Free Ravensclaw by Maggie MacKeever Page B

he’ll not come home a horse.
    (Romanian proverb)
     
    Emily’s foot still tingled where Ravenclaw had stroked it. Of course he would know how close he’d come to seducing her. Without even trying. For Ravensclaw to seduce females must be as natural as drawing breath.
    Not that he drew breath.
    She really must try to remember that.
    All in all, she considered that she had exhibited remarkable self-possession for a young woman who had never before found herself sharing a bed with a half-clad gentleman.
    Still, it might be prudent, in the future, to avoid champagne punch.
    He hadn’t seemed surprised to find her in his bed. No doubt Ravensclaw was accustomed to finding females in his bed. It was that ivory skin. Those sapphire eyes. Those oh-so-knowing lips. That glorious muscular chest with its furring of auburn hair. Emily reminded herself that the strigoii of Romania had two hearts. And that red-haired men who rose from the dead had the power to transform themselves into frogs. She tried but failed to convince herself that in his true form Ravensclaw was ugly as a toad.
    Emily sighed, drawing the attention of the other occupants of the drawing room. Zizi, Bela, and Lilian paused in their attempts to instruct Jamie in the proper handling of a tea tray, it being customary for the first pot to be prepared in the kitchen and carried to the lady of the house. These being early efforts, Jamie carried a book — A Greene Forest, or a Natural Historie, divided into three sections, Animal, Vegetable and Mineral, an encyclopedic digest prepared by John Maplet in 1567 — on the tray instead. Thus far he’d only spilled it thrice. Machka lent her efforts to the enterprise by winding around his feet. Sprawled in his usual spot on the hearth, Drogo surveyed the proceedings with an expression of lupine disbelief.
    Lady Alberta put down the magazine from which she had been reading Mr. Polidori’s account of Lord Ruthven, the fearless world-traveling aristocrat who lured innocent women to their deaths so he might feed on their blood . “Is something on your mind, my dear?”
    Jamie did a nice turn with the tray. “Och, she’s in a wee dwam.”
    “I’m no such thing,” protested Emily. “Whatever it is.”
    Lady Alberta reached for an oatcake. “A dwam is a daydream.”
    Emily was in rather more than a daydream. She couldn’t decide whether she should be pleased with her initiative at bearding the dragon in his lair, or appalled at herself. Bearding dragons was one thing, falling asleep in their beds something else.
    She watched Jamie’s contortions with the tea tray. Emily had brought the boy into a nightwalker’s household, only to, preoccupied with her own problems, abandon him to his fate. Ravensclaw must surely dine on something more substantial than oatmeal and tea. “Jamie, has Count Revay-Czobar—” How best to phrase it? “Ah—”
    Jamie stared blankly at her. As did Lady Alberta, Bela, Zizi, and Lilian. Emily cleared her throat. “Has he offered you advances that seem, um, unusual?”
    Jamie hadn’t survived ten years in the streets of Edinburgh by being slow on the uptake. “G’wa! Are ye thinkin’ himself is a mop-molly?”
    Emily wrinkled her brow. “A mop-molly? What is that?”
    “A deviant, my dear,” Lady Alberta said comfortably. “A gentleman who prefers relations with a member of the same sex. Or with an animal.” She glanced at Drogo. The wolf growled. Lady Alberta picked up another oatcake. “But to each his own.”
    Jamie snorted. “Himsel’s nae Jessie.”
    Perhaps instead of learning about matters supersensible, Emily should have devoted herself to the study of anatomy. Umbivalent, actually. Ravensclaw had said so himself.
    Isidore carried a huge bouquet of roses into the room and plopped them on a table. “ ‘One ass scrubs another.’ And someone should have her mouth washed out with soap.”
    Someone regretted that she had ever opened her mouth. Emily said, “I didn’t mean—