As though in apology for the atrocity committed by their leader, the staff of the chateau prepared a sumptuous evening repast. Sebastiao took up his position at the head of the table, with Ann Feathers at his right, and behaved for all the world like he intended to keep her there. As his guests moved into the dining room, Lady Whitebarrow and Penelope remained absent. Lord Whitebarrow and Lady Grace entered, and she came to Vitor.
“Thank you for what you did, my lord.” Her eyes were rimmed with red, but dry.
“Miss Caulfield deserves your thanks. It was she who solved the mystery.” He lowered his voice. “I am sorry for your loss.”
“She said that Oliver would not wish me to grieve too greatly. She said he would wish me to be happy.”
The woman he’d searched for all afternoon appeared then in the doorway, arrayed in a gown of deep rose that caressed her curves and revealed her arms—unadorned by sleeves, bracelets, gloves, or other decorations—as shapely and beautiful. She tilted her head, and her hair glittered like a night sky studded with stars.
Lady Iona took her hands. “The gown be perfect, lass.”
“Thank you for the loan of it.” Without casting him a glance, she walked to the other end of the table and sat between Pettigrew and the general.
After dinner she settled in the drawing room at the tea table with Lady Margaret, the duchess, and several other guests as though she meant to remain there for the duration of the winter. But Vitor had had enough. He went to the cluster of ladies and bowed.
“Miss Caulfield, might I have a word with you?”
She lifted wide black eyes to him. “Now?”
Lady Iona chuckled.
Vitor’s collar had shrunk two sizes. “If you will.”
“Go on, dear,” Lady Margaret said. “Mustn’t keep a man as handsome as that waiting. His eye is likely to stray, don’t you know.”
Ravenna rose to her feet stiffly and walked beside him to the door. Her steps dragged.
“What do you wish to say to me that you could not say over there?” She looked back at the group around the tea table.
“Have you injured your ankle again, Miss Caulfield?”
Her eyes snapped up to his. “No. What— Why do you—”
“I was obliged to halve my already-halved strides just now to maintain your snail’s pace across the drawing room,” he said, and gestured her out the door and along the corridor.
“Oh. Well. The conversation I was enjoying with Lady Margaret was so—so—”
“Enjoyable?”
“Yes. Of course.” Her gaze darted about. “Where are we going?”
“And what subject were you conversing upon that enthralled you so, I wonder?” He touched her elbow, guiding her across the hall toward the armory rack.
“It was wildly diverting,” she mumbled, and cast another glance back at the corridor to the drawing room. “What was that we were discussing? I did so enjoy it. Perhaps it was . . . Hm . . .”
“The day’s remarkable revelations?”
“That was it.” She looked up at the display of armaments as he urged her into the crevice behind them. “I don’t understand. There are no more clues to be studied. What are we doing here?”
He pulled her into the alcove and against his chest. “What we should have done here five nights ago.”
She resisted for a fleeting moment. Then she went soft and willing against him. With a little sigh of pure surrender, she lifted her face to be kissed.
He had already memorized her features, yet he could look upon them every day and never tire of the sight. In the flickering torchlight, he drank in the vision: lush lips, lashes black as coal shading sparkling stars, perfectly imperfect nose, tumbling hair, delicate lines radiating from the corners of her eyes that bespoke a lifetime of laughing in the sunshine.
“Are you going to kiss me?” Her breath stole across his lips, sweet and warm. He felt drunk—drunker than drugged—intoxicated upon her and the prospect of having her entirely to himself tonight and every night—drunk upon holding in his arms the woman he’d had to cajole and command in order to be with her alone now.
He backed up a step and held her off. “I don’t believe I will, after all.” He released her. She seemed to sway. Then her eyes popped wide.
“You won’t?”
“Not at this time.” He stepped out from behind the screen of armor and started across the hall.
“But.” She came fully into the light. “Why not?”
“I have changed my mind.” He reached the stairway and ascended.
Her footsteps pattered swiftly to the base of the stairs. “You have changed your mind?”
He paused on the top step where eight nights earlier he had looked into her starlit eyes and had, without will or effort and against all that was wise, become her servant. “I’ve realized I have several other pressing matters to attend to.”
“Other pressing matters?” She stared up at him bemusedly. He moved into the corridor. She hurried to follow. “What sorts of matters?”
“You know how it can be.” He strode along the gallery where she had discovered a dead man and from which, later, he had swiped a sixteenth-century rapier to protect her. “Hours of this. Hours of that. Before you know it, the day has passed and yet”—he rounded a corner, halted, turned, and she came flying into him—“you haven’t managed to do the one thing you ought to be doing.” He grabbed her up. “Where were you all afternoon?”
“Here and there.” Her breaths came quickly. She stared at his mouth. “Kiss me.” Her lips were perfect, full and dark.
“Where here and there?”
“Lady Margaret’s chamber. She asked me to examine a joint that has been causing her pain. Then the duchess required my advice for a feminine matter of some delicacy that I cannot, of course, detail to you. Then General Dijon wanted my opinion on the use of arrow root to cure distemper, which he read about in a journal. And Sir Henry wished me to look in on Titus again, though he is perfectly—”
He halted her speech in the most effective manner. She sank into his kiss, parting her lips and sighing deep in her throat. When she offered her supple tongue to caress, he entwined it with his and drew her fully against him. Lush and sweet and wild and good, she captivated him and made him furious, frustrated, and hard as mountain stone.
He lifted his mouth. Her eyes remained closed and she released a delirious little sigh.
“I also looked in on your brother,” she murmured. “The fever persists. But he will recover soon. Kiss me again.”
“Why do you continue running from me?”
“I am not running now.”
It was some effort to speak now, he found. “Wesley Courtenay is not my only brother.”
Her lashes fluttered up, eyes questioning in shadow.
“Sebastiao and I share the same father,” he said.
“Sebastiao, the prince?”
“Yes. The prince that your sister sent you here to wed.”
She blinked several times. “You remember that I told you that?”
“How could I forget it?”
Her breasts rose against his chest. “Hold me,” she said.
He laughed. He had not known what response to expect from her, but this would do. “I am holding you.”
She ran her fingers through his hair and drew his head down. Pressing up onto her toes, she whispered against his ear. “Hold me . . . down.”