Prince of Ravenscar (Sherbrooke Brides 11)

“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?”

He nodded. “When is your birthday?”

“August the third.”

“Then I am three months older than you.”

“Are you older than your mistresses?”