by Lydia Joyce
"Who was it before me, then, your ladyship?" The title held a scornful note, mocking her formality.
"It's of no consequence." No, she did not want to tell him, she decided abruptly. Perhaps someone, someday, if she must, but not this cold duke whom she hardly knew.
"If it's of no consequence, you shan't mind telling me." His voice grew deeper, softer, and she saw a hint of compassion creep into his eyes. "I won't betray you, Victoria. Trust me."
She opened her mouth to refuse him again, but then she shut it because she realized that she did trust him, however strange it might seem. Finally, she sighed. "His name was Walter. He was the oldest son of an earl, and we were very much in love—or at least, we thought we were." She smiled slightly and shook her head. "In retrospect, it was as much self-absorbed infatuation and lust as anything."
Raeburn traced the line of her nose, resting his finger briefly on its tip. "You loved the way you felt when he looked at you, when he touched you, when he whispered into your ear."
Victoria looked up at him ruefully. "Aren't all young passions painfully the same? I loved him as much as I was able, I suppose, but I fear it wasn't the kind of love it should have been. He was twenty and I only seventeen, and although our parents had reservations about an alliance at such a young age, we still became engaged. Once we were betrothed… well, the wedding was only two months away, and parents tend to turn a bit of a blind eye once a betrothal has been announced, so one thing led to another, and we became lovers in every sense of the word. We met in gardens, in back parlors, even once in a stable. Then, only two weeks before the wedding, Walter rode out to his family estates because his father was ill."
"And he found another woman."
Victoria shook her head. "Nothing so romantic. He had a cold when he left, and it turned into pneumonia, and he died the day before we were to be wed." She snorted. "Something so… banal to destroy one's life, don't you think? How much more suitable to have a sufficiently theatrical hunting accident or some freak mischance abroad. Instead, I was bereft by a cold."
"You can't tell me that your heart never recovered."
She smiled at the memory of her younger self. "At the time, I thought I would not survive. But though I was left heartbroken, or as broken as such a self-centered heart could be, the more indelible result of the liaison was the unhappy fact that I was left ruined, as well." She looked at him obliquely. "I miscarried our child a month after his death. No one ever knew."
"And since then—"
"The armor, as you called it. Yes. I didn't want to go out into society again until I was nineteen, and even then, I dressed in mourning. Mourning for Walter, but even more—though I'd never have admitted it then, not even to myself—mourning for me. I was young and resilient and might have been back dancing and laughing the very next season, but I had lost my only chance at marriage, because now I had a secret: I was unmarried and no virgin. I comforted myself by pretending privately that I really was Walter's widow who had buried her love with her husband, but there was a more ugly truth. Few men would take me as I was, and I did not have the courage to risk ruination by confessing my past to those who might have. And so I became the Wakefield spinster." She shrugged slightly. "There is nothing brave or glamorous in my story, and much that is cowardly and tawdry, but I have accepted it. It is mine."
Raeburn traced, the line of her jaw with one rough finger. "And do you miss him at all?" There was a strange note in his voice, of regret or even pain, and Victoria tilted her head to look squarely up at him.
"Walter? Goodness, no. I still feel for him, that his life was cut so short. But for me?" She smiled humorlessly. "He was a good boy who would have grown into a fine man, but we were both too callow to have the depth of feeling that would result in a lifelong grief. He was in another life, one that I lost. I've made many choices since then, and the ones I made with him are too distant to rue."
"And what about now?" Raeburn asked, his voice hardly above a whisper. "Will you rue this choice?" His hand descended to cup her breast through the silk of her dress.
Victoria's breath caught. "Ask me in another fifteen years."
Then Raeburn's mouth met her own and ended the need for speech.
When they finally separated, he took her hand and squeezed it once, then stood, his eyes hooded with something she could not decipher. "I will see you tonight."
And then she was alone.
Once again, a clock somewhere struck nine as Fane led Victoria through the echoing hallways, but this time, he traveled up instead of down. The rooms they passed through seemed vaguely familiar, as if she'd seen them in a dream or another life, but it wasn't until she was facing a door at the top of a spiral staircase that her suspicions bloomed into certainty.
It was the tower room.
A surge of emotions battled within her—disappointment, resignation, titillation. After what had happened in the Unicorn Room that afternoon, she had expected some sort of change from the night before. She didn't know whether she was angry or glad that there appeared to be none.
Opening the door, Fane announced her as decorously as if she were entering a grand salon. Raeburn looked up from a low table in front of the little stove, dismissing the servant and inviting her in with the same wave.
Branching candelabra sat at the center of the table, bathing the room in a soft glow. The hard planes of Raeburn's face were strangely gentled by it. He leaned back on his hands as he regarded her, his unbuttoned waistcoat falling open. His coat lay on the floor beside him, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up and his collar unfastened, revealing the shadowed hollow of his throat. His bearing was both indolent and tightly coiled, like a half-slumbering panther, and he radiated a hungry sensuality that seemed to bridge the distance between them to brush against her skin.
She crossed slowly toward him, feeling like she was wading ever deeper into an oriental fantasy. The room looked even more exotic and garish than it had the night before, as if it had been taken from the fevered imagination of an illustrator for the most risqué translation of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. In the light of the single candle, there had only been a feeling of Eastern extravagance, but now, the riot of red, blue, green, and gold was revealed. Out of the score of pillows mounded on the floor, the dozen rugs, and three divans, not one repeated a pattern.
"Join me," Raeburn ordered, stretching his long legs out in front of him as he tilted his face up toward hers.
"Though you might want to leave that contraption behind"—he waved to her crinoline-rounded skirts—"since I doubt it will be anything but awkward when eating like a Turk."
"I shall manage, I'm sure," Victoria said, matching his light tone and ignoring the small thrill of anticipation and dread that shot through her. Was there some trace of recognition of the confidence she had shared with him that afternoon? She couldn't tell. She dropped one of the pillows on the other side of the table and positioned herself over it before sitting carefully as her skirts billowed around her. "Am I to be honored with your personal attentions tonight instead of the flawless service of your most excellent staff?"
The corner of Raeburn's mouth quirked, acknowledging her jibe, but he responded coolly. "Their lack of polish is as much my fault as theirs, and as much my lamented great-uncle's as mine. Two decades of senility do not lead to excellent domestics. He left me a score when it would take at least three times that number to keep the house." He uncovered one of the dishes, revealing cold tongue, pallid boiled vegetables, and some sort of potatoes that looked grayish and unappetizing. But the smell that wafted out was at least wholesome, if not tantalizing.
The mundane nature of their conversation and repast seemed at odds with the gaudy surroundings and the sensual awareness that tensed the air between them, but it was obscurely reassuring, too. "And you've done nothing to rectify the matter in the year you've been duke?"
Raeburn shrugged, removing the lids of the other three dishes. "I've devoted my time to renovating the Dowager House
and attempting to make the place profitable again." His lips twisted as he served her a generous portion from each dish, and he headed off the obvious question. "My own cook went back to Essex to tend to her mother, my butler married, and I dismissed the rest of the staff at my London town house." His tone did not encourage her to inquire why.
Victoria took a forkful of assorted boiled vegetables to cover the awkward silence that settled between them, fumbling for a new subject before the conversation foundered entirely. It shouldn't matter if it did; after all, the embarrassment properly belonged to her host, and she had nothing at stake to make her feel chagrined. But somehow it did matter, so she rescued the discussion with all the grace she could muster. "I shouldn't think that it would be hard to make a profit from such extensive lands."
Raeburn shook his head, but the tightness dissolved from his face, and Victoria felt a sympathetic loosening in muscles she hadn't realized she had tensed. "I can't even find tenants for two tracts, and I've had to cut the rent on the others. There's not the money in wool there used to be, and the Raeburn flocks are poor at best. I've brought in some merinos from Spain to improve the long-haired flocks and Irish rams to improve the short-haired ones, but it will be years before I see the results." His face darkened. "Meanwhile, Stoneswold and Weatherlea are half deserted because the weaving is all done in factories in Leeds. The weavers' families have all left or been reduced to menial labor."
Victoria realized that he cared—not just about property and income, but about the common villagers, too. There was perhaps something medieval in his concern, but if it was stained with feudal overtones, it had a certain chivalric element as well and was rather touching. "Oh," she said and took another bite of the vegetables. They dissolved unpleasantly on her tongue, and she made a face despite herself.
Raeburn raised an eyebrow. "Still not accustomed to plain Yorkshire cooking, I see," he said.
Victoria smiled ruefully. "No," she agreed, thinking wistfully of the French chef at Rushworth. Rushworth. Its cool, orderly limestone facade seemed like a dream now. Much more real was Raeburn himself, twirling his fork idly and watching her with half-lidded eyes. A ghost of a smile played about his lips, and she wondered what he was thinking as a trickle of warmth slid up her spine. Not that it mattered. What mattered was that they would enjoy each other again that night, without fears or regrets, and after five more nights, they would part ways forever. And she could forget whatever confessions she'd made in a moment of weakness. Just a week of carnal indulgence and a reward at the end, and back to society as if she'd never left. The thought should have been comforting, but instead, it stirred a coldness in the pit of her stomach that leached away even the heat of Raeburn's presence. . She shook her head to dispel that thought and took another bite of the over-boiled food, followed by a long draught of wine. "At least your cellar cannot be faulted," she said, attempting to keep the conversation light when she felt anything but.
Raeburn didn't seem to notice her unease as he held the dark red liquid up to the candle flame. "I should hope not. That's the one thing I did send for from London, and it took a month of settling before everything was drinkable after it arrived."
Victoria slid gratefully into the new avenue of dialogue, beginning a discussion of vintages and transport methods that lasted through the rest of the meal. She had wanted to distract her own thoughts as much as keep Raeburn to safe topics, but when she set down her fork after the last bite, she knew that she had failed. She felt troubled by the man who reclined so nonchalantly across from her, and she didn't know why, which was the most disturbing thing of all. She could have told herself it was Raeburn's sheer physicality that was bothering her, or the hideously overdecorated room, or even the confidences she had made, but it would not be the whole truth.
"Filling, if not palate-beguiling," she remarked, setting her napkin down beside the plate.
Raeburn smiled mysteriously. "There's still more." He gathered the plates and dishes and set them aside, and from the darkness beside the small stove, he produced a final dish with new plates and silverware. With a flourish, he uncovered the top.
"A crumble?" Victoria asked in surprise, looking at the pastry-topped fruit dish between them.
"The best peach crumble north of Manchester," he agreed. "And it happens to be the one thing the cook makes well."
Victoria looked at him doubtfully as he put a generous scoop on her plate. He chuckled at her expression and dipped his own fork into the dessert.
"Try it," he coaxed, bringing the fruit to her lips.
Victoria hesitated a moment, sensing again that strange tension within her that had everything and nothing to do with the flutter of warmth his gaze kindled in her belly. Raeburn's expression turned amused, and she automatically met the implied challenge by opening her mouth.
The cinnamon-rich syrup flowed onto her tongue, and when she bit down, the firm peach flesh yielded in a rush of juice. "Oh!" she said when she'd swallowed. "That's lovely." The taste of it lingered, sweet and enticing. She reached for her own fork, but Raeburn put a restraining hand on her wrist.
"No," he said. "I shall do it for both of us." Watching her with hooded eyes, he raised a forkful of the crumble to his mouth and took it slowly between his teeth in a way that made her catch her breath and blush like a girl of half her years. A smile quirked the corner of his mouth at her reaction.
That was enough to swamp her uneasiness in a wave of pricked pride, goading her into outdoing his performance when he brought the next bite to her lips. She ate it slowly, luxuriantly, curling her tongue around the peach slice before taking each bite. Raeburn's expression grew sharper, and when she licked away a bit that had dribbled from the corner of her mouth, it turned to raw hunger and his hand tightened around her wrist. An answering warmth spread from her center to suffuse her body, and she was suddenly conscious of the calluses on his palm against her skin, of the constriction of her corset and the texture in her dress.
"If you continue in the same manner, I fear you shall not finish Mrs. Macdougal's fine dessert," he said with an underlying intensity that belied his light tone.
"Who says that would be a bad thing?" Her voice caught slightly and tumbled out high and strained.
" 'Twas never I."
Victoria's sensation of strangeness returned with full force, disquiet mingled now with a feeling that was almost like pain. Impulsively, she disengaged herself from Raeburn's hand and lifted it to her mouth. She held it there for a long moment, fingertips to lips, as if she could breathe the essence of him, isolate it and dissect it into its components and so discover what in him was troubling her so. She pressed her lips to his palm, brushing her tongue across it, learning every fold and crease of his skin as his breath grew fast and ragged.
It was useless. There was nothing there but mute flesh—suggestive even in its uncompromising bluntness but devoid of the answers she sought. When she released him, he curled his hand closed as if catching her kiss.
"Fortune-tellers claim they can read a life from the lines and creases on a palm." Victoria shook her head and smiled slightly. "I can read nothing except that you must not wear gloves as often as gentlemen generally do."
Across the table, Raeburn's expression was both distantly amused and strangely sad. "What would you read? My fate is hidden from such blatant sciences. They say I carry mine in my blood, which no one can read."
"Secrets upon secrets, like the little Russian dolls that sit inside each other. I'm sure that even Mrs. Peasebody has her own dark shadows in her past, if only we knew them."
Raeburn's lips quirked. "You puncture my self-importance so skillfully."
"And remind me that my own is misplaced." Victoria stood abruptly and turned away, more discomfited by the train of thoughts that followed her reply than she cared to show. She had allowed herself to believe, on some basic level, that she mattered, that her small story made some minute difference in the world. And looking at Raeburn's smile, she knew that she had fooled
herself.
She crossed to one of the arching windows that looked outward, away from the buttresses and balconies of Raeburn Court. Through her own reflection, she could make out the stony declivity encircled by the hedge and the white scar of the drive that led up from the lane. The moon shone through wispy clouds, turning the pools of low fog to opalescent fleece. It was desolate but eerily peaceful, not at all foreboding as it had seemed in the midst of the storm's fury. Yet a niggling sliver of intuition warned her that she had been much safer the night before, when she could be carried away by madness and blame it on the wind and rain.
Victoria turned back to face the duke. He was watching her, his expression inscrutable in the highlights and shadows of the candlelight. He lounged carelessly, one leg cocked, the other straight, and she could see the outline of his muscles where his shirt was pulled taut across his chest. If there had not been a glimmer of something human behind his haughty mask, Victoria could not have controlled the iciness that crept over her. But there was something—wry sadness? poignant self-mockery?—and it dissolved the knot of coldness into nothing.
She took a breath, surprised to find it slightly unsteady. "We are two old frights, aren't we?"
Raeburn's mouth creased in a frown, and he began to shake his head. But then he paused, seeming to catch himself, and shrugged. "Perhaps. Are you always so direct, your ladyship?" His tone was teasing but not without some exasperation. "It seems that not even one's closest and most precious delusions are safe when you are nigh."
Victoria smiled thinly. "I am better at self-scrutiny than self-pity, I fear, and I tend to extend it to others. I've lost the habit of mercy, if I ever had it."
"And forgiveness?" Raeburn's stare was suddenly too perceptive.
Victoria shook it off. "There is no one to forgive. If I bleed, then I put my hand in the way of the knife." She leveled a pointed look at the duke. "I am rarely cut twice."