The Prince of Ravenscar Read Free Page A

don’t need me with you, Mother.”
    To his surprise, her small rounded chin began to tremble, and those beautiful dark eyes of hers sheened with tears.
    â€œAll right, I see you will have the truth out of me, Julian.”

3
    T he truth?
    Before he could find out this truth, Julian heard barking outside the drawing room and rose. “I have a surprise for you.” He opened the door and motioned to his valet, Pliny, to release the King Charles spaniels he’d brought back from Genoa.
    Freed, the spaniels ran to him, yipping, leaping about, their long silky ears flopping up and down. They didn’t jump on him, but they circled him, dancing, as he’d taught them.
    He went down on his haunches and gathered them all to him. He said, pointing, “Mother, I would like you to meet Cletus, Beatrice, Oliver, and Hortense. They are a year old. You might think they all look the same, but their personalities are as different as ours. Since my estate room gives onto the dog run, that is where they’ll spend most of their time.”
    â€œAh, that is fine, dearest. Goodness, they do leap about, don’t they? Look at that one.”
    â€œCletus.”
    â€œWhy, I think he would like to meet me.”
    Julian picked up an excited Cletus and carried him to his mother, the other three spaniels barking madly behind him. She petted his soft hair, received a dozen enthusiastic licks.
    â€œCletus,” she said. “I fancy you are a very well-behaved little fellow, are you not?”
    Cletus wriggled free from Julian’s hands, yipped and barked, and relieved himself on the Aubusson carpet.
    Corinne said, “Yes, your estate room is an excellent place for these charming little dogs. Call for Pouffer, dearest, to clean up little Cletus’s accident.”
    Soon the four spaniels were racing after Pliny, barking, tails wagging, to visit their new home in the estate room, and Pouffer was directing a maid to clean up little Cletus’s accident, after which he burned two feathers to eliminate any possible odors.
    â€œPliny is looking well,” Corinne said.
    â€œAs much as his poet’s brooding soul allows,” Julian said. “He should have trod the boards, I’ve told him. He adores drama and being in the center of it. I’m pleased, though, he didn’t cry when Cletus relieved himself on the carpet.” Pliny, a dapper little man of forty, blessed with a full head of white-blond hair, had been selling boots in Portsmouth and fair to starving when Julian had hired him away as his valet. Eleven years, he thought, he’d been so young. On the other hand, Pliny had been young as well.
    His mother eyed him and spit it out. “We must go to London because there is a young lady for you to meet.”
    â€œAh, so this is the truth you must tell me?”
    â€œYes. You remember Bethanne Wilkie. She was my very best friend. She died two years ago.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Mama. You wrote to me of her death. I remember her as a charming lady, always smiling.”
    â€œYes.” Corinne sighed. “I still miss her. Do you happen to remember her daughter?”
    Julian recalled a skinny little girl with dark braids scraped back from her small face, tall, awkward, never saying a word in his presence. He remembered once when he’d been working at his desk, he’d happened to look up and see her peering at him from behind a curtain in the estate room.
    His mother cleared her throat. “The truth is Bethanne Wilkie and I always wished to have our families united.”
    His stomach dropped to his dusty Hessians. He had a terrifying image of the skinny twelve-year-old gowned in white standing beside him in front of a vicar, a long veil covering her face, the beautiful Ravenscar ruby ring sliding off her small finger to land on the floor and rolling, rolling—“Good grief, Mama, she’s a little girl! When she wasn’t trailing after me, she