Cold-Hearted Rake (The Ravenels #1)(17)

“You’re safe,” she heard him say. “Easy… you’re safe. I won’t let go.”

Dimly she realized that she was no longer trying to escape but fighting to press closer and hide against him. Her arms clutched around his neck, her face against his throat as she sobbed too hard to think or breathe. Emotion came in a deluge, impossible to separate into its parts. To feel so much all at once seemed a kind of madness.

Her corset was too tight, like a living thing intent on crushing her in its jaws. She went weak, her knees giving way. Her body folded in a slow collapse, and she felt herself being caught up and lifted in strong arms. There was no way to find her bearings, no way to control anything. She could only surrender, dissolving into the devouring shadows.

Chapter 4

After a measureless interval, awareness returned by slow degrees. Kathleen stirred, aware of a brief murmured conversation and retreating footsteps, and the relentless patter of rain on the roof. Irritably she turned her face away from the sounds, wanting to drowse a little longer. Something soft and warm touched the crest of her cheek, lingering gently, and the feel of it teased her senses awake.

Her limbs were heavy and relaxed, her head comfortably supported. She was held firmly against a solid surface that rose and fell in a steady rhythm. With every breath, she drew in a fragrance of horses and leather, and something fresh like vetiver. She had the confused impression that it was morning… but that didn’t seem quite right…

Recalling the storm, she stiffened.

A dark murmur tickled her ear. “You’re safe. Rest against me.”

Her eyes flew open. “What…” she faltered, blinking. “Where… oh.”

She found herself staring up into a pair of dark blue eyes. A little pang, not entirely unpleasant, pierced somewhere beneath her ribs at the discovery that Devon was holding her. They were on the floor of the saddle room, on a stack of folded horse blankets and rugs. It was the warmest, driest place in the stables, located close to the stalls for easy access. An overhead skylight illuminated the rows of saddle racks affixed to the white pine walls; rain streamed over the glass and sent dappled shadows downward.

Deciding that she wasn’t ready to confront the sheer awfulness of how she had just behaved, Kathleen shut her eyes again. Her lids felt itchy and swollen, and she fumbled to rub them.

Devon caught one of her wrists, easing it away. “Don’t, you’ll make them worse.” He pressed a soft cloth into her hand, one of the rags used for polishing tack. “It’s clean. The stable master brought it a few minutes ago.”

“Did he… that is, I hope I wasn’t… like this?” she asked, her voice thin and scuffed.

He sounded amused. “In my arms, you mean? I’m afraid so.”

A moan of distress trembled on her lips. “What he must have thought…”

“He thought nothing of it. In fact, he said it would benefit you to do a bit of ‘screetin,’ as he put it.”

The Yorkshire word for bawling like an infant.

Humiliated, Kathleen blotted her eyes and blew her nose.

Devon’s hand slid into her tumbled hair, his fingertips finding her scalp and stroking gently as if she were a cat. It was wildly improper for him to touch her in such a way, but it was so shockingly pleasant that Kathleen couldn’t quite bring herself to object.

“Tell me what happened,” he said softly.

Her insides turned hollow. Her body was as limp as an empty flour sack. Even the effort to shake her head was exhausting.

His soothing hand continued to play in her hair. “Tell me.”

She was too exhausted to refuse him. “It was my fault,” she heard herself say. A continuous hot rivulet leaked from the outside corner of her eye and disappeared into her hairline. “I’m the reason Theo is dead.”

Devon was silent, waiting patiently for her to continue.

The words came out in a shamed rush. “I drove him to it. We had been quarreling. If I had behaved the way I should, if I’d been kind instead of spiteful, Theo would still be alive. I had planned to ride Asad that morning, but Theo wanted me to stay and battle it out with him, and I said no, not when he was in such a state – then Theo said he would go riding with me, but I told him —” She broke off with a wretched sob, and continued resolutely. “I said he wouldn’t be able to keep pace with me. He had been drinking the night before, and he still wasn’t clearheaded.”

Devon’s thumb stroked across her temple, through the trail of salt water. “So he decided to prove you wrong,” he said after a moment.

Kathleen nodded, her jaw trembling.

“He dashed out to the stables, half drunk and in a fury,” Devon continued, “and insisted on riding a horse that he probably wouldn’t have been able to control even sober.”

The tiny muscles of her face spasmed. “Because I didn’t manage him as a good wife would have —”

“Wait,” Devon said, as a hiccupping sob escaped her. “No, don’t start that again. Hush, now. Take a breath.”

His hand slid from her hair, and he propped her higher in his lap until their gazes were almost level. Taking up a fresh cloth, he blotted her cheeks and eyes as if she were a child. “Let’s consider this rationally,” he said. “First, as to this business of managing Theo – a husband isn’t a horse to be trained. My cousin was a full-grown man in command of his own fate. He chose to take a stupid risk, and he paid for it.”