Beauty and the Werewolf Read Online Free PDF

thinking about what he must be doing to poor girls who don’t have powerful papas. I can’t even imagine what he does to people he’s actually caught poaching…” She clenched her jaw. “I can’t allow someone like that to go on as he is. He is going to become more abusive, not less, the longer he can bully people unopposed. I don’t matter—it’s not as if he actually hurt me, and I suspect he is still stinging from what I said to him. That’s revenge enough. But others will not be so fortunate if he is not stopped.”
    Granny nodded with satisfaction. “All right, then. Shall we get to what brought you here in the first place, now that your head is clearer?”
    â€œPlease!” she said eagerly, and Granny put down her mug and got up from her chair.
    She returned with an enormous leather-bound book, and opened it at the place they had left off.
    This book was an extensive compendium of the medical knowledge—especially herbs—of at least ten generations of Grannies. The binding had been cunningly made so that pages could be inserted anywhere, and when something new was learned about a plant, the information could easily be added. Each entry had a dried specimen, a decent drawing of the living plant and everything that had been learned about it, even if all that anyone had left was a notation saying “sheep fodder.”
    â€œI didn’t remember that,” Granny mused, her finger on a line that said that “the root of Sheep Sorrely, when roasted and ground, can be used to make a tasty hot beverage.” “This is as useful for me as it is for you. I don’t believe I have looked this closely at the book in years.”
    But something had been nagging at the back of Bella’s mind ever since the discussion of the Woodsman, and finally, it solidified into an actual thought. “Duke Sebastian,” she said aloud. “You said no one had seen him since he came of age—”
    Granny closed the book. “Not quite true,” she admitted, “but close enough. No one outside the Court, at any rate.”
    Bella waited, hands folded in her lap, eyes fixed on Granny expectantly. Granny laughed. “I know that look! Your turn to brew the tea. There should be just enough time to tell the tale before you must be getting back.”
    Bella was more than willing to brew the tea in exchange for what promised to be more than mere Court gossip.
    When she returned with the two mugs full, both sweetened with a touch of honey, Granny had built up the fire again. The two of them put up their feet and Granny took an appreciative sip of her mug. “Well,” she said, “not much of this will be in the broadsheets.Sebastian may be a Duke, but he is not one of the truly wealthy ones.”
    Bella settled into the chair and nodded. Wealth was as important as rank in the city, and a blindingly rich commoner, like the Master of the Goldsmiths Guild, was more important to the gossips and often within Court circles than a Duke of modest means and little or no political ambition.
    â€œSebastian’s mother died when he was very young. His father, the Old Duke, was gray-haired when Sebastian was born, so it was no surprise when he died when Sebastian was sixteen. Sebastian inherited these woods and lands enough to support him comfortably, but not so much that it excited anyone’s greed.” Granny chuckled. “So I was told.”
    Bella wondered who had told her. Granny was hardly the simple Herb Woman she pretended to be, but from the way she was talking now, it seemed as if she had some contact with people within the King’s Court.
    Or— Well, perhaps not. Her sources could simply be the King’s servants, who probably knew as much about what was going on as their masters.
    â€œAt any rate, failing a Guardian or Protector being named in his father’s will, he was left to the care of the King and was