I Adored a Lord (33 page)

“Either he ceased wanting her when he became certain her parents would not pay him a penny . . .”

“Or?”

Vitor's hand closed around the letter, crumpling it. “Or he was a coward.”

“A coward? You are harsh,
mon fils
.”

“Not harsh.” He should not have allowed Ravenna to go. “I am a fool.” Lady Grace had lied to them all because she had not believed that in the end her lover would desert her. She had believed in his constancy. And, despite the letter that was meant to be a good-­bye, when she summoned him, he had gone to her.

I am well accustomed to being alone
.

Ravenna had never said she did not want him.

He should not have doubted.

Please don't let it end
.

The hermit folded his hands into his sleeves. “Have you,
mon fils
, finally discovered an adventure worthy of your pursuit?”

“I have.” It remained to be seen if in his pursuit he would ever catch her.

A
S A MEMORIAL
for his friend, Sir Beverley threw a grand party with champagne fountains, French culinary delicacies, an Italian puppeteer who did caricatures of all the guests, and Turkish dancing girls. According to the gossip columns, London society was scandalized. But they all came. It was a fantastic success, and in the carriage the next day on the way to Shelton Grange, as Sir Beverley slept sitting upright against the squabs, Ravenna finally wept.

The following afternoon when they drove up the drive and halted before the house, she stumbled out of the carriage, walked to the mound of earth beneath the old oak tree, and lay down upon it.

“I miss him, Beast,” she said into the grass. “I knew him only a fortnight and yet I miss him like I miss you and Petti. I love you,” she whispered. “I love you.”

A sennight later a letter arrived from General Dijon with news of the betrothal of his daughter to the Earl of Case. Since he would be remaining in England until after the wedding, he did not require Ravenna's response to his offer of employment quite yet. Extending an invitation to the wedding, he indicated that a formal invitation would arrive shortly from Airedale.

“Will you accept?” Sir Beverley said.

Ravenna dropped the letter onto the grate and watched the flames eat it. “I haven't yet decided. With Petti's house now, and all the work I already have in this county, it seems absurd to take a post in America. I am thinking of setting up my own practice from the other house.”

“But will you accept the invitation to the wedding?”

The door beneath her ribs cracked open again and the ache sprang out.

She affected a shrug. “Why wouldn't I? Arielle is a sweet girl. I like her very much. And Iona will probably attend. I would be glad to see her again.”

Sir Beverley peered at her through half-­lidded eyes. “Why wouldn't you, indeed?”

Because he allowed me to walk away
.

She had not bluffed. She had anticipated his disenchantment and had been wise to put him off swiftly.

Another letter arrived, this one posted from London.

The wedding will be in Lisbon. Papa is thrilled at the prospect of joining Prince Raynaldo's stables with his. Oh, dearest friend, how is it possible that I could be so fortunate, so blessed to be marrying the man I admire above all others and making my father and mother happy at once? It seems a dream, but I never wake from it! You must come stand beside me. Sebastiao has sisters and cousins that will attend me for the ceremony, but I will not be happy unless you are with me on that day. You vowed to me you would. I expect you in June.

Ravenna set that letter on the grate too.

“It is possible . . .” Through the drawing room window she watched the setting sun bathe the park in dusk. “Is it possible to love a man after knowing him only a fortnight?”

Paper rustled, a page of Sir Beverley's journal turning. “It is possible, my dear, after only an hour.”

She stared at Petti's empty chair, now in shadow. “And yet, given . . .”—­grief, loneliness, pain—­“given all, you do not regret it?”

Sir Beverley lowered his paper. “Given all, how could I?”

When she received word that the first of the tenants' ewes had dropped a lamb, she walked to the farm to assist. As always, the lambs all came within days of each other, tiny and confused, then hungry, then sleeping. She wanted to sleep too, to fall into a field of wildflowers beneath the spring sunshine and disappear.

The long days and nights of lambing came to an end on a morning dark with clouds that stretched across the sky. Dragging her weary legs and arms from the barn, she declined a ride home in the farmer's cart and set off, cutting through the wood carpeted with bluebells.

The rain began in thick droplets spaced far apart. As the trees thinned, it grew heavy, splashing off her nose and cheeks in giant splotches, washing away the dirt and straw, soaking through her hair and filling the woods with its soft, steady rhythm.

At the edge of the woods Ravenna's footsteps faltered, the exhaustion of every limb, every thought, every feeling that she had held at bay now overcoming her. She halted and for a moment swayed, and the rain slid down her cheeks, tasting of salt as it mingled with tears. The scents of spring and birth stirred by the downpour rose around her, urging her to lift her face and spread her arms and run as she had always done. But her legs would not obey.

Her knees buckled and she dropped to them in the bed of flowers. She sought the ground with her palms, then laid her head upon the sodden carpet, curled up on her side, and closed her eyes. She thought perhaps that if she were Arabella she would imagine this was fate: to be soaked to the bone, then fall ill with a fever and perish just when she had finally understood the truth of her heart. If she were Eleanor she would ponder something profound, then write about it.

But Ravenna did not believe in destiny and she was not an adept writer. And the grief was too powerful to bear. Tucked into a ball, she lay aching until, eventually, she fell asleep.

The lathe of a dog's tongue on her cheek woke her. Not even in dreaming could she mistake the modest size of this animal's greeting for Beast's giant lick. Still, her heart constricted. Then it constricted again, harder, for another loss altogether, because it did that lately, collided one hole in her heart with another to make one gaping wound.

She opened her eyes to discern which of the farmer's sheep dogs was cleaning the salted raindrops from her face. Her breaths stuttered. She lifted her hands and held the soft white and black head far enough away to study him. His muzzle was a bit longer, his ears floppier and his nose a shade broader, all in the manner of young animals that grow at astounding speed. But his face was entirely familiar.

“Gonçalo,” she whispered, her heartbeats quick.

He yipped and sprang away.

Shoving hair from her eyes and swiping a damp sleeve across her cheeks, she pushed up to sit and peered into the thinning rainfall. Toward her across the field cantered a handsome dappled Andalusian, the man astride the mighty animal handsomer yet. She could not stand up or indeed move at all; her trembling limbs rebelled.

Vitor drew the horse to a halt, dismounted with agile elegance, and walked toward her.

“What—­” She coughed upon rainwater and stumbled to her feet. He was real, here, in the rain before her, his dark eyes taking in her bedraggled hair and gown covered with sheep muck. “What are you doing here?” she finally managed.

“Are you all right?” His gaze swept the impression that her body had made in the bluebells, then her body.

“I—­I was—­ The lambing, you see—­ That is to say, I haven't slept since—­”
Since she had left him
. She drew a tight breath. “On my way home, I paused to rest. I suppose I fell asleep.”

“In the rain,” he said. “In a patch of wildflowers.”

“Oh, you know,” she said airily, waving a damp, unsteady hand. “It's a remarkable challenge to keep goose feather pillows dry out of doors. Substitutions are occasionally necessary.”

“I daresay.” His dark eyes quietly smiled.

“Why are you here?”

“I came to give you this.” He opened his greatcoat and from it produced a lump of shaggy white fur barely bigger than his hand. The rain pattered upon the pup's silky head. It lifted its nose, cracked opened it eyes, and sniffed the air. “He is not Beast, of course. But I don't like the thought of you being alone. And this one”—­he glanced at the long-­legged pup dancing around his knees—­“likes him, so I supposed he would suit.”

She was afraid to reach out and touch it—­
touch him
—­lest he should disappear and prove a dream. “How do you know about Beast?”

“You told my brother. After I decided through careful consideration that the beast you spoke to him of was not a man, I recalled that you had mentioned him to me before. Sir Beverley has just now taken me to visit the old oak. I am sorry, Ravenna.”

“You have come all the way here to give me a puppy? To replace my dog?”

He seemed unhappy with her question. “Not to replace. I don't suppose that's possible.”

It wasn't. Just as it would not be possible to replace him.

“Will you accept it?” He extended his arm.

She moved forward and took care to lift the pup from his hand without touching him. But through the rain she smelled him, familiar cologne and horse and leather and
him
, and longing clogged her throat. She backed away.

“Thank you.” She could say nothing else. He was giving her a puppy because he cared about her and did not wish her to be alone. They truly were friends. “Are you en route somewhere . . . else?” Kent wasn't so far from everywhere. He must have stopped at Shelton Grange as he passed through the country. “Airedale?”

He removed his hat, ran his hand over his jaw, and looked away across the field. “Yes. I—­” He frowned and returned his attention to her, raindrops settling upon his hair and cheeks. “My brother's wedding will be in several weeks and our mother is already in a state of high agitation over preparations.”

“I see.” If he did not leave now she would burst into tears. It would startle the pup. Awful way to become acquainted, that. “I suppose you should be on your way, then,” she said through the prickles in her throat that signaled the hated tears.

He looked grim. “I should.”

“Thank you. Again. For him.” She drew the pup against her neck.

“Well, then. Good day.” He bowed and it was so beautiful and lordly that she didn't even care that it was positively silly for him to be bowing to her in the middle of a patch of bluebells in the rain. He took several steps away and she felt like someone was squeezing her heart with a fist.

“No. I cannot,” she heard him utter quite firmly. He pivoted to her. “Ravenna, I love you. These past weeks have been hell. I did my damnedest to believe that I could walk away from you, that we could be friends, or rather some idiotic fond memory of a passing acquaintance. But we cannot, not on my part, and I don't wish to be without you. I want you and I need you with me. If you go to America now and abandon me you will be doing to me just what Beast and Pettigrew and that damned bird did to you. I don't know if you want this, but I cannot let you go. I will follow you across the Atlantic if I must.”

For a long moment she could say nothing; the tide of joy overwhelmed. “I did not think you could love me. I thought your world was so distant from mine that you could not possibly find in me what I found in you.”

He walked right to her, very close. “Tell me that means you love me.”

“When I thought you were—­ That night at the castle, when you did not return, and the next morning, it was as though my life had ended. I could not bear it. I thought that if I pretended that my heart was not bound to you already, I could—­ I could . . . escape.”

“Escape?”

“Escape the pain of losing you.”

He stood perfectly still, tension in his arms at his sides, the emotion in his eyes beautiful. “If you will allow me to hold you, I will never let you go.”

Delirious happiness filled her and tumbled across her tongue. “I will allow it. I—­”

He caught her mouth with his, sank his hands into her hair, and united her to him in abandonment to their love. She flattened her palm over his heart. The strong, steady beat of his life thrummed through her.

He kissed her cheek, her brow. “Why did you run away from me?”

“I knew you would leave me.”

“You knew a falsehood.”

“I did not wish to be taken by surprise.”

His smile was both tender and amused. “You are a controlling female.” He brushed his lips to hers. “Ravenna Caulfield?”

“Yes, Vitor Courtenay?” She smiled fully now, because the holes inside of her were sealing up, all of them, as though this love was swallowing the grief of loss and making her whole again. “Lord Vitor Courtenay, that is. I am using the title, you see, in hopes of inspiring your ardor.”

“You inspire my ardor by simply existing, so really the title isn't necessary after all. Now, could you put the dog on the ground?”

“Yes.” She suited action to word, nestling the pup in the grass. “Why?”

Vitor drew her into his arms, fitting her snugly against him. “Because I am going to make an offer of marriage to you now, and I would like to receive your enthusiastic assent without any impediments to my enjoyment of it.” Rain ran down his nose and over his sculpted lips. She pressed onto her toes and kissed those lips that were hers now to kiss forever.

“Vitor?”

He nuzzled the corner of her mouth. “Mm?”

“After we are married, will you allow me to continue working with animals?”

He drew back and his smile was gorgeous, the crease in his cheek pronounced. “Have you just consented to becoming my bride?”