Swearing under his breath, he shrugged out of his own coat, draped it over her shoulders, and shepherded her from the room to his personal offices, which he should have done from the start. Then his own ill-timed ducal news as well as her revelation would have occurred behind private, closed doors. Too late for any of that.
Bloody hell.
“Drink?” he asked her.
“No, thank you.”
In silence, he poured two fingers of imported French brandy into a tumbler and took a healthy sip. Coppery irises of the same changing hues as the brandy met his. Had her eyes always been that color? He’d remembered them being brown. Her shorn hair was a surprise, the close-cropped curls lying flat beneath the copious pomade. As a girl, her long hair had been braided tight to her scalp and gingery-red—to the point where her brothers had called her gingersnap mercilessly—and not such a dark auburn.
It was no wonder he hadn’t recognized her outright, though some instinct deep within him had sensed…something.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why what?”
Thick russet lashes lifted and he questioned how he’d ever thought she was male. Even with smudges of dark ink on her chin and cheeks, she was comely. Too much so. Courtland shrugged. The now defunct mustache, obviously fake, had been a damned convincing touch.
But now, he couldn’t stop thinking of her as a woman—scrutinizing each of her features—including those copper-bright eyes and the wide, rosy pout that he hadn’t noticed before. The meddlesome, nosy little Lady Ravenna had grown up to be a beauty, one whom gentlemanly suitors in London drawing rooms would have been fawning over.
Speaking of, why wasn’t she married? Was she married? He was only two years older than she was, so she should be three-and-twenty or thereabouts. Long past marrying age.
“Why are you here?” he asked, enunciating each word.
“My grand tour?” she replied. “A pleasure trip?”
He couldn’t help noticing that the huskiness in her voice stayed that way. Put together with the fact that she was an adult woman, the raspy just-waking-up-after-hours-and-hours-of-sex sound of it shaping the word pleasure arrowed straight to his groin. Scowling at the reaction, he moved behind his desk. “Ladies don’t do grand tours.”
“Hence my ingenious disguise,” she said. “At least until today.”
“You would have been found out eventually. Be glad it was by me and not someone else.” He cringed to think that he’d nearly sent her to a public jail. “So I take it Embry doesn’t know you’re here then?”
Courtland wasn’t close with the duke though they were close in age. The sons of the Duke of Embry had all gone to Eton when he’d been fighting for his life at Harrow. Even in Antigua, however, he’d learned about the tragic fire that had made the youngest Huntley duke, and then the news had come about said duke’s nuptials with an Anglo-Indian princess.
Good for them, he remembered thinking.
If only the marchioness and his own brother had been that accepting, the path his life had taken might have been vastly different, though the final destination had turned out to be inevitable. While his grandfather had written steadily over the years, always knowing exactly where he was—first in Spain, and then Antigua—they hadn’t cared.
Courtland had received all of the late duke’s letters but had refused to read them. He’d instructed Rawley to dispose of them. If he was being summoned to Ashvale Park, he didn’t want to know. He had no intention of going back to England.
Without Courtland’s presence, his ambitious stepbrother would no doubt have led a charge to prove he was the Duke of Ashvale’s true heir. Courtland wondered idly if his stepmother had tried to have him declared dead through the courts. He also wondered what his grandfather might have had to say about that or if he even knew of their plans.
Scowling as fresh feelings of bitterness rose, Courtland stalked forward to refill his glass, lifting a brow and waiting for her answer. Her brother would never have condoned this, that much he knew. He glowered at his mutinous quarry who had yet to reply.
“Stop trying to think your way out of this and answer me—what does Embry believe?”
“He thinks I’m in Scotland with Clara.”
“Clara?”
“A recently married dear friend. She wed a Scottish earl.”
Courtland frowned. “How is Embry not worried?”
“I wrote several letters in advance, which she will mail out at monthly intervals, and swore Clara to secrecy as long as I was in good health.” She gestured to herself. “Which as you can see I am. No need to trouble my brother.”
“And this Clara considers you a friend?” He didn’t hide his sardonic tone.
Her eyes narrowed on him. “The best kind.”
“Forgive me if I’ve been out of London society too long, but friends don’t force friends to lie on their behalf. Much less lie to a respected and rather formidable peer of the realm.”
Turning pink, Ravenna tossed her head. “What Embry doesn’t know won’t hurt him, and besides, he’s just had a new baby and deserves every joy. If he knew where I was, he’d be frantic with worry instead of focusing on his own happiness.”
“For good reason, you daft girl!”
“Because I’m female?” she shot back. “Why should men have all the adventure and women be forced to sit at home tending the hearth? We are not possessions or brainless biddable toys designed for male consumption.”
He almost choked on his drink at the images her provocative words produced, but the hostility beneath was clear. “Because it’s not safe or smart for a woman to be traveling on her own.”
“I know how to use a pistol, Cordy,” she said. “I was a better shot than you, remember? Or perhaps you choose not to remember how many times I bested you just to preserve your insufferably delicate male pride.”
He didn’t remember her being this…caustic. Silent laughter rippled through him. Who was he fooling? She’d always been a hothead.
“We were children then,” he said. “And my name is Courtland, not Cordy.”
“Apparently, it’s Ashvale now,” she reminded him.
The sound of the ducal title set his teeth on edge. He was going to have to deal with that complication as soon as possible, too. “How did you get here anyway?”
“I took one of Embry’s clippers.” She lifted an ungloved hand to sift through the pressed strands of her shorn mane. “Hacked off my hair and disguised myself as a boatswain. Learned a lot over the last few years from my brother and his old quartermaster so it was easy. Kept my head down, did the work, and no one was the wiser.”