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He managed to catch her by the waist, but she wouldn’t stop struggling.
He held her down and straddled her. When she started to roll away, he lay on top of her.
She gasped and fell back onto the pillows, her eyes opening very wide.
He was profoundly aware of her soft, warm body beneath him.
He found his brain and made it work.
Rather more hoarsely than he liked, he said, “Be still, will you? If anybody comes in and sees this, we’re done for. I’ll be ruined, and I shall never be Lord Chancellor or even a madcap judge, my heart’s ambition.”
“Raven?” she said.
“Yes, drat you. Have you returned to the world of sane people?”
“Are we lovers?” she said.
A pause.
“You’re not that delirious,” he said. He rose, bracing himself on his elbows.
“Oh,” she said. “I forgot. I’m sick.”
“Yes. Your fever is up and I need to brew you more willow bark tea, but I can’t leave you alone for a minute.”
She blinked hard, and he thought he glimpsed tears. She swallowed and said, “I’ll try to be quiet.”
He thought quickly. “Do you remember how to say the word?”
“What word?”
“The room with the mirrors and twining snakes and trees.”
She frowned. After a moment she said, “Hepta . . .” She paused and bit her lip, displaying the chipped tooth.
His heart seemed to be in a state of strangulation.
He climbed off her and off the bed, aware he was shaking and hoping she couldn’t see.
“Never mind,” he said dismissively. “You’re only a girl. I can’t expect you to remember.”
The blue eyes flashed. “I do!” she said.
“No, you don’t. It’s too many syllables for your miniscule female brain. And after all the trouble I took to teach you. Dogs can be taught to heel and fetch, I told myself. Monkeys can be taught to dance while the organ grinder plays. Why cannot a girl be taught to say a word?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Professor.”
“That isn’t the word.”
“Heptaplop— Drat you!”
“You try to make your infinitesimally small brain function at a proper level,” he said, “I’ll brew the tea.”
She tried the word a dozen different ways. She muttered to herself, but she did not sound deranged and did not become agitated.
The tea was nearly brewed when she said, with a laugh, “Heptaplasiesoptron!”
“That is correct.”
“Heptaplasiesoptron. Heptaplasiesoptron. Heptaplasiesoptron. So there, Professor!”
“That’s Professor Raven to you,” he said, in the same haughty tones she’d used on him. “Or sir. Genius will do, too.”
“What about ‘most provoking man’?”
“And you are not at all provoking, I suppose.”
“Yes, I am,” she said. “But you like it, Sir Genius. From his lofty intellectual heights, the Great God Raven looks down upon me with amusement. Don’t pretend you don’t. I see your mouth twitch. I see the glint in your beady avian eye. Why can’t you laugh like a normal person?”
“I’m not a normal person,” he said. “I’m vastly superior to normal persons.”
He filled the cup and carried it to the bed.
He propped her up with pillows, and this time the movement seemed not to distress her so much. She drank the tea without trouble, and when she lay down again, she was quiet, and eventually drifted into sleep. Her fever seemed to have lessened. The delirium had passed, at least for now.
On the next night, she was tranquil enough, although from time to time her mind seemed to wander and she muttered unintelligibly.
Then, near midnight, she grew restless, and demanded her carriage. She tried to get out of bed. This time, when he took her shoulders and guided her down, she went without trouble. He was smoothing the bedclothes when she tried to push him away.
“Come, my girl, you were better before. You need to rest. You can’t leap about.”
She bolted up to a sitting position. “I know how to drive. You can’t make me stay. We’re going to Portsmouth and Egypt and Arabia.”
This time she was determined to get out of the bed. He struggled with her. When he tried climbing onto her again, she bucked and kicked. Fearing she’d wear herself out, he got off her. He spoke to her but she didn’t hear him. He pushed her down as gently as she could, and she went, and lay quietly for a moment, breathing hard. Then she rolled to the edge of the bed, and nearly off before he caught her. This time she fought wildly. “Let me go!” she cried. “Let me go!”
“Clara, please. This is not good for you. Please, Clara, come back.”
He was struggling with her, trying to control her without hurting her, when her fist shot up and she hit him in the eye.
Chapter Ten
Though you do not always see the raven, the raven always sees you; and he will steal along, by the side of your route, in the tractless desert for many miles, though when you get a sight of him, he appears always to be leaving you.
—Charles F. Partington, The British Cyclopedia, 1836
Lady Clara hit hard for a girl.
She must have put all she had into it, because she sank back on the pillows and fell asleep. Worn out, no doubt. Yet her face wasn’t as hot as before.
Since she seemed safe for the moment, Radford went out into the corridor and signaled to William.
“Her ladyship has done her best to black my eye,” Radford said. “You will have to wake somebody belowstairs and fetch me a cold beefsteak to keep the swelling down. I need both eyes working properly.”
A facial spasm, so minute only Radford could have caught it, betrayed the servant’s amusement.
“Never underestimate the power of a woman’s fist,” Radford said. “Too, they don’t fight fair. They strike without warning.”
“Yes, sir.” Another spasm.
“I think the worst has passed,” Radford said.
The footman released his rigid control and smiled. “Very good news, sir. I’ll get that beefsteak straightaway.”
Radford returned to his vigil. His eye was beginning to hurt, but he smiled, too.
The next time Clara woke, Davis was with her. Clara had no idea what time it was. Daytime? Did it matter? Though she was tired, she was a little hungry, for the first time in a very long time. And for the first time, she finished her cup of broth without Davis’s nagging or coaxing. She held the cup, too, with Davis steadying it. But the process tired her, and she slept again, for most of the day.
When she next awoke, sometime in the evening, Radford was at his post. Even before she looked, she could hear his pen scratching over a document. She lifted her head and saw him bent over his work, the pen moving steadily.
She came up gingerly onto her elbows to study him. Except for the day they’d rescued Toby, Radford had always been neatly groomed and tailored. She couldn’t remember if this had been true lately. She couldn’t distinguish one day from another, and she didn’t know what had happened and what she’d dreamed.
This wasn’t dreaming, though. She saw clearly enough that he was not fully dressed. He’d hung his coat over the back of the chair, and worked in waistcoat and shirt, his long, black-clad legs stretched out under the dainty desk.
At present, only the single lamp on the desk and the firelight illuminated the room. Even so, she could see the way light and shadow outlined the contours of his shoulders and upper arms under the fine linen sleeves. He’d loosened his neckcloth, revealing his throat, which wasn’t usually on view. Beard stubble shadowed his jaw. Unruly black curls sprang from his head, telling her he’d raked his fingers through his hair more than once.
Something in his intent expressio
n and in the way the candle cast shadows over the angles and planes of his strong features made her heart squeeze.
She must have uttered a sound without realizing, because he looked up from his work and toward her.
“I’d hoped I’d have a peaceful night,” he said. “No luck there.”
She was silly, perhaps, but it tickled her when he said things like that. It was rather like her brothers’ joking insults—those male signs of affection—though when Raven spoke, it didn’t feel brotherly at all.
She swallowed a sigh. She wished she weren’t sick and helpless. She wished she had an idea how to seduce a man. But if she hadn’t been sick and helpless, he wouldn’t be here. In any case, she knew very well she was far from looking her seductive best, scantily clad though she was.
He wiped his pen and set it down. He closed the inkwell and set the paper aside, on top of another document. He rose and came to the bed. Despite the murky light, when he stood over her, she discerned something amiss with his left eye. Was that bruising?
“Did you walk into a door?” she said.
