Page 3 of The Raven’s Lady

He stepped forward. “Sixty guineas, did you say?”

The gentleman and the woman turned to him. Raven caught his breath at the face previously hidden by the bonnet. The voice had prepared him for youth and refinement, but he’d had only a vague expectation of genteel womanliness. Now he saw smooth, rounded cheeks, above a wide bow of a mouth. Expressive gray eyes looked at him frankly from a countenance made uncompromising by a pair of definite dark brows.

“Who the devil are you?” the gentleman asked.

“A traveler delayed by your quarrel.” Raven reached into his coat and produced a wad of Bank of England notes. He counted out sixty guineas and held the notes aloft. “Yours,” he said to the gentleman, “immediate compensation for your inconvenience…on one condition.”

“Condition?” Hugh sneered, but his gaze remained locked on the notes in Raven’s hand.

“Apologize to the lady and to her companion.” Raven smiled at the gentleman, aware of enjoying himself for the first time since he and Trimley had left London. He might appear to be Sir Adrian Cole, newly knighted by his majesty, but inside he was his old self, Raven.

“Apologize!” Hugh raised his whip hand.

Raven lunged for Hugh’s arm, grabbing it and twisting it behind his back. He wrenched the whip from Hugh’s hand and with a shove sent Hugh staggering across the courtyard. Clumsily regaining his balance, Hugh turned to regard Raven with intense malice.

Chapter Two

Cassie studied the stranger. Until he spoke, she had been unaware of his presence in the crowd of gawkers, most of them village lads. He was no doubt on his road and must have taken refuge from the storm in the inn. He was tall, athletically built, and plainly in command of an expensive tailor and deep pockets. His handsome face was marked by an easy authority. His elegance made her conscious of the plainness of her cloak and the mud on her skirts.

His gaze was fixed on Hugh. Again, he offered the bank notes. He appeared to recognize Hugh’s nature, but not how dangerous it was to provoke him.

Hugh was breathing hard. “One … does … not … apologize to one’s inferiors.”

“But I understand that Mr. Crockett here”—the stranger indicated Dick, as if he meant to include him in the conversation—“is your superior in at least one respect, if he is, indeed, the best farrier in these parts.”

“You, sir, are meddling in an affair that’s none of your business.”

“Alas, your quarrel has impeded my business, or I would gladly let you continue to waste your breath defending the indefensible.”

“Indefensible!” Red splotches bloomed in Hugh’s fair cheeks. “This”—he pointed an accusing finger at Dick, then dropped it in the face of the stranger’s forbidding countenance—“fellow has—”

The stranger held up his hand. “Spare me.” He gave the bank notes a little shake. “Whatever the cause of your inconvenience, I suggest you cut your losses. Sixty guineas.” He paused. “It’s not difficult, really. A simple I beg your pardon will do.”

There was a moment of frozen silence in the inn yard. Cassie realized she was desperately clutching her aunt’s package, hoping that Hugh could behave with sense for once. She suspected that even the flies had suspended their buzzing waiting for his reply.

“Oh, very well then,” Hugh said. He pivoted and executed a sloppy bow in Cassie’s direction that slightly included Dick. “Cassie, Crockett, I beg your pardon.”

He turned to the stranger with a smirk. “Satisfied?”

The stranger merely extended the hand with the bank notes. He let Hugh take them, careful that their hands did not touch, an insult that Cassie knew would not go unnoticed by Hugh, who stalked off, yelling at the yard boys to bring him a horse. The little drama ended, and the inn yard came back to life with ostlers hustling to hitch teams to carriages and bring saddled horses to their riders.

A tug on her sleeve made Cassie turn to Dick Crockett. His eyes were big with questions. The youth was deaf from an illness contracted when he was eight. His family spoke with him through signs they’d invented and through writing on slates. The boy was good at reading faces and doing sums. He knew how hard it was to come by ready cash.

Cassie tried to ease his fears. She had a little facility with the signs he used especially those that had to do with his work. It was harder to explain the role the stranger had played in pacifying Hugh. Dick mimed the counting of the bank notes. Cassie shook her head and told him not to worry. His gaze focused on her lips. She promised that she would talk with his parents later.

When she was able to turn her attention to the stranger, his chaise and four had been drawn up, and he was on the point of climbing aboard with another gentleman. Again, she got a sense of his wealth. Not only was he able to throw away what could be a year’s income for the likes of Dick Crockett, he had a team of horses her grandmother would likely kill to possess.

“I fear you’ve made an enemy,” Cassie told him, looking up into the strong, lean face. It was something to be the object of the stranger’s intense gaze. As one of the neighborhood’s eccentrics, she was used mainly to indifference from the male population around her. The stranger seemed really to see her.

“Will he bother you because of my interference?”

“Oh, I think not. He has little regard for my opinion.”

“Yet, you’ve known him a long time?”

In the face of his alert, and she had to admit, admiring gaze, Cassie tried to return a light answer. “All my life. It’s impossible to avoid knowing one’s neighbors in the country.”

“Ah,” he said. A smile tugged at the corner of his fine mouth. “I’ll have to remember that.”