligraphy. Then, during the day, when everyone else was asleep, she could open the curtains and look at them under the sunlight.

“And you’ll take me into the countryside collecting?” She asked this even knowing she wanted too much, but unable to resist.

“I will. And I will sleep in a tiny cottage while you and whatever poor Iftercast cousin you have recruited to your cause go tramping about, chiseling away at things all day. When they are older, you will no doubt take Robbie and Gracie with you.”

Faith pushed for more. I’m always so demanding. “I want to see Dover.”

“It is very picturesque.”

“The white cliffs.”

“Of course it is the cliffs you want.”

“And the red clay further south.”

“I will take you to see clay, my heart.”

“Oh.” Faith clasped her hands. “This is so romantic.”

Channing rolled his eyes and snorted. “I give her clay and empty shelves and she is in ecstasies.”

“And I’ll come home wet from wandering the moors and curl up against you as the sun sets, and you’ll wake to find me there next to you.”

“Now who is being romantic?”

Faith remembered something he’d said earlier, when she was tumbling over her words, confessing Minnie’s sins. “You love me!”

“Now she listens,” he grumbled to himself.

“But that’s wonderful.”

“No, my Lazuli, it’s not.”

“But I love you.”

“I know.”

“That’s not a very nice response.”

“My sweet, I have loved before and it went badly for me. I’m afraid my loving you will go badly for you.”

She was staunch in her defence of him. “Never!”

He sighed. “You do not know the half of it.”



Channing shook his head. She really was a most aggravating female when she set her mind to something – how could he not adore her?

“Sit down a moment, please, Lazuli, and let me try to explain. It’s not easy. This is not a topic I enjoy discussing.”

Faith nodded and he knew she understood. She’d not wanted to talk about her lost child and neither did he. In this, they were alike. Yet she’d mustered the courage to do so, and he owed her for that. Plus, he couldn’t let one small mortal female outmatch him in bravery.

Faith said nothing, only looked at him with wide blue eyes, sympathetic and patient. She crossed her white hands in her lap and sat in the bay window exactly as he had imagined her. He wanted to return to wolf form and lie at her feet; things were so much simpler when he was a beast. She would run those small hands though his fur, lightly, reverently, as she had only moments before.

He had to chase that future if he truly wanted it. He had to earn it.

“I was a sculptor before the bite. Not a particularly good or famous one, although I might have become so, given a different life. I lived in Paris for a time, there is – was – a great sculptor there, Pajou. You’ve heard of him?”

Faith shook her head.

“It was a long time ago. I was barely twenty when I met Odette. She was so beautiful. This fair, frail creature with flaming hair and big green eyes. I loved her rather madly, as only the young can really love. We married and had a child.”

He paused, gathering his courage. A name he had hadn’t spoken in decades. “Isolde was this bright, vibrant little fairy girl. So much energy and life. Odette was not a good mother, always sickly and sad. I suppose, initially, I was attracted to the darkness in her – this tortured soul appealed to the artist in me. She spent a great deal of time in bed after Isolde was born. So, it was mainly the two of us, father and daughter. I would have Isolde with me in the studio while I worked.”

Faith held still, barely breathing, eyes big and fierce on his face – as if she might hold him together with her will alone.

He thought he was doing well so far. His voice was firm. His delivery crisp. “We were so young. I thought Odette would change. And she did improve a little. She began to eat more, smile occasionally. Sometimes, she even touched Isolde, like a mother ought. But then Napoleon happened. At first, he had so little effect on us. A poor artist and his family, even a British one living in Paris, knows so very little of politics and armies. But you feel it when a country goes to war, even if you aren’t facing it directly. The whole place catches fever, like marsh sickness. Still, I thought we would be fine. I thought: it’s Paris. We had this little apartment on the bank of the Seine – the bedroom window opened out over the water. I thought, if anything, the danger would come from outside, from my own country’s invasion, and then I would merely claim to be British and all would be well.”