Free The Cursed One by Ronda Thompson

crouching position, took up a candle and lit it with the fire, then moved quietly as a mouse from the parlor.
    â€œWhat are those things?” Amelia asked him. “How can they do what they do? How can they become beasts? How can they become someone else?”
    Â 
    Gabriel wasn’t certain how to answer. Could men turn into wolves? Yes, he knew that for a fact. He’d seen his father turn into one at dinner one night years ago. The Wulfs were cursed by a witch in a time long ago. The transformation had to do with a full moon and with a man’s heart. But Gabriel had never heard of a creature taking on the likeness of another person.
    â€œGabriel?” Amelia repeated.
    Her wide blue eyes held shock and fear, as they should. The same expression he would see in them if she knew that Gabriel was not a normal man, either. He was also part of the shadows.
    â€œI don’t know what they are,” he finally answered her. “But I do know that Robert is dead, Amelia. You must plant that fact firmly into your mind lest one of them tries to fool you again.”
    Her perfect brows furrowed. “How do you know the man in the cellar was Robert at all? Maybe it was another impostor. Maybe Robert is still alive. Maybe he has gone for help.”
    Explaining would be difficult, but Gabriel knew that he must. Amelia must understand once and for all her husband was dead and help would not be coming.
    â€œAll people have a scent. One that marks them,” he said. “I have an unusual ability to identify a person by
their scent. I knew it was Robert in the cellar. When we were boys, his scent had a certain … ill smell to it. He still carried it as a man.”
    Amelia blinked down at him. “Do I have a scent that marks me?”
    â€œYes,” he answered, reaching down to pull her dainty slippers off. Just as he suspected, her feet were as chilled as her hands had been. He began rubbing them. “Although you mask it with sweet-smelling soaps and perfumes. Because of that, it is harder for me to pick up a woman’s natural scent.”
    â€œYou have some rather extraordinary abilities,” she remarked. “Outside, I’ve never seen a man run as fast as you did, and carrying another person at the same time.”
    Circumstances had forced him to rely on his odd abilities, and he wondered what else Amelia Collingsworth would discover about him. “I was scared,” he said.
    When she didn’t respond, he glanced up at her. Her blue eyes held his stare boldly. “I don’t believe that you’re afraid of anything,” she said.
    Mora chose that moment to enter with a glass of red liquid. “Cooking sherry,” she proclaimed, and brought it to Gabriel.
    â€œI’ll fetch the tea now,” the girl said, and moved on.
    Gabriel lifted the glass to Amelia’s sweet lips. She drank the sherry down just as easily as she had the brandy the night before.
    â€œI like brandy better,” she proclaimed. “Sherry is too sweet.”
    He could not help but smile up at her. Lady Amelia was a most unconventional young woman. The more time he spent with her, the more he became aware of
her uniqueness. Still, this was no place for her. She belonged in London, in a ballroom, wearing a pretty dress and turning heads with a smile.
    â€œWhat you said about people having particular scents,” she said, placing her glass aside. “I believe you’re right. I might not have noticed that until today.”
    He glanced up at her. “Why today and not yesterday?”
    She moistened her lips. They were pink and plump and made him think of things best left alone. “Because you have one. A scent,” she clarified. “Upstairs earlier, when we, when you came to check on me, I smelled it. It made me feel odd.”
    Gabriel glanced back down at her dainty feet. Any true explanation would make her distrust him, and he needed her to trust him right