The Veil of Night

by Lydia Joyce

  "Oh, one's days would be plagued with thoughts and one's nights haunted by dreams of you." He stepped forward, trapping her with both hands braced against the library ladder.

  She started to lean back but stopped when the bottom edge of the ladder tipped up the front of her dress. Instead, she tilted her chin up to meet his eyes. "Then it is fortunate that you are astute enough not to be so ensnared."

  "Very fortunate," he agreed, punctuating each word with a small step forward until Victoria had no choice but to back up, whatever havoc it caused her skirts.

  By the time he had her pinned against the ladder, the back of her crinoline was pressed flat and the front stood up, coming almost to her shoulders so that her arms were caught behind its wide circle. Victoria made no sound of protest, only looked up at him in silence, expectation written in her clear blue-gray eyes. Despite the raised hoops and thick corset, Byron could see her breathing quicken, and his own body stirred in response.

  He smiled at her hoops. "Confounded things." He reached across and traced the thin, delicate line of her nose from forehead to tip, resting his finger there. Victoria started to reach out, her motion arrested by the width of the crinoline. "But it has its uses, I see," he added.

  She tilted her head up at him. "Do you like me so helpless?"

  "Indubitably." He slid his hand behind her head, cradling the soft swirls of hair in his palm. Already, her eyes were half lidded, her lips parted in anticipation. A wonderful dark warmth filled him that was entirely carnal and reassuring in its familiarity. But even as he tilted his head down to cover her waiting mouth, a twinge somewhere inside him disagreed.

  "Oh, thy grace, I don't know how to tell thee. It's just the most awful thing I've seen in all my days! I never imagined I'd live to see Raeburn Court come—Oh."

  Byron pivoted slowly away from the suddenly scarlet Victoria to face the intruder. "Yes, Mrs. Peasebody?"

  For the first time since he'd met her, the housekeeper was momentarily at a loss for words. "I… Why, I… I had no idea…" she managed. Then she drew herself up, looking, if anything, even more distressed. "But that's not the point, thy grace. I've come to tell thee myseln because I couldn't bear to hear that another brought it." She took a deep breath. "It's the village. It's afire!"

  * * *

  Chapter Twelve

  Once again, Victoria found herself closed up with the duke in the windowless carriage. This time, though, the vehicle careered down the drive, and only her death grip on the straps kept her from being flung from her seat as they slammed into a sudden rut, then dropped into a hole an instant later.

  Across from her, Raeburn exuded grim tension, seeming to be equally oblivious of her and the nightmarish ride. Until Mrs. Peasebody had made her dreadful announcement, Victoria could not have imagined mat anyone could whip an approximation of efficiency from the duke's servants. But scant minutes after Raeburn burst out of the library to thunder down the stairs, shouting orders like a man gone mad, he was swathed in layers of clothing and hustled into the still-moving carriage.

  Spurred by morbid fear, Victoria had scrambled in behind with her heart in her throat, and the duke's snapped command of "Shut the door!" was his first and last acknowledgement of her presence.

  Another jolt threw Victoria against the straps, and the carriage came to an abrupt stop. For an instant, she feared they had broken an axle, but then the door flew open and the footman's pinched face appeared, haloed by sunlight.

  "We have arrived, thy grace," Andrew announced, ignoring Victoria.

  Raeburn started up and then collapsed back against the squabs with an expression of excruciating frustration. "I cannot," he ground out. "Go, Lady Victoria, so I may gain what vantage I may from within."

  Victoria scrambled down the steps and away from the door. She blinked against sudden sunlight and a wash of acrid smoke and heat. When her eyes cleared, she found herself standing in a bare yard. Directly before her, orange flames tore through a thatched roof and leapt to the sky.

  Only one building then, not the whole village—her first thought was one of relief. But the flames were growing higher by the minute, and the wind snatched up embers and rained them on the thatch of the cottage next door, which sat far too close to its own neighbor.

  Two boys pumped water into buckets, trying to douse the inferno through sheer energy, but a hiss of vaporization was the only result of their efforts. More buckets lay abandoned near their feet.

  The other villagers stood in the yard with the contents of the endangered cottage spread about them, staring bleakly at the fire or glancing without curiosity at her and the carriage. Annie was there, crying and clutching at the collar of a broad-shouldered, soot-stained man who held her, but hers appeared to be the only emotion more intense than resignation on any of the sweaty faces that encircled the scene.

  The sound of the duke's voice drew Victoria's attention away from the tableau. She turned to see Andrew leaning into the carriage. A moment later, the footman turned away and shouted, "Where are the ridgepole hooks?"

  The soot-stained man rumbled, "They were in the forge when it went up."

  A few second's consultation, and then the footman shouted, "Wet down those quilts and haul them onto the roof." The watchers hesitated. "Go on, now! His grace will buy yer more quilts, if he must, and they are a far sight less dear than rebuilding a house."

  A red-faced woman standing close by the sooty man gave a small exclamation that ended in a sob, and she ripped the counterpane and blankets from one of the beds that squatted in the weeds and ran to the pump with them. Victoria started forward hesitantly, uncertain if her help would be welcome, but by the time the woman reached the pump, the two boys were there to meet her. A few seconds later, the sopping quilts were in their arms as they nimbly scaled the woodpile on the far side of the cottage. They tossed the bundles onto the roof and scrambled up after them.

  Roused from their dull acceptance, the villagers shouted encouragement as the boys reached the ridgepole. One swung his leg over onto the side thick with smoke and ash, but the other grabbed his arm and said something to him. They each grabbed one corner of a blanket and snapped it out over the roof so that it spread out flat before it landed. They repeated the process until that entire side of the roof was covered, then slid down the thatch to arrive blackened and beaming for the cheers and back-thumpings of the other villagers.

  Andrew held another quick consultation with the duke, then called, "What are yer staring at? Take those there buckets and wet the ground all around."

  The villagers scrambled to comply, and dismissed by the duke, Andrew took the still-sobbing Annie into his arms and began whispering into her hair.

  Feeling superfluous and in the way as villagers dodged around her skirts in their hurry, Victoria retreated to the carriage. She climbed the steps and ducked through the doorway into the shadowed interior where Raeburn stood half-stooped between the seats. He stared at her for a long moment before flopping into his seat with a strangled sort of sigh. Victoria realized that it was the first completely unguarded and graceless action she's ever seen from him, and she paused, weight balanced between the top step and the carriage floor, before taking her seat.

  Without acknowledging her presence, Raeburn leaned his head back against the squabs and closed his eyes. At that moment, perhaps for the first time, Victoria did not see a mystery-shrouded duke but just a man, a mere man, tired and frustrated and approaching middle age alone in a decaying house. She took advantage of his inattention to study his countenance. Without the ever-changing glitter of his eyes, his face also seemed lessened. His features were still attractive even etched with weariness, but they looked more worn than rugged.

  So this was the real Raeburn, she found herself thinking, without the inflating shadows of intimation and rumor bulking his frame of flesh and bone into something almost titan. Her madcap bargain with him had seemed so daring when she was caught in his glamour. So unreal. But if he was just a man and the ancient
hulk of the manor just a run-down house, then her liaison, too, must lose its breathless dazzle, no more fantastic than the hurried copulations of the old duke and the broad-faced girls who gave him a ride for a coin and a new petticoat.

  Even as she had the thought, Victoria rejected it. There might not have been anything more in their intentions than a tawdry tumble when she had accepted the duke's offer, but from their first meal together, she had felt a connection that could not be dismissed as delusion and lust.

  And she still felt it now. When Raeburn opened his eyes again, she discovered that his moment of weakness—of reality? humanity?—had done nothing to stifle her desire for him. Instead, his exposed imperfection seemed to settle like another layer of nacre on the image she was building of him in a private corner of her mind.

  "I will remain here until the fire burns down," he said. "It looks to be well in hand now. If you wish, I can send someone to walk you back to the manor house, or you can go alone."

  "I would rather wait with you."

  He grimaced. "The pantomime is over. There is no reason for you to stay. For that matter, there was no reason for you to come at all."

  "I wanted to. And now I want to stay."

  "Suit yourself." He angled himself so he could see the burning smithy through the open door. Already, the flames were getting lower, Victoria saw, but the villagers still passed doggedly back and forth from the pump with their buckets of water, dumping them to form a wide ring of mud around the building. The autumn sunlight poured over the scene like thin honey, the curling smoke more black against the glittering blue of the sky, every fold of the villagers' clothes etched with sharp shadow and clear light. There was something mesmeric about the dancing fire and the steady, circling passage of the men and women in that pale brightness.

  But Raeburn did not look mesmerized. His expression had settled back into lines of restless frustration. Victoria knew he wanted to be out there, hauling buckets along-side his tenants, but he made no move to leave the carriage. What was it that stopped him? Mrs. Peasebody had spoken of an illness, and she'd heard that albinos could not see in bright light, but Raeburn was no albino. Perhaps it was something similar. If it damaged his eyes or blinded him when he went outside, he would not dare venture out no matter what he desired.

  "The smith is Annie's uncle." He abruptly broke into her thoughts.

  "The one who was first holding her?"

  "Yes. The men of their family have been smiths here for as long as anyone can remember. The forge burns once every century or so, but it has always been rebuilt." He shifted to look at her. "But Tom Driver has been talking of leaving for Leeds. His son's already there, and there isn't much work for a smith in a town this small. Horseshoes and repairs are all he does anymore, and he prefers the fancywork he learned at his father's knee. I don't know if he could do more than horseshoes even in Leeds, but at least there would be more of them."

  "So your smith will follow the weavers?" Victoria asked, remembering their discussion the night before.

  "Perhaps." He looked out at the building again, his face inscrutable. "When I was young, I dreamt of what I'd do when I became the duke. I would be fair and just and generous, and the tenants would love me. I would be like a king in a fairy tale, and because I was so good, all my fields would yield double measure and all my sheep would bear twins."

  Victoria snorted. "When I was a little girl, I pretended that the Duchess of Windsor had a little boy bidden away a few years older than our future queen and that he would succeed to the throne and marry me."

  "You did not dream small."

  "Nor did you, to imagine that one pair of hands, however determined, could hold back the tide of time."

  A sudden crack split the air, interrupting them, and Victoria started and whipped her head around to see the roof of the smithy collapse, sparks shooting into the air as thatch rained down into the shell of the four walls. The villagers scampered back with cries of alarm. Slowly, majestically, the wall nearest the endangered cottage fell inward, and the flames, subdued for a moment, shot up again twice as high.

  Victoria's attention was brought back to the duke by his sigh. The tension in his face had suddenly eased, and she realized that he had been waiting for that wall to fall, for if it had gone outward, it would have taken the cottage with it.

  "Andrew!" Byron shouted, and a moment later, the footman appeared in the doorway, the flushed Annie half hidden behind him. "We will go now. But first—first, tell Tom Driver that I will rebuild his smithy if he decides to stay."

  "Aye, thy grace." And with that, Andrew swung the door shut, leaving them in darkness once again.

  In darkness. Before she could lose her nerve or be interrupted again, Victoria blurted the question she had been wondering since she arrived. "Why do you shun the light?"

  Raeburn stilled, and she sensed his sudden strain across from her as the carriage jerked into motion.

  "Call it an affectation."

  The words were light, but his tone was unequivocal—the subject was closed, and he would tolerate no more questions.

  With a sinking in her belly, Victoria leaned back and let the rest of the ride pass in silence.

  "Why did you ask about Annie?" Byron asked.

  Victoria stood across from him in front of the door to the Unicorn Room. She had been withdrawn and cold since her unfortunate question in the carriage, and he had been reluctant to allow her to take her leave of him with that edgy awkwardness still hanging between them. So he had taken it upon himself to escort her to her room, and she had voiced no protest.

  "Call it an affectation."

  Those clipped words came back to him like a blow. Victoria must have read some small betrayal in his face because her own expression softened. She looked uncomfortable. "It's of no importance. Just one of the strange thoughts I've been having recently. I never questioned anything before, I suppose, and now…" Her clear gray eyes met his frankly. "Now that I've started, I don't seem to know where to stop." She gave the explanation like a peace offering.

  Byron's nod accepted it, and after a moment's pause, he continued his line of speculation. "I asked because… well, do you ever wonder what would have happened to your child?" He asked the question softly—after his own reticence, he half expected her to snort and turn away without answering.

  But to his surprise, she laughed mirthlessly. "No, because I know too well. Fostered out to a vicar's family, hidden away in the country, or, if that failed, sent with me into exile in Nice or Rome. No, I never wonder, and I am hardly ever sad that it did not survive. It would have been a terrible life for a child."

  "And his mother."

  "Yes. I admit to that much selfishness." Her look grew far away. "Sometimes—not often, mind you, but sometimes—I look at the other girls who came out the same year I did, and I wonder which I'd be like, the ones who hate carrying every child, who call them dirty little creatures and keep them hidden away with nannies and nursemaids save for a Sunday pat on the head, or those who seemed to be transformed from girl-child to matron with nothing in between, whose worlds are now as centered on teething and first steps as they had been on day dresses and dance cards." She shook her head.

  "Neither. Those divisions are too simple for you."

  She smiled, but her expression had a wistful edge. "That's no real answer."

  "It's the best I can give." He bent down and kissed her softly, a mere brush of the lips. "I have to meet with Tom Driver before supper."

  She sighed and opened her eyes. "And so you recall me to my own duties, for I must write to my mother. Until supper, then, your grace."

  "Until supper," Byron murmured. And with a bob of her head and a swish of her skirts, Victoria was gone.

  Victoria closed the door behind her and leaned against it. She felt emptied as she never had before, and confused. Raeburn was such a frustrating bundle of contradictions that she could make neither heads nor tails of him. He strove to appear indifferent to everything abou
t him, but the more Victoria was with him, the more he revealed that he cared deeply, more deeply than anyone she knew. Duty. Beauty. Even love—she had heard the hurt behind his jaded bitterness, and though she knew he did not tell her all, she sensed unhealed wounds festering beneath his impartial facade.

  She shook her head free of those fruitless thoughts and crossed to the night table beside the bed, hoping to find writing paper and ink there. But when she reached it, she discovered a letter was already waiting for her. The morning post? It must have been, and then taken most of the day to work its way from the porter's house to her chamber.

  The handwriting was her mother's distinctive scrawl, beautiful and nearly illegible, but it had an unsteadiness she wasn't accustomed to seeing. Her mother must have been composing messages in the carriage again, Victoria thought as she broke the seal, carrying it to the deep window seat to read in the fading evening light.

  Ah! My dearest, darling daughter—

  How desperately I miss you, and I rue every moment that we did not part more happily.

  Victoria snorted at the countess' usual exaggerations.

  Rushworth is desolate without you, as am I. I have had to cancel all my engagements in the shire, for I cannot stand to face everyone alone. Lady Bunting was most insistent that I grace her tea—Tea! If such a circus could be given such a dignified name!—but, alas, I had to decline.

  I am so desolate without you! Please, hurry back to Rushworth. We all miss you.

  Your dearest, most loving Mamma

  Victoria frowned. The bathos was expected, but the repetition was not. Even more troubling was the reference to Lady Bunting, whoever that was. Old Lord Bunting had been a widower now for three years with no intentions of remarrying, and his son was hardly out of leading strings. Well, whatever was happening back at Rushworth, it would have to wait until the end of the week. Shaking her head, she set the letter aside.