Raven's Vow

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

Gayle Wilson

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Copyright

“It’s quite impossible,” Catherine said softly. “My father would never allow such a match.”

“Then you have no objection to my approaching him?” Raven asked calmly.

“You intend to approach my father?” she repeated unbelievingly, incredulous that he didn’t seem to understand the width of the gap that lay between them.

“Yes.”

“With that proposition?”

“Not couched in precisely those terms,” he said, amusement in his voice. “Simply as an offer for your hand.”

“He’ll have you thrown out,” she warned.

“Will he?” he asked, sounding interested. “I wonder how.”

“By the servants,” she responded with deliberate bluntness, finally angered at his continual mockery of the reality of the world she lived in. Coal merchants, however wealthy, didnot ask for the hand of the Duke of Montfort’s daughter.

“I should like to see them try,” Raven suggested softly, and found that he really would. He’ddamn well like to see them try…!

Dear Reader,

When an American businessman and a British heiress agree to a marriage of convenience, both are in danger inRaven’s Vow, a dark new Regency novel from former March Madness/Romance Writers of America RITA Award nominee Gayle Wilson, the author of The Heart’s Desire. Don’t miss this exciting new tale from this talented author.

Elizabeth Mayne, another March Madness/RITA Award nominee author, is also out this month.Lord of the Isle is a classic Elizabethan tale featuring an Irish nobleman who unwittingly falls in love with a rebel from an outlawed family. Ana Seymour’sLucky Bride is a sequel toGabriel’s Lady. Set in Wyoming Territory, it’s a delightful story of a ranch hand who joins forces with his beautiful boss to save her land from a dangerous con man.

Our fourth title for the month,The Return of Chase Cordell, is a new Western from Linda Castle, who is fast becoming one of our most popular authors. It’s a poignant love story about a war hero with amnesia who rediscovers a forgotten passion for his young bride.

Whatever your taste in reading, we hope you’ll enjoy all four of these terrific stories. Please keep an eye out for them wherever Harlequin Historicals are sold.

Sincerely,

Tracy Farrell

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Harlequin Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

Raven’s Vow

Gayle Wilson

GAYLE WILSON

teaches English and history to gifted high school students. Her love of both subjects naturally resulted in a desire to write historical fiction. After several years as the wife of a military pilot, she returned with her husband to live in Alabama, where they had both grown up.

You can contact her at: P.O. Box 342, Birmingham, AL 35201-0342.

For my beloved sister Joy

Prologue

London, 1826

“What you need, Mr. Raven, is a wife.”

The tall man at the window turned, a slight indentation deepening the corners of the hardest mouth Oliver Reynolds had seen in his seventy years. He had learned through experience that the look John Raven was now directing toward him was intended to indicate amusement.

“A wife?” the American repeated, that amusement now touching the rich tones of his voice as it had marked the stern lips.

“Unless, of course,” the banker continued with the merest trace of sarcasm, “you have a duke hidden away somewhere in your family tree. Or an earl. Short of that, sir, I’m afraid…” The old man let the suggestion trail off. He had made his point, and he knew his client’s ready intelligence needed no more prompting.

Oliver Reynolds had been paid, extremelywell paid, to guide this American nabob through the perils of London society, and the solution he had just broached to John Raven was really the best advice he had to offer.

“Three of my grandparents fled Scotland after the ‘45, half a step ahead of Cumberland’s butchers,” John Raven confessed. The mockery lurking in those strange, crystalline blue eyes proved his very New World lack of embarrassment over the mode of his ancestors’ departure from the Old. He had been born on the edge of the American wilderness and had watched the influx of settlers move across the land, always westward toward the great river. His country was changing, the vast forest tracts gradually giving way to farms and communities, the conquest of its wildness the result of the hard work of people like his parents and his grandparents.

“In that case—” the banker began, only to be cut off by the sardonic voice.

“My paternal grandmother, however, was a princess.”

“A princess?” Oliver Reynolds repeated carefully. “Royalty, Mr. Raven? And from what dynasty did this fortuitous ancestor spring? Despite its supposed sophistication, the British nobility still finds a certain fascination in foreign royalty.”

“The Mauvilla, Mr. Reynolds.”

“Mauvilla,” the old man repeated, trying to think. “I don’t believe I’m familiar with that particular family.”

“They defied de Soto, virtually destroying themselves in the process. My grandmother was the last of the royal line.”

“De Soto?” the banker questioned. He had heard the name, of course, in conjunction with the exploration of the American continent. Surely, Mr. Reynolds thought, those who had defied him would not be mentioned in the context of royal families.

“Indian?” He spoke his sudden realization aloud, his voice rising. But even as he did, he acknowledged that the heritage John Raven had just confessed would explain so much. The American’s coloring, for example—the bronze skin that offered such a striking contrast to the clear blue eyes. And his hair, of course. “Indian,” the old man said again, an affirmation that put so many pieces of the puzzle John Raven had represented into place.

Raven’s dark head inclined slightly in agreement. The small upward tilt at the corners of his mouth increased minutely. “Indian,” he agreed softly. “Do you think they’ll be impressed?”

“I should think,” the banker began, wondering how to warn him without being too offensive, “that you should be damnably certain this noble mob never finds out about your grandmother.”

“Not royal enough for our purposes?” Raven suggested easily as he moved back to the chair he had earlier occupied.

Watching his client traverse the short distance, Oliver Reynolds inventoried his recent accomplishments. The American’s shoulders were now shown to advantage by Weston’s expert tailoring, the coat of navy superfine covering their broad width without a wrinkle. Underneath, a striped French silk waistcoat was discreetly visible. Fawn pantaloons stretched over the flat stomach and accented the firmness of long, muscular thighs. Tasseled Hessians fashioned by Hoby’s master hand completed the picture of elegance that finally matched the vast wealth the American had brought from the East into the English capital.

On his arrival in London, John Raven had sought Reynolds’s advice and had, surprisingly, followed it to the letter. Except for one thing, the banker thought with regret. The only concession he had been able to wrest from his client regarding the length of his hair was compromise satisfactory to neither. The American had agreed to secure the dark strands, their blue-black gleam rivaling the feathers of the bird whose name he bore, into a queue tied with a black silk ribbon. He had adamantly refused to cut it, and given, of course, the startling revelation he had just made, Reynolds at last understood.

“If words gets out aboutthat, Mr. Raven, you won’t need a wife. A fairy godmother, perhaps. Or a guardian angel.”

“A fairy godmother who’d wave her wand to make me acceptable? An angel to ensure that my many faults are hidden under the splendor of her wings?” the American jeered quietly, not bothering to hide his frustration.

Damn them, John Raven thought bitterly. He’d come to England to build. Instead, he had found the doors to those gracefully proportioned drawing rooms and exclusive clubs where the real power resided closed to him because he was an outsider.

The arrogant, pompous bastards. He had visited their tailors and their boot makers, and Raven knew—because he was certainly no one’s fool—that he was as well dressed as any man in London. And as wealthy. Still they refused to deal with him. Because he wasn’t a member of their bloody ton.

“I’ve told you before. You’ll never find a more closed or closed-minded circle in the world,” Reynolds said. “They’ll back the outrageous schemes of the most profligate bounder, drunkard or scoundrel of their own class, but an outsider? You had as well have stayed in India and attempted to do business from there as to try to force your way in. You can’t make them invest.”

“They won’t even meet me. Polite refusals is all I’ve gotten. If only they’d listen, they would know that what I propose is not only advantageous to Britain, but profitable for investors as well. Why the hell won’t they listen?”

“Because you don’t belong. Birth is the only membership in this society, and yours is unacceptable. You need a wife whose place within the ton is so secure that she will be able to win you a grudging entry by virtue of her own connections.”

“How do you propose that I convince this paragon to marry me? introduce her to my grandmother?” Raven countered with savage politeness.

“The usual procedure is to offer enough money that her family can’t refuse.”

“Buy her, do you mean?”

“It’s done everyday. Not in those terms, of course. However, that is the general idea. You certainly have the funds. All we need to do is find some impoverished noblewoman whose family is willing to marry her off in return for a guarantee of financial security for themselves for the rest of their lives.”

“I thought slavery in Britain disappeared with the Saxons,” Raven commented bitterly. “I damn well don’t intend to buy a wife. I wouldn’t want a woman who’d be willing to sell herself.”

“I suppose,” the banker said carefully, recognizing the truth in the American’s argument, “that most of them aren’t.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Willing,” Oliver Reynolds explained regretfully.

“Good God,” Raven said with a trace of horror. “And they would call my grandmother’s people savage. I won’t buy a wife, Mr. Reynolds, willing or unwilling. If the mines and railroads I came to Britain to build don’t become a reality, then the bastards will have only themselves to blame.”

Fighting to control his anger, John Raven descended the stairs that led from the old man’s office. If buying a wife was what it would take to succeed in England, he would damn well find somewhere else to invest his energies.

Raven moved from the narrow flight of stairs onto the street with an unconscious grace, a smooth athleticism that had already attracted attention in the capital. More than one pair of female eyes, accustomed to the sometimes delicate fragility of the gentlemen who set the mode for London society, had on occasion during the last month followed that purposeful stride.

The feminine voice that attracted his attention now, despite the bustle of traffic that rushed past the bank, did so by the sharpness of its tone, and not because of Reynolds’s suggestion.

“If you strike him again, I shall have my groom take that stick from you and apply it toyour back.”

The peddler paused in his determined attempts to move the pitiful creature fastened between the wooden tongues of his overloaded cart. Unable to pull the burden up the inclined street, the small donkey stood shivering and flinching under the blows from the rattan stick the man was using as encouragement.

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.