Prince of Ravenscar (Sherbrooke Brides 11)

> Julian stared after her. She hadn’t yet told him what she knew about any spears of stone. He supposed she’d been jesting with him. However, not ten minutes later, he looked up to Sophie striding toward him, making her bonnet ribbons dance in the stiff breeze. He stood in the dog run, surrounded by all four spaniels, all yipping and leaping about, trying to bite one another, vying for his attention. When they heard Sophie’s voice, they left him flat and raced back to dance around her, barking their heads off, their tails wild metronomes. He turned again to face the channel, breathing in the wondrous smell of brine and fish and sun, when she said from behind him, “If you will come with me, I will show you spears of stone.”

When he turned to face her, she was on her knees, staring up at him, trying to duck the dogs’ tongues licking at her face and hair.

“Heel!”

The spaniels eyed him, then, one after the other, heeled.

“They obey you.”

“Occasionally. I keep telling them they should do whatever I command, since I am their master. Let’s give them another ten minutes—Cletus, no, don’t try to bite Beatrice’s belly. Ah, so you really do think you know where we’ll find these spears of stone?”

Sophie was petting each spaniel’s head, one after the other. She said, not looking at him, “I’m really not such a silly girl with air between her ears, as much as you would like to think so.”

“No, there’s barely any room in your head for air, you’ve got so many brains tucked in there. I’m afraid you know all too much—for a girl your age.”

She grinned up at him now. “You should have known me when I was five years old. I was a right proper little whip, according to our gardener.”

The thing was, he couldn’t really see her as a little girl, not now, dammit.

When they brought the spaniels back into his estate room, Sophie realized she liked the smell—dog and leather and the scent of the sea from just beyond the glass door. And man.

“We’re going to the cave,” she said.

As they walked side by side to the banks of the River Horvath, he said, “Spears of stone, that could very well be it. How came you to think of it?”

She raised her skirts a bit to avoid a tangled bush.

“Sophie?”

“All those brains in my head have to be good for something.” Fifteen minutes later, they slipped behind the thick brush that hid the entrance and stepped into the cave. Julian raised the lantern high. “I’ve never thought of stalactites being made of stone, yet they are. There are so many of them.”

“You’re right, I hadn’t realized. Very well, we must concentrate only on those that look exactly like a spear.”

Unfortunately, most of them were spears.

She faced Julian, shaking her head. “I imagined it would be so simple. I would bring you here, point to the only spear, we would scrape away sand, and there it would be, this ugly black jewel, perhaps wrapped in seal cloth. But instead . . .” She waved her arms around her.

“I had thought to impress you, to make you see me as a grown-up lady, to make you see me as, well, never mind.” She sighed. “I had thought to be a heroine, but I am not. I am not even a right proper little whip anymore.”

“Don’t say that.”

His voice was deep and harsh. Sophie stared at him. “But it is true, Julian. We could spend the next ten years digging beneath every single limestone spear in this dratted cave.”

“Your deduction was excellent. We must try to think like my father when he was writing out his blasted clues. Spears of stone—it has to have meant something special to him, something he perhaps mentioned to my mother. We will ask her to think on it.”

“Or perhaps it is here.” Sophie fell to her knees beside a particularly long sharp stalactite and dug her fingers into the smooth sand. After several minutes, she stopped and looked up at him. “Well, this probably isn’t the right one.”

He laughed, hauled her to her feet. He used too much strength, he knew it, and yet he still did it. She came flying up hard against him, every bit of her hard against him, and he felt a bolt of lust so powerful he nearly fell over.

“No,” he said, pushed her away, grabbed the lantern, and left the cave, pausing only to hold the branches out of the way for her to pass.

“I’m not a right little whip anymore, Julian. I’m a right big whip.”

He said not a word to her on their walk back to Ravenscar.

Pouffer told them Baron Purley was in the drawing room with her grace, drinking tea.

“Like Pouffer, I shan’t pay much attention to his lordship’s politeness, either,” he said.