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
