Devil's Daughter (The Ravenels #5) - Lisa Kleypas Page 0,76

Fortunately, I’ve brought presents for you and Stephen.”

Justin squealed happily.

“I arrived in London late last night,” West continued, “after Winterborne’s department store was already closed for the evening. So Mr. Winterborne opened it for me, and I had the entire toy department all to myself. After I found what I wanted, Winterborne wrapped your toys personally.”

Justin’s eyes turned round with awe. In his mind, a man who could have a department store opened just for him must possess magical powers. “Where is my present?”

“It’s in that bag on the floor. We’ll open it later, when there’s time to play.”

Justin studied West intently, rubbing his palms over his hair-roughened jaw. “I don’t like your beard,” he announced. “It makes you look like an angry bear.”

“Justin—” Phoebe reproved, but West was laughing.

“I was an angry bear, all summer.”

“You have to shave it,” Justin commanded, framing the man’s smiling mouth with his hands.

“Justin,” Phoebe exclaimed.

The boy corrected himself with a grin. “Shave it please.”

“I will,” West promised, “if your mother will provide a razor.”

“Mama, will you?” Justin asked.

“First,” Phoebe told her son, “we’re going to let Mr. Ravenel settle comfortably in the guest cottage. He can decide later if he wants to keep his beard or not. I for one rather like it.”

“But it’s tickly and scratchy,” Justin complained.

West grinned and dove his face against the boy’s neck, causing him to yelp and squirm. “Let’s go see your brother.”

Before they went to the breakfast room, however, his gaze met Phoebe’s for a searing moment. His expression left no doubt that their impulsive kiss was a mistake that would not be repeated.

Phoebe responded with a demure glance, giving no hint of her true thoughts.

If you won’t promise me forever, West Ravenel . . . I’ll take what I can have of you.

Chapter 23

Raw-nerved and unsettled, West went with Phoebe on a tour of the manor after breakfast. The majesty of the house, with its portico and classic white columns, and banks of windows on all sides, couldn’t have provided a greater contrast to the Jacobean clutter of Eversby Priory. It was as elegant as a Grecian temple, occupying a ridge overlooking landscaped parkland and gardens. Far too often a house seemed to have placed carelessly upon a site as if by a giant hand, but Clare Manor inhabited the scenery as if it had grown there.

The interior was open and lofty, with high vaulted ceilings of cool white plasterwork and sweeping staircases. A vast collection of fine-grained marble statuary gave the house a museumlike air, but many of the rooms had been softened with thick fringed rugs, cozy groupings of upholstered furniture, and palms in glazed earthenware pots.

West said little as they went from room to room. He was feeling everything too deeply and struggling to hide it beneath the façade of a normal, reasonable person. It seemed as if his heart had just resumed beating after months of dormancy, forcing blood back into his veins until he ached in every limb.

It was clear to him now that he would never find a substitute for Phoebe. No one else would ever come close. It would always be her. The realization was beyond disaster . . . it was doom.

West was no less troubled by the fondness he felt for her children, both of them bright-eyed and heartbreakingly innocent as they sat with him at the breakfast table. He’d felt like a fraud, taking part in that wholesome scene, when not long ago he’d been a scoundrel other men wouldn’t want anywhere near their families.

He thought back to the conversation he’d had with Ethan Ransom in London the night before, when they’d met for dinner at a west-side tavern. An easy friendship had struck up between them during Ransom’s recuperation at Eversby Priory. On the surface, their backgrounds couldn’t have been more different—West had been born into a blue-blooded family, and Ransom was an Irish prison guard’s son. But they were similar in many ways, both of them deeply cynical and secretly sentimental, well aware of the darker sides of their own natures.

Now that Ransom had decided to discard his solitary ways to marry Dr. Garrett Gibson, West was both puzzled and envious of the other man’s certainty.

“Won’t you mind bedding only one woman for the rest of your life?” he’d asked Ransom as they’d talked over mugs of half-and-half, a drink of equal parts ale and porter.

“Not for a blessed minute,” Ransom had replied in his Irish brogue. “She’s the delight of my soul.