LITMIR.BIZ

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Mr. Penhurst saw anything unusual in the two girls’ strolling about on such a ferocious day, he was too well-bred to say so, but he did not appear pleased to see them. He looked anxiously over his shoulder, as if torn between inviting them in, which, apparently, he did not want to do, and leaving them to the mercy of the elements, which would hardly mark him as a gentleman.

      Although his face brightened at the arrival of Phoebe, who had hurried to join them, he nonetheless appeared troubled as he glanced around. Seen against the backdrop of his ancestral home, and stricken by some sort of nervous energy, he seemed more of a Penhurst, but Prudence still found him sadly lacking. The gathering clouds muted the brilliance of his blond hair, yet he could hardly be called mysterious, and he was obviously uncomfortable in his surroundings.

      While she listened absently to the young people’s chatter, Prudence brooded. When it became clear, from his peculiar manner, that young Penhurst was not going to invite them inside, she suspected that she would have to think of some way to politely force him to do so. She was just on the point of manufacturing a swollen ankle when the decision was taken away from them all.

      Thunder had been growing in the distance, so at first no one took note of a low rumbling, and the sky had become so dark as to make seeing any great distance an impossibility. But suddenly a great flash of lightning lit the area as bright as day, illuminating a coach and four that appeared over the rise in the drive.

      Prudence was immediately struck by the funereal aspect of the scene. It seemed apocalyptic: the black horses, their hooves pounding in their headlong race toward the abbey, and the shiny, midnight-colored carriage, with its driver wrapped so well against the weather as to be completely unrecognizable.

      She sucked in a breath, trying to absorb the majesty of the vision as the animals rushed forward against a bleak, stormtossed sky, the wind whipping and howling around them like a banshee.

      This was the stuff of her dreams, and Prudence was suddenly filled with a sort of wild exhilaration that she had never known before, her blood pumping fresh and fast within her veins. Never in her quiet, sensible existence, or even in the silent splendor of her own imagination, had Prudence known such a moment, and she felt giddy with the force of it.

      She was aware of Mr. Penhurst pulling Phoebe back, closer to the steps, but she remained where she was, thrilled by the thunder and clatter of the magnificent vehicle’s approach. It rolled to a halt but a few feet from where the three of them stood watching, and with breathless excitement, Prudence recognized the Ravenscar coat of arms, gleaming in the shadowy light.

      Then the door was thrown open, and a man stepped out. Tall and lean and swathed in a dark cloak, he looked like some phantom from hell, and Prudence saw Phoebe inch closer to her neighbor. The Honorable James Penhurst had paled considerably himself, and his interesting reaction made Prudence eye the new arrival more closely.

      The wind whipped hair as black as night away from his rather gaunt face, and his mouth curled in a sardonic smile as he spoke in a deep—and oddly disturbing—voice. “Well, James, have you no welcome for your brother?”

      Young Penhurst’s soft reply barely reached her ears above the roar of the oncoming storm, but she caught one word, a bitterly whispered “Ravenscar.”

      With a start of surprise, Prudence stared openly at the mysterious earl she had so often conjured in her imaginings. He was tall, far taller than she had first thought, and dark. His raven hair was a little longer than fashion dictated, and if it had ever been combed into a dandy’s perfect coiffure, the effect was lost to the gusting air.

      He had a high forehead, a hawklike nose, and strangely slanted brows that gave him a devilish look, heightened by the inch-long scar under one of his steel gray eyes. His very masculine mouth curled contemptuously as he eyed his brother, and Prudence heard Phoebe draw a sharp breath of dismay. In all fairness, Prudence acknowledged that to some, Ravenscar’s face might appear too harsh; to others, he might even look menacing.

      To Prudence, he was the handsomest man she had ever seen.

      The earl of Ravenscar not only was a fitting custodian for the abbey, he surpassed even her wildest dreams. He appeared to be the embodiment of the elemental forces around them, his features as mysterious and stony as Wolfinger itself.

      The exhilaration that had been gripping Prudence since she had first noted the coach’s approach soared now to a new level. For the first time in her life, she felt as if her legs might fail her. Words did. Instead of seeking an invitation into the abbey, she simply stared, along with her sister and young Penhurst, at the man before them, while the coach rattled away.

      “Have you nothing to say for yourself, James?” Ravenscar asked, in a chilling tone that sent a shiver up Prudence’s spine. When Penhurst did not answer, the earl laughed coldly. “Well, you will, I expect. I wish to speak to you inside. Now. Alone,” he added, his gaze flitting to the girls and dismissing them with obvious uninterest.

      Instead of bristling at the rude slight, Prudence felt her awe of the man redouble. Oh, my! He was a worthy heir to the title, as arrogant and wicked as the cursed line’s reputation. She gazed at him in open admiration, while Phoebe shrunk back against his brother, just as if the earl might suddenly swoop down and swallow her whole.

      Young Penhurst, finally moved to action, cleared his throat. “Ravenscar,” he said haltingly. “I would like you to meet two of our neighbors, the sisters Lancaster. Their cottage—”

      “Good afternoon, ladies,” Ravenscar said, without even looking at them. “Now, if you will excuse us, I have business that I must attend to with my brother—in private.”

      Whatever protests young Penhurst might have made at this peremptory order were drowned out by a huge clap of thunder that shook the air with deafening intensity. With a soft shriek, Phoebe abandoned Penhurst for her sister, grabbing at Prudence’s cloak and pulling her toward home.

      “But could we not—” Prudence began, finally jolted from her dazed admiration of the earl.

      “Sebastian, I hardly think—” Penhurst started to argue at the same moment.

      Ignoring their feeble entreaties, Ravenscar strode up the stone stairs that fronted the abbey and called for his brother. With one last look of apology, mixed in with a healthy dose of anxiety, young Penhurst turned to follow his brother, leaving the two sisters to stand in the driveway, their wraps whipping frantically about them while the first heavy drops of rain finally appeared.

      Knowing when to quit the game, Prudence did not linger, but glanced up at the opening skies and shouted to her sister. “Run!” she yelled and, grasping hands, they rushed for the path in a headlong race against the oncoming deluge.

      Unfortunately, they did not win, and by the time they reached the cottage, they were soaked to the skin and shivering, their clothes spattered with mud and their spirits dampened.

      “What a horrid man!” Phoebe moaned for the millionth time as she wrung out her stockings and hung them up to dry in front of the fire. “Rude, ghastly creature! I can well understand why Mr. Penhurst does not wish to see him. Why, he looked as evil as…” Obviously, having seen nothing as scary as Ravenscar in all her sheltered sixteen years, Phoebe was at a loss for words. Finally, she gave up and conceded that even the abbey itself was not half so frightful as its owner.

      Prudence listened absently to Phoebe’s complaints as she finished with her own toilet. She had hung out her wet clothes and changed into a warm gown, but she refused the hot soup that Cook was pushing upon them. She was too eager to get back to her desk and begin writing.

      For, despite the failure of her scheme to enter Wolfinger, Prudence had been rewarded with new inspiration—Ravenscar himself. To her, he was not frightening or gruesome, but thrilling and alluring beyond anything she had ever known. After meeting him, she knew just how her villain would look and act, and she could not wait to put him to paper.

      Her pulse leaping with excitement, Prudence sat down to pattern him after the Devil Earl’s descendant.

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