Cold-Hearted Rake (The Ravenels 1)

Exasperated, he studied her shrouded form. “Has it occurred to you that we have more to gain from mutual cooperation than hostility?”

“I’ve just lost my husband and my home. What precisely do I have to gain, my lord?”

“Perhaps you should find out before you decide to make an enemy of me.”

“You were the enemy before you ever set foot here.”

Devon found himself straining to see through the veil. “Must you wear that blasted head covering?” he asked irritably. “It’s like conversing with a lampshade.”

“It’s called a weeping veil, and yes, I must wear it in the presence of a visitor.”

“I’m not a visitor, I’m your cousin.”

“Only by marriage.”

As he contemplated her, Devon felt his temper begin to subside. How small she was, as fragile and quick as a sparrow. He gentled his tone. “Come, don’t be stubborn. There’s no need to wear the veil around me unless you’re literally weeping, in which case I would insist that you put it back down immediately. I can’t abide a woman crying.”

“Because you’re secretly soft-hearted?” she asked sarcastically.

A distant memory stung him, one he hadn’t allowed himself to think about in years. He tried to shake it off, but his mind stubbornly retained the image of himself as a boy of five or six, sitting at the closed door of his mother’s dressing room, agitated by the sounds of weeping on the other side. He didn’t know what had made her cry, but it had undoubtedly been a failed love affair, of which there had been many. His mother had been a renowned beauty who often fell in and out of love in a single night. His father, exhausted by her caprices and driven by his own demons, had rarely been at home. Devon remembered the suffocating helplessness of listening to her sob but not being able to reach her. He had settled for pushing handkerchiefs under the door, begging her to open it, asking repeatedly what was wrong.

“Dev, you’re sweet,” she had said through her sniffles. “All little boys are. But then you all grow up to be so selfish and cruel. You were born to break women’s hearts.”

“I won’t, Mummy,” he had cried in alarm. “I promise I won’t.”

He had heard a laughing sob, as if he’d said something foolish. “Of course you will, poppet. You’ll do it without even trying.”

The scene had been repeated on other occasions, but that was the one Devon remembered most clearly.

As it had turned out, his mother had been right. Or at least, he’d often been accused of breaking women’s hearts. But he had always made it clear that he had no intention of marrying. Even if he fell in love, he would never make that kind of promise to a woman. There was no reason for it, when any promise could be broken. Having experienced the pain that people who loved each other could inflict, he had no desire to do that to anyone.

His attention returned to the woman in front of him. “No, I’m not soft-hearted,” he said in answer to her question. “In my opinion, a woman’s tears are manipulative and even worse, unattractive.”

“You,” she said with certainty, “are the vilest man I have ever met.”

Devon was amused by the way she enunciated every word as if it had been shot from a bow. “How many men have you met?”

“Enough to recognize a wicked one when I see him.”

“I doubt you can see much of anything through this veil.” He reached out to finger the edge of the black gauze. “You can’t possibly like to wear it.”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

“Because it hides your face when you cry,” he said rather than asked.

“I never cry.”

Taken aback, Devon wondered if he had heard her correctly. “You mean not since your husband’s accident?”

“Not even then.”

What kind of woman would say such a thing, even if it were true? Devon gripped the front of the veil and began to hike it upward. “Hold still.” He pushed handfuls of the crepe back over the little headpiece that anchored it. “No, don’t pull away. The two of us are going to stand face-to-face and attempt a civilized conversation. Good God, you could rig a merchant ship with all this —”

Devon broke off as her face was uncovered. He found himself staring into a pair of amber eyes that tilted at the outer corners in a catlike slant. For a moment he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, while all his senses struggled to take her in.

He had never seen anything like her.

She was younger than he had expected, with a fair complexion and auburn hair that looked too heavy for its pins. A set of wide, pronounced cheekbones and a narrow jaw imparted an exquisite feline triangularity to her features. The curves of her lips were so full that even when she pressed them together tightly, as she was doing now, they still looked soft. Although she was not conventionally beautiful, she was so original that it rendered the question of beauty inconsequential.

Her mourning dress was slim and tightly fitted from the neck to the hips before flaring into a series of complex pleats. A man could only guess at the figure encased in all that boning and ruching and intricate stitching. Even her wrists and hands were obscured by black gloves. Aside from her face, the only visible skin was at her throat, where the front of her high collar parted with a U-shaped notch. He could see the vulnerable movement of her swallow. It looked so very soft, that private place, where a man might press his lips and feel the rhythm of her pulse.

He wanted to start there, kissing her throat, while he undressed her like an intricately wrapped gift until she was gasping and squirming beneath him. If she were any other woman, and they had found themselves in any other circumstances, Devon would have seduced her on the spot. Realizing that it would not do to stand there gaping a landed trout, he searched through his hot, disordered thoughts for some conventional remark, something coherent.

To his surprise, she was the first to break the silence. “My name is Kathleen.”

An Irish name. “Why do you have no accent?”

“I was sent to England as a child, to live with family friends in Leominster.”

“Why?”

A frown knit between her winged brows. “My parents were very much occupied with their horses. They spent several months of each year in Egypt to purchase Arabian bloodstock for their farm. I was… an inconvenience. Their friends Lord and Lady Berwick, who were also horse people, offered to take me in and raise me with their two daughters.”