Page 27 of Crying Wolfe
Not a being of light, but a dark-haired, flinty-eyed God. One who’d crafted a kingdom beneath the earth and ripped gold from stones and ore. His features were a perfect canvas for the stark and brutal bones beneath them.
Stealing covert glances during the ceremony had forced her to notice only one defining feature at a time. The grooves etched in the corners of his eyes. The sparse threads of silver anointing the dark hair at his temple. The strong cut of his jaw that wanted a shave by three in the afternoon. The lackadaisical arrangement of his limbs, loose and lethal when so many of her countrymen were taught to stand with regimental posture.
He presented the image of a predator at rest. A wolf in the woods surveying his territory as, though he was in a foreign country, it seemed that any land he stood upon was claimed by him.
That it would be easier to move a mountain than the man.
The constant challenge in his eyes invited anyone to try.
Rosaline had yearned to examine his rough, scarred hand as she’d slid on the ring with trembling fingers. The gold band had been simple and wide, cold and hard to the touch.
Like him.
As she understood it, he was a being of the desert, a man used to unthinkable heat and a relentless sun. How did he fare in their damp, chilly land?
She’d given his chilled hand a squeeze between the two of her own after sliding the ring into place, hoping to impart some of her warmth.
Without reciprocation, or even acknowledgment, he’d extracted his hand from hers, his fingers closing into tight fists.
“Why are you hiding here?” Emma asked with gentle solemnity settling onto the stair beside her. “Is this not a happy day?”
Swallowing the sand in her throat, Rosaline studied her own ring, also gold, though a few diamonds winked from where they were inlayed into the band like little captured stars. “I was hoping for a happy match, despite the circumstances, but I don’t think Mr. Wolfe is at all pleased to be called my husband.”
Emma’s expression darkened as much as her gingery complexion would allow. “If he’s unhappy with you, Ros, he’s a fool.”
“I don’t know…” Plucking at a stray thread on her sleeve, she fought back emotion with all the fervency of a besieged stronghold.
Once the walls collapsed, there’d be nothing to protect what was inside. Her soft, vulnerable underbelly so often exposed to bruising blows and crushing cruelty.
“Emma, he thinks of me as little more than a child. He’s used to bold American women. Ones who know how to…to entice men. I’m too fragile for him. He says he’s afraid to break me, but I’m terrified of the moment when he finds out I’m already broken.”
“Hush, you.” Emma squeezed her close. “You mustn’t talk like that. You’re not broken, darling, you’re simply uncompleted. You’re a young woman who has yet to finish becoming who she was meant to be. Certainly, you can’t be broken before you’re even made.”
Filled to the brim with gratitude, Rosaline leaned into her sister’s embrace, resting her head on her shoulder. “You’re so kind, but—”
Emma’s hand clamped over her mouth as the click of several finely cobbled heels on the parquet floors filtered up through the staircase banister.
Another pair of women, or perhaps a trio, had paused on the floor beneath the dark landing on which the Goode sisters perched, to indulge in a bit of gossip.
“…size of his hands is positively obscene,” one said under her breath. “They were as callused as my land-keeper’s.”
“Aren’t you and your land-keeperlovers?” Another lady added syrup to her sneer to make it more palatable, Rosaline supposed.
“Only because I hadn’t met Mr. Elijah Wolfe yet,” said the first before a rip of fabric announced that she’d opened her fan. “In my experience, men who look like that fornicate like animals. They’ll shape you into the most vexing positions and pound you past all semblance of sanity.”
A third companion simpered. “When have you ever come into contact with a man like that? God doesn’t make his ilk in our Empire.”
“Oh, he sends us a few, though one does have to search carefully, and often in Scotland.”
“I wonder if he’s as ruthless in bed as he is in business,” the second woman sighed. “I worry for the wife.”
“She’s an odd little mouse, isn’t she? They seem so ill matched. It appears to me a marriage of convenience, or perhaps of circumstance.”
“Which means he’ll be in the market for a mistress…”
The atmosphere veritably vibrated with excitement as Rosaline’s stomach seized and twisted so violently, she pressed a hand to her mouth, afraid to be sick.
Emma surged to her feet, fists curled into balls of wrath. “I’m going to put a stop to this.”
