I Adored a Lord (32 page)

“It isn't standing that concerns me,” Vitor said, but he came forward. As he passed her, he touched her hand, and a rush of warm pleasure went through her. “I will wait just without.”

She closed the door and faced the bed.

“Miss Caulfield,” Lord Case said, “I beg your pardon and I hope quite fervently that you will someday bestow upon me the mercy of forgiveness.”

“That was a very pretty speech. I think the prince miscast his play. You ought to have had more lines.”

“I was a beast.”

“No. I have loved a beast,” she said, “and you are far inferior to him, in fact. But I am not a fool—­”

“Quite the opposite, if my brother is to be believed.”

“—­and I recognize that you spoke and acted according to your kind. I will forgive you for insulting me if you promise to not be such a sorry specimen of a man if the occasion should again arise.”

He shook his head. “You have no sense of the superiority of my station, do you?”

“A sense of the superiority of your station and everybody else's in this house is my constant companion. But I am fully aware of my place and, what's more, happy with that place. Your insult did not offend or hurt me, but I think more highly of you for offering the apology.”

“When do you imagine the occasion would again arise?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“When do you imagine I will again feel the need to protect my brother from a woman who might intend him ill?”

Her heartbeats stumbled. “I—­I—­”

“I should think, madam, that particular task would be yours in the future.”

She had nothing to say to that and turned away, her cheeks hot. In the corridor, Vitor stood against the opposite wall. She closed the door and he came to her and without a word took her hand, only her hand, when he might expect to take all of her if he wished.

“I must go, to wash and change my clothes,” she said somewhat unsteadily.

“You were magnificent, capable and focused throughout. Thank you for what you have done.”

“I—­”

Then he did take her, but only her face gently between his hands, and he kissed her. It was not a long or particularly passionate kiss, but when he released her she longed to go fully into his arms and press her cheek against his chest and breathe in his solid strength and life.

“Now, go,” he said and, with visible effort, stepped back from her. “Wash. Change clothes. Eat, if you must. You look skin and bones. As I like a bit flesh on a woman, you must remedy that immediately.”

“To please you?”

“To please me, of course.” He gestured her away. “Off with you, now. When you are finished, I am easily found.” He offered her a smile that went not to her stomach, but traveled beneath her ribs with a sweet, deep ache that gave her pain, a good, joyful sort of pain.

She went, her steps quick and her bag swinging in her hand. Her bedchamber door was open. She crossed the threshold and recognized the straight, elegant back of the man in whose house she had lived for six years. He stood by the window.

“Good morning!” Happiness pressed at her, seeking to have its scandalous way. “Have you heard the news? Lord Case is on the mend. His fever broke and his wound is again healing well. There are no murderers about the place and even that horrid Penelope and her mother have departed. That last, I tell you, is true cause for celebration. All is well with the w—­”

Sir Beverley turned from the window, his face ashen. Tears stood upon his cheeks. In the six years in which she had known him, she had never once seen him weep.

“Francis is gone,” he said simply.

It was as though the world went stark, blazing white and just as cold. She shook her head. “Take me to him. I will help. I—­”

“It happened hours ago, my dear,” he said. “He went in his sleep. Peacefully, it seems, without sign of distress. I found him thirty minutes ago when I called upon him for breakfast.”

“No.” She could not seem to stop shaking her head. “No. He cannot have left us.”

“No,” Sir Beverley only said, and the early spring sunshine glimmered off the tears on his face in mockery.

S
HE DID NOT
call for him or come to find him. The morning waned into afternoon and when Vitor finally left his brother in the care of his own competent valet in order to seek her out, he learned the reason for it.

“We are all stunned. Stunned, I tell you, my lord.” In the drawing room where Lady Margaret sat with her daughter, Sir Henry, and Sebastiao, she swiped her eyes with a kerchief. “Such a charming man. Such an amusing man. Far too young to be swept off at night like that. He could not have been above five-­and-­sixty. But Sir Beverley said his heart was weak, and that dear Mr. Pettigrew had anticipated this. Yet they told none of us, not even that poor girl. I am stunned. And devastated. Devastated, I tell you.”

“A damned shame.” Sir Henry shook his head. “In the name of Zeus, I've never met another man who knew his horses as well as his cravats.”

Vitor bowed and went to the door.

Sebastiao followed. “Vitor, wait.”

He paused, but he wanted to be gone, to find her and . . . He didn't know what, but whatever she needed he would give it to her.

“It is dreadful timing,” Sebastiao said, “but I must share news with you before the others discover it. I have asked Sir Henry for his daughter's hand. He gave his approval and Ann—­Miss Feathers—­despite all that she knows of my past, has accepted me.” Sober for nearly a fortnight now and once more resembling the boy he had been, eager to please and bright, he looked at Vitor with hopeful eyes.

“Congratulations, Sebastiao. I wish you and Miss Feathers happiness.”

“Father will be satisfied, don't you think? Sir Henry's stables are superb and the portion he intends to settle upon her is substantial.”

“I suspect he will be glad for this marriage.”

“I suppose it shouldn't matter that I like her,” he said more airily now, flirting with his accustomed insouciance. “Quite a lot, in fact.”

“I should think that matters above all else.”

“Thank you for accompanying me here, Vitor. You needn't have, and it's been a horrid disaster of a party, of course. But I am grateful for what you have done. For what you have always done.”

Vitor nodded and moved away.

“Returning to Case's chamber?” Sebastiao smiled. “You are a devoted brother, in truth. How fortunate he and I both are.”

“I am searching for Miss Caulfield. Have you seen her?”

“Not a quarter hour ago in the forecourt, supervising the preparation of Sir Beverley's carriage for those ridiculous little dogs—­ Ah.” His grin slipped away and he scowled. “One should not speak ill of the dead. I believe the dogs were Pettigrew's. What an idiot I continue to be.”

“Carriage? Is Sir Beverley departing?”

“They hope to take advantage of the cold weather to remove the body to England. The team is being hitched to Sir Beverley's rig as we speak.”

“Today? They are leaving today?”

“You did not know?”

As Vitor strode outside, the shock pressing at his chest became a ball of anger in his gut. Footmen loaded luggage onto a traveling carriage. At a distance, a cloaked, hooded woman walked between the gravestones in the cemetery. By her shape and the movement of her body he knew her.

She moved from behind a mausoleum, about her heels clustered three squat brown dogs, three woven lines dangling from her bare hand. As though she felt his attention she looked up.

She waited motionless until he reached her. But when he would have taken her hands she withdrew them inside the cloak and stepped back. Her face was pale and her eyes shadowed.

“Ravenna, I am sorry.”

“You have done nothing for which you should apologize,” she said without animation. “But I take your meaning. Thank you.”

“They tell me you are leaving, and I see it with my own eyes, but I cannot believe it.”

“Yes. The quicker we travel north, the less ice we will be required to purchase along the—­”

“Sebastiao explained.” He stepped toward her but she backed away again. He could not manage to draw a full breath. “I will of course accompany y—­”

“No.” She averted her body, hiding her face behind the hood. “Sir Beverley is an experienced traveler. We shan't want for anything on the journey. You needn't worry.”

“I have no concern on that account. I will accompany you because I wish to be with you.”

She turned fully to him, her brow pleated. “I cannot be with you as we were the other night.”

“For God's sake, I don't want that from you now. What sort of a man do you imagine me to be?”

“A man of privilege accustomed to having what he wants. As you have made it clear that at this time you want me in that manner, it would be foolish of me to imagine—­”

“
Stop
.” He moved to her, but as much as he longed to take her into his arms he could not. Touching her without permission would only prove her right. He gripped his fists at his sides. “I wish only to give you comfort, to make this tragedy easier for you to bear.”

“Then I thank you for your kind offer. But I am already well prepared with Petti's dogs as distraction, and another distraction as well, one that should occupy my thoughts and plans for some time to come: General Dijon has offered me a post in Philadelphia. I am ideally qualified for it—­”

“No.”

“Of course I am qualified.”

“I have no doubt you are qualified, for that post and many others. But this is ridiculous, Ravenna.”

“Ridiculous?”

He shook his head. “Do you truly intend to travel to America now?”

“It is not ridiculous. I have wished for a position like this. I have dreamed of it. Now it has fallen into my hands. Women are not offered such posts regularly. Ever, really. It is the opportunity of a lifetime.”

The anger in Vitor was disintegrating, leaving only confusion. Could he have understood her so wrongly? Could he have seen skittishness where in fact there had been honest indifference? Her calm conviction now suggested it. Her passion when she touched him said otherwise, but he'd made love to women without deep attachment. Why couldn't a woman as well? This woman was wholly unique. To have imagined she would behave predictably had been his mistake.

“After you return with Sir Beverley to his home,” he said, struggling to reorder all he had been imagining since that moment on the tower steps, to remember her words and see them in a different light.
Please don't let it end
. Perhaps that had been the wine speaking for her. She'd told him directly that she had no wish to entrap him in marriage. Yet he had never imagined he would not win her. He was, perhaps, as unaware of his own expectations of privilege as she had said, and he was most certainly the greatest fool alive. “You will travel to America alone?”

The corner of her lips lifted slightly. “I am well accustomed to being alone, of course.” Again she turned her face away and urged the dogs forward.

“Ravenna,” he said to her back, prickling panic rising in him, the sort he always experienced before he decided to move on, to seek a new adventure, a new danger. “You must allow me to accompany you to England.”

“No. It will be best to say good-­bye now.” She looked over her shoulder. “I have enjoyed knowing you, Lord Vitor Courtenay. I have never had a friend quite like you. A friend with advantages.” The partial smile peeked forth again briefly. “But now our ways will part.”

He did not believe her. He could not.

Only a man possessed by an ungovernable passion would pursue a dangerous course without first considering all potential pitfalls.

She blinked swiftly, then turned and moved away. But again she paused.

“How do they say farewell in this country? Is it
au revoir
or
adieu
?”

“
À bientôt
,” he said. “They say
à bientôt
.”

She nodded, and he stood amidst the gravestones and watched her disappear.

So long
. He would not say good-­bye or farewell to her, no matter what the French said.
So long
. Because even a moment without her now seemed forever.

 

Chapter 21

The Gift

T
hey buried Petti at sea. In his adventurous youth he had briefly served as an officer in his His Majesty's Royal Navy and had always wished to be put to rest in the briny deep wearing naval blue and white. Never mind that he'd only been a sub-­lieutenant or some such thing. Ravenna was certain he'd been as charming standing on the deck of a ship as he had always been on land. Sir Beverley did not again shed tears, but as the sailors tilted the plank and the sea swallowed his life's companion, she took his hand and found it trembling.

Before continuing on to Shelton Grange they stopped in London, where Sir Beverley placed a death notice in the
Times
and met with Petti's solicitor.

“Sixty-­eight calling cards,” she exclaimed, dropping the pile onto the tiny gilded table in the foyer of Sir Beverley's house. “The notice only ran in the paper this morning and we were only gone three hours. I always knew he was popular, but I never quite understood how very popular.” Removing the leashes from around the pugs' chubby necks and sending them up the stairs to their favorite parlor, she paused on the middle riser. “By the by, Beverley,” she said over her shoulder, “what will you do with his house?”

“Why, my dear?” He stood at the table, an elegant portrait in black, filing through the stack of correspondence. “Do you wish to abandon me and live there in solitary splendor?” He jested, she knew, but there was a note of anguish beneath his urbane drawl.

“Of course not. I only wonder what will happen to it. I adore that old rose trellis and the gardens and fishpond. They are so spectacularly unkempt.”

“Francis preferred to spend his money on wine rather than gardeners, of course.” He discarded several pieces of the post, then came to the bottom of the stairs. “As to the house, impertinent girl, he left it and all his other worldly goods to you.”

Ravenna was obliged, then, to sit for many minutes on the step in order to find her breath. Sir Beverley brought her a beverage in a crystal glass that made her cough and sputter. When a knock on the door echoed through the foyer, he said, “More callers, I suspect.” She leaped to her feet and hurried up to the parlor.

The pugs were not in the parlor. Instead, a tall man with black hair nearly to his shoulders and a crooked smile across his darkly handsome face sat in the window box. Arms crossed and eyes on the door, clearly he awaited her entrance.

“Tali!” She flew to him.

Taliesin accepted her embrace with manly tolerance, then extracted himself.

“Hello, mite.”

“What are you doing here?” She went to close the door, and when Sir Beverley's excessively correct London footman gave her a disapproving frown, she bit her tongue between her teeth.

“I see you've grown into a real lady,” Taliesin said with a chuckle. Often his laughter had been a balm when the church ladies had scolded and she escaped to the Gypsy caravan to forget about it. Now that laughter came from a deep, broad chest. “Which of your sisters taught you that showing your tongue to a grown man was a wise idea? Arabella, I suspect.”

“Neither. I learned it on my own. I am very clever like that.”

“I hear you're very clever in general.”

“Do you? How? Have you been to visit Papa?”

“No.”

Not in years, Ravenna suspected. At one time Taliesin had been nearly a son to the Reverend. But now when he traveled to Cornwall for the summer fair, he did not visit the vicarage where Eleanor still lived with Papa.

“A man named Henry Feathers was speaking to me of you only yesterday,” he said.

“Sir Henry! Is he here in London?”

“He has a breeding mare I might purchase. We were doing business and he mentioned that he'd recently met a girl, a young slip of a thing, he said, who knew everything any horse doctor he'd ever met knew about healing an animal's hoof.”

“I do,” she said. “You taught me most of it, of course.”

“He also said you saved a man's life. A titled lord.”

“I did that too.”
With help
. Her stomach tightened, and the door inside her chest that she was obliged to close every hour because its lock was broken burst open anew and filled her with aching.

“A titled lord?” Taliesin said again.

She shook her head. “Don't look at me that way.”

“I am not looking at you in any particular way.” Then he repeated. “A titled lord?” He folded his arms across his chest again. “Arabella, certainly. But you pursuing a titled lord, mite? I sense a hidden motive.”

“I was not trying to encourage him to hire me. He was actually ill.”

“His property must be hundreds of acres larger than Clark's,” he said with a spark in his eyes that were as black as hers. “Acres and acres of land.” He knew her nearly as well as her sisters did. He had fetched her home from the far edges of the parish as often as Arabella or Eleanor had. He knew of her escapes. She suspected that he, raised among wandering souls, understood how no land was ever big enough.

“I have been offered an enviable post in Philadelphia,” she said. “I still haven't decided whether I will accept it.”

His response was as unlike Vitor Courtenay's as possible. Vitor's perfect, handsome face had shown perfect shock. Now Taliesin's single raised brow spoke everything.

“What are you running from this time?”

“Arabella still—­” she began, but had to draw an extra breath to continue. “Arabella still has that foolish notion the fortune-­teller put in her head that one of us must marry a prince.”

“I thought she married a duke. Lycombe, isn't it?”

“She did. Now she wants me to marry the prince, but I don't wish to.”

“And you think you need to sail all the way to America to avoid this fate?” He laughed. “Ravenna Caulfield, you may be gifted with animals, but in all other ways you are as shake-­brained as a—­”

“My brains do not shake, and I think if I found someone else who would marry me, Bella would stop pestering me about a prince.” Beneath her ribs, her heart was so tangled she could barely think. “Would you?”

Both brows rose now. Then his eyes changed. Slowly he shook his head and smiled at her with some pity but mostly sympathy. “You know I cannot, mite.”

“I know it, of course.” Then to pique him she said, “And I suppose all that
being
married business would be awkward.”

His mouth curved into a wicked smile. “I don't know about that.”

She lobbed a book across the room. He dodged it and chuckled again.

“You are a beautiful girl, Ravenna, with a good heart. You deserve a man who can give you his heart in return.”

“Like you gave yours away long ago?”

He did not respond, but a muscle in his jaw flexed.

Finally he said, “Go on,” and jerked his chin toward the door.

“Go on, what?”

“Go find him.”

“Who?”

“The man you're running to America to escape. A prince, is he?”

“No.”
Better than a prince
.

“Do it, mite.” His brow darkened. “Or would you rather I break his arms?”

She twisted her lips. “He would give you a good fight.”

“He wouldn't win.”

“With swords, you wouldn't have a chance.”

He pushed away from the window and walked to the door, a tall, lean Gypsy horse trader incongruously in a gentleman's London house. “Go find him, Ravenna. Quit running for a change.”

“Tali,” she said quickly, “have you ever thought that we might be related? Brother and sister?”

“Ravenna . . .”

“I don't mean—­” She halted her words. They never said Eleanor's name at these moments. “I mean that we look alike, still, after all these years, as though we could have the same . . . the same father.” For years she had not allowed herself to consider it. Then Vitor told her of his father.

“I don't know who my father is,” Taliesin said.

“Arabella's fortune-­teller said that if one of us married a prince we would learn who our parents are.”

For a moment he did not speak. Then: “Does she believe this prophecy?”

She. Not Arabella.
Eleanor
.

“Perhaps.” She looked into his eyes so like hers—­black and long-­lashed,
yet not Gypsy
. Despite what the girls at the foundling home had called her, she—­and he—­looked nothing like the ­people with whom he had lived his entire life and who had reared him as one of their own. Instead, he and she looked
foreign
.

She wondered why he did nothing to find his real parents. As the man he'd always been, he traveled to Cornwall each summer, to the Gypsy fairgrounds near the vicarage, hoping that upon some chance he might catch a glimpse of the girl he had once loved. Did he believe that if he found his real parents that would change? Or did he simply care nothing for that distant past, as she hadn't for so long.

“Taliesin, should I tell Arabella that I cannot wed a prince? That she must pass our destiny on to Eleanor to fulfill?”

Hand upon the door handle, he paused. “If you should need my help . . . any of you . . . you know where to find me.” Opening the door, he left.

W
HEN THE LAST
of Sebastiao's guests had departed, descending down the mountain through groves of spruce and fir, Vitor went to his bedchamber and packed his traveling case. He had already dismissed his valet. Where he intended to travel now, he would not need a personal servant.

Perhaps he had simply chosen the wrong monastery before. Or the wrong religious order. Denis was a friar. Perhaps he would take that direction. Friars did all sorts of good in the world, feeding the poor and . . . doing other things. He thought.

He would learn well enough. His English family would think he'd gone mad again. Wesley would tease for the remainder of their lives. But Raynaldo would understand. And the marquess.

Gonçalo sat at his feet, chewing the edge of the rug and watching him. Vitor tucked his starched cravats and stiff collars in the bottom of the case. He would not need these either. Nor his sapphire pin or gold watch or pureblooded horse.

“I will not give up Ashdod,” he said aloud. “I will simply take myself to another monastery and then another until I find one that will allow me to keep him.”

The mongrel lowered his chin to his forepaws and his tail thumped the floor.

“All right. I will keep you too.”

He would avoid preaching orders, of course. He'd no advice to give to ­people looking for salvation, except of course that they shouldn't be blind asses. He knew plenty about that.

Nothing else kept him from adopting the cowl now. The thought of being with any woman other than one inspired no interest in him whatsoever. In time he supposed that might change.

No. It would not change.

“Do you depart,
mon fils
, without bidding an old man good-­bye?”

Vitor swiveled to the friar standing in the doorway. “I intended to call upon you, of course. Have you come to bless Sebastiao's journey?”

“I have come to give you this.” He drew from his wide sleeve an envelope. “Young Grace gave it to me the morning she departed with her family. She said she did not hold with ‘the ignorant superstitions of Papists,' as I believe she phrased it, but that in leaving this with me she would unburden herself of the guilt of having lied.”

“Lied? About the murder?”

“Read it. She did not, after all, give it to me under the seal of confession.”

“She must have meant for you to keep her confidence, Denis.”

He shrugged. “I am only bound by my vows,
mon fils
, not the unsteady consciences of young girls.”

My Gracious Lady,

Though it pains me to write this before I have again set eyes upon your lovely face, I must now bid you adieu. The objections your family raises to our union are too powerful to fight. Your mother has made it clear that, should we wed, your family will cut you from its heart and home. I shudder, dear lady, at the inevitable outcome of this alienation. My income is small; our home would be poor. The image of you forced to live in a wretched flat, your beauty waning under cares as I work day and night to maintain you in even the most meager comforts—­it is too painful to contemplate.

I wish for you, gracious lady, not ignominy and poverty, but contentment and a place among those with whom you rightfully belong. If only your parents would relent and consent to our marriage, all could be well! But they will not, and my hopes for happiness are dashed. By the love I bear you, I must release you now. Go and wed a man of your equal rank who can stand beside your father with pride. Dear lady, forget about me.

Your most loyal knight, OW

“
Eh
.” the friar said. “How do you find our deceased Lothario's withdrawal?”