Chapter 3
He had fled the music of the ballroom for the music of contented horses.
The stables, the only place in Ravenscroft House that smelled of work rather than perfume.
Hay, leather, lamp oil. Honest things. Edward Ravenscroft, formerly Lieutenant Edward Ravenscroft of HMS Argus, now Duke Edward of Wexford and unwilling to feel like it, brushed down the black mare with the calm economy the navy had burned into him.
It was habit as much as refuge. Eight years at sea had built a man who counted by bells and watches, who trusted what he could tie, trim, or test. The ballroom sharpened every edge in him.
Too many eyes. Too much talk of heirs and duty.
He could still hear his mother’s hectoring words earlier.
“You owe the name what you stole from it.”
And what did it steal from me, mother?
Then a slice of ballroom brightness had cut across the straw.
A lady in green stepped in. She spoke to the dappled mare at the other end of the stables with a Scottish lilt and the gentle confidence of one who had grown up around horses.
Too easy to imagine his mother arranging such a creature to tease him back to duty.
Sending her to me like a brood mare to a stallion. The devil!
Such was his anger at the notion that he forgot the prejudice his mother held which would not allow her to propose a Scot as a potential bride for her son.
He had met the stranger with boldness and cool insolence.
Wishing her away even while he found his eyes drawn to her beauty as though they were iron and she a magnet.
Then she turned to go, caught a rope, and struck her head with a hollow sound that emptied his lungs.
Edward moved before thought. The training of an eight year Navy man leaped to the forefront of his mind, action driving out thought. He ran to her, dropping to his knees beside her and placing fingers at her wrist.
Her heart beats and I can see the rise and fall of her chest. She breathes.
He reached up for the lantern, bringing it down to the floor to better shed light on her.
Apart from the marring of a rising bump on her forehead, she was beautiful.
Exceedingly beautiful. Her bronze hair and pale skin put him in mind of a girl he had met in Newfoundland when the Argus had put in to lick wounds to hull and pride after an insulting defeat at the hands of a French privateer. She had been Irish.
This girl was definitely a Scot though he could not place the location.
Proud of it and prickly as a porcupine at even the hint of insult.
He touched gently at the swelling under the lamplight.
No blood. Relief hit hard, like a wave over the bow.
Her skirt had snagged on a nail and the silk was torn from hip to knee.
It showed a stocking dusted with straw. Above the top of that stocking he caught a tantalizing glimpse of creamy skin, a bare thigh.
Hastily he yanked his coat from the stall door and settled it over her, masking the damage and the dirt.
Then he slid one arm beneath her knees, one behind her shoulders, and lifted.
She weighed little. Her hair grazed his jaw.
Her perfume was subtle, carrying citrus and a hint of rose.
Not French, at least not the vulgar kind of French that seemed popular now that the war was over.
He looked down at her. In sleep her features were peaceful and she seemed to glow.
Tranquility made her radiant now as fierceness had made her ferociously beautiful just a few moments before.
Her lips were full and ached to be kissed.
Her nose was petite and her figure slender but with a woman’s alluring curves.
When he realized that he was standing and staring, he shook himself.
Get a hold of yourself Lieutenant! She is in need of a physician, not a fiancée.
He set his mouth and carried her out. The straightest path to the guest rooms ran through the ballroom. So, obeying the pragmatism of the Service, he took it.
I will not delay getting her to safety and comfort simply to avoid prying eyes. And I will not hide away in my own house!
He regretted his decision as he stepped through the French doors and the musicians of the orchestra became the first to register his presence.
They faltered as their maestro gaped, his arms slowing.
Then the guests became aware as Edward strode through them.
Conversation snapped and curled like a cut rope.
Faces turned. Mouths opened, whether to gape or whisper.
He kept a sailor’s pace across the parquet, the lady in his arms and London’s curiosity in his wake.
A man, brave or foolish, stepped forward with a question and stepped back without one when Edward’s look reached him.
Then a young man with bronze hair and a face storm-dark with fury blocked his way.
“Your Grace,” he said, low and dangerous. “You will give me that lady.”
“No,” Edward said, and did not slow.
“I am Alistair Drummond, Duke of Strathmore. That is my sister.”
Strathmore reached out but Edward brushed past him. The coat draped over her knees fell away, revealing the tear, the stocking and the thigh.
“Then follow. She needs a physician, not a crowd,” Edward rumbled.
“What has happened?” Strathmore barked.
“She struck her head,” Edward said. “She breathes. She will be seen at once. Stand clear.”
A woman’s voice, cool as glass, cut the air. “Edward.”
The Dowager Duchess, Eleanor Ravenscroft, Edward’s mother, with a gaze that arranged people as neatly as porcelain, detached herself from a knot of watchers.
She took in the scene, the fallen coat, the straw, the exposed flesh, and turned to the room with a crisp announcement that was also a command.
“You seem to be carrying, Lady Isla Drummond, sister to His Grace of Strathmore.”
“So he has just told me,” Edward said.
Away from the urgency of action his reason took over.
My mother would never bait me with a Caledonian native. She is far too hateful of anyone from north of Carlisle. All Scots are reavers to her. All are murderers of husbands.
She put a hand to his arm which stopped him, momentarily. An army could not have achieved the same as the hand of a fifty year old widow with the eyes of a raven.
“I will have a physician sent for. And then try to silence the gossip. We will speak.”
“We will!” Strathmore said, hotly.
“Now is not the time, Your Grace,” Lady Eleanor said. “Let us try and revive the discretion my son has tried to sink, shall we?”
Edward left the ballroom and crossed the gallery into the corridor where portraits glowered in gilt. He took the stairs two at a time to the floor on which the guest rooms lay. He laid Isla on the bed, taking a blanket from the chest at the bed’s foot and carefully laying it over her.
Strathmore entered the room on his heels. Then Lady Eleanor who motioned a maid to go to Isla’s side and beckoned her son and Strathmore to the other side of the room.
“Explain,” she said.
“She came to the stable,” Edward answered. “We spoke. She turned to go, caught a rope, and hit the beam. Her gown tore on a nail. I covered it and brought her here. Send for Doctor Hargreaves.”
“He is coming,” the Dowager said, as if physicians were footmen.
“I still have not heard an explanation as to why you were in a stable of all places with my sister. My unmarried sister!” Strathmore hissed, putting himself in front of Edward.
Edward raised an eyebrow.
“I was in my own stables. I will not justify where I go in my own house.”
He turned away and unstopped a decanter of brandy he had spotted on a sideboard, pouring himself a measure.
Not rum but it will do.
“Don’t turn away from me!” Strathmore barked.
Edward looked at him. Only looked. Strathmore shrank from that stare as many a seaman had before. As a French officer once had, confronted by a young English Lieutenant with an empty pistol and a broken sword. Strathmore did what that the officer had done. Surrendered.
“Edward I do not think you appreciate the damage you have done to …”
“Mother, do not use the R word. I will not hear it. I brought the young lady to safety and everything else can go hang,” Edward grated. “Would you have preferred I risked her health by taking the servants’ routes through the house? Would you, Strathmore?”
Strathmore growled but shook his head sharply.
“I thank you for your swift action. I reserve the right of a brother to be suspicious of your actions prior to the … accident.”
Edward wanted to look towards the bed. She was a lodestone to his compass.
Her scent filled the air and exhilarated him in a way that only salt air after a long period land-locked had been able to do previously.
He did not look, not with her brother standing there.
He resisted the urge to fill his sails with her scent.
To look at her beautiful face and remember the fierce light of her proud eyes.
Pull yourself together man!
“I think we should leave Lady Isla to the care of Lucy and the physician, when he arrives. Perhaps we should retire to your study, Edward, and discuss our next steps,” Lady Eleanor suggested.
Edward nodded sharply, throwing back his brandy and slamming the glass down. He felt the way he had when he received the letter concerning his father’s death. When he knew the freedom of the sea was lost to him.
I should have called a servant. I should have stopped to think. Damnation! I will not be tied.
Chapter 3
A soft, rhythmic sound drew her back from the dark.
It took a moment to realize it was her own heartbeat, thudding faintly beneath her ear.
Something cool pressed to her forehead. Linen, damp with water.
The air smelled of lavender and the warm woody aroma of a fire.
She opened her eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling traced with delicate plasterwork.
“Lie still, my lady.”