It isn't me, he'd wanted to tell his sister. It isn't I they should fear, except that he had come to understand that somehow he had absorbed the beast and that he now took it with him everywhere. He rather suspected that the wolf must shine through him like the glowing coals of predator eyes in the darkness.

And yet this woman beside him had smiled at him, and patted his arm, and said, "Oh, that was well done, Mr. Worthington!"

And the Yorkshire man and his wife had smiled at him and thanked him and when they had driven away, the entire family except the injured boy had piled out onto their steps and waved them away. "Good night, Mrs. Oakes! Good night, Mr. Worthington!"

Just as if he were an actual person. It had been the strangest evening.

As if she was thinking the same thing at the same moment, Mrs. Oakes turned to him. "Your quiet manner serves you well here. Yorkshire folk work hard and have little patience for idle chatter. I know many a quiet man who is respected here."

Lysander turned to look at her. The bit of light from the lanterns shimmered on her porcelain skin. Even bundled up as she was with her scarf nearly covering her chin and her practical man's knitted hat pulled down over her ears, she glowed. She reminded him of a luminous alabaster angel in a midnight garden. She caught his intense gaze with her own and wrinkled her nose at him.

"I know I look a mess. You must be used to a much more fashionable sort of lady. New gowns every Season and a different bonnet for every outfit."

Lysander considered that for a moment. "Sisters. A lot of gowns. Mostly." He was thinking of Attie, who had grown into a gangling adolescent while he'd been at war and her inquisitive mischievousness had turned sulky and intense. He had never seen Attie in a dress without trousers beneath it nor had he ever seen her hair pinned up in a shining mass or even anything ornamental on her person whatsoever. "Not all of them."

Mrs. Oakes leaned forward and squinted at him as if trying to read the printed word on the page of his face. "How many sisters do you have?"

Lysander felt the intensity of her focus, but there was something reassuring about her that made him trust her. Her intense regard did not alarm him the same way as that of most strangers, or even the silent longing of his family's wistful gazes. "Three."

"How wonderful." She sighed wistfully. "I had no siblings. One should share. It does seem rather greedy of you to take all the siblings. Do you suppose you got mine?"

The accusation was so ludicrous that Lysander made a rather shocked noise in his throat. He was being teased? Him?