Raven's Vow

by Gayle Wilson

  “What is it?” she asked, her voice thready and breathless.

  “It’s called a star sapphire.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she whispered, turning it back and forth in the sunlight.

  “They’re very rare. And, I think, very beautiful.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “In India. Kashmir. Beginner’s luck, they told me.”

  Unable to resist, she glanced up and said teasingly, “I told you it was all a matter of luck.”

  He laughed, and she held out the stone to him. “It’s very beautiful.”

  “I’m glad you like it,” he answered politely, making no effort to take it from her. “I would have had it made up, but I wasn’t sure whether you’d prefer a ring or a pendant.”

  “You’re giving it to me?”

  “Of course.”

  “But why? I don’t understand. If you found it and it’s very rare—”

  Raven interrupted. “Perhaps itis all a matter of luck. Very rare,” he repeated softly. “And I found it.”

  Aware that his words were intended to mean more than a simple repetition of hers, she closed her fingers suddenly around the stone.

  “It’s like your eyes,” she said, unable to prevent the expression of the ridiculously romantic thought she’d had. Somehow the ease that had grown between them in the last few moments invited that very personal comment.

  For a long time Raven made no response to what she had said, and eventually she felt a blush begin to creep into her cheeks. He was watching her with those beautiful eyes she’d just childishly remarked upon.Like a lovesick schoolgirl, she thought in disgust. But since he’d already admitted he thought her a child, she supposed it didn’t matter how much more foolishly she behaved. Where Raven was concerned, she really had no pride left at all.

  “Thank you,” he said finally. When he turned and walked across the room, the Oriental carpet softening the sound of that decisive stride, Catherine closed her eyes. Finally, a reprieve from the intense examination his had just made. And when she opened them again, she also opened her hand and looked down into the depths of the priceless stone he’d just given her. He had presented it without any ceremony and with no fanciful words about his regard for her, it was true. He had, instead, plucked it from behind her ear like a conjurer at a fair. But he had given it to her.

  And she thought again, looking down into its depths, that it reallywas very much like his eyes.

  “But you can’t believe that the workers are in favor of these innovations you’re proposing as their salvation. You have only to look at the machine-smashing rampages of the Luddites,” the Earl of Devon argued vehemently.

  “Because they don’t understand the machines’ potential for improving their lives. They see them as taking jobs, not as—” Raven began to explain, only to be interrupted by Lord Elliot.

  “Why shouldn’t they? For most of them that has certainly proved to be the case. Jobs lost, families destroyed, land that could be in crop production used for factories.”

  “Surely you’re not attempting to blame the lack of available farmland on the manufacturers? I should think you would more properly blame the greed of the landowners for that situation.”

  Her husband was treading on dangerous ground there, Catherine thought, since the gentlemen gathered around his dinner table were themselves large landowners.

  “Enclosure, I suppose,” scoffed Devon. “An old ogre.”

  “An old problem,” Raven agreed. “One far more responsible for the dissolution of the family than the factories are. There they work together, I’m afraid, from the youngest to the eldest.”

  “Children?” Catherine asked. The ongoing debate had been waged with little contribution from the ladies. They had apparently decided this rehash of a favorite masculine subject would simply have to be endured.

  “As soon as they are able to pick up lint from the floor in the textile mills,” Raven answered, glancing at her.

  Catherine had seldom taken an active part in these discussions, which were as lively, and often as heated, as those in Parliament, but she knew her dinner parties had become very popular because of them. No one seemed to mind what topics were introduced and threshed out over the exquisitely prepared courses her chef produced, the debates fueled by the flow of Edwards’s carefully selected wines. She had been instructed by her husband to provide the best for those fortunate enough to be included on her guest lists these last few weeks, and she had done so unstintingly. And now an invitation to dine at the home of John Raven was one of the most sought after of the Little Season.

  “It seems so cruel,” she said, picturing such a childhood.

  “Twelve- or fourteen-hour days. And the mines are far worse,” her husband said.

  “Mines?” repeated Lady Avondale. “Surely there are no children working in the mines.”

  “The smaller the better,” Raven acknowledged. “The drifts are too narrow for the men. Women and children are employed to push the loosened coal up the inclines to the surface. And the owners prefer children because they can pay them less than a quarter of what an adult would make.”

  “But why would parents allow their children to go down into the mines?” Catherine asked, shuddering slightly as she pictured that dark, narrow tunnel Raven described.

  “And if your choice were that or starvation for the entire family? What option do you believe you would have?”

  “And your mines employ machines to do those jobs?” Catherine asked, almost forgetting the others listening to their exchange. As always, she was fascinated by the ideas her husband suggested.

  “In several of the mines I own around Durham the coal is brought to the surface by machine.”

  “Thenyou’ve put workers out of their jobs,” Devon pronounced, satisfied that he’d made his point.

  “We’ve putchildren out of their jobs,” Raven said patiently. “We’ve sent the children home.”

  “And the wages those children were bringing in? How have your workers endured that loss of income, Mr. Raven?” Lord Russell asked. There was simply interest in his question.

  “Those particular mines are more productive than the ones around them—because of the machines, certainly. They’re faster and they don’t tire as the children do. And perhaps because the miners don’t have to worry about their offspring. Because of that increased production, I’ve been able to raise wages.”

  “And I suppose your profits have remained as high?” Devon asked with sarcastic surety.

  “No. To be honest, they’ve not,” Raven acknowledged. “But theyhave been sufficient to allow me to undertake other innovations that will, in the near future, make profits even greater than they were before.”

  “That’s well and good for a man of your resources, but there are owners who don’t have the capital to bear the resulting loss of profit. What should they do?” Russell asked.

  “Recognize that their ultimate success rests upon the efforts of their workers. On their workers’ success.”

  “Bah,” Devon said with disgust.

  “Because the better paid they are, the stronger the workers are, the freer from disease, and the harder they’re able to work. And the more interested they are in the success of what they’re doing, in learning how to operate the machines that will eventually, I admit, take over some of the jobs. But by that time, the machines will also have allowed new mines to be dug, in seams that are now inaccessible. New foundries will be built to produce more and better iron. Iron rails and iron bridges will be built across England, gentlemen, and there will be a lot of manpower required to operate the machines that will build them.”

  “I’m not such a skeptic as Devon, Mr. Raven, but I must confess that I can see no practical application of the rails and the locomotives you’re so set on,” said Russell.

  “They are already being used to take coal from the mines to the canals and to the rivers, and I personally intend to run rails from my mines all the
way to the foundries.”

  “But why undertake that expense when the canals can transport your coal as easily, canals that are already in place?”

  “Because the transport they offer is limited to the speed at which a horse can walk. And because of size differences, with a time-consuming transfer of cargo at the lock.”

  “And by rail?” Elliot asked, his fascination again evident.

  Catherine was well accustomed to the spell Raven’s conviction wove over his listeners. He’d shared his ideas with anyone who had professed the slightest interest. And to give the men of her class credit, more of them had been interested than she’d imagined before she’d seen the effect of Raven’s words.

  “Locomotives already exist that can run at over fifteen miles an hour. Compare that to the canals, gentlemen, and I think you’ll see why I’m willing to go to the expense of building the rails to carry my coal and iron,” Raven said.

  “But you said the rails would spread all across England,” Catherine reminded him. “Not just to carry coal?”

  “To carry people. And anything else that needs to be transported quickly from one place to another.”

  “People? Even women?” she asked, smiling as if amused at the ridiculous idea of riding on a locomotive.

  “I’ll buy you a ticket on the first passenger run,” her husband offered. “I assure you, you’ll be perfectly safe.”

  “Perfectly safe? But how disappointing,” she said, smiling at him. The tension that had grown with the intense discussion was released in the appreciative laughter that ran around the table.

  Catherine took the opportunity their amusement offered to signal Edwards to replenish the gentlemen’s glasses, and she found herself again watching her husband’s hand caress the fine hollowware.

  “We’re behind times in implementing that idea in this country,” Raven suggested after the laughter had died down.

  “Behind?” Viscount Templeton commented. “I thought Stephenson invented the thing.”

  “Trevithick, Hedley, Stephenson. Englishmen, or Scots, Welsh. But if we’re not careful it will be the Americans who make the quickest use of locomotives. And they have as many iron and coal deposits as we do here.”

  “They’re ahead of us in employing the rails?” Elliot questioned.

  “More than ten years ago an American, Colonel John Stevens, acquired a charter to build a railway across New Jersey,” Raven answered, his eyes on his glass rather than on the questioner.

  “And did he build it?” the viscount asked.

  “He did not. Not because the technology was lacking, but because of a lack of money. He couldn’t find enough backers willing to invest what was, I must admit, a great deal of money.”

  “If you thought it to be a great deal, I’m sure the rest of us should be staggered,” Lady Avondale suggested with a touch of asperity.

  Raven smiled at Lady Avondale, and at the laughter her comment had aroused, without a trace of discomfiture.

  “Certainly more than one man could afford to bear,” he agreed. “No matter the anticipated return. And that is perhaps where we have the Americans at a disadvantage.”

  “How so?” Lord Avondale questioned.

  “Capital.That we have in abundance. And if enough people, gentlemen who can afford the investment, were convinced of the feasibility of rail transport, of its importance to the industrial development of Britain, and more importantly of the potential for gain it will offer them as investors…” Raven let the suggestion trail off.

  Catherine knew that it was a compliment to his powers of persuasion that for several seconds no one spoke into the silence that fell. They were thinking about what he had said. And she knew that was all that he’d intended. For now, at least.

  She glanced at him and found those remarkable blue eyes resting on her face. His lips moved ever so slightly in amusement at her expression. She had sat in on this same discussion, or one very like it, on several occasions, and no matter how many times he introduced these ideas, he always made believers of his listeners. Perhaps, she thought in fairness to her husband, because he himself believed so strongly in what he had just said. One dark, winged brow lifted, and knowing that was her signal, she rose.

  “Ladies,” she said, smiling openly across the table at her husband and then at the other gentlemen who were beginning to stand. “I believe we should leave the men to their port and their locomotives. I, for one, have heard all the steam I can bear for one evening.”

  Smiling slightly, her husband bowed to her, and amid the masculine laughter, Catherine swept the ladies out of the way of whatever else he might need to discuss with these very potential investors. This part of the evening was his business, and she was more than willing to leave him to it.

  Chapter Ten

  It was much later, as she sat before her dressing table, that Catherine decided she would finally share with Raven something she had been considering for weeks. The idea had grown more compelling with each dinner party at which she had listened to her husband’s vision of the England he was sure would develop within the next few years, and finally she’d decided to act on it.

  She knew Raven had been successful in finding men who were interested in supplying the capital he needed to begin the rail project, but not as many as he had hoped. He had acknowledged that disappointment to her on one of the few occasions their schedules had allowed them to dine together. And thinking of the little time she’d managed to spend with him in these last weeks, she sighed. It seemed nothing would come of the rapport they’d shared the morning he’d given her the sapphire.

  She wore it often, always receiving admiring comments on the beauty of the stone, which she had had mounted as a pendant surrounded by diamonds. When she had come downstairs tonight, her husband’s gaze had rested briefly on the sapphire as it lay just above the valley formed by the uplift of her breasts. His eyes had traced slowly over the skin exposed by the low neckline and had deliberately moved up to meet hers. There had been again something of the emotions of the morning he’d given her the jewel, and then he had turned to greet the first of their guests.

  Catherine had long been accustomed to the adulation of the most eligible men of her world, and even Raven had seemed to find her decorative enough to be his hostess. But perhaps, she acknowledged disconsolately, it had really been only her position that had attracted him and nothing about her person. Looking at the woman reflected in the glass, she found herself wondering again, the most bitter of pastimes, about his mistress.

  Knowing the futility of that train of thought, she rose decisively and found the silk wrapper her abigail had put out for her on the bed when she’d left. She drew it on and, without allowing herself time to reconsider, left the safe confines of her own room and walked the short distance to Raven’s.

  She lived in the same house with him. They had eaten dinner together surrounded by people who assumed that they were man and wife. They had even shared some brief moments of intimacy.

  You may put that down to blood loss, my dear, Raven had told her, dismissing one of the most intimate of those memories. Catherine remembered also that he had sent her away the night she’d kissed him, the night she’d dressed his shoulder and had been allowed to touch the golden skin that shifted under her hands like warm velvet. But sometimes it seemed there was something in his eyes, something hidden in the lucid and open gaze, that made her wonder if he, too, spent sleepless nights remembering those moments.

  She tapped lightly on the door to the small room he had selected as his own when he had chosen this house. She had expected to hear his voice, a spoken invitation to enter, but instead the door opened suddenly, and Raven was standing before her. He had taken off his coat and waistcoat, and his shirt was unbuttoned, revealing an expanse of golden chest and a tantalizing, mouth-drying glimpse of a flat, ridged stomach.

  “Catherine?” he said, and she could hear his surprise.

  “May I come in?” she asked.

  The pause b
etween her question and his answer was slight, but definite. She knew the terms of their agreement, and they didn’t include midnight visits. And he had certainly never indicated that he wanted to modify those terms. She didn’t understand why she kept putting herself in such a position that he would be forced to rebuff her.

  “Of course,” Raven said, moving away from the doorway and opening it to allow her passage. He had enough trouble keeping his hands off her during the somewhat formal moments they shared at dinner or at the theater. He wasn’t sure his control was up to the challenge of entertaining his wife—his enticingly disrobed wife—in the intimate privacy of his own bedroom.

  Catherine’s eyes were drawn to Raven’s disordered bed. The evening coat he’d removed had been tossed carelessly across the foot, and a glass of what appeared to be brandy stood on the small table beside it. A ledger lay facedown on the tumbled coverings, and from the arrangement of the pillows, she knew he must have been stretched out, studying it, when she’d knocked.

  They stood facing each other for a moment, and she was again very conscious of the power of his body. She had to force her brain to dredge up the words that she had come to say.

  “I’d like to invest in your railway,” she said.

  Some emotion disturbed the careful calm into which he had arranged his features while he’d waited for her revelation of why she’d come to his room in the middle of the night. And she realized only with that lapse of control what he must have been thinking when she showed up at his door.

  “In my railway?” he repeated with a touch of disbelief.

  “Youare still seeking investors? That’s why you were sounding out the men you invited here tonight?”

  “If my tactics are that obvious, I had better rethink my plan of action,” he agreed, amusement threading his admission.