“If you wish, mademoiselle,” he said, noting her slippers, “one may access the chapel beyond the dining room.”
She went, but slowly now, her pulse hard and uneven.
Across the hall, Arielle descended the stairs upon her father’s arm, her tiny dog trotting beside them. She hurried to Ravenna, but her steps glided. “Dear Miss Caulfield, how brave and wise you are, and how blessedly competent. I should not have known how tend to a wound.”
“I shouldn’t think you would ever need to know how to do so.”
“Lord Case owes his life to you.”
Twice over, in fact. Yet still he had insulted her. “You mustn’t worry about his fever. It will pass as soon as the wound begins to knit.”
“Oh.” She dipped her delicate lashes. “I should not presume to burden him with my anxiety.” Her cheeks pinkened with pretty modesty, a color Ravenna had never seen in her own face. It was impossible. Her skin was not fair like this delicate girl’s, this girl whose father had offered Ravenna employment while her noble beau bribed her to stay clear of his brother.
“Will you join us for breakfast, mademoiselle?” the general asked.
“Thank you, no. I must see . . . see to a matter.” She continued toward the dining room, skirting the billiards parlor from which male voices emanated. Palms damp and throat thick, she went through the door into the chapel.
Inside the chapel the air hung still and peculiarly warm, like a stable but not with life, instead with some ephemeral quality of age, candle wax, and sacred stuff that her papa’s small church only hinted at. Sunbeams angling through tall windows of pale blue, red, and gold painted brilliant colors upon stone arches and pillars. A modest number of chairs were clustered close to the far end, before each a kneeler fashioned of carved wood and brocaded satin. To either side stood massive tombs, sentinels of power topped by effigies of men and women with coronets upon their regal heads.
He stood below the steps that rose to the altar, facing it, his stance easy and his shoulders square.
Ravenna’s breaths failed. Hopeless thoughts crowded her. This was not her world, even less so than the rest of the castle. This was a place of ancient holiness, of sculpted stone and exotic incense and all the civilization of men. Her lungs fought for air. What could she say to a man from this world that he would wish to hear? She did not belong here.
He turned and saw her.
She whirled back through the door. Hurrying from the dining room, she ran into Sir Henry and Lord Prunesly leaving the billiards parlor.
“Ah, Miss Caulfield, the hero of the hour!” Sir Henry chuckled. “Rather, heroine. Isn’t that right, Prunesly? Miss Caulfield, you’ve done great deeds, I hear. Good show, miss. Good show, I say.”
The door to the dining room opened and Lord Vitor came into the corridor.
“Forgive me,” she muttered to Sir Henry. “I must . . . that is . . .” She broke away. A servants’ door opened off the corridor. She darted through it and tripped down a narrow stair in the dark. Exiting by the kitchen, she turned from the scents of fresh bread and roasting meat toward the door that led to the courtyard where the fowl and cow and goats were kept and refuse was dumped through a hole at the base of the castle wall. The crisp air snapped against her cheeks as she burst outside.
She pressed her back against the cold stone wall. Inside its stall across the small yard, the milking cow turned its head to her and swished its tail. Chickens cackled in the henhouse against the far wall that was bathed in morning sunlight.
The breath shuddered out of Ravenna. He would not find her. If he followed her into the servants’ stairwell, Sir Henry and Lord Prunesly would remark upon it. Even if he did, he would never look for her here. No nobleman dressed in starched linen and pristine boots would think to go into a kitchen courtyard. In her six years at Shelton Grange she had never once seen Sir Beverley or Petti anywhere near either kitchen or livestock. A marquess’s son would not come here.
But he did. The door from the kitchen opened and he came through it, strong and handsome and perfectly well, it seemed.
He might have died.
“Now I have rescued you,” she blurted out. “To accomplish it, I used my skirts that can, as you previously pointed out, prove so inconvenient in a water rescue, but were wonderfully convenient in this instance.” She fought to make her voice light. “A fitting counterpoint to your fishing venture in the river on my behalf, wouldn’t you say?”
He came directly to her, seized her face between his hands, and captured her mouth beneath his. He kissed her powerfully, deeply, as though he would have all of her through this kiss, and she held on to his waist and gave herself up to him.
He lifted his lips. “In that cellar—”
“Do not speak of it.”
“All I thought of was this. Touching you. I wanted only to touch you once more.” His thumb stroked across her lips and he followed it with his mouth. It was not a gentle kiss, but demanding. His hands covered her shoulders, then moved to her waist. She wrapped her arms around his neck and let him pull her against him. She melted into him, into his kiss and his hands spread on her back. She had barely known a man’s touch, and she felt as she had on the occasion when lightning struck the old tree in a field where she had been dancing in the rain, as though the lightning was sizzling through her marrow.
“Why did you run from me just now?” he said against her lips.
“I thought perhaps—that perhaps I had been mistaken in seeking you out—that you had not come looking for me this morning because you did not—did not want to see me. That you did not want me.”
He pressed his brow to hers, his hands tight around her ribs. “I have wanted you since the moment I first saw you and every moment after that.”
“Since the moment . . . ? But I thought we were f—” She stumbled upon the word. “Friends.”
“Friends with advantages.” He took possession of her mouth again, completely, until there was nothing on the earth but his kiss making her need him, his strong arms holding her to him, and the weightlessness of her body that wanted to fly and join with him all at once. She felt the thrilling hardness of his chest and thighs and needed to be closer. Sinking her hands into his hair, she met his tongue with hers, and pleasure so intense came over her that she gasped. She struggled to get closer, to satisfy the urgency, to feel him more. Her heels left the ground as he pulled her up and tighter to him, lifting her as though she weighed nothing. But even that did not suffice.
Her knee stole upward along his leg. Then she jumped. He caught her up easily and she clamped her thighs about his hips and halted his laughter with her mouth. She felt him with her hands and mouth and body, and he met her kiss with hunger like hers, hunger that made her seek the bulge in his breeches with her hand, then press to him. She rocked against him and his hands aided her, holding her fast.
“Ravenna, you drive me mad,” he uttered against her lips.
She bore down on his arousal, needing him, needing to be closer still, needing to be joined in the manner of all creatures. She felt like a clock wound too tightly, like steam pressing at the lid of a pot on the fire. She wanted him desperately. He gripped her to him and she ground against his hardened cock and she wanted.
Her pot exploded upon a crashing, unexpected rush, bursting inside her and tumbling, and seizing her throat for a moan of pure ecstasy as she shuddered against him. She gasped. He kissed her neck and she shivered in pleasure. She accepted his lips on hers. Breathless and boneless and warm, all she wanted was for him to kiss her. Forever. “What was that?” she whispered.