hardy girls and they followed the well-worn paths with ease. Phoebe chatted in her usual companionable way, but Prudence was intent upon one thing—reaching the abbey.
She had never put much stock in convention, so it mattered little to her if she strained the bounds of propriety a bit by showing up uninvited at a bachelor’s establishment. It was not as if young Penhurst were a desperate character intent upon ravishing them. He was an aristocrat, a neighbor, a well-mannered gentleman, and she did not plan on a lengthy stay. A peek—just a look at the famed building’s interior—was all she wanted.
If Phoebe noticed that they were gradually working their way toward the abbey, she did not mention it. However, it was not long before she tried to coax Prudence to return home. “Perhaps we had better go back, Prudence,” she said, frowning thoughtfully. “The weather has turned, as I knew it would, and I have no wish to be caught by a storm!”
Prudence looked up, rather surprised to see how the sky had darkened. When she was lost in thought, she often became oblivious of all else, and this was not the first time she had been startled by a sudden change in her circumstances.
The wind had picked up alarmingly, too, flapping their cloaks and whipping their hair about their faces. Although Prudence was well aware of the dangers of such sudden storms, they were already on the grounds of Wolfinger. She could see the rear of the tall structure towering above them, like a beacon calling to her, and she was loath to surrender her scheme after coming so far.
“Nonsense!” she answered. “Look, Phoebe, we are nearly to Mr. Penhurst’s. Perhaps he will be about. It would be a shame to leave without passing by.” With brisk motions, Prudence urged her sister on, determined to take the quickest route to her goal.
Without a thought to her grim surroundings, she opened the wrought-iron entrance to the ancient graveyard that lay in the shadow of the abbey and picked her way through the overgrown stones. She heard Phoebe following, murmuring a protest, and then the gate slammed shut with a loud clang that made her sister jump and squeak.
“Prudence—” she began in a high, anxious voice. “Mr. Penhurst will not be about. No one is out in this weather! I want to go home!”
“Nonsense,” Prudence repeated.
“Prudence! Oh, I don’t know why I let you drag me here,” Phoebe wailed. “I despise this horrid, ghastly place!”
Ignoring her sister’s words, most of which were lost upon the wildly gusting breeze anyway, Prudence climbed over the crumbling stone wall that marked the edge of the cemetery and stepped toward the long, curving drive that led to the imposing abbey. The wind was positively howling now, rattling shutters and setting the graveyard gate to banging like a clock striking the hour.
A breathless Phoebe reached Prudence’s side and pulled rather frantically on her arm. “Come, Prudence, let us go home before we are drowned or washed into the sea.” Following her sister’s gaze, Prudence found it was not the slippery cliffs that drew Phoebe’s look of horror, but Wolfinger itself, tall and black and menacing in the dim light. As she viewed the formidable edifice with admiration, Prudence noticed a figure hurrying toward the great stone steps that marched toward the arched entrance.
“Hello!” Prudence called, moving forward. “Hello, there!” The man halted and gazed in her direction, and to Prudence’s delight, she realized it was young Penhurst himself. With high hopes, she strode toward him eagerly, ignoring the dismay that was quite apparent on the boy’s face.
“Mr. Penhurst! How nice that we should run into you!” Prudence said, speaking louder than usual, so that she might be heard over the roaring of the wind. “We were just out for our walk, and I said to Phoebe, we simply must look in on Mr. Penhurst.”
If Mr. Penhurst saw anything unusual in the two girls’ strolling about on such a ferocious day, he was too well-bred to say so, but he did not appear pleased to see them. He looked anxiously over his shoulder, as if torn between inviting them in, which, apparently, he did not want to do, and leaving them to the mercy of the elements, which would hardly mark him as a gentleman.
Although his face brightened at the arrival of Phoebe, who had hurried to join them, he nonetheless appeared troubled as he glanced around. Seen against the backdrop of his ancestral home, and stricken by some sort of nervous energy, he seemed more of a Penhurst, but Prudence still found him sadly lacking. The gathering clouds muted the brilliance of his blond hair, yet he could hardly be called mysterious, and he was obviously uncomfortable in his surroundings.
While she listened absently to the young people’s chatter, Prudence brooded. When it became clear, from his peculiar manner, that young Penhurst was not going to invite them inside, she suspected that she would have to think of some way to politely force him to do so. She was just on the point of manufacturing a swollen ankle when the decision was taken away from them all.
Thunder had been growing in the distance, so at first no one took note of a low rumbling, and the sky had become so dark as to make seeing any great distance an impossibility. But suddenly a great flash of lightning lit the area as bright as day, illuminating a coach and four that appeared over the rise in the drive.
Prudence was immediately struck by the funereal aspect of the scene. It seemed apocalyptic: the black horses, their hooves pounding in their headlong race toward the abbey, and the shiny, midnight-colored carriage, with its driver wrapped so well against the weather as to be completely unrecognizable.
She sucked in a breath, trying to absorb the majesty of the vision as the animals rushed forward against a bleak, stormtossed sky, the wind whipping and howling around them like a banshee.
This was the stuff of her dreams, and Prudence was suddenly filled with a sort of wild exhilaration that she had never known before, her blood pumping fresh and fast within her veins. Never in her quiet, sensible existence, or even in the silent splendor of her own imagination, had Prudence known such a moment, and she felt giddy with the force of it.
She was aware of Mr. Penhurst pulling Phoebe back, closer to the steps, but she remained where she was, thrilled by the thunder and clatter of the magnificent vehicle’s approach. It rolled to a halt but a few feet from where the three of them stood watching, and with breathless excitement, Prudence recognized the Ravenscar coat of arms, gleaming in the shadowy light.
Then the door was thrown open, and a man stepped out. Tall and lean and swathed in a dark cloak, he looked like some phantom from hell, and Prudence saw Phoebe inch closer to her neighbor. The Honorable James Penhurst had paled considerably himself, and his interesting reaction made Prudence eye the new arrival more closely.
The wind whipped hair as black as night away from his rather gaunt face, and his mouth curled in a sardonic smile as he spoke in a deep—and oddly disturbing—voice. “Well, James, have you no welcome for your brother?”
Young Penhurst’s soft reply barely reached her ears above the roar of the oncoming storm, but she caught one word, a bitterly whispered “Ravenscar.”
With a start of surprise, Prudence stared openly at the mysterious earl she had so often conjured in her imaginings. He was tall, far taller than she had first thought, and dark. His raven hair was a little longer than fashion dictated, and if it had ever been combed into a dandy’s perfect coiffure, the effect was lost to the gusting air.
He had a high forehead, a hawklike nose, and strangely slanted brows that gave him a devilish look, heightened by the inch-long scar under one of his steel gray eyes. His very masculine mouth curled contemptuously as he eyed his brother, and Prudence heard Phoebe draw a sharp breath of dismay. In all fairness, Prudence
