I Adored a Lord (11 page)

Finding nothing more to do, she stood. “Until tomorrow.” She turned to leave.

Tiny teeth snagged in her hem. The runt tugged on the fabric.

“Good heavens, this is not my gown. You mustn't tear it.” She bent and scratched the pup around the ears while she pried its miniature jaws from the flounce of Ann's gown. “Now good night. Again.”

In short bounds that rustled the straw it followed her, mewling when she nudged it back with her toes to close the door. It yipped and scratched upon the wood. Ravenna retraced her steps and cracked open the door. The runt wiggled with joy and leaped at her ankles. At their mother's side, his warm, well-­fed siblings remained oblivious.

“You want adventure, do you?” She tucked it against her chest. “I once knew a creature like you.” She fondled a soft little paw between her fingers. “He was entirely black and grew to be much larger than you ever will. But you have something of his spirit, I think.” She rubbed her nose against its silky white brow and breathed in the scent. “I know just what to do with you.” Pulling her shawl over it, she enclosed it against her chest.

A groom bid her a good night and she crossed the forecourt into the castle. The last time she'd made this short trip she had run. Thrown to the ground and kissed by a strange man in the dark, she had been frightened and angry and confused.

Now her strides were light and giddy.

Inside the castle she could still hear the guests in the drawing room. Someone played the pianoforte beautifully—­Arielle Dijon, probably. Perhaps Lord Case had cajoled her out of her despair for a moment. Ravenna ducked inside the servants' stairwell and climbed to the bedchamber floor. A guard stood mid-­corridor.

“Which bedchamber is Lord Vitor's?” she asked.

He directed her along the passage.

The door opened without resistance. In his bedchamber, she poured water from the pitcher into the washbasin and offered it to the pup. It mewled and yipped again when she shut the door, leaving him behind her. But in the warmth he would soon fall fast asleep right where she had left him. Her smile split her cheeks as she followed the narrow passageways to her bedchamber.

A man stood by her door, leaning against the wall, a candle in one hand illumining his face.

“Mr. Anders?” She did not allow the jump in her nerves to sound in her voice. Her guard had apparently disappeared forever. She was alone with one of their prime suspects in the dark. “This is the ladies' wing. Are you lost?”

“Only lost in admiration.” He set the candle on a table and moved toward her.

“Oh.” She reached for the door handle. “Well then, I bid you good night—­”

He grasped her shoulder and turned her to face him. “Do not abandon me so early in the evening, dearest Miss Caulfield.”

She could not reach the knife in her pocket.
Foolish
. “Abandon you?” She spoke lightly. “I've barely ever spoken with you. How on earth could I abandon you?”

He gripped both her arms. “Yet I feel as though the moments that I have admired you across rooms full of bothersome others have been endless—­endless torture to be so ardent in my admiration yet so far from the object of it.”

He did not smell of alcohol, but he didn't smell of malevolence either.

“Mr. Anders, there is a guard on the other side of that corner,” she lied, “who will stick you through with his big Portuguese sword if I call out.”

“I would not harm you! I could not harm you! You are a treasure beyond telling.”

Fear slipped away from her. This was not an assassination attempt but simply a young man's natural idiocy. She had not really believed him capable of murder anyway. “Sir, do take your hands off me and be done with this nonsense.”

Poetically long hair that wasn't quite long enough to match the hair on Mr. Walsh's coat fell over one eye. But the other eye gazed at her ardently. “Now that I have touched you, I cannot release you. You must allow me to remain close. For the farther you are from me the greater my torment.”

“Sir, unhand me or you will come to fiercely regret it.”

“But I love you!”

“You
do
?”

“Powerfully. Deeply. Truly. My
darling
.”

“Not two hours ago you were drooling into your soup over Lady Iona. If this is true love then I don't think I wish to see infatuation.”

His brow grew stormy. “She is all beauty and no passion. She has no appreciation for real feeling. But you, Miss Caulfield, are of an emotional race.”

“What?” The word came out choked.

“Your dark, exotic blood knows true desire. I can see it in your eyes. They are the eyes of a wild creature. You need a man to tame your heat. I want to be that ma—­”

Her knee impacted precisely where she aimed. Mr. Anders doubled over with a groan, and she slipped into her room and locked the door. Without lighting the fire, she stripped off the delicate pin-­striped gown meant for a lady, then curled beneath the covers in her bed and waited for morning.

V
ITOR REMOVED HIS
horse's tack, rubbed him down and filled the hay rack, all with a head muddled from his sleepless night. He'd spent more peaceful nights on battlefields. The farther away he'd tied the mongrel from him in his bedchamber, the louder it had whined.

He rubbed his eyes and glanced at the pup rolling about in the straw at Ashdod's hooves.

“Come on, then.”

It cocked its head at him.

He opened the stall door. “Your mistress will wish to know how you fare.”

In the forecourt his elder brother walked toward him beneath a sky that had turned gray again overnight.

“You are permitted to ride abroad while the rest of us are locked within these walls?” he said, glancing at the puppy stumbling through the snow at Vitor's heels.

“The prince knows that I am not the murderer.”

“But the rest of us don't know that.” Wesley turned and fell in beside him. “You might have any one of us on your list. I could be next, and then you would be earl and when father is gone all your dreams would come true.”

“My dreams have never bent in that direction.” Last night his dreams had bent toward a black-­eyed woman. Like in that moment by the river when he had removed her sodden clothing, his dream had painted a vision of her body encased in linen rendered translucent by water, the dark points of her breasts poking hard beneath the cloth. In his dream he had peeled that garment off her and warmed her with his hands and mouth. He had never wanted his father's or brother's titles. He'd never wanted much of anything except to make himself useful to both his fathers and kingdoms. Now, however, he wanted Ravenna Caulfield.

“You know that,” he added.

“I do,” Wesley said easily. “What do you make of the general's daughter?”

“Do I think she is a murderer?”

“Do you think she could be a countess?”

Four years earlier, Vitor had spent an endless fortnight enduring his elder brother's questioning without once speaking a word. Now, despite his surprise at this question, he maintained his even stride. “I suspect so.”

“She is of noble blood.” Wesley said this as though it were a minor advantage. “Her father is the fifth son of a French count of little land and status, although he enjoyed some notoriety in the early months of Boney's ascendancy. The general first followed in his father's tracks, but when that resulted in a painful venture to Russia, he shifted his interests and went off to the United States. Made a name for himself advising the army and took to breeding world-­class hounds, it seems, from which lucrative endeavors he amassed considerable wealth and land. Father could not object to her pedigree, I think.”

Vitor remained silent. There was nothing he could say.

“Miss Caulfield is quite taking too.” Wesley spoke too casually. “Of course, she has no connection to the nobility, so marriage is out of the question. Did you know that she was a foundling? Her adoptive father would not put up resistance to a temporary arrangement, I suspect, although Sir Beverley might prove troublesome. But I know how to get around these sorts of things. I had an interesting conversation with him last night after dinner while Sebastiao was doling out parts for
Romeo and Juliet
. Peculiar choice of plays given the grim circumstances in which we all find ourselves, wouldn't you say? But his royal highness seems an odd bird in general. I don't know how you bore with him all those years.”

Vitor had ceased walking.

Wesley looked back at him. “Brother?”

“Why are you speaking to me about this?”

“Why not?”

“Do not trifle with her in an attempt to hurt me, Wes. If you do, I will make you sorry for it.”

His brother's eyes narrowed. “Not denying it, hm? And yet I believe she said that she threw you off already once.”

Vitor went to him. They were of a height and he looked him in the eye. “It has been seven years, Wes. When will you set aside your anger?”

“Perhaps it is not anger toward you that inspires my interest in Miss Caulfield but her natural appeal. I would not be the only man here who has given her more than a passing glance.”

In the drawing room the night before, Sebastiao had asked after her until Vitor went searching, to be told by the guard he'd posted to her protection that she had retired early.

Wesley seemed to study him. “Ah, he does not know the lady's mind, it seems,” he said as though to himself. “Perhaps he thinks she favors another.” His eyes narrowed. “Tell me, little brother, how does that feel?” After a moment's pause, he turned and went inside.

Vitor followed. The great hall echoed with the sounds of activity in the drawing room beyond the archway. Ravenna appeared in the opening. Without pause she came to him, crouched to the stone floor, and took the pup into her arms. She caressed its neck and behind its ears with her supple hands.

“Monsieur Sepic is in the drawing room being thoroughly useless,” she said, setting the pup on the ground. It attacked her hem. “He accused Lord Whitebarrow of stubbornness and arrogance—­which of course is accurate—­and the duchess of speaking nonsense. He does not understand her when she speaks French and she refuses to speak English with him. It is fabulously entertaining.” Her eyes sparkled. Then her brow pinched. “Much more so than dinner last night, at least.” She walked across the great hall beside him, the pup trailing. “Have you learned anything useful this morning?”

“Martin Anders's boots and the hem of his coat were soaked through. I discovered them drying by the hearth here when I went out at dawn. He must have been outside for some time to achieve that.”

“So was everybody. Guests stroll within the walls under the supervision of the prince's guards. Perhaps he took his walk before dawn to avoid the others. Sir Henry's boots shine despite several trips to the stables.”

“Feathers is considerably wealthier than Prunesly. He would have more than one pair. Prunesly's son might not.”

“Are you considerably wealthy?”

Vitor couldn't help smiling. “You say the damnedest things.”

“My father tried to teach me manners but I didn't listen very often. Petti and Sir Beverley have despaired of me for years. And of course I am not unique between us in saying ‘the damnedest things.' ”

“I am a second son only.”

“Second son of a wealthy peer, they say, which probably makes you at least grandly comfortable if not despicably rich. Why are you here?”

He peered at her.

“What are you doing in the mountains of France in March at the bride-­hunting party of a Portuguese prince?” she clarified.

“How long have you been wondering this?”

“The question only now occurred to me. Rather, it occurred to me when I saw you take out your horse. It is a beautiful animal. Superbly beautiful. He must have cost you a fortune.”

Ashdod had cost a fortune, but it had been only a mere fraction of the money he had in London and Lisbon banks.

“Watching from an upper window, were you?” he said.

“I was in the stable examining a sore hoof.”

Before dawn? But she had been in the stable after midnight when he first encountered her. This time he had not heard her and she had not revealed her presence to him.

“In that?” He glanced at her gown. The pink frock was youthful and light and damnably tight across her breasts. As though she had only just come inside, her cheeks were bright with cold, and straw and dirt clung to the gown's hem where the dog had not yet chewed it away.

“Recall that you sliced my best gown into shreds.” She offered him a too-­sweet smile.

He shook his head. “I—­”

“Feeling guilty?”

For stripping her to her shift and affording himself a glimpse of her hidden beauty?
No
. He couldn't make his tongue function.

She laughed. “I have other gowns, of course. But thanks to Ann Feathers inviting the prince to peruse my wardrobe while I was in the housekeeper's room, I now know that he prefers that I wear her gowns instead. She lent me this and two others, both with considerably more ruffles and lace. Lady Margaret has astoundingly busy taste.”

He bowed and finally managed, “I offer my apologies for ruining your gown.”

“Just don't do it again. You may be a wealthy aristocrat but I am a poor vicar's daughter. I cannot afford to repay Miss Feathers should you ruin one of her gowns the next time.”

“I do not anticipate a next time.”

Her lashes beat twice, rapidly. “Then perhaps you might reconsider the reliability of the guard you assigned to me. He was nowhere to be seen when Mr. Anders cornered me by my bedchamber door last night.”

Jealousy
. Hot and quick. “Anders was still in the drawing room when I retired.” Had the guard lied about her retiring early? “When did you see him?”