“Ah, but the church is the noblest of professions, my lady,” Lord Vitor replied, and reached for two more glasses on the waiting footman’s tray. He extended one to Lady Penelope. “Miss Caulfield, what admirable moral guidance you must have enjoyed in your impressionable youth—”
The footman pitched forward abruptly, the tray jerked, and the remaining glass of champagne splattered over Lady Grace.
She gasped. The footman grabbed the glass. Lord Vitor took the tilted tray from his grip and set it down. Ravenna stared, but not at Lady Grace. The dent in his cheek had deepened.
Fury lit Lady Grace’s eyes upon the footman. “You—”
“I fear, my lady,” Lord Vitor said, “that the fault is not this poor fellow’s, but mine.”
“Mais— monseigneur—” the footman sputtered.
“No, no, my good man. I won’t have you taking the blame for it. This dratted injury to my leg caused it to spasm momentarily. I kicked you and I am terribly sorry to have made you trip.” He turned to Lady Grace and bowed. “I am devastated, my lady. Can you ever forgive me?”
She opened her lips and after a moment’s silence said, “Of course I shall, my lord.”
Lady Whitebarrow appeared between Ravenna and Miss Feathers. “My dear Grace, whatever has happened?” she said coolly. “Come. They will hold dinner while you change. Do not fret. We will demand that his highness remove that footman from service immediately.”
Lady Penelope set her hand atop her mother’s. “That will not be necessary, Mama. Grace will be all right as soon as she changes her gown.” Her gaze slid to Ravenna, and the blue of her pale eyes grew diamond hard. “No one is at fault.”
Ravenna returned her stare. While innocent Ann Feathers would not understand what had just occurred, Lady Penelope most certainly did. It might have been the nobleman who enacted the insult, but Ravenna would pay for it.
This time, however, there was no bird, no chicks, nothing with which they could hurt her. There was only she, alone yet capable of defending herself even from an attacker in the dark. She could manage two spiteful girls well enough. She could even wrest justice from an arrogant lord too.
Chapter 4
The Knight
Vitor had already reached the base of the stairs to the upper quarters when he heard her footsteps, light and far too quick for a lady, coming after him. He lengthened his pace, and she hastened hers.
“Wait, would you!” she shouted up to him.
It could not be avoided. Hand on the rail, he paused on the uppermost step and turned, squelching a grimace from the pain in his leg. Like a dark, homespun fury, she ascended.
“Miss Caulfield,” he could only think to say. As in the stable, then again in the drawing room, he felt the most insistent urge to grab her about the waist and kiss her. It was instinctual and animal and thoroughly ignoble and certainly a product of two years of enforced celibacy. It left him tongue-tied.
She came to a halt on the step beside him. “Well?” Cheeks flushed lightly pink and eyes sparkling like stars at midnight, she looked directly at him. There was no coquettishness about this girl, no maidenly reticence or superficial niceness, rather, all justified indignation that made her astoundingly pretty. “Well?” she repeated.
With some effort he unwound his tongue. “I am emboldened by your eloquence, Miss Caulfield, to suggest that you are perhaps as weary as I at the end of this long day—after a rather uncomfortable night, although perhaps not quite as uncomfortable for you as it was for me.” He allowed himself the slightest smile. “I advise you to continue on to your quarters for a good sleep as I intend to do.”
“Oh!” she said brightly. “Such a wit! I am transported.” With a swift perusal of his coat, waistcoat, trousers, and boots—first down, then up—that rendered the tension in his abdomen into an aggressive pressure, she took the final step to the landing above. Her starlight eyes came to his level. Not good.
“You tackled me, then you kissed me,” she said.
“And you hit me with a door and then a pitchfork and bit me. It seems we are both outrageously outrés.”
“Perhaps,” she conceded with a twist of soft, full lips the color of summer dusk over the Mediterranean. “But you actually deserved it.”
“I don’t know what came over me.” Celibacy. Two long years of celibacy. And ripe lips. Dusky, tempting lips an inch beneath his. And a soft, curved body, also beneath him. Tonight her curves were concealed by yet another gown of plain fabric and serviceable shape, and yet still he could not look away. He didn’t know what sins he had done to deserve this torment, but whatever it was he was willing to do a thousand novenas to escape speaking with her in private ever again.
She set her hands on her hips, emphasizing their decadent curve. Never mind her homespun gown and unkempt hair, she made his breaths short.
“You kissed me because you thought I was a servant, which is despicable.”
“I kissed you because you were soft and shapely and at the time under me, which is in fact quite reasonable.”
“I did not exactly put myself there.”
“And I did not exactly plan on being attacked by a feral cat in the dark. It was a mistake. Good night, Miss Caulfield.” He continued onto the landing and swiftly down the long, high gallery that his blood-grandfather had constructed to display the family’s vast collection of medieval armor. To either side, his forebears had arranged suits of steel, some of plain, pounded metal, others elaborately painted and embossed.
“Is that all I am to have?” She followed him. “I suppose you consider an apology beneath you.”
Rather, he was considering her beneath him, how good she’d felt there, and how he would like that again. He halted. “Madam, I offer my profoundest apology. It shan’t happen again.” As though his feet moved of their own will, he found himself stepping toward her. “Unless you wish it to.”
She backed up. “Not in this life.” But her eyes were wary.
Good. He did not wish to frighten her. But keeping her wary could work. And yet the most powerful need to be near her would not leave him. Of course it wouldn’t. After two long years he wanted a woman. Among his brother’s potential brides was not, however, the place to go searching for one.
“That must be to my advantage, then,” he said.
She screwed up her brow. “Must it?”
“You wield an impressive pitchfork.”
“I know how to use the tines too.” A smile played about her lips, a reluctant smile that begged a man to set his lips to it and tease it into fullness.
Oh, no.
“I do not doubt it,” he said, backing away. “And I will hold you to that should I decide I need assistance in hastening my end.” Turning away from the temptress, he started along the corridor again. But . . . he had to know. He looked over his shoulder. “How did you know what colh?es meant?”
“I guessed.”
“You guessed?”
“I spend a lot of time with stable hands and farmers. Now, what about the other apology you owe me?”
Looking into her upturned face, he wished he had a list of sins for which he must apologize. Last night, if he’d had his wits about him, he might not have returned her attack. Instead he might have seduced slowly, carefully, and succeeded. He might have enticed her to him, tempting her to touch him voluntarily. Then, in the dark he might have allowed his hands to explore those hips and that waist, to smooth up to her breasts, round and young and the perfect size for a man’s hands, to press her knees apart and—