by Lydia Joyce
He must have felt the question rising between them, for he rolled himself on top of her as if to distract her, putting his weight on his elbows on either side of her. "Until dawn, you're mine."
She started to reply, but he caught her mouth half-open in a kiss, and she knew with a drop in her belly that asking would be of no use. There was still pleasure, she told herself. That was what she could have of him. That was what was hers as much as his, and in that she would make herself content.
The room was flooded with steely predawn light when Byron opened his eyes. Victoria had rolled away from him in her sleep, wrapping the blanket around herself so that half his body was bare to the chill air. He had not feared he wouldn't wake; after the one agonizing incident when he was still a boy, he always woke at the first hint of light and fled it long before it could do any harm. If the pain itself hadn't been enough to make him never forget, the memory of Will's reaction certainly would be.
He stood, careful not to disturb Victoria, and dressed stealthily in the grayness. There was no reason for caution, he told himself. After all, it was his manor and his week, and he could come and go and treat Victoria as he pleased. But still he felt like an escaping criminal as he loaded the tray with the dirty dishes, and he hesitated even at the doorway, looking back at the figure sprawled so defenselessly across the mounded pillows. Her white-gold hair puddled around her head like a halo of sunlight, her outstretched hand curved almost imploringly toward him. She couldn't have looked more out of place in his great-uncle's gaudy, exotic boudoir, with her pale English features and an endearing, commonplace hint of dampness on one cheek. Byron smiled despite himself at the ' thought that she could forget herself even in her sleep so much as to drool. He wanted to stay and see her wake, see her expression when she opened her eyes and found him there, waiting for her.
But he knew that was impossible. He could wake her and bid her good-bye, but such an action would only be met with confusion and the inevitable questions that he had sworn never to answer again. Meanwhile, the day was waiting for him, the first hour in his gymnasium with his weights and racks and then the accounts and business transactions that seemed to have no end.
Byron shook his head and slipped through the door, but his guilt dogged his heels all the way down the stairs.
* * *
Chapter Ten
Victoria awoke bathed in sunlight that poured through the eastern windows of the tower room. She was alone, and she had to suppress a pang of disappointment despite the fact that she had hardly expected anything else.
She shivered, unable to shake the vague uneasiness that had haunted her since the night before. She shouldn't be so disturbed by this situation. After all, she told herself, there could be nothing less complicated than the relationship between herself and Raeburn. It was written in black and white and stored in the night table in the Unicorn Room. A service for a payment, no more, no less. And so she determined to put him out of her mind.
She stretched slowly, her limbs still heavy and sore, before sitting up and searching among the scattered pillows and rugs for her clothes. All of Raeburn's were gone, she saw without surprise. She pulled on her stockings, her chemise, and the awful corset. She could hook the busk closed without assistance, but tightening the laces was a daunting task, and she looked helplessly at the divan where her lavender morning dress lay crumpled. She could never fit into it with her corset loose, and buttoning it alone would be even more impossible. She considered sneaking to the Unicorn Room in her underthings—there were few enough servants that she probably wouldn't get caught—but she wasn't certain she could even find the way, and the thought of wandering the corridors of Raeburn Court half-dressed was enough to make her hesitate.
Her dilemma was solved when the door opened.
"Oh," Annie said, blinking in the sunlight. "I didn't know thoo'd be awake. I ought to have come earlier. I'm so sorry—"
"You've brought breakfast, and that's all that matters," Victoria said reassuringly, nodding at the girl's tray.
Annie stared at it as if just realizing it was there. "I have, haven't I?"
"Indeed." All evidence of the meal of the night before was gone, even the crumble dish. Victoria shivered at that memory, still slightly stunned. She made her voice brisk and practical with effort. "Bring it here, please, Annie."
Annie obeyed, then retreated to hover by the door again. Victoria uncovered the dishes—the expected toast, eggs, and sausage—and began to eat. She glanced at the maid as she took a drink of slightly tepid tea. Considering the girl's delicate constitution, it was curious how unabashed she seemed in the face of Victoria's unquestionably illicit nocturnal activities with the duke. She remembered the hints of stories of his debauched great-uncle and amended that thought. Perhaps it was what Annie was accustomed to.
"Have you worked here long?" Victoria asked.
"Aye, my lady, all my life. I was born here. My mother was a housemaid." Annie's habitual tension seemed to loosen at the innocuous topic.
"You were born here! In the manor house?" Victoria repeated.
"Aye." Annie nodded. "My mother died in having me, so I raised myself mostly, but there was always someone to look after me when I was a lass."
Victoria had never heard of a master who would keep even a married servant on, much less a pregnant one. "What did you think of the old duke?"
To her surprise, Annie flushed. "Oh, none of us saw naught of him much, not since I can remember. His grace would sit alone in his rooms with Gregory or Stephen just outside the door, waiting while he needed the least little thing. And Mrs. Peasebody would bring him his food on a tray herself, and that was it." Her expression grew abstract. "I think I had more years of age man times seeing him when he died."
Annie trailed off, and Victoria let her be as she was led away by her own curious thoughts. Her caricatured image of a crazed, randy old man could not encompass this new information. Had all the masters of Raeburn been so convoluted underneath the easy stereotypes, or only the last two? The great-uncle, mad yet merciful; the nephew, playing at iniquity while truly… what? Victoria admitted that she still couldn't say.
She wondered how like the old duke the current one was. Strange men with dark reputations, living in the moldering remains of a great manor house… In thirty years, would the heir continue the legacy of that dissolute madman, whatever it really was? Victoria shook her head, unable to envision it. Already, her Raeburn was breaking away from his predecessor's shadow, building a queerly beautiful house that could not be more different from Raeburn Court.
Her Raeburn. Exactly how had that pronoun slipped into her thoughts, and what did it mean? She frowned as she swallowed another bite of eggs. Nothing but that he was the Raeburn she knew, she decided. After all, it could mean nothing else.
And .yet she was strangely dissatisfied with that answer even as she took the first bite of the thick, buttered toast.
Victoria walked in the gardens, feeling refreshed despite her sere surroundings. Calling the space "the gardens" was somewhat generous, she had to admit—the tangle of overgrown hedges and half-hidden paths held only a distant memory of its prior manicured life.
She'd come down to the Unicorn Room to find a piping-hot bath waiting for her, and while she had soaked, Annie had whisked away her clothes. By the time she was finished, fresh underclothes were laid out for her, including her own sober black stockings as Raeburn had promised, and her lavender morning dress had been brushed and ironed.
Even if the gardens weren't beautiful, the day certainly was. After drizzling on and off throughout the morning, the afternoon sun had burned away the last of the clouds, and the sky shone blue with the deep bell-like clarity of early autumn. Thrushes flitted among the weeds, and rustles in the undergrowth marked the escape of small animals as she approached.
She might feel refreshed, but she also still felt out of sorts and almost… lonely. The garden was causing her odd mood, she decided—it was like a symphony played out of t
une, elaborate and abandoned, artificial yet wild. But even as she wandered among the hedges and rosebushes, her mind kept returning to the manor house behind her and the man within.
This time was hers now, a few minutes stolen from the week she had given him. So why couldn't she ignore the duke and all his shadowy secrets? She tried to concentrate on the warmth of the sun against her back, the crackle of leaves beneath her feet, but her thoughts kept going back to Raeburn, wrapped up in some gloomy inner room and shut away from the glorious day.
Victoria squeezed between two wild yews—and stopped dead. Instead of finding herself in yet another tangle of growth, she discovered a small, well-swept clearing defined by the meeting of three brick paths, the hedges neatly trimmed and the flowerbeds mulched for the winter.
But that change, surprising as it was, had not caused Victoria's hesitation. In the center of the space, on a curved stone bench, sat the housekeeper with a tea tray beside her.
Mrs. Peasebody set her teacup down on the saucer she held and stood so hurriedly that tea sloshed over the edge to darken her serviceable gray dress.
"Thy ladyship!" the broad-faced woman exclaimed, the last word ending in a yelp as the steaming tea splashed across her fingers.
"Mrs. Peasebody, please forgive me," Victoria said, covering her own startlement. "I didn't mean to intrude. The day was just so lovely that I couldn't help but go for a walk…" She trailed off, realizing the strangeness of apologizing to her host's housekeeper for taking a walk in his gardens.
"It's no intrusion, love." Mrs. Peasebody waved the handkerchief that she was using to dab at the spill across her wide bosom. "It's just that I don't expect naught else out here no more. There's not much to attract folks, I fear, and his grace… Well, his grace doesn't go out much." she said obliquely. "His grace's great-uncle was the same way, I fear. Runs in the blood, it does." She plumped down on the bench again.
Victoria was surprised to hear her private comparisons of that morning echoed by someone else, but she held her tongue as the old woman continued.
"Such a shame to see such ailments plague the noblest lines in England." Mrs. Peasebody shook her head.
"Ailments?" Victoria asked. She remembered the rumors of a weakness of the blood and Raeburn's own indirect reference to it the night before. Finally, to have a certain name put to it: an illness, not an eccentricity.
The housekeeper gave her a sharp look. "Now, thy ladyship, I've been a good servant to the Raeburns since long before thoo was born. If his grace is wanting to confide in thee, I'm sure he will, and a better one to tell I don't know if he can find, not that there's been many out to see him. But as for me, my lips are sealed."
"I see," Victoria said, chagrined that the only subject she was interested in seemed to be the only one on which the woman would not speak.
Mrs. Peasebody seemed not to notice her reaction, merely waving to the bench across from her. "Sit thissen down, thy ladyship, and have a little chat, if thoo'd like. I know I get lonely in that old house." She looked at the stained limestone walls fondly where they rose above the growth.
At any other time, Victoria might have shied away from such forwardness, but it seemed ludicrous to attempt to keep up the usual social forms at Raeburn Court. Choosing to indulge her curiosity instead, she sat. "You knew the previous duke, then?"
Mrs. Peasebody nodded vigorously, causing her iron-gray sausage curls to bob where they emerged from her neat little mobcap. "And when I was but a wee lass, the duke before that." Her gaze grew far away. "Aye, those were the days. Half the manor house was no better than it is now, but the gardens… oh, the gardens were beautiful. His grace was very par-tic-u-lar about the gardens. There was an army of gardeners and boys, and every year there were rounds of planting and fertilizing, pruning and composting. The grounds were famous throughout England, and all the grandest designers did their bit." She shook her head. "But that was long ago, and now I come out here for the memories, silly old woman that I am, and keep my favorite corner as much as it was as I can remember."
"That's lovely. And sad." Victoria was surprised to find that she meant it.
The housekeeper started to pour herself another cup of tea and stopped midgesture. "Pardon me, love. I didn't mean to sit here, sipping afore thee as if I were the Queen hersen."
"Please, go ahead." Victoria motioned to the teapot, and the housekeeper's expression changed from martyrdom to pleasure.
"Thoo is a good one, thy ladyship, if you don't mind my saying." She took a sip from her newly filled cup and returned to her original subject. "Of course, I'm a silly old body, and I like to make it all sound much more romantic than it is. The truth is, the garden's a good place for an afternoon constitutional, and when the weather's fine, this spot is just grand for tea." She switched topics suddenly. "I hope thoo is getting on well with Annie."
"As well as I can, I suppose," Victoria said, slightly bemused, "since she's still half-terrified of me. I wonder at times if I have grown a second head without realizing it."
Mrs. Peasebody waved a meaty hand. "That's just little Annie's way. Always been a bit queer in the head, but she's a nice enough lass. Her mother was a maid here before her, and her father…" She paused and leaned forward conspiratorially. "Well, it isn't nice to spread rumors of the dead, but they say her father was the late duke." She sat back with the expression of someone who knows she's just delivered amazing news.
"Oh," 'Victoria said, at a loss at her frank confidence. "I—I suppose there must be many of his… progeny about the place, then."
Mrs. Peasebody grinned. "Thoo would think so, wouldn't thoo? But she's the only one. There was another lass up from Weatherlea, she was here for a week, and four months later, she sent a letter to his grace that she was with child. The duke paid her handsomely, as was his way, but I've seen the child, and bless me if he isn't the spitting image of the young man the lass married only three weeks later."
"I see," Victoria said.
"Now this new duke—he's different." Mrs. Peasebody gave her a hard look. "He's not had a single lass up from any of the villages or towns despite the stories of his London life. He's a deep one, too, deeper than his great-uncle ever was. Thoo should be careful of him, love, because I don't think he knows what he's about." She emptied her teacup with a last swallow, then unpinned a well-worn pocket watch from her bosom. "Why, bless me, look at the time! I do go on forever, don't I, thy ladyship?" She arranged everything on the tray beside her and picked it up as she stood. "Why, I'd babble half the afternoon away! But my duties call me—and no one would call me anything but dutiful. Good-bye, thy ladyship, and enjoy the rest of thy constitutional."
And with that, she was gone.
Victoria was left alone in the suddenly silent clearing, her head spinning with new thoughts. So Annie was Raeburn's cousin, in a way. She wondered if he knew. Or if he cared. She shrugged. There was probably a housemaid or two at Rushworth that were her father's by-blows, and she'd intervened between her father and brother on three different occasions when village girls came calling, claiming that their bastards belonged to Jack. It had never bothered her before that half a man's children might be reared in luxury while the other half begged on the streets, but now, it was strangely troubling.
Victoria stood and began to wander slowly deeper into the manor grounds, lost in thought. What did Mrs. Peasebody mean by the present duke being different, and that being dangerous? Surely, if she had been an innocent, there could be no one more dangerous than a randy, callous old man. She shook her head, giving up. It made no sense. Only… the Raeburn she knew was dangerous. It wasn't physical intimidation or a fear of what he might do to her—if she'd felt either one of those, she'd have been back at Rushworth by now, devil take her brother.
No, Raeburn's dangerousness was of a much subtler sort. Who else could have coaxed the ugly story of the past from her? If that wasn't dangerous, she didn't know what was.
She turned a corner, and the path ended abruptly at a lo
w stone wall where the land dropped away sharply as the garden surrendered to moor. Far below, hedgerows and lanes crisscrossed the countryside, beyond the broken stump of a tower that rose from the top of the manor house's sister hill. The tower was both beautiful and desolate, the afternoon sunlight etching its sharp shadow across the undulating green meadows beyond. It suddenly struck Victoria that there was an answer there, somewhere in the landscape, to a question she had not yet fully articulated, but the more she stared, the more obscure it seemed to grow.
Victoria stood for a long moment, watching a flock of sheep wander across a field in the middle distance as a solitary raven wheeled overhead, before giving up and turning away to work her way back toward the manor house.
She made the final turn along the path, and the back face of the manor house came into view, Baroque giving way to Gothic and Romanesque farther along. Her stomach jolted slightly when she spied an unexpected form by one of the French windows closest to her path. Though she was too far away to make out a face, the sense of size, of coiled expectation, left no room for doubt in her mind.
It was Raeburn, lounging in the shadows of the eaves.
He watched her as she mounted the four steps up to the terrace, his expression unreadable. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her and whether it was a pleasing sight. But there was no answer in the shifting hazel depths of his eyes, and only the slightest detached smile hovered on his lips, a smile that could mean anything.
"I was beginning to wonder if I should send someone after you," he called as she approached.
"Did you think I had run away?" she replied, keeping her tone careless. Despite herself, she felt a slight flush creep up her cheeks as memories of the night before invaded her mind. It seemed impossible that this cool gentleman could be the same man who had tasted every inch of her body only hours before.
He snorted. "More likely that you got lost—broke your neck in the ha-ha or drowned in an ornamental pond."