Page 65 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

“That’s my bedroom,” Sorcha pointed out. “Granny would not approve.”

Granny, as if summoned, appeared in a draft of frigid air. Her diamonds were enough to make the eyes water. They could have fed a hundred unicorns. “You make me sound positively fussy, gel.”

“You’re not fussy, you’re tyrannical, old woman.”

“Bah.”

“Ouch!” Sorcha exclaimed with a laugh when a pellet of ice smacked her on the nose.

“Serves you right.”

He’d never known a family who were so easy with each other, so loving even through sharp words and teasing. His own family… Well. He’d never known this kind of acceptance. Trust.

“Did you make your bed?” Lady Gloucester demanded.

“That’s what you’re worried about? Not my shiningly pure reputation?”

“Well, did you?”

“Of course I didn’t,” Sorcha muttered. She slipped ahead of Aidan and frowned at him as her grandmother vanished in a waft of rose perfume. “You don’t get to lecture me about my unmade bed.”

“Of course not.” If she only knew how desperately he wanted to unmake her bed every day and night. He did not even glance at it. It may as well have been the bloody sun, waiting to blind him.

Instead, he returned to the green thread, leading him to a chipped stone mask of a man with leaves surrounding his face and bursting from his mouth. It sat on the mantelpiece, scratching at him, pulling him closer.

“Granny bought that a few years before she died,” Sorcha said when he picked it up to inspect it further. The Green Man was a common motif in some medieval churches, full of oak leaves and acorns. “She was told it was once used to spell the poison gardens behind the Hallow Library. She’ll be very put out if she was lied to.”

“She wasn’t. It’s authentic. I can see the green threads where the spell was cast.” And taste the wolfsbane. He set it down hastily as his wolf snarled.

“You can tell just like that?” Sorcha asked.

“Aye. It’s my job to know,” he replied.

“Right,” she murmured. “Lord Most Exalted Curator of the Fancy London Museum of Old Magical Things.”

“I generally go by Most Exalted,” he replied drily. “It saves time. But I can see the magic of it. This Green Man is easily five hundred years old. The museum would buy this from you.”

She placed her hands on her hips. “I see what you are doing, Aidan Carnahan.”

“Finding artifacts? It’s my job, remember?”

“Hmph. That’s not it, and you know it. But as Nimue will eat my arm if I don’t find the funds to feed her, I shall allow it.”

“Very magnanimous of you.”

“Isn’t it?”

“In that case, you also have a horde of Saxon coins buried under the left-back corner of the Pegasus stall,” he said. He was itching to dig them up. “They belong in a museum. Donated.”

“You would say that. And ha. You can buy them if you want them so badly.”

The museum curator in him wanted to lecture her about the necessity for donated relics, that legally all found gold belonged to the Crown, but the rest of him just wanted to tell her she was adorable. He wanted to drink in every detail of her chambers, tuck it away inside himself. The soft pillows, the chair by the hearth, the baskets scattered around for various animals to sleep in. The birdseed on the windowsill outside for the birds that followed her everywhere. The bed, which he, once again, was not looking at. His eyes flared, the wolf stirring.

“Are you about to wear the wolf?” Sorcha asked, sounding curious and not at all frightened. She truly was a wonder.

“No.”

“I don’t mind, but try not to shed on the furniture. We can’t keep housemaids for very long, and I do not care for dusting.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

He wanted to kiss her again, to taste every inch of her so badly that he was afraid he might start sweating. Or growling.

He could not read her expression, which was disconcerting. Sorcha’s every emotion flitted across her face. “Shall we go for that walk?” she asked.

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak for a long moment. “Where to, Lady Sorcha?” He used her title mostly to remind himself that she was not Lady Coventry. That he had to act accordingly. With restraint.

Something he was very accustomed to.

“Why, to the Cauldron, Lord Coventry.”

The way she mocked him only made her more endearing. Very few people mocked an earl. Or an Alpha, whatever he might think of the designation.

And then her words registered. The air around him stilled, chilled. “Pardon me?”

“Freya said you could not find it because it has cloaking spells.” She grinned smugly. “But I can.” She added over her shoulder, “Are you coming?”