The Passion by Donna Boyd

the pale carpet beneath him. Her breath caught in her throat as she looked at him, and then faintly, indistinctly, she saw the rise and fal of his chest.
    Tessa got her hands and knees beneath her and crawled to him. Desperately she tried to stanch the flow of blood with her hand. She stroked his thick coarse fur. It felt cool, and his breath was faint.
    When she gently lifted his head into her lap, he was limp and unresponsive. She bent low over him, rocking back and forth. "Don't die," she whispered.
    "Oh, God save us, please don't die."
    That was when she knew she had been wrong. Al along, she had been terribly wrong.
    Chapter Three
     
     
    Tessa left the room only briefly, flying down the stairs in her nightgown with just the moonlight and her memory to guide her steps. She reached the butler's pantry and tore through the shelves of supplies, fil ing her arms with soft towels, gauze bandages, camphor and laudanum. She snatched a kettle from the kitchen and, grabbing her skirts above her knees, ran up the stairs again, taking them two at a time.
    An intruder had entered the room in her absence.
    It was Gault, the master's valet. He wore a red tapestry dressing gown and no slippers, and his dark curly hair was loose over his shoulders. Until that moment Tessa had not realized that his hair was easily as long as the master's.
    He had lifted the limp body of the wolf from the rug on which he lay bleeding and placed him on the bed, and he was bending over the prone figure when Tessa entered. She dumped her supplies on a table and rushed at him with nothing but the copper teakettle for a weapon.
    "Get away from him!" she cried. "No one gave you permission to enter!"
    He turned on her, dark eyes blazing. "Nor you, I'll wager! What have you done, you foolish girl?"
    She hesitated a few feet from him, kettle upraised to strike, chest heaving with emotion and exertion. His eyes swept the room, from the bloody knife in the corner to the medicine on the table to her stained hands and nightgown, and the narrowing of his eyes told her he had no difficulty in discerning the truth.
    And the truth did not reflect wel on her.
    For just a moment, there was a tremor in her resolve. He straightened, steely anger darkening his face, and he took a step toward her. But she stood her ground, tightening her grip upon the teakettle, setting her jaw.
    "He bolted the door against you," she reminded him.
    "He won't be happy to know you're here."
    She saw a flicker of uncertainty cross his eyes.
    Clearly, he was accustomed to his master's eccentricities, particularly where those of the opposite sex were concerned, and he was not quite as sure of the appropriate response to this situation as he would like to be. He scowled. "I don't know what games you were playing, but it is to your very good fortune that his wound is minor. Obviously, it's not my place to decide your punishment."
    She swal owed hard but maintained his gaze and the strength of her voice. "Nor is it your place to interfere. Leave now and I may not tel him you were here."
    She thought for a moment that he might refuse. He glanced at the stil , limp form of the huge wolf on the bed, and the sight of it was evidently nothing remarkable to him. Then he looked at her.
    "He'll need blood broth," he advised matter-of-factly,
     
    "and plenty of it."
    For a moment she wavered. "Blood—broth?"
    "Fresh chicken or goat. Fortify it with sugar and brandy and warm it to drink. His wound must be cleaned…"
    He moved toward the bed, but Tessa stopped him with a sharp "I can do that."
    He gave her a look that was eloquent in its contempt and skepticism. "If I thought you could do any more harm, I'd tear your throat out with my own hands," he told her, in a voice just as flat and detached as the one he had used to advise her about the blood broth. "As it is, I wil attend him in the morning. You are a very, very lucky little human."
    It occurred to Tessa for the first time as he departed that Gault