Page 69 of Rules for Heiresses
Her heart quailed.Blast it!She wasn’t some cowering miss! She couldn’t—wouldn’t—let him intimidate her. Thrusting her chin up, she sauntered over toward his study as though she didn’t have a care in the world, even though her soles dragged like lead, whereupon she poured herself a finger of brandy. And took it like a sailor facing the strap.
“Where were you?” the duke asked in a soft voice.
The awful mouthful of brandy gave her liquid, if foolish, courage. “Out.”
“I gave specific instructions for you not to leave this house.”
“You told Lady Ravenna, your dutiful wife, not to leave and she did not.” Affecting indifference, she gestured down at her clothing. “Mr. Hunt did.”
The silence was thunderous, pulsing between them like a living heartbeat. Ravenna moved to pour herself another drink and found herself halted by a fairly seething duke. “You’ve had enough, and I want your mind clear for what comes next.”
Whatcomesnext?
Ravenna inhaled his dark, sinful scent and nearly swooned. She was a lunatic! The man wanted to throttle her with his bare hands, and she was struck with the demented urge to kiss him.
Her desires must have been transparent because her husband moved away with a hurried step. If it hadn’t been for the tiny noise escaping his lips, she’d have thought him unaffected. Ravenna swallowed her grin of satisfaction. No, if anything, she and her controlling husband were afflicted by the same extreme lust.
“You disobeyed me.”
“No, I did not,” she tossed back.
He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “Ravenna, you are trying my patience. You and Hunt are one and the same. Do not try to manipulate the truth. Now, where the fuck did you go?” Those last few words were punctuated with wrath.
Ravenna’s shoulders stiffened in affront. “How dare you speak to me so?”
“What?” he asked, brow arching in a mockery of hers earlier outside. “Like a man?” His smile was easy, trickery, she knew. The tension in his body gave him away. “You can’t have it both ways, Mr. Hunt.”
“I was bored. I needed to get out of the house.”
He stared at her, those glacial eyes boring into her like a pair of ice-shards. “I will find out the truth, Ravenna, and when I do, you will regret lying to me.” The duke turned on his heel and stalked toward the door. “Do not leave this house, Lady Ravenna and Mr. Hunt both.” He paused at the threshold. “Or in any other disguise your clever little mind concocts.”
Unwilling to let him leave without the last word, a seething Ravenna snapped a sailor’s salute. “Yes, sir, yes!”
That gaze drilled into hers, as if he didn’t know whether to bend her over his knee or the desk. Breath hissed through his lips, a thousand emotions flicking through his eyes—anger, desire, impatience, frustration, passion, vexation, fury. Ravenna recognized every single one, because they were the mirror images of hers.
When he finally left, her trembling knees collapsed and she sank to the floor.
If anyone cared to know, she’d have preferred the desk.
Nineteen
The note delivered to Courtland had only an address on it. There was no sender’s name, only a time and a place with instructions to go alone. It could be a trap, or it could be a response to the numerous requests he’d put out for paid information on ships that Sommers might hire or any dockyard men willing to risk dodgy employment for significant coin. Courtland had sent for Waterstone, but perhaps it would pay to be prudent. He stood, reaching for his brace of pistols. He’d instruct Rawley to inform Embry as a precaution.
On his way out, he caught sight of Ravenna in the salon, her fingers drifting over the keys of the pianoforte. Dressed in a lavender dress that complemented her coloring, she was so breathtakingly lovely that it made him falter. Courtland’s pulse caught as the sunlight from one of the paned windows turned her auburn hair to liquid fire.
Her maid, sitting quietly on a nearby chair, caught his eyes but he shook his head as he approached on silent feet. “I didn’t know you played,” he said.
“Well, you don’t know much about me, do you?”
“Touché.”
She didn’t sound surprised by his quiet approach, and he wondered if it was the same for her. Whenever she was in a room, heknew. It was the strangest thing, as if some deep part of him, some part of his soul, recognized its own counterpart in her. Scowling, he shook the whimsical thoughts from his head as her fingers glided over the keys in a somewhat familiar melody.
“Mozart?” he asked.
“Bach, actually.”
Courtland hesitated. “Ravenna.”
