Raven's Bride (27 page)

Charlotte gave another theatrical wail. “Oh, they have put out all the lights. What shall I do? I am lost. Undone. They have come to rob me of everything I hold dear.”

There was another loud crash. Now their eyes had adjusted to the lack of light, they could make out the scene. Hetherington, despite the din around him, had fallen into a drunken sleep and was snoring loudly in the corner.

Charlotte, meanwhile, had tipped over the chair in which Melcott was tied, and was taking her opportunity to whip him mercilessly with her hands and feet, all the while continuing her loud lamentations.

“Oh, how the rogues are beating and kicking me,” Melcott wailed amid the din. “Help me, Charlotte, anyone, for the love of God, or I shall be killed.”

“Should we not stop her?” Anna whispered, as Charlotte landed a particularly heavy blow on his side. “He is an old man, and she will kill him if she does not take care.”

Lord Ravensbourne pulled her away. “Come, let’s go.” His voice was harder than she had heard it before. “Melcott whipped her black and blue to make her consent to the marriage he arranged for her. He deserves every blow she could ever give him—and more. If he dies, so much the better. I will dance on his grave myself, with the greatest pleasure.”

Goody Hepney kissed them goodbye as they sneaked out the kitchen door again. “I’ll see you both in the morn,” she said. “I won’t want to miss the face of that miserly, old reprobate when he sees the pair of you together again.”

There was no urgency to their walk home across the fields. Anna sauntered along beside her betrothed , feeling well-satisfied with her night’s work.

Only a couple of hours ago she had been weeping over her wedding dress as she reconciled herself to the unhappiness of an unwanted marriage to prevent herself from starving. Never again would she fear hunger or death. There were many worse things in the world.

They stopped by an old oak tree in the grounds of the dower house. Lord Ravensbourne took her hand in his. “You do not regret this night?”

She shook her head emphatically. “Never.”

He bent his head towards hers. “Thank you, Anna, for everything that you have done for me.” His lips touched hers in a gentle embrace that sent sparks of fire shooting through her body.

She put her arms around his neck and pulled him closer to her, deepening their kiss. After the numbness of her grief in the last few months, all she wanted was to feel alive again. Her cousin made her feel alive as no man ever had—or ever would again.

He put his arms around her and hugged her close to his body, his warmth covering her. With a gentle motion he stroked her back with the palms of his hands as he explored every inch of her mouth with his tongue.

When her senses were reeling from the touch of his mouth, he drew his head away. “We must go in and get out of these clothes. I have no mind to spend another night in prison—this time for housebreaking. I am a sad jailbird already.”

She nodded, not trusting her voice to speak. Hand in hand, they entered the dower house and latched the door securely behind them.

The darkness inside overwhelmed her. The few rush tapers she had left alight had long since burnt themselves out, and all that was left of them was a faint acrid smell of smoke lingering in the air. With faltering footsteps, the two of them groped their way up the stairs to her chamber, where they had left their clothes.

A faint beam of moonlight shone through the casement window. She shrugged off her jacket and let it drop to the ground. “I shall put it away for a rainy day,” she said, with a laugh, “in case I get a yen for breaking into your house at night when all your household is asleep.”

Lord Ravensbourne took her into his arms, stroking the back of her neck through the coarse fabric of her thick woolen smock. “You may break into my chamber any night you choose, my sweetheart.”

His words sent shivers of a new kind of excitement skittering along her spine. “You like me dressed as a man then?”

He moved his hand to cup one of her breasts. “I like the way you are all woman underneath.” He shrugged off his own jacket. “All my very own.”

She reached for him, sliding her hands underneath his shirt. Tonight she would celebrate his return to life in every way she knew how, and face the consequences in the morning.

His skin felt rough under her hands. She caressed his back with her fingertips, reveling in the groan of pleasure she wrung from him.

“We have wasted so much time,” he said, as he pushed her smock down over her shoulders and kissed her neck.

The touch of his mouth on her bare skin sent a wave of pleasure through her, which rocked her body to her very soul.

She laid her head against his chest. “If only I had trusted what my heart was telling me, I would never have come so close to losing you.”

“You did what you thought was right. No one can do more than that.”

It was not too late. She would trust her heart now in everything it told her. Lord Ravensbourne had returned to her, and she knew in her heart that he loved her still, as he had loved her before. She would place her trust in him forever.

Shivering with excitement, she reached out for his breeches and fumbled with the laces.

Lord Ravensbourne suffered her clumsy efforts for a few moments before he took over with a laugh. “You have not become any more experienced while I was away, I see.”

Anna hid her face in his chest to hide her blushes. “I saved myself for you.”

He stepped out of his breeches and drew his smock over his head. “I am glad of it. I could not bear the thought of another man making you his wife. I had rather face death than that.”

Anna gloried in the sight of him. “You came back to England for me?”

He turned his attention to her clothes, hastily dispensing with her breeches, stockings and smock, before standing back to look at her with admiration in his eyes. “For you, and you alone.”

“I am glad of it.”

Gently he tugged her onto the coverlet. “You are not afraid?”

Willingly she lay beside him. As he moved on top of her, she knew she would never be afraid of him again.

It was barely dawn when Anna woke. Lord Ravensbourne was lying next to her, tickling her with the feather from his cap. “Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” he said with a grin. “Time to wash and brush and dress yourself in your best. Have you forgotten that today was supposed to be your wedding day, and you have not yet told your poor bridegroom you have changed your mind and will not marry him after all?”

She had not forgotten. Turning over, she hugged him close to her and murmured sleepy, contented sounds in his ear. There was no need for her to rise just yet. The guests would not be arriving for some time yet for the wedding breakfast, she had little to do to get herself ready, and she wanted him again. “I would jilt a thousand bridegrooms for you,” she said, as she caressed his chest with her hand, then moved it slowly lower, “though they were rich as Croesus and handsome as Apollo to boot. What hope then for the wicked pinchpenny whom I promised to wed in one foolish moment?”

He gave a gasp of pleasure as her hands found their target. “I would do the same for you, though they were more beautiful than Aphrodite, and had five hands apiece to pleasure me with, instead of a mere two.”

She nipped his chest with her thumb and forefinger. “Would you now? And, pray tell, what is wrong with my two hands?”

He took her hands in his and guided them back to his swollen shaft. “Nothing at all, my love. I love them just the way they are.”

Then it was her turn to gasp as, in his turn, he touched her intimately with his fingers until she was slick with need. Not until her mind was too scrambled with passion to think did he move on top of her, filling her with himself over and over again until she screamed out her release into the still of the morning.

He awoke her with his feather again, this time tickling her in the most intimate places. With a sleepy sigh, she batted his hand away. “It is not yet time to rise,” she mumbled into his chest, which she had made into her pillow. “I still have some hours yet.”

“A half-hour at the most,” he replied, in a conversational tone. “The first carriage full of wedding guests has already arrived. I heard it trundle down the lane some ten minutes ago.”

At his words, Anna sat up in bed with a start. He was right. It seemed only a few minutes ago he had woken her for the first time, but the sun had already gotten high in the sky.

With a muttered curse, she threw on her best black dress and brushed the night’s tangles out of her hair. She had intended to tell Mr. Melcott first thing in the morning that the wedding was off. Despite his wickedness, she had no wish to humiliate him before his chosen guests. Now that kinder course was denied her, and she would be forced to break her news to him in public.

Beside her, Lord Ravensbourne had put on his breeches of soft doeskin and a soft brown velvet jacket with handsome ribbons on the neck and sleeves. He held out his hand to her. “Ready?”

“As ready as I ever shall be.” Together they walked towards the manor house.

Mr. Melcott was standing over the fireplace in the large parlor, talking with his guests, his eyes still bloodshot and his face pale. Anna and Lord Ravensbourne opened the door and stood in the entranceway, hand in hand.

Slowly the conversation around them died, and Melcott raised his head to see the cause of the sudden silence. When he saw his nephew, his face turned gray with anger. “Tom, my lad,” he said, “how good of you to escort my betrothed to her wedding.” And he sent Anna a false smile that promised a speedy retribution for the embarrassment she was causing him.

She did not fear him. She felt nothing for him at all—he was beneath even her contempt. “There will be no wedding today,” she said simply.

A buzz of chatter started around her, but she was oblivious to the whispers and stares of her neighbors.

Melcott tried to brazen it out. “Come, no more of your maidenly modesty,” he cried, as he came up to her and tried to take her by the hand. “The pastor is here, our wedding license awaits, and the food is prepared for our wedding breakfast. We may as well be married today as tomorrow.”

Anna took a step backwards. “You mistake my meaning, sir. I shall not marry you at all. I plighted my troth to my cousin long before I agreed to wed you. Now he has returned from the dead, and my faith returns to him as well.”

“Your cousin, Tom,” Melcott sneered. All trace of good humor had vanished from his tone as he turned to his nephew. “You left England some months ago after being found guilty of a foul murder and condemned to hang, did you not?”

Lord Ravensbourne shrugged his shoulders easily. “All men make mistakes. The justice made one when he condemned an innocent man.”

“But condemned you were,” Melcott spat, “and like a traitor, you shall die.” He turned towards one of his guests. “Constable Hitchins, do your duty and arrest this fugitive from justice.”

The man Melcott addressed moved forward unwillingly, his hands held palm up in front of him as if asking for pardon. “If you are indeed a fugitive, then I m…must arrest you in the name of the k…k…king,” he stammered.

“Not so fast, not so fast, my good man.” Lord Ravensbourne reached into his waistcoat and pulled out a piece of vellum decorated with the king’s seal. “The trouble I have had to get hold of this makes me unwilling to let it out of my hands,” he explained, as he waved it at the constable, “but if you would come over here and look over my shoulder, you may read it for yourself.”

Constable Hitchins took out a pair of spectacles from his pocket and came to stand behind him. “It seems in p…perfect order,” he said, his relief evident in his voice. “C…c…completely regular. A p…p…pardon signed by the k…king himself.”

Melcott’s face looked grayer than before. He turned his back on the room and put his glass down on the mantelpiece of the fire with a studied gesture that didn’t disguise the trembling of his hands. “Congratulations, nephew,” he croaked when he turned around again, looking and sounding as though he wanted to be vilely ill. “And welcome back to England.”

Lord Ravensbourne took him by the elbow and ushered him to the door. “I do not take it so much amiss that you killed the squire,” he said conversationally, as he maneuvered his uncle out the front door. “He was worse than vermin, and the world was well rid of him. But I take exception to the way you used my dagger and tried to throw the blame on me. I take exception to the sailor you hired to murder me on the streets of Amsterdam. I take exception to the way you lied to my sister and my betrothed about my death. And, most of all, I take exception to the way you tried to steal my betrothed from me. Do I make myself clear?”

Melcott nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat convulsively. They were at the stables now. Lord Ravensbourne ushered his uncle inside. He untied a donkey and threw a halter around its head . “Fortunately for you, you are my uncle,” he said, “or I would set the constable on you, as you tried to do on me. But, as you are family, I will merely banish you from here forever, and woe betide you should you ever set foot on my grounds for the rest of your days.”

“Set the constable on me? Banish me? Nephew, you are doing me a grave injustice. I have never tried to harm you.”