No.
He shook his head. “I did nothing else to you.” Deeply regrettable.
“Not that. What about Lady Grace in the drawing room?”
Ah. The champagne rescue. Cats like Whitebarrow’s daughters needed to be served occasional doses of humility. It was good for their souls. “Don’t thank me.” He waved it off. “I did nothing.”
“You made it worse.”
“What?”
“They are furious with me for having witnessed Lady Grace’s embarrassment.”
“But they ceased insulting you, didn’t they?”
A mulish frown marred her brow. “I can defend myself.”
“You were clearly doing a spectacular job of it.”
Ravenna stared into eyes the color of midnight and did not like it that laughter and warmth lurked there. This handsome, virile nobleman could know nothing of her daily struggle not to tell girls like Penelope and Grace exactly what she thought of them. Standing here with a sapphire nestled in his snowy, starched cravat and aristocratic blood stamped all over his face, he couldn’t understand anything worthwhile. But nothing came to her tongue. The crease teasing at his left cheek muddled her head, just as his lips upon hers had.
“Mm hm,” he murmured, his midnight eyes intent. “I thought so. Good night, Miss Caulfield. Pleasant dreams plotting your revenge.” He bowed. His gait as he walked away was not entirely even. He favored his left leg, the leg she’d hit with the pitchfork.
Guilt and some confusion tangled in her belly. “I absolutely will not dream of you, even to plan revenge,” she said to his back.
Over his shoulder he turned a smile upon her that sent her breath into her toes. For a moment, almost, his smile seemed regretful. “I was referring to your revenge upon Ladies Penelope and Grace, of course,” he said.
An alien sensation swept into her face. She touched her cheek. It was hot. Hot?
At a slow pace he returned to her. His smile had vanished. He halted before her and bowed again, this time soberly.
“Miss Caulfield, I beg your forgiveness.” His voice was low and his gaze seemed to seek hers quite closely. “I intended you no harm, in truth. Still, I was unpardonably dishonorable to assail you and then tease you and then rescue you and then tease you yet again. Can you forgive me, or will those eyes like stars stare with accusation at me throughout the remaining weeks of this fete?”
Eyes like stars? It was a very good thing she didn’t regularly consort with lords. Their rote flatteries were positively inane. “You are still teasing. And you ask my forgiveness in the same words you asked Lady Grace’s.”
“But in this instance I am most sincere.”
“I am not in the habit of forgiving.”
“Perhaps you might make an exception this time.”
“I don’t know why I should.”
“Consider my injuries.” The dent deepened anew. “Perhaps I am already sufficiently punished.”
She tried not to smile. “I won’t apologize for that.”
“I never expected you to. Now may we put this unfortunate episode behind us and instead pretend to be two people who happened to become acquainted over spilled champagne?”
“Why should we pretend that?”
“It’s either that or the pitchfork.” His dark eyes glimmered.
“All right. But don’t do it again.”
“Kiss you in a stable or defend you from tabbies?”
The heat was back in her face. “Either.”
“I believe I can promise that.” He bowed again. “Good night, madam.” He walked away.
Ravenna stared at his back but her cheeks still burned. She dragged her attention to the floor. Nothing there could make her feel peculiarly hot or unsteady as his shoulders and dark hair and the muscular lengths of his legs did.
Where her gaze alit, a blot of dark liquid pooled about the pointed toe of a suit of armor. She crouched and studied the leak. It was not black but dark crimson and congealed. Blood. Undeniably, blood. Far too much blood for a mouse that might have gotten trapped in the armored foot, or even a cat. She sniffed. The scent that came to her was ripe like animal death yet unfamiliar, an odd oniony morbidity. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled.
She stood and peered at the suit’s visor. The steel looked impenetrable, with a tiny slit over the eyes that was lost in shadow now, one of those old helmets from which she could not imagine how a knight would be able to see. She reached up and pried open the visor.
She jolted back. The visor clanked shut. But she’d seen enough to make her hot skin turn clammy.
“A student of medieval arms, are you, Miss Caulfield?” Lord Vitor’s voice echoed from the opposite end of the gallery. “And here I’d thought you preferred farm tools.”
“There is a dead man inside this suit.”
He moved to her quite swiftly, no evidence of the injury she’d dealt him now in his gait.
“I saw the blood on the floor from the foot,” she said as he came beside her. He lifted the visor, then lowered it and looked down at her. His sapphire eyes were no longer warm and laughing.
“I pray you, go now, Miss Caulfield,” he said.
“No.”
“Go now.”
“Why?”
“Go. A lady should not see this.”
“I’m not a lady. And I have seen dead bodies before.” That made her stomach tight. Beast’s grave was the freshest. She had laid him atop his favorite old blanket and wrapped the wool about him, then she had watered the dirt with her tears.
“Go.”
“I wonder who he is. That gold tooth wasn’t come by cheaply, so he’s certainly not a servant.”
“He was a man of more vanity than means.”
She looked away from the corpse to the nobleman beside her and her stomach did a little jerk. He was so alive. It struck her as odd that she would think this, that she would notice a man’s aliveness. She had never done so before, even when confronted by death. But there was a depth of warm vitality to Lord Vitor Courtenay that shone in his eyes and the manner in which he stood with easy confidence.
“How do you know that?” she said.
“His name is Oliver Walsh. I have known him many years but I did not know he was to be a guest here.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” She looked at the suit of armor again. “I suppose he became trapped in there and suffocated, though of course that wouldn’t explain the blood. We must—”
Lord Vitor grasped her arm. “Miss Caulfield, will you retire now? I will send the housekeeper to see to your comfort.”
She pulled free. “I don’t need comforting. I told you—”
“Woman, do as I say,” he growled.
“Ah, we’ve returned to the stable, have we?”
A muscle in his jaw flexed. “Miss Caulfield—”
“You don’t think he suffocated. You think someone murdered him, then stuffed him in this suit.”
He shook his head. “You are the most peculiar lady I have ever encountered.”
“I have already told you, I am not a lady. Let me help.”
“Help?”
“Help you remove this suit and examine him.”
“No.”
“I am quite good at this sort of thing.”
“No.”
“I have considerable experience caring for both animals and humans.”
“Live humans, presumably?”
“Usually, but not exclusively. Three months ago I solved the mysterious death of the butcher in the local village.”