“I—”
“And, por Deus,” he said upon a catch in his throat, his eyes hard upon her mouth, “you are lovely.”
The rutting urge must have overcome him. The only male creature that had ever considered her lovely was Beast, and that was because she sometimes smelled like bacon.
She must distract him.
“I can help with that bruise on your brow,” she said, struggling against panic.
“Can you?” He seemed bemused. Jars to the head could scramble the brain.
“It’s starting to swell. It will leave a painful wound that could fester. Let me up and I’ll ask the housekeeper for—”
His mouth came down upon hers without further warning. Not hard or violently or forcefully. But fully, with complete contact.
Ravenna pinned her lips together. Breathing through her nose, she smelled horses and straw and something else foreign and male and . . . good. Like whiskey without the bite. Or well-loved leather. He released her wrist and with his big hand cupped her cheek.
She did not push him away. She must. But his scent, the heat of his skin, the sensation of his lips upon hers—teasing, encouraging, urging—paralyzed her. The pad of his thumb stroked gently along her throat. His touch was so warm. Intimate. Tender. Tingling pleasure mingled with the panic in her belly. She could kiss him back. She could discover what it was like to really kiss a man.
She couldn’t.
He had one thing in mind after kissing, and she wasn’t prepared to oblige him.
She did what Beast would have done to an attacker.
“Colh?es!” He jerked away and rolled off her and to his feet.
She scuttled back, skirts tangling in her boots as she jumped up, leaping to avoid puppies. The man’s shadowed eyes swung to her, anger sparking in them in the dim light. Blood dripped between his fingers clamped over his mouth.
“I hope I bit it off,” she said, unwisely.
He dropped his hand and his lower lip was still intact, though bleeding down his chin. “Damn it, woman. I only kissed you.”
“While you had me trapped beneath you.”
“Yes, well, obviously that was a mistake.” He dabbed gingerly at the blood with the back of his sleeve. He was tall, his shoulders broad, the sinews in his neck pronounced. He did not sound like a stable hand, rather more like a gentleman, but those sinews were like a farmer’s. This man knew physical labor and he had trapped her with little effort. He could have easily done anything to her he wished. He still could. The pitchfork lay close to his booted feet. He blocked the door. She was still trapped.
“Get out of my way,” she said, “or I’ll kick you in the colh?es even harder than I bit you.”
Without speech he stepped out of arm’s range of the door, and she darted past him and ran across the forecourt. Inside, she locked her bedchamber door, wrapped a blanket around her, and sat before the dying embers of the fire, shaking a little. She had never imagined what her first kiss would be like. She had never imagined she would have a first kiss at all.
Now she knew.
Chapter 3
The Monk
Flakes of cold crystal fluttered between the trees as Lord Vitor Courtenay tied his horse to a branch and stepped into the church built of gray stone at the mountain’s peak. Closing the door behind him, he walked down the nave bare of adornment, his boot steps echoing in the vaulting. Upon the limestone steps to the chancel he went to his knees, pulled off his cap, and touched his fingertips to his brow, his breastbone, and each shoulder in turn.
In years past he had come to this mountaintop hermitage for food, shelter, and safety. On this occasion he needed none of those. The wealth he had earned during the war through labor for both England and Portugal now collected dust in his London bank, and the luxuries of Chateau Chevriot were presently at his command.
This morning he sought another sort of aid altogether.
The church smelled of incense and tallow wax and ancient, sacred aromas: the scents of his blood-father’s land. Fourteen years ago, after learning of his true parentage, Vitor had first traveled to that land, only to depart from it when the Portuguese royal family fled the threat of Napoleon all the way to Brazil. But Vitor had not crossed the Atlantic with the rest of the court. Instead, his father, Raynaldo, cousin to the Prince Regent, retreated into the mountains. From hiding he had sent his English son—young and eager to prove himself—into Spain, then France, to learn what could be learned to make Lisbon safe for the restoration of the queen’s court. Vitor had not disappointed him.
He probed his sore lip with his tongue. Apparently not everyone respected a war hero.
A door creaked behind the wooden choir boxes. He bent his head and waited. Sandaled footsteps shuffled toward him and paused at his side. The hermit knelt on the cold steps, the clacking beads of his rosary muffled in the wool of his habit.
“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.” No whiff of wine accompanied the murmured words. Yet.
“Amen.”
“What sin have you committed for which you seek absolution, mon fils?” the priest said, then added, “This time.”
“Father . . .”
“Did you act in anger?” The hermit asked this according to ancient tradition, urging a confession from the sinner through questioning. During the two years Vitor had lived in a hilltop monastery in the Serra dal Estrela, he’d read everything in the library of the Benedictine brothers, including confessor manuals. This hermit now did not fix upon the sin of anger at whim. He knew Vitor’s special interest in it.
“No,” he replied, his throat dry. “Not anger.” Not this time.
“Greed?”
“No.”
“Pride?”
“No.”
“Envy.”
“No.”
“It could not have been sloth.” The hermit’s voice gentled. “You’ve never slept a full night in your life, young vagabond.”
“No.” Get to the relevant sin.
“Did you lie?”
“No.”
“Did you steal?”
A case could be made for it. “Not quite.”
“Did you covet your neighbor’s goods?”
Momentarily, though “goods” didn’t quite express it, really. “No.”
“Son—”
“Father . . .” Vitor pressed his brow into his knuckles.
The priest paused for a moment that stretched in the chill air. “Did you commit murder again?”
“No.”
The Frenchman’s breath of relief whispered across the chancel. He sat back on his heels and folded his arms within voluminous sleeves. “Then what did you do that brings you from the gathering at the house where your half brother needs you now?”
“I kissed a girl.”
Silence.
“Father?”
“Vitor, you are bound for the madhouse.”
“Or hell.” He raked his hand through his hair and turned to the priest. Patient tolerance lined the old Frenchman’s face. Vitor shook his head. “I shouldn’t have done it, Denis.”
“You might be taking those monastic vows too seriously, mon fils, especially since you left them behind six months ago.” He lifted shaggy brows. “Or so you told me then.”
After the war, the monastery had made an excellent retreat. But Vitor’s fathers, the Marquess of Airedale and Prince Raynaldo of Portugal, complained. Where was the man loyal to both families, the man they had depended upon to do dangerous tasks, to loyally serve both England and Portugal at once? Where was the man hungering for adventure?