Vitor remained silent. There was nothing he could say.
“Miss Caulfield is quite taking too.” Wesley spoke too casually. “Of course, she has no connection to the nobility, so marriage is out of the question. Did you know that she was a foundling? Her adoptive father would not put up resistance to a temporary arrangement, I suspect, although Sir Beverley might prove troublesome. But I know how to get around these sorts of things. I had an interesting conversation with him last night after dinner while Sebastiao was doling out parts for Romeo and Juliet. Peculiar choice of plays given the grim circumstances in which we all find ourselves, wouldn’t you say? But his royal highness seems an odd bird in general. I don’t know how you bore with him all those years.”
Vitor had ceased walking.
Wesley looked back at him. “Brother?”
“Why are you speaking to me about this?”
“Why not?”
“Do not trifle with her in an attempt to hurt me, Wes. If you do, I will make you sorry for it.”
His brother’s eyes narrowed. “Not denying it, hm? And yet I believe she said that she threw you off already once.”
Vitor went to him. They were of a height and he looked him in the eye. “It has been seven years, Wes. When will you set aside your anger?”
“Perhaps it is not anger toward you that inspires my interest in Miss Caulfield but her natural appeal. I would not be the only man here who has given her more than a passing glance.”
In the drawing room the night before, Sebastiao had asked after her until Vitor went searching, to be told by the guard he’d posted to her protection that she had retired early.
Wesley seemed to study him. “Ah, he does not know the lady’s mind, it seems,” he said as though to himself. “Perhaps he thinks she favors another.” His eyes narrowed. “Tell me, little brother, how does that feel?” After a moment’s pause, he turned and went inside.
Vitor followed. The great hall echoed with the sounds of activity in the drawing room beyond the archway. Ravenna appeared in the opening. Without pause she came to him, crouched to the stone floor, and took the pup into her arms. She caressed its neck and behind its ears with her supple hands.
“Monsieur Sepic is in the drawing room being thoroughly useless,” she said, setting the pup on the ground. It attacked her hem. “He accused Lord Whitebarrow of stubbornness and arrogance—which of course is accurate—and the duchess of speaking nonsense. He does not understand her when she speaks French and she refuses to speak English with him. It is fabulously entertaining.” Her eyes sparkled. Then her brow pinched. “Much more so than dinner last night, at least.” She walked across the great hall beside him, the pup trailing. “Have you learned anything useful this morning?”
“Martin Anders’s boots and the hem of his coat were soaked through. I discovered them drying by the hearth here when I went out at dawn. He must have been outside for some time to achieve that.”
“So was everybody. Guests stroll within the walls under the supervision of the prince’s guards. Perhaps he took his walk before dawn to avoid the others. Sir Henry’s boots shine despite several trips to the stables.”
“Feathers is considerably wealthier than Prunesly. He would have more than one pair. Prunesly’s son might not.”
“Are you considerably wealthy?”
Vitor couldn’t help smiling. “You say the damnedest things.”
“My father tried to teach me manners but I didn’t listen very often. Petti and Sir Beverley have despaired of me for years. And of course I am not unique between us in saying ‘the damnedest things.’ ”
“I am a second son only.”
“Second son of a wealthy peer, they say, which probably makes you at least grandly comfortable if not despicably rich. Why are you here?”
He peered at her.
“What are you doing in the mountains of France in March at the bride-hunting party of a Portuguese prince?” she clarified.
“How long have you been wondering this?”
“The question only now occurred to me. Rather, it occurred to me when I saw you take out your horse. It is a beautiful animal. Superbly beautiful. He must have cost you a fortune.”
Ashdod had cost a fortune, but it had been only a mere fraction of the money he had in London and Lisbon banks.
“Watching from an upper window, were you?” he said.
“I was in the stable examining a sore hoof.”
Before dawn? But she had been in the stable after midnight when he first encountered her. This time he had not heard her and she had not revealed her presence to him.
“In that?” He glanced at her gown. The pink frock was youthful and light and damnably tight across her breasts. As though she had only just come inside, her cheeks were bright with cold, and straw and dirt clung to the gown’s hem where the dog had not yet chewed it away.
“Recall that you sliced my best gown into shreds.” She offered him a too-sweet smile.
He shook his head. “I—”
“Feeling guilty?”
For stripping her to her shift and affording himself a glimpse of her hidden beauty? No. He couldn’t make his tongue function.
She laughed. “I have other gowns, of course. But thanks to Ann Feathers inviting the prince to peruse my wardrobe while I was in the housekeeper’s room, I now know that he prefers that I wear her gowns instead. She lent me this and two others, both with considerably more ruffles and lace. Lady Margaret has astoundingly busy taste.”
He bowed and finally managed, “I offer my apologies for ruining your gown.”
“Just don’t do it again. You may be a wealthy aristocrat but I am a poor vicar’s daughter. I cannot afford to repay Miss Feathers should you ruin one of her gowns the next time.”
“I do not anticipate a next time.”
Her lashes beat twice, rapidly. “Then perhaps you might reconsider the reliability of the guard you assigned to me. He was nowhere to be seen when Mr. Anders cornered me by my bedchamber door last night.”
Jealousy. Hot and quick. “Anders was still in the drawing room when I retired.” Had the guard lied about her retiring early? “When did you see him?”
“I don’t believe he is the murderer,” she only replied.
“Have you a reason for that?”
“No. Since I am a woman I haven’t the ability to reason, as all those medieval theologians my father likes to quote were so fond of insisting. Therefore I draw conclusions based not on evidence but on emotion, of which, according to Mr. Anders, I have a great quantity.” A shadow crossed her eyes.
Grasping her elbow, he halted her. “What happened?” Ravenna. He wished to speak her name. She had given him leave. But he would be a scoundrel to take it, and a fool. He wanted it too much.
She glanced down at his hand around her arm and her throat moved in a soft constriction. She drew out of his hold. “I had occasion to study the bruise on his eye,” she said. “If his health is good and his humors are balanced, which they seem to be, I place the injury within hours of the time we discovered the body. Mr. Walsh might have struck Mr. Anders in the eye. Rather more to the point, however, is that Mr. Anders is a fool. He had ample opportunity to harm me, even to threaten me, yet he failed to do so.”
Vitor tried to steel his voice against the anger. “He could be ingratiating himself to you in order to act later, when you do not expect it.”