Free Raised By Wolves 1 - Brethren by Raised by Wolves 01 Page B

Graeland, was with them.
    To my amazement, my bedchamber was exactly as I had left it; well, a little cleaner. I shooed the maid out and immediately performed a habit I had learned in this very room: I slid a chair to the door and under the knob. Its legs settled into the grooves in the floor they had made one night when Shane had tried kicking the door open while in a drunken stupor. I was apparently home.
    On a whim, I tried on several coats from the closet, and found that none of them fit me. I had indeed widened markedly across the shoulders. They were woefully out of fashion, anyway. The court of Charles I I was a modern one, and the fashions were more in keeping with the rest of Christendom now. I dressed for dinner in the clothes I had purchased in London with Teresina’s money.
    My uncle knocked on my door. “I thought you might not wish to go down alone,” he said quietly.
    “I do not wish to go down at all, but I thank you for your company.”
    He watched me strap on a sword belt and my favorite rapier.
    “Marsy, you will not need that here.” The look I gave him stopped his words.
    He shrugged. “Shane will remain in London.”
    I was equally relieved and disappointed, but I had expected as much.
    “Lovely, I am sure that will cause some amount of bitterness,” I said.
    “I care not what Shane feels about that matter, but I am concerned the others will hold ill will over it. He has, after all, been the good son.”
    “Would you prefer him to be here?” he asked with concern.
    “Nay, nay, we will leave him there, thank you. If I am not to kill him, I would rather not see him.”
    We were down before many of the others, except for my mother.
    She sat on a settee, a skeletal figure swathed in pale pink satin that managed to be more deeply hued than her white skin. She regarded me through a haze of laudanum, while her nurse tried to explain who I was. The understanding that I was her son finally dawned; and then that look of disapproval I remembered all too well pinched her features.
    I paid my respects with a forced smile and the exceedingly clear enunciation I use for idiots and drunks. She managed to glare at me.
    She said nothing, however. I recalled being told at a very early age that the nanny whose lap I dearly loved was not my mother and this cold and hideous woman was. I had been disappointed, more so when I became old enough to understand that other mothers loved their offspring. I hoped she ran out of laudanum before she died.
    My aunt wafted into the room in a cloud of blue satin, and reminded me how regal my mother had been capable of appearing once upon a time. They were very similar in countenance. Thankfully there was no commonality between them in demeanor. My aunt embraced me and bid me welcome, before asking of my journey. There was no sincere emotion in it, but she was at least cheerful and polite in paying the courtesy due a guest. As I had often been a guest in gracious homes, I felt at ease in her presence. I knew how to deal with strangers I wished to get on well with. Thus I regaled her with trivial tales and complaints of my journey from Florence, rarely touching on the truth.
    My sisters arrived. They paused in the doorway, like two dogs unsure of an intruder’s intent. Was I to be barked at, or licked, or both?
    Elizabeth had grown into quite the beauty, with all the regal air my mother had once possessed and, once she made up her mind to enter, all of my aunt’s social talents. Her hair had darkened into a pleasant brown, like my mother’s. Her eyes were not my mother’s hazel, though, but the vivid blue of many of my father’s family, a color I shared with my uncle.
    Sarah was not as attractive as our sister. I assumed that, at seventeen, she had reached her full growth in both height and bosom.
    Both were short of Elizabeth’s measure in those areas by several inches.
    She still shared my blond hair, but she had my father’s misty grey-blue eyes. Unlike Elizabeth, she