After the story Christoph had related today about his English grandmother, Alana understood that remark. “Christoph told me a little of your family history.”
“Did he?” Ella asked with interest.
Alana felt like groaning. The mother was obviously still trying to ferret out the nature of Alana’s relationship with her son. Like Hendrik, she’d probably like to see him settled down and raising his own family.
To point out that he hadn’t volunteered the information on his own, she said, “I was surprised when I found out he was part English. I asked for an explanation. Is your mother still living in England?”
Ella tsked. “Yes, she comes to visit us each summer, but I’ve never been able to talk her into staying. Her art keeps her in London, where she has a comfortable studio in her own home and she can easily obtain the supplies she needs. She has such a long list of commissions for portraits. She’s very talented, but thinks that talent would be wasted here, where Lubinians favor a different sort of art. But I’m more hopeful this year she’ll change her mind, otherwise she should stop coming. The last few years she’s arrived here utterly done in. She’s too old to travel such long distances.”
“She’ll never stop coming here,” Christoph said as he stepped into the room. “She’s too ornery to think she’s too old.”
“You’re back already?” Alana said in surprise.
Christoph shrugged out of his coat. “It only took a few minutes to see that the two men were dead after all.”
“Did you bring those bodies back for your father’s wolves?” Hendrik asked. “They can’t be buried until the ground thaws, but the wolves can dispose of them nicely.”
Christoph laughed at Alana’s expression after hearing that. “He’s not serious, wench.”
“Then your father doesn’t really keep wolves?” she asked.
“He does,” Christoph answered as he sat down next to her on the sofa. “He breeds them because they are so unique.”
She was disconcerted for a moment. He could have sat in plenty of other places, including next to his mother. Ella had noted it, too, her eyes moving back and forth between them.
More as a distraction than a correction, Alana pointed out, “Wolves aren’t unique.”
“These wolves are. Tell her,” Christoph said to his grandfather.
Hendrik grinned. “When his father, Geoffrey, was just a boy, I would take him hunting in the high mountains each summer, where the snow never melts. One year we went higher than ever before. It was a clear day, no clouds on the mountain-tops. We found an unnatural creature up there, an albino wolf never seen before in Lubinia, or anywhere else in Europe that I know of. It would have made a fine pelt. I told Geoffrey to shoot it. I wasn’t as good with the bow and arrow as he was. But he refused. He wanted to capture it instead and bring it home to tame. I thought it would be a good lesson for him, that the wild should be left wild. I didn’t think he would succeed, but in less than half a year the white wolf was obeying his every command. Before she passed on, he found her a mate.”
“And he still breeds them?”
“Why not? They’re tame, at least, tame for him!” Hendrik laughed. “He uses them to hunt fresh meat in the winter. So many hunts come to a quick end in the high hills because the frequent snow limits visibility. But it doesn’t stop the wolves.”
She’d love to see these unique animals for herself, but they were probably kept outside and the snow was still coming down heavily, so Alana didn’t ask. Instead, she asked, “You actually hunt with bows and arrows here instead of rifles?”
“I’ve never seen a rifle shot start a snowslide, but why take the chance, eh, when a bow is as easy to master as a rifle?”
If it were that easy, Poppie would have taught her how to use one, but her eyes still flared wide and turned on Christoph. “You could have brought down an avalanche today?”
“What choice did I have, eh? But, no, there isn’t enough snow down here for an avalanche.”
“Who was shooting at you so near here?” Ella asked. “Thieves don’t usually waylay people on the roads. Rebels?”
“The king’s enemies are my enemies. I’ve been a target for some time now.”
Ella scowled at him. “I could have done without hearing that.”
He grinned at her. “You have nothing new to worry about. They only send expendable lackeys after me. But today, we are not sure who they were shooting at, me—or her.”
He actually bumped shoulders with Alana when he said her. She scooted away from him. What was he doing, behaving so familiarly with her in front of his relatives? Especially after he’d been caught kissing her!
“Why her?” Hendrik asked.
“She’s also a target,” Christoph said. “But that’s a long story and privileged information.”
Ella raised a brow at him. “Who is more privileged than your family?”
