“She’s not such a wildling as the usual barn cat,” Ernestine commented. “Most of them never purr or want to be held.”
“This one seems at least half tame,” Phoebe agreed.
“She’s trying to rise above her station,” the lady’s maid suggested with a laugh. “A barn cat with dreams of being a house cat.”
Phoebe frowned. “I wish you hadn’t put it like that. Now when I take her back to the barn, I’ll feel terribly guilty about it. But we can’t keep her.”
A few minutes later, dressed in blue summer serge with a white silk bodice, Phoebe made her way to the wing of the house where the Ravenel family members resided. After asking directions from a maid who was sweeping the hallway carpet, she approached a long, narrow passageway. At the far end of the passageway, she saw three men conferring at the threshold of a private suite: Lord Trenear, her father, and a man holding a doctor’s bag.
Phoebe’s heart quickened as she caught a glimpse of West Ravenel, wearing a dark green dressing robe and trousers, just inside the threshold. The group talked companionably for a minute, before Mr. Ravenel reached out to shake hands with the doctor.
As the men departed, Phoebe backed away and went into a small parlor, staying out of view. She waited until the group had passed and the sound of voices had faded. When the coast was clear, she headed to Mr. Ravenel’s room.
It wasn’t at all proper for her to visit him unaccompanied. The appropriate thing would be to send a note expressing her concern and good wishes. But she had to thank him privately for what he’d done. Also, she needed to see with her own eyes that he was all right.
The door had been left ajar. Bashfully she knocked on the jamb and heard his deep voice.
“Come in.”
Phoebe entered the room and stopped with a head-to-toe quiver, like an arrow striking a target, at the sight of a half-naked West Ravenel. He was facing away from her, standing barefoot at an old-fashioned washstand as he blotted his neck and chest with a length of toweling. The robe had been tossed to a chair, leaving him dressed only in a pair of trousers that rode dangerously low on his hips.
Henry had always seemed so much smaller without his clothes, vulnerable without the protection of civilized layers. But this man, all rippling muscle and bronzed skin and coiled energy, appeared twice as large. The room scarcely seemed able to contain him. He was big-boned and lean, his back flexing as he lifted a goblet of water and drank thirstily. Phoebe’s helpless gaze followed the long groove of his spine down to his hips. The loose edge of a pair of fawn-colored trousers, untethered by braces, dipped low enough to reveal a shocking absence of undergarments. How could a gentleman go without wearing drawers? It was the most indecent thing she’d ever seen. The inside of her head was scalded by her own thoughts.
“Hand me a clean shirt from that stack on the dresser, will you?” he asked brusquely. “I’ll need help putting it on; these damned stitches are pulling.”
Phoebe moved to comply, while a thousand butterflies swirled and danced inside her. She fumbled to retrieve the shirt without overturning the stack. It was a pullover style with a half-placket, made of beautiful fine linen that smelled like laundry soap and outside air. Hesitantly she moved forward and dampened her lips nervously, trying to think of what to say.
Setting down the water goblet, Mr. Ravenel turned with an exasperated sigh. “Good God, Sutton, if you’re going to be that slow—” He broke off as he saw her, his expression turning blank.
The atmosphere in the room became still and charged, as if lightning were about to strike.
“You’re not the valet,” Mr. Ravenel managed to say.
Phoebe held out the shirt clumsily. To her mortification, she was staring at him openly, ogling, and she couldn’t seem to stop. If the back view of West Ravenel was fascinating, the front was absolutely mesmerizing. He was much hairier than her husband had been, his chest covered with dark fur that narrowed to a V at his midriff, and there was more hair on his forearms, and even a little trail below the navel. His shoulders and arms were so powerfully developed, one had to wonder why he hadn’t simply wrestled the bull into submission.
Slowly he came forward to take the shirt from her nerveless hands. Bunching the garment awkwardly, he pushed his hands into the sleeves and began to lift it over his head.
“Wait,” Phoebe said in a suffocated voice, “let me help.”
“You don’t have to—”
“The placket is still buttoned.” She moved to unfasten the short row of buttons while he stood there with his hands caught in the gathered sleeves.
His head bent over hers; she could feel the rush of his unsettled exhalations. The hairs on his chest were not flat and straight, but softly curling. She wanted to brush her nose and lips across them. He smelled of soap, male skin, clean earth and meadow grass, and every breath of him made her feel warm in places that hadn’t been warm in years.
When the placket was finally unfastened, Mr. Ravenel raised his arms and let the shirt settle over his head, wincing as the neat row of stitches at his side was strained. Phoebe reached up to tug at the hem of the garment. Her knuckles inadvertently grazed the dark fleece on his chest, and her stomach did an odd little flip. From the surface of her skin down to the marrow of her bones, her entire body was alive with sensation.
“Forgive me for intruding,” she said, her gaze lifting to his face. “I wanted to find out how you were.”
Amusement flickered in his eyes. “I’m well. Thank you.”
With the short, dark layers of his hair all disheveled, he looked so attractive, somehow both cuddly and uncivilized. Hesitantly Phoebe reached for one of his wrists and began to button his cuff, and he went very still. How long it had been since she’d done this for a man. She hadn’t realized how she missed the small, intimate task. “Mr. Ravenel,” she said without looking at him, “what you did for my son . . . I’m so grateful, I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to be grateful. It’s a host’s responsibility not to let a dairy bull gore the houseguests.”
“I wish I could do something for you in return. I wish . . .” Phoebe flushed as it occurred to her that appearing uninvited in a man’s room and making such a statement while he was half dressed could easily be misinterpreted.
But he was being a gentleman about it. There were no mocking or teasing comments as he watched her fasten his other shirt cuff. “What I’d like more than anything,” he said quietly, “is for you to listen to an apology.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I’m afraid I do.” He let out a measured breath. “But first, I have something to give you.”
He went to a cabinet in a corner of the room and rummaged through its contents. Finding the object he sought . . . a small book . . . he brought it to her.
Phoebe blinked in wonder as she read the gold and black lettering on the battered cloth cover. The title was worn and faded, but still legible.
Stephen Armstrong: Treasure Hunter
Opening the book with unsteady fingers, she found the words written on the inside cover in her own childish hand, long ago.
Dear Henry, whenever you feel alone, look for the kisses I left for you on my favorite pages.
Blinded by a hot, stinging blur, Phoebe closed the book. Even without looking, she knew there were tiny x’s in the margins of several chapters.
Mr. Ravenel’s voice was hushed and gravelly. “You wrote that.”
Unable to speak, she nodded and bent her head, a tear splashing on her wrist.
“After we talked at dinner,” he said, “I realized your Henry was the one I knew at boarding school.”
“Henry was sure you were the one who took this book,” she managed to say. “He thought you’d destroyed it.”
He sounded utterly humble. “I’m so sorry.”
“I can’t believe you kept it all these years.” She tugged a handkerchief from the bodice of her dress and pressed it hard over her eyes, willing the tears to stop. “I cry too easily,” she said in vexation. “I always have. I hate it.”
“Why?”
“It shows weakness.”
“It shows strength,” he said. “Stoic people are the weak ones.”
Phoebe blew her nose and looked up at him. “Do you really think so?”
“No, but I thought saying that might make you feel better.”
A laugh trembled in her throat, and her eyes stopped watering.
“You sat down to dinner with me,” Mr. Ravenel said, “knowing what a brute I was to Henry, and you said nothing. Why?”
“I thought it would be kinder to keep silent.”
Something relaxed in his expression. “Phoebe,” he said softly. The way he said her name, like an endearment, made her insides feel pleasantly weighted. “I don’t deserve such kindness. I was born wicked, and I only grew worse after that.”
“No one is born wicked,” she said. “There were reasons why you fell into mischief. Had your parents lived, they would have loved you and taught you right from wrong—”
“Sweetheart . . . no.” His smile was edged with bitterness. “My father was usually too far in the drink to remember he had children. My mother was half mad and had fewer morals than the barn cat we brought back today. Since none of our relations wanted custody of a pair of impoverished brats, Devon and I were sent to boarding school. We stayed there most holidays. I became a bully. I hated everyone. Henry was especially irritating—skinny, odd, fussy about his food. Always reading. I stole that book from the box under his bed because it seemed to be his favorite.”