Raven's Vow. Gayle Wilson

she imagined it to be floated through her consciousness. The old lures of silks and spices. Jewels and precious metals. Ivory and drugs.

      “Is that where—” She broke off, realizing the rudeness of her question.

      “Where I acquired my money?” he finished easily. “I told you that you might ask me anything. There’s no reason to guard your tongue with me. Most of it came from the East, but I have interests in America also.”

      “What kind of interests?”

      “Shipping, which led naturally to my contacts in the Orient. I became fascinated by the cultures. And there, too, fortunes were to be made.”

      “Too?” she repeated.

      “As there will be here.”

      “In coal and railroads?” she said, remembering.

      “And in iron and steel. For the machines.”

      “What machines?”

      “All of them,” he said, his lips flickering upward. “Machines for everything,” he offered, wondering if she could really be interested.

      “I don’t understand.”

      “The world is changing. What has been man-made is about to become the province of machines. To build machines, there must be iron. And to make iron…” He paused, glancing at her face.

      “There must be coal,” she repeated, as if it were a lesson she’d learned. As indeed, she had. “And the railroads?” she asked. “Why are you building railroads from your coalfields?”

      “Because to make iron you must bring the coal and the ore together. The iron ore. So I buy the coalfields, employ the power of machinery to improve the mining techniques, and eventually I’ll carry the coal to the foundries by rail,” he explained patiently.

      “But won’t that take a long time? To build railroads from the mines?”

      “Yes, but the process can be speeded up by the cooperation of the men who matter in this country. Or it can be slowed down by their refusal to cooperate.”

      “And that’s why-”

      “I need a wife. The kind of wife I described to you.”

      He waited for her response, but it seemed that she’d finally run out of questions. The only sounds that surrounded them were the brush of the wind through the leaves of the trees above and the soft impact of the horses’ hooves over the loam of the bridle path. She had no more questions, and so he asked the one that remained unanswered between them.

      “Have you decided about my proposal?”

      “Mr. Raven, I’m sorry, but you must realize that I can’t marry you. My father would never agree, and even if he did, we should not suit. Please, I beg you, don’t mention it again.”

      “I think…” he began, and then stopped. He certainly couldn’t tell her that he believed they’d suit extremely well. That he believed he had been deliberately led to her by the efforts of an old woman who was very far away. He’d been led to Catherine Montfort exactlybecause she was the woman who would best suit John Raven’s needs. All his needs.

      She looked up quickly at his hesitation. He had always seemed so sure of what he wanted.

      “It doesn’t matter if we suit,” he continued, but she was aware that was not what he had begun to tell her. “If you’ll remember, ours isn’t to be that kind of marriage. I promise that I will leave you strictly alone, free to make your own decisions and to follow your own desires, with the one exception we discussed. Other than that, you need consider me no more than a business partner who happens to live in the same house.”

      “Amariage de convenance.” Smiling, she identified for him the term for the kind of arrangement he had described. One that was certainly not unheard of in the ton.

      “In the truest sense of the word. At your convenience. I shall not interfere in your life.”

      “And you expect the same noninterference in yours?”

      “Of course,” he responded smoothly. “Nothing more than a business deal. No personal involvement whatsoever.”At least for the time being. At least until I’ve convinced you that you want to belong to me, he promised silently. “Other than that involvement necessary to give the ton the opinion that we are united in our social contacts.”

      Catherine Montfort was unused to men who treated marriage to her as a business arrangement. She was more accustomed to men who made ardent vows of undying devotion. Raven, on the other hand, had in no way suggested that he was attracted to her—other than as one of his machines needed to perform a certain task.

      “No,” she said softly. She wondered at her sense of disappointment at his clarification of his original proposal. “It’s quite impossible, and you might as well understand that now. My father would never allow such a match.”

      “Then you have no objection to my approaching him?”

      “You intend to approach my father?” she repeated unbelievingly, incredulous that he didn’t seem to understand the width of the gap that lay between them.

      “Yes.”

      “With that proposition?”

      “Not couched in precisely those terms,” he said, the amusement back in his voice. “Simply as an offer for your hand.”

      “He’ll have you thrown out,” she warned.

      “Will he?” he asked, sounding interested. “I wonder how.”

      “By the servants,” she responded with deliberate bluntness, finally angered at his continual mockery of the reality of the world she lived in. Coal merchants, however wealthy, did not ask for the hand of the Duke of Montfort’s daughter.

      “I should like to see them try,” Raven suggested softly, and found that he really would. He’d damn well like to see them try.

      He inclined his head to her and turned the black away from the path, touching the animal’s gleaming sides with his heels. Catherine wondered if that had been anger she’d read in his voice, but the statement had been too quietly and calmly made. It had sounded like a simple declaration of fact.

      She watched horse and rider until they disappeared into the line of trees across the park, and then, disgusted with her attention to the American nabob, she once more touched Storm’s flank, breaking into what passed for a brisk gallop within the careful restraints of London. And she didn’t even wonder why her morning’s ride was so bitterly dissatisfying.

      

      Two days later, returning from a particularly dull afternoon musicale, she was approached by the duke’s butler as she entered the door, his agitation obvious.

      “His grace requests that you join him, if you would, my lady. He’s awaiting you in the salon.”

      “Thank you, Hartford. I’ll only be a moment. Please convey that message to my father, and tell him—”

      “I think…” the servant interrupted, and then paused, unaccustomed to denying her ladyship’s requests. “If you would be so kind, my lady, I believe you should join him immediately.”

      Catherine considered the man before her. Hartford had never before shown her the slightest sign of disrespect, so she decided that whatever had distressed him enough to cause this small breech of his usually careful manner might really need her immediate attention.

      “Thank you, Hartford,” she said softly and walked to the wide doorway of the town house’s formal salon.

      Her father greeted her appearance with something that sounded like relief. He was dressed with his usual elegance, every white hair in place, but because she knew him so well she could sense his annoyance.

      “This…gentleman,” he said sardonically,