“No.” She could not seem to stop shaking her head. “No. He cannot have left us.”
“No,” Sir Beverley only said, and the early spring sunshine glimmered off the tears on his face in mockery.
SHE DID NOT call for him or come to find him. The morning waned into afternoon and when Vitor finally left his brother in the care of his own competent valet in order to seek her out, he learned the reason for it.
“We are all stunned. Stunned, I tell you, my lord.” In the drawing room where Lady Margaret sat with her daughter, Sir Henry, and Sebastiao, she swiped her eyes with a kerchief. “Such a charming man. Such an amusing man. Far too young to be swept off at night like that. He could not have been above five-and-sixty. But Sir Beverley said his heart was weak, and that dear Mr. Pettigrew had anticipated this. Yet they told none of us, not even that poor girl. I am stunned. And devastated. Devastated, I tell you.”
“A damned shame.” Sir Henry shook his head. “In the name of Zeus, I’ve never met another man who knew his horses as well as his cravats.”
Vitor bowed and went to the door.
Sebastiao followed. “Vitor, wait.”
He paused, but he wanted to be gone, to find her and . . . He didn’t know what, but whatever she needed he would give it to her.
“It is dreadful timing,” Sebastiao said, “but I must share news with you before the others discover it. I have asked Sir Henry for his daughter’s hand. He gave his approval and Ann—Miss Feathers—despite all that she knows of my past, has accepted me.” Sober for nearly a fortnight now and once more resembling the boy he had been, eager to please and bright, he looked at Vitor with hopeful eyes.
“Congratulations, Sebastiao. I wish you and Miss Feathers happiness.”
“Father will be satisfied, don’t you think? Sir Henry’s stables are superb and the portion he intends to settle upon her is substantial.”
“I suspect he will be glad for this marriage.”
“I suppose it shouldn’t matter that I like her,” he said more airily now, flirting with his accustomed insouciance. “Quite a lot, in fact.”
“I should think that matters above all else.”
“Thank you for accompanying me here, Vitor. You needn’t have, and it’s been a horrid disaster of a party, of course. But I am grateful for what you have done. For what you have always done.”
Vitor nodded and moved away.
“Returning to Case’s chamber?” Sebastiao smiled. “You are a devoted brother, in truth. How fortunate he and I both are.”
“I am searching for Miss Caulfield. Have you seen her?”
“Not a quarter hour ago in the forecourt, supervising the preparation of Sir Beverley’s carriage for those ridiculous little dogs— Ah.” His grin slipped away and he scowled. “One should not speak ill of the dead. I believe the dogs were Pettigrew’s. What an idiot I continue to be.”
“Carriage? Is Sir Beverley departing?”
“They hope to take advantage of the cold weather to remove the body to England. The team is being hitched to Sir Beverley’s rig as we speak.”
“Today? They are leaving today?”
“You did not know?”
As Vitor strode outside, the shock pressing at his chest became a ball of anger in his gut. Footmen loaded luggage onto a traveling carriage. At a distance, a cloaked, hooded woman walked between the gravestones in the cemetery. By her shape and the movement of her body he knew her.
She moved from behind a mausoleum, about her heels clustered three squat brown dogs, three woven lines dangling from her bare hand. As though she felt his attention she looked up.
She waited motionless until he reached her. But when he would have taken her hands she withdrew them inside the cloak and stepped back. Her face was pale and her eyes shadowed.
“Ravenna, I am sorry.”
“You have done nothing for which you should apologize,” she said without animation. “But I take your meaning. Thank you.”
“They tell me you are leaving, and I see it with my own eyes, but I cannot believe it.”
“Yes. The quicker we travel north, the less ice we will be required to purchase along the—”
“Sebastiao explained.” He stepped toward her but she backed away again. He could not manage to draw a full breath. “I will of course accompany y—”
“No.” She averted her body, hiding her face behind the hood. “Sir Beverley is an experienced traveler. We shan’t want for anything on the journey. You needn’t worry.”
“I have no concern on that account. I will accompany you because I wish to be with you.”
She turned fully to him, her brow pleated. “I cannot be with you as we were the other night.”
“For God’s sake, I don’t want that from you now. What sort of a man do you imagine me to be?”
“A man of privilege accustomed to having what he wants. As you have made it clear that at this time you want me in that manner, it would be foolish of me to imagine—”
“Stop.” He moved to her, but as much as he longed to take her into his arms he could not. Touching her without permission would only prove her right. He gripped his fists at his sides. “I wish only to give you comfort, to make this tragedy easier for you to bear.”
“Then I thank you for your kind offer. But I am already well prepared with Petti’s dogs as distraction, and another distraction as well, one that should occupy my thoughts and plans for some time to come: General Dijon has offered me a post in Philadelphia. I am ideally qualified for it—”
“No.”
“Of course I am qualified.”
“I have no doubt you are qualified, for that post and many others. But this is ridiculous, Ravenna.”
“Ridiculous?”
He shook his head. “Do you truly intend to travel to America now?”
“It is not ridiculous. I have wished for a position like this. I have dreamed of it. Now it has fallen into my hands. Women are not offered such posts regularly. Ever, really. It is the opportunity of a lifetime.”
The anger in Vitor was disintegrating, leaving only confusion. Could he have understood her so wrongly? Could he have seen skittishness where in fact there had been honest indifference? Her calm conviction now suggested it. Her passion when she touched him said otherwise, but he’d made love to women without deep attachment. Why couldn’t a woman as well? This woman was wholly unique. To have imagined she would behave predictably had been his mistake.
“After you return with Sir Beverley to his home,” he said, struggling to reorder all he had been imagining since that moment on the tower steps, to remember her words and see them in a different light. Please don’t let it end. Perhaps that had been the wine speaking for her. She’d told him directly that she had no wish to entrap him in marriage. Yet he had never imagined he would not win her. He was, perhaps, as unaware of his own expectations of privilege as she had said, and he was most certainly the greatest fool alive. “You will travel to America alone?”
The corner of her lips lifted slightly. “I am well accustomed to being alone, of course.” Again she turned her face away and urged the dogs forward.
“Ravenna,” he said to her back, prickling panic rising in him, the sort he always experienced before he decided to move on, to seek a new adventure, a new danger. “You must allow me to accompany you to England.”