“I don’t know that. How did Lady Penelope learn that I cannot dance?”
“Not from me.”
“And how is it that Mr. Walsh once worked for your father but you hadn’t any notion that he would be at this castle in France at precisely the time you and Lord Case are guests here?”
“I don’t know. My brother might, but if so he hasn’t told me.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Ravenna, I am telling you the truth.”
Her eyes skittered away. “I don’t know that the information I just learned is useful to the investigation of the murder.” But even as she spoke, he could see that she doubted her own words, and that troubled her. Her nature did not incline toward secrecy, rather honest clarity. She had the hands of a healer and the beauty of a wild creature, and Vitor wanted to take her into his arms and taste her, now, here, until he had his fill.
She worried her lower lip between her teeth.
“I can nearly see the gears grinding,” he said to distract himself from what he wished to do to her lips.
Her heel shifted up a step, retreating. “My mind is not a clock. There are no gears.”
“Give me your thoughts. Please,” he added.
“It was Lord Whitebarrow, but . . . not Lady Whitebarrow.”
Unsurprising. Like most men of his status, Whitebarrow took what he wanted. More instructive, perhaps, would be the identity of his partner.
A reluctant smile rippled over her lips. “I had the same thought.”
“What thought was that?”
“That with an Ice Countess like his, it’s no wonder he looks elsewhere.”
The general’s avowal of devotion to his wife came to Vitor as he looked into the dark star eyes of this woman he wanted. “Whitebarrow was not only looking.”
Her gaze retreated into the confusion he’d seen in them when he had touched her the night before. “No,” she agreed.
“Who was he with?”
“I cannot tell you.”
There were few options. Lady Margaret: unlikely. The duchess: unlikely for different reasons. A maid: possibly.
“Lady Iona,” he said.
A breath shot from her. “I cannot confirm that.”
She hid her feelings in dissembling as well as she hid her beauty in plain gowns and unkempt coiffures: without success. Watching her with the other guests had left him with few questions as to her loyalties. “In this house among the women, you would only go to the gallows for Lady Iona or Miss Feathers.”
Her chin lifted infinitesimally. “Perhaps you do not know me well enough to know whom I would protect if I must.”
“I do.”
“Really? Then since you have already pronounced upon my loyalty to the women here, tell me, whom among the men would I defend?”
“Sir Beverley and Pettigrew.”
“Anybody can see that.”
Now he could say what he might have said in the darkness before he had ordered her to go. He could tell her of the desire he had seen in her eyes when he had touched her so simply, the naked longing. He could tell her that he had made her go because he hadn’t trusted himself not to take advantage of it.
He said, “And me.”
Chapter 11
The Wild Creature
Her lashes beat once. “You are astoundingly arrogant. But I suppose handsome men are rarely otherwise.”
“I do not speak from arrogance.” He spoke from the certainty born of a single meeting of hands that she was as moved by him as he was by her.
A frown marred the bridge of her nose that was not of classical proportions or fashionably pert and as such was infinitely more adorable. Then she pushed by him and hurried down the steps. “I will question her later. After she is . . . finished.” She seemed to choke on the last word.
Vitor pivoted and descended behind her and grasped her by the arm. The color drained from her cheeks.
He bent his head, willing her to look at him. “You are as skittish as a filly.”
“I have been called many things, but never before a horse. Thank you.”
Damn it, he felt all sorts of at a loss. He had never done this—never come close to doing this. He had never needed to say such things aloud. Men simply didn’t. He shook his head. “You have nothing to fear. Not from me.” He felt her life beneath his hand and he wanted his words to be true. “Look at me, Ravenna. Look at me.”
Finally she obeyed, and the black stars glittered with panic.
Now he could not say what had finally come to his tongue, untested as it was, and astonishing, and uncertain as he was of its purport. But he could not bear to distress her either. “What happened last night changes nothing.” He would do penance for a month for this lie. “You are a pretty girl and it was a dark place and I am a man and that is all there was to it. We will pursue this mystery and when it is solved the prince’s party will commence as planned. Until then let us continue as we were.”
For a moment’s silence there was only the chill of the medieval tower and his heartbeats battering his ribs.
Then her lips twitched. “As we were when I nearly drowned in a frozen river and you risked your life to save me?” she said. “Or as we were when I attacked you with a farm tool yet you kissed me anyway?”
Her spirit was irrepressible. He smiled. “Perhaps we should establish an entirely new footing.”
The softest breath of relief issued through her lips. “That would probably be best.”
Now he should release her. But holding her even in this manner felt too good. He sought for words to delay the moment.
“Does their liaison”—he glanced up the stairs—“lead you to believe that she might withhold the truth in other matters?”
“No. Not precisely. But . . . Did you see the faces of the others at the moment the prince announced Mr. Walsh’s death?”
He had not. He had been watching her, as he had not ceased doing since he first saw her. “No.”
“She did not think to mask her reaction.”
“Which was?”
“Shock, I think. But not generic. She stared as though she were stunned, as though she had not expected him—Mr. Walsh in particular—to die.”
“Understandable, perhaps, if she had encountered him earlier in the day.”
“But she had not. She told me that she had not made his acquaintance.”
“Might she have lied about that?”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly, her gaze shifting down to his hand still wrapped around her arm. “I shan’t tumble down the stairs now, you know.”
He released her.
“And by the by,” she said, “did you truly assign a guard to me? Because if you didn’t, I won’t heed another word you say to me.” But he could see in her bright eyes that she did not believe this. Her mistrust of him had been momentary, it seemed. “On the other hand,” she said, “if you did, he is woefully negligent.” She started down the stairs again, this time without haste. “You needn’t waste the man on me, you know. I have been going about the castle and stables for two days now without incident. More to the point, before this week I spent three-and-twenty years going about the countryside largely upon my own governance.”
“You are not now in the countryside but in a castle in which a murderer still dwells.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “In the normal course of things I can defend myself. Barring the presence of frozen rivers, of course,” she added.