Those words had been a relief then. Now, they scratched at his conscience, itching inside his head like a whirring cyclone of dried leaves and pine needles.
Before he left, even in the midst of all the chaos, she still found him. Across the vast hall, her gaze sought his for comfort. He held it for as long as he could, then nodded with a promise to return later.
He hated leaving her. And he felt no peace in his thoughts as he rode against a bracing morning wind, plagued by one single question—How did he fit into her life?
* * *
When Raven returned to Holly House after midnight, he still didn’t have the answer to the question that had plagued him all day. The only thing he knew for certain was that he wanted to see Jane, and to ask her how Henry was faring.
The door to the conservatory was unlocked, the only light within came from the pale orange glow of the embers beneath the iron stove’s curfew and the gray moonlight shining down through the domed ceiling. But Jane wasn’t there.
He found a letter on the cushion of the chaise longue, with his name scrawled in her familiar hand. And, for just an instant, a jolt of fear trampled through him.
As he reached for the folded page, his mind started to spin in circles with the countless nightmares that could be written within. Of all the different ways the rug could be pulled out from under his feet.
Last night was a mistake . . . We live in two different worlds. I see that now . . . I don’t really love you after all . . .
Raven inhaled a fortifying breath before he opened it.
Then he exhaled with a smile.
Inside, there were no words, but an interior sketch of the house—every room, because she was meticulous in the best possible way—and a tiny x inside a corner chamber on the second floor.
A few minutes later, he knew that he wouldn’t have needed the sketch at all. The powdery fragrance of lavender drew him to her door and inside, where he turned the key in the lock.
He found Jane asleep in a pale yellow chair by the hearth.
She looked so small and vulnerable with her legs curled up on the cushion beneath the tucked hem of her nightdress. The soft fan of her lashes drifted shadows against her cheek. A spill of glossy curls rested on the arm of the chair. A book lay unattended on her lap, and a sputtered chamberstick sat on a rosewood drum table beside her.
She’d waited up for him as long as she could, it seemed. The thought brought another smile to his lips and a swelling warmth inside his chest.
He crossed the room to kneel in front of her and slipped the book from beneath her hand, setting it aside. She stirred, her fingers flexing over his, and her lips tilted upward even before she opened her eyes.
“You’re here,” she whispered.
He leaned in to kiss those tender-padded fingertips and kitten-soft palms. “How did you fare today, and how is your brother?”
Her free hand combed through his hair in gentle soothing strokes that eased away all the irritations that built during these long hours apart. He found himself resting his head on her lap and pulling her close.
“Henry will be fine in a month or two,” she said. “Doctor Lockwood is confident that the break will mend without any lingering effects, as long as he avoids all toboggans in the near future. Which shouldn’t be difficult now that it’s in one hundred and seventy-four pieces.”
Leave it to Jane to know the exact number. “You counted them?”
“The children did. It helped to keep their minds off their worries. Most of them were concerned for Henry. The twins, however, were lamenting over the fact that, with only one toboggan left, there would be no race down the hill toward the canal on Christmas Day and no way to win. They were quite sore at their brother and told him outright that he should know better.” She yawned and bent to kiss his head, lingering to rest her cheek there. “He is fourteen, after all. And he’d never been given to flights of recklessness before.”
Raven could feel the turn of her thoughts. “Did you ask what compelled him?”
“After the good doctor and our parents left the room, Henry told me that he is in love,” she said with a soft smile. “Apparently, his muse lives in the village near the boarding school. She is the loveliest creature in the entire world, of course. But the heart-thief is also poor, has no family connections, and he knows that our parents would never approve the match. So, in his own dramatic way, he decided that getting tossed out of school and engaging in other wild behaviors would show Mother and Father that he wasn’t worth their high expectations. He wants them to wash their hands of him so that he can have a life of his own choosing.”
She sighed, the smile fading from her eyes as she averted her gaze to worry a loose thread from his sleeve.
He took her fingertips and kissed them again. “And what did you tell him?”
“I assured him that he can depend upon the rest of his family to support him in whatever life he chooses, and that I would always be here for him.”
A faint shiver rolled through her body and into him. It reminded Raven of what she stood to lose if they’d been caught this morning. She would have been sent away, like her friend.
He hadn’t been thinking of the risks she’d taken. He’d only been lost in his need for her. And so he’d claimed her as his own . . .
But was she truly his?
“We’ll need to be more careful from now on,” she said, her thought mirroring his. “On the nights you come here into my bedchamber, you’ll have to leave by dawn. And I will go to your house as often as I am able.”
His conscience pricked at him. This wasn’t what he wanted for her. She deserved more than these clandestine encounters and the deception of her family. She deserved the world handed to her on a tray that she could dissect at will in order to discover its contents.
“Oh, and here. This is for you.” She twisted to slip a folded page from beneath the chamberstick and handed it to him.
Still bothered by his thoughts, he sat back on his haunches and stared blindly at it. But when he blinked and realized what it was, his heart started racing in panicked beats.
It was another of her sketches. This one was of a tree filled with slanted charcoal slashes, and on most of the branches hung names and dates written in ink.
A Northcott family tree. And his name was there, too.
He stared at it, speechless. All his life he’d wanted a family. All his life he’d wanted to know his name. So then why, for the past weeks, had he done nothing but doubt all the evidence shown to him?
But Raven knew why. Fear.
Fear of a hand clamping down on his shoulder and capturing him as he tried to run for freedom. Fear of the cupboard doors closing him in the dark, the click of the latch, and the quiet that came before the rats scurried in through the hole in the wall. Fear of losing his place if he didn’t whore out his own body. Fear of dying on the wharf with nothing to show for his life.
Fear had taken too much from him. It was time to be done with it.
No more, he thought, and he stared at the page. Emotion stung the back of his eyes, clogging his throat, and he didn’t know what to do with it.
“Happy birthday,” she whispered. “Of course, it is only the past seven generations. I’m afraid that I shall need to complete more resear—”
He cut her off with a searing kiss. Fitting his mouth to hers, he let the deluge of his overflowing heart fill her. She had made all this possible. And, in the process, she’d pushed her way into his life and embedded herself into his very soul. He wouldn’t even be surprised if part of it was indelibly stained pink.