Honor and loyalty and all the lessons he had learned at school and war and from his fathers . . . betrayed in a fortnight. After that, the monastery hidden in a remote crevice of the Serra dal Estrela seemed the ideal place to burn away his anger in hard labor and silent contemplation of higher things. Even as he accepted the cowl he’d known that he was unsuited to monastic life, and he had been quite certain he would miss women. But solitude and an end to rushing headlong into danger had appealed to him at the time.
The respite had been brief. Two years. Then he’d been ready to set off again.
Now, for the first time in his life of chasing adventure and courting danger, Vitor was terrified. Denis often chided him for his vagabond ways. But this was no laughing matter. After fourteen years could he cease running, finally? For a woman?
But Ravenna Caulfield was no ordinary woman.
He bent his head and closed his eyes.
A furtive scratching sounded at the door; the lady returning with his pet before she was discovered, no doubt. Vitor drew on his dressing gown and went to the door.
His elder brother’s valet stood there in shadow, his face taut.
“My lord.” The words quivered. “His lordship is terribly ill. You must come.”
IN LONG, RUSHING slides and dripping as loud as rainfall, the snow on the mountain melted. Trees, roofs, and walls gradually reappeared from beneath their icy mantle, spring valiantly attempting to show its face.
Ravenna’s shoes splashed across the forecourt as the sun poked its golden nose over the mountain, and she thought it especially fitting that the roads should begin to thaw today. Lord Whitebarrow and his family would be departing. Along the route their carriage would certainly become mired in mud. Pity.
She grinned.
Grace did not deserve it, though. A weak character had led her to follow her sister’s example. But she had loved truly, despite the censure society would have heaped upon her for the unequal union . Oliver Walsh’s death had broken her heart. Ravenna understood that pain. For the unkindnesses of her past, Grace’s grief was punishment enough.
As she neared the front door, nerves danced in her belly. She’d slept little and awoken to the heat of a man’s body beside hers, his big hand loosely clasped around her arm in sleep. Through the night he had done things to her that she’d never before imagined and that now, at the mere thought, made her face and the excessively tender place between her legs hot. Then he had ordered her to remain, as though it were perfectly reasonable to demand that she sleep in his bed and to awaken there too. Clearly he’d had no thought of how she would depart or when, only that he must have what he wished, by his command and upon his terms.
Standing in the halo of dawn by his bed, watching him sleep, she had wanted to touch him, to trace with her hands the sculpted contours of his chest and arms that the bed linens revealed, and to wake him with her lips upon his skin. Her body had warmed and she wanted to wrap her arms around him and breathe him in, then to caress him as he had taught her to caress him during the night, as she had done willingly, eagerly.
Some commands were not so difficult to obey.
With a secret smile and Gon?alo at her heels, she entered the house and tracked the scents of coffee and freshly baked bread to the dining room. Ann met her in the corridor.
“Oh, thank heaven, you are found!”
Ravenna’s nerves spiked. After dinner the night before, she’d left the drawing room quite obviously with him. Iona would think nothing of it. But Ann was truly modest. She might not understand.
“We have searched for you everywhere,” Ann said. “I’ve just sent the footman to the tower thinking you might have gone there. But Mr. Franklin—”
“Mr. Franklin? Is Lord Case unwell?”
“Terribly unwell. Mr. Franklin despairs of him. You must help him, Ravenna. It could not be borne if such a fine man were to be lost like this. And poor, dear Arielle . . . She must not suffer Grace’s—” Her voice broke off and her hands spasmed around Ravenna’s.
Ravenna pulled away. “I will gather my medical bag and go there directly.”
At Lord Case’s door, Mr. Franklin admitted her. The bed curtains were parted and Vitor sat in his shirtsleeves in a chair by the head of the bed, elbows bent to his knees and hands over his face. He lifted his head and his handsome face was stark. Swiftly he came to his feet. She crossed the chamber. Lord Case was utterly still, his face waxen. She drew back the coverlet from his injured arm, and the scent that arose curled her nostrils.
“Remove his nightshirt.” She set her medical bag on the nightstand and opened it.
“But, madam—” the valet said.
“Remove it this instant. Cut it off if you must. The bandage too.”
Vitor reached for his coat, withdrew the knife he had used at the river to cut her free of her gown, and sliced through the earl’s nightshirt from neck to wrist.
“My God,” he uttered.
The arm was swollen twice its size to the elbow, and crimson. A yellowed bandage dug into the flesh.
“Cut off the bandage,” she said. “Even if he feels it, it will only be a relief.”
Vitor did as she said, and the wound was revealed, a raw, running sore. Mr. Franklin choked and backed away, pressing a kerchief to his mouth. Lord Case did not stir.
“I need red wine,” she said. “The wound must be bathed and drained. When did you last dose him with the fever powders, Mr. Franklin?”
He did not answer.
Vitor said sharply, “Tell her.”
“Yesterday morning, my lord.”
She snapped her gaze to him. “Why haven’t you dosed him as I instructed?”
He pressed the cloth to his mouth. “Mr. Pierre said that I was not to give him any further medicines that would thicken his blood, but that today he would bleed him—”
“Mr. Pierre?” She pressed the wine-soaked cloth to the wound, allowing it to pool, her pulse speeding. “Is there a physician in the village, after all?”
“Monsieur Pierre is the cook here in the castle,” Vitor said. “Franklin, did you consult with the cook on his lordship’s care?”
“Yes, my lord. He treats the ailments of the staff and the villagers when—”
“Did you dress the wound with the salve I left with you, Mr. Franklin?” The festering flesh was slick, the wine sliding off in beads.
“No, miss. Mr. Pierre recommended fat cured from a swine—”
“Pig fat?” She swallowed over panic. “Good Lord, you have poisoned his blood. Flaxseed. Charcoal. Even dung, if you must. Not animal fat. But I will fix it.” She willed her hands not to shake. “I will fix it. There is nothing to fear.” Nothing to fear. No more death in this house. No more loss. Her hands would save him. She must save him.
“Why did you follow the cook’s counsel when I had made it clear to you that Miss Caulfield was to be consulted on Lord Case’s injury?”
“My lord,” she barely heard the valet say. As her hands worked, her pulse washed in her ears like the ocean crashing upon shores of hard hewn rock, a sound from her earliest childhood, years almost beyond memory but not quite. Never quite far enough away.
“She is a woman,” the valet said.
“Get out,” Vitor said. “Send my valet and inform his highness that I require his presence here at once. Now.” He came to her side. “I trust you. I do not fear.”
But she did. She feared that she could not endure one more loss. She would lose him—this man beside her whose world had nothing to do with hers. She knew it as surely as she knew how to heal his brother. And deep in her heart she wished for the hundredth time that on that day so long ago she had flown away with the little bird and, like it, had never returned.