“I have,” Ravenna agreed. She looked over her shoulder at him. “Do make certain to keep the sword away from me so that I don’t snatch it from you and do away with everyone in the house before breakfast.” She pinned Penelope with her stare. “Starting with you. Apologize to Miss Feathers or you will regret it in a manner you cannot imagine.”
“ ’Tis the right thing to do, lasses.” Lady Iona poked her head inside the door frame beside Lord Vitor. “We all ken ye did it. The prince’ll ken by luncheon, an’ he’ll no’ be happy wi’ ye. Ye may as well make the best o’ it while ye’ve still a chance wi’ him.” She cut a glance at Lord Vitor, followed his legs clad in tight breeches all the way to his exposed collar and tousled hair, and offered him a saucy grin. “Guid mornin’, my laird. Ye ought to come out before ye’ve dressed properly more often.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
Ravenna folded her arms. “Well?”
Lady Penelope’s eyes narrowed. “All right. We will apologize to the mouse. Won’t we, Grace?”
“Yes, Penny.”
Ravenna gestured for them to precede her into the corridor and Iona took the lead. Lord Vitor did not follow, the sword point stuck in the carpet and his hands resting upon the pommel as he watched them go. Ravenna returned to him and, edgy with her triumph, had some trouble meeting his eyes. The sight of his chest clad only in fine, thin linen tangled her wits.
“Thank you for allowing me to do that,” she said.
“I could not have stopped you had I tried.”
“You did try.”
“With very little effort.”
“You appeared so swiftly. I guess you heard her scream. Were you . . .”
“Was I what?”
Already in the ladies’ wing of the castle. In another woman’s bedchamber. If Lord Whitebarrow, who was married, practiced such pastimes, why wouldn’t a young, unmarried man? Petti had told her enough of the ways of the licentious beau monde that she was not entirely na?ve. “Nearby?”
He bent his head and peered at her. “I was damning that canine whelp of yours to perdition and preparing to take him outside for the fifth time since midnight.”
Relief slipped through her. “It must be easier to raise a puppy in a kennel than in a vast castle.”
“I am not raising a puppy. I am enduring it until you take responsibility for it or return it to the stable where it belongs.”
“I cannot. It is too late. He is yours. He will always be yours now.”
He looked at her very strangely then, and seemed to be on the verge of speech. But instead he drew an audible breath. “Go, see to your forced apology.” He turned away.
“It is a very nice sword. I enjoyed using it as a threat.”
He paused. “I have no doubt that you did.”
“You could wield it quite dashingly in the play today. Until you perish upon Romeo’s blade, of course.”
He bowed. “I live to dash, madam.”
For a moment he was silent again with that air of waiting. But she found nothing to say, no easy quip in response. She was imagining what it might be like to clasp him to her like she had clasped the bolster, to feel the muscles of his back beneath that fine linen shirt with the palms of her hands. She wanted to hold him like that. She longed for it, but it was not a welcome longing, rather tinted with strange despair.
He walked toward her until they were nearly toe-to-toe and she had to bend her neck to look into his face.
“Will you forgive me for handling you so harshly outside Miss Feathers’s door?” he said.
Her mouth was dry. “I took no note of it.”
His hand circled her arm where he had held her before, but with gentleness at odds with the roguish figure he now cut. His thumb caressed.
“I fear for you, Ravenna.” He said it simply and she wondered how she had ever mistrusted him, even for a moment.
“You needn’t. I told you that you needn’t.”
“Yet I do.” The crease appeared in his cheek. “In any case, I am loath to allow a woman to tell me my business. Even a controlling woman like you.”
“Are you?” His thumb caressed again and her heartbeats fluttered. “How positively medieval of you.”
He bent his head. “Take care, will you? I did not fish you out of that river for naught. I should like you to remain alive for the foreseeable future.”
“So that you can order me around and alternately tease me, I suppose.”
He smiled. “Yes.” Then he did what she did not expect: he kissed her brow. Softly, gently, not a transitory peck but a permanent marking, he took the most innocuous possession of her. When he drew away and looked into her eyes, she could not speak.
“Good,” he said. “I am glad we understand each other now.” His hand slipped from her and he walked away.
In point of fact she understood little, and now considerably less than before. Only her father had ever kissed her on the brow. Lord Vitor, however, did not stir in her feelings of filial duty or tolerance. Nor did she feel for him the grateful friendship she felt for Petti and Sir Beverley, or even the comfortable affection she bore Taliesin, who had been like a brother to her since childhood. Toward Lord Vitor Courtenay she harbored a tangled confusion of pleasure and fear—tumultuous, gripping feelings that she wished to run both toward and from at great speed.
PRINCE SEBASTIAO PLAYED the parts of both narrator and Romeo in the production. Ravenna and the other women to whom the prince had not assigned roles, with Monsieur Brazil and Monsieur Sepic, sat at the bottom of the shallow flight of stairs in luxurious comfort while the sounds of preparations behind elegant curtains finally quieted.
The prince strode across the top riser, a vital figure in gold silk and black ermine, his hat a masterpiece of ancient haberdashery. He liked fancy dress; that had been clear from the first. But this was unprecedented magnificence.
“Two households, both alike in dignity,” he proclaimed, “in fair Verona where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes a pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life.” He recited the verse with fluid comfort.
“He is an actor,” Iona whispered in Ravenna’s ear. “No wonder he wanted to do the play so ardently.”
Sir Henry and Mr. Anders appeared from behind the curtain clad in hose and doublets, swords at their sides and caps covering their heads.
“Gregory!” Sir Henry boomed. “O’ my word, we’ll not carry coals!”
“No, for then we should be colliers,” Mr. Anders replied with feeling.
Lord Case came on and began remonstrating with them. But Ravenna could barely follow. Shakespeare’s stories were wonderful, but she never quite understood the poetry, no matter how Eleanor and Sir Beverley had labored to give her an appreciation for it. The trouble now, however, had nothing to do with poetry. Staring at Lord Case and Mr. Anders’s legs in hose while anticipating Lord Vitor’s entrance onto the stage was causing her the most unpleasant heart palpitations.
As it turned out, the hose suited him to devastating advantage. When he entered, with a mocking air he demanded of Lord Case, “What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds? Turn thee, Benvolio, look upon thy death.” He unsheathed his sword and leveled it at his brother. Stomach in knots, Ravenna wished she could turn away. Even more fervently she wished that he had not kissed her on the brow in that fatherly manner.