The Raven Prince (40 page)

“Me?” Edward tried to look innocent as he trailed the rose over the tops of her exposed breasts. He didn’t succeed nearly as well as his son.

“Edward!”

One petal fell down her cleavage. He knit his brows in mock alarm. “Oh, dear.”

His long fingers delved between her breasts, searching for the petal but only pushing it farther down. He wasn’t doing a very good job finding it, his fingertips kept brushing over Anna’s nipples.

She batted at his hand halfheartedly. “Stop that. It tickles.” She squeaked as he pinched a nipple between two fingers.

Edward frowned sternly. “Shh. You’ll wake Samuel.” Her bodice gave way. “You must be very, very quiet.”

“But Mother Wren—”

“Is seeing how Fanny fares at her new post in the next county.” His breath tickled her exposed breasts. “She shan’t be home until supper.”

He took a nipple into his mouth.

Anna’s breath caught. “I think I’m breeding again.”

Edward lifted his head, his black eyes glittering. “Would you mind another child so soon?”

“I’d adore one,” she said, and then sighed happily.

Edward was taking the news of her second pregnancy much better than he had the first. From the moment Anna had told him of her first pregnancy, he’d been terribly grim. She’d done her best to comfort him at the time, but she had been resigned to the fact that he wouldn’t truly recover until she was safely delivered of their child. And indeed, Edward had sat white-faced beside her bed the entire labor. Mrs. Stucker had taken one look at the expectant father’s face and sent for brandy, which Edward had refused to touch. Five hours later, Samuel Ethan de Raaf, Viscount Herrod, was born. He was possibly the most beautiful baby in the history of the world, in his mother’s opinion. Edward had drunk nearly a third of the bottle of brandy before climbing into the big bed with his wife and newborn son and wrapping his arms around both.

Now he flipped Anna’s skirts up and settled between her bared thighs. “It’ll be a daughter this time.”

He was trailing kisses up her neck. Both of his hands covered her breasts, and his thumbs flicked her nipples.

Anna gasped. “Another boy would be nice, too, but if it is a girl, I know what I’ll name her.”

“What?” He was nibbling her ear, and Anna could feel his erection pressing against her.

He probably wasn’t listening, but she answered him anyway. “Elizabeth Rose.”

About the Author

Elizabeth Hoyt
lives in central Illinois with three untrained dogs, two angelic, but bickering children, and one long-suffering husband. There is some debate on whether a golden hamster resides with her family as well. The freethinking rodent decided to live
sans
cage sometime during the summer of ’05. It has not been reliably spotted since, although Elizabeth’s youngest child holds out hope of its return. The hermit crabs are best not mentioned at all.

Winters are long, cold, and monotonous in central Illinois. Elizabeth would be most appreciative of any mail you’d care to send her. You may e-mail her at: [email protected] or mail her at: PO Box 17134, Urbana, Illinois 61803. Please visit her Web site at www.elizabethhoyt.com for giveaways, book excerpts, and author updates.

More Historical Romance from

Elizabeth Hoyt!

Please turn this page for a preview of

The Leopard Prince

AVAILABLE IN FALL 2007.

Chapter One

Yorkshire, England
September, 1760

After the carriage wreck and a bit before the horses ran away, Lady Georgina Maitland noticed that her land steward was a man. Well, that is to say, naturally she knew Harry Pye was a man. She wasn’t under the delusion that he was a lion or an elephant or a whale, or indeed any other member of the animal kingdom—if one could call a whale an animal and not just a very big fish. What she meant was that his
male
ness had suddenly become very evident.

George knit her brow as she stood on the desolate high road to East Riding in Yorkshire. Around them, the gorse-covered hills rolled away into the gray horizon. Dark was rapidly falling, brought on early by the rainstorm. They could’ve been standing at the ends of the earth.

“Do you consider a whale to be an animal or a very big fish, Mr. Pye?” she shouted into the wind.

Harry Pye’s shoulders bunched. They were covered only by a wet lawn shirt that clung to him in an aesthetically pleasing way. He’d previously discarded his coat and waistcoat to help John Coachman unhitch the horses from the overturned carriage.

“An animal, my lady.” Mr. Pye’s voice was, as always, even and deep with a sort of gravelly tone toward the bottom.

George had never heard him raise his voice or show passion in any other way. Not when she’d insisted on accompanying him to her Yorkshire estate; not when the rain had started, slowing their travel to a crawl; not when the carriage had overturned twenty minutes ago.

How very irritating.
“Do you think you will be able to right the carriage?” She pulled her soaked cloak up over her chin as she contemplated the remains of her vehicle. The door hung from one hinge, banging in the wind, two wheels were smashed, and the back axle had settled at an odd angle. It was a thoroughly idiotic question.

Mr. Pye didn’t indicate by action or word that he was aware of the silliness of her query. “No, my lady.”

George sighed.

Really, it was something of a miracle that they and the coachman hadn’t been hurt or killed. The rain had made the roads slippery with mud, and as they had rounded the last curve, the carriage had started to slide. From inside, she and Mr. Pye had heard the coachman shouting as he tried to steady the vehicle. Harry Pye had leapt from his seat to hers, rather like a large cat. He’d braced himself against her before she could even utter a word. His warmth had surrounded her, and her nose, buried intimately in his shirt, had inhaled the scent of clean linen and male skin. By that time, the carriage had tilted, and it was obvious they were falling into the ditch.

Slowly, awfully, the contraption had tipped over with a grinding crash. The horses had whinnied from the front, and the carriage had moaned as if protesting its fate. She’d clutched Mr. Pye’s coat as her world upended, and Mr. Pye grunted in pain. Then they were still again. The vehicle had rested on its side, and Mr. Pye rested on her like a great warm blanket. Except Harry Pye was much firmer than any blanket she’d ever felt before.

He’d apologized most correctly, disentangled himself from her, and climbed up the seat to wrest open the door above them. He’d crawled through and then pulled her bodily out. George rubbed the wrist he’d gripped. He was disconcertingly strong—one would never know it to look at him. At one point, almost her entire weight had hung from his arm, and she wasn’t a petite woman.

The coachman gave a shout, which was snatched away by the wind, but it was enough to bring her back to the present. The mare he’d been unhitching was free.

“Ride her to the next town, Mr. Coachman, if you will,” Harry Pye directed. “See if there is another carriage to send back. I’ll remain here with her ladyship.”

The coachman mounted the horse and waved before disappearing into the downpour.

“How far is the next town?” George asked.

“Ten or fifteen miles.” He pulled a strap loose on one of the horses.

She studied him as he worked. Aside from being wet, Harry Pye didn’t look any different than he had when they’d started out this morning from an inn in Lincoln. He was still a man of average height. Rather lean. His hair was brown, neither chestnut nor auburn, merely brown. He tied it back in a simple queue, not bothering to dress it with pomades or powder. And he wore brown—breeches, waistcoat, and coat—as if to camouflage himself. Only his eyes, a dark emerald green that sometimes flickered with what might be emotion, gave him any color.

“It’s just that I’m rather cold,” George muttered.

Mr. Pye looked up swiftly. His gaze darted to her hands, trembling at her throat, and then shifted to the hills behind her.

“I’m sorry, my lady. I should have noticed your chill earlier.” He turned back to the frightened gelding he was trying to liberate. His hands must be as numb as her own, but he labored steadily. “There’s a shepherd’s cottage not far from here. We can ride this horse and that one.” He nodded at the horse next to the gelding. “The other is lame.”

“Really? How can you tell?” She hadn’t noticed the animal was hurt. All three of the remaining carriage horses shivered and rolled their eyes at the whistling of the wind. The horse he had indicated didn’t look any more ragged than the rest.

“She’s favoring her right foreleg.” Mr. Pye grunted, and suddenly all three horses were free of the carriage, although they were still hitched together. “Whoa, there, sweetheart.” He caught the lead horse and stroked it, his tanned right hand moving tenderly over the animal’s neck. The last two joints on his ring finger were missing.

She turned her head away to look at the hills. Servants—and, really, a land steward was just a superior sort of servant—should have no gender. Of course, one knew they were people with their own lives and all that, but it made things so very much easier if one saw them as sexless. Like a chair. One wanted a chair to sit in when one was tired. No one ever thought about chairs much otherwise and that was how it should be. How uncomfortable to go about wondering if the chair had noticed that one’s nose was running, wishing to know what it was thinking, or seeing that the chair had rather beautiful eyes. Not that chairs had eyes, beautiful or otherwise, but men did.

And Harry Pye did.

George faced him again. “What will we do with the third horse?”

“We’ll have to leave her here.”

“In the rain?”

“Yes.”

“That can’t be good for her.”

“No, my lady.” Harry Pye’s shoulders bunched again, a reaction that George found oddly fascinating. She wished she could make him do it more often.

“Perhaps we should take her with us?”

“Impossible, my lady.”

“Are you sure?”

The shoulders tensed and Mr. Pye slowly turned his head. In the flash of lightning that lit up the road in that instant, she saw his green eyes gleam, and a thrill ran up her spine. Then the following thunder crashed like the heralding of the apocalypse.

George flinched.

Harry Pye straightened.

And the horses bolted.

“OH, DEAR,” SAID
Lady Georgina, rain dripping from her narrow nose. “We seem to be in something of a fix.”

Something of a fix, indeed.
More like well and truly buggered. Harry squinted up the road where the horses had disappeared, running as if the Devil himself were chasing them. There was no sign of the daft beasts. At the rate they’d been galloping, they wouldn’t stop for half a mile or more. No use going after them in this downpour. He switched his gaze to his employer of less than six months. Lady Georgina’s aristocratic lips were blue, and the fur trimming the hood of her cloak had turned into a sopping mess. She looked more like an urchin in tattered finery than the daughter of an earl.

What was she doing here?

If not for Lady Georgina, he would’ve ridden a horse from London to her estates in Yorkshire. He would’ve arrived a day ago at Woldsly Manor. Right now he would be enjoying a hot meal in front of the fire in his own cottage. Not freezing his baubles off, standing in the middle of the high road in the rain with the light fading fast. But on his last trip to London to report to Lady Georgina on her holdings, she had decided to travel with him back to Woldsly Manor. Which had meant taking the carriage, now lying in a heap of broken wood in the ditch.

Harry swallowed a sigh. “Can you walk, my lady?”

Lady Georgina widened eyes that were as blue as a thrush’s egg. “Oh yes. I’ve been doing it since I was eleven months old.”

“Good.” Harry shrugged on his waistcoat and coat, not bothering to button either; they were soaked through like the rest of him. He scrambled down the bank to retrieve the rugs from inside the carriage. Thankfully, they were still dry. He rolled them together and snagged the still-lit carriage lantern. Then he gripped Lady Georgina’s elbow, just in case she was wrong and fell on her aristocratic little arse, and started trudging up the gorse-covered hill.