The Prince of Ravenscar (26 page)

Corinne said, “It is such a pity so many die so very young. His grace was very lucky. You and I are lucky as well. I have found that one seems to come to understand what one is really made of as the years pass and experience brands us. But there seems too little time to make use of what we learn, since the time simply disappears from one thought to the next, and then one is dead. But another's experiences, do they really teach us anything at all?”

Rupert said, “I agree that we all travel alone. I think another's experiences may touch us, maybe even teach us about ourselves.”

Corinne said, “I remember well your precious wife, Lydia. Such a dear lady she was. She surely touched you deeply, made you more aware of who and what you were.”

The baron said nothing. He began humming.

Richard paused by them for a moment. “I believe years do change one, but not at the core, never at the core.”

Vicky tapped her slippered foot until Pouffer finished the first waltz and immediately broke into another, this one more exuberant. The old man seemed to bounce on the piano seat. Vicky danced with Julian, and she laughed, a sane, focused laugh, Roxanne thought, as she watched them.

Devlin said to Roxanne, as he watched Sophie waltz with the baron, “Who knew Pouffer had such talents? Her grace, I have found, usually has fine ideas.”

“I think Corinne wished to give Julian time to settle. Seeing his father as a young man, seeing himself so clearly in his father, it must touch him deeply.”

Devlin said slowly, “Julian holds what he feels deep inside, so I do not know how profoundly it touches him. I believe I heard Richard laugh at something your sister said. How can you be enemies with a person when you are dancing? Have I ever told you your name sings on my tongue?” He grabbed her and brought her into his arms. She was laughing as he whirled her about, barely missing Leah, who was so happy she didn't even frown at her.

After all of them drank their tea and were off to bed, Julian found himself returning to the drawing room. To his surprise, his mother was there, a candle held high in her hand, staring up at his father's portrait.

He said quietly, “I wonder why Lord Purley never showed it to you?”

Corinne turned slowly to face her son. “I'll tell you why, Julian. I never showed any interest, and so he simply forgot, as he said.” She looked at the portrait again. “When I met your father, I was seventeen years old. Your father was old, beyond old, to my girl's eyes. Even when I married him, I never thought of him as any other than what he was when I met him. Do you know, looking at him quite terrifies me.”

“I am the image of him, Mother. It is like I am looking in a mirror. Do I terrify you?”

Corinne looked at her son, lightly patted his forearm. “It is not the same thing, dearest. No, not at all.”

“Do you have a portrait of yourself as a young girl, Mother? Hidden away? Perhaps there is something about my face that resembles you?”

She only shook her head.

“I shall have a portrait done of you now. I should like to see the two of you side by side above the mantel.” He paused for a moment. “Why did you never remarry, Mother? You were twenty when you became a widow, were you not?”

“It was a very long time ago, Julian, and if you do not mind, I have no wish to speak of it.”

He wondered why she'd had no wish to speak of it as he walked to his master's bedchamber. He knew a portrait of her now would please him very much. Odd, but she would look like his father's mother now, not wife. Sometimes life was Byzantine.

He paused in the wide corridor, listening, but he didn't hear rain or wind. The storm had passed out to sea. It was now utterly still. Then he heard whispers. They came from Leah's bedchamber.

Richard was in Leah's bedchamber. Julian hoped she knew what she was doing.

R
oxanne was dreaming of her mother. She couldn't see her, but she knew she was close; she could smell her scent—jasmine, her mother always wore jasmine. Her mother said something, a muffled sound, as if behind closed hands, but Roxanne heard it. She was still half asleep when the sound came again, a sort of scratching sound, coming from against her door; someone was there, someone meant to hurt her—she snapped awake. She jerked up and stared toward her bedchamber door.

It was quiet. Again, that slight sound—perhaps it was a mouse, perhaps a branch slapping lightly against her window.
What drivel.
Again, she had the mad thought that someone was outside her door, maybe talking low, someone who wanted to come in. But the door was locked. If they were up to good, why didn't they simply knock?
That's because they're not up to good.
Her heart started pounding. She stared at the large brass key in the keyhole. She'd turned it after she'd sent Tansy off to bed, surely she had, but she couldn't be certain.

This was ridiculous. Put her in a dark room by herself and watch her begin to foam at the mouth. Why couldn't Sophie have come to sleep with her again tonight? Roxanne swung her legs off the bed, slid her feet into her slippers. She grabbed up her wrap, pulled it around her shoulders, and tightened the sash at her waist. She walked very quietly to the door, pressed her ear against it. And listened.

Nothing at all.

She watched her own hand turn the brass key to unlock the door. She was witless, she thought, no other explanation for it, as she watched her hand pause on the knob. Then before she could talk herself out of it, she pulled open the door and stepped out. The corridor was dark, silent. She had no candle, but her eyes began to accustom themselves to the darkness. She began to make out shapes—a table set against the wall with a marble bowl atop it, a marble bust of some long-ago Monroe inset in a small alcove. But no one was lurking about to make those small sounds.

Not fifteen feet down the corridor, a door creaked open. Roxanne's heart stopped. Was that what she'd heard? She saw a shadow—it was a man—and he stepped out into the corridor, a candle held in front of him.

She heard his voice, quiet, a bit peeved. “Who is there?”

Roxanne's breath whooshed out, and without a thought, she ran toward the man, her slippers clipping on the wooden floor. She threw herself against him.

“
What?
Who—Roxanne?”

He cursed, grabbed her with one arm while with the other he held out the candle so he couldn't catch either of them on fire. “Roxanne, what the devil are you doing out of bed? What—”

“I heard something or someone out here, Devlin.” Roxanne realized she was pressed against him. She also realized there were only three items of clothing separating them. Devlin's hand pulled her closer, and suddenly he was kissing her hair, all wild around her head, spilling over her shoulders, his brain filled with her scent, the feel of her, the softness of her hair against his mouth.

Was he mad? He forced his brain to step back, since his body wasn't about to. He was panting, surely not at all the thing for a man of his sophistication to do, but she was standing so close, and perhaps her breasts were heaving a bit beneath those two thin layers of nightclothes, and he
felt
them.

Devlin nearly stumbled out of his own slippers. He brought the candle closer so it made a barrier of sorts between them. “I heard something, and came to investigate.”

“Yes, yes, I did, too. Then your door opened, and you were here, and I was so relieved—” Her voice dropped right off the cliff. She stared at him. Her tongue was on her bottom lip, worrying, tasting, and he wanted—he shook. He opened his mouth, shut it, then it burst right out of him: “Your hair is incredible.” He raised his hand to touch it, then quickly dropped his hand to his side.

My hair is incredible?
It was the middle of the night, and they were swallowed in shadows so deep perhaps Devlin wasn't seeing things the way they really were. Maybe he was overset because he'd fancied someone or something was out here—but no, he'd said what he'd said. It was all about her and her incredible hair. She beamed at him in the darkness. “I am so glad it's you, Devlin. I was alarmed, silly of me, I know, because who could be skulking about in the middle of the night? Who could be making noises to jerk me out of a very nice dream?”

“Richard Langworth, for one. He was with your sister earlier; I heard them whispering. Maybe they were finished with—never mind that. They were probably speaking at her bedchamber door before he left.”

“Whispering? Leah and Richard? That's what I heard? But that would mean that—how could she do such a thing? They are not married, they are very nearly strangers, they—”

Devlin raised a finger, laid it against her lips. She opened her mouth beneath his finger, closed it again. Merciful Lord, he wanted his mouth against hers, not his bloody finger. Still, he forced himself not to lower the candle to the floor; that would surely bring him everything he wanted—perhaps Roxanne wanted it, too—but the consequences?

Roxanne gulped. “Are you wearing only your dressing gown, Devlin?”

“You should not remark upon that, Roxanne. Yes.”

“That is not much barrier between thee and me.”

“You are quoting Shakespeare to me?”

“It does sound like something Oberon would say to Titania, doesn't it? No, no, don't answer that. I should go back to my bedchamber. I should lock my bedchamber door again. And I should shove the key through to the other side.”

“I can see you clearly now, Roxanne. You are framed by black, it halos your face. You are so very white, do you know? Perhaps you have vampire leanings yourself. Perhaps you should eschew the sun as I do.”

She nodded, stilled. “I wonder which of us is the whiter?”

I think if we were naked together, we would blend into a perfect single whiteness.
Where had that ridiculous thought come from? Because he wasn't a complete dolt, he managed to keep that madness behind his teeth.

He merely smiled at her.

“Do you prefer your mistresses be as white as you are, Devlin?”
As white-skinned as I am?

He could but stare at her over the arc of candlelight. “No, you are the first to be as white as I am. Is the rest of you as white as your face?”

She didn't mean to, she truly didn't, but she parted his dressing gown. He didn't move, scarcely breathed.

She said, “Even the soles of my feet are white. Are you smooth as white marble, or do you have hair on your chest?”

“Yes, I do have lots of hair. So does my father. And Julian, too. You cannot imagine what picturing all of you is doing to my brain, Roxanne.” Now she was tangling her fingers in the hair and he was leaning into her fingers.

Her fingers flattened on his chest. She was closer now, and he could feel her breath sighing through the warm air between them. She said, “Your heart is galloping, Devlin, as fast as Eglette, my prized childhood pony. He was faster than a storm rolling right at you. Your heart is pounding so hard and fast that if you were an old man, I would fear for apoplexy.”

He raised his free hand. His fingers, light as a shadow, pressed against her breast. “Your heart is drumming as well, Roxanne.”

“Once, it was a very long time ago, I remember feeling quite strange when John kissed me, but it didn't make me want to bound to the heavens and shout with joy at the same time; it didn't make my heart want to leap out of my chest.”

“It is lust,” he said.

“Lust? It is lust that is making me warm all over and my heart race like a flying arrow?”

“It is. Listen to me. Lust is a simple thing that freely roams the land, pops up in unlikely places, like in a castle's dark corridor, between a man and a woman who shouldn't even be in the bloody corridor together, maybe even in the bloody castle together.”

“No, Ravenscar is a palace,” she said. “Sophie said a prince could only live in a palace.”

Devlin watched his own hand drop from her breast. The loss of her nearly broke him. He forced himself to step back in his mind, one step, another. He said, “Do you know, I am a very content man?”

Roxanne was silent for a long moment, then she managed a sneer she knew he couldn't appreciate despite the candlelight. “Naturally, you are content. You are rich, you are a duke's heir, an earl in your own right, and you have three mistresses. I am given to understand if a man were to enjoy three mistresses—three
different
mistresses at the
same
time—he would be very content even without money, without a title. Mayhap he'd be whistling all the time. Do not forget, you excel at being a vampire. You have played the role so long every woman who meets you is immediately fascinated. You represent the danger of the unknown.”

“Do I fascinate you?”

“I shall not answer that. Now, I have said too much, and I have said it at great length. I began by insulting you . . .” She paused. “I suppose I ended with the insult intact.”

He nodded. “Very fluent you were, too. But you know, you said so much I can ignore what I wish to. Yes, I much enjoy whistling, particularly when the moon is high and I can raise my face and see the clarity of it piercing through the shadows surrounding me, and no, it will not fry me like the sun. If you had three lovers, I wonder if you would be as content as I, Roxanne?”

“Where would a lady find the time to juggle three lovers, Devlin? I mean, can you imagine having to change your gown for three different gentlemen? And your hair, brushing it into a new style for each lover? It would be exhausting, don't you think?”

He wanted to laugh, but he didn't. He had to stop, he had to.

She said, “Do you know I am twenty-seven?”