Seven Wicked Nights (Turner #1.5)

Yes, dear Cecily. They do, indeed. In more ways than you could dream.

A hollow laugh rattled in his chest. Portia had pulled them all out to the forest, to hunt for her fabled “werestag”? Little did she know, they’d left the true beast here at the house. He’d been prowling this bedchamber every night, driven wild by the knowledge only two oaken doors and some fifty paces of wainscoted corridor lay between him and the woman he’d crossed a continent to hold. By day, he’d been drinking himself into a stupor, positioning himself at the opposite end of every room, adopting a temporary vow of silence. Futile efforts, all. He’d known a scene like tonight’s was coming, and he’d known it would end with Cecily hurting and in tears. Charm, politesse, gentlemanly behavior—they’d long ago been stripped away. He was down to his basest form now, both hardened and desperate, and if she had not slapped him cold this evening, only the devil knew what he would have done to her. Cecily was far safer roaming a cursed forest with Denny.

She was safer with Denny, in general.

Sighing heavily, Luke closed the velvet drapes. He tugged his cravat loose, then rang for his valet and poured himself yet another tumbler of whiskey.

Time to be honest. He did know what to do about Cecily. The answer was easy, and there was just enough human decency left in him to divine it. He’d known it the moment he’d pressed his cracked, weathered lips to her pale, delicate fingers eight days past.

He had to let her go.





LUKE FOLLOWED HER INTO THE FOREST.

Cecily tried to leave him behind, but she couldn’t. The memories stalked her down the root-scored pathways; her thoughts cast long, flickering shadows. Two kisses they’d shared now: one innocent and fresh, one desperate and demanding. Both intoxicating. Stirring, in ways she scarcely had words to describe. She’d wanted him, even as a girl, though she’d hardly known what it meant. Now a woman, she understood longing and claimed more than a passing acquaintance with desire. And she burned for him, body and soul. She must find some way to extinguish that fire, before it consumed her completely.

“Tell us more about the werestag,” Portia called to Denny.

It took Cecily a moment to understand what her friend meant, and to recall that they were not hunting Luke in the undergrowth.

“Is the legend centuries old?” Portia asked, stepping over a fallen branch.

“Not at all,” Denny answered. “Mere decades. If you believe the locals, these woods have been cursed for generations, but the man-beast is only one of the more recent victims.”

“Oh, come now.” Brooke swatted an insect against his neck, then squinted at his hand before wiping it against his trousers. “What evidence is there for this supposed curse? Unless by ‘cursed’ you mean plagued by midges, in which case I readily capitulate.”

“People have died here,” Cecily said.

“People die everywhere.”

“Yes, but this forest claims more than its share,” Denny said, pausing and raising his torch high. “And it has a taste for the young and foolhardy.”

“Of course it does,” Brooke argued. “Most people who die of accidental causes are young and foolhardy.”

Denny shrugged. “Believe what you will. But there is no way to disclaim the fact that nearly every family in the area has been touched by some tragedy that occurred here. Even aristocracy cannot escape the curse. Why, the old Earl of Kendall’s—”

“This local history is all so very fascinating,” Portia interrupted, taking Denny’s other arm, “but could we return to the story of the werestag? If we’re going to find him, we ought to know what we’re about.”

“Yes, of course.”

Denny began to tell the story, and Cecily purposefully fell a few paces behind. She’d heard this tale before, many times. How an impoverished man, desperate to feed his ailing wife and children, had gone into the forest at night to trap game. Such poaching was illegal and incurred stiff penalties, but Denny’s grandfather had generally turned a blind eye to the practice. The man in the story, however, had made the grave mistake of wandering across the Corbinsdale border, and the old Earl of Kendall did not share Mr. Denton’s leniency. Men had been sentenced to hard labor, even transportation, for the offense of poaching on Kendall land.

“So there he was,” she heard Denny recounting in a dramatic tone, “crouched over his brace of pheasants, when he heard the hounds. The Corbinsdale gamekeeper had spotted him. The poor fellow ran, even dodged a bullet or two, weaving through the woods. But he couldn’t outrun the dogs forever. He tried throwing them the pheasants, but the hounds were well trained and barely stopped to sniff at the birds.”

Denny paused, drew up, considered. At length, he pointed right. “There’s a deer trail, just here. We’ll follow it.”