Prudence, he was the handsomest man she had ever seen.
The earl of Ravenscar not only was a fitting custodian for the abbey, he surpassed even her wildest dreams. He appeared to be the embodiment of the elemental forces around them, his features as mysterious and stony as Wolfinger itself.
The exhilaration that had been gripping Prudence since she had first noted the coach’s approach soared now to a new level. For the first time in her life, she felt as if her legs might fail her. Words did. Instead of seeking an invitation into the abbey, she simply stared, along with her sister and young Penhurst, at the man before them, while the coach rattled away.
“Have you nothing to say for yourself, James?” Ravenscar asked, in a chilling tone that sent a shiver up Prudence’s spine. When Penhurst did not answer, the earl laughed coldly. “Well, you will, I expect. I wish to speak to you inside. Now. Alone,” he added, his gaze flitting to the girls and dismissing them with obvious uninterest.
Instead of bristling at the rude slight, Prudence felt her awe of the man redouble. Oh, my! He was a worthy heir to the title, as arrogant and wicked as the cursed line’s reputation. She gazed at him in open admiration, while Phoebe shrunk back against his brother, just as if the earl might suddenly swoop down and swallow her whole.
Young Penhurst, finally moved to action, cleared his throat. “Ravenscar,” he said haltingly. “I would like you to meet two of our neighbors, the sisters Lancaster. Their cottage—”
“Good afternoon, ladies,” Ravenscar said, without even looking at them. “Now, if you will excuse us, I have business that I must attend to with my brother—in private.”
Whatever protests young Penhurst might have made at this peremptory order were drowned out by a huge clap of thunder that shook the air with deafening intensity. With a soft shriek, Phoebe abandoned Penhurst for her sister, grabbing at Prudence’s cloak and pulling her toward home.
“But could we not—” Prudence began, finally jolted from her dazed admiration of the earl.
“Sebastian, I hardly think—” Penhurst started to argue at the same moment.
Ignoring their feeble entreaties, Ravenscar strode up the stone stairs that fronted the abbey and called for his brother. With one last look of apology, mixed in with a healthy dose of anxiety, young Penhurst turned to follow his brother, leaving the two sisters to stand in the driveway, their wraps whipping frantically about them while the first heavy drops of rain finally appeared.
Knowing when to quit the game, Prudence did not linger, but glanced up at the opening skies and shouted to her sister. “Run!” she yelled and, grasping hands, they rushed for the path in a headlong race against the oncoming deluge.
Unfortunately, they did not win, and by the time they reached the cottage, they were soaked to the skin and shivering, their clothes spattered with mud and their spirits dampened.
“What a horrid man!” Phoebe moaned for the millionth time as she wrung out her stockings and hung them up to dry in front of the fire. “Rude, ghastly creature! I can well understand why Mr. Penhurst does not wish to see him. Why, he looked as evil as…” Obviously, having seen nothing as scary as Ravenscar in all her sheltered sixteen years, Phoebe was at a loss for words. Finally, she gave up and conceded that even the abbey itself was not half so frightful as its owner.
Prudence listened absently to Phoebe’s complaints as she finished with her own toilet. She had hung out her wet clothes and changed into a warm gown, but she refused the hot soup that Cook was pushing upon them. She was too eager to get back to her desk and begin writing.
For, despite the failure of her scheme to enter Wolfinger, Prudence had been rewarded with new inspiration—Ravenscar himself. To her, he was not frightening or gruesome, but thrilling and alluring beyond anything she had ever known. After meeting him, she knew just how her villain would look and act, and she could not wait to put him to paper.
Her pulse leaping with excitement, Prudence sat down to pattern him after the Devil Earl’s descendant.
“Well, you have cut quite a swath, have you not?” Sebastian asked, in that cool, detached tone of his, and James cringed.
The earl had barely taken the time to remove his greatcoat and nod to the housekeeper before dragging James after him into the library with that imperious gaze of his. As long as James could remember, his brother had dictated to him in that cold manner, and, lately, he felt he had stomached quite enough of it.
“Please interrupt me, if I fail to include all your exploits in my recitation,” Sebastian said, in a sarcastic tone that set James’s blood to boiling. “Let’s see…You were turned out of Oxford Then, instead of coming home to Yorkshire to inform me of this turn of events, you went to London and fell in with companions I can only describe as creatures of the lowest sort. You spent several weeks wenching and drinking and gaming in the worst of hells, losing all your money, totting up bills of every imaginable variety, and finally handing your vowels to the basest of moneylenders, thereby compounding your problems tenfold.”
Sebastian paused long enough to pin him with a piercing gray stare, and James had to resist the urge to squirm. “Am I giving a fair account?”
“Yes, sir,” James muttered through gritted teeth. Why did his brother always seem so deadly and yet so controlled? It was wholly unfair. He had gone to London with the hopes of acquiring a dash and sophistication that would put him on a footing with Sebastian. Instead…
“And then, rather than notify me of these new doings, since I might well be expected to foot the bills for your wild extravagances and your gambling losses, you turn tail and run to hide out here in Cornwall—” Sebastian’s hard gaze bored into him, while James swallowed thickly, for he had never meant to “—like a coward.”
The accusation made James’s temper snap. “I am not a coward!” he shouted. “I came here to think, to decide what to do! I only expected to stay a day or two before…” he finished lamely.
“Before what, James? I am curious to see just how you planned to extricate yourself from this mess,” Sebastian said, and James realized that his arrogant brother was not so composed as he seemed. A muscle in the earl’s cheek jumped, giving away his anger.
Swamped with remorse at the enormity of mistakes so grave as to make Sebastian’s legendary control slip, James hung his head. “I…I thought I might…join the army—”
“Without a commission?”
James glanced away. “Or the navy.”
“Without a sponsor?”
James cleared his throat. “I thought it would be best to start over, try and make my own way…”
“In His Majesty’s forces?” Sebastian’s infamous slanted brows rose swiftly. “Do you really think you are up to it, whelp?” he asked with barely suppressed fury. “And just how did you intend to settle the bills from your old life on a soldier’s pay?” The question hung in the air, unanswerable, until Sebastian spoke again.
“Although you have never evidenced the slightest interest in such matters, I might as well inform you right
