St. Raven

A SIGNET BOOK

Copyright © Jo Beverley Publications, Inc., 2003 Excerpt copyright © Jo Beverley Publications, Inc., 2003 All rights reserved

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you as always to my wonderful editor, Audrey LaFehr, and to my supportive agent, Meg Ruley. You smooth my path.

I am blessed with many on-line friends and groups who are always ready to brainstorm, or supply information or act as a sounding board. I am equally blessed with a fun and supportive local romance writers group and critique group. Thank you, everyone.

I often go to the internet for spot research. For this book Rosemary Sachdev, whom I know through Dunnettry, found the names of a pair of Indian lovers for me, and also just the right term for a partner in such exercises. Fellow author Margaret Evans Porter helped me with the value of gemstones. If I have made any errors, they are entirely my own.

And thank you to all my readers. I could write for myself, but it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun!

Summer 1816. North of
London

Still as a statue in the full moon’s light the highwayman watched the road. He controlled his mount without effort and without bit, and when the horse stirred, tossing its head, no jingle broke the quiet of the night woods.

His clothing was dark as the shadows, his face concealed behind a black mask and a delicate beard and mustache in the style of Charles I. He would be invisible if not for the splash of a sweeping white plume on his broad Cavalier hat.

That plume was the signature of Le Corbeau, the bold French rascal who called himself the Crow and claimed the right to peck at those who traveled the night roads north from London.

Though no one else was could be seen, the Crow did not fly alone. He had men stationed north and south to warn of danger and of approaching prey. He waited for their signals in stillness except for the stirring of his feather in the breeze.

Then, at last, an owl hoot with a strange pattern at the end floated from the south. A victim approached. A suitable one. Not the well-armed mail coach or poor pickings on a swaybacked horse or in a cart. What came from the south was undefended but worth the effort, and would be here soon.

He listened until he heard the pounding of fast horses. With a sharp whistle of his own, he surged out of the trees and down the road head-on to the coach and pair.

The startled coachman dragged on his reins. By the time the coach stopped, Tristan Tregallows, Duke of St. Raven, commanded the two people in the coach with his cocked pistol, and two colleagues kept guard nearby.

Heart pounding in a way both alarming and pleasurable, Tris thought this was almost as good as sex. Pity this was his first and last night for the game.

“
Monsieur, madame
,” he greeted with a slight inclination of his head. He continued in the French-accented English of the real Le Corbeau. “Pleeze to step out of ze carriage.”

As he spoke, he assessed his victims as best he could, given the dim interior.

Perfect.

Terror or threatened apoplexy might have driven him off, but he had a fashionable young couple at gunpoint. The lady sat closest to his side of the coach, and she seemed more furious than frightened. Her mouth was set, and her direct, pale eyes showed outrage at his attack.

“Damn your eyes, you gallows bait!” the man snarled. The voice confirmed him well-born, which was excellent. He would not miss half his money.

“Zat is in ze hands of
le Bon Dieu
and ze magistrates,
monsieur
. You, on ze other hand, are in mine.
Sortez
! You know my reputation. I will neither kill you nor take your all—unless,” Tris added, trying for silky menace, “you continue to disobey me.”

“Oh, get out and let’s get this over with,” ordered the man, shoving the woman so hard that she banged against the inside of the coach.

Her head snapped toward her partner as if she’d blister him, but then she turned back to open the door, head bowed, apparently meek as milk.

As Tris backed Caesar a few steps to make sure he couldn’t be jumped, his mind danced with curiosity. The man was a cur. It seemed the woman might think the same, yet she obeyed. It could be an unhappy marriage, but such wives rarely rebelled over little things.

He tried to shut off curiosity. He didn’t have time for a mystery. Even so late, on a night with a good moon another vehicle could appear at any time.

The woman climbed down the steps, one hand holding her pale skirt out of the way, the other using the open door for balance. Half an eye on the man, St. Raven still made a number of instant assessments.

She tended to roundness rather than slender elegance.

She was graceful in this awkward situation.

She was dressed in a fine evening gown under a light shawl. Unusual for traveling. Damn. Perhaps they were called away to a deathbed.

She had a neat ankle.

When she arrived on the road and looked up at him, he noted a heart-shaped face fringed with dark curls frothing out along the front edge of a fashionable evening turban of striped cloth. She wore pearls at her neck and ears.

Modest pearls, however. He wished she showed signs of fabulous wealth. He supposed he’d have to take them, or at least part of them. Damnation. Would returning them destroy the purpose of this enterprise?

He turned his full attention to the stocky man who followed her. His top boots, breeches, jacket, and beaver hat might seem casual to some, but Tris recognized the height of fashion for a certain sort—a sporting Corinthian. The striped waistcoat, the flamboyant cravat, and the cut of the coat confirmed it and sent a warning: The man’s heavy build would be all muscle.

Then the moon shone full on the man’s sneering face—chunky, wide in the jaw, and with a nose that looked to have been broken more than once.

Crofton.

Viscount Crofton, a man in his early thirties of moderate wealth and expensive tastes, especially in women. Or rather, in quantity of women. He was a bruising rider and pugilist who was generally to be found at any event promising sport—with men or women—and with a preference for the rough.

Crofton had attended a gentlemen’s party at Tris’s house once. It had been made clear that he would never be welcome again. It would be a personal pleasure to distress Crofton, but the man was dangerous, and needed watching.

Tris reminded himself not to be distracted, but some detail niggled. Something that might be relevant here.

He brushed it aside. He had a simple task in hand— to stage a holdup so that the man in jail as Le Corbeau would be proved innocent.

“Your purses, pleeze,” he said, but couldn’t resist another glance at the woman. Crofton wasn’t married, but dress, demeanor, and jewelry spoke of a lady, not a whore. Did he have a sister?

Crofton pulled a handful of banknotes out of his pocket and tossed them onto the ground, where they fluttered in the breeze. “Grovel for them like the pig you are.”

“Crow,” Tris corrected, tempted to force the man to pick them up with his teeth. “
Madame
?”

“I have no purse.”

A cool, educated voice. A lady for sure, and the moonlight painted her features with white marble purity.

“Then it will have to be your earrings,
cherie
.” Instinct clamored that something was wrong, and he couldn’t ride away with this mystery unsolved. The thought of a well-bred lady in Crofton’s clutches revolted him.

He glanced at the woman, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was gazing at the moonlit countryside, denying his existence even as she took the pearl drops from her ears and tossed them down by the money.

Then she looked at him, eyes narrowed, lips tight. The mysterious lady wasn’t frightened. She was furious.

She had to be with Crofton by choice to be so angry at the interruption. On the other hand, he couldn’t forget the way Crofton had shoved her and her instinctive, outraged reaction.

And then, the elusive detail came to him.

A week or two ago, Crofton had won a property in a game of cards. Stokeley Manor in Cambridgeshire. To celebrate, he was throwing a party—an orgy, to be precise. Tris had received a presumptuous invitation, and unless he was mistaken, the event began tomorrow night.

So, Crofton was on his way there, and he wouldn’t be taking his sister with him, or any other respectable lady. Unlikely as it seemed, the moonlit madonna had to be a high-priced whore. Not all whores were sluts, and some used a ladylike appearance as part of their stock-in-trade.

Experience and instinct, however, told Tris that this woman was no such thing. There was one way to try her out.

Le Corbeau was a foolish, romantic sort of highwayman, and he sometimes offered to return his loot for a kiss. A lot could be learned from the way a woman kissed.

Tris smiled at her. “Since my wages have so unfortunately fallen in ze dirt,
ma belle
, I must ask you to pick zem up for me.”

He thought she was going to refuse. The moonlight did not show color, but he knew a flush of anger heated those rounded cheeks—anger that tightened, her lips and confirmed his fears. It was the sort of cold, righteous anger no whore he’d known would ever permit herself.

“Do it,” Crofton snapped, “and get rid of the cur.”

She flinched under the order, but again she submitted, walking forward and then dipping down to pick up the money and earrings. She didn’t walk like a whore, either.

Tris didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.

He’d heard that Crofton’s entertainments leaned to the crude and that he had a taste for debauching virgins—the less willing, the better. Might he have found a way to force a well-bred virgin to be the centerpiece of his celebration?

The woman straightened and approached the horse, holding out the money and jewelry.

He looked down into steady, despising eyes. Who the devil did she think she was? Joan of Arc? She was on her way to an orgy with Crofton, and she’d be wiser to be looking for help than treating a possible rescuer like a slug.

He moved Caesar forward a step. The woman flinched back, her stony composure breaking for a moment. Afraid of horses? When her lips relaxed, however, they showed a temptingly full bow. Kissing her wouldn’t be any sacrifice at all.

He remembered to check on Crofton. Damn stupid to have been distracted. The man seemed to be simply observing, amused. A bad sign. Tris moved Caesar forward another step, and again she backed away.

“If you keep retreating,
cherie
, we will be here all night.”

Her lips tightened again. “Good. Then someone will come along and arrest you.”

“Not in time. Ze money?”

She set her chin and stepped forward, holding the money and earrings up and out, coming no closer than she had to. The contrast between her bravado and her obvious fear of Caesar touched his heart.

He took the loot, and she hastily backed away. He separated the banknotes roughly in half and tossed part back on the ground. “I beggar no man.”

Crofton laughed. “That amount wouldn’t beggar me, cur. Are we done, then?”

Tris looked at the woman again. “I will return ze rest and your earrings for a kiss,
cherie
.”

She took another step back, but Crofton pushed her forward. “Go on,
Cherry
, kiss him. I’ll let you keep the blunt if it’s a good one.”

Tris saw her inhale a long, angry breath, sensed fire behind her eyes, but again she did not protest. What hold did Crofton have over her?

“Well?” he asked.

“If I must,” she replied so coldly that he felt he should shiver. He suppressed a grin. He liked her spirit.

He extended his gloved hand. “I cannot risk dismounting,
cherie
, so you must come up.”

Panic staggered her then. “On the
horse
!”

“On the horse.”

Cressida Mandeville stared up at the costumed madman on the huge horse, knowing she had finally reached her breaking point. She had struck a loathsome deal with Lord Crofton, she had set out to be his mistress for a week, she had endured some pawing in the carriage without throwing up. She would not, however, could not get up on a horse.

“Keep the money,” she snapped.

“Kiss him!” Crofton snarled.

Frozen by that, she did not react in time when the highwayman holstered his pistol, moved the horse forward, and leaned to snatch her up into the saddle in front of him.

She swallowed a scream because she wouldn’t show that sort of fear, but when she landed on the horse and it sidled beneath her, she clutched the enemy’s jacket, her eyes tight shut, and prayed.

“Zere, zere,
petite
, I assure you it is not so bad up here.”

The amusement in his voice stung her pride, and indeed, now she was up and the horse was still, it didn’t seem too bad—as long as she had the robber’s big, solid body to hang on to.

She made herself crack her eyes open. All she could see was dark clothing. Her head was buried against warmth and wool, surprisingly surrounded by the smell of clean clothing and spice.

Sandalwood.

A strange crow, indeed.

Since pride was all she had left, Cressida made herself release her clutch and straighten her spine. Having achieved that, she turned her head to see what Crofton was doing.

Nothing, because another highwayman had the area covered by two pistols. Not a careless crow, but Crofton wouldn’t interfere, anyway. He must be finding this amusing.

Cressida remembered attending the theater in London some months ago and seeing a play that featured this rascally highwayman. There he turned out to be the hero. Reality, of course, was very different.

All the same, given the choice between the two men…

The highwayman seemed to have moved back on the horse so that she was sideways on the saddle in front of him, but even so, she was crushed against his body. He chuckled, and she felt it.