WolfeStrike (De Wolfe Pack Generations #2) - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,55

She’d visited more frequently than most because the vast majority of the de Wolfe family didn’t want to see the pair, or deal with them, but Isabella and her mother, Rose, would come along with Tor’s parents on occasion. Everyone loved Tor but they didn’t love what The Vipers did to him.

Or, more correctly, what he allowed them to do.

Isabella knew.

Oh, but she knew.

Tor had raised the pair after their sister, Tor’s wife, had died. He’d brought them all the way from the Welsh Marches because they had nowhere else to go. But the trouble had started when Lady de Lohr had said something to Tor that he had taken literally – Jane asked that you take care of her sisters. Tor had, bringing them to Castle Questing almost seventeen years ago, where they had been raised as wards of William de Wolfe. They had been educated and taught the finest skills that all young maidens were expected to know.

But something strange had happened in the meantime.

Whey they had been young, they had been inordinately attached to Tor. It was understandable given the fact that he was their dead sister’s husband, but as they grew into young women, it wasn’t just attachment they felt for him.

It was possessiveness.

Tor belonged to them. It wasn’t that they lusted for him in a sexual sense. It was simply that he was their possession and they had a duty to protect their sister’s husband from other women. Jane had died so, in their mind, she had passed Tor down to them. Isabella had grown up alongside Barbara and Lenore, living in the same castle for several years, and they had always been friendly with each other. Barbara and Lenore could be very gracious and kind to women they didn’t view as competition for Tor. Since Isabella was a cousin, they did not view her as a threat.

But Isabella had seen what they could do to women who were.

That was when The Vipers’ fangs came out.

There had been a lass from the House of d’Umfraville of Prudhoe Castle. She and her family had simply come to visit on their way to Berwick. Lady Heather d’Umfraville, named for the vibrant heather that covered the northern moors, had been a very pretty girl who had struck up polite acquaintance with Tor. Her family was only at Castle Questing for the night, so it wasn’t as if they’d had a huge amount of time to get acquainted.

But that was enough for Barbara and Lenore.

Pretty, lively Heather d’Umfraville awoke the next morning, put her feet on the floor, and promptly fell into the corner of a table, mouth-first. Somehow during the night, an oil lamp had been tipped over and she had slipped on the oil. The fall had knocked out three of her teeth, an absolute mess and the end of a lovely smile. Everyone agreed that it had been a terrible accident at the time, but Isabella had seen Barbara and Lenore giggling about it. Coincidentally, they had been in the vicinity of Lady Heather’s chamber that evening.

That had been the start.

After that, any woman who looked twice at Tor ended up somehow disfigured or injured. There had been Lord Lanchester’s daughter who had come at the invitation of Sorcha du Rennic, Scott’s adopted daughter. Sorcha knew Lady Violet le Marr from the days when she had fostered at Alnwick Castle and she had been very excited to have her friend visit for a few weeks. Violet was tiny, dark, and quite lovely, something that hadn’t gone unnoticed by some of the single males at Castle Questing.

Tor hadn’t paid any attention to the woman, but that hadn’t mattered to Barbara and Lenore. Perhaps he would and they had to prevent that at all costs. Violet had been pushed down a flight of stairs and she’d broken a leg, hitting her head so hard that she lost some hearing in her right ear. She couldn’t say who had pushed her because it had been at night, and the stairwell dark, but someone had. She’d known that for certain because she’d felt the shove.

Scott had turned Castle Questing inside-out looking for the culprit, but no one had been named and no one confessed. Barbara and Lenore had found Violet at the bottom of the stairs after her fall and they pointed fingers to a mute male servant who couldn’t defend himself. With no other choice, or suspects, Scott had banished the man from Castle Questing, but Isabella knew the