“This is the seal from the Northcott family,” she said. “Though, how the identical design came to be on your arm, I do not know.”
Dazedly, he unfolded the letter. He studied the looped scrawl with fascination, the right-sided slant, the spots of ink here and there. Skimming over the page, he tried to piece together the contents but only cursed in frustration. “This is in French. I thought the Northcotts were English.”
“Correct,” Jane said, leaning in to read it with him, her lips moving soundlessly. “Water has made many of the sentences run together, so I cannot read it all. However, the handwriting appears feminine. And from what I gather, this letter is a request to hire a tutor to speak her husband’s native tongue. And here it says”—she gasped and her hand fell atop his sleeve with a squeeze—“it says that she is newly married and would like to speak like a proper English lady before her child is born. And do you see the date?”
Speech failed him at the moment, so he nodded and issued a grunt of affirmation.
1799.
Mr. Mayhew, the beadle in charge of the orphanage, had told him he was abandoned in January of 1800.
Raven had never come this close to finding anything before. But there it was in his grasp—the wax seal that matched the mark on his arm, the letter written just months before he was left on the doorstep, and the surname . . . Northcott.
Was that his name?
Raven’s heart stopped beating. Instead, it rushed in his ears, roaring like a caged animal and he hated it. Bloody hell! He shouldn’t still be wondering about his name. What did he care? He was a grown man, not a child.
Lowering the page, he drew in one breath—two, three. He needed a moment to shut out all the distractions and to gather his reliable cynicism.
So, he stood and focused on his external senses, ignoring the erratic clamor of his heart rising up the constricted path of his throat. Breathing in, he smelled the cool earthiness of freshly watered soil in the pots, the misted leaves on the branches, and the clean, powdery scent of lavender. But those things weren’t helping him. They were far too sweet.
Swallowing, he tasted tea on his tongue and the residual char from the toast. And there was the bitterness he needed. He let it fill him.
Jane’s cool, soft fingers curled over his wrist. A slender furrow had worked its way into the creamy flesh of her brow as she gazed up at him with concern.
The jaded part of him wanted to laugh at the absurdity of her reaction. They were mere strangers, after all. Why should she care what the letter may or may not have revealed? This had no effect on her life whatsoever. And yet . . .
Another, unnamed, part of him wanted to soothe her. To shield her from the inevitable disillusionment that would follow when this turned into nothing. And it would turn into nothing, he was sure.
He shook his head. “There’s no reason to make any ridiculous leaps. It’s merely a letter.”
To prove it, he dropped it down into the trunk again and watched as the weight of the seal carried the page in a downward plunge, like the sail on a sinking ship.
“Raven, this is not a coincidence. You have to realize what this means.” Hands on hips, she stood in front of him like a miniature blockade.
Caught somewhere between amusement and exasperation, he took her by the shoulders. He drew her closer and felt the stiffness in her muscles, the tight coils that had been tormenting her for the past hour. Beneath the heat of his hands, he began massaging them away. “You’re getting ahead of yourself.”
“And you’re trying to dismiss everything we’ve learned.”
“Seems to me that I’m the only one thinking clearly at the moment, instead of rushing to judgment. Just relax, Jane. Let those pixie wings fall to the side. Yes, that’s right. It’s been a long day for both of us,” he crooned, watching her eyes blink drowsily as the tendons and tissues yielded to his tender kneading. Moving along the slender slope, he cupped her nape, his fingertips probing in circular motions. The softest of moans escaped her. The unexpected sound sent a surge of arousal through him and he tried not to wonder what other noises she might make under his hands. “Soon I’ll walk out that door and you’ll only ever think of me in your naughtiest fantasies, like the one I’m having of you right now. Would you like to hear it?”
“You’re just trying to distract me,” she said crossly. “This woman—”
“No. You’re getting all tight-shouldered again. Let it go. I mean it, now.”
He didn’t want to hear any more about the letter or the mark. All he wanted was time to think. He couldn’t take any more of this upheaval.
Cupping her jaw, he gently tilted her head back to give her the hard, unquestioning stare that had warned many a man to keep their distance.
But Raven made the mistake of setting his thumb against the cushion of her lips. His gaze was instantly drawn to the supple pouting flesh that had tempted him from the start.
This spell-casting mouth had gotten him into all sorts of trouble with her silent incantations, brown thread declarations, probing questions, and earth-shattering epiphanies. Not to mention, the tantalizing mouthfuls of lush red jam.
Just the thought of it made his pulse start to riot, his blood running hot. Was it any wonder that he’d reached his limit?
“You may not want to hear it,” she continued, undeterred, “but this woman might very well be your—”
He silenced her with a kiss. Capturing the tender sweetness of her gasp, he finally found the respite he needed.
Chapter 12
Clearly, Jane had pushed Raven too far.
Otherwise, he never would have overlooked the fact that the recipient of this sudden smoldering kiss was a plain bookish debutante and not a worldly woman. She attempted to draw back to alert him to his error. But when his warm mouth settled over hers with firm possession, she forgot what she wanted to say.
Clever scoundrel that he was, he seemed to read her thoughts and then assured her in the tender way his strong hands cradled her skull that he knew what he was doing.
Oh, he most certainly did.
Deftly, his fingertips worked a tantalizing massage into her nape, keeping her right where he wanted her. Which, coincidentally, was precisely where she wanted to be. Only she hadn’t known it until just then.
She yielded to his mastery of the subject as he nibbled softly into her flesh. The heat of his breath slipped inside the narrow seam, bathing her tongue with the flavors of their shared breakfast and the taste of something else—an unknown delicacy—that made her inexplicably hungry. She wanted more of it.
A budding pressure grew beneath her lips. The tender-swollen skin felt like grapes coming to full succulent ripeness in the hands of an expert wine maker. She needed to be plucked off the vine, harvested by his mouth, crushed into pulp and juice, and readied for fermentation. Oh, sweet fermentation!
Without thought or any true skill of her own, she kissed him with firm compressions to soothe the pulsing pressure. Her hands splayed over the coarse wool of his coat, grazing up and over the heavy stitching of his lapels to his shoulders, and earned his gruff grunt of approval.
Her body reacted to the primal utterance. Her small breasts grew taut and aching with a peculiar heaviness. A bewildering, unexplored gravity pulled her closer to him and she listed forward on tiptoe until only a sliver of space remained. But the force was too great to resist, the air crackling like static between them.