The Veil of Night

by Lydia Joyce

  "Stand up, your ladyship," Byron said when her smile had faded again. "Let me see what the seamstresses have done with you. It could hardly help but be an improvement."

  Lady Victoria's expression turned wry, but she set aside her tray and stood. She turned with exaggerated slowness for his inspection. Though he knew she meant to goad him, he found it almost titillating as she exposed first one angle of her body, then another to his sight. First her face, with its clear gaze, then the length of her neck, the swell of her breast, the arch of her nape, her other ear peeking like a shell among the whorls of hair. She looked years younger than when she arrived—certainly not girlish, but closer to girlish than withering and half-spent, as she dressed to be—and there was a native sensuality that permeated the air about her now that she no longer imprisoned it behind walls of whalebone and black taffeta. When she came around to face him again, the expression in her blue-gray eyes was worldly yet dryly amused, intriguingly at odds with her delicate, porcelain complexion, and Byron had the sudden certainty that, shorn of her somber disguise, she would have been the kind of woman who incited devotion among the ranks of callow youths and dotards alike.

  "Well?" Victoria demanded. "What now? You could examine my teeth. Or I could prance up and down the room—go through my paces—if you wish."

  "But I saw your paces last night—most thoroughly and enjoyably," Byron pointed out. She colored slightly in response, and that faint flush of heat was enough to send him over the edge. "Come here," he ordered roughly.

  Victoria paused for a moment, as if to show that she obeyed by choice, not because she had to, then stepped forward.

  Byron closed the remaining space between them until her skirts pressed against his legs, but he did not reach out for her. Instead, he stood regarding her blatantly for a long moment, almost nose to nose. Victoria neither flinched nor leaned away, and her jaw was set in the recognition of a challenge issued, stubborn yet feminine. And challenging in its own right.

  Byron seized that chin between his thumb and forefinger. Victoria stiffened, and she was still frozen in surprise when his mouth came down on hers. But only for a moment. Her lips opened under his tongue as she pressed into him, slipping her hands under his morning coat and bunching the fabric of his waistcoat in her fists. Her mouth was hot and welcoming, slick under the slow strokes of his tongue. A jolt of desire went through him, straight to his groin. He kissed her with his eyes open, watching the color creep up her cheeks, drinking in the look of pleasure and the pain of longing that knitted her fair brow and made her moan into his mouth. Her hand found the hard bulge of his arousal, stroking it through the fabric of his breeches, and it was all he could do not to strip off her crinoline and throw up her skirts right there.

  With a sound of regret, he drew away. She sighed piteously and opened her eyes.

  "Why?" she whispered.

  "Because, as much as I'd prefer to dally here, I have duties to attend to today," he replied dryly. He cupped her face in his hand and tilted it up. Her skin was silken, fragile under his rough fingers, and he could feel her pulse fluttering at her throat. He cocked his head to the side. "What made you, Victoria? One moment Alecto, the next Circe." He referenced the mythological Fury and enchantress without a trace of humor.

  She jerked away, stepping abruptly out of the circle of his arms. Her gray-blue eyes were wide and calm, but there was still a flush of passion on her cheeks and her swollen lips. "Your grace, I promised you a week," she said hoarsely. "I did not promise my confidences."

  "Have you given them to anyone?" he mused coolly, rocking back on his heels.

  "Not for a very, very long time," she said, her voice hard, her eyes dark with old memories. "Wisdom comes with age and cost."

  He could almost feel her secrets, vibrating in her voice even as she tried to shunt the conversation toward generalities, but he could not read them, however hard he tried. Was she a scorned lover? There were nuances of loss and disillusionment, certainly, but somehow, that did not fit. "One might think that naivete would be a happier condition," Byron said, softening his voice, hoping to prod some revelation from her.

  Her reply was unequivocal. "Then one would be wrong. For the naive, the pain of learning merely has not come." She seemed to shake herself, and the moment was lost. "Let us speak of something else," she said, her face closing.

  "Of course, your ladyship," Byron murmured, letting the matter drop. Almost regretfully, he checked his pocket watch. He should go soon—in fact, the carriage was probably already waiting for him at the front door. But to leave Victoria now, when he could almost taste her secrets… He knew what would wait for him when he came back—the collected spinster, all memory of their exchange erased from her cool features. He'd come too far to allow her to slip back into her old role. Better to keep her with him and off-balance.

  "How would you feel about a short trip this afternoon?" he asked, snapping his watchcase closed.

  "To hell and back?" she replied with false lightness.

  He quirked an eyebrow. "Actually, I was thinking of the Dowager House. I go most afternoons to examine the progress that's being made with the renovations. From hell and back, if you like."

  She smiled tightly. "My time is yours."

  "But of course," he replied, and extended his arm as if they were descending to a ball.

  Giving him an exaggerated nod, she took it and let him lead her from the room.

  * * *

  Chapter Seven

  Victoria tightened her grip on the leather loop as the carriage jolted again. She could sense Raeburn's presence as a shape in the blackness across from her, but she could see nothing of him, for the carriage had no windows.

  She fought a sudden feeling of being impossibly alone, surrounded by insane servants and their even more insane master. He travels in darkness… That was one rumor that proved to be truer than she would have imagined. What other strange stories might have a basis in fact?

  She heard Raeburn shift as the carriage hit another rock. Tension radiated through the darkness. He was waiting, she realized—waiting for her to ask the question on the tip of her tongue. Why?

  She remembered his expression as they went through the main doors of the manor to find the carriage sitting there like a great black coffin. When she had cast a surprised look his way, she found him already watching her. His expression seemed to challenge her to make a comment, but behind the bravura was a defenselessness, as if she'd just seen some shameful and infinitely embarrassing secret. Before she could make anything of it, the footman had opened the door and lowered the steps and it was time to enter the carriage.

  Since then, they had ridden in silence.

  It was ridiculous, Victoria thought. The night before, they had shared something. Something more than just their bodies. She had looked at Raeburn and had seen something she recognized in herself. Now, although attraction still thickened the air in the closed box of the carriage, he was as remote and forbidding as when she'd first arrived.

  It seemed like an eternity before the carriage stopped. Victoria squinted against the flood of light as the footman opened the door. Raeburn paused to turn up his coat collar, tug his silk scarf higher about his face, and pull his unfashionably wide-brimmed hat over his eyes—the only odd note in his smart attire. Then he stepped out of the carriage and thrust his arm toward her, more a demand than an offer.

  Victoria took it, steadying herself as she stepped onto a wide gravel expanse in front of the house. She tried to pause to take it in, but Raeburn pinned her arm to his side and hustled her up the walk to the door, his head down and steps swift. Despite her long legs, Victoria had to break into a half trot to keep pace, and her attention was so taken with the effort not to stumble on the rough path that she got only a fleeting glimpse of the house—an impression of herringbone red brick, white plaster, and long black oak beams. Then they were inside.

  As soon as the door shut, Raeburn stopped dead as if he'd been in no hurry at all.
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br />   "I'm bringing a master pargeter in to restore the ornamental plasterwork on the upper stories," he said with studied casualness. "Some of it was lost when repairs were made on the west-facing gables about a century ago, but the designs can be recreated easily enough."

  "Oh," Victoria said, at a loss. Her question still hovered unspoken between them, but Raeburn's jaw was set forbiddingly and his hazel eyes bore into hers, daring her to ask it. She could not find it within her to take him up on the challenge.

  A heavyset, middle-aged man trundled into the room, covered in dust and with an apron about his waist.

  "Your grace!" he exclaimed heartily. "Grand news, grand news! The woodwork is finished on the ground floor, and the addition is back on schedule."

  Raeburn smiled dryly. "So nice to find that things are going well for once."

  The man nodded as if taking the comment in stride. "Of course, of course. But come! You must see what we did since you last visited."

  "I'll show myself around, if you don't mind, Harter. And her ladyship as well. I'll find you again when I need you."

  Harter gave Victoria a preoccupied half bow as he rubbed his hands on his apron. "I see. In that case, thy grace, my lady, I'll just be off…"

  And with mat, he was gone, passing through a doorway from which the sounds of hammering filtered into the room.

  Raeburn released Victoria's arm and moved deeper into the room. "Poke and prod at whatever you'd like." He cast a wry expression over his shoulder. "Nothing here is dangerous, you know."

  Victoria realized that her uncertainty and disconcertment were written on her face and schooled her features into a more bland expression. "I've never been bitten by a rug before, but since this house is yours, one can not help but be cautious. Unpredictability appears to be the most fundamental element of your character."

  Raeburn just snorted without turning around from his examination of the paneling on the opposite wall.

  Victoria gave a mental shrug and decided that she might as well "poke and prod" if he was going to ignore her.

  She stood at the midpoint of a long, narrow chamber, once a hall, now divided by furniture and rugs into two distinct parlors decorated in tones of scarlet, purple, and umber. Like a Yorkshire sunset, she thought, remembering the dazzling view as she stepped off the train at Leeds.

  The room's scale should have been intimidating, yet there was something oddly comfortable and intimate about it, a well-worn feeling that lingered despite the pristine furnishings and the gleaming, newly polished oak wainscoting.

  She crossed into the parlor opposite the one that Raeburn was examining, noting the heavy, simple lines of the furniture and the archaic paintings that hung on the walls. But the most striking feature was the narrow stained glass windows that flanked the fireplaces at the ends of the hall, four jewel-toned glowing pictures of slender, long-faced women with intricately draped robes and tumbling hair. They were also the only unobstructed source of light for the room, for the other windows were all close-swathed.

  "It is very different," she said. That was certainly an understatement. "Most people would have made the house lighter, more delicate. This seems positively medieval."

  She turned to face the duke in time to see a humorless smile flash across his face. "Delicacy doesn't suit me. This does." He paused as if deciding whether to add more before speaking again. "I met a young architect by the name of Webb two years ago. He's idealistic to a fault, believing that he's part of some artistic revolution, but I like his work. Simplicity, naturalistic beauty, and medievalism are the guiding principles of his little group—the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of architecture and design, I suppose they could be called. I am too cynical to be excited by their ideas, but I hired his company to design a house, not to inspire me."

  "How practical," Victoria murmured, vaguely disappointed and only half believing. But what had she been expecting? An enthusiastic endorsement of his personal aesthetic? Still, feeling that she was shortchanging the house, she added, "It is beautiful, though. Not what I would have expected, but beautiful nevertheless."

  Raeburn made no reply as he walked a circuit of the other parlor. "Harter was right," was all he said when he finally spoke. "It is finished." He waved toward the wide doorway opposite the front door. "Let's see the rest."

  Victoria led the way and emerged between two more rooms, mirrors of the last, but this time set up as a salon and a dining room in rust, gold, and midnight blue with a dozen heavy-draped windows along the back wall. Small fixed transoms held more stained glass, this time curling with flowering and fruiting vines. Victoria had the strange feeling that they were as much for light as for beauty, as if Raeburn expected the curtains of the large windows below to stay drawn. There was a closed doorway at the end of the dining room, and another opposite it, bright with sunlight, through which a skeleton of raw beams was visible—the addition.

  Raeburn stalked a slow perimeter of the rooms while Victoria watched, puzzled. She had the growing sensation that the house was a portrait of the duke, done in such precise detail that every idiosyncrasy in his nature was laid bare, if only she knew how to look at it.

  She shook her head, giving up as Raeburn returned to her side. He escorted her to the staircase that ran up the long wall of the salon.

  "Naïveté," he said musingly as they mounted the first step side by side. Victoria stiffened and pressed her lips together at the reminder of their earlier discussion but said nothing. "I doubt I've ever had such a luxury. I have suffered frustration but never disappointment."

  "If one's expectations are low enough, one can never be disappointed," she returned tartly, "though that is no way to live."

  Raeburn cast her a sidelong glance. "Lady Victoria, you surprise me. I thought all your optimism should be dead by now."

  She smiled coldly. "Optimism, perhaps, but not expectations."

  He made an incredulous noise. "To have expectations is optimistic."

  He was attacking her with crude philosophy, trying to sneak under the door when hammering down the walls would not work. Victoria's eyes narrowed. Two could play at that game. "Then not even you can claim to a true pessimist, for you are too practical a man to have embarked on such an ambitious project as this house unless you expected it to come to completion."

  Raeburn did not deign to reply. They reached the top of the stairs in silence, and he released her and took the lead.

  There was dust in the air, and the sounds of hammering were loud and close. Raeburn strode down the central corridor without pausing to see if she followed, stopping at every doorway to look in, exchanging a few words if there were any workers within or surveying the room with a single, penetrating glance if there were not. He acted as if Victoria had disappeared, and she took advantage of his rather studious inattention to proceed more leisurely, guessing at the functions of the rooms as she went by.

  The first was a wide, windowless room with a doorway that went through a series of two small rooms to another large room that overlooked the back garden—the bedchambers for the duke and duchess. The nursery suite was equally recognizable. Then there was a series of rooms all in a row—bedrooms, probably, and two adjoining rooms that could only be the schoolroom and governess' chamber.

  Had it been designed with Raeburn's unnamed ladylove in mind? And was he still hoping to use it for his family? The thought was strange to her, the image of the duke surrounded by cherubic children ludicrous, almost impossible. And yet the undeniable reality of the floor plan confronted Victoria not only with the possibility that he had entertained such a vision but with the certainty of it.

  Victoria caught up to Raeburn at the far end of the hall, where two small chambers sat empty with pipes jutting out of the walls.

  "I've had two years of hip-baths," Raeburn explained, suddenly choosing to acknowledge her presence once again, "and come spring, I hope to have my last."

  "Water closets?" Victoria asked. Her family's town house in London had such luxuries, but
at Rushworth, they still had to make do with chamber pots and bathwater hauled up from the kitchen.

  "Indeed," he said. "A small indulgence." He turned. "And now I must check the progress of the annex."

  "What are they building there?" Victoria asked, curious despite herself.

  "There's to be a sitting room, a library, and a study. It will minor the kitchen wing on the other side, except the sitting room will have French windows leading out to the terrace."

  French windows—another bit of proof that the house was not being prepared for him alone. Raeburn's expression was closed, but Victoria thought she saw a flicker of pain pass over it, if only for a fraction of a second before he turned his face away. It awakened an echoing pang within her, one she did not dare examine too closely.

  "This house is very important to you, isn't it?" Victoria asked softly. "You might have found the young architect Webb to design it, but he designed it as much with you as for you, yes?" She spoke slowly, working through the thought as she went. "It's important because you put so much of yourself into it—even your dreams, although you didn't realize it until too late."

  Even at a quarter profile, she could see the tightening of his jaw. "And?" he prompted tightly, as if inviting a blow he knew was inevitable.

  A blow she had no intention of delivering.

  "And I like it," she said, feeling almost shy.

  He turned to face her, surprise passing over his face, followed by a flash of a smile that tugged at the corner of his lips—not the dry grimace she'd seen before, but a real, if infinitesimal smile. For once, his shifting hazel eyes lost their hard, self-mocking glint and shone warm and green.

  "It pleases me to hear you say that," he said, and he seemed almost as surprised at making this confession as she was hearing it. But he regained his equilibrium first, covering his moment of openness with a devilish grin. Taking her gloved hands in his, he pulled her to him.