Page 1 of Barbarous

Chapter One

Sussex, England, early 1811

Daphne’s head rang louder, but less joyously, than the twelve bells of St. Paul’s—perhaps head-butting Cousin Malcolm in the face had not been the best decision?

The thought had barely entered her head when agonizing pain drove it out again. Black spots danced in front of her eyes and she clutched at the rough wood of the ancient tree stump to steady herself, blinking away tears to clear her vision. When she touched her throbbing forehead, her fingers came away with blood: hers or Malcolm’s or both. She looked from her bloody hand to the man across the small glade. Malcolm lay sprawled amidst the wreckage of the picnic lunch she’d been unpacking when he accosted her.

Her cousin had aged greatly in the decade since she’d last seen him. His brown hair, once thick and lustrous, had thinned and lost its shine and his bloated body was a far cry from the slim, elegant dandy who’d briefly—but disastrously—held her future in his hands. Eight years separated Daphne and the man who’d once been her legal guardian, and every one of them was etched onto his thirty-five-year-old face; a face now wreathed in pain and fury.

Malcolm scrambled into a seated position and shot her a murderous glare before tearing off his cravat and lifting it to his hemorrhaging nose.

Daphne smiled; a bloody, ringing forehead was a small price to pay for Malcolm’s obvious suffering. She squinted to get a better look at his face but his puffy, bloodshot eyes shifted and blurred.

Her glasses! Daphne touched the bridge of her nose and bit back a groan; he must have knocked off her spectacles during their struggle.

Angling her body to keep Malcolm in view, she lowered herself into a crouch and began patting the shaggy grass around her feet, praying neither of them had stepped on them. The glasses were special, made with a split in the lenses to accommodate her poor vision. They were also the last gift from her husband before his death. If she lost them, it would be like losing even more of Thomas. It would be—

“Well, well, well, what have we here?” a deep voice boomed.

Daphne squawked like a startled hen and tipped forward onto her hands and knees, her eyes flickering over the surrounding foliage for the voice’s owner. A shadow emerged from between two towering wych elms and shifted into the recognizable shape of a man on a horse; a huge man on an enormous horse.

His features became clearer—and more remarkable—with every step. The massive shire was at least seventeen-and-a-half hands, and the man astride it matched his mount in both size and magnificence.

Daphne knew she was gawking, but she couldn’t stop. His sun-bronzed skin and golden hair were an exotic surprise against the pallid gray of the spring sky. But it was the black eye-patch that covered his left eye and the savage scar that disappeared beneath it that were truly arresting. He lacked only a battered tricorn and cutlass between his teeth to be every maiden’s fantasy of a handsome pirate. Was he lost on his way to a masquerade ball?

Daphne blinked at the foolish notion and her thoughts—usually as well-regimented as Wellington’s soldiers—broke and ran when the stranger looked down at her with his single green eye.

“Lady Davenport?” His appearance was exotic but he spoke like an English gentleman. “Are you quite all right, my lady?”

“Yes, but—” she began, and then noticed his attention had become stuck at the level of her chest. She looked down and gasped. Her coat was ripped open from neck to waist, exposing a mortifying amount of chemise, stays, and flesh. Daphne hastily pinched the torn garment closed with her fingers and forced herself to look up again. But the stranger had turned to Malcolm and was staring at him as if he’d forgotten all about her.

He slid gracefully from his huge horse, as if it were no bigger than a pony, and took a step toward Malcolm, raising an ornate gold quizzing glass. His dark blond eyebrows inched up his forehead as he examined the bedraggled, bleeding man.

Only the distant tweeting of birds broke the tense silence, which stretched and stretched and—

“Ramsay?” Malcolm’s voice was muffled by the bloody cravat and he lowered the ruined garment, his mouth agape.

Daphne looked from her cousin to the stranger and squinted—as if that might sharpen her hearing as well as her vision.

Ramsay? The only Ramsay she’d ever heard of was her husband’s deceased nephew and heir, Hugh Redvers—who’d held the title Baron Ramsay. She shook her head at the bizarre thought; her idiot cousin had to be wrong. Hugh Redvers was dead—long dead.

The giant ignored Malcolm’s question, lines of distaste etching his striking profile as he studied the smaller man. For his part, Malcolm raised the crumpled cravat higher and higher as he endured the silent scrutiny, until only his slitted eyes glittered above the bloody cloth.

Daphne recognized her cousin’s malevolent gaze and shivered. After all, she’d been on the receiving end of that same look more often than she cared to remember when she’d been his ward. She turned to the stranger to gauge his reaction to her cousin’s threatening stare, only to encounter a grossly magnified green eye, the color somewhere between an emerald and peridot. Daphne swallowed, suddenly able to comprehend Malcolm’s mortification. This must be what an insect felt like beneath a magnifying lens. She began to shrink away but stopped; she was no insect and he was a trespasser. She threw back her shoulders—keeping one hand on her torn coat—and shot him a bold, if blurry, glare.

His lips curved and he lowered his vile glass, took a step forward, and extended a hand the size of a serving platter.

Daphne frowned at his huge, gloved hand; but it was either accept his help or struggle to her feet without it. She placed her hand in his and he lifted her as if she were a feather rather than a woman of five feet ten inches. He did not release her when she was standing. Instead, he bowed over her captive hand and kissed the naked skin with lips that were warm and soft. Astoundingly soft, and yet the rest of him looked so very . . . hard.

“I beg your pardon for not introducing myself right away, Lady Davenport.” He nodded toward her cousin but did not take his eye from her. “Sir Malcolm has the right of it. I am Hugh Redvers, Baron Ramsay.” His oh-so-soft lips curved into a smile. “Your long-lost nephew.”

Daphne shook her head and blurted. “How can that be?”

His eye glinted with amusement. “Well, the earl was my father’s oldest brother and the earl’s first wife—my Aunt Eloisa—died, and then the earl married you, which would make—”

He was mocking her. She drew herself up to her full height and fixed him with an arctic stare. “I am well aware of family genealogy, sir. I meant, it is not possible you are alive.”

He appeared to enjoy that asinine comment even more.