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“Not with you, Aunt, and besides he will calm down. You must change the name of your villain, of course.”

Honoria nodded. “Done. My villain shall be Valmont the Vengeful.”

“Stop!” Grandmama thumped the table with her fist. The boys jumped in their seats. “You can’t mean to continue this writing business under my roof.”

Cassie set down her teacup. However much she might regret her mistaken estimation of Raven, one good thing remained of his being their tenant. Rent. Because he paid rent, Cassie was free to use her own funds however she wished. “Honoria and I can go to London, Grandmama, if she and her writing are no longer welcome at Verwood.”

“Insolent girl. You will do no such thing. Do you know that your Mr. Kydd has found a rider for Hermes? You want Hermes to run, do you not?”

Cassie looked from her grandmother to Honoria, a little lost at the turn the conversation had taken. “I do want Hermes to run, but what has that to do with Honoria’s writing?”

“You began this horse race scheme, miss, and you will see it through. I expect you to remain at Verwood until Hermes is ready for his first race.”

“But that will not be until late July!” Cassie cried. It was intolerable to contemplate lingering at Verwood while Raven prepared for his grand ball. Worse to imagine being there while the people who had mocked her danced, and she hobbled on.

Grandmama was watching, her gaze shrewd and knowing, and Cassie pulled herself together. She must not allow anything of the blow Raven had dealt her to show.

“Yes, July, after Sir Adrian’s ball.”

Cassie started. She had thought her grandmother too absorbed in her horses to know what Raven planned.

“Of course, I know about his ball, miss, and if you want me to run that horse at Chichester, then you will show your face at that ball.”

“You can’t mean it, Grandmama. What possible reason could I have for attending a ball?”

“You will go for Verwood. We will all go. Verwood does not bow to Ramsbury Park. Then you can run off to London.”

Her grandmother turned to Honoria. “And you, Honoria, will write no more of your drivel about our neighbor. Only a complete ninny offends Ramsbury. I won’t lose another acre of this estate to that man, certainly not on account of his despicable son.”

Her grandmother stood. The boys popped to their feet. Cook and Hannah stopped their work. Cassie started to push up out of her chair.

“Sit girl,” Grandmama ordered. “Have the sense to get warm and dry. I won’t have you catching your death now.” She turned her glare on Honoria. “You led these three into folly. See that they are fed, and send them back to Sir Adrian when the rain stops.”

*

Raven did not know how long he stood in the rain before any thought intruded other than the sting of her indifference. He had mistaken her civility for friendship. Her solicitude for Dick Crockett had wounded his pride, and he had lashed out at her with that cruel phrase. Rain dripped from his chin. His clothes clung to him, and his skin burned with an icy chill. He could not remember being so angry. His claim to be a gentleman was swallowed up in the mortification of behaving in such an ungentlemanly manner. He had seen at once from the boys’ playacting how his treatment of Hugh would look to Amabel. He should have gone directly to her. Instead, he had sought out Cassie to quarrel. He turned his face up in the rain.

It made no sense to go to Ramsbury Park now. He would go in the morning. He slogged back to the garden to find the boys. They were not to blame for Honoria’s folly or his. When he didn’t find them on the bench, he broke the dowager’s rule and went to the stable to look for them. They were not there either, and Raven was met by stares that plainly declared he was a bedlamite. He arranged, as calmly as he could, for his carriage to take a message to Ramsbury Park with his apology for being unable to call.

He trudged back to the hall. In the entry, servants met him with a brief flurry of solicitude, scurrying to bring him towels and mop up the floor after him.

Jay appeared from the study. “You look like a drowned rat. What happened?”

“Did the boys come back?” Raven toweled his dripping head.

Jay frowned. “The dowager found them in the garden. She sent a note round. They are drying out in her kitchen. You told them to sit on a bench in the rain?”

“May I dry off before you grill me?”

Jay raised his hands and backed away. Raven trudged up the stairs.

In Raven’s dressing room, his man, Hackwood, treated Raven’s ruined clothes with calm efficiency, peeling away wet layers of wool and linen and offering towels. Ruined coats were nothing new. Raven had lost more than one coat fighting fires. A bath was prepared for him, and a hot cordial to drink. His first thought on sinking into the tub was to wonder if someone had prepared a bath for Cassie. He gritted his teeth. The idea of Cassie in her bath roused the most ungentlemanly of thoughts.

He tipped his head back against the lip of the tub and closed his eyes against an image of a white arm resting along the rim of a copper bath. Maybe he did not understand women. Since he’d left Cambridge, he had devoted himself to making a success of the glass business and then to the design of new fire engines for his grandfather to build. He had had no thought of a wife. He knew some wives. They were fine women, but he had not imagined wanting one. From time to time at the duke’s dinners for their old gang, he saw Wenlocke’s duchess, who had been their grinder at Daventry Hall when they were boys, and the wives of Wenlocke’s brothers, Sir Xander and Sir William. He supposed they were beautiful women, but around them he had always been perfectly at ease, usually laughing, and neither dazzled nor disturbed.

Only Amabel had dazzled him. She had danced with him in the fashionable world that had largely ignored him before the fire. From the moment the newspaper accounts of the blaze had named him and his Cole engines, West End hostesses had sought him for their gatherings. To dozens of silk-clad young ladies fanning their rosy faces, he had described the flames, the heat, the roar of the fire, the collapsing beams and swirling embers. The others could not compare to Amabel with her golden curls and sparkling eyes. When she took his hand and led him into a waltz, she confirmed what he had believed all along, that he was meant to rise in the world, to break the barrier of rank.

For months he had thought only of Amabel, acted only to win her. He had hired Trimley to find a house near her father’s estate to show her that he could offer her the life of a lady of rank. Everything he had done at Verwood had been to make the place worthy of her, as perfect as she, herself, was. Now when he was ready to unveil Verwood to her, he discovered that in a moment of arrogance, he had jeopardized her good opinion. He had believed he understood the little scene in the inn yard, that Hugh was a villain and that Dick Crockett was the injured party. He had rushed in, a mistake as fatal as aiming a fire hose at the flames, not the fuel.