Wolf Bride by Elizabeth Moss Read Free Book Online Page A

stared at him, speechless.
    ‘Half an hour,’ Wolf told her brusquely, turning away. ‘Your father and I will wait for you below.’
    The inn chamber was bare and low-ceilinged with a threadbare tester bed for herself and a straw mattress on the floor for Mary. She prodded the mattress with her toe, and a mouse ran out from underneath. Mary gave a little shriek, but said nothing, merely looked at her new mistress with trepidation.
    ‘You can share the bed with me,’ Eloise promised her. ‘First though, you had better help me look respectable for this meal.’
    Mary dressed her by the light of their single candle, its flame flickering with every icy draught that blew in around the loose window shutters or under the door. Much to Eloise’s relief, Mary had thought to bring a small handglass in which she was able to study herself.
    She held it up while Mary combed out and arranged her hair. A narrow-chinned face frowned back at her, pale and not particularly pretty, with unfashionably fair looks. She was no dark court beauty. Yet somehow she had managed to procure a wealthy lord for a husband. And she had even thought Simon in love with her once, though his intentions had not been honourable. Perhaps Queen Anne had been right to say her charms, like the queen’s own, lay below the neck.
    Eloise pinched her cheeks to bring some colour into them after the long dreary journey. Would Lord Wolf be as disagreeable a husband as he was a suitor?
    ‘A clean ruff,’ Mary murmured, and Eloise straightened to receive it, holding still while her maid fastened the fresh ruff in place.
    She tried to guess at the intimacies of her wedding night, with nothing but young maids’ gossip to fuel her imaginings. Brought up in the country, she knew how animals coupled, but had always hoped that love between a man and a woman would be a more dignified affair. Soon she would know the truth. She felt like a virgin sacrifice in one of those ancient Greek tales mentioned by the poets, left chained to a rock to appease some ogre. Part of her dreaded the appeasing of the ogre, while part of her was curious to become a woman at last.
    At least she could be in no doubt that Lord Wolf desired her, that he was unlikely to mistreat her. She told herself it could have been worse: an infirm old man for a husband, or a drunken brute. But in truth she would have preferred a man she loved. Not this sharp-eyed, cold-tongued stranger.
    Downstairs, she found a long room with a fire burning in the stone hearth and a trestle table set for supper, an array of serving men bustling to and fro with platters, trenchers and cups for the wine. Her father was already seated at the head of the table, stately in his furred robe and embroidered cap, drinking wine. The other gentlemen were standing, conversing together by the fireside. Among them she saw the tall figure of Lord Wolf, and looked hurriedly away before he saw her looking, determined to appear more modestly behaved than she had done at court.
    ‘There you are at last, Eloise!’ her father exclaimed impatiently, and gestured her to the seat on his left. ‘Come and sit beside me, my daughter. Supper is ready to be served, we have been waiting only for you.’
    But Lord Wolf intervened before she could sit.
    ‘Sir,’ he said coolly, ‘if I might first introduce my bride-to-be to this company? Some of these gentlemen are to remain in my service once we are married. Your daughter should perhaps know their names as well as their faces.’
    ‘By all means, my lord,’ her father agreed hastily.
    Eloise nodded as each man was introduced to her, then gave them all a deep curtsey, her eyes demurely lowered. ‘Sirs,’ she replied.
    She knew none of the men except one, Hugh Beaufort, a young man she had seen a few times about the court, though they had never been introduced.
    Hugh was not a rugged, weathered soldier like the other fellows, but a courtier who worked for the king in some clerical post. A handsome,