Raven's Vow

The words had stopped the cruelty momentarily, but the face of the man who turned to confront the girl on horseback reflected neither embarrassment nor regret for her reprimand. Instead, the coarse features were reddened with anger.

The gleam of pure hatred that had shone briefly from the mud-colored eyes made John Raven take an automatic step closer to the scene. His forward progress was halted when the lady’s groom swung down easily from his saddle. Although not up to Raven’s size, he certainly appeared to be of a bulk sufficient to handle whatever threat the wizened driver represented.

“Lighten the load of your wagon,” the girl ordered. “He can’t possibly pull that heap.” The truth of her statement was obvious to the onlookers, but until she had stopped the beating, none of them had considered the unfairness of the man’s actions.

“I don’t have time to be coddling him. Lazy is what he is, my lady,” the peddler said, removing the shapeless felt that served as his hat. “He can pull the load. Always has. It’s just temperament,” the man assured her, his ingratiating smile revealing blackened teeth. “Nothing to concern your ladyship.”

“If you beat your animal to death in the public street, it should be of concern tosomeone,” the girl said, giving no quarter, and at the same time controlling the skittering side steps of her restive mare.

The thin lips of the American lifted slightly in admiration of that assessment, and the shrewd blue eyes took their own inventory. The black habit the girl wore was heavily frogged with silver, the darkness of its high collar and the matching cravat stark against the porcelain of her skin. Strands of dark auburn hair had escaped the modish hat and veil to curl around her heart-shaped face. Despite the perfection of her features, it was her eyes that held Raven’s fascinated gaze. Clear russet, they were the exact color of leaves turning under the touch of autumn’s chill. At this moment, they were fixed with determined concentration on the hawker, totally unaware of the interested bystanders.

“It be necessary ‘times to prod him, ladyship. Animals don’t feel the blows like we do. Don’t trouble yourself about the beast. He’ll pull it, I promise, ‘ere I’ve done with him.”

As an accompaniment to his last words, he turned back to the small animal, raising the stick high in the air to bring it down again in the whistling arc that had first attracted the girl’s attention. This time its fall across the trembling back was arrested, the thin rattan captured by a slender gloved hand.

“I said no more. Unload the cart,” she ordered. The fury in her eyes brooked no defiance.

“I’ve no time to be unloading. And who’s to guard what I leave? You’re thinking my goods will still be here when I return, are you? This ain’t Mayfair, your highness.”

At the taunting incivility, the girl’s lips tightened. She gestured to the groom, who took the captured stick from the peddler’s hand and broke it quickly across his knee.

“How much?” she asked.

The vendor paused, seeing his livelihood threatened, but at the same time greedily calculating what he could get from the lady. “For the donkey?”

“Donkey, cart, load. Whatever it takes to free the creature,” the girl suggested. There was no trace of impatience in her voice now. She watched the man’s devious expression impassively.

“If I sells my kit, I’ve no way to make me living.”

“The donkey then.”

“But without me donkey—” he began to argue.

“Get the constable,” the girl ordered her groom, who turned almost before she had finished speaking, his intent too clear for the man to doubt that he would do exactly as she’d commanded.

“Two quid,” the peddler suggested, a ridiculous amount.

“All right,” she agreed. “Give my groom your name and lodging and he’ll bring it round to you this afternoon. Get the donkey, Jem,” Catherine Montfort ordered, turning her mare away from the scene, already late for her appointment in Hyde Park.

The peddler began to protest as the groom efficiently dealt with the traces. “You’ll not be taking property without paying me. How do I know you’ll send barn with the money? How do I know this ain’t a plot to steal a poor man’s livelihood? I’m the one who’ll be calling the constable, I think, if you take the beast. I knows me rights, nobs or no,” he finished belligerently, pulling against the line the groom was using as a lead rope. “Here, you, give me back me donkey.”

Catherine Montfort’s lips tightened in frustration. She had no money with her, of course, and she doubted Jem would be able to come up with that much. Glancing at the groom, who was still in control of the exhausted donkey, she saw him shake his head in response to her unspoken question. She had no option but to send home for the amount and try to stop the hawker from leaving in the meantime.

“If I might be allowed to offer assistance,” a deep, accented voice at her elbow suggested.

She glanced down into the bluest eyes she had ever encountered. The clear, rare color of a summer sky, they were set like jewels in the golden skin surrounding them, emphasized by small, white lines radiating around the crystal blue and the black sweep of lashes.

A man who’d lived a long time in a climate where the sun left its mark, she thought briefly. He was very tall, tall enough that she needn’t look down far to be lost in those blue depths. She watched as his hand, lean, long fingered and remarkably graceful, automatically smoothed the sweating neck of her impatient mare. He whispered something, the words too softly spoken for Catherine to make sense of the soothing sibilants, and Storm’s ears flickered with interest.

Amazingly, as he continued to whisper, Catherine could feel the tension caused by the street’s commotion and the delay in the promised run leave her mount. Storm turned to nuzzle those strong fingers, and Catherine found herself watching their caress with something approaching fascination. “Two quid, I believe,” the stranger said.

Still disconcerted, Catherine nodded. She watched him give Storm one last competent stroke and then walk to the waiting peddler. If Jem’s intimidating size had affected the man, he had given no sign of it, but his response to the American seemed one almost of fear. His instinctive recoil when the tall man held out his hand brought a brief reactive movement to those thin lips. Raven waited patiently until the peddler had worked up his courage to take the money and restore his cap to his head.

Slipping between the wooden tongues in the donkey’s place, the vendor awkwardly turned the heavily loaded cart so that it was now headed down the slight incline. The three watched as the wagon gathered momentum on the slope and the usual street sounds again intruded into the stage where the drama had been played out.

Raven turned back to the girl to find her eyes no longer watching the merchant’s retreating figure, but on him. She was questioning the color of his skin, he supposed, or his hair. Making her fascinated distaste apparent. He didn’t know why her frank appraisal bothered him. He had certainly grown accustomed to the stares he’d attracted in London in the last few months.

“Thank you,” she said simply, her eyes meeting his. She held out the small gloved hand that had caught the peddler’s stick. Not to be kissed, Raven realized, but to be shaken.

Her hand was almost lost in his, but her grip was pleasantly firm. He controlled the quick amusement at the sight of those slender fingers captured by his hard, dark ones.

“If you’ll give Jem your address—” she began.

“Consider him a gift,” he interrupted softly, and watched her eyes flick quickly to the animal he’d just bought. Head drooping, the donkey stood patiently waiting for the next blow to fall. In several places where the stick had cut, blood oozed.

The girl’s lips tightened and she took a deep breath. For the first time an emotion besides anger tinged her voice. “Damned bastard,” she whispered. Realizing that she’d spoken the epithet aloud, she glanced quickly at the American. The russet eyes swam with tears, but before they could overflow, she blinked, a fall of impossibly long, dark lashes concealing feelings Raven read quite clearly.

“Thank you,” she said again, looking down into that strong-featured face. Something in the crystalline eyes had changed. And he made no response to her gratitude.

“For my gift,” she explained softly, her lips lifting into the smile that had set masculine pulses hammering since she’d turned fourteen. Catherine Montfort thought of all the presents she had received from suitors in the last three years, not one of whom had, of course, thought to give her an abused donkey.

There was no response in the still, dark face. Not handsome, Catherine thought; it was too strongly constructed to be called handsome. But there was something, some indefinable something in the hawklike nose and high cheekbones that was very appealing. And in his eyes, she thought again. She had never seen eyes that shade of blue.

Raven became aware suddenly that she was talking to him, but he didn’t have any idea what she had said. Something about a gift. Something… He took a deep breath, realizing that air was a necessity he had neglected in the last minute. The perfection of the heart-shaped face floated before him against the background of clouds and sky.

“Angel,” he said softly in his grandmother’s tongue, although the word’s connotation there was not exactly the same. Oliver Reynolds had told him he’d need a guardian angel. The stern line of John Raven’s lips tilted upward at the corners.

Catherine Montfort found that her hand was still resting in his and her throat had gone dry. The small movement of his mouth fascinated her until she recognized the expression for what it was—he was smiling at her.

Sensing her inattention, Storm sidestepped suddenly, and the pull against their joined hands broke the spell. Reluctantly, Catherine disentangled her fingers. She had thanked the man twice, and there was really nothing else she could say. She didn’t even know his name. She might never know it. She’d never seen him before and would, in all probability, never see him again. He was certainly not a member of the select group, the London ton, with whom she associated, the only people with whom she had associated since her birth. What had happened today was simply a chance meeting with a stranger on a crowded London street.

Raven stepped back, clearing the way for her departure. Her boot heel touched Storm in command, and, her back flawlessly straight, Catherine Montfort directed her mount around the donkey and back on the course of her normal activities.

John Raven watched the slight figure until it was lost in the throng of riders and carriages. Realizing that he had been staring far too long for politeness, he turned back to find the groom carefully inspecting the animal’s injuries.

“Shall I find him a home?” Raven asked, wondering what her ladyship would do with a donkey in Mayfair.

“You think she’ll forget him?” the groom asked, not bothering to look up from his examination. “You think she bought him on impulse and will forget him before she gets home?” The rude sound that followed was indicative of his opinion of what Raven had suggested about the girl.

“Then she won’t?” Raven asked, the slight smile again marking the hard mouth.

“If I don’t have him back in the stables and these injuries tended to by the time she returns, she’ll serve my head to the old man with his supper.”

“The old man?” Fear stirred suddenly in Raven’s gut.

“Montfort,” the groom informed him, as if, that said, there was no other explanation needed. He moved to the other side of the donkey to run skilled hands over the protruding ribs and to pick up a trembling foreleg to examine an untreated cut.

“Montfort,” Raven repeated, feeling like Echo.