Rebecca Brandewyne - From The Mists Of Wolf Creek

“Like fine wines, some writers seem to get better and better, and Rebecca Brandewyne belongs to this vintage group.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“Among the Updikes and Bellows of the [romance] genre are…Rebecca Brandewyne.”

—Newsweek

“Rebecca Brandewyne is…a…powerhouse of the romantic novel industry.”

—Houston Chronicle

“Brandewyne’s latest is another winning romp.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Crystal Rose

“Enduring Brandewyne gives her readers what they crave—a well-researched, detail-rich, and gentle historical romance about deserving characters and evildoers who get their comeuppance.”

—Booklist on The Crystal Rose

“A lush novel brimming with rich historical details and written in the grand tradition of the Victorian gothic.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on The Ninefold Key

is a bestselling author of historical novels. Her stories consistently place on the bestseller lists, including those of the New York Times and Publishers Weekly. She was inducted into the Romantic Times BOOKreviews Hall of Fame in 1988, and is a recipient of the magazine’s Career Achievement Award (1991). She has also received Affaire de Coeur’s Golden Quill Pen Award for Best Historical Romance, along with a Silver Pen Award.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dear Reader,

“Where do you get your ideas?” That’s invariably the question most asked of writers.

So, what does inspire a tale? In the case of From the Mists of Wolf Creek, the answer might surprise you—because it was actually my two dogs who gave me the idea for this particular novel. One of my dogs is a beautiful black long-haired German shepherd. He looks and acts very much like the wolf in my story. My other dog is a sassy Australian cattle dog (red heeler) mix. He reminds me of my book’s hero, Trace—someone who drifted around quite a lot before finally finding a good home. My dogs are the best of pals, to the point that each somehow always knows what the other is thinking. They’re both extremely loving and protective, also, offering exactly the kind of care I thought my heroine, Hallie, needed in this novel. So she got a wolf and a man, courtesy of my two dogs—and of her own grandmother, a woman wise in the ways of Magick who casts a powerful spell that enchants more than one heart at Meadowsweet Farm, on the banks of Wolf Creek.

Happy reading!

Rebecca Brandewyne

www.brandewyne.com

For Wulfie and Buddy,

who inspired this tale.

With all my love.

The wolf padded silently

From the mists of Wolf Creek

Into the magic circle

Where a wise witch did speak.

With her jeweled pewter wand,

She touched him on his head,

Cast a spell of enchantment

That bound him and so led

To his role as protector

At old Meadowsweet Farm.

There, he would forever stay,

Keeping all free from harm.

The man padded silently

From the mists of Wolf Creek

Into the magic circle

Where a wise witch did speak.

With her jeweled pewter wand,

She touched him on his chest,

Cast a spell of enchantment

That drew forth all his best,

Eased the pain of the past,

And bound him to the farm.

There, he would forever stay,

A stout heart, a strong arm.

When the spell was finally done,

Not the wolf nor the man

Knew where one of them ended

And the other began.

Sharing a deep and special bond,

They were as one, soul and mind,

Their dreams and their thoughts

Now and always entwined.

Laid upon them was this charge:

Guard the farm; keep it well;

And when love comes softly

To cast its magic spell…

Like the mists from Wolf Creek,

Greet it with willing arms

And with a faithful heart.

Revel in all its charms.

Both wolf and man listened hard

To the wise witch’s song.

For too many full moons,

They’d wandered far and long.

But the mists from Wolf Creek,

Now sweetly both bespelled,

And love came as promised,

At Meadowsweet e’er dwelled.

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Epilogue

Prologue

Meadowsweet Farm, Wolf Creek, The Present

Death drew ever closer.

With her heightened senses, always so keenly attuned to her surroundings and her own being, Henrietta Taylor had discerned its inexorably nearing presence for some time now.

At first it had only lurked in the shadows and hovered at the edges of her consciousness. She had caught only occasional glimpses of it then—a fluttering of its amorphous cloak, an inscrutable glance from beneath its voluminous hood.

Sunlight and her sheer strength of will had held it at bay for a while.

But eventually over the passing months, Death had grown bolder and less patient.

Now, sometimes late at night when she lay sleeping, it slipped into her old Victorian farmhouse, into her bedroom, and sat upon her shallowly rising and falling chest, peering down impenetrably into her slumbering face, as though to steal away her last breath finally and forever.

No doubt, with these tactics, Death hoped to frighten her, as it did so many others.

But unlike them, Henrietta was not afraid. She had lived too long and seen too much for that. She knew Death was but the guide to another dimension, another plane of existence not yet fully understood by those who dwelled in the physical realm.

When she passed beyond the door through which Death would lead her, she would see her parents and Jotham and Rowan again, and she would be glad of that.

But before then, she must do everything in her power to protect those she would be leaving behind—especially her namesake and granddaughter, Hallie.

That was the reason for the ritual Henrietta was undertaking tonight and why she had gone to such great lengths to prepare for it.

For months, she had befriended the huge wild black wolf around which her ceremony would center, gradually gaining its trust and confidence. For weeks, she had gathered the herbs and other plants she intended to employ, neatly cutting them with her bone-handled boline, then drying and preparing them for grinding with her mortar and pestle. For days, she had consulted her almanacs and correspondence tables to ensure that her timing would prove auspicious and her tools appropriate to her spellwork. Earlier this evening she had bathed in the nearby creek in order to cleanse and purify herself, then carefully dressed in her best witching clothes and flowing cloak.

Now Henrietta was ready.

Above the sweet meadow in which she stood—and for which her farm had been named—the moon shone bright and full, a gleaming silver orb in the black-velvet night sky. From the creek that wound through the woods encompassing the meadow, wisps of mist drifted ghostily, enshrouding the gnarled old trees and blanketing the gentle hollows of the land.

With her black-handled, double-edged, singing arthame and the carefully knotted cingulum she took from around her waist, Henrietta began the casting of the magic circle she required for this night’s work, marking the perimeter with small stones she had collected some days before and set to one side for just this purpose.