All he’d wanted was just one look at Jane’s favorite napping spot. But when he’d entered this foliage-thick corner, secluded like a long-forgotten hermitage for the first explorers of the world, he’d felt a waterfall of peace and calmness wash over him. The air was so heavy and damp that it felt like breathing in purified waters. And the overstuffed age-softened chaise longue was so inviting that he’d given in to temptation and sat down. Then her soft powdery scent had enveloped him like a downy coverlet.
He’d felt so at ease that he’d closed his eyes . . . for just a minute, he’d promised.
Now, lifting his gaze to the domed glass ceiling, he saw the flame-bright circle of the sun shining down from a pale blue sky and heard the distant laughter of children in the garden. He must have slept for hours. Bollocks.
Not wanting to be discovered, he stood, ready to quit this place without Jane any the wiser.
But when he peered around the corner to where the door was nestled between palm trees, Mr. Miggins made a sudden, unexpected appearance.
The heavily bejowled butler bowed calmly as if he hadn’t just taken a year off Raven’s life. “Pardon me, sir, but would you care for anything from the kitchens?”
“How did you—” Raven felt the flesh of his brow pucker. “How long have you known I was here?”
“Ever since Miss Jane went to teach her lessons and I came to clear away the tray, sir,” the butler said blandly.
“Does she know?”
“Of course, sir. When I informed her, she begged that I not disturb you. As for the matter of the kitchen . . . we have an excellent selection of cold meats, cheeses and pies.”
Embarrassed, he raked a hand through his hair, combing through the uneven layers. He wasn’t used to being caught unawares. Keep a watchful eye, he reminded himself mockingly.
But ever since meeting Jane, he’d noticed that his own rules were falling by the wayside, and fast. Well, not anymore.
“Much appreciated, Miggins,” he said. “But I’ll just have a cup of tea and be gone.”
“Very good, sir.” He bowed as if to leave, but hesitated. “Also, I regret to say that the family’s copy of Debrett’s is not currently in residence. It has been at the bookbinder’s since Master Charles and Master Tristram launched it from their trebuchet last week.”
Raven was struck by a rise of reluctant amusement. This house was a regular Bedlam. “How far did it go?”
“All the way from the pyramid to the Parthenon. As you might imagine, there was much celebration in the hall.”
Miggins walked away after that, seeming pleased even though his impassive expression never betrayed him.
Left alone, Raven straightened and stuffed in the tails of his wrinkled shirt. When he walked around the maze of plants into the open area, he expected to find Jane waiting to gloat.
Instead, he found her kneeling before an open trunk, sifting through the contents in a frenzy. She lifted books and various objects from the depths for cursory examination before hastily casting each one aside in scattered piles on the stone floor.
Sliding a glance his way, she grinned and spoke as if they were already in the middle of a conversation. “I had an epiphany.”
“And I had an accidental nap,” he said, walking past the labyrinth behind her to the tea trolley.
As he poured a cup, his hungry gaze swept over the crystal dish of deep red jam and the slices of toast, cut on the bias and lined up like gabled rooftops inside the silver claw-footed rack. But no. He refused to linger long enough to break his fast. Already he sensed that one more delay would only lead to another.
So, he would drink this and then go, he told himself. And he most definitely wasn’t going to ask about her epiphany.
Gulping down the tea in two scalding swallows, he moved nearer to the trunk. “I’ll be leaving now.”
Still immersed in her exploration and bent over the side in a fine display of her curvy bottom, she gave an absent wave. “Be sure to steer clear of the open garden beyond the wall. Phillipa has talked Charles and the twins into racing backwards down the hill. There are sure to be casualties.”
He took a step, then hesitated. “Why didn’t you simply tell them not to?”
She lifted her head just enough to brush a wisp of hair from her temple and stared at him dubiously. “They’re children. How are they expected to learn about gravity, or cause and effect for that matter, if they’re locked in their bedchambers? Every moment is an opportunity for learning. Not all of us choose to turn our backs on enlightenment.”
The scolding edge of her tone did not escape his notice. “I see what you’re doing.”
“I have no idea what you could mean.”
She blinked, innocent and owl-eyed, but then gave herself away by biting her lower lip. She did that, he noticed, whenever she was keeping herself from saying what she really wanted to.
“You’re pretending that it doesn’t matter a whit to you if I walk out that door.”
She went back to rummaging, but he caught sight of her cheek lifting in a grin. “It worked before, didn’t it?”
“That was an accident. An accidental nap.”
“There’s no such thing. You chose to stay. Aristotle said ‘choice, not chance, determines your destiny’ and that ‘the ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.’”
“Well, what did he know, anyway?”
She burst into laughter, the sound bubbling over the sides of the trunk like an overfilled pot of jam on a cookstove. It was so sweet and rich that he wanted to taste it.
Sitting back on her heels, she gazed up at him, her tempting lips parting in a smile. “Ask me about my epiphany.”
“No,” he said, feeling in serious danger of liking Jane Pickerington. “I’m leaving now before I do something I regret.”
Without another word between them, he turned and walked toward the glass door.
Then, just as he set his hand on the bolt, she called out, “I think my uncle knows the Northcotts.”
Raven went still. His feet were suddenly leaden and weighted to the mud rug.
He tried the bolt. But his hand wouldn’t obey, the tendons seemingly enervated by interest.
The problem was, he’d been thinking about her comment earlier, regarding his birthmark being a scar instead. The only reason he gave it a passing thought was because he remembered something from long ago.
When he was near the age of seven, an old caretaker had confessed that he’d been the one who’d found Raven on the doorstep of the orphanage.
“Never seen such an angry babe a’fore. There ye were, half-frozen, howlin’ loud enough to shake down the walls, and waving that arm marked with a bird as black as pitch. Determined to survive, ye were. Must be in yer blood. Never forget that, lad.”
And Raven hadn’t forgotten.
. . . a bird as black as pitch . . .
Could that have been a scab on his skin from a cut? A scab that had healed and left him with the pale red scar that the beadle of the orphanage had told him was a birthmark?
He didn’t have an answer. But what he had in abundance was something he’d been trying like hell to deny—overwhelming curiosity.
A heavy breath evacuated his lungs. Damn her and her epiphanies!
* * *
Raven slowly turned on his heel to face her and Jane knew she’d piqued his interest beyond a mere passing curiosity. At last!
Now, to keep hold of it, she mused.
The problem was, she didn’t have any proof to validate her claim. At least, not yet. She was sure it was here, somewhere. All she knew was, if she could discover a bit more about his origins, it would not only benefit him but the primer as well.
To her way of thinking, the more time she spent in his company, the more she would understand the mindset of scoundrels and how they came into being.
“As you may recall, my uncle—Duncan’s father—is in prison,” Jane began. After years of tellin
g bedtime stories, she’d learned that the more salacious the opening scene, the more eager her siblings were to listen.
“And?” Raven said with gruff impatience.
Oh dear, she would have to speed this up to hold his attention long enough to make her point.
“Uncle Pickerington is the black sheep of the family. And, much to my father’s dismay, his youngest brother chose the vocation of tutor instead of something more respectable like a cleric. But that is neither here nor there . . .” she said, realizing she’d started to ramble. “The point I’m making is that he was a tutor for many notable members of society—politicians, military leaders, dukes, earls, and viscounts—and he was highly regarded. Until, of course, his debts got the better of him and he was sent to Fleet. But we have his things here in the garret. There are trunks brimming with ledgers and books. And this very morning, during the children’s lessons, I suddenly remembered that I’d seen your mark—without the arrow and laurel branch—in one of my uncle’s ledgers.”
“So you’ve found it, then?”
“Well . . . no. But he had the habit of sketching things from his surroundings along the margins. So, I know it’s here, somewhere in his vast collection. The footmen are carrying down two more trunks.”
In the same moment, a pair of older men trudged into the room, arms stiff and straining with the cumbersome straps. All at once, the heavy portmanteau dropped, hard on the stone tiles.
Jane startled. The sharp crack even caused Raven to flinch ever so slightly. Which surprised her. Even during his battle in the brothel, he’d maintained a cool facade. And since he didn’t seem like the type of man to become alarmed by a sound, she made a mental note of it to ponder later.
“Let’s say you do find the sketch,” he said after the footmen had withdrawn, his features inscrutable once again. “That still won’t prove anything.”
She tiptoed over the clutter toward the tea trolley. Famished after a long night, she munched on a corner of toast and poured a cup of tea. “Correct. At least, not without more evidence to support my hypothesis.”
“Dare I ask what it might be?” He came to her then, his fingers white-tipped and pressed tightly to his temple.
Jane almost felt sorry for him. He wasn’t the first one to whom she’d given a headache in the course of her life. But it couldn’t be helped. She was determined to entice him to stay until they unraveled this mystery together.
Handing him the cup, she held up a finger and said, “I need a bit of sustenance first, so that I am forearmed against your inevitable counterarguments.”
If the way he greedily drained the last drop was any indication, it seemed he was willing to wait. So she took another bite of toast, then sank a large spoon into the dark jam. Lifting it to her lips, she savored the sweet, tart flavors that spread over her tongue on a sigh of pleasure. There was nothing better to break one’s fast than toast and jam. Barely pausing to swallow let alone draw a breath, she dug in for another heaping spoonful.
Raven came closer. She felt the enthralling heat of his body at her back as he peered over her shoulder. His warm breath sent a tingling caress along the column of her neck, stirring the fine hairs at her nape.
“You’re barbaric when it comes to food,” he said. “You do realize that you’re supposed to put the jam on the bread first and eat them together, don’t you?”
The low vibration of his amusement teased a flutter into her midriff. Reflexively, she settled a hand over the tilting, lifting sensation, and wished she had a jar of his voice—a deep, rich conserve—that she could put on her tongue and languorously lick the bowl of the spoon after she’d finished.
Nibbling away the residual stickiness on her bottom lip, she turned. Somehow, she knew that he wouldn’t stand apart from her like a gentleman. She was already learning a bit about scoundrels.
Toe to toe, Jane and Raven shared an enticing bubble of static heat that made her skin exceptionally sensitive, the way it was after a steaming hot bath. Even the soft cambric of her chemise abraded her in taut, pleasure-stung places. It made her breath quicken. And standing this close in the daylight, she could see that his pale gray irises contained filaments of sparkling silver that surrounded the dark expanse of his pupils. Those bright slivers were like a source of heat within a vapor of smoke, white-hot and smoldering.
“That’s what everyone else thinks,” she said, trying to sound informative even as her voice turned peculiarly hoarse. “However, if you take something that is dry and porous—the toasted bread—and combine it with something wet and sticky—the jam—then the dry will invariably begin to absorb the wet, thereby becoming soggy. Why, it completely negates the entire purpose of toasting the bread in the first place.”
“Do you think this much about everything?”
A grin from anyone else, and she might have thought they were laughing at her. It was something she’d grown used to over the years. But with Raven, the slow curl of his lips was accompanied by a simmering hunger in his gaze, and she sensed that his thoughts were on a different trajectory.
“Well, not everything. There are many things I have yet . . . to encounter.” She faltered as those filaments flared with more heat. So much so that they scorched the apples of her cheeks.
“If you have a list that’s particularly wicked, then I’m at your full disposal.”
Jane was breathless for a moment, imagining what it might be like to have him at her full disposal. Just think of all the anatomical research she could conduct!
“What are you thinking of?” he asked, his eyes narrowed in rakish speculation.
She cleared her throat, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip as she straightened her shoulders to present a more scholarly air. As if she hadn’t just imagined his body laying bare on the trestle table for her to examine.
“The correct phrasing would be, Of what are you thinking? Here,” she said, handing him her toast. “You look hungry.”
As if seeing her grammatical lesson for what it was—a sly evasion—the scoundrel chuckled and took a bite, holding her gaze all the while.
She ignored the unspoken accusation. Relieving him of the teacup, she averted her scalding face to drink the last remaining drops, then set the cup on the trolley beside her spoon.
Dusting her hands together, she said, “All I want from you is your time and patience.”
“Pity,” he said, taking another greedy bite and not appearing a bit sated. “But I have a life to get back to.”
She darted a calculating glance to the trunks. “Give me three hours. Working together, we’re bound to find it. You’d finally have answers. And I know you’re curious, too. You needn’t be ashamed of it.”
“Bloody hell, Jane. You could badger an escaped prisoner back into gaol.” He looked from her to the door, lingering with longing on the latter. Then he heaved out a sigh. “I’ll give you an hour. No more.”
“Agreed,” she chirped, bouncing up onto the balls of her feet. She felt like clapping, but it wasn’t time to celebrate. At least, not yet.
He grumbled under his breath, “I don’t know why I’m doing this. It isn’t going to change anything.”
“That’s not quite true,” she offered. “If my hypothesis is correct on these two points”—she lifted one finger, then another—“one, that the mark on your arm is actually a scar; and two, that it’s related to the Northcott lineage, then that could very well mean you were born into the aristocracy. In fact, I’m almost certain of it already.”
Raven stared at her for a moment without blinking.
Then, all at once, he laughed. Shaking his head, he laughed some more and so hard he nearly choked on the toast.
“The theory wasn’t meant to be amusing,” she huffed and handed him a freshly poured cup, which he drank down after a few fading chuckles. “Startling, perhaps. But you’re acting as though I’ve suggested you’re a descendant of flamingoes.”
“After last night, I would believe that more readily.”
She sniffed, marginally offended, and marched over to her desk to withdraw the hourglass perched on the corner. “You weren’t that pink, and it was only temporary.” Coming back to him, she held the timepiece between them. “All I’m asking, is for you to look through a few trunks. And you gave me an hour. Well, I want the full hour.”
His brow arched with intrigue. “You shouldn’t say that to a man. It gives him all sorts of wicked ideas.”
She knew he was only flirting with her out of habit, wanting to distract her. There could be no other reason. And yet, that low gravelly drawl made her wonder what, precisely, those wicked ideas were.
Her mild irritation over his laughter was completely forgotten. Now, inside her mind, a tiny eager scribe sat at a desk—hair in complete disarray, spectacles perched on her nose, heart pounding—and waited with fresh ink and paper.
“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” she heard herself ask, “could you . . . um . . . list them? For research purposes, of course.”
Raven’s gaze strayed to her mouth and lingered.
Was this a mere flirtation? Truth be told, in this moment, she wasn’t entirely certain. And it was the first time in Jane’s life that a trace of doubt left her feeling giddy and warm from head to heel.
Perhaps he was thinking of demonstrating? A firsthand account would be far more thorough than a list, to be sure.
“Tell you what. I’ll tackle those trunks with you first.” He took a step toward her to breach the distance. Lifting his hand, his index finger skated a tingling path along her jaw to the crest of her chin, and he tilted up her face as her pulse hopped beneath the thin, susceptible skin of her throat. “Then we’ll see if there are any grains of sand left in the glass, hmm?”
The dark promise in his smoky gaze sent a frisson of heat spiraling inside her. Jane offered a wordless nod in agreement.
Inside, however, her inner scribe gasped, bosom heaving in anticipation, poised pen all aquiver.
Raven released her and took the glass to start their time, propping it on the trestle table. All the while, Jane was dividing the hour into minutes and those into seconds. If they found what they were looking for within the first few then, by her calculations, that should leave plenty of time for quite a thorough and scandalous list.
My Kind of Earl Page 10