Beauty and the Werewolf by Mercedes Lackey Page B

duchy becomes annexed by His Majesty and given to my father as a garden.” Just how she was supposed to accomplish this, when she was being held far from everyone, she hadn’t a clue, but he looked as if he believed her.
    â€œFair enough,” he said. “Please follow me.”
    He led her through the doors he had just entered the room by,which led to a very long passageway. More fortifications; this was plain, heavy stone with no other entrance than the one they had used, nor exit but the one at the end of it. There were slits in the walls and holes in the ceiling—another murder-hole, in which invaders could be trapped while the defenders shot at them through the slits and poured boiling liquid or molten lead on them through the ceiling. It was lit by torches in hand-shaped sconces. Rather unnerving.
    He led her through the door at the end, and once again, it was as if these rooms belonged to an entirely different building.
    To the right—well, she didn’t get a chance to look at it, because it was the room to the left that caught her attention immediately.
    The two rooms must have stretched on either side of the murderous passageway. The room to the left was a sumptuous dining room, hung with tapestries of hunting scenes, and beautifully lit with more lamps. But that was not what caught her attention; it was the delicious smells wafting from the many dishes waiting on one end of a very long banquet table.
    There were just two chairs there, neither one placed at the head. She limped toward the nearest; he hurried his own steps so that he could pull the seat out for her before taking his own.
    If she had been asked to name every single food she liked most at breakfast, she would have found them here. Her stomach didn’t growl, but it did remind her forcefully that she hadn’t eaten since last night.
    Since there didn’t seem to be any servants—which was odd, but perhaps understandable, given that the master of this place was on occasion a slavering beast that might turn them into bloody shreds—she helped herself. Perhaps the servants scuttled in at meals, left everything on the table and scuttled out again, locking themselves safely in their own quarters.
    He sat opposite her, and served himself, as well. So he was used to it. She waited with her fork poised over her plate.
    â€œYou promised me an explanation,” she said, a little severely. He flushed.
    â€œI am not sure where to begin,” he said, toying with his food.
    â€œWell, you weren’t always a werewolf, or I assume people would have noticed,” she pointed out tartly, then did her best not to show how heavenly the bit of ham she had just eaten had tasted.
    â€œNo, and that is the peculiar thing.” His brows knitted in a frown. “I wasn’t bitten, not even by so much as a mouse. And Godmother Elena was unable to find any evidence of werewolfery being in my family line—”
    â€œWait just a moment!” she exclaimed, interrupting him. “You mean the Godmother knows about this?”
    He blinked at her from behind his glasses, mildly confused. “Of course,” he told her. “Why wouldn’t she? Just as the King knows. Anyway, even though I am a wizard—”
    â€œYou’re a wizard?” This was getting far more complicated than she had ever thought it could be.
    â€œI suppose people don’t know,” he mused. “It’s not as if I ever do anything with it—publicly, that is.” He pushed more food around his plate. “Besides, wizards aren’t all that powerful without a lot of practice and—well, never mind that now. It’s a very small duchy and it’s not as if I wanted people to know I did wizardry. They might assume I either needed hiring or conquering. Anyway I could faithfully promise Elena that I hadn’t tried any wolf-transforming spells, because I hadn’t tried any transforming spell, so