As for myself, I’m sure I cannot even recall your face as it has been so long since I’ve seen it.
Your once, but now forgotten,
Professor
After his second read, Raven had found it amusing. He could imagine Jane scolding him with her hands on her hips, tapping the toe of her slippers on the floor.
But now, with Sanders here sniffing through his shaving kit, Raven didn’t find it amusing in the least.
He hadn’t meant to respond to her at all. It was best to avoid temptation, after all. Under the circumstances, however, he was too furious to think about bedding her.
So, he went to his desk for a scrap of paper. His mouth curled in a cold smile as he stabbed the surface of the ink with his pen. She wasn’t the only one who could send a missive.
* * *
Less than an hour later, Raven heard his front door open and then a rapid patter of footsteps on the stairs.
Jane appeared, breathless and wide-eyed. To the valet, she said, “Oh, thank goodness you’re still alive.”
In turn, Mr. Sanders stared back at her perplexedly. “I am indeed, miss.”
Raven crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her. “So, you’ve come to beg my forgiveness, have you?”
“Not in the least,” she said with an exasperated sigh as she jerked the ends of her moss-green ribbons before setting the straw bonnet down onto the bedside table. “I came because of your missive. If you didn’t want me here, then you shouldn’t have written the words, and I quote: Dear Jane, I am about to commit murder. Be warned, I’m laying the corpse on your doorstep.”
Raven speared the meddlesome valet with a deadly look.
“Pay no attention to him,” she said to Sanders, who turned three shades paler as he took a step back. “He’s all growl and thunder.”
“He tried to shave me, Jane. Came at me with a razor.”
She grimaced and shook her head as she patted the valet on the shoulder. “Well, perhaps, it would be best to wait downstairs for a moment. I’ll talk with him.”
Sanders left without argument. But when the door at the end of the hall opened, Raven heard the sound of thumps from the main floor and then a high, piercing war cry. And it sounded uncannily like one of her brothers.
Raven stared out the open door to the hall and then back at her, dubious. “Did you bring the children?”
“Well, it is Sunday,” she said as if that explained everything. “Many of the servants have a portion of the day off from their duties, including the governess and the nurse. We usually fend for ourselves.”
“And your parents?”
“Having tea with Lord and Lady Sutcliffe.”
No sooner had the valet’s steps descended than Raven heard someone tromping back up, along with a crescendo of wailing as it drew closer. Then eleven-year-old Charles appeared, his short-cropped hair sticking up in brown tufts, his eyes wide in an unmistakable expression of being at his wits’ end. Raven imagined he looked the same.
“Jane, you’ve got to take Anne. She just won’t stop crying. I’ve tried everything, but I think she hates men.”
“Nonsense,” Jane said and summarily plucked the plump, mop-headed, bawling Anne out of Charles’s arms and handed her off to Raven.
Stunned, he didn’t know what to do with the soggy-faced creature.
Reflexively, he drew her against his chest so he wouldn’t drop her, one hand tucked beneath her nappy-pinned bottom, and the other over the center of her back. The baby quieted after a series of stuttered, snuffling hiccups. She stared up at him with glistening blue eyes surrounded by wet, thorn-shaped lashes as she flexed her little hands on his shirtsleeves.
“Gah,” she said. Accompanying the sound, a rainbow-prismed bubble of drool formed from her rosebud mouth.
Then Jane added to her brother, “You see, it’s all in the manner in which she is held. She needs to feel secure and safe. You tend to hold her as if she has the plague.”
“I just don’t want her to wet on me again.”
“Believe me, I felt the same way about you.” Jane grinned and ruffled his hair. “Go on, now. Keep watch over the rest. Make sure Peter keeps all his clothes, and inform me if the twins start to plot against the valet. I’ll keep Anne up here for a minute.”
Charles was off like a shot and Raven . . .
Well, he was left holding the baby.
Jane turned a pair of doe eyes on him, her head tilted to the side, her lips curving softly.
“No,” he said and quickly put little, sweet-smelling Anne back in her sister’s arms. “You’re not allowed to look at me that way with those midnight eyes, which are likely calculating a three-part plan of domesticity. And aye, I see you shaking your head in denial, but you are biting your lip. That always means you’re not saying all your thoughts aloud.”
She frowned, adjusting her sister on her hip. “An entire library of charts and graphs wouldn’t form enough of a plan to domesticate you. You’ll always be untamed.”
“Never forget that,” he said sharply as he pivoted on his heel and stormed back into his bedchamber. “In case you’re not aware of it, I’m angry with you. All this madness is due to whatever you said to my”—he growled, frustrated that he still felt like a pretender—“to Warrister. And it was you who told him, wasn’t it?”
“I may have sent him a missive, as a courtesy.” She sniffed, indignant. “At least he responded. At least he didn’t forget my very existence, like you have done this past week.”
Raven detected a twinge of hurt in her tone and that irritated him even more. “No! You don’t get to come here with your accusations and soft smiles as if you’re the aggrieved party. Because of you, I’m forced to deal with a valet barging into my house, determined to fit me for a suit of clothes in order to attend a ball that I never agreed to go to in the first place.”
“I tried to prepare you, but you didn’t answer your door. If anything, this entire ordeal should convince you to hire—”
His growl cut her off.
He jerked open his bedside table drawer and picked up a pink letter, unfolding it with a single irritated shake. “You should have discussed this with me before you mentioned anything to Warrister.”
“For what purpose? You would have refused the invitation, regardless,” she whispered as her sister yawned sleepily in her arms.
“Correct,” he vehemently whispered in return, tension roped between his shoulders.
Raven hissed out a breath through his teeth. Then, looking down at the letter, he folded it with care and tucked it back in the drawer before locking it for safekeeping.
When he faced Jane again, he saw her gaze drift absently from him to the tasseled key. Her lips moved briefly in a silent murmur as if she were making a mental note of something.
But he refused to ask her what it was about. Instead he crossed his arms as another edgy growl vibrated in his throat.
When she spoke aloud, her tone was contrite, tender. “I will write to Ableforth this very day to make amends.”
“Fine.”
She rocked the baby back and forth, stroking her hand along the layers of tiny scalloped ruffles. Gradually, the heavy cherub head settled into the curve of her neck on a soft sigh, a fan of lashes falling against the plump crests of her cheeks. “I suppose I lost my head for a moment.”