Free The Raven's Revenge by Gina Black

he’d awakened this morning to discover his household at a standstill. There had been no satisfactory explanation, except that Katherine was not there to make it go.
    He’d not been alarmed, at least not at first. After all, she was generally a sensible girl who did not disobey or turn up missing. Still, it was too easy to remember how she’d resisted him about Finch. Wilfred had often warned him about sparing the rod, and Gerald was beginning to think his father might have been right. Perhaps what the girl needed was a good beating.
    Something he would attend to as soon as she came back.
    While he’d waited for his breakfast, he’d set the servants to look for her. Instead of Katherine, they’d found a note: a list of tasks underway and what still needed doing. Gerald wondered if that might be her way of saying good-bye. This became more likely when Lucy discovered Katherine’s little cat was gone. Then news came from the stables that Jeremy and two mounts were absent as well.
    That was bad.
    Very bad.
    So bad, Gerald lost his appetite and left his breakfast uneaten. The anxiety of what to tell his father set his knees knocking. And now, drat it all, Finch was arriving early.
    Outside the window, the coach came to a stop. The coachman hopped down from his perch and helped Finch out of the cab. Gerald hurried to the antechamber, preferring to meet Finch in the smaller room.
    At the sound of Finch’s imperious steps clicking across the stone floor, Gerald’s stomach twisted into a hard knot and his mind went blank. He tried to compose himself before the other man barreled into the small room, the Ashfield butler in tow.
    “Is my bride ready for our espousals?” asked Finch, without even the courtesy of a greeting. He dismissed the servant as if this were his house already.
    “She’s gone,” Gerald blurted out, not meaning to say that at all.
    “Gone?” Finch squeaked. He cleared his throat. “What do you mean she is gone? Where did she go?”
    “Not far, not far. I-I am sure she will return soon. A touch of the megrims is all, I think. The gentle sex…” Gerald tried to smile but failed. He had to protect Katherine, not that she would appreciate it. The chit didn’t know what was best for her; women rarely did. He’d secured a very advantageous match for her, and she was ruining it all.
    “She knew we were to say our espousals today.” Finch’s eyes narrowed. “Has she gone off to the woods again? I do not approve. ’Tis dangerous.” He cracked his knuckles.
    Gerald flinched with each pop. “I shall send word when she is back,” he said, trying to gain control of the exchange. “I will lock her up. You have my word on it.”
    “You should have locked her up before. She is a disobedient daughter, which is not to your credit.” Finch waved a finger at him. “I will not have a disobedient wife to discredit me.” He grasped the hilt of his dress sword, pulled the blade out halfway, and then shoved it back inside its scabbard. “She will not be disobedient long.” He turned and left without so much as a good-bye.
    Gerald sank onto the stone seat. With the two best horses gone, he’d have to send Horace and Stephen on the remaining mounts. They’d find them.
    They had to.

    * * *

    Once clear of the village, the four riders passed hills dotted with small farmhouses and sheep, picturesque under a crystal-blue sky. A bucolic and peaceful scene that did not match Nicholas’s irritated mood.
    Feeling thus as a younger man, he’d have picked a fight, calling out the biggest, brawniest opponent he could find and emerging a bloody, yet usually triumphant, mess. At twenty-eight he was too old for that. And who would he fight anyway? Jeremy? He let out a derisive snort.
    Katherine made a disapproving shrug.
    It all came from lack of sexual activity. He could think of no other reason that she should fill his thoughts. Instead of watching the landscape as they traveled past, or thinking of what to do