Raven's Vow

by Gayle Wilson

  It had taken the combined efforts of several men called up from the taproom below, but they had deposited the American in the inn’s best bed, and Mrs. Hawthorne had, for modesty’s sake, found a sheet to spread over the wide, bare chest. The soft buckskin breeches he was wearing seemed unrestrictive and so they left those alone. And they left the poultice with its infusion of willow leaves that Raven had placed over the entry wound.

  The physician had arrived in short order, perhaps hastened by the generous fee Reynolds had sent as an inducement, and the banker had thankfully left his client in the competent hands of the physician and Mistress Hawthorne. It was almost two hours later when the doctor emerged, carefully refastening the cuffs he’d obviously rolled up to perform some service for his patient. The banker felt his stomach clench when he remembered the grossly distended flesh underneath the poultice. Resolutely, he blocked that image and watched the physician shrug into his frock coat.

  “How is he?” Reynolds asked when the man seemed disinclined to share any evaluation of the American’s condition.

  “Lucky to be alive,” the doctor said bluntly. He had not learned a fashionable bedside manner at the University of Edinburgh, which was surely why he preferred a rural practice, tending to the honest injuries of farmers and farriers, than a more profitable London one, soothing the imaginary vapors of delicate gentlemen and fainting females. “I lanced the wound and bled him. For today, that’s all that anyone can do. Alone in the world, is he?” he asked casually.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  The physician glanced up, shrewd hazel eyes assessing the old man’s puzzlement. “I assumed there’s no one who gives a damn whether that man lives or dies, given the fact that he appears to be well on his way to the latter, alone and uncared for.”

  Reynolds swallowed uncomfortably, remembering the unnecessary delay his pride had demanded before his delivery of the papers John Raven had asked him to prepare.

  “He has a wife,” he said hesitantly. Catherine Montfort, he thought again. He couldn’t imagine how the American had brought that off, but the marriage was legal enough. Reynolds had made certain of that before he’d drawn up the will. However, he couldn’t picture a woman he knew to be the acknowledged toast of London and a diamond of the first water sitting in a second-rate country inn beside a dying man’s bedside.

  The doctor’s eyebrow lifted slightly. “Indeed,” he said softly, a world of meaning in the single word.

  “She probably doesn’t even know…” the banker began, and then hesitated, wondering, if that were true.

  “Well, if she expects to see her husband again—her living husband, I should say—then I suggest you tell her.” With that brusque opinion delivered, the physician picked up his satchel and descended the steps.

  Taking a deep breath, the old man turned back to the door of the bedroom where the American lay. The devastating sarcasm of the phrase echoed in his head.Her living husband. It seemed he had no choice, but he supposed he owed it to his client to inform him of what he intended. As quietly as possible, he opened the door and almost tiptoed to the side of the bed that Raven’s massive frame filled. The injury had been rebandaged, the poultice discarded, and the American lay unmoving under the spread of sheet and counterpane, their smoothness disturbed only by his slow, too-shallow breathing. Mistress Hawthorne sat in a straight chair near the curtained window.

  “Is he conscious?” Reynolds asked.

  “I don’t know. He never made a sound through the whole ordeal, which was ghastly enough, I promise you. I’ve never seen as much vileness pour out of a wound as when the sawbones opened that one. Enough poison to kill a normal man, I should have thought,” she said softly, shivering at the memory.

  “The doctor thinks I should send for his wife,” the banker said, looking down at the man on the bed. The black hair was fanned against the whiteness of Mrs. Hawthorne’s linen, the golden skin stretched too tightly over the bones beneath.

  The blue eyes slowly opened, bloodshot and unfocused with the fever. “No,” Raven said. He licked parched lips, trying to think what he could say to prevent that. He didn’t want Catherine here.Feeling maternal, he had asked her mockingly.He was the protector. That was the way it was supposed to be. He didn’t want her to see him like this, too weak, he knew, to pretend strength if she came. But also too weak, he was afraid, to prevent them bringing her here.

  “I don’t want her,” he whispered finally, watching the old man’s face waver through the mists above him. That was not what Raven had meant to say. He wanted her, of course, but not to see him this way—brought down by the bastard he’d promised would never bother her again. She would never believe he could protect her from the likes of Amberton if she saw him like this.

  “But the doctor thinks…” Reynolds began, and then thought better of telling him that truth.

  The cracked lips moved upward slightly. “Don’t send for Catherine,” Raven ordered, imbuing his voice with all the surety he could command. “I’m not going to die,” he said, remembering the vow he’d made. The solemn, sacred promise that Catherine Montfort Raven would be his. That she would be his wife in every meaning of the word. He’d be damned if he’d die before he fulfilled that oath. “I promised,” he finished, and then the clouded blue eyes were slowly hidden by the downward drift of his eyelids as unconsciousness claimed him.

  He’d had his instructions and unwilling to go against orders again, knowing that if he’d only arrived two or three days earlier, his client might not now be lying at the edge of death, Oliver Reynolds nodded. And it was not until much later that he thought to wonder about the past tense.

  Despite the supposed dearth of society in London at the end of summer, someone who was very determined could find endless engagements to occupy what otherwise might loom as empty hours. And Catherine Raven was very determined. Because when she was not riding or dancing or promenading through the park, shopping or chatting away the afternoon with old friends, she was remembering the morning of her husband’s departure.

  As he had promised, Raven had had Oliver Reynolds send her word of his itinerary. She supposed the banker received written communication from his employer, but if so, none of it was ever passed on to her—only the briefest note to the effect that Mr. Raven had asked him to convey the information that he was now in Lancaster or Glasgow or Edinburgh. And eventually the days stretched beyond the fortnight Raven had suggested he’d be gone. Far beyond, to three endless weeks, and well into the fourth.

  By then, of course, she’d relived a thousand times that morning’s encounter, remembering not only the kisses they’d shared, but the feel of his body against hers. Its fragrance. And then, unbidden, would come the frightening remembrance of the hot, dry heat of his face against hers. As hot as if he were fevered. As if his wound were already inflamed with the inevitable infection that followed any injury that broke the protective covering of the skin. After the realization had come to her that the warmth of his skin that morning was not normal, she had remembered, too, the abnormal brightness of his eyes. She’d noticed them, of course, but she’d not assigned the proper cause to their nearly luminescent glow. Not at first, in any case.

  And so she deliberately filled every moment of her day with almost hectic activity. She had found that if she were not surrounded by the most entertaining and lively members of her set, those who were still in the city, she found herself picturing Raven’s body twisting in pain on some strange bed, the shoulder she’d so ineptly bandaged agonizingly swollen.

  Men died from the effects of wounds far less serious than the one he’d suffered because of her. He could be dead even now, she had realized, and she would have no way of knowing. She had heard nothing in the last week, not even the unsatisfactory travelogue that the banker had originally provided.

  Icould kill you, John Raven, she thought illogically,for putting me through this. If only you were here, and I could see to it that you were being cared for. That you were receiving proper
treatment. That you were eating the things that would keep you strong through a debilitating fever. Whatever those things were. Surely Edwards would know what to feed an invalid. Or the cook would. Surelysomeone would know in this vast staff whose wages he paid while he himself lay somewhere, dying perhaps, with no one of his own to look after him.

  Her hand trembled suddenly, spilling the wine she’d barely tasted. Edwards was there immediately, offering a cloth. She touched it unthinkingly to the slight dampness of her fingers, and then, unable to bear the direction of her thoughts any longer, she rose suddenly, dropping the cloth onto the table beside her untouched plate.

  “Thank you, Edwards,” she said.

  This was one of the few times she’d dined at home since her husband had left. How different tonight had been from the evenings she’d spent with Raven, discussing a hundred topics, even his businesses. Anything he said or did, she thought in self-mockery, was interesting to her. As sitting alone at his table certainly was not. He had been gone long enough that the chairs he’d ordered removed the morning he’d left had been returned, recovered in an elaborately embroidered fabric that had very closely matched the pattern she’d originally chosen. Standing by the table, arrested suddenly by the memory of the dark stain that had covered the back of his chair that evening, she lowered her head, fighting tears.

  “Is something wrong, madam?” Edwards asked in concern.

  “No, nothing, thank you,” she whispered. Embarrassed that she had given way to her feelings in front of the servants, Catherine turned and made her way out of the room and to the stairs that would lead to her chamber. And to another night that she would spend wondering where he was.

  Sleep eluded her, as she had known it would. Sometime near dawn she slipped out of her bed and tiptoed, still in her night rail, down to the small room that served as Raven’s office. She had done this before, sitting through the cold dark hours, her body curled into the chair behind his desk, somehow feeling closer to him here than in any other spot in the vast house in which he had spent so little of his time. Only here did he still seem real to her. And somehow present. And the hours she’d foolishly spent in his small domain this week had been the only comfort she’d found for her unreasoning fears.

  The room was dark and silent. She stood a moment in the doorway, knowing that in less than an hour the servants would come upstairs to build up the fires in the kitchen stoves and to prepare breakfast. Just now the house was still deserted and quiet, and she had some minutes that she could stay here alone.

  Raven was sitting in the darkness of his office when she entered, her body outlined by the dawn that was breaking through the tall windows of the salon across the hallway. She moved into the doorway, the material of her nightgown falling straight from its high waistline, the line of long, slender leg clearly revealed by its sheerness. She had left her hair unbound, and one dark red strand lay across her shoulder, resting smooth as a silk ribbon over her left breast.

  He was unsure at first if he had conjured her here, if she were a phantom created by his desire. He had been savoring the familiarity of the small, dark room and envisioning Catherine sleeping above, unaware of the battle he had waged during the past month. Unaware of his illness, because he had never intended her to know. The suffering hero was not a role he relished, and he had known from her halting confession that she blamed herself for his injury. He knew her well enough now to know that Catherine would have felt guilty over the result of Amberton’s attack. Guilt and probably pity, he’d acknowledged bitterly, had she seen him as he had been only two weeks ago. Neither of those was the emotion he wanted to arouse in his wife.

  “Good morning,” Raven said softly.

  Catherine’s heart leapt in response to the quiet voice that spoke out of the shadows. “My God,” she whispered, her heartbeat slowing because she had recognized the speaker.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I hadthought this is where I live. Or has that changed?”

  “No,” she said, slowly shaking her head.

  Raven was alive. Alive and seated in his accustomed place behind his own desk. The gladness that sang through her veins over that realization was almost impossible to contain. She wanted to laugh out loud. To hug him. Hold him. Touch the dark, warm skin. To be reassured that he was truly all right.

  “Nothing has changed,” she said instead.

  “And in my absence, Catherine, have you taken to wandering around the house in your nightgown like Lady Macbeth?” he asked.

  She was very thankful for the teasing quality that she clearly heard in his deep voice. She’d been so afraid she would never hear him tease her again. “Sometimes. And have you taken to sitting in the dark, waiting to frighten visitors to death?”

  “Sometimes,” he echoed. “Although I can’t ever remember having had a visitor at this hour. Is something wrong?”

  “I was worried about you.”

  “About me? Why would you be worried about me?” he asked, forcing the amused note into his question.

  “Because I hadn’t heard from you.”

  “Surely Reynolds—”

  “He would tell me where you were, but then you didn’t come home when you had said you would. You’ve been gone a whole month, Raven. And this week I heard nothing. I thought you were sick, perhaps, or…” She paused, afraid somehow to confess the hours she’d spent worrying about him. “And even Mr. Reynolds’s notes were so… He never told mehow you were,” she finished plaintively, knowing she was making a fool of herself.

  “Why should he?” Raven asked simply. “I suppose he didn’t realize you were worried. He had no way of knowing your imagination would suggest the delay in my return was because of some…danger,” he suggested calmly.

  She could see the quick gleam of very white teeth despite the shadows that surrounded him. He was laughing at her, she thought in sudden fury. “I didn’timagine the damage Gerald did to you,” Catherine said hotly. She’d spent nearly a month in the worst sort of anxiety, and he was belittling her concern.

  “Damage that Gerald…” Raven began, as if she’d mentioned some trifling mishap that had slipped his mind. “Surely, Catherine, you didn’t think Amberton had inflicted any lasting injury. I told you it was nothing.” He prayed the lie was more convincing than it sounded to his own ears.

  “Isaw what he did, Raven. And then the day you left…”

  Suddenly, in the face of his denial, Catherine was no longer so certain of her interpretation of the events of that morning. She reviewed the evidence on which her anxiety had been built. His skin had been hot and dry, his eyes too bright, so she had taken that to mean that he was ill, his shoulder inflamed.

  “What about the day I left?” Raven’s question floated to her out of the shadows, as if he, too, were attempting to remember.

  “Your skin was hot,” she said, trying to convince herself that she hadn’t made up all the carefully constructed clues to the terrifying scenario she’d been living with.

  “That is one of the side effects of passion.”

  “Passion?” she repeated. At least, she thought bitterly, she hadn’t been wrong aboutthat.

  “I’ve never denied that I have carnal needs,” he reminded her. “I’m afraid it had simply been too long since I’d taken the opportunity to satisfy them.” He hoped that in her innocence she wouldn’t recognize the absurdity of that as an excuse for fever.

  “Then what happened that morning…”

  “My apologies, Catherine. You may put that lapse down to blood loss. And to too prolonged an abstinence. I hope you’ll forgive me for kissing you without your permission. It won’t happen again. I intend to take steps to guarantee that it doesn’t.” Raven hoped she couldn’t see in the darkness the involuntary lift of his lips that promise invoked.

  “Steps to prevent suchprolonged abstinence?” she asked bitterly.

  “Yes,” he confirmed. It was a simpl
e statement of fact. That was one of the decisions he’d made during the tiresome weeks of his recovery. Despite the promise of freedom he’d given to convince Catherine to wed him, he intended somehow to court and to win his own wife. To make her want him with the same fierce desire that moved through his body whenever he even thought of her. That was not against their contract. And it had been too prolonged an abstinence. Too damned prolonged.

  “I see,” she whispered.

  No, my darling, you certainly don’t see, Raven thought, but you will. Soon, I promise you, you will. Aloud he simply reminded her, “Ihave rendered my apology.”

  “Yes, you have,” she agreed softly. How dare he apologize for kissing her?Damn you, damn you, damn you, she thought fiercely.How can it have meant nothing to you? And she wondered suddenly what his mistress was like. Was she beautiful? Witty and charming?Damn you, John Raven, she thought again.

  “And what have you been doing in my absence? Besides imagining me ill?”

  Again she believed she could hear his amusement.

  “I’ve managed to entertain myself,” she forced herself to answer, but the lie sounded brittle after the seriousness of their conversation. “London in the summer’s not nearly so dull as everyone pretends. I think it’s become fashionable to deplore the lack of society and adopt an air of ennui. Pretending boredom makes people believe you’re accustomed to far more exciting activities than the one you’re engaged in.”

  “You’re probably right,” he said.

  Raven certainly sounded bored with what she was babbling about, and she didn’t blame him. “Did you just arrive?” she asked, trying to get back to some topic that made sense. The meaningless chatter her cicisbei found so charming apparently left her husband cold.

  “I arrived in London last night,” he said. “It was very late, so I decided not to disturb the household.”

  “Where did you spend the night?” she asked without thinking.