The Raven's Revenge (8 page)

“I am a man,” he said simply. 

Katherine let out a shuddering sigh and nodded.

He loosened his hold.

She snatched her hand back into her lap just as Henry approached the table, carrying a steaming mug. Clothing straightened, he looked almost presentable.

Nicholas took the cup and brought it not to his mouth, but to his nose, and inhaled deeply.

The delicious scent wrapped around Katherine, exotic and earthy. “It smells wondrous. What is it?” She sniffed the air. “Is that what you do with it?”

Nicholas laughed. “Nay. I drink it,” and he proved this by taking a big gulp. He held the mug out to her. “Coffee.”

She brought it to her lips and sipped. He watched as her eyes widened, then her mouth pulled into a grimace. “Why, ’tis bitter.” She looked at him reproachfully and put the cup on the table.

Nicholas smiled, taking the mug back up. “Only at first.” He took another big drink. “Later ’tis pleasing. Very pleasing.” Just like lovemaking, he thought, and then shook his head.

Why did his mind stray to carnal pleasures when he was with her, this drab Puritan? Too bad there was no time to slake his lust with Molly.  He drained the last of the stimulating brew and turned to Henry, who had fallen into conversation at one of the tables nearby. “Are we ready then?”

CHAPTER FIVE

“WHO ARE your new friends, Nicky?” Henry kept his voice down and inclined his head toward the other end of the yard where Jeremy readied three fresh mounts. Katherine stood to the side, holding her cat.

“She isn’t my sister, that’s for certain.” Nicholas chuckled.

“I know that. Your sister is in France.”

“Listen,” Nicholas’s voice took on a conspiratorial tone. “She is heiress to Ashfield.”

Henry’s eyes grew large.

“And, she is to marry Dickon Finch.”

“No!”

Nicholas nodded. 

Henry rubbed his jaw. “Then what is she doing with
you
?”

“She doesn’t know who I am, or that I have a connection to Ashfield. Thinks I’m a Nicholas Eddington, got that idea while I was ill,”—and then at Henry’s expression—“nothing to worry about, just a bullet to the arm. I’m quite recovered, I assure you.” To prove this he raised his arm, waved it back and forth, up and down. “See?” he said smiling, even though showing it didn’t hurt at all made it hurt quite a bit.

“She does not want to marry Dickon. Who would blame her? She thinks I’m helping her run off to London—which I am, in a way.” He winked. “She knows I’m the Raven.”

“Are you sure you’re alright Nicky? Maybe that bullet addled yer brains?” Henry shook his head. “What can you possibly be doing with her? And who is the boy?”

“He came long to make sure I do her no harm.”

“Mayhap a good thing.” Henry frowned. “I know this is asking a lot of ye, but have ye made any sort of a plan?”

Nicholas looked across the yard at Katherine and Jeremy, in quiet conversation. She smiled up at Jeremy in a way he found most annoying.

What were his plans for the lass? It had seemed so simple back at the cottage: through her, he would wreak his revenge. But how, exactly? Would it be possible to hurt her father and Finch without hurting her, and still fulfill the promise he made to his father?

He kicked at a rock with the toe of his boot. “Not exactly,” he admitted. “But by keeping her with me, I at least foil the plans of Finch and her father to unite their properties.”

“That old friend of yours was here t’other day, the day after you disappeared, looking for the Raven. I fear he might have recognized me. It has been many years, of course—“

“And you haven’t changed a bit, have you my friend.” Nicholas teased, remembering a younger and wider Henry, as he had been when they left Ashfield. The man’s hair, then brown, had long since turned gray.

“We must travel where we are not known. Until I am certain what game I play, I don’t wish Katherine to discover who I am. Mayhap we should take the Salisbury road. What do you think?”

Henry furled his brow. “I do not recall the country lanes at all well, Nicky. But since we had best get going, any road should do as long as we aim in the right direction.”

* * *

Gerald Welles watched through the tall mullioned window as the elegant Finch coach wound its way up the drive. His empty belly clenched. This would not go well; he knew it.

Nothing had gone as it should since he’d awakened this morning to discover his household at a standstill. There had been no satisfactory explanation, except that Katherine was not there to make it go.

He’d not been alarmed, at least not at first. After all, she was generally a sensible girl who did not disobey or turn up missing. Still, it was too easy to remember how she’d resisted him about Finch. Wilfred had often warned him about sparing the rod, and Gerald was beginning to think his father might have been right. Perhaps what the girl needed was a good beating.

Something he would attend to as soon as she came back.

While he’d waited for his breakfast, he’d set the servants to look for her. Instead of Katherine, they’d found a note: a list of tasks underway and what still needed doing. Gerald wondered if that might be her way of saying good-bye. This became more likely when Lucy discovered Katherine’s little cat was gone. Then news came from the stables that Jeremy and two mounts were absent as well.

That was bad.

Very bad.

So bad, Gerald lost his appetite and left his breakfast uneaten. The anxiety of what to tell his father set his knees knocking. And now, drat it all, Finch was arriving early.

Outside the window, the coach came to a stop. The coachman hopped down from his perch and helped Finch out of the cab. Gerald hurried to the antechamber, preferring to meet Finch in the smaller room.

At the sound of Finch’s imperious steps clicking across the stone floor, Gerald’s stomach twisted into a hard knot and his mind went blank. He tried to compose himself before the other man barreled into the small room, the Ashfield butler in tow.

“Is my bride ready for our espousals?” asked Finch, without even the courtesy of a greeting. He dismissed the servant as if this were his house already.

“She’s gone,” Gerald blurted out, not meaning to say that at all.

“Gone?” Finch squeaked. He cleared his throat. “What do you mean she is gone? Where did she go?”

“Not far, not far. I-I am sure she will return soon. A touch of the megrims is all, I think. The gentle sex…” Gerald tried to smile but failed. He had to protect Katherine, not that she would appreciate it. The chit didn’t know what was best for her; women rarely did. He’d secured a very advantageous match for her, and she was ruining it all.

“She knew we were to say our espousals today.” Finch’s eyes narrowed. “Has she gone off to the woods again? I do not approve. ’Tis dangerous.” He cracked his knuckles.

Gerald flinched with each pop. “I shall send word when she is back,” he said, trying to gain control of the exchange. “I will lock her up. You have my word on it.”

“You should have locked her up before. She is a disobedient daughter, which is not to your credit.” Finch waved a finger at him. “I will not have a disobedient wife to discredit me.” He grasped the hilt of his dress sword, pulled the blade out halfway, and then shoved it back inside its scabbard. “She will not be disobedient long.” He turned and left without so much as a good-bye.

Gerald sank onto the stone seat. With the two best horses gone, he’d have to send Horace and Stephen on the remaining mounts. They’d find them.

They had to.

* * *

Once clear of the village, the four riders passed hills dotted with small farmhouses and sheep, picturesque under a crystal-blue sky. A bucolic and peaceful scene that did not match Nicholas’s irritated mood.

Feeling thus as a younger man, he’d have picked a fight, calling out the biggest, brawniest opponent he could find and emerging a bloody, yet usually triumphant, mess. At twenty-eight he was too old for that. And who would he fight anyway? Jeremy? He let out a derisive snort.

Katherine made a disapproving shrug.

It all came from lack of sexual activity. He could think of no other reason that she should fill his thoughts. Instead of watching the landscape as they traveled past, or thinking of what to do next, Katherine appeared in his mind’s eye. Not as she sat, stiff before him on the horse, but a different Katherine, a winsome, responsive, full-blooded woman.

This other Katherine did not wear her hair bound under an ugly white cap, but wore it flowing free. Long and silken, he could imagine it spilling across his pillow. Her mouth, instead of drawn in a tight line, was soft, yielding, and full of erotic promise. Her eyes, instead of sad and wary, were beckoning, warm, and hungry. For him.

A dream Katherine to be sure. He cursed silently and shifted in the saddle to ease the tightness in his breeches.

Katherine’s Puritan upbringing did not bode well for bed sport. He’d heard that Puritans regarded bedding with the same dry religious conviction as they did everything else. Likely for Katherine, fornication would be a cold perfunctory joining purely for the begetting of children. No doubt she would be as wooden in bed as she sat before him now.

And a virgin, too. Although some men preferred them innocent, that chaste state was not at all to his taste. He preferred a seasoned woman, one who could match his level of passion and delight in sex play.

Nicholas grimaced and shifted in the saddle again. Taking a deep breath, he acknowledged that traveling with Katherine presented complications he had not foreseen.

He raised his arm in a signal to stop. “We can rest now,” he said, and at Katherine’s pleased smile, he added, “but only for a moment.” Although he’d been aching for her to smile, perversely, he now wished to crush it. 

He dismounted, and then helped her down, putting her away from him with haste.

Montford sprang from her arms and darted off into a thicket.

“I will not wait for you to find your cat,” Nicholas warned.

“My kitten will come when I call,” she said, her voice a trifle haughty.

It had better
, he thought, turning away.

After Nicholas and the other men went off, Katherine found a group of bushes to seek her ease.

“Montford,” she whispered when she was done. Then louder, “Where’d you go, puss? Will you make me a liar?” A rustling in the far undergrowth caught her attention. In a flash of grey fur, Montford dashed across the clearing and scampered up a stately old oak. Shading her eyes against the late afternoon sun, Katherine spied her kitten several branches up and well out of reach.

“Montford,” she pleaded. “Nicholas said he would not wait, and I think he’s a man of his word. At least I’ve been hoping so.”

That didn’t budge the cat, except, perhaps, to send Montford higher up into the branches. The kitten’s movement dislodged several leaves and an acorn, which hit Katherine squarely on the forehead. She let out a yelp and jumped back at the sudden pain.

Rubbing her brow, she vowed she would not leave without her kitten, no matter what Nicholas said. If he wanted to go on, then he would have to leave without both of them.

She looked around the clearing. Night would soon obscure the shadows and plunge the woods in darkness. She would be prey to any wild animal or thief that happened by. Katherine shuddered and clenched her hands into fists. She could not let it come to that. “Montford!”

Nicholas, returning at that moment, winced at hearing his name, and hoped Jeremy did not see the astonished look on Henry’s face.

“’Tis her cat,” he hissed to his friend. “She gave it the family surname, I forgot to tell you.”

In an instant, Nicholas could see what had happened. Speaking in his normal tone, he addressed the two men. “Leave this to me.”

Unable to resist toying with Katherine, he sauntered over to her. “Lost your cat up a tree, have you?” He smirked.

She looked away.

He took hold of her up-thrust chin, slowly turned her face to his, and looked straight in her eyes. “And you want me to get it back for you?”

She swallowed deeply and nodded. A plaintive meow from up in the branches echoed her assent.

He looked into the tawny depths of her eyes. She looked back warily. At this range, he could kiss her.

That was it. He could solve both their problems. She would get her cat back, and he could put the fantasy Katherine out of his mind with one harmless act.

Nicholas smiled. “I will demand payment.”

Her delicate brows drew together.

“Don’t worry lass, ’tis a payment you can afford.” He caught a whiff of lavender. “All I ask is one kiss.”

Her eyes widened. He saw a flash of alarm just before it was replaced by a look of reluctant curiosity. Then she turned her head away and he could no longer read her eyes. Montford’s pleas grew louder.

“Please,” she said, arms crossed over her chest.

He bent his head and spoke into her ear. “Ah, lass. A kiss is naught to be feared. ’Tis one of the wondrous things a woman can share with a man.”

“’Twill be payment for your service, and naught else.”

“As you wish,” he grinned, certain she was right. “But I will collect.”

With that, he walked over to the tree, grabbed hold of the two lowest branches, thrust a leg into the “V” at the bottom and began his ascent.

As Jeremy and Henry joined her, Katherine’s stomach knotted. They stood, a somber threesome, necks craned to watch his progress. The branches above swayed as Nicholas climbed. A loud crack sounded, and a small branch came plummeting down. Jeremy grabbed Katherine and pulled her to safety.

“You aright, Nick?” Henry called up.

“Quite,” Nicholas’s terse reply came down.

“And Montford?” Katherine now realized that for Nicholas to bring down the cat, he’d only be able to use one hand for climbing. That, and his recent arm wound, made it seem an impossible task.

How could she have asked it of him?

How could he dare it for a kiss?

If he did succeed, she would have to pay the forfeit, but for him not to succeed was unthinkable.

“Your puss is fine.” Nicholas called down, sounding like he spoke through clenched teeth.