Raven's Vow
Gayle Wilson
A Scandalous ArrangementAmerican merchant John Raven had stolen the toast of the London season out from under ton's very nose! He had offered the lovely Lady Catherine Montfort freedom in exchange for marriage and she'd accepted - despite her father's assertion he'd rather see the interloping colonial dead than wed to his daughter!Catherine had expected nothing from Raven, but her enigmatic and seductive husband-in-name-only made her wish for a real wedding night. He'd married her for convenience's sake, but she feared he'd gotten more than he'd bargained for - had she, by accepting his hand, put Raven in grave danger?
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u4259ec6a-1981-542a-b6cd-f8b7dfa2e79b)
Excerpt (#u0916a964-ff88-5f48-b3d5-1acbd1310c37)
Dear Reader (#u7dd37b66-fc32-5d0c-8881-9c4bf120a8aa)
Title Page (#ufd71cd29-0cd0-5e75-aaac-e3146e08f387)
Gayle Wilson (#u9b780dce-c2b0-55ef-bb6e-f5c1a3228766)
Dedication (#u2e3c484f-3b46-50ce-9ac0-1d1df9c865fd)
Prologue (#u1894ee36-bd6a-5e6f-b34c-07058a8f115a)
Chapter One (#u402602ff-d74f-51dc-a952-1dab149faebf)
Chapter Two (#uccf72e56-26c1-5df9-add0-6925a6e96f7c)
Chapter Three (#u06e3f1db-e870-5ad6-b5c8-286d1b3f9925)
Chapter Four (#u4dc608c0-e740-5af6-8e8b-4a0ebe7a7e53)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“It’s quite impossible,” Catherine said softly. “My father would never allow such a match.”
“Then you have no objection to my approaching him?” Raven asked calmly.
“You intend to approach my father?” she repeated unbelievingly, incredulous that he didn’t seem to understand the width of the gap that lay between them.
“Yes.”
“With that proposition?”
“Not couched in precisely those terms,” he said, amusement in his voice. “Simply as an offer for your hand.”
“He’ll have you thrown out,” she warned.
“Will he?” he asked, sounding interested. “I wonder how.”
“By the servants,” she responded with deliberate bluntness, finally angered at his continual mockery of the reality of the world she lived in. Coal merchants, however wealthy, didnot ask for the hand of the Duke of Montfort’s daughter.
“I should like to see them try,” Raven suggested softly, and found that he really would. He’ddamn well like to see them try…!
Dear Reader,
When an American businessman and a British heiress agree to a marriage of convenience, both are in danger inRaven’s Vow, a dark new Regency novel from former March Madness/Romance Writers of America RITA Award nominee Gayle Wilson, the author of The Heart’s Desire. Don’t miss this exciting new tale from this talented author.
Elizabeth Mayne, another March Madness/RITA Award nominee author, is also out this month.Lord of the Isle is a classic Elizabethan tale featuring an Irish nobleman who unwittingly falls in love with a rebel from an outlawed family. Ana Seymour’sLucky Bride is a sequel toGabriel’s Lady. Set in Wyoming Territory, it’s a delightful story of a ranch hand who joins forces with his beautiful boss to save her land from a dangerous con man.
Our fourth title for the month,The Return of Chase Cordell, is a new Western from Linda Castle, who is fast becoming one of our most popular authors. It’s a poignant love story about a war hero with amnesia who rediscovers a forgotten passion for his young bride.
Whatever your taste in reading, we hope you’ll enjoy all four of these terrific stories. Please keep an eye out for them wherever Harlequin Historicals are sold.
Sincerely,
Tracy Farrell
Senior Editor
Please address questions and book requests to:
Harlequin Reader Service
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Raven’s Vow
Gayle Wilson
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
GAYLE WILSON
teaches English and history to gifted high school students. Her love of both subjects naturally resulted in a desire to write historical fiction. After several years as the wife of a military pilot, she returned with her husband to live in Alabama, where they had both grown up.
You can contact her at: P.O. Box 342, Birmingham, AL 35201-0342.
For my beloved sister Joy
Prologue (#ulink_6fa3502e-9b60-57ff-8e42-183fa6adbf2e)
London, 1826
“What you need, Mr. Raven, is a wife.”
The tall man at the window turned, a slight indentation deepening the corners of the hardest mouth Oliver Reynolds had seen in his seventy years. He had learned through experience that the look John Raven was now directing toward him was intended to indicate amusement.
“A wife?” the American repeated, that amusement now touching the rich tones of his voice as it had marked the stern lips.
“Unless, of course,” the banker continued with the merest trace of sarcasm, “you have a duke hidden away somewhere in your family tree. Or an earl. Short of that, sir, I’m afraid…” The old man let the suggestion trail off. He had made his point, and he knew his client’s ready intelligence needed no more prompting.
Oliver Reynolds had been paid, extremelywell paid, to guide this American nabob through the perils of London society, and the solution he had just broached to John Raven was really the best advice he had to offer.
“Three of my grandparents fled Scotland after the ‘45, half a step ahead of Cumberland’s butchers,” John Raven confessed. The mockery lurking in those strange, crystalline blue eyes proved his very New World lack of embarrassment over the mode of his ancestors’ departure from the Old. He had been born on the edge of the American wilderness and had watched the influx of settlers move across the land, always westward toward the great river. His country was changing, the vast forest tracts gradually giving way to farms and communities, the conquest of its wildness the result of the hard work of people like his parents and his grandparents.
“In that case—” the banker began, only to be cut off by the sardonic voice.
“My paternal grandmother, however, was a princess.”
“A princess?” Oliver Reynolds repeated carefully. “Royalty, Mr. Raven? And from what dynasty did this fortuitous ancestor spring? Despite its supposed sophistication, the British nobility still finds a certain fascination in foreign royalty.”
“The Mauvilla, Mr. Reynolds.”
“Mauvilla,” the old man repeated, trying to think. “I don’t believe I’m familiar with that particular family.”
“They defied de Soto, virtually destroying themselves in the process. My grandmother was the last of the royal line.”
“De Soto?” the banker questioned. He had heard the name, of course, in conjunction with the exploration of the American continent. Surely, Mr. Reynolds thought, those who had defied him would not be mentioned in the context of royal families.
“Indian?” He spoke his sudden realization aloud, his voice rising. But even as he did, he acknowledged that the heritage John Raven had just confessed would explain so much. The American’s coloring, for example—the bronze skin that offered such a striking contrast to the clear blue eyes. And his hair, of course. “Indian,” the old man said again, an affirmation that put so many pieces of the puzzle John Raven had represented into place.
Raven’s dark head inclined slightly in agreement. The small upward tilt at the corners of his mouth increased minutely. “Indian,” he agreed softly. “Do you think they’ll be impressed?”
“I should think,” the banker began, wondering how to warn him without being too offensive, “that you should be damnably certain this noble mob never finds out about your grandmother.”
“Not royal enough for our purposes?” Raven suggested easily as he moved back to the chair he had earlier occupied.
Watching his client traverse the short distance, Oliver Reynolds inventoried his recent accomplishments. The American’s shoulders were now shown to advantage by Weston’s expert tailoring, the coat of navy superfine covering their broad width without a wrinkle. Underneath, a striped French silk waistcoat was discreetly visible. Fawn pantaloons stretched over the flat stomach and accented the firmness of long, muscular thighs. Tasseled Hessians fashioned by Hoby’s master hand completed the picture of elegance that finally matched the vast wealth the American had brought from the East into the English capital.
On his arrival in London, John Raven had sought Reynolds’s advice and had, surprisingly, followed it to the letter. Except for one thing, the banker thought with regret. The only concession he had been able to wrest from his client regarding the length of his hair was compromise satisfactory to neither. The American had agreed to secure the dark strands, their blue-black gleam rivaling the feathers of the bird whose name he bore, into a queue tied with a black silk ribbon. He had adamantly refused to cut it, and given, of course, the startling revelation he had just made, Reynolds at last understood.
“If words gets out aboutthat, Mr. Raven, you won’t need a wife. A fairy godmother, perhaps. Or a guardian angel.”
“A fairy godmother who’d wave her wand to make me acceptable? An angel to ensure that my many faults are hidden under the splendor of her wings?” the American jeered quietly, not bothering to hide his frustration.
Damn them, John Raven thought bitterly. He’d come to England to build. Instead, he had found the doors to those gracefully proportioned drawing rooms and exclusive clubs where the real power resided closed to him because he was an outsider.
The arrogant, pompous bastards. He had visited their tailors and their boot makers, and Raven knew—because he was certainly no one’s fool—that he was as well dressed as any man in London. And as wealthy. Still they refused to deal with him. Because he wasn’t a member of their bloody ton.
“I’ve told you before. You’ll never find a more closed or closed-minded circle in the world,” Reynolds said. “They’ll back the outrageous schemes of the most profligate bounder, drunkard or scoundrel of their own class, but an outsider? You had as well have stayed in India and attempted to do business from there as to try to force your way in. You can’t make them invest.”
“They won’t even meet me. Polite refusals is all I’ve gotten. If only they’d listen, they would know that what I propose is not only advantageous to Britain, but profitable for investors as well. Why the hell won’t they listen?”
“Because you don’t belong. Birth is the only membership in this society, and yours is unacceptable. You need a wife whose place within the ton is so secure that she will be able to win you a grudging entry by virtue of her own connections.”
“How do you propose that I convince this paragon to marry me? introduce her to my grandmother?” Raven countered with savage politeness.
“The usual procedure is to offer enough money that her family can’t refuse.”
“Buy her, do you mean?”
“It’s done everyday. Not in those terms, of course. However, that is the general idea. You certainly have the funds. All we need to do is find some impoverished noblewoman whose family is willing to marry her off in return for a guarantee of financial security for themselves for the rest of their lives.”
“I thought slavery in Britain disappeared with the Saxons,” Raven commented bitterly. “I damn well don’t intend to buy a wife. I wouldn’t want a woman who’d be willing to sell herself.”
“I suppose,” the banker said carefully, recognizing the truth in the American’s argument, “that most of them aren’t.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Willing,” Oliver Reynolds explained regretfully.
“Good God,” Raven said with a trace of horror. “And they would call my grandmother’s people savage. I won’t buy a wife, Mr. Reynolds, willing or unwilling. If the mines and railroads I came to Britain to build don’t become a reality, then the bastards will have only themselves to blame.”
Fighting to control his anger, John Raven descended the stairs that led from the old man’s office. If buying a wife was what it would take to succeed in England, he would damn well find somewhere else to invest his energies.
Raven moved from the narrow flight of stairs onto the street with an unconscious grace, a smooth athleticism that had already attracted attention in the capital. More than one pair of female eyes, accustomed to the sometimes delicate fragility of the gentlemen who set the mode for London society, had on occasion during the last month followed that purposeful stride.
The feminine voice that attracted his attention now, despite the bustle of traffic that rushed past the bank, did so by the sharpness of its tone, and not because of Reynolds’s suggestion.
“If you strike him again, I shall have my groom take that stick from you and apply it toyour back.”
The peddler paused in his determined attempts to move the pitiful creature fastened between the wooden tongues of his overloaded cart. Unable to pull the burden up the inclined street, the small donkey stood shivering and flinching under the blows from the rattan stick the man was using as encouragement.
The words had stopped the cruelty momentarily, but the face of the man who turned to confront the girl on horseback reflected neither embarrassment nor regret for her reprimand. Instead, the coarse features were reddened with anger.
The gleam of pure hatred that had shone briefly from the mud-colored eyes made John Raven take an automatic step closer to the scene. His forward progress was halted when the lady’s groom swung down easily from his saddle. Although not up to Raven’s size, he certainly appeared to be of a bulk sufficient to handle whatever threat the wizened driver represented.
“Lighten the load of your wagon,” the girl ordered. “He can’t possibly pull that heap.” The truth of her statement was obvious to the onlookers, but until she had stopped the beating, none of them had considered the unfairness of the man’s actions.
“I don’t have time to be coddling him. Lazy is what he is, my lady,” the peddler said, removing the shapeless felt that served as his hat. “He can pull the load. Always has. It’s just temperament,” the man assured her, his ingratiating smile revealing blackened teeth. “Nothing to concern your ladyship.”
“If you beat your animal to death in the public street, it should be of concern tosomeone,” the girl said, giving no quarter, and at the same time controlling the skittering side steps of her restive mare.
The thin lips of the American lifted slightly in admiration of that assessment, and the shrewd blue eyes took their own inventory. The black habit the girl wore was heavily frogged with silver, the darkness of its high collar and the matching cravat stark against the porcelain of her skin. Strands of dark auburn hair had escaped the modish hat and veil to curl around her heart-shaped face. Despite the perfection of her features, it was her eyes that held Raven’s fascinated gaze. Clear russet, they were the exact color of leaves turning under the touch of autumn’s chill. At this moment, they were fixed with determined concentration on the hawker, totally unaware of the interested bystanders.
“It be necessary ‘times to prod him, ladyship. Animals don’t feel the blows like we do. Don’t trouble yourself about the beast. He’ll pull it, I promise, ‘ere I’ve done with him.”
As an accompaniment to his last words, he turned back to the small animal, raising the stick high in the air to bring it down again in the whistling arc that had first attracted the girl’s attention. This time its fall across the trembling back was arrested, the thin rattan captured by a slender gloved hand.
“I said no more. Unload the cart,” she ordered. The fury in her eyes brooked no defiance.
“I’ve no time to be unloading. And who’s to guard what I leave? You’re thinking my goods will still be here when I return, are you? This ain’t Mayfair, your highness.”
At the taunting incivility, the girl’s lips tightened. She gestured to the groom, who took the captured stick from the peddler’s hand and broke it quickly across his knee.
“How much?” she asked.
The vendor paused, seeing his livelihood threatened, but at the same time greedily calculating what he could get from the lady. “For the donkey?”
“Donkey, cart, load. Whatever it takes to free the creature,” the girl suggested. There was no trace of impatience in her voice now. She watched the man’s devious expression impassively.
“If I sells my kit, I’ve no way to make me living.”
“The donkey then.”
“But without me donkey—” he began to argue.
“Get the constable,” the girl ordered her groom, who turned almost before she had finished speaking, his intent too clear for the man to doubt that he would do exactly as she’d commanded.
“Two quid,” the peddler suggested, a ridiculous amount.
“All right,” she agreed. “Give my groom your name and lodging and he’ll bring it round to you this afternoon. Get the donkey, Jem,” Catherine Montfort ordered, turning her mare away from the scene, already late for her appointment in Hyde Park.
The peddler began to protest as the groom efficiently dealt with the traces. “You’ll not be taking property without paying me. How do I know you’ll send barn with the money? How do I know this ain’t a plot to steal a poor man’s livelihood? I’m the one who’ll be calling the constable, I think, if you take the beast. I knows me rights, nobs or no,” he finished belligerently, pulling against the line the groom was using as a lead rope. “Here, you, give me back me donkey.”
Catherine Montfort’s lips tightened in frustration. She had no money with her, of course, and she doubted Jem would be able to come up with that much. Glancing at the groom, who was still in control of the exhausted donkey, she saw him shake his head in response to her unspoken question. She had no option but to send home for the amount and try to stop the hawker from leaving in the meantime.
“If I might be allowed to offer assistance,” a deep, accented voice at her elbow suggested.
She glanced down into the bluest eyes she had ever encountered. The clear, rare color of a summer sky, they were set like jewels in the golden skin surrounding them, emphasized by small, white lines radiating around the crystal blue and the black sweep of lashes.
A man who’d lived a long time in a climate where the sun left its mark, she thought briefly. He was very tall, tall enough that she needn’t look down far to be lost in those blue depths. She watched as his hand, lean, long fingered and remarkably graceful, automatically smoothed the sweating neck of her impatient mare. He whispered something, the words too softly spoken for Catherine to make sense of the soothing sibilants, and Storm’s ears flickered with interest.
Amazingly, as he continued to whisper, Catherine could feel the tension caused by the street’s commotion and the delay in the promised run leave her mount. Storm turned to nuzzle those strong fingers, and Catherine found herself watching their caress with something approaching fascination. “Two quid, I believe,” the stranger said.
Still disconcerted, Catherine nodded. She watched him give Storm one last competent stroke and then walk to the waiting peddler. If Jem’s intimidating size had affected the man, he had given no sign of it, but his response to the American seemed one almost of fear. His instinctive recoil when the tall man held out his hand brought a brief reactive movement to those thin lips. Raven waited patiently until the peddler had worked up his courage to take the money and restore his cap to his head.
Slipping between the wooden tongues in the donkey’s place, the vendor awkwardly turned the heavily loaded cart so that it was now headed down the slight incline. The three watched as the wagon gathered momentum on the slope and the usual street sounds again intruded into the stage where the drama had been played out.
Raven turned back to the girl to find her eyes no longer watching the merchant’s retreating figure, but on him. She was questioning the color of his skin, he supposed, or his hair. Making her fascinated distaste apparent. He didn’t know why her frank appraisal bothered him. He had certainly grown accustomed to the stares he’d attracted in London in the last few months.
“Thank you,” she said simply, her eyes meeting his. She held out the small gloved hand that had caught the peddler’s stick. Not to be kissed, Raven realized, but to be shaken.
Her hand was almost lost in his, but her grip was pleasantly firm. He controlled the quick amusement at the sight of those slender fingers captured by his hard, dark ones.
“If you’ll give Jem your address—” she began.
“Consider him a gift,” he interrupted softly, and watched her eyes flick quickly to the animal he’d just bought. Head drooping, the donkey stood patiently waiting for the next blow to fall. In several places where the stick had cut, blood oozed.
The girl’s lips tightened and she took a deep breath. For the first time an emotion besides anger tinged her voice. “Damned bastard,” she whispered. Realizing that she’d spoken the epithet aloud, she glanced quickly at the American. The russet eyes swam with tears, but before they could overflow, she blinked, a fall of impossibly long, dark lashes concealing feelings Raven read quite clearly.
“Thank you,” she said again, looking down into that strong-featured face. Something in the crystalline eyes had changed. And he made no response to her gratitude.
“For my gift,” she explained softly, her lips lifting into the smile that had set masculine pulses hammering since she’d turned fourteen. Catherine Montfort thought of all the presents she had received from suitors in the last three years, not one of whom had, of course, thought to give her an abused donkey.
There was no response in the still, dark face. Not handsome, Catherine thought; it was too strongly constructed to be called handsome. But there was something, some indefinable something in the hawklike nose and high cheekbones that was very appealing. And in his eyes, she thought again. She had never seen eyes that shade of blue.
Raven became aware suddenly that she was talking to him, but he didn’t have any idea what she had said. Something about a gift. Something… He took a deep breath, realizing that air was a necessity he had neglected in the last minute. The perfection of the heart-shaped face floated before him against the background of clouds and sky.
“Angel,” he said softly in his grandmother’s tongue, although the word’s connotation there was not exactly the same. Oliver Reynolds had told him he’d need a guardian angel. The stern line of John Raven’s lips tilted upward at the corners.
Catherine Montfort found that her hand was still resting in his and her throat had gone dry. The small movement of his mouth fascinated her until she recognized the expression for what it was—he was smiling at her.
Sensing her inattention, Storm sidestepped suddenly, and the pull against their joined hands broke the spell. Reluctantly, Catherine disentangled her fingers. She had thanked the man twice, and there was really nothing else she could say. She didn’t even know his name. She might never know it. She’d never seen him before and would, in all probability, never see him again. He was certainly not a member of the select group, the London ton, with whom she associated, the only people with whom she had associated since her birth. What had happened today was simply a chance meeting with a stranger on a crowded London street.
Raven stepped back, clearing the way for her departure. Her boot heel touched Storm in command, and, her back flawlessly straight, Catherine Montfort directed her mount around the donkey and back on the course of her normal activities.
John Raven watched the slight figure until it was lost in the throng of riders and carriages. Realizing that he had been staring far too long for politeness, he turned back to find the groom carefully inspecting the animal’s injuries.
“Shall I find him a home?” Raven asked, wondering what her ladyship would do with a donkey in Mayfair.
“You think she’ll forget him?” the groom asked, not bothering to look up from his examination. “You think she bought him on impulse and will forget him before she gets home?” The rude sound that followed was indicative of his opinion of what Raven had suggested about the girl.
“Then she won’t?” Raven asked, the slight smile again marking the hard mouth.
“If I don’t have him back in the stables and these injuries tended to by the time she returns, she’ll serve my head to the old man with his supper.”
“The old man?” Fear stirred suddenly in Raven’s gut.
“Montfort,” the groom informed him, as if, that said, there was no other explanation needed. He moved to the other side of the donkey to run skilled hands over the protruding ribs and to pick up a trembling foreleg to examine an untreated cut.
“Montfort,” Raven repeated, feeling like Echo.
“The Duke of Montfort,” the groom said, glancing up at last to assess a man who was so ignorant as not to recognize that particular name. “The Devil Duke, they call him. Not out loud, of course,” he said, remembering his employer’s temper. The sobriquet was well earned and well deserved.
“Who is she?” the American asked, his gaze moving back to the street down which the girl had disappeared.
“The Devil’s Daughter,” Jem said, noticing for the first time the style of the foreign gentleman’s hair. The groom’s eyebrows climbed slightly, but it was not his place to question his betters. “Lady Catherine Montfort. The Duke of Montfort’s only heir.”
“Thank you,” Raven said, and reaching into his waistcoat pocket, he flicked a coin to the groom. The man smiled his thanks and then turned back to his careful survey of the donkey.
John Raven crossed the street and, taking the narrow stairs two at a time, retraced his path to Reynolds’s office. The old man looked up from his notations in a leatherbound ledger.
“Lady Catherine Montfort,” John Raven said, his wide shoulders filling the doorway.
“Montfort?” the banker repeated, wondering again, as he had when he’d first met the American, if he were more than merely eccentric.
“Is Lady Catherine Montfort angelic enough for our purposes?” Raven asked calmly.
The old man stared blankly for a moment, wondering how his client had come up with that name.
“Is she?” Raven prompted, knowing that the banker’s reply really didn’t matter. The die had been cast in the middle of a crowded London street, but at least Reynolds’s approval would provide an acceptable excuse.
“Catherine Montfort is bloody well the entire seraphic choir,” the old man acknowledged truthfully. He watched the smile that touched the American’s mouth again deepen the indentions at the corners. “But I’m afraid that the Montforts—”
“You said one only had to offer enough money.”
“Montfort’s one of the few men in London evenyou couldn’t buy. And I must tell you…” The banker’s voice trailed off. He really hated to offend the man, but he knew that the duke would never accept John Raven as a suitor for his daughter’s hand. His only daughter. His only surviving child and heir. Reynolds’s mind having dealt too long with the prospects of profit, he briefly allowed himself to consider those combined fortunes being handled by his bank. And why not? Was his not the oldest financial establishment in the city? The bank had financed the East India Company’s venture into the Russian market in the sixteenth century. He cleared the tempting visions from his mind and shook his head regretfully.
“He’ll never allow you to even present your suit. Forget Catherine Montfort, John. You’ll never convince her father, and I must warn you that it would be dangerous even to try. Montfort’s as proud, cold-blooded and arrogant as any of the old aristocrats. His was a generation that made its own rules—whatever they wanted, whether legal or moral, they took, consequences be damned. There’s nothing you can do to win Montfort’s daughter. You have nothing to offer the girl that she doesn’t already have.”
The blue eyes rested on the seamed face of the old man a moment, their farseeing gaze untroubled by the obstacles Reynolds had just thrown in his path.
John Raven had believed he had come to London to make money. The call had been so strong that he had left India in the middle of an incredibly successful mining venture. His intuition had directed his journey to this city as surely as it had previously drawn him to Delhi, leaving the profitable exporting business he’d founded in New York to be run by his assistants. Wherever there was money to be made, John Raven could sense it. He could feel it moving in his hands as clearly as he had felt the reality of the rubies and sapphires he’d mined in India. He thought he had been drawn to England by the growth of the mining industry and the possibilities offered by the new developments in the locomotive.
Now he knew that his arrival in London had had nothing whatsoever to do with that.What you need is a wife, Oliver Reynolds had told him, almost exactly the words his grandmother had said to him when he had last seen her more than five years ago. He wondered how many prayers had accompanied the sacred white cedar smoke directed to the AllSpirit in the intervening years. And with amusement Raven found himself wondering if, in one of her dream trances, his grandmother could possibly have envisioned anyone like Lady Catherine Montfort.
Chapter One (#ulink_5e5fdc40-ffed-50e5-9881-e590c25b590a)
“Ididn’t come out to be pawed. I came for a breath of air that wasn’t contaminated by a hundred perspiring bodies wearing too much perfume,” Catherine Montfort said, wondering why the lovemaking of this extremely handsome and highly acceptable suitor left her so cold. She moved out of the attempted embrace of her escort, who released her with a small laugh.
The Viscount Amberton watched as Catherine leaned gracefully against the stone railing of the balcony. He knew she was as unmindful of the nearly priceless material of her gown as if she had been wearing sackcloth. Of course, none of the tedious hours of beading that had gone into its creation had been performed by her hands. She propped her chin on fingers covered in the finest kid and stared out into the darkness that hid the garden.
“Admit it, Cat. You’re bored. Too many ballrooms. Too many dinner parties attended by the same people. Too many suitors declaiming their undying love. Why don’t you name the lucky man and put them all out of their misery?” the viscount suggested.
Since Amberton was well aware that he held the inside track, with the duke, certainly, if not with the daughter, he was becoming increasingly impatient with Catherine’s refusal to accept the necessity of matrimony. Especially when he considered all the diligent toadying to the old man it had taken to acquire that inside track. The viscount was not nearly so impatient as his creditors were, however. The only reason they had held both their tongues and his bills was that they, too, were well aware of how this game was played. The faintest hint that Lord Amberton needed Montfort’s money, and he’d never see a guinea of it.
“All ofthem?” she questioned mockingly, slanting a quick smile at him over her shoulder.
“All of us, then,” he conceded. “You know my heart’s yours. It always has been. You are very well aware of that fact.”
“But the problem is inmy heart,” Catherine said softly.
“Not being in love is not generally considered to be a hindrance to marriage,” he assured her. Indeed, they both knew how rare a love match was in their circle.
“I keep thinking there must be a man who won’t bore me to tears after the first month.”
“You’re such a wonderfully spoiled chit, my dear. There are worse things than boredom,” Gerald suggested lightly, knowing she wouldn’t understand just now the truth of his statement. But she would. One day soon she most certainly would. Then she might long for boredom, Gerald thought with a touch of malicious humor.
“I doubt it,” she said, but she smiled again.
“You’re eighteen, at the end of your second season. The Duke of Montfort’s only child, and he wants a grandson. He’s not going to wait much longer.”
“I know.” She’d heard the same arguments all too often, from both Amberton and her father. She had begun to be afraid the duke would brush aside the promise he’d made two years ago to consider her wishes in the selection of her husband.
There was no need to base that decision solely on the amount of the marriage settlements. And no one unsuitable by birth would be so absurd as to offer for Montfort’s only daughter, so her father had seen no reason not to give her the assurance for which she had so charmingly begged. But now he was growing impatient. Her refusal to choose was becoming a source of discord in what had always been, despite the duke’s notoriously volatile temperament, a loving relationship.
“Give in gracefully before you’re left with no choice at all,” Gerald suggested smoothly.And before I’m clapped into Newgate, he thought bitterly.
“Give in,” she repeated, with her own touch of bitterness. “Always to be at someone else’s command. Forever hemmed in by his wishes and desires. Governed by his—”
Amberton’s laugh interrupted her litany of complaints. “And you, of course, believe that you should be the exception to those restrictions, allowed to make your own decisions.”
“To a certain degree. Why not? I’ve not made so many errors in judgment that I must always be constrained to accept a husband’s guidance in every decision,” she argued.
“And if youhave made errors, your father has been remarkably willing, and certainly more than able, to extricate you from situations that were, perhaps, not in your own best interests. Such as a certain clandestine journey to the Border.”
Catherine had been only sixteen, and the fortune hunter who had arranged that elopement had been handsome and charming enough to turn older and wiser heads. However, his carefully selected target had been, almost from his arrival in London, the Duke of Montfort’s daughter.
“Don’t,” she ordered softly, her humiliation over the incident still acutely painful. “I shouldn’t have told you about that. And you promised never to repeat it.”
“Your secrets are safe with me, my dear. Especially if you agree to favor my suit,” he suggested truthfully, smiling at her. “Then I’d have a vested interest in protecting your reputation.”
“Such as it is,” she finished for him. “Blackmail, Gerald?”
“Not in the least. Simply another heartfelt avowal from quite your oldest suitor.”
“Oldest?” she repeated, laughing, relieved to be back on the familiar ground of flirtation. “You’ve forgotten Ridgecourt.”
“Then earliest, my love. I think you know that we’d rub along together very well. And I promise to permit a certain amount of freedom. Not, I’m afraid, that I’m willing to give you as long a tether as your father has allowed.”
“Tether!” she echoed despairingly. “Oh, God, Gerald, that’s just the sort of thing I’m talking about.”
“Simply a figure of speech, my dear. There’s really no need to pounce on every idiom as if I’m trying to imprison you.”
“That’s exactly how Ido imagine marriage. I’m already surrounded by enough restrictions to enclose an army. Don’t ride too fast. Don’t dance with the same gentleman more than once. It’s not seemly for unmarried females to wear that color or this style. God, I’m so sick of it all. Even my father has lately taken to issuing dark warnings about my being left languishing on the shelf, despite the fact that he’s received at least three offers in the last week.”
Eventually, the viscount knew, she would have to succumb. Everyone did. And Amberton intended to be prominently at hand, conveniently under her father’s nose and eminently suitable, when she did. But she had damn well better hurry. He had heard the wolf howling at his door too often to have any peace of mind.
“There is a solution,” Gerald reminded her.
“Marriage. To exchange one prison for another. To give another person the right to correct, criticize and chastise. Do you know, Gerald, that there are men who beat their wives if they don’t obey them in every instance? How would I know—”
He held up his hand, palm out, and vowed, “I shall never beat you, Cat. There are better ways to achieve control over a recalcitrant wife than violence. Far more pleasant ways.” There were methods that he’d be delighted to demonstrate to this girl, who was seriously endangering his plans with her stubbornness.
“Really?” she said with a touch of haughtiness, disliking the suggestive undertone of that declaration.
“Marry me, my sweet, and I shall be delighted to demonstrate the controlling power of love.”
“No,” she said simply, returning to the contemplation of the garden that stretched below her in the darkness. “I don’t want to get married. To anyone.”
“But eventually—” he began.
“Not tonight, please. I don’t want to think about that tonight. Go away, Gerald. Let me just enjoy being alone. I have a feeling that the days when I control my own destiny are dwindling, which makes each more precious. My days of freedom may be numbered, but I’m not at your beck and call yet. Nor any man’s. Not yet,” she said with an almost fierce resignation.
Amberton watched the slight heave of the slender shoulders as she took a deep breath, but smiling still, he obeyed.
Let her enjoy the illusion that she had some choice in the matter as long as she was able, he thought. The Season was coming to an end, and her days of freedomwere certainly numbered. Like it or not, Catherine Montfort would have to choose, forced to that decision by the demands of her father and of society. Amberton knew that there was not another of her suitors who enjoyed the rapport he had so carefully cultivated. Soon she, and more importantly her fortune, would be under his control, and there were a few lessons that he would delight in teaching Catherine Montfort, proud and stubborn as she was.
With Gerald’s departure, only the calm of the night sounds and the drifting music from the ballroom surrounded her. Propping both elbows on the stone railing, she interlaced her fingers under her chin and sighed again.
Unbelievingly she heard behind her the sound of a pair of hands slowly clapping. She turned to see a tall figure standing in the shadows at the edge of the balcony.
“Bravo,” the intruder said softly. “A remarkable declaration of independence. I applaud the sentiment, even if I doubt the possibility of your success in carrying it out.”
“How long have you been there?” she demanded.
“I believe you were being pawed. And objecting to it.”
“How dare you!”
“I didn’t. That was Gerald.”
“You were listening to a very private and personal conversation. You, sir, are obviously no gentleman.”
“Obviously,” he said agreeably.
Now that she was over her immediate shock, she had begun to notice details of his appearance. He was far taller than any of the men she knew—over six feet tall. Several inches over, she accurately guessed. And very broad shouldered. Massive, really.
As he moved into the light from the windows, she became aware of bronzed skin stretched tautly over high cheekbones and lean, smoothly shaved cheeks. Dear God, she thought in disbelief, it was the man who had bought the donkey. The man with the eyes—crystal blue and piercing, set like jewels among the uncompromisingly strong angles of his dark face.
She swallowed suddenly, fascinated again by his sheer foreignness. No fashionable cut scattered curls over the high forehead. His black hair was pulled straight back and tied at his nape, the severity of the style emphasizing the spare planes of his face and the strong nose.
She realized that she had been staring. Angry with her display of near country simplicity and still embarrassed at having been caught in such a compromising situation, she turned back to the railing, trying to regain her composure.
The silence stretched, only the muffled strains of the music invading the quietness. She had expected some reaction—an apology for his intrusion, a reminder that they’d met before and that she was in his debt, something. He was certainly not responding as Amberton or any of her other courtiers would have reacted to her very deliberate lack of attention.
Almost against her will, she turned back to face him. He was standing exactly as he had been before, watching her with those strangely luminescent eyes. Those damnably beautiful eyes. Even as she thought it, she wondered what was happening to her. She was surely sophisticated enough not to fall tongue-tied at the feet of a stranger because he had blue eyes.
“I’d like to talk to you,” he said. The accent was marked, and she wondered why she hadn’t been aware of it when he’d spoken from the shadows. Probably because she’d been too mortified by the idea that he’d witnessed Amberton’s attempted lovemaking.
“If I don’t want to talk to Gerald, who is a very old friend, it should be obvious that I don’t wish to talk to you.”
“I’m not Gerald,” he said, unmoving.
“I beg your pardon?” She had gaped at him like the veriest schoolroom miss. Yet she didn’t intend to be treated like one.
“I’m not Gerald,” he repeated obligingly.
“I know what you said. I didn’t mean that I didn’t hear you. I meant…”
He waited politely for her explanation. His hands were relaxed at his sides; his face perfectly composed.
“I meant I don’t knowwhy you said that—that you’re not Gerald. Obviously you’re not Lord Amberton.”
“My name is Raven,” he said calmly.
“Mr. Raven,” she said sweetly, acknowledging the information. Raven? What kind of name was Raven?
Raven inclined his head, not the least bit taken in by her politeness. She was certain by now to be wishing him in Hades.
“Go away,” she responded, turning once more to the railing.
Behind her she heard his soft laughter. He was laughing at her. Whoever he was—whatever he was.
“I’m not accustomed to gentlemen who refuse to do as they’ve been requested,” she said with frigid politeness.
“I didn’t imagine you were,” he said reasonably. “However, I have some business to discuss with you. I believe that this is an opportunity I may not be offered again.”
She could still hear the amusement in the deep voice.
“Business?” she repeated, turning once more to face him. “I assure you that I do not discussbusiness with strange men.”
“But I’m not a stranger. We’ve met before. I thought you might remember.”
“Of course I remember. I believe that Idid thank you for the donkey. And now, I really must insist that I be left alone. If you would be so kind.” She didn’t understand why she was trying to drive him away. She was honest enough to admit that his image had intruded frequently in her brain during the days since their first encounter. She had even envisioned meeting him again, but not while baring her soul on a dark and isolated balcony where no well-brought-up young lady should be found.
“I have a proposition to offer you,” Raven said, completely unperturbed by her repeated attempts to dismiss him.
She turned back to face him, appalled beyond words, feeling her skin flush hotly. He had witnessed Gerald’s very improper embrace and apparently believed that she would entertain…
“My father will have you horsewhipped,” she threatened.
The line of his lips tilted upward at the corners. “Notthat kind of proposition,” Raven corrected. “And I’m shocked that a gently reared young woman would believe that I’m about to offer her carte blanche. Iam surprised at you.” He made a smalltsking sound, shaking his head. The anger he’d felt watching the blond Englishman hold her was beginning to dissipate. She was obviously not the kind of flirt he’d feared when he’d followed the pair from the crowded ballroom.
“What do you want? Please state yourbusiness and then go away,” Catherine ordered. “You have the manners of a barbarian.”
“American,” he admitted pleasantly, knowing that she was probably correct—at least by her standards.
“Ah,” she said, giving him a mocking smile of agreement. “That explains so much.” American. No wonder he was unusual.
“I hope so,” Raven replied graciously, as if there had been no trace of sarcasm in her reply. “I’m not very familiar with the apparently intricate courtship rituals of your circle. So forgive me if I fail to say all that’s proper. I’m a man who believes in cutting to the heart. I’d like you to marry me.”
Despite her genuine sophistication, Catherine’s mouth dropped open slightly. She made a small strangled sound and then, controlling her shock, began to laugh, in honest amusement that he should believe he could appear out of the shadows—a stranger with all the panache of a red Indian and the physical presence of a prizefighter—and offer her marriage.
Raven made no outward reaction to her amusement. He hadn’t expected her to laugh, despite the fact that she knew nothing about him. Few people ever laughed at John Raven. If nothing else, his sheer size was too intimidating. But, he remembered, Reynoldshad tried to warn him.
The American waited with only a calm patience evident in his features. Eventually her laughter began to sound a little forced, even to her own ears, and she allowed it to die away.
His lips lifted slightly in what she was beginning to recognize as his version of a smile. A mocking smile.
“I’m glad I’ve amused you. I imagine you haven’t found an occasion for such a prolonged bout of laughter in months.”
“Youare amusing,” she taunted, knowing he’d seen through her. Could he possibly realize how he’d affected her at their first meeting? She forced sarcasm into her voice. “I can’t tell you how deliciously ridiculous I find you. And your suit. Quite the most unconventional suitor I’ve ever had, I assure you.”
“At least I’m not boring you,” he suggested softly.
She realized with surprise that he wasn’t. She was not— definitely not—bored and had not been for the last few moments.
“There are worse things than boredom,” she retorted mockingly, unconscious that she was repeating Amberton’s statement, which John Raven, of course, had certainly overheard.
“I doubt it,” he responded, exactly as she had. “At least we agree on something.”
“I would imagine that’s the only thing we are ever likely to agree on,” she said, opening her fan and moving it gracefully.
His eyes watched the play of her hands a moment and then lifted to study her features. He’d never seen a woman as beautiful. Despite her coloring, there was no scattering of freckles across the small, elegant nose. The long lashes that surrounded the russet eyes were much darker than the auburn hair. Almost certainly artificially darkened, he realized in amusement.
Catherine was glad of the covering darkness that hid the slight flush she could feel suffusing her skin at his prolonged examination. Her acknowledged beauty, which had been her heritage from her mother, had attracted the usual masculine attention, but he was tracing each individual element of her face as if he were trying to memorize them.
“And I believe there are other, more important considerations about which we are in agreement,” he said finally, the piercing crystal gaze moving back to meet her eyes.
“Such as?” she asked indifferently.
“Such as the idea that a woman need not be at the beck and call of her husband. That she should enjoy a great deal of personal freedom. With a few necessary limitations, of course.”
You have nothing to offer the girl that she doesn’t already have, Reynolds had told him, but Catherine Montfort herself had given him a key, an inducement that might tempt her to consider his proposal. She had said that she wanted freedom, and perhaps, if he promised her that…
“Of course.” She smiled tauntingly. “But there are those limitations—those verynecessary limitations.”
“I’m offering you almost unlimited wealth. Enough money to become the most fashionably dressed woman in London. You’ll have your own household, furnished and staffed exactly as you desire. An unlimited account for entertainment. And the more lavishly you entertain, the better it will suit me. Jewels, horses, carriages, travelwhatever appeals to you will be yours to command.”
She smiled again, almost in sympathy at his naiveté. “And if I told you that I already enjoy all of those enticements? What do you have to offer that I don’t already possess?”
He studied her upturned face a moment. “Freedom,” he said again, and laughing, she simply shook her head. “Freedom from being courted by men you abhor,” he continued, as if she’d made no response. “Freedom from society’s restrictions. Freedom from your father’s demands for a grandson.”
“Ah,” she said, mocking again, “but to achieve that particular freedom…” She let the indelicate suggestion fade.
“I don’t need a mistress,” Raven responded softly. “What I need is a hostess.” She wanted his assurance that he didn’t intend to make physical demands on her, and although her rejection of that aspect of his proposal had not occurred to him before, he knew that he would do whatever was necessary to ensure that Catherine Montfort would be his. Even if it meant restraining for a time his very natural inclinations to do exactly what Lord Amberton had been attempting moments ago.
A platonic marriage was definitely not what John Raven had in mind, but he was a very patient man. He had been carefully trained in that stoic patience since childhood. He could wait for what he wanted, for the kind of relationship he intended to have with this woman.
At his rejection of her taunt, Catherine was surprised to feel a tinge of regret.Good God, she thought, examining that emotion.Why the deuce should it matter to me if he has a dozen mistresses? A hundred mistresses.
“Then how should I answer my father’s demand for a grandchild?” she asked. “Or will your mistress handle that, too?”
“Our marriage would answer for a time. And eventually—”
“Eventually?” she interrupted, smiling at the trap he had created for his own argument.
“He’ll decide you’re barren or unwilling to share my bed—whichever version you prefer to put about. I assure you I couldn’t care less.”
She hid her shock at his matter-of-fact assessment of her father’s probable reaction. “You won’t require an heir for this unlimited wealth you intend to put at my disposal?”
“Eventually,” he said again, as calmly as before, the blue eyes meeting hers. “But you may take as long as you wish before satisfying that desire.” The word hung between them, its sexual connotations implicit in the context of their discussion. “You will surely begin to feel maternal stirrings before I require you to carry on my family line,” he continued. “After all, I believe you’re only eighteen. Or was Amberton wrong about that, too?”
“And how old are you?” she wondered aloud.
“I’m thirty-four,” he said.
Almost twice her age. Older by several years than most of the eligible suitors who had approached her father. Except, of course, for the highly unsuitable—like the Earl of Ridgecourt, on the lookout for his fourth wife, someone to preside over his shockingly full nursery, the production of its inhabitants having brought a swift and untimely end to his first three wives.
“Why do you need a hostess?” she asked. She didn’t understand why she felt such freedom to delve into the intricacies of the patently ludicrous proposal he’d made. Maybe it was his willingness to discuss any aspect of his plan with her, despite its nature. He didn’t seem to be shocked by her questions. On the contrary, he had treated them as legitimate attempts to solicit information necessary to make her choice.
“I’ve already made investments in British industry—”
“What kind of investments?” she interrupted.
“Coal,” he said, thinking with pleasure of the mines that were already producing a far greater tonnage than he had thought possible when he’d bought them.
There was a spark of something in the crystalline depths of his eyes, and she could hear the same quality of possessiveness in his deep voice that one sometimes heard in the voices of women discussing their jewels or, more rarely, their children.
“I buy coalfields,” he continued.
“Why?”
“So I can build railroads from them.”
When Catherine shook her head slightly in confusion, he smiled that small, controlled smile. “Coal is going to fuel what’s beginning to happen here, and the man who controls the coal…” His explanation faded away and he simply watched her face.
“You’ve made investments in coalfields and railroads?” she questioned carefully. Again she felt a sense of unreality that she was standing in the darkness with a stranger discussing coal.
“And foundries. To make iron. However, most of the men who will be instrumental in deciding on the direction British industry will take in the next few crucial years belong to the circle you frequent. I need to talk to them, to influence them in ways that will increase the value of my investments. But I have no access to those men. I need a wife who does.”
“What men?” she asked, interested despite herself. There was some strange compulsion in listening to his deep voice.
“Men like your father. Men of power and influence. The men who control the House of Lords. Who control the land and property of this country.”
“Men like that don’t discuss business over the dinner table,” she told him seriously, falling in with his fantasy.
“And after dinner? Over their port and cigars? With the ladies safely out of the way?” Raven questioned. It was what Reynolds had told him.
“Perhaps,” she was forced to admit.
“But first…”
“First they must agree tocome to dinner.”
“Yes,” he said simply.
She studied the lean, harshly defined planes of his face.
“I can’t marry you,” she said finally. She paused, thinking about all he’d offered. “Even if…” She carefully began again, wondering why she was making an explanation. It was almost as if he had constrained her to consider his proposal seriously. “Even if I wanted to.”
“Freedom,” he invited softly.
“With limitations,” she reminded him. And then, remembering, “I never heard the limitations.” Almost against her will she responded to the small movement of his lips. Seeing his smile, her own was given with a warmth usually reserved for old friends.
“No lovers,” he said. Raven wasn’t exactly sure of the conventions of her society, but he’d seen little since he’d been in London to reassure him about the morality of the ton. And he knew that he wouldn’t allow another man to touch her. No matter what he’d promised about freedom.
“What?” Catherine gasped in shock, her smile vanishing.
“No lovers,” he repeated, trying to think of an excuse she’d believe, something other than the truth—that he couldn’t endure the thought of any other man touching her. “I won’t leave what I’ve worked so hard to acquire to some other man’s—”
“How dare you?” she interrupted before he could finish.
“Other than that, I can’t really think of any additional limitations,” he continued smoothly. “You would be free to come and go as you will, to spend as much of my money as you possibly can, provided you bring to my house the men I need to meet to successfully carry out my investments.”
“You’re free to have a mistress, but I’m not allowed to have lovers. Is that the arrangement you’re suggesting?”
“Unless you have some other plan for satisfying my physical needs,” Raven said, wondering how he would manage to control those needs if, by some miracle, she did agree to marry him.
“And what about my needs?” she countered angrily. This was exactly the sort of thing she hated about the restraints imposed by society. It was perfectly acceptable for him to have a mistress, but she was to be bound by his “limitation.”
“I hadn’t intended to make that a requirement.”
“What?” Catherine asked. She must have missed something.
“I would, of course, be delighted to satisfy your needs,” Raven agreed, fighting to control his amusement. “However, I-”
“How dare you!” Catherine repeated scathingly. “I assure you that I don’t want you to…” She couldn’t believe where he’d led her, or what she had been about to say.
“I never assumed you did,” he agreed, deliberately clearing any trace of humor from his voice. “What I’m offering is a simple business proposition. You have to marry. You’ll be forced to do so, and you are very aware of that. You want freedom to doexactly as you please. I’m offering you that freedom, with one restriction. A very reasonable restriction. And in exchange, you provide me an introduction into this society I should never be allowed to enter without your help.”
“Do you think you can discuss these arrangements—”
“You’re very well aware of the considerations we’ve discussed tonight. The understanding of them is implicit in most marriages. You and I have simply put all the cards on the table, open and aboveboard. That’s also a freedom you’ll enjoy if you agree to marry me. I promise you I’m unshockable. You may say to me whatever you wish. You may ask whatever questions occur to you. About anything. I will endeavor to answer them honestly.”
“However appealing that may be—” she began.
“Then you do find something in my proposal appealing?” he questioned softly, wondering if he dared hope.
“Freedom.” She repeated the tantalizing word. “But…”
“But?” he urged at her hesitation.
“My father would never entertain the idea of you as a son-in-law. He would never consent.”
His lips twitched again with that slight upward movement. “How much?” he asked.
“How much?” she repeated blankly.
“To convince your father that I’m a suitable suitor. Marriage settlements, I believe is the proper term.”
“Are you proposing tobuy me?” she asked incredulously. “Surely you don’t believe that the Duke of Montfort would simply sell his daughter to a coal merchant? You really are incredibly ill informed.” There was, she knew, some truth in his ideas about how such things were done. She wondered suddenly just how much itwould take for her father to agree to what this man proposed.
“You don’t have that much money,” she said bitingly.
“You might be surprised,” Raven suggested calmly. There was no challenge in the quiet avowal.
“My father is a very proud man. Of his name and heritage.”
“I understand pride,” he answered, his eyes still watching her reaction. “I, too, am proud of my heritage.” He remembered the quiet strength of the loving family he’d left behind in the haze-shrouded mountains of Tennessee when he’d begun his long quest. “I assure you it wouldn’t sully the purity of the Montfort stock. In horse breeding they make such matches to inject new blood, to add vigor to bloodlines that are outworn.”
“Are you suggesting—”
“I’m suggesting that what has existed as the standard for judging a man’s quality is about to change in England, as it has already changed in the New World and in France. I believe you are intelligent enough to grasp that concept, even if your father will not. A man’s titles and the nobility of his lineage will soon matter less than his intelligence, his hard work and his ability to create, to forge new ideas and turn them into practical applications for the benefit of all. Your father’s day is drawing to a close. As is his society’s. The world is about to change, and it will never again be the same.”
She blinked to clear the spell woven by the conviction in John Raven’s voice. Whatever the validity of those views, he certainly believed them. There was no doubt he sincerely thought her world was about to disappear. But she, having known no other, was unprepared to accept that assessment.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. There was nothing else she could offer a man who had revealed to her a dream she could not accept. For in doing so, she would admit that this society, into which she fit as well as her slender fingers fit into the gloves that had been cut to their exact measurements, was doomed. In admitting the reality ofhis vision, she would be forced to deny all the securityshe had ever known.
She brushed by him, leaving John Raven, an alien. in the world she understood so well, in the darkness of the balcony, choosing instead to return to the brilliant light of a dozen chandeliers and the elegant music and the endless restrictions.
Chapter Two (#ulink_470914df-34dd-5efd-8145-99c4b3dde4c2)
The enormous black was entirely suitable. On anything less magnificent, its rider might have appeared ridiculous, but the blackwas magnificent and, therefore, exactly right for John Raven’s size. Catherine supposed she should not have been surprised, on the morning after the ball, to find the American approaching her out of the mist that had not yet been burned away by the sun. The vapor swirled around the gleaming forelegs of the black as the man cantered to where she had reined in her mare.
Raven slowed the stallion, controlling the powerful animal with sure horseman’s hands. “May I join you?” he asked.
“I’m waiting for someone,” she answered truthfully, her voice deliberately cool.
“A gentleman given to puce waistcoats and horses too long in the tooth and too short in the shank?” he asked.
Recognizing all too readily, from his very accurate description, her intended companion for this morning’s exercise, Catherine laughed. She watched the corresponding upward tilt in the corners of that forbidding mouth. “Yes,” she said, still smiling despite her earlier intent to keep her distance.
“He’s not coming. Unavoidably detained, I should say.”
“What have you done to Reginald?” she asked, fascinated.
“Reginald?” Raven repeated, allowing disbelief to creep into his deep voice. “Gerald and Reginald,” he added, shaking his head. “My God,” he said under his breath, and then clearing the derision from his voice and the mischief from the blue eyes, he shook his head again.
“I assure you I had nothing to do with it.” Not exactly the truth, he admitted to himself, but all’s fair in love and war. “He seemed to be having trouble with his animal, but I promise you, he won’t be joining you this morning.”
Although, through visible effort, Catherine had managed to control her lips, her eyes were still laughing. They were deep amber in the morning light, darkened with flecks of the same rich auburn that gleamed in her hair, which was almost hidden under the modish hat that matched the dark green habit she wore. The garment, although cut very fashionably, was relatively free of decoration, designed for riding, Raven was pleased to note, rather than parading.
His eyes answered the amusement in hers, and for a moment a decided jolt of power from their crystal depths curled upward inside her body, fluttering against her heart. Catherine swallowed suddenly, dropping her gaze to her gloved hands that were perfectly relaxed over the reins. There was a moment of silence, and then she once more directed her mare onto the bridle path she’d been following before she’d paused to admire the stallion. Long before she had recognized the rider.
Taking that for permission to join her, Raven guided the black alongside, and they rode without speaking for a while.
“He’s magnificent,” she said finally. Surely horses were a safe topic and apparently one they both appreciated.
“He’s a brute with an iron mouth and a heart as black as his hide,” Raven answered without a. trace of annoyance, “but we’re beginning to understand one another.”
“Then you haven’t had him long?” There was no evidence of anything but perfect understanding between horse and rider. If the black was a brute, he was keeping his temperament hidden.
“Since this morning,” Raven said calmly.
“This morning?”
“Tattersall’s, I believe, is the name of the establishment where I found him.”
“But…” She paused, glancing at that dark face to see if he were teasing her.
Raven turned at her hesitation and met her eyes, his brows raised slightly, questioning her surprise.
“It must be…it’s barely daybreak,” she finally managed to say.
“I needed a horse,” Raven said, as if that explained it all.
“They aren’t open this early,” she persisted.
“They are today,” he assured her. Then, closing the subject of the power of his money, a subject he had never intended to open, but which had just been demonstrated, Raven asked, “Would you like a run? I haven’t had a chance to see if he lives up to the promise of his looks or if he’s all flash and no substance.”
“Here?” she asked, looking at the narrow, tree-lined path.
“Is there arule against it?” he questioned, almost mocking.
“Probably,” she answered tartly, but even as she said it she touched the mare with her crop.
Catherine had caught him by surprise and was therefore able to maintain her lead for a short distance, but, of course, they both had known that the black had a decided advantage, by size if by nothing else. She was forced to admit that his rider also had an edge. Although she was widely acknowledged as one of the finest equestrians in the ton, John Raven seemed to be one with his horse, blending with the reaching effort of the black and almost adding energy to the stallion’s powerful motion.
Recognizing defeat and feeling nothing but admiration for the pair who had beaten her, she slowed Storm until eventually they were moving again side by side, at a pace that almost demanded conversation.
“Is this where you always ride?” Raven asked, thinking with sympathy how constricted the area was for a horsewoman of her skills. He wished they could race over the vast lowlands along the great river called Mississippi, space and time unlimited.
Catherine wondered if the American was planning on joining her each morning. She had been forced in the past to give some sharp setdowns to suitors who believed she would welcome company on her early morning excursions. She did occasionally allow very old and trusted acquaintances like Reggie to join her, because she could be sure that they would fall in with any suggestion she made as to the speed or duration of the ride. But, except for her groom, following behind, this was a private time.
“It’s the only place in London for a gallop.”
“A gallop,” Raven repeated derisively. “If that’s what you call a gallop.”
“No, it isn’t, of course. But there’s really nowhere else. Thisis a town, you understand—streets, houses, people.”
“We have towns in America,” he answered, and she knew he was laughing at her again. His face didn’t reflect his amusement, of course, but he was laughing just the same.
“And in which one do you live?” she asked sweetly. She tried to dredge up the names of some of those distant cities. New York and Washington. Boston. And Baltimore, of course.
“I haven’t been home in several years,” Raven answered.
“I thought you’d only recently come to England.”
“There are other parts of the world besides England.”
“And in which parts were you?” she asked almost sharply. She didn’t know how he could make her feel so provincial. He was the one who should be aware that he was lacking polish, and instead, when they were together, she ended up feeling very much out of control of the situation. That had never before happened to her where men were concerned.
“China and then India. For the last five years,” he said.
Images of the East as she imagined it to be floated through her consciousness. The old lures of silks and spices. Jewels and precious metals. Ivory and drugs.
“Is that where—” She broke off, realizing the rudeness of her question.
“Where I acquired my money?” he finished easily. “I told you that you might ask me anything. There’s no reason to guard your tongue with me. Most of it came from the East, but I have interests in America also.”
“What kind of interests?”
“Shipping, which led naturally to my contacts in the Orient. I became fascinated by the cultures. And there, too, fortunes were to be made.”
“Too?” she repeated.
“As there will be here.”
“In coal and railroads?” she said, remembering.
“And in iron and steel. For the machines.”
“What machines?”
“All of them,” he said, his lips flickering upward. “Machines for everything,” he offered, wondering if she could really be interested.
“I don’t understand.”
“The world is changing. What has been man-made is about to become the province of machines. To build machines, there must be iron. And to make iron…” He paused, glancing at her face.
“There must be coal,” she repeated, as if it were a lesson she’d learned. As indeed, she had. “And the railroads?” she asked. “Why are you building railroads from your coalfields?”
“Because to make iron you must bring the coal and the ore together. The iron ore. So I buy the coalfields, employ the power of machinery to improve the mining techniques, and eventually I’ll carry the coal to the foundries by rail,” he explained patiently.
“But won’t that take a long time? To build railroads from the mines?”
“Yes, but the process can be speeded up by the cooperation of the men who matter in this country. Or it can be slowed down by their refusal to cooperate.”
“And that’s why-”
“I need a wife. The kind of wife I described to you.”
He waited for her response, but it seemed that she’d finally run out of questions. The only sounds that surrounded them were the brush of the wind through the leaves of the trees above and the soft impact of the horses’ hooves over the loam of the bridle path. She had no more questions, and so he asked the one that remained unanswered between them.
“Have you decided about my proposal?”
“Mr. Raven, I’m sorry, but you must realize that I can’t marry you. My father would never agree, and even if he did, we should not suit. Please, I beg you, don’t mention it again.”
“I think…” he began, and then stopped. He certainly couldn’t tell her that he believed they’d suit extremely well. That he believed he had been deliberately led to her by the efforts of an old woman who was very far away. He’d been led to Catherine Montfort exactlybecause she was the woman who would best suit John Raven’s needs. All his needs.
She looked up quickly at his hesitation. He had always seemed so sure of what he wanted.
“It doesn’t matter if we suit,” he continued, but she was aware that was not what he had begun to tell her. “If you’ll remember, ours isn’t to be that kind of marriage. I promise that I will leave you strictly alone, free to make your own decisions and to follow your own desires, with the one exception we discussed. Other than that, you need consider me no more than a business partner who happens to live in the same house.”
“Amariage de convenance.” Smiling, she identified for him the term for the kind of arrangement he had described. One that was certainly not unheard of in the ton.
“In the truest sense of the word. At your convenience. I shall not interfere in your life.”
“And you expect the same noninterference in yours?”
“Of course,” he responded smoothly. “Nothing more than a business deal. No personal involvement whatsoever.”At least for the time being. At least until I’ve convinced you that you want to belong to me, he promised silently. “Other than that involvement necessary to give the ton the opinion that we are united in our social contacts.”
Catherine Montfort was unused to men who treated marriage to her as a business arrangement. She was more accustomed to men who made ardent vows of undying devotion. Raven, on the other hand, had in no way suggested that he was attracted to her—other than as one of his machines needed to perform a certain task.
“No,” she said softly. She wondered at her sense of disappointment at his clarification of his original proposal. “It’s quite impossible, and you might as well understand that now. My father would never allow such a match.”
“Then you have no objection to my approaching him?”
“You intend to approach my father?” she repeated unbelievingly, incredulous that he didn’t seem to understand the width of the gap that lay between them.
“Yes.”
“With that proposition?”
“Not couched in precisely those terms,” he said, the amusement back in his voice. “Simply as an offer for your hand.”
“He’ll have you thrown out,” she warned.
“Will he?” he asked, sounding interested. “I wonder how.”
“By the servants,” she responded with deliberate bluntness, finally angered at his continual mockery of the reality of the world she lived in. Coal merchants, however wealthy, did not ask for the hand of the Duke of Montfort’s daughter.
“I should like to see them try,” Raven suggested softly, and found that he really would. He’d damn well like to see them try.
He inclined his head to her and turned the black away from the path, touching the animal’s gleaming sides with his heels. Catherine wondered if that had been anger she’d read in his voice, but the statement had been too quietly and calmly made. It had sounded like a simple declaration of fact.
She watched horse and rider until they disappeared into the line of trees across the park, and then, disgusted with her attention to the American nabob, she once more touched Storm’s flank, breaking into what passed for a brisk gallop within the careful restraints of London. And she didn’t even wonder why her morning’s ride was so bitterly dissatisfying.
Two days later, returning from a particularly dull afternoon musicale, she was approached by the duke’s butler as she entered the door, his agitation obvious.
“His grace requests that you join him, if you would, my lady. He’s awaiting you in the salon.”
“Thank you, Hartford. I’ll only be a moment. Please convey that message to my father, and tell him—”
“I think…” the servant interrupted, and then paused, unaccustomed to denying her ladyship’s requests. “If you would be so kind, my lady, I believe you should join him immediately.”
Catherine considered the man before her. Hartford had never before shown her the slightest sign of disrespect, so she decided that whatever had distressed him enough to cause this small breech of his usually careful manner might really need her immediate attention.
“Thank you, Hartford,” she said softly and walked to the wide doorway of the town house’s formal salon.
Her father greeted her appearance with something that sounded like relief. He was dressed with his usual elegance, every white hair in place, but because she knew him so well she could sense his annoyance.
“This…gentleman,” he said sardonically, the pause clearly deliberate, “insists he’s an acquaintance of yours.”
The duke’s disbelief was patent. His thin hand moved to indicate the man standing at his ease before the strawcolored sofa. He had not, of course, been asked to sit down on it.
Catherine felt an absurd urge to smile at the picture John Raven presented. He, too, was perfectly dressed: his cravat, faintly edged with fine lace, flawlessly tied; his expertly tailored coat of Spanish blue stretched over wide shoulders; his silk waistcoat and pantaloons revealing the strong lines of his muscled body. And yet he looked as out of place in the genteel confines of this room full of priceless family heirlooms and fragile furniture as her father would look in a coalfield.
“Mr. Raven,” she greeted him, her amusement at the image of the duke in the middle of a coalfield still showing in her eyes. There was a gleam of reaction to that amusement in John Raven’s eyes, and then he inclined his head as regally as royalty was wont to do at an audience. If he felt any unease at being in the Duke of Montfort’s elegant salon, he hid it very well indeed.
“You do know him?” her father asked, apparently finding it hard to believe his daughter was confirming Raven’s claim.
“Of course,” Catherine said easily, advancing across the floor to present her hand to Raven. He glanced down at her fingers, as if contemplating their cleanliness, and then, at the last second possible to avoid outright rudeness, he took them in his own and conveyed them to the line of those straight lips. She was briefly aware of the warmth of his breath above her skin for a second before he released them. His fingers had been hard against the softness of hers, their callused strength very unlike the well-cared-for hands of the men she knew.
“Lady Montfort,” he said, controlling his anger at her amusement as impassively as he had at Montfort’s rudeness.
“Mr. Raven,” she answered, smiling. “How delightful you could visit today. No coalfields up for bid?”
An almost indiscernible reaction moved behind the crystal eyes, which were taking on the glint of ice. “No, I’m confining my bidding to other properties today,” Raven mocked, his meaning apparent only to her.
Good God, she thought,he hascome to offer for my hand.
“Coalfields?” Her father repeated the word as if he’d never before had occasion to use it. Or as if he couldn’t quite believe he had just heard his daughter employ it.
“Mr. Raven is a coal merchant,” Catherine said, reducing all he had taught her to an object of derision. How dare he embarrass her before her father? He had probably told the duke that they’d discussed marriage settlements. She had told Raven how impossible this was, but here he was, determined to humiliate them both and to anger her father in the bargain.
“A coal merchant?” Montfort repeated.
“I’m an investor,” Raven said simply. He’d be damned if he’d let the two of them belittle honest labor. He certainly wasn’t ashamed of what he did.
“In coal,” Catherine interjected helpfully. “And railroads.”
“In locomotions?” Montfort’s voice rose.
“Locomotives,” John Raven corrected quietly. He wondered if he could have been so wrong about what he had seen before in Catherine Montfort’s eyes. She was deliberately trying to embarrass him before the duke, but there had been no derision in her voice when she’d asked him to explain his businesses to her.
“For carrying the coal,” Catherine continued. “Or was it the ore? I’m afraid I’ve forgotten which. And I’m sure it was very useful information. I was thinking only today how I might work that into a conversation at some dinner party. I’m sure—”
“Are you serious?” the duke interrupted.
“Perfectly,” she said. “I assure you I have it on the best authority, even if I’m a trifle unclear on the details. I’m certain Mr. Raven would be willing to explain it again. He seems to feel everyone else finds coal as interesting as he does.”
“I find human progress interesting,” Raven said simply. There was no trace of answering amusement in his voice.
“Indeed,” Catherine said primly. “How… interesting.”
“Is there a reason,” the duke began, looking at his guest, “for your call today?”
Catherine could almost see her father mentally repeating the phrase she’d used, as if fixing it in his mind.Coal merchant. She could imagine the laughter at his club tomorrow when he told his cronies about it. And she, of course, was only making it worse. Humiliation was inherent in the situation; that was why she had tried to warn the American. But he had been so sure that what he’d suggested was as reasonable as he’d made it sound.
She glanced at Raven’s face and found he was watching her instead of her father. A muscle tightened briefly beside his mouth, and then even that was controlled. His eyes moved back to the duke, and he said finally, despite her warning, what she had known he would say from the moment she had walked into the room.
“I’ve come to offer for your daughter’s hand. I would like your permission to marry Catherine.”
Her father’s face quickly drained of color, and then, his eyes never leaving those of the man who had made that ludicrous suggestion, it suffused with blood, purpling with rage.
“You—you wouldwhat?” he sputtered.
Raven drew papers from the inside pocket of his coat and unfolded them as if he had all the time in the world. “One of these is a listing of my assets. The other is a marriage agreement that the man of business I employ here in London believed might be appropriate in such a merger. As you will see, the death settlements are extremely generous, and I require nothing from you except your permission for the match to take place. Not the usual contract in matters such as these, I’m aware, but my financial success has given me the liberty of not having to be a stickler for the conventional terms. Your daughter’s hand is dowry enough, I assure you.”
Raven had just uttered more words than Catherine had heard him put together in their previous conversations, except when he was talking about coal. The speech had had a rather endearing charm, if one thought about it—not that her father would.
“How dare you!” the duke said.
Although the old man certainly presented no physical threat to the American, his fury was rather awe inspiring— to Catherine at least. She couldn’t remember seeing her father this enraged since she’d run off with the fortune hunter. Resolutely, she turned her mind away from that memory.
“Listed here also are the properties I am willing to settle on your daughter after our marriage,” Raven added.
Catherine wondered if she were to be given a coalfield as an inducement to marriage. The wordswith my worldly goods, I thee bestow ran fleetingly through her mind.
“Get out,” her father said ominously.
“Or a cash settlement if you prefer,” Raven offered reasonably. Reynolds’s warnings began to stir darkly in the back of his mind. Because the settlements were indeed extremely generous, he had believed that a man of the duke’s intelligence would immediately see the advantages for his daughter.Not of his class, the banker had counseled.Notorious for his temper, the groom had suggested. And Catherine’s own advice, given almost with regret, he’d believed:My father would never allow such a match. All the warnings Raven’s pride had ignored were repeated in the old man’s features.
The Duke of Montfort stalked across the room to ring the bell, which Hartford answered too quickly. The butler must have been standing in the hall in case of just such an occurrence.
“Get out of my house,” the duke repeated.
“Your daughter has voiced no objection to the match,” Raven averred calmly.
Not exactly the truth, Catherine thought, but he was certainly not easily discouraged.
Her father, however, had apparently had enough. “Throw him out,” he said, gesturing to Hartford.
The butler walked up to John Raven, who turned those remarkable eyes from the contemplation of her father’s face to the servant’s. As the duke’s had, Hartford’s features lost color, but for a different reason altogether. The American’s controlled smile appeared briefly at the man’s hesitation, and then he turned and walked around him.
There would be no advantage to Raven in a meaningless confrontation with Montfort’s butler. Fighting with the servants would only make him appear more ridiculous than he already had.
However, he didn’t resist the impulse to issue his own warning. He turned back in the doorway to speak to the duke.
“I intend to marry your daughter, your grace. Nothing that has been said today has changed that. I have never done business this way in the past, and I believe it was a mistake on this occasion, but because I’m a stranger here, I allowed others to influence my actions. You may name your price, but I mean to have Catherine. You can be certain of that.”
The duke’s shock held him motionless a moment. Raven’s eyes moved back to meet Catherine’s. He nodded to her and finally, mercifully, he turned to leave.
Something in that last challenge to his authority, his pride or his honor had broken Montfort’s control, never particularly reliable under the best of circumstances. He rushed after the departing American, almost shouting in his fury. “You’ll marry Catherine over my dead body. You’ll not bring your sweat-stained lucre into my family. You’re another damned fortune hunter, and you’re not fit tospeak my daughter’s name. I’ll see you in hell before you insult her with your proposal again. You stink of sweat, and your stench offends my nose!”
Raven turned back to face the duke, and for once the warrior Scot in his heritage overcame the hard-learned Indian stoicism.
“If my money’s stained, it’s with my own sweat, your grace. Not that of the peasants your family robbed for hundreds of years. Mine’s a far cleaner stench than yours, sir,” he said bitterly. “And as for being a fortune hunter, I assure you I’m not interested in your money. It’s Catherine I want, and I intend to have her. I assure you I meant no insult to your daughter. I have made her the most honorable offer she’s likely to receive. Even if you’re both too insular to understand that.”
“Insular?” Montfort shouted. “You colonial jackanapes, don’t you dare call me insular.”
His gaze found the crop Catherine had left on the hall table that morning after her ride. It was not her custom, but she had apparently forgotten it when she had stopped to examine the calling cards in the salver that rested there. The crop’s position proved far too convenient for her father’s fury.
In his fit of blood lust, he grasped the whip, flying across the narrow space that separated him from his unwanted guest, to slash a blow across the mouth that had spoken those insults.
Raven wrenched the crop from the duke’s fist, but a slim, feminine hand caught his wrist, just as it had caught the rattan stick. Although he could have easily freed himself from the grip of Catherine’s fingers, Raven hesitated, another emotion interfering with his anger. She had touched him, slender fingers resting on the bare skin of his wrist, and he could feel the results of that realization beginning to move through his body, replacing the involuntary flood of adrenaline with a different, but just as uncontrollable, response.
“He’s an old man,” she begged. “Please don’t hurt him.”
Raven’s eyes, filled with a fury that matched her father’s, moved down to meet hers. Somehow, at the sight of russet eyes full of regret and apprehension, he found control.
She took a deep breath as she felt the rigidity gradually leave the upraised arm. “Just go away,” she whispered. “I tried to tell you this would happen. Please, just go away.”
Catherine’s fingers slipped across the back of Raven’s hand, and he allowed her to take the crop he could never have used against the old man. The welt her father had raised across his face was beginning to change from livid white to angry red. He raised his own fingers, which to his disgust trembled slightly, to explore it. The upper end was the most heavily damaged, a crimson thread there beginning to overflow and spill across his high cheekbone. He brushed his hand over the welling blood, feeling the fighting fury of his ancestors build again.
Catherine could hear the harshness of Raven’s breathing. She was close enough even to. smell him. There was no cloying perfume, but rather a pleasant aroma composed of the starch that had been used in his cravat, the fine leather of his boots and the warmly inviting, totally masculine scent of his body.
She lowered the hand that now controlled the whip and found, surprisingly, that she was fighting an urge to touch the brutal stripe her father had laid across his face. She knew that the duke’s rage was not really directed against John Raven. This blow had been struck in revenge for another insult to his daughter, for another man whohad been exactly what Montfort had accused the American of being. What had happened here this morning was not what she had wanted, but she knew very well her mockery had played a role in what had occurred. Raven would never know how deeply she regretted that.
“I’m sorry,” she offered softly.
It seemed almost as if he didn’t hear her. Finally the blue flame of his gaze focused again on what was in her face. His lips were white with the pressure he was exerting. The small, throbbing muscle jumped again in his jaw.
“Tell him,” Raven ordered, reading the look in her eyes— the look he had seen there before. He hadnot been mistaken.
“Tell him what?” she asked, truly not understanding what message she was supposed to give.
“That you’re mine. And that he might as well get accustomed to that reality.”
John Raven had disappeared into the street, slamming the door behind him, before she could think of an answer.
Chapter Three (#ulink_85c3e500-3212-5ae7-bafb-7d3d41c8ef29)
In the ensuing days, her father said little about the confrontation with John Raven. He had grudgingly admitted, knowledge assuredly gained from his friends at White’s, that the “coal merchant” was exactly what he had claimed to be.
“Rich as Croesus,” the duke acknowledged. “They’re calling him the American nabob, but I am led to understand that most of his wealth was accumulated in the East.”
“China and India,” Catherine agreed, remembering their ride.
The old man’s eyebrow lifted. “God’s teeth, Catherine, exactly how well do you know this damned miner? Surely you must realize what you’re doing by this ridiculous delay—making it appear youdesire the attentions of men like this American. Choose a man of your own class, suitable for your birth and position, and do it damned quickly. I’ll not be accosted by any more importunate jackanapes with coal dust under their fingernails.” The duke’s slender, elegantly erect frame shuddered dramatically, illustrating his distaste.
“Importunate?” Catherine repeated. “I should think that would be one adjective that wouldn’t apply in this case. He’s hardly the fortune hunter you called him.” Recalling her father’s fury over the disastrous incident of two years ago, she added, “I should think you’d be glad you don’t have to worry about that with Mr. Raven’s proposal. Actually…” she began, savoring the rather exciting bluntness of that proposal.
“Don’t press me, Catherine. You think to wind me around your finger as you’ve always done, but I warn you, girl, this is no trifling matter. Pick a husband, or I shall do it for you. And be damned sure that I will, Cat. Damned sure.”
The problem was that she knew very well his temper might cause him to do exactly that, regardless of his promise to her. Despite her father’s warning, she had found herself reliving that last encounter with John Raven more times than she wished, mentally watching her crop descend across the high cheekbone. The memory that was most clear and, to her disgust, most often repeated in her mind, was what he had said just before he’d departed.
Tell him, John Raven had said,that you belong to me.
Once more in the midst of a crowded ballroom, Catherine forced her thoughts away from the remembrance of whatever, besides anger, had been in Raven’s eyes that afternoon. She was still not certain of the emotion that had called forth his declaration. Fury at being denied what he wanted, certainly. And at her father’s treatment of his suit. But she had begun to believe that she had seen something else stirring in that blue flame.
Resolutely she broke off her fruitless attempt to identify that fleetingly glimpsed emotion and tried to focus on what her partner was saying. She wished he’d simply let her enjoy the waltz, but he seemed to think thathe must entertain her rather than allowing the flowing movements of the dance and the pulse of the music to do so. She allowed her lids to close over eyes that were beginning to glaze with boredom, and there appeared before her, in her mind’s eye, John Raven’s face. That had happened far too frequently lately, and she had found herself at too many social engagements unconsciously seeking that dark head which she knew would tower above those of the room’s other inhabitants.
Guilt, she had finally decided. Guilt over the role she’d played in her father’s brutality that day. By her mockery she had thrown Raven to the wolves when, she knew, she could have handled the situation differently, perhaps even have mitigated the duke’s fury. Apparently she wasn’t going to be given a chance to explain or apologize. John Raven seemed to have disappeared from London as quickly as he had appeared. Unconsciously, she sighed.
“Bored, my dear?” Gerald asked solicitously.
Good God, she thought, shocked at that familiar voice. She had changed partners in such a perfect fog that she’d been unaware until that very moment that she was floating across the floor in Amberton’s very capable arms.
“Tired,” she offered, wondering what she’d said to him before, while she was thinking of the American’s strong features.
“It’s nearly over. The Season is winding down and—”
“Don’t,” she ordered with something of her old spirit. “Don’t tell me what’s going to happen after that. I assure you I don’t intend to repeat the argument we had two weeks ago.”
She began to take her hand from his, resolving, since he seemed determined to remind her, to move away from him. But his fingers tightened over hers, controlling.
“You really are too accustomed to having your own way. I don’t think public humiliation, my dear, is on tonight’s agenda.”
She turned in surprise at his unexpected masterfulness. Smiling smugly, he ruthlessly swept her back into the rhythm of the waltz, holding her far closer than was acceptable.
“Let me go,” she demanded imperiously.
“Quit behaving like the spoiled chit I called you. We’re in the middle of the dance floor, for God’s sake. Don’t you dare try to walk away from me.”
Furious, she struggled again, and his fingers ground into hers more strongly, hard enough to bruise.
“You’ve had your own way too long, my pet. But I think you’ll not find me so easy to deal with as your ever-indulgent parent. You really have no option here, and you must know it.”
Catherine was forced to realize the unpleasant truth of his assertion. She could literally fight him for her freedom, here under the eyes of the gossiping old tabbies of the ton, or she could give in gracefully and finish the set. She couldn’t imagine what had come over Gerald, but in this instance she recognized the validity of what he had said. As much as she hated the admission, she really had no choice.
Finally the music ended, and with what she hoped was an icy dignity, she allowed him to lead her from the floor. Still furious, she had said nothing after his unconscionable behavior. She was relieved to find that her next partner was an old and trusted childhood friend, Lord Anthony Dellwood. Gerald released her with what appeared to be satisfaction with his mastery, and she nodded coldly before he turned away.
“I’m sorry,” she said as soon as Amberton had moved out of earshot, “but I’m feeling a trifle unwell. Do you suppose you might find my father, Tony? I really would like to go home.”
She dealt charmingly with his expressions of concern and was infinitely relieved when he left her alone in the small sheltered alcove to which he had taken her to wait while he saw to the arrangements. It was not just Gerald’s bizarre behavior, it was everything. The Seasonwas coming to an end, and with its conclusion, her father’s repeated ultimatums for her decision had increased. And the only man with whom she could imagine…
The thought impacted like fireworks in her brain. The only man with whom she could imagine spending the rest of her life was not Gerald, nor any of the other perfumed and pompous members of her set, but… Surely she couldn’t be contemplating marriage to the coal merchant. The words you belong to me echoed again in her brain, causing their own small explosion of sensation. My God, she wondered, could he possibly be right about that? “The bride was conveyed to her wedding by locomotive,” theMorning Post would say.
Catherine’s lips slanted suddenly as she remembered Raven correcting her father. She doubted whether anyone else in his very long and noble life had had the gall to point out the duke’s obvious errors to him. No wonder her father had been so furious that day. John Raven certainly did not play by the rules that had been set down for members of this society to follow.
“I’m sorry, my dear, but your father seems to have been called away. Some unexpected emergency. I’m sure a very minor one, but I’ve ordered your coach brought round and will very gladly escort you home,” Dellwood offered gallantly.
“There’s no need for that, Tony. You know how short the distance is. And Tom’s perfectly reliable. He’s been in my father’s service for years.”
“I insist. I’m sure your father would much prefer that I come with you. He probably already made arrangements for you to be conveyed home, and I’ve inadvertently countermanded them. I would never forgive myself if anything were to happen.”
“And what do you imagine might happen to me between here and home? This is London, you know, not the wilds of America.”
He laughed cooperatively at her feeble attempt at humor, while she wondered why that particular analogy had leapt into her mind. Obsessed with things American, perhaps? she questioned herself mockingly.
“I really insist on being allowed—” her escort began, and was quickly interrupted.
“And I must insist that I’m better off alone. Please. I really am not well, and I’m afraid this pointless argument…” As an added inducement, she pulled her small lace handkerchief from her glove and pressed it delicately against her lips.
Although still worried about the impropriety of allowing her to depart without escort, Dellwood was forced to agree. As Catherine had logically pointed out, thiswas London. What could possibly happen to the Duke of Montfort’s daughter while being transported to her home by her father’s own coachman?
The rain that had been a shower at the beginning of the evening had turned into a deluge, but through the solicitude of Lady Barrington’s servants, Catherine was put into the coach, suffering no more than a drop or two spotting the emerald silk. She sat morosely in the darkness of the swaying carriage, listening to the pounding fury of the storm against its roof. She was angered and bewildered by Gerald’s attempt at domination tonight. And, she was honest enough to admit, to herself at least, she was again disappointed that she had not at some point in the evening found two piercing blue eyes meeting hers with unusual directness. She missed the excitement her encounters with the American had added to her existence, and if she were completely honest, she knew that she also missed the man himself. Her lips moved into a slight smile, again remembering.
The small jolt of the carriage as it drew up to its destination pulled her attention from those memories, and she gathered her skirt in preparation for the descent into the driving rain. The door was opened and an enormous black umbrella held over her to shelter her from the deluge. Hurrying down the steps the coachman had dropped, she ran, head lowered against the force of the blowing rain, toward the welcoming glow that shone into the dark street from the door of the town house.
She heard it close behind her as she was shaking raindrops from her ball gown. She turned to hand her gloves and reticule to Hartford and found she was standing in the foyer alone.
In a foyer she had never seen before in her life. It took a moment for the reality of that to sink in. She was not in her father’s town house. There had been some terrible mistake.
“Good evening,” a deep voice intoned from the shadows at the end of the enormous hallway. She glanced up to find John Raven standing there, quietly watching her. His voice had echoed slightly across the empty expanse of softly gleaming black and gray squares of Italian marble that stretched between them.
She swallowed against the fear that constricted her throat. He had brought her here to avenge himself on her for what her father had done. She turned to the door behind her and began struggling to open it, her fingers trembling uncontrollably.
Before she could manage the intricacies of the unfamiliar lock, his beautifully shaped hand, which she had admired caressing Storm that day, gently closed over hers and removed them from the door. He turned the key that was in the lock and, removing it, placed it in his waistcoat pocket.
Catherine’s fear was reflected in the strained face she raised to his, so he smiled at her before he spoke. “I’m not going to hurt you,” Raven promised softly. He hated making her afraid, especially afraid of him.
“What do you want?” she whispered past the unfamiliar tightness that threatened to block her throat.
His mouth moved slightly, the corners deepening. “I thought I had made that perfectly clear. Even your father finally managed to understand what I want,” he answered, and she was allowed to read his amusement.
Catherine was beginning to calm down, Raven’s quiet humor making her believe that he really didn’t intend her harm. There was no anger in his tone or posture. Apparently he didn’t intend to seek revenge for the father’s insult by ravaging the daughter, but she could still see the mark the crop had made that day faintly lined on his cheek.
Raven let her study his face a moment, and then he said, “There’s nothing to be frightened of here.”
Somehow, she found herself believing him. But he must know—surely he must know, even stranger that he was— what being found in such a situation would do to her reputation.
“Why did you bring me here?” she asked, and then wondered for the first time how that had been accomplished. “And how? That was my father’s coachman. I saw him quite clearly before, at Lady Barrington’s. He would never—”
“He has an invalid wife and a multitude of children.”
“Youbribed him?” she asked, unable to believe that Tom would betray her for money.
“He was very concerned about you. But I gave him my word that you would come to no harm at my hands.”
“And he believed you?”
“Of course. He seems to be an excellent judge of character. He likes you very much, but he thinks your father’s a bastard.”
“You and the coachman discussed my father?” she asked. This must be some sort of nightmare. Soon she’d wake up, and she would still be on the dance floor, safely waltzing through another evening of deadly sameness.Safe, she thought longingly.
“Not at length. But we found ourselves in perfect agreement, I assure you.”
“Why did you bring me here?” She was beginning to be able to control her fear. To be able to think.
“I wanted to show you something. Two things, really. Both of which I thought you should see.”
“You abducted me toshow me something?” she repeated carefully. “And when I’ve seen whatever it is?”
“Then I’ll arrange to have you taken home. If you decide that’s what you want.”
“If I decide…?” Her voice rose. “What else do you imagine I would want?” She paused and took a breath, again seeking control. “Of course I shall want to be taken home.”
“Perhaps not. We won’t know until we’ve completed our business.”
Business, she echoed mentally, wondering with irritation if that was all John Raven ever thought about. Apparently he had kidnapped her to discuss business. She felt a spurt of fury. She’d been abducted by a man whom, she admitted, she was fascinated by, and all he wanted to do was to talk business. As if she were some solicitor or shopkeeper instead of what she was—the acknowledged toast of the last two London seasons. The final thought was reassuring in light of his disinterest.
She glanced up and realized he knew exactly what she was thinking. His amusement was obvious in that dark face. His eyes, which were warmer than she had ever seen them, displayed a clear understanding of her disappointment.
“Then why don’t you show me whatever you’ve brought me here to see and let me go home? The sooner the better, I assure you,” she said decisively.
Raven inclined his head in agreement and gestured with his hand, urging her ahead of him down the wide hall. She hesitated a moment and then swept up her damply clinging skirt and proceeded in the direction he’d indicated.
On her left was a vast salon, perfectly proportioned from the sweep of its tall Palladian windows that lined the wall to the graceful Adam fireplace and the finely executed plaster medallions overhead. And perfectly empty. Catherine wandered in, wondering what she was supposed to do. She turned, allowing a small sarcastic lift of one beautifully shaped auburn brow.
“And?” she said.
“This way,” he commanded and, shrugging, she followed.
It was exactly the same over the entire lower level of the mansion: elegant rooms of stately design and size, completely unfurnished. Raven didn’t comment as he led her through the vast dimness, their footsteps echoing over the bare floors. He took her finally into a small study, sparsely furnished with a huge desk and chair, another chair facing the desk, and a tall cabinet. The surface of the desk was cluttered with ledgers and papers. “I had thought, if you didn’t mind, that I would leave this as it is. To serve as my office. And there’s a small bedroom that I’ve left as I found it, simply for convenience. However, if you have any objections, I assure you I won’t stand in your way in redecorating those. I myself have little interest in such things. A chair and a bed and I’m perfectly happy.”
“This is your house?” Catherine asked, beginning to make some sense of this mysterious tour. “You’re living here.”
“A rather Spartan existence at present. But soon, I hope-”
“Inmy redecorating?” she interrupted, having just registered the gist of his explanation. “You expect me to redecorate?”
“I promised a house you might furnish as you pleased.”
“This… You intend that I… That you and I…” Despite several attempts, she couldn’t seem to complete the suggestion he once again appeared to be making. Apparently her father had not convinced him that he couldn’t have what he had decided he wanted. “Mr. Raven, you must realize—”
“They tell me it’s rare that such a property becomes available in Mayfair. That such houses as this seldom change hands. It was the first one they showed me, and I must confess, I felt it to be perfect. However, you know far more about such matters than I. If you think—”
“Mr. Raven…” She broke in again and then found herself at a loss. Nothing she said seemed to make an impression. Nothing her father had said or done seemed to matter at all. John Raven was without a doubt the most obstinate man she’d ever met.
“Then it won’t do?” he asked in the sudden silence.
“It’s not the house. It’s wonderful. You must know that.”
“The original furnishings are in storage, until you’ve had the opportunity to choose any of them you wish to keep. Or you may discard them all and begin anew. My solicitor assured me there are some very fine pieces among them, however. I’ll make arrangements for you to see everything as soon as—”
“Mr. Raven,” she interrupted, more strongly than before.
He stopped. The small depression at the corner of his lips deepened, but his expression was otherwise under perfect control, the blue eyes resting on her face with polite interest.
“I can’t marry you,” she said softly.
He glanced down briefly at the toe of his evening shoe, which gleamed softly at the bottom of his impeccably cut formal trousers, and she saw the breath he took before he spoke.
“Then perhaps I should show you the second thing I brought you here to see,” Raven said.
“Perhaps that would be wise,” Catherine agreed. “And then you promised to have me returned to my father’s house. I can only hope that he hasn’t already found that I’m not there.”
“Your father won’t be home for at least another hour.”
“How can you possibly…” The realization was as startling as the idea that he could simply bribe her father’s trusted servant to do whatever he wished. “You arranged for my father to be called away. So you could bring me here.”
“If things don’t turn out tonight as I hope they will, it seemed the safest way for you. No one will know that you’ve been here. Tom will take you home, and nothing will ever be said about your visit. If you decide that’s what you want.”
“If I decide?” she questioned.
“After you’ve seen what I would like to show you now.”
There seemed to be nothing to do but let him play out this fantasy, whatever else he had in mind. Whatever else he had to show her. Jewelry? she wondered, trying to think what he had mentioned in the original offer.
Turning, he chose a paper from the clutter on the desk and held it out to her.
Catherine had hesitated in the doorway, somehow reluctant to enter the suddenly too small confines of the room, which he seemed to dominate simply by standing, completely unmoving, waiting for her to take the paper he offered. In the dimness, his eyes shone in the spare, rugged beauty of his face.
Beauty? She repeated that incredible thought, wondering at her own description.
Shaking her head slightly to break the spell he always cast over her senses, she walked forward, laid her gloves and reticule on the desk and took the proffered sheet. She looked down at what she held, expecting a deed or some bill of sale, some added inducement to all that he had already offered. Something to sweeten the pot. And yet… he had never offered her the one thing she was beginning to realize she really wanted from him, the one thing that she knew would affect her decision.
She started to read, scanning what was written on the paper. One more obstacle to be overcome, and then he had promised to have her conveyed home…. She stopped suddenly, some sense of what she held finally dawning, and her eyes flew back to the top of the page to carefully peruse what she had only glanced at before: “… His Grace, the seventh Duke of Montfort, is pleased to announce the forthcoming marriage of his daughter, Lady Catherine Montfort, to Gerald Blaine, third Viscount Amberton.”
“That’s to appear in thePost and theGazette tomorrow,” Raven said.
“How did you get this?”
“Most things are for sale—given enough money. I was afraid your father might try something like this, so I took precautions against it.” Raven had offered her freedom, the only thing she did not have, and he could only pray that she would desire it enough to escape the trap they had devised for her.
Catherine felt the sickness growing in the pit of her stomach. Her father had broken a promise to her for the first time in her life. He was going to give her to Amberton without in any way considering her own wishes. And then, even more disturbing than that betrayal, came the remembrance of Gerald’s behavior on the dance floor. As if he were already certain of his control over her. As, of course, he had been, she realized—assured of that control through her father’s treachery.
Unconsciously she flexed the bruised fingers the viscount had gripped so painfully earlier tonight. “But he promised,” she whispered, fighting the urge to give in to the tears that she so seldom shed. Her own father had forsaken her.
“I’m sorry. I believe my proposal probably played a part in his decision, at least in the timing. Youdid try to warn me.”
She looked up at the unexpected confession, surprised to find what appeared to be a look of concern on his face. It was almost immediately replaced by the controlled expression John Raven’s features always bore. So quickly did the change occur that she was forced to doubt her identification of the emotion she had seen. How could he possibly know what she was feeling—this sense of betrayal and despair over the fate her father had arranged?
“It’s not your fault,” she admitted, because in all fairness it wasn’t. “I suppose I’ve always known this was inevitable. And Gerald…” she began, again remembering his actions tonight. She had held to the illusion that if she were forced to choose from the men she knew, Gerald at least offered some possibility of rapport. Until tonight. Tonight he had seemed almost a stranger, determined to force her to his will.
“There is another option,” Raven said, interrupting her despondency.
She glanced up from the announcement her father had had composed. An option. Freedom and wealth.Rich as Croesus. At least she would never have to wonder if John Raven had wanted her for her father’s money. No, she remembered suddenly, he wanted her for a far different reason. His promise of noninterference in her life was to be in exchange for her becoming his hostess, for arranging his entry into the ton. A business arrangement. If only he had offered…
She banished that ridiculous thought, trying to decide if accepting Raven’s proposal could possibly provide a way out of the trap Amberton and her father had so blithely created. A marriage trap—weighed against the promise of freedom.
“Freedom?” she questioned aloud. And as if he had been following the convoluted path of her reasoning, he nodded.
“You have my word. Within the constraints of our contract. You invite to this house those men who would certainly not come otherwise, entertain them so well that the invitations to dine here become the most fashionable in London, and you refrain from taking lovers. Other than those responsibilities, you may do entirely as you wish. I promise that I will never censure you,” he vowed, and again she found herself believing him.
“You must know my father will disinherit me,” she warned.
“The fewer ties you have with your father, the better pleased I shall be,” Raven admitted. His gut twisted at the remembrance of what the old man had said. That insult had cut far more deeply than the gash across his face.
Catherine hoped that, like her father’s coachman, she was a good judge of character. “All right,” she agreed softly.
Raven said nothing, relief and exultation blocking his throat, a reaction as automatic and uncontrollable as that which tightened his stomach muscles and stirred painfully in his groin. She had just agreed to become his wife. Against everyone’s assurance that she never would.
Because he didn’t respond, Catherine was unsure that he had heard her whisper. She looked up and said it again. “All right, Mr. Raven. I accept. And now, how do you intend to bring this off, in light of the announcement tomorrow of my betrothal to Lord Amberton?” Somehow she had no doubt he had already devised a plan to handle the practical aspects of their wedding.
“I had thought…” Raven paused, trying to gauge her mood. There had been too much pain in those beautiful eyes. Pain quickly hidden beneath her pride.
She met his searching gaze with her face deliberately cleared of emotion and her chin unconsciously raised. Once committed, she was prepared to burn her bridges spectacularly.
“You intend to let my father find us together?” she guessed, realizing that he certainly didn’t know the duke as well as she. “Hoping that he’ll then consent to our marriage?”
“Would that work?” Raven asked, amused at the scenario she’d suggested. Far more melodramatic than what he’d planned, but when he considered the possibilities it offered…
“I’m afraid not. He’d shoot you, or hire someone to do it, and then cover it up. He also has a great deal of money.”
His lips moved slightly, and she knew she’d amused him.
“Then do you suggest I tell him that you’ve agreed to become my wife?”
“He’ll shoot you, or hire someone to do it, and then—”
“I see.” He interrupted her repetition of the outcome. And he was still amused. “Then perhaps you have a suggestion.”
“Gretna Green,” she said decisively, fighting memories of another run for the Border. Another man, very different from this. “Shocking, I know,” she forced herself to continue, “but it’s really the only way.”
“And your reputation?” Raven could imagine how their elopement would be viewed by the ton. He hadn’t intended to ruin her life, to cut her off from everyone she’d ever known.
“Oh, dear Lord,” she said, chiding his ignorance. “A scandal of the proportionthis one is going to be? The love story they’ll imagine is at the root ofthis runaway marriage? Your wealth? And your appearance?” she added unthinkingly, and saw again the small, upward quirk of his lips. “Give the gossip two months to ferment, and we’ll be able to charge admission to the first dinner party.” She glanced down at the paper he had handed her. They really had given her no choice.
“Let me worry about the ton, Mr. Raven. You worry about what horses you have in your stables that can beat my father’s best in a race to the Border. I’ll take care of the rest. It’s what I was born to do,” she asserted confidently. Having been bred and reared in the world he desired to enter, she was secure in her membership. She was already thinking of the best way to handle the necessary explanations when the time was right.
“I don’t think that’s what you were born for at all,” Raven said, knowing exactly for whom Catherine Montfort had been created. His angel. His wife.
At that surprising comment, she looked up from the hated announcement. John Raven, however, was already striding through the door to make those arrangements that she had suggested were his responsibility in this merger they had undertaken.
Only a business arrangement, she reminded herself, her eyes resting again on the evidence of her father’s treachery, which had driven her to this contract and to this man.
Chapter Four (#ulink_d3e0e86a-f8a7-5114-92dd-cea01ea8de78)
Once the flight up the Great North Road had begun, they did not stop except to change horses. It seemed to Catherine that they flew through the darkness, the coach rocketing along the well-maintained thoroughfare. The horses Raven had arranged to be waiting at the various posting inns were not only fresh, but bred for stamina and speed. They finally reached their destination in less than thirty hours, without having seen any evidence of what she had been sure would be a determined pursuit.
Despite the inducements of the professional “witnesses,” Raven sought out a real blacksmith shop. The ceremony over the anvil was quickly completed, an exchange of vows as stripped of pageantry as even, she believed, the American might wish.
Raven then took time to discuss with the smith the quality of the metal he had been using, before they’d interrupted him, to shape the products that came from his forge. Even the taciturn Scot responded to his well-informed comments.
“Aye, well, you’re right enough about that, my lord,” the smith said in answer to Raven’s observation that nowhere in Scotland was wrought iron produced, which would be free from the impurities that often ruined an object of some hours’ work.
“My name is Raven,” the American had corrected, offering his hand, “and I’m no lord.”
“Your pardon, then, Mr. Raven. I meant no offense,” the smith said, smiling, his pale eyes twinkling at his joke.
“Offense?” Catherine Montfort Raven questioned.
Her husband turned, smiling, to answer her slightly affronted inquiry. “There are men,” he explained, “who believe that to be accused of being English nobility is a deadly insult.”
“Why?” she asked, never having encountered such a ridiculous prejudice. But then, of course, she had never before talked to a Scots blacksmith as he worked his forge.
“Because it implies uselessness, perhaps,” Raven answered hesitantly. He had known instinctively what the smith implied, but he didn’t intend to explain the insult to Catherine.
“Like my father, you mean,” she suggested.
Without answering, Raven took her elbow to guide her back to the waiting carriage, scarcely able to believe that this incredibly beautiful girl, serenely elegant even after their long journey, was now his wife. His to care for and protect. And her comment had brought him back to the stillprecarious situation in which they found themselves. The Duke of Montfort, when crossed, could be a very dangerous man. Despite the Scots’ friendliness, Raven doubted they’d be willing to fight the duke’s hirelings to defend a stranger who happened to know something of their trade.
He helped Catherine into the coach and walked back to the forge to wait for the mulled wine the smith’s daughter had been dispatched to fetch.
“That girl’s too delicate for marriage to the likes of you, Mr. Raven,” the blacksmith offered, eyeing the foreigner’s broad shoulders, which looked more than capable of handling the heavy hammers that were a part of his own trade. “She’ll be whining and denying you after the first child. You’d best hope she gets you a son on her first swelling. Though, come to that, she don’t look sturdy enough to bear a babe. Not up to your riding weight, if you get my meaning,” he suggested, slapping his blushing daughter on her ample rump as she passed. “You need a fine Scots lass who’ll welcome your lovemaking and bear you a houseful of strong sons. You’ll soon be regretting this day’s work,” he said, becoming more daring in response to the hooting enjoyment of the men who had gathered to watch as he plied his bellows.
Even hidden from sight in the isolation of the waiting coach, Catherine was well able to hear the smith’s comments. She felt the hot blood flowing upward into her cheeks, not only at the crudity with which he was discussing the consummation of her marriage, but at the contempt in which he obviously held her and her class.
“You may know a great deal about iron,” her husband said, his voice coming to her as clearly as had the Scotsman’s, although he had not raised it to entertain the listening crowd. “But I’m forced to tell you, sir, that you know nothing about women. My wife is, I assure you, the purest cast steel. You need have no doubts about her quality. Or,” Raven added, “about anything else you’ve called into question.”
At the burst of laughter and the catcalls that greeted his response—all made, surprisingly, at the expense of the smith and not the American who had so eloquently defended his choice of woman—Raven touched his hat, planted a quick kiss on the cheek of the smith’s daughter as he took the stone bottle from her hand, and walked back to the waiting carriage.
Catherine’s blush made it obvious, she was afraid, that she’d overheard the entire conversation. “They don’t think much of the English, do they?” she commented, with what she hoped was a convincing display of nonchalance. “Or of me,” she added almost bitterly, spoiling the effect.
“I told them they were mistaken,” Raven said, smiling. When her lips moved slightly into a reluctant realignment, almost an answering smile, he finished, “About you at least.”
Finally, she did smile. There was really no need to argue with him about the smith’s assessment of the English nobility, an assessment she realized she had at times even shared.
She was also beginning to realize that she was no longer just a part of the world she’d always inhabited; she was, by virtue of the vows she had spoken, simple though they were, a part of Raven’s. A world which, apparently, included vulgar Scots blacksmiths. She shivered slightly, whether from the cold of the morning air or from her acknowledgment that she belonged not only to Raven’s world, but also, of course, to John Raven himself.
“Would you like some wine?” he asked into the uncomfortable silence that had fallen between them.”I can’t vouch for its quality, but at least it’s warm.” He had wrapped his ungloved hands, their golden color reddened slightly with the cold, around the bottle, using it as a warming stone.
She tried to block the image of those strong hands moving over her body, one she was sure the Scotsmen whom they were leaving behind at the smithy were also picturing. She knew her life would never be the same. She had committed herself to this man who had promised her freedom, but now, in the swaying confines of his coach, she acknowledged that that was no longer the thing she most desired from him.
Raven watched the slender fingers smooth tremblingly over her arms. Somehow the sophisticated surety that had characterized Catherine Montfort since he’d met her had softened, had lessened in this unfamiliar environment. He could only imagine what she must be feeling now. She had committed herself to him without any certainty that he would honor their agreement. And if he broke his word, she would have no legal recourse. By virtue of the vows they had just spoken, she had given herself into his control. Because, he reminded himself grimly, he had promised her freedom.
“Here,” he offered softly.
She looked up from the tangled emotions of the last few minutes, to find Raven holding out a steaming cup of the mulled wine. She took the tin mug, her fingers gratefully encircling its heat. As she sipped the comforting beverage, her frame still racked by occasional shivers, her husband’s arm came around her shoulders. He pulled her, unresisting, to lean against the pleasant heat of his body.
At least he could hold her, Raven thought, as frustrating as he was finding the restraint imposed by the terms of their contract to be. For the time being he must be satisfied with the relationship he’d promised. A vow, his grandmother had taught him, was sacred and must be kept, no matter the cost.
Eventually he felt Catherine’s breathing deepen, and he knew that she slept. Asleep in his arms. Her small frame sheltered by his. He would give his life, without hesitation, to guard and protect this woman who now belonged to him. At least in name, he acknowledged bitterly.
Catherine Montfort Raven, he thought again, feeling the pleasure of that stir hotly in his groin. Slowly and carefully he shifted his weight, trying not to waken her, but needing to find a more comfortable position for the painful hardness of desire. John Raven knew, of course, there was really only one position that would ever offer true relief for that particular ache, and he wondered how long it would be before he might be allowed to savor its sweet release.
Two months later
Catherine sat, nibbling the end of her pen, once again remembering that flying journey home from the Border. She had slept, exhausted, through most of the trip, and whenever she’d awakened it had been to the comfort of Raven’s steady heartbeat, just under the hard muscles against which her cheek had rested. That was, however, the last time her husband had touched her, and in the months since their marriage, his apparent lack of interest had become almost unbearable.
He had promised her freedom from his interference, and it was a promise he had certainly kept. He had made a contract with her for certain services and then, surprisingly, he had scrupulously kept to its terms—terms that she had never believed he would be able to adhere to. She had expected to be courted, and instead he virtually ignored her existence.
She had occupied her time and energy during those weeks in staffing and furnishing the elegant mansion he’d purchased. Although her instructions had been carried out to the letter, the task of seeing that they were had been left to Mr. Reynolds, Raven’s very efficient man of business, and his start.
Her husband had taken no part in choosing the nearly priceless items she’d retained from the original furnishings, which she’d found stored, as he’d promised, in a vast warehouse near the East India docks. She had discovered that the warehouse was one of many London properties he owned, most of its space devoted to the temporary storage of goods that he imported from the Orient for the insatiable English market.
She had also been allowed to choose the finest of those imports for her new home. She had spent hours wandering among the bolts of newly arrived silks, the porcelains still in their straw-packed crates. Her skirts brushing against the Holland covers, she had examined countless pieces of furniture, paintings and objets d’art that had been purchased with the mansion, and which Mr. Reynolds’s clerks uncomplainingly uncovered for her inspection.
She was conscientiously trailed by one of the banker’s staff, and almost by magic, the pieces she had chosen from the warehouse, plus the additional ones she purchased from the manufacturers on Bond or Oxford Streets, arrived at the Mayfair residence and were set up in the rooms they were intended to grace.
And grace them they did, she thought with satisfaction, glancing around the small salon in which she was sitting. It was almost certainly the finest house in the capital. As it should be, considering the sums she had spent. But if she had been hoping for some comment on that almost deliberate extravagance from the man who paid the bills, she had been disappointed.
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