The Passion by Donna Boyd Page A

might be of the same remarkable species as his master. The possibility held no especial interest for her. After al she had experienced that night, nothing could startle her ever again.
    She bolted the door after him, quickly added more coal to the stove, then put the kettle on to boil.
    Armed with gauze and camphor, fil ed with trepidation, Tessa approached the wolf. His eyes were open to narrow slits, but glazed and unfocused. They showed no reaction as she came near, to her great relief. She knelt beside the bed, cautiously extending a hand to part the blood-stiff fur around the wound. It had stopped bleeding, for which she fervently thanked God. But then she stopped and stared. What once had been an ugly gash was now pink, puckered flesh, lacking only a needle's breadth from being knitted and whole. The wound was almost completely healed.
    A sound issued from his throat, a growl or a moan, and he moved restlessly. Tessa quickly backed away. The pace of his breathing had increased, and it frightened her. "What?" she whispered frantical y.
    "What can I do? What do you need?"
    She wished she had not sent Gault away so summarily, and wondered if it was too late to cal him back. He would know what to do. But the master had not wanted him here; he had bolted the door against him. Had she been wrong to respect his wishes?
    His panting was shal ow, quick, accompanied by a high, thin wheezing that fil ed the room. Tessa's stomach tightened with helpless despair; she raised her hands to her ears to block out the sound. And then she remembered.
    Once again she flew down the stairs, threw open bolts, plunged into the night. She tore across the stableyard and into the chicken house, where she snatched two sleeping fowl from their roosts and wrung their necks before they had time to utter more than a squawk. She dispatched their heads on the chopping block with barely a grimace, and hung them up by their feet to drain into a bucket. She rushed back inside to grab two more.
    She continued in this fashion until the bucket was fil ed; then she prepared the broth as directed, with strong brandy and plenty of dark sugar, al the time wondering if Gault could have been lying to her, or if she had misunderstood, or in fact had dreamed the entire unlikely episode from beginning to end.
    She carried the steaming mixture upstairs, where he lay just as she had left him, dul eyes watching her guardedly, breathing short and rapid. She poured a little of the broth into a saucer and held it close to him. He lifted his head a little, then drank greedily.
    Over and over she fil ed the saucer, bending and straightening until she could no longer feel the pain in her back and she thought her body would snap in two at the waist. When he dozed she fed the fire and stroked his fur and murmured softly to him, and when he woke she brought more broth.
    It was just before dawn when exhaustion overcame her, and Tessa fel asleep in her chair.
    When she awoke she was looking into the bright blue, very human eyes of Alexander Devoncroix.
    "Who the flaming hel are you?" he demanded, scowling.
     
    Tessa leapt to her feet, overturning her chair, and stumbled a few steps backward. He was propped up on one elbow in bed, his lower extremities now more or less decently covered by the duvet, his smooth muscled chest displaying nothing but a slight pink shininess over the place where the knife wound had been. Tessa could not believe that she had slept through that incredible transmutation of forms, and then she wondered for one brief, disoriented moment whether she might have been asleep from the beginning and had only dreamed what she remembered…
    "Wel ?" he demanded. "I asked you a question, girl."
    "I—I…" She saw the bowl with the congealed remains of the blood broth; she saw the saucer from which he had drunk. She saw the bloody towels with which she had cleaned him, the knife, the broken porcelains. She gulped a breath, but the only words that she could find were a