Luck of the Wolf

It was the same thing that Cort had said, but Aria didn’t believe it this time. There was something about the Russian she didn’t like, even if he was Cort’s friend. He had doubted that she was telling the truth about losing her memory. He was right, of course, but every instinct told her not to trust him.

“I don’t know my name,” she told him bluntly.

“So I have been told.” He glanced at Cort. “You are going to buy her clothes?”

“I was about to leave,” Cort said. He smiled at Aria. “She has given her word to remain. You will have a chance to get acquainted.”

“It will be my pleasure,” Yuri said. “And I will be certain that the young lady receives whatever she needs to make her comfortable.”

“There is bread and cheese in the cupboard,” Cort said. Aria’s stomach rumbled again, too loudly for him to miss. “You must be hungry,” he said.

“Yes. Thank you.”

“I’ll bring more to eat when I return,” Cort said, exchanging a glance with Yuri—a glance Aria knew she was not supposed to understand—and retrieved a hat from a hook on the wall. He turned at the door. “Trust me, chère,” he said. “We will uncover your past, whatever it may be, and restore you to your people.”

He left, and Yuri went to a cupboard that stood against one of the otherwise bare walls. He removed a wooden platter with the bread and cheese, and set it down on the table in the corner.

“It is true that you remember nothing?” he asked, taking a seat on the couch.

Aria hesitated, sat in the chair at the table and sniffed at a piece of cheese. She remembered, with a pang of sadness, the fresh, pungent cheese she had eaten nearly every day in the mountains.

But there was no returning to that life, even if she had wished it. And instinct, even when it went against her desire to believe what Cort had said, told her to continue to withhold information about that life.

“It’s true,” she said, biting into the cheese.

“So.” Yuri rubbed his knee. “You can be sure that Cort will learn the truth about you and your origins.”

It felt almost like a threat. “You have known Cort a long time?” she asked, as she swallowed a bite of stale bread.

“Da. A long time.” She caught him staring at her, and he quickly looked away. “I know more about him than anyone else in this world.”

“Did you always know he wasn’t human?”

“Yes.”

His grimly amused expression made Aria shiver. After she had eaten all her shrunken stomach would accept, she struggled with a fresh wave of exhaustion. She might have risked sleeping with Cort present, but she could not feel comfortable doing so with Yuri in the room. She retreated to the couch, settled in one corner and wrapped the blanket tightly about her body.

She had given her word. And it was true that she had nowhere else to go, and no real understanding of this country and the people in it. But still she watched the door, half anticipating and half dreading Cort’s return.

CHAPTER THREE

THE MAN WHO CALLED himself Hugo Brecht stared unseeing at the curtains that separated the private dining room from the peasants outside and sipped his wine. It went down sour and bitter, though it was said to be of the finest French vintage.

He had lost her. After years of fruitless searching, she had escaped him again.

Hugo swallowed the last of the wine and set down the glass. He remembered every day, every hour, of those years of seeking the lost princess. He had gone through hell and crossed the world to find her. Alese di Reinardus—the sole surviving heir to the throne, daughter of Hugo’s cousin twice removed, the King of Carantia—spirited away from her enemies in infancy and transformed by her protectors into Lucienne Renier of the New Orleans werewolf clan.

When at last he had found her in New Orleans and taken her captive, he had been patient, waiting for the day when she would be old enough to marry him. She would become his bride and give him the throne he had coveted long before he had engineered the coup against Carantia’s king.

Alese’s escape had altered all his meticulous plans. It was as if she had vanished from the face of the earth. All the rogues and investigators and lawmen he had hired to find her had returned empty-handed. Even he had begun to lose hope.

Until he heard of the tournament and the beautiful girl—golden haired, with eyes the rare blue-green of the finest turquoise. Subtle inquiries had convinced him. It had to be Alese. He’d been sure of it once he’d seen her.

How she could have been overpowered by humans and become a prize in San Francisco’s most notorious underground poker tournament he couldn’t guess. What had she been doing since her escape? Why hadn’t she returned to New Orleans? Had she been too ashamed? Afraid he would find her there?

The fact was that it made no real difference what had happened to Alese during the past four years since she had escaped his custody. He had her at last.

Or so he had believed.

Hugo’s hands clenched and unclenched on the tabletop. He had not dreamed it possible that Cochrane could fail to win the match. The man was said to be the best in the city, perhaps in all the West, and yet he had lost to a common gambler.

No. Cortland Beauregard Renier was very far from common. He was werewolf, and that was the one circumstance Hugo had failed to prepare for.

Cortland Renier. A man of great skill—or luck. By all accounts an inveterate gambler, one of that class of men who considered themselves gentlemen but haunted the Coast seeking the easy life they hoped to acquire by the most dubious of means.

But this one, they said, could be very dangerous if crossed. That was hardly a surprise, given his inhuman nature.

Still, it was not his nature that troubled Hugo at the moment. The name Renier was not uncommon in parts of the United States. It was held not only by the most powerful werewolf clan in the country, but by lesser breeds scattered through the South and West.

The question was which clan and family claimed the man who had stolen Hugo’s prize, and whether or not his being here at such a time was more than mere coincidence. Most of all, Hugo had to find out whether Renier knew he had just taken custody of his own missing relation.

Hugo rang for another bottle of wine and scowled at his empty glass. If the New Orleans Reniers had heard of the tournament and the girl who stood as one of the prizes, it was not so incredible that they would have sent a family member to see if she could be the missing Lucienne. Discreetly, of course. The New Orleans Reniers had not widely advertised Lucienne’s kidnapping, and Hugo suspected that few in the family actually knew her true name and origins.

The name “Cortland” was not one Hugo recognized from his time in New Orleans. Even if the man was one of the Western Reniers, unconnected with the aristocratic lineage, he must quickly have realized that the girl was a werewolf.

Such females were not easily acquired in the West, especially not by lone wolves, and lust could be a powerful motive.

Lone wolf or New Orleans Renier, Cort was not likely to be an easy mark. Hugo’s clear advantage was that Cortland Renier, whoever he was, would not be likely to recognize him.

Hugo allowed his thoughts to simmer as the waiter brought another bottle, held it for his inspection and poured the wine. When the human was gone, Hugo’s mind was a little clearer. Assuming Cortland Renier was a free agent and didn’t recognize his prize as “Lucienne Renier,” she might be desperate and frightened enough to disclose her name.

How would Renier respond? Would he choose to help her? That would be only a little less problematic for Hugo than if he were a direct agent of the New Orleans Reniers.

Slapping a few coins down on the table, Hugo rose. It was only a question of getting the facts and making his plans accordingly. He would get Alese back. There was no question of that. He would set his men to watch the boardinghouse where Renier lived, and the gambling halls and dives he frequented. He would send a telegram to his contacts in New Orleans. By tomorrow or the next day, he would know if Cortland Renier had the backing of the clan.

If he did not, Hugo would approach Renier directly. He might simply take her by force, which would seem to be the easier path, but there was always a risk in using violence against a fellow werewolf. Alese might escape again.

No, Hugo thought as he walked toward the saloon door, he would take the somewhat lesser risk of offering Renier a substantial reward for the girl’s return.

One way or another, Alese would become his bride, the bride of Duke Gunther di Reinardus. The weakling cousin who now held the Carantian throne, ruling at the whim of the noble houses, would be far more easily deposed than Alese’s parents had been. And those who would change the ancient Carantian way of life, the human-lovers and rebel egalitarians who wished Carantia to become part of the corrupt modern world, would suffer the fate they deserved.

IT COULDN’T BE.

Cold logic told Yuri that the girl in the other room couldn’t possibly be the one she so vividly resembled. It had, after all, been eight years since the duke had stolen her from New Orleans, and there was no guarantee that a woman grown would resemble the child of twelve she had been then. Especially a woman who had so clearly suffered since her abduction from a pampered, aristocratic life.

He paced the narrow boarding-house hallway, shaking his head with every step. What were the odds that she could have escaped Duke Gunther di Reinardus, the ruthless traitor, the very man responsible for the deaths of her parents, and ended up in San Francisco at the very same time he and Cort were here? And she must have escaped, because the Gunther he had known eight years ago would never have let her go.

Yuri sat down on the steps and fiddled nervously with the unlit cigarette dangling from his fingers. It must be the same woman. He had seen the birthmark below her shoulder blade when her blanket had slipped. As fantastic as the whole thing seemed, he had never been one to doubt his senses. That very pragmatism had originally allowed him to accept the existence of werewolves and join the duke in his scheme to claim the Carantian throne.