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“So you quarreled with me in the rain?”

“Yes. And wanted to kiss you at the same time. Now I’ve shocked you.”

“Ah,” she said.

“What struck me the night of the ball, and it flashed upon me almost like this comet everyone’s going on about, was that I liked you. I liked you before I loved you. What hurt the afternoon of our quarrel was thinking that I had been wrong to like you, that you did not like me.”

“I wonder that you did not see how much I liked you, more than I should have liked a man intent on winning another woman’s love.” She paused. “You know about my foot, but you don’t know how I made such fool of myself in London over Torrington, a man everyone but me could see was going to marry another. I thought I could never love again.”

He stopped walking abruptly and hauled her up a short bank to an ancient tree with drooping branches, ducking, he pulled her into a green space apart from the crowds below.

“I can see that this hat of yours,” he said, tilting her chin up, “is the height of fashion.” It was a little joke about the silk flowers piled on the hat’s crown. In his eyes was a curious, almost disinterested expression, a man facing the mysteries of a woman’s dress. He tugged the end of the wide garnet ribbon under her chin and the bow gave, letting the ribbons flutter down her bodice. An answering flutter started low in Cassie’s belly. He brushed the ribbons back over her shoulders and rested his hands there. “You don’t need to wear fine gowns or fashionable hats for me. I had to learn how to see you. I caught a glimpse that first day, but until the ball I did not see you … whole.”

His eyes grew solemn. “I love you, Cassie. I have been calling you Cassie in my head since the day of our quarrel in the rain. I quarreled with Jay because he was happily calling you Bluebell when I had lost any chance of speaking to you at all.”

Cassie reached up and lay her hand against his cheek and brushed that cheek with her thumb. “I love you, Raven.”

His kiss when it came was sudden and impassioned, the end of holding back and waiting, the end of the advance and retreat of the dance they had been doing from the beginning. Cassie returned it with all the fierceness she possessed. He had invited her into this other dance, in which her damaged foot could not hold her back, a joyful dance of soaring spirits. And yet even as he claimed her, and she him, Cassie knew they would fly higher into an endless sky.

When he released her, to hold her lightly in his arms, their hearts still thundering, she remembered that they were not alone, but in the middle of the most crowded park in London.

She leaned her head against his chest. “We must turn back, you know. There is one more part of this afternoon’s plan.”

“And that is?” He showed no inclination to move, his voice a low, lazy rumble.

“For the duchess to take us both up in her carriage. We must be seen together for the plan to work.” She pulled against his hold, and smiling, touched her fingers to his lips, a promise of other times.

Chapter Twenty-Five

From the south entry, Raven surveyed Verwood, for perhaps the hundredth time since he first stood on its steps, vowing to make it his. He might not own the place, but he belonged to it now. A week earlier he sent Cassie ahead from London in his traveling carriage with the three messenger boys who had been plaguing his grandfather. In her absence from London, he had found a ring for her, one for her taste and her character, with its steady radiance rather than Amabel’s glittering surface.

Nearly a year had passed since fire destroyed the Houses of Parliament. His memories of that night remained vivid. The burning of the old wooden tally sticks in a furnace meant for the lower temperature of burning coal had melted the copper flues running under the House of Lords. Cracks in the brickwork from frequent repairs had allowed the fire to send smoke and heat into the closed chamber full of ancient tapestries until the whole room had spectacularly burst into flame. A strong wind blowing from the west had whipped the fire to monstrous heights.

From all over London, fire companies responded, two of them with new Cole engines, marvelous machines of iron and brass, sprung wheels, oaken tanks, and leather hoses with copper rivets, capable of sending gallons of water per minute as long as hearty, twelve-man crews pumped the horizontal bars that drew water from London’s plugs, and sent it cascading onto the burning fuel. He had been at the heart of the fire, standing knee-deep in water, supervising the changing of the crews and directing the hoses. The heaving of those pumps, the roar of the fire, the crackling of red-hot timbers never stopped until eleven when the wind shifted, and the hall was saved. Beating that fire, maybe that was the thing that made him feel unstoppable.

Even as the ashes smoldered, invitations had come for him from hostesses eager to claim a firefighter as a guest. At first the ladies in their silks were a blur of names and faces until his old friend Ned Farrington introduced him to Amabel. She eclipsed the others, and he pursued her the way he pursued any object he had in mind to win. Only when he accomplished his dream did he realize it was the wrong dream for him. Now he was awake, clear-headed, and in pursuit not of a dream, but of a woman, a wonder made of the ordinary elements out of which all women were made. Miraculously, she was his. He strode down the drive toward the dower house and Cassie.

When the bend in lane opened on the grass in front of the house, he stopped short. His three young messengers rolled and tumbled over each other on the lawn, fists flying, arms flailing, tearing at each other’s clothes and hair, kicking and shouting. Honoria stood over them, wringing her hands, and calling on them. “Stop, boys. Stop this minute. You shall have no tea.”

Raven simply waded into the fray and lifted Ben and Joe by their torn and sweaty jackets. Tim lay in a heap in the grass, panting and pointing an accusing finger at the others.

“They started it,” he said.

“That’s a lie,” said Joe, squirming and dangling in Raven’s hold.

“oo’s callin’ me a liar?” Tim sprang to his feet, ready to charge.

“Enough,” Raven said. “You lot are coming with me, but first, you must apologize to Miss Thornhill for not listening to her when she has charge of you.”

“Wot’s ’pologize’?” asked Joe.

Raven set the two boys in his hold down on the grass. He gestured to Tim to join the lineup and faced the small troublemakers. “Apologizing is begging pardon when you’ve offended someone. It’s tricky because it only works if you are sorry for the harm you did. And it helps if you name the harm you did.” As he spoke, he shed his coat, waistcoat, and tie. The boys watched him with wide eyes. He kept his face as grave as he could and handed his discarded clothing to Honoria.

“We didn’t mean no ’arm to Miss T,” Ben said.

“She’s a good ’un,” added Joe.

Raven nodded and stepped aside. “Your apology, now.”