Prince of Ravenscar (Sherbrooke Brides 11)

“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.

41

Roxanne 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.”