The Legend of the Werestag by Tessa Dare

Cecily’s voice was indignant, and she shrugged off Denny’s touch. “Unarmed and unaided, he killed a ferocious boar that would have gored and devoured me. Yes, it was messy.
    Battles to the death often are. Stop speaking as though he took pleasure in it.”
    “Your defense is most stirring, Miss Hale.” Luke deliberately adopted a formal, detached tone that he knew would only inflame her anger. “You seem to have developed a rather personal attachment to this man-beast.”
    Tears glittered in her eyes as she glared at him. Tears, and accusations. “He fought for me.” The group fell into an uncomfortable silence. She sniffed and dropped her eyes, and Luke took the opportunity to study her pale expression of distress.
    Cecily, Cecily. Foolish girl, to think herself enamored with a beast. She could have no conception of Luke’s animal side. There were times during the war he’d been stripped down to it—become a base, feral creature that knew only hunger, sweat and the smells of blood and fear.
    She was dreaming after a myth: a gentleman who dallied as a noble beast, rescuing damsels in some enchanted forest. With Luke, she would get a beast wearing the clothes of a man. An uncivilized creature who’d lost all enjoyment in balls and parlor games, who’d forgotten the words to all her trite little songs of green meadows and shepherds and love.
    Enjoy your fantasy world, Cecily. Let me visit you there, from time to time.
    “Now this is a thrilling development,” Portia sang. “I knew it. What an enchanting twist this will make for my novel. The heroine is in love with the werestag.”
    “No, the heroine is not .” Fingers pressed to her temples and eyes squeezed shut, Cecily took a deep breath and began again. “Forgive me. But I tell you with perfect candor, I am not in love with a werestag.
    I’m just feeling…a bit out of sorts. Perhaps I’ve a headache coming on.” She extended a hand to Denny.
    “Will you walk with me? I feel better when you’re near.”
    “But of course.” He tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow, and then addressed Luke. “Why don’t you lead the others on ahead? The path leads directly to the cottage. It’s not as though you could become lost. Cecily and I will catch up.”
    Luke nodded. He turned and marched forward, a sense of hopelessness hollowing out his chest. He knew exactly what conversation would take place between Cecily and Denny on the way to the cottage.
    Well. That was that. When they returned to Swinford Manor this evening, he’d instruct his valet to pack up his things. Perhaps Luke would even ride out tonight. He could bring himself to let her go, but he’d be damned if he’d sit around and toast the happy couple’s betrothal.
    To that, he would drink alone. In copious amounts.
    “Very well,” said Portia thoughtfully. “Perhaps the heroine is not in love with the werestag. It makes a much better story if the beast is in love with her. So close, and yet so far from his beloved. Doomed to watch her from afar, never to hold her again. How tragically romantic.”
    “How patently ridiculous,” Brooke replied.
    Luke strode briskly ahead, leaving them to their quarrel. He would not have admitted it, but he rather agreed with them both.
    She would tell him, Cecily bargained with herself, once they reached that small boulder. Or perhaps the little patch of ferns. Failing that, she would most certainly break the news before they passed that gnarled birch tree.
    Denny kept pace with her easily, as he always did. Their silence was companionable, as it always was.
    All the while, Cecily kept up this internal bartering, staving off the inevitable just one more minute…and then again one minute more.
    At last she halted at a rotted, mossy stump. “I cannot marry you,” she told the clump of toadstools flourishing at its base. “I’m so terribly sorry. I should have told you years ago, but—”
    “For God’s sake, Cecily.” His soft laugh startled