Even though she’d changed into dry clothing, Mena couldn’t seem to stop trembling. Perched on a delicate chair next to the hearth, she held her hands out to the fire, though she knew that her quivering no longer had anything to do with the cold.
And everything to do with heat.
The fire she’d seen simmering in the eyes of the marquess as he lifted her finger to his lips. The heat of his mouth and the silken rasp of his tongue against her cold skin.
How could she—how had she—allowed that to happen? How had the gentle warmth evoked by his offer of protection suddenly flared into a conflagration of the senses that left her feeling—well, scorched?
Her finger still glowed with sensation, so much so that Mena kept checking it to see if he had, indeed, burned it somehow with his sweltering mouth.
Curling her fingers into a fist, Mena leaned back in her chair and pressed her closed hand to her heart. Damn her, but his lips had felt good—too good—and the branding impression of them singed along her blood and carried that heat all the way down to her—
A soft knock ripped her away from her disquieting thoughts. Standing on unsteady legs, Mena smoothed her hair and ran her hands down the front of her green and gold striped dress, making certain the lace on her vest wasn’t in disarray.
Jani’s brilliantly white smile met her when she answered, the effect almost startling against the brilliance of his attire. “Miss Mena, you have a letter, and I wanted to give it to you myself.”
“Thank you, Jani.” Mena took the small folded letter and a pang of apprehension shot through her as she instantly recognized Farah Blackwell’s small and efficient handwriting. She smiled her gratitude and began to push her door closed.
“Forgive my impertinence, Miss Mena.” Jani stood on his tiptoes and stretched his neck to peek around her into her chamber. “But I could not help noticing that you have been here for several days and have yet to fully unpack your trunks.”
Glancing behind her, she noted that her trunks, indeed, remained where they’d been placed at the foot of the bed, and she’d not done a great deal to move their contents to the wardrobe. Every time she considered emptying them, something had prevented her from doing so. What if she had the need to flee again? What if she’d failed to impress the marquess and he sacked her? Surely if her things were already in their trunks, it was safer.
“I—I’ve yet to find the time to truly settle in.”
Chocolate eyes lit with the pleasure one found in a grand idea as Jani clapped his hands together. In a liquid movement of violet silk, he somehow slid past her and into her room. “Permit me to assist you, Miss Mena. We will be finished by the time it is for supper.”
“That really isn’t necessary.” Mena tucked the letter into her belt and hovered anxiously by as he hurried to the empty wardrobe in the turret and threw open the ornate doors. Anxious to read her letter, she considered the best way to dismiss him without hurting his feelings.
“I was the valet to the Mackenzie for many years before he brought me here to Ravencroft.” Jani announced proudly. “I am exceptional at organization.”
“I’m certain you are, but—”
“When he was lieutenant colonel, I kept almost twelve uniforms for him and also his other belongings.” Bustling to her trunks, he unlatched one and tossed the lid up and gasped as though he’d found a poisonous serpent.
“What?” Mena asked, her heart rate spiking. “What is it?”
“Oh, no, no, Miss Mena, no, no, no. It is being bad luck to be putting a red garment next to a blue garment,” he said gravely.
“It is?” She peered into her own disheveled trunks as though she’d never seen them before.
“Yes. In my village they are two very auspicious colors. One is sensuality and purity, and the other is the color of creation. Very powerful. And they will fight each other, causing you many problems.”
She’d certainly seen her share of those. “Fight each other…” she echoed. “In—in my closet?” Mena regarded him skeptically, thinking how strange and intriguing it was that sensuality and purity were considered to be close to each other in his culture.
He nodded gravely. “I will fix this, and arrange your garments for optimal placement for colors, seasons, and accessories.” Plucking her red wool pelisse from where she’d folded and tucked it, he snapped it out and began to brush the wrinkles and arrange the buttons.
Mena wanted to insist on her privacy, but she had seen that expression of serious determination and kind condescension before. Her father used to wear it often, and when he did, she’d learned that there was no standing in his way. In truth, she’d never had to unpack and organize her own garments before. She’d always had servants to do so, and was both ashamed and grateful for the assistance.
Taking a moment, she turned from him and unfolded the letter, which, it seemed, had been folded and unfolded a few times. Her heart kicked against her ribs as she absorbed Farah’s carefully intended words.
Dearest Mena,
It is my fervent hope that you are settling well into your new position. London is frenetic with preparation for the coming holiday season and gossip already abounds. I thought I’d inform you so you don’t feel so isolated. The most salacious story on everyone’s tongue is that of a viscountess who apparently absconded from Belle Glen Asylum more than a fortnight ago during a recent régime change organized by none other than my husband. She’s quite disappeared. No one knows what to make of it.
The viscount and his family appear beside themselves with worry. They’ve all but torn the city apart looking for her, and have threatened to start searching abroad, going so far as to hire a few detectives. Though I found it curious that her father-in-law has petitioned the high court to begin proceedings toward proclaiming her deceased. I find myself hoping that she is careful, that she is never found by these horrible people. Though my dear husband has improved upon the situation at Belle Glen, I should not like to see her back there.
Write and tell me how Scotland agrees with you. I do so miss Ben More Castle. Perhaps in the summer when we return, I will come to visit you.
Please take care, dear Mena.
Your ardent friend,
Lady Farah Blackwell, Countess Northwalk.
“You have gone very, very pale, Miss Mena,” Jani observed. “I fear you are fainting.”
He reached to help her and Mena put out her arm. “No. No, I’m just fine, Jani. Just a bit of bad news, is all.”
“Did someone die?” he queried, dark eyes liquid with concern.
Myself, perhaps, she thought acerbically, tucking the letter back into her wide belt.
“No, Jani, it’s nothing of consequence,” she lied. Extracting the bodice of the green dress she’d worn to dinner the first evening, she arranged it to be hung neatly, mirroring Jani’s efficient movements and hoping to distract him from the letter. “I don’t often think of the marquess as a lieutenant colonel,” Mena remarked, picking up a scrap of conversation he’d dropped earlier. “Were we in England, he’d be referred to as such, but I rarely hear of it here at Ravencroft.”
“Perhaps, Miss Mena, that is because most of the Mackenzie people do not think so well of the British or their armies and corresponding titles,” Jani said sagely, hanging her pelisse and returning to the trunk.
“Just so,” Mena murmured. It had been a hundred years since the Jacobite rebellion, and yet in places like this, where tradition ran through the bones of every baby born, prejudices remained strong. She’d never been particularly political, but she remembered her father’s strident opinions against what he considered the English empire’s overreach.
Curious about Jani and his relationship to the marquess, Mena asked, “How long have you been in the laird’s employ?”
“Ten years,” he answered cheerfully.
“How much of that time have you spent here at the keep?”
“Very little, though I am quite happy to be staying. I have seen many countries and many wars, and somehow they were all in places that are very hot. I am not meaning to be complaining, but I admit that I am excited to see the snow.” He beamed at her before lifting one of her thin, white undergarments from her trunk and examining it curiously.
Mena snatched it from him and hid it behind her.
Dark eyes sparkling with naughtiness, Jani allowed himself to be directed toward the trunk containing her shoe boxes.
Sorting through her own underthings, she shoved them in a few dresser drawers before turning back to him. “May I inquire … that is … do you remember much about the late Marchioness of Ravencroft?” she ventured.
He nodded, stacking boxes dangerously high on one arm. “Lady Colleen. She was quite mad.”
“Mad?” Mena’s heart started. “As in, she belonged in an asylum.”
“Yes.”
Oh, no. Mena turned, so he could not see the fear tightening her features. Though she doubted he could over the mountain of boxes he hauled toward the turret.
My, but Millie LeCour did get carried away at the cobblers.
Biting her lip, Mena remembered back to her encounter in the library earlier that morning. An encounter with a demon? Or with her own madness?
She struggled to keep her voice casual as she asked, “Would it be terrible of me to inquire about how she … how she died? I’ve heard the children discuss it, but I’m not certain of the particulars, and I thought it cruel to ask.”
“They are ignorant of the particulars, as well,” he called from around the dividing wall. “For they are too brutal.”
“Oh?” Her heart bumped against her chest. She burned to know, but didn’t dare ask him to elaborate, so she remained quiet, hoping he’d fill the silence.
Luckily, he did just that. “She had terrible fits. So bad that the marquess had to keep her from the children. One night, she climbed up to the widow’s walk, and threw herself from it.”
Oh, dear Lord.
“Why?” Mena whispered, horrified. “Were the children in residence?” Had the marquess been?
Jani appeared around the wall shaking his head. “The children were with their maternal grandmother in London, and the laird and I were not even in the country. The marquess was called back from Rajanpour for the funeral. That was maybe more than nine years ago. Though the children think that an illness took her, and the marquess would be very angry if he found out they knew different.”
“They won’t hear it from me,” she promised.
So what had been the meaning of the ghostly encounter in the darkness of the library this morning? She’d been so tired, hadn’t she? So utterly exhausted, perhaps she’d imagined it. Perhaps she was remembering it wrong and this was all the fault of an overwrought imagination.
Needing a change of subject, she asked, “What about you, Jani? How old were you ten years ago?”
“I was a very small boy, maybe seven.”
Working alongside him to pull out all her skirts, she pressed, “That’s awfully young. Your parents allowed you to work for the marquess at that age?”
“My parents were part of a rebel force that fought the British and the East India Company. They were killed when the laird’s regiment … moved on our village. Everyone was killed, but me.” His voice remained genial, pleasant even, but his features darkened with something bleak and indefinable.
“Dear God, Jani!” she gasped. The petticoat Mena had been folding slid from her fingers and fell in a heap at her feet.
He shook his head, the deft movements of his fingers never ceasing. “It was so long ago. Time has a way of softening all tragedies, and after a while, it is easier to forget the pain of it.”
Horrified, Mena tried to focus on their task, but she simply couldn’t bear it. “But Jani, how can you bring yourself to work for him? To live under his roof and serve him?”
His dark, gentle eyes lit on her as he smiled sadly. “Because he offered me revenge.”
“What?” Mena could hardly believe what she was hearing.
“The marquess was a captain then. He and his lieutenant found me picking through the rubble searching for food. I was so angry that when I saw them I threw things, even glass. I screamed at them and spat at them. His superior took out his pistol and was about to put me down when Ravencroft stopped him. I remember being very frightened when he approached me. I never had seen a person so big before. So tall and wide. He subdued me and picked me up. Then he took me to his tent and fed me. I was so angry, but also starving.” Even in the dim light of the fading evening, the youth’s hair gleamed a brilliant black, and it matched the darkness in his eyes. “Do you know what he said to me while I ate?”
Mena shook her head, astounded. “I can’t even imagine.”
“He said that if I wished, he’d feed me, train me, and protect me. He promised that if my anger grew to hatred as I grew into a man, he would be always close, and I could have my revenge whenever I wanted to take it. He said he would not fight me.”
Plunking onto the bed behind her, Mena just shook her head in disbelief. “You had to have been tempted.”
Jani’s eyes lost some of their luster as they gazed into the past. “I would sit on my cot eating the supper he brought me. He always provided a sharp knife, even when there was no meat to cut, and we’d eat in silence. For years I went to bed, fully intending to slit his throat while he slept.”
“What stopped you?” Mena breathed.
“I think it was the way he looked at me every night before he blew out the lantern…” Jani paused, glancing up at Mena as though remembering that they were not so well acquainted.
“How was that?” she inquired, unable to stop herself from asking.
“Like he wanted me to do it.” Jani gathered an armful of her new skirts and carried them to the wardrobe, leaving her to stare after him in dumbfounded amazement until he glided back for more.
“But he has children.”
“Yes, he does.” Jani’s expression turned contemplative. “But he’s never really allowed them to know him.”
With movements that felt stilted and stiff, Mena rose to help, but her mind wouldn’t stop racing. “Even after all these years, you can’t have just … forgiven him.”
“The marquess, he has kept his promise. He took me with him all over the wide world, and even provided for me in his will should he die. I do not know, Miss Mena, if he’s responsible for the deaths of my parents, but I do know that we were both part of an empirical war machine that was built long before that day.” Jani paused in his work to look out her window and over the forest that rolled down to the sea. “The first time he brought me to this place, I understood that Ravencroft was bred to be a warrior, it was his destiny.” He turned back to her with that white smile, though this time it was not so bright. “Can you imagine him as anything else?”
“No,” Mena admitted, her heart bleeding for the pure tragedy of it all. “No, I don’t suppose I can.”
“I did not mean to distress you, Miss Mena,” the young man said earnestly. “I am content with my life here, and there are … other reasons for me to stay.”
It was strange, Mena thought, that for the first time in their entire conversation, Jani truly seemed sad.
She had a good idea as to why. “Rhianna?” she prompted softly.
He looked at her, and his heart was revealed.
“Does she return your feelings?”
“She does not know.” Fear crept over his features and Mena hurried to comfort him.
“It’s all right,” she murmured to him, placing a hand on his silk sleeve. “I’ve mentioned it to no one. I have secrets of my own to keep, and would never betray a confidence of a friend.”
He searched her gaze, then nodded. “It is not to be, Miss Mena. The daughter of a marquess doesn’t marry a valet, especially a foreigner. I mean, is that not why you are here, to teach her how to be the wife of a gentleman and a nobleman?”
Mena lifted her hand to his smooth cheek and rested it there, a lump of emotion in her throat. “I think, sweet Jani, that there may be no man alive more gentle and noble than you.”
A curious sheen glimmered in his dark eyes before he quickly turned away. “Then you will allow me to arrange your writing desk to further maximize your efficiency,” he said with forced brightness. “When you reply to your letter, you will be thanking me.”
“If you must.” She offered him a tremulous smile, allowing him to alter the course of the conversation. She stepped back to her trunks to finish sorting and unpacking them. She and Jani worked in relative but comfortable silence, though, she suspected, their thoughts were anything but.
The dinner bell interrupted them not long after, and Mena decided she and the sweet valet had made sufficient progress.
“Miss Mena,” Jani exclaimed upon opening the door.
She looked up from her dressing table, where she hastened to tidy her coiffure.
“This was left in the hallway outside your room.”
What lay in his hands instantly softened the sharp edges of her heavy thoughts, and brought back the memory of her encounter with the marquess.
And the heat.
Standing, Mena reached for the tidy, if indelicately arranged, bouquet of the very same flowers she’d abandoned that afternoon. There was no note, no card, and nothing but a small knot made from the Mackenzie plaid to hold them together.
But there was no question as to just who had left them at her door. And as she wrapped careful fingers around the fat stems of the few roses, Mena noticed something that melted the very cockles of her careful heart.
Ravencroft had stripped them of every thorn.
