I Adored a Lord (26 page)

“Well enough, bastard.”

Astoundingly, Wesley chuckled.

For a long while there was nothing but the muted driving rain above and the trickle of chill water somewhere closer by and solid darkness wrapping about them like a pall. Vitor no longer felt pain in his knuckles or his shoulders, and where the bruise rose on his skull was only a numb throbbing. He dozed and listened for voices, hooves, cart wheels—­for anything that might announce a person nearby. The rain drowned out all.

Into the frigid stillness, Wesley eventually spoke again. “I wished to save you . . . from the pain I suffered.” His voice was shallow. “No punishment . . . worse than a woman's . . . faithless heart.”

“I am disappointed . . .” The heat in Vitor's body was nearly gone. His words did not even warm his lips.

“Hm?”

“Disappointed that . . .” A weight pressed upon his chest, the cold sucking at his lungs. “I shan't have the chance . . . to prove you wrong . . . in this.”

After that there was only silence and cold and waiting for the end.

L
ORD
V
ITOR AND
his brother did not return during the night. The villagers had been alerted and, when dawn arose, those who were able assisted in the search. Ravenna tied on her boots and went out with the men, with Cecilia and Iona at her side. Crisp cold gripped the mountain again and puddles froze underfoot, every step treacherous.

On the bridge that stretched across the river that gave a view of the entire chateau through the trees, Ravenna clutched the wall and stared into the water below. Iona slipped an arm about her waist. Everyone thought the same, Ravenna suspected. But she had felt his strength and did not believe the river had taken him.

They searched for hours, the parties of three—­for safety—­returning to the chateau or ducking into the village wine shop to warm fingers and toes. On the path from the village, Martin Anders and Sir Henry met them with furrowed brows.

“The mayor's nephew has confessed to lying,” Mr. Anders said grimly.

“Lyin'?” Iona exclaimed. “Aboot murderin' a man?”

“Seems the fool's roof collapsed under the snow,” Sir Henry said. “He only wanted a spot to sleep.”

“He thought that since his uncle was the mayor and there could be no proof to convict him, he would be set free before a trial,” Martin Anders said. “It doesn't mean another drunken villager did not take me up on my boast.”

Cecilia grasped her brother's hand.

“The prince's two guards—­the guard at the gate and the other,” Ravenna said, “were not to be found in the castle this morning. I do not believe a villager murdered Mr. Walsh.” She walked away from them, down the center of the icy bridge, not looking to the banks below. She had already searched by the river. They would not find him there. He was still alive. She could feel him alive.

As the sun slid into the western sky everyone straggled back to the castle. She resisted, but Iona and Cecilia took her arms and forced her inside with them.

She went to his bedchamber and found it empty of his valet. With an ecstatic yip, Gonçalo leaped off the bed and hurled himself at her. She fell to her knees and gathered his warm, wagging body into her arms and pressed her face into his fur.

“Where has your master gone?” she whispered, biting back tears gathering in her throat. “He said wild dogs would not keep him from coming to me. He is too honest to lie, so whatever spirited him away must be stronger than wild dogs, for you and I both know there is nothing more clever.” The pup smelled of the lord's cologne and faintly of cheroot smoke.

He wiggled free of her hold and flew across the room to set upon a ruined boot as though it were a villain.

Wild dogs.

Wild dogs . . .

Nor tame
.

Ravenna watched the pup tear at the leather and her breaths halted.

A dog of no more than ten weeks knew nothing of scent hunting. And who knew if Gonçalo was even a scent-­hunting breed? But he had spent a sennight in the nobleman's chambers, destroying his clothing and apparently sleeping in his bed.

No
. It was impossible. But so was the ache in her chest, impossible yet more real than anything she had ever felt.

She sprang to her feet, and scooped up the puppy and a scrap of the boot.

Iona saw her. “Where be ye goin', lass?”

“To hunt.”

She slipped across the ice of the forecourt to the gate and set Gonçalo on the ground. She allowed the pup to nuzzle the piece of boot, then withdrew it. “Now let's go find him.”

She started off and the pup stumbled after her, his big paws clumsy on the slippery road at first but taking to it swiftly. He bounded about as she walked away from both village and river, biting at crusty ice and yipping. But also sniffing. His attention would stray to a bird or branch blown by the wind, then his nostrils would quiver and he would press his big nose to the ice and yip again.

Centuries ago an outer fortress wall had offered additional protection to the inhabitants of Chevriot from invasion from above, and protection for the stores of salt that had made the region rich. Remnants of the wall crept low along the slope of the hill that rose into the tree cover climbing the mountain. Ahead of her Gonçalo disappeared over a mound of earth flanking the ruined wall. Ravenna called to him. He did not reappear. She hurried, struggling to ascend the slick rise, her stomach tight. There were holes and drains aplenty around the castle walls. If he had fallen into one—­

She rounded the mound and her breaths stalled. The pup stood at the mouth of a cave set into the far side of the mount, his forepaws against a waist-­high earthen wall blocking the cave's entrance. He yipped. Only the whisper of frozen branches above answered. Then a voice sounded from the shadows of the cave.
His
voice. Relief broke from her throat in a sob.

Gonçalo barked frantically as she stumbled forward to grab the wall. She jerked back. Not a cave. An ice cellar. She bent to peer into the dark below.

She did not collapse or weep or shout in joy. She whispered, “You are alive,” and her legs nearly gave out.

He did not reply. He sat back against the wall directly below her. Lord Case lay on his side nearby. Both were still.

It was not far down, no more than six yards, still, impossible to manage without a ladder or rope. But if they'd been in the cellar for all this time, no time could be wasted returning to the village or chateau to seek help.

Hands shaking, she tore the lowest flounce from Ann's gown, then the middle flounce, then the top. Blessing Lady Margaret's poor taste, she tied the fabric together. But the rope was not sufficiently long to wrap around her chest and still to reach the bottom of the hole.

The skirt went next in broad strips that she secured to the flounces. In petticoat and shift, she hefted the rope over the wall.

“You must grab this and pull yourself up,” she said. He did not move. “You must,” she said louder. Below, both men remained still as death. “Wake up!” she shouted. “You must take up the rope and save yourself. You must, for I cannot do it without your help.” She tossed the rope about until it landed against the back of his hand. “Please,” she said. “I beg of you.”

His hand flexed and he grasped the fabric.

When he moved to bind the rope about his brother, she shouted and remonstrated with him until he obeyed her. Pushing first to his knees then his feet with labored movements, he took the rope in both hands. She crouched with her back against the wall and braced herself. Gonçalo danced about, barking. Then with perked ears he darted off.

“Now!” she called. “Climb now.”

The rope pulled at her chest until she couldn't breathe. Eventually, after what seemed far too long, his hand, white to the bone, the knuckles bloodied, grabbed the edge of the wall. Footsteps crunched in the ice nearby and Gonçalo appeared leaping in circles around Martin Anders and Sir Henry.

“In the name of Zeus! They're found!”

They grabbed Vitor and pulled him over the ledge. His eyes were closed and she put her hands on his face and withheld her sobs as men—­more men—­seemed to fill the tiny opening of the ice cellar. They carried him back to the castle, others remaining to pull Lord Case from the hole. She ran ahead, calling for warm baths to be prepared, specifying the exact temperature of the water and the oils to be added, and demanding bandages and dressing. Everyone did as she bid until they carried him into the room with the filled copper tub.

Ann appeared and took her arm.

“Come, dear friend,” Ann whispered. “You may not remain, and you must see to your own comfort now.”

Ravenna went, frustrated to be ejected when she was the most suitable person in the castle to see to a man's injuries, and weak with joy.

 

Chapter 18

A Lord in the Kitchen Yard

S
he was not permitted to see either man that night. The prince himself and a bevy of servants waited upon them. She was unneeded.

Unlike Arielle Dijon, she could not bear to sit in the drawing room with the others before dinner, remaining modest and demure while the gentlemen, Lady Margaret, and the duchess speculated on the purpose the betraying guards had in harming Lord Case and his brother. Unable to eat, she took out the pugs and then asked after Gonçalo. She was told that the hero of the day was sleeping soundly in his lordship's room.

She retired to her bedchamber, unnoticed.

Late, after she finally ceased pacing and climbed into bed, a scratch at her door roused her. By the light of a candle, Lord Case's valet was white with agitation.

“He has taken fever, miss.” He wrung his hands. “I haven't any notion of how to care for him. His lordship has a physician to see to such things.”

“I can help.” She changed clothes and took up her medical bag to follow him to his master's quarters through dark, silent corridors.

The earl's brow was hot, his face and nightshirt damp with perspiration. “You must change the bed linens and his nightshirt as often as necessary to keep him dry,” she instructed the valet as she poured an inch of water into a tumbler and emptied into it a packet of the fever powder she carried for Sir Beverley and Petti in case of emergency. “If the fever should break and he remains for long in a damp state, his lungs could take an inflammation.”

The valet lifted his master and she propped pillows behind his back.

“My lord,” the valet whispered. “Miss Caulfield wishes to dose you with medicine.”

The earl's eyelids fluttered but did not open. “Ah, an angel of mercy,” he mumbled. “She may do as she wishes if she smells this devilishly good while she's about it.”

She set the glass to his lips. “Drink, my lord, and don't dribble or I will scold you for wasting my powder.”

“Lucky devil, m'brother,” he said against the rim of the glass, and swallowed.

They lowered him to the mattress.

“While I examine the wound you must remain very still.”

He mumbled unintelligibly, but when she unwrapped the poorly tied bandage and began probing at the wound, he squeezed his eyes closed. “Bloody hell. Call off the witch, Franklin.”

“I cannot, my lord. Excepting the cook, who is asleep and refuses to be roused, she is the only individual in the castle with medical knowledge. If you should like, I will summon the village midwife—­”

“I am not giving birth, you idiot.” He clamped his jaw.

“Quite right, my lord.”

“Mr. Franklin,” Ravenna said, “I require clean linen to bind this wound.”

“Yes, miss.” He hurried away. She bathed the wound with wine, then set her needle and thread to the torn flesh while the earl's chest rose upon hard gasps. The bullet had passed cleanly through the fleshy part of his muscle, and the wound was easily mended. Still, he would have lost considerable blood, yet he did not swoon.

“Did you mix a drug into the wine that you invited me to drink the other night, my lord?” she said quietly as she worked. “Do tell me the truth, or I will poke this wound with my sharpest fingernail before I bandage it.”

“Hippocrates spins in his grave,” he said upon a rasping breath.

She tied off the thread and dabbed the wound with salve oil. “I should like to hear from you the truth. My finger is poised.”

“I did not.”

“Why did you follow me to the stable?”

His eyes opened, dull with fever but aware. “To offer you gold in exchange for your promise to leave my brother alone.”

She swallowed over the catch in her throat.

Mr. Franklin returned and she bound the earl's wound, gave instructions that the poultice should be changed every three hours, and left. Candlelight skittered along the walls as she trod on quiet feet to the ladies' wing of the castle, wishing that now that the danger was over she still possessed the courage of a wolf, enough to cast away fear and go to Vitor's room and demand entrance. But Lord Case had reminded her that in their world she was merely a hare and would never be otherwise.

W
HEN SHE AWOKE,
she found a message delivered from Mr. Franklin informing her that while Lord Case's fever had not yet broken, he continued to sleep comfortably.

She rose, dressed in one of her own woolen gowns, and left her bedchamber.

All eyes followed her about the house, to the dining room and then to the parlor where Lady Margaret and Ann sat with the duchess, Iona, and the Whitebarrow ladies. Each held a frame of embroidery, which they plied with needles much tinier than anything Ravenna had ever used to tie a wound shut. They all stared at her as though she wore horns atop her head.

Iona came to life first. “Miss Caulfield!” She hurried over to her. “Have ye broken yer fast?”

“I—­”

Iona pulled her into the corridor and whispered, “Everybody's heard whit ye did for Lord Case in the wee hours. His valet told Lord Prunesly's man, an' the news spread like fire. Well done, lass!”

“I see.” She could not return to the parlor now, and wanted to see only one person, to assure herself that he was well. She hadn't a care for her own reputation, only how it might reflect upon Sir Beverley and Petti. But if the whole household knew she had been in a gentleman's bedchamber in the middle of the night with only his valet as chaperone, how could it hurt for her to now demand an audience with Lord Vitor?

She squeezed Iona's hand and went to his bedchamber. Her heartbeats pounded in her throat as the door opened.

“My lord is not in, miss,” his exceedingly proper valet said.

“Not in? Is—­is he well enough to be not in?” She sounded like a fool.

“His lordship has a remarkably strong constitution,” the valet said stiffly.

“Do you know where he has gone?”

“I should think to breakfast, miss.” He tilted up his nose. “But as his lordship did not share with me his itinerary, I cannot say with certainty.”

Her fingers itched to pinch him for that. Instead, she went to the hall. Monsieur Brazil spoke with the guard in the foyer.

“His lordship is in the chapel, mademoiselle.”

“Father Denis's hermitage?” she asked in disbelief. A quick healer he might be, but this seemed miraculous.

“
Non
, mademoiselle. The chapel here at the chateau.”

“At the chateau?”

“
Bien sûr
.” He motioned for the guard to open the front door, then pointed across the forecourt. Flanked by the cemetery, a substantial church structure rose between the keep and curtain wall between two towers. She had not noticed it before. In all her perambulations of the cemetery with Petti's dogs, she had not once lifted her attention to the huge building beside it.

“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.”