Lord Ravenscar's Inconvenient Betrothal

by Lara Temple

  ‘Why should I take her to Bristol?’

  He looked genuinely puzzled, which added fuel to her fire.

  ‘You must know Lady Ravenscar isn’t given to entertaining, which means your poor sister spends most of the year cooped up at the Hall with no one to talk to but Lady Ravenscar and Nicky when she is down from school. She is barely thirty years old and she should not be behaving as if she were seventy. Would it have been so hard to make some time to take her shopping or to an assembly, or are you too busy with your gaming hells and brothels?’

  As the words poured out, she knew she was once more crossing a line, that her annoyance was in excess of its stated cause. It wasn’t his fault she was marooned at the Hall until she made her decision, that she had no idea what that decision should be, that he kept pushing her out of her hard-earned equilibrium. None of it was his fault and yet it felt like it was. She drew breath, dragging herself back, and looked away from the smoky fury in his eyes.

  ‘I apologise, Lord Ravenscar. It is quite clear you care for your sister and niece and I have no right to interfere in what I don’t understand.’

  ‘You’re right. You don’t.’

  She wasn’t given to blushing, but she felt the heat of mortification in her cheeks. She probably appeared both childish and shrewish, two attributes she hated. Perhaps he was right that her privileged position as heiress had spoilt her. Usually her sense of humour kept a rein on her temper, but this time she had gone too far.

  She waited for the counter-attack, focusing on the buttons of her gloves, sinking into the familiar ritual of buttoning and unbuttoning them to calm her nervousness. She had never worn gloves on the island and they had been harder to accustom herself to even than corsets. They felt clumsy and unnatural, separating her from the world and hemming her in. She slipped out the buttons one by one, counting out memories for each of them, far-gone memories of the little house in Somerset before their departure to Brazil, then her favourite corners on Isla Padrones, all the people she loved, living and dead, until she was calm and collected again. With each sleek slide of pearl through its loop, her mind settled a little: this one was for her little treehouse the gardener had built for her out of a shipping crate in the mango tree; this was for tickling the manatees with her bare feet when they came to beg in the bay for crusts; this one was for Augustus, who had been her favourite from the island’s many half-domesticated dogs; this one was for...

  His chair scraped against the floor and she looked up. He hadn’t moved, but his gaze was on her hands. For some reason she froze, her fingers still with a pearl button partly unfurled. He had the most amazing lashes, long and definite and the only feminine element in a face that was too virile and male to be truly beautiful. They rose now as she watched and he was close enough for her to see a ring of darkened blue, the colour of night that makes the eyes ache as they search it for shapes.

  ‘If you’re going to take them off, then stop playing with them and take the damn things off!’

  ‘What?’

  He moved with a suddenness that didn’t even give her time to tense, grasping her wrist and swiftly unhooking the final buttons and tugging off her glove, tossing it next to his on the table. His hands were brusque, like an impatient parent, but she didn’t notice that, just the slide and scrape of his fingers against her wrist as he worked.

  When he took her other hand and unhooked the first button with the same businesslike movement, she turned her arm over and pressed it down on the table, blocking him. She didn’t want to be treated like an aggravating child.

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  But he didn’t let go, just sat there clasping her wrist in his hands. She tugged at it, but he tightened his hold. This time she didn’t resist when he turned her hand over, because this time it was different.

  She watched his hands, dazed. Was it possible that they were even more beautiful than his face? No, they were too rough-looking to be beautiful, with a series of small white scars along the back of his right hand and one cut still unhealed along the softer skin between his thumb and forefinger. They were the hands of a man who used them for more than gambling and seduction, but they were still mesmerising. They also had to be quite large to make hers look so small by contrast. She didn’t have the dainty hands and narrow wrists so admired by men. Her father would make fun of what he called her pianist hands that could span a whole octave when she played on the warped old pianoforte for the islanders. But as Lord Ravenscar’s long dark fingers uncovered the pale length of her forearm and the greenish veins at her wrist, she felt fragile, breakable.

  He was moving even more slowly now than she had, as if it was a physical effort to continue. Then as the edges of her glove peeled back to reveal the heel of her palm, he raised it and with one finger traced the line between wrist and palm. Her fingers twitched and her body breathed in that faint flush of skin on skin. It lit up the whole right side of her body, ending in a tingle along her cheekbone.

  She wanted him to kiss her there. Press that beautiful taunting mouth right there, just as lightly. And then...

  ‘Damn.’

  His curse was soft and didn’t seem connected to anything, but it rang through her like a stone dropped into a well. His face had an abstracted look as he inspected her hand. It should have sobered her, but it didn’t.

  She held herself completely still, waiting, but inside her was a rising blaze of a fire that demanded she do something. She just had no idea what. He might think her bold, but to do what she wanted to do right now, grab his hand and pull him towards her, make him kiss her, make him peel back much more than her glove, was so outrageous she could hardly believe she was even thinking it. Not thinking it, feeling it, her whole body drawing life at the moment from the contact of his fingers on her wrist. Her legs were clenched, pressing together hard, trying to hold something down.

  Maybe she was falling ill after all. It must be that. This heat and discomfort and...and something made no sense otherwise. This was the fever and it was hitting her hard. She should tell him she needed to get back to the Hall. Soon. Before it became worse.

  But she didn’t say anything. Not even when his hands started moving again, his thumb sweeping over the skin he exposed, from the line he had traced gently over the hills and valley of her palm and up each finger, curving over its crest and resting at each tip for a moment before continuing to the next. She looked away from the damage he was wreaking, but her eyes caught on his face, intent, calm, utterly focused on what he was doing. Until he looked up.

  The dark grey had melted into night and she was just melting. No one had ever looked at her like that, or if they had, she hadn’t noticed. No, no one she had ever met could look like that. She could give credence to tales of the Wild Hunt, of seductive devils rising from the depths of hell to tempt unwitting maidens who wandered out after dark. Except that it wasn’t dark and they were in the private parlour of a small English inn in Somerset in the middle of a rainstorm and she didn’t believe in devils any more than she believed in ghosts.

  He was just a man.

  But she was just a woman.

  She hardly noticed her hand stretch under his, her fingers scraping against his palm as it lay lightly on hers, but it had the desired effect. His hand closed on her wrist and he drew her towards him, over the table, his other hand closing on her nape as he stood up, drawing her to her feet, moving towards her.

  She opened to the kiss as if it was the most natural thing in the world. As if she had known this man for years rather than days and this intimacy was part of her own existence, natural, reaching deep inside her to places no one else was allowed.

  She didn’t know what she had expected, her experience of kissing was just another part of her role as heiress pursued—she had toyed with it and discarded it as interesting but hardly worth the annoyance when kissing turned to pawing. God, had she been wrong. She had had no idea...

/>   She hadn’t expected the very contact of his mouth on hers to pour liquid heat through her, to reach even to her toes and fingertips like an ancient spell bringing a statue to life. She needed more; she wrapped her arms around his neck, raising herself on tiptoe, unable to stop her body from pressing against his hard length. A sound burst from deep inside her, a cry of yearning that she had no control over. It was a mistake. He pulled back, his eyes narrowed as if in pain.

  ‘Lily...’ It sounded like a protest, but she ignored it. She wouldn’t let him stop. She could touch him; her hands realised it before her and were already moving over him, feeling the grain of his skin from the hard angle of his cheekbone to the scrape of stubble on his cheek, then into the warm silk of his hair at his nape, the taut rise of muscle and sinew as he held himself rigid. But when she pressed her mouth to his, sliding against the smooth heat of his lips, he groaned and dug his hand into her hair, angling her head and taking control. No one had ever dared kiss her like this, hard, demanding, his tongue seeking hers, torturing her sensitised lips, nipping at them before suckling them into quivering submission as he moulded her body to his. Her hesitant exploration was submerged in the force of the embrace and she just clung, waiting for disaster or salvation, little whimpers coursing through her without even realising, gathering force.

  ‘Lily...’ The single word shivered through her, a whisper of wind high above the storm. He had warned her. She understood the danger of the wild hunt now that it was too late.

  She didn’t hear the knock and didn’t understand why he was suddenly halfway across the room until Greene walked in and laid Lily’s cloak over a chair. Without a word he picked up his gloves and hat from the table and left the parlour.

  Chapter Six

  Alan opened his eyes and stared at the sooty beams.

  Had the already cramped rooms at the Ship shrunk overnight?

  The dun-coloured walls leaned in, mean and oppressive, and a draught whistled past the warped window frame. No wonder the room was so cold; it felt even icier under the blanket than out of it. He debated staying where he was. What was the point of getting up anyway? The sky outside was still depressingly grey and he would likely only get soaked a third time. Neither he nor Jem had enough clothes with them to spare another dousing like the past couple of days they had spent driving around looking for a new property, none of which had proved any more suitable than the house in Saltford. The only benefit of the massive discomfort had been to distract him, partially, from the persistent and uncomfortable memories of his idiocy at that inn.

  Idiocy. The word felt woefully inadequate in the face of the physical torture that careened through his body just at the memory. His mind had never before clung so tenaciously to the sensations of a body pressed against his, to the unique, intoxicating flavour of a woman’s mouth and skin. It lingered at the tips of all his nerves and at his core, an aching accusation.

  How had he allowed a kiss to so completely escape his control? Her avid response had surprised him and all but knocked him off his feet, but that was no excuse. That was just it; there was no excuse for what he had done.

  He turned on his side, trying to stifle his treacherous thoughts and gather the resolution to get out of bed and send for some firewood. His back ached, probably from the sagging bed. His head ached, probably from sheer frustration at being in this cursed corner of the world where everything always went wrong.

  But the most abused organ at the moment was his pride and it was about to get worse. After a whole day and a half of marshalling every argument against debasing himself, he knew there was no getting around it—he would have to apologise to that vixen. She might have given his temper plenty of provocation, but he was responsible for losing it and his pride dictated he swallow it and apologise.

  Damn the girl. She would have served him better if she had swung that mace at him the day he came across her at Hollywell House so he could have been knocked out and not fallen into Jezebel’s trap in the first place. Then he would have taken himself off safely to Bristol and could have avoided making a thorough fool of himself.

  It served him right for teasing her. What the hell had he been thinking...or rather why the hell hadn’t he been thinking? He never should have succumbed to the informality of her behaviour and engaged in conversations with her that were as improper as he could imagine with a gently reared young woman who might one day become the wife of a business partner, no matter how unconventional. Whatever the merits of his reputation as a rakehell, not even in his wildest days had he crossed the line with marriage material, out of pure self-preservation if nothing else, because if there was one price he was unwilling to pay for his pleasure, it was matrimony. There was a little grey stone by the Hall to remind him precisely why he would never proceed down that path, no matter what Catherine or society thought. There were certain mistakes in life one didn’t make twice. Catherine had been too ill to remember, but he could never forget. He had lost his will and his right to a family before it was even a thought in his young mind. There would be no home and no children and that meant he stayed away from virtuous young women. In London he was careful not even to engage them in conversation unless he was safely in the despised but controlled confines of society’s playgrounds. However little society trusted him, he trusted it less—it was the hypocritical domain of the likes of his grandmother, and if he gave it a finger, it would snap off his arm, pick the bones clean and beat him over the head with it.

  So how the bloody hell had he crossed that acid-etched line with the impertinent heiress? Not just crossed the line, but all but pitched a tent on the other side. He had taunted her, insulted her, kissed her and was well on the way to doing worse if her maid hadn’t appeared in time.

  He groaned and shoved back the blanket, shivering as he tugged on the bell and went to put on his dressing gown. His head felt heavy and he wondered if the ale he had drunk last night had been bad. It hadn’t tasted off, but then the Ship wasn’t the type of hostelry he was used to any more and anything was possible. It was too close to Bristol to cater to serious travellers and both the bedrooms and the fare were mediocre at best. He smiled at the thought—he had accused the heiress of being spoilt, but he himself was becoming quite spoilt. Either that or he was getting old. A few years ago he wouldn’t have thought twice about staying in a much less commodious inn and a few years before that he had spent more nights than not sleeping on the rocky ground in Spain with nothing more than a scratchy, filthy blanket as cover and a knapsack as a pillow, hoping to make it through another day without being shot or skewered by a bayonet. Now he felt like a creaking, groaning octogenarian because his bed sagged and the window frames weren’t true.

  Maybe winning that mill at cards five years ago had done him a serious disservice. At the time he had considered it poetic justice—after all, he spent a pretty penny supplying his mistresses with the best in women’s clothing, so perhaps it was fitting he should be making his fortune producing the finest muslin fabrics. Not that it had started out that way. The man who had staked the mill had actually laughed at the loss, admitting it was in such bad repair and so deep in debt he hadn’t even been able to sell it.

  At the time Alan had been furious and seriously considered tossing the key and deed into the Thames. Instead he had dragged himself up to Birmingham, a decision which had changed his life. In two years he had taken over two other failing mills, introducing light wrought-iron power looms with swift gearing and lighter dressing frames. That had brought him into contact with Marston and together they had invested in additional mills and more interestingly in a large manufactory of their newly patented power looms that were transforming the industry. It might not be good ton, but it sure as hell beat depending on his skill with horses and cards to make ends meet after selling out from the army. He had staffed both the mills and manufactories with men who had served under his command and then with more and more of the veterans floating around
the country in search of employment. With Stanton and Hunter’s help, he had transformed an old manufactory nearby into another Hope House, drawing veterans from all over the Midlands, and now they were doing the same in Bristol, or at least they had been until the building they had leased had caught fire. It had been sheer luck that none of the men and their families had died, but the temporary solutions they had found for them in Bristol were abysmal and made the Ship look like Prinny’s Brighton Pavilion by comparison. Many of the veterans were already infirm and ailing. If they weren’t going to succumb to inflammation of the lungs or worse, he needed to move them to a safer, healthier and larger home. He was through with people dying on his watch when he could do something about it.

  He sat down on the side of the bed, drawing the blanket around his shoulders. He had plenty to do before he left Bristol, but before all else he had to gather the resolve to deliver the dreaded apology. If only he could gather the resolve to stand up.

  He straightened at a knock on the door and Jem entered with an armful of firewood.

  ‘Well, the landlord’s ill, Captain. This place is going from bad to worse; the sooner we move on, the better.’

  Alan watched Jem work at the fire.

  ‘My thoughts exactly. We can stay at the Pelican in Bristol until we’re done here.’

  Jem glanced over his shoulder, frowning.

  ‘You shipshape, sir? You’re sounding rusty. Not like you to sleep in either.’

  ‘I didn’t sleep in. I barely slept at all. The damn place is like an icehouse. There’s nothing wrong with me a decent room won’t cure.’

  ‘Getting soft, are we, Captain?’

  ‘Getting old, Jem. Any chance you could find some warm water for me to shave? I feel as rusty outside as in.’

  ‘I’ll take a toddle downstairs and see if there is anyone here not laid up.’ He stopped by the door. ‘Why don’t you get back into bed, sir? At least until the room warms.’