by Lydia Joyce
She found writing materials in the night table drawer as she had hoped and began her quick reply. She spoke of negotiations, of walks in the garden, of her maid Dyer—with a fleeting pang of guilt for the lie—and of expectations of returning soon. She finished with a breezy signature, sanded it, and folded it to be sealed later, when she had a candle lit to melt the wax.
Glancing out the window, she saw a slim figure toiling up the drive. Beyond, along the main road, a dark smudge of soot still rose above the village, but Victoria's attention was taken by the walker.
A bonnet blocked her view of the figure's face, but she sensed it must be Annie. Annie, who had somehow made it to the village before the duke's carriage could reach it, who had fallen into her uncle's arms, sobbing, as if he should comfort them both as he watched his livelihood go up in flames. Maybe her tears were meant to give comfort instead of beg for it. If so, it was an expression of sympathy that seemed entirely extraordinary to Victoria. Even accounting for the time it had taken to find Raeburn and rig the carriage, Annie must have sprinted to reach her uncle before Victoria and the duke.
The walker was no more that a few hundred yards from the manor when another figure burst into view from under Victoria's window. This time, the sandy hair and awkward gait left no room for doubt: Andrew. When she saw the footman, the walker sped up, and they threw their arms around each other as they met.
They made no move to kiss or disengage—just stood there, motionless, with their arms locked about each other. Victoria felt a weight settle over her as she watched them, an indefinable sadness that made her feel slow and old—and jealous.
She turned away abruptly, angry at herself that she could even imagine wanting what the maidservant had. She would light a candle and seal the letter now, and then she would find some other occupation for her thoughts. An occupation that concerned only her own affairs.
* * *
Chapter Thirteen
"Yet another room?" Victoria asked as Fane bowed her into the study of the Henry Suite.
"I hope you don't mind," Byron said easily, setting aside the quarto. "I decided that you were right. The tower really is too tawdry." He motioned for her to take a seat at the small playing table where supper was spread. "Besides, I was busy with the records. I thought it far more convenient for you to be brought to me."
"Of course." She folded herself gracefully into the chair. "Your taste in women's clothing is quite excellent, it seems," she remarked, motioning to her deep cornflower blue dinner dress. It must have arrived some time earlier that day, but Byron had not received word. No wonder, considering all that had happened.
Byron dismissed that thought. "I can take credit for little more than the colors, I fear." He stood and crossed to her side, judging it with a critical eye. The seamstresses had done well, he admitted. Even working within the conservative constraints of the current dinner fashions, they had managed to create something almost provocative. The bodice was shaped in an imitation of a man's jacket, edged in darker blue ribbon, the deep opening it formed filled by a frilled chemisette. He'd seen a similar style on a dozen other women, but somehow, on Victoria, it had the air of revealing something not meant to be seen. Perhaps it wasn't the dress, he admitted. Perhaps it was the way Victoria held herself or even the way he'd come to think of her.
He shook his head and raised his eyes to her face, surrounded by small, carefully sculpted curls. There was a faint blush on her porcelain skin, and her eyes seemed almost artificially bright, though there was a down-turning of her lips he could not remember seeing before.
"If you were anyone else, I'd say something glib about the gown not being half so ravishing as the woman, but I fear you'd laugh if I were so facile."
Victoria's mouth widened slightly in a small smile. "Oh, no, I wouldn't laugh—but I should be dreadfully disappointed. I thought more highly of you than that."
"Thought? I refrained, and yet I still receive the censure?" He caught her chin in his hand and ran a thumb down the delicate smoothness of her cheek. He did not know why he was so fascinated with the softness of her skin, so different from his own. Had his face ever been unmarred by the hundreds of tiny scars and pits that now covered it? Even at birth, could it have been as sweetly tender as Victoria's still was? He dropped his hand from her face.
Victoria must have seen his frown and misinterpreted it, for she caught his hand in his and looked up at him, gray blue gaze earnest. "I didn't mean to tease. Mirth fits me ill today."
He forced himself to smile down at her. "It wasn't you—only a thought I suddenly had. Mirth seems to have fled me as well."
She laughed, but the sound was hollow. "The fire punctured the fantasy so neatly. I fear to look at what is left."
Byron took the chair opposite her and uncovered the dishes. "Supper, for one, though I doubt that shall lighten the mood. I'm afraid there are no surprises tonight. Stewed peas, the cook's version of pommes Anna, and leftover cold tongue and rabbit stew." He filled her plate. "You should be flattered. Mrs. Macdougal doesn't take out her fancy French recipes for just anyone."
This earned a freer laugh. "I am duly honored."
They began to eat, Victoria leisurely surveying the room. "Mrs. Peasebody said this is your private suite."
"Mrs. Peasebody is a gossipy old hen," Byron said with feeling. Then he shrugged. "But I can't quite imagine Raeburn Court without her. Like the inconveniences of the architecture, she is both annoying and endearing."
"Indeed." Victoria returned his smile before reverting her attention to the room. "But I would have thought that your own chambers would have something more of you in them."
"What do you mean by that?" Byron asked, stifling his automatic defensiveness as he scooped up a forkful of potatoes. Even with the cook's alternations—was that a hint of pork drippings?—it was impossible to make pommes Anna taste anything but delicious without either undercooking or burning them, and the cook had done neither.
"I mean that I doubt you've done a thing to the rooms since moving in except having them cleaned and rearranging the books on the shelves." She waved to the bookcase behind his desk, overcrowded with records books and ledgers and random scraps of paper that his great-uncle had scribbled notes upon.
"And how would you know that?"
Victoria grimaced. "I've seen the Dowager House, and… and I think I can presume to claim that I know you at least to some extent by now. Mangy deer heads, strange little tables crowded with hideous curios, terrible lamps made of all sorts of unspeakable things—it hardly seems your style."
Byron barked a laugh. "I should hope not!"
"I have heard of combining work and pleasure, but it seems that you left pleasure out and simply transported your work into the middle of someone else's room."
"The ghost of my great-uncle seemed to stay my hand any time I even countenanced making a change," Byron intoned. Victoria gave him a skeptical look, and he continued on a more sober note. "These rooms have never seemed like mine. Maybe it shall be different once I begin remodeling the manor house, but I have felt like a stranger in my own house for the past year."
"If you'd at least take away all the extra furniture and bric-a-brac, you might begin to find yourself more at home," Victoria pointed out with crushing practicality. "And then the other changes would come much more easily."
He smiled ruefully. "Too, too true. I suppose I must chalk it up to laziness, then."
She snorted. "If nothing else, this room does reveal one thing about you. Now I understand why you dared me to make the bargain with you."
"Oh?"
"An excess of tedium. This place is layered with it. Every day, nothing to look forward to but another round of expenditures and three-per-cents, musty deeds and sheep diseases. Considering your formidable reputation as a rakehell and a bounder, it is surprising you haven't gone mad."
Byron raised his glass in a mocking salute. "Oh, but I have. The bargain, remember? Twenty thousand pounds for a single week migh
t be a record of some kind."
"Money that you will collect, and with interest, in due time. Money that you could not have collected now under any circumstances. You can hardly call mine an extravagant fee, for I have charged nothing at all."
Byron dismissed her argument with a negligent wave and changed the course of the conversation. "You are calling it 'charging,' now, are you?"
"The word is no crasser than those you have used." She set her silverware down and looked him squarely in the eye, her jaw jutted out slightly. "I whored myself, Raeburn. I've not made pretence of anything more refined. And I don't care because I'm enjoying myself thoroughly and I've spent the last fifteen years caring too much about everything."
Byron looked at her, slightly taken aback by her frankness. He could tell she meant it, meant it perhaps even more than she knew. He wondered if her unconventionality would survive the trip back to Rushworth. After all, habit creates many fetters difficult for even the determined to break, and Victoria didn't seem to realize the implications of her change in attitude. But looking at the set of her jaw and the light in her eyes, he could not believe she would bow back into her old role, whatever happened.
But he voiced none of his thoughts, merely swallowing a bite of tongue and saying, "Eloquently put."
She shot him a narrowed glance. "You would do well not to laugh."
"Am I laughing?" Byron demanded.
"You have that distant expression that means you're hiding something."
"And you think it amusement." He smiled slightly. "Now I am amused. You declare that you've cared too much about what people think, and yet in the next breath, you worry about what I'm thinking."
Victoria sighed, her face relaxing into soft lines once more. "A pathetic start, I suppose."
"Not pathetic. Natural." He reached across the table and took her narrow hand in his. "And I wasn't laughing. I was thinking about what a stir you would cause if you returned to society and… and stopped caring, as you say."
Victoria raised her wineglass in a mocking salute. "That would be a sight to see. Me, the talk of London, scandalizing every level of society from Billingsgate to the Buckingham."
He really could go see her, he realized. The idea held a seductive appeal, but the very desirableness made him recoil as if he'd been stung. No, he was finished playing the lord of night and shadows, the mysterious guest, the dark duke. He had no stomach for swirling cloaks and vague allusions anymore, and even less for the whispers that seemed loudest when he tried to seem as other men. His masquerade might have impressed young, fluttery things, but Victoria would give him a single raking stare, snort, and turn aside. And like the proverbial emperor, he would be left naked before the world.
No, better to pass his days among sheep and servants in the country, neither of which would think to question what their master was and what he seemed to be.
"I don't go to town anymore," he said flatly.
That single sentence, dropped inelegantly on the table like a bloodied, feathered game hen, effectively stifled the rest of the conversation until supper was finished. Then they sat, mute and awkward across the table, Byron watching the play of lamplight across Victoria's pale hair as she studiously examined her empty plate, her lips creased in a faint frown.
Finally, Byron broke the silence. "I spoke to Tom Driver this afternoon."
She looked up, her eyes searching his face. "He is going to Leeds."
"Yes."
Victoria's eyebrows rose at the sharpness of his tone.
He sighed. "It seems like they're all leaving. Every few months, another family gives up and goes to Leeds or London."
"They aren't abandoning you." Victoria spoke softly, almost hesitantly.
He looked at his hands, broad and capable as any farmer's, and remembered what she had said about holding back time. A feeling that had been brewing in him for years boiled up, frustration and impotence erupting at the memory of Tom Driver's earnest, agonized face. "I feel like I am failing them. They can't stay anymore, Victoria. Times change, and I haven't figured out how to keep up. Better flocks and new farming methods will make the tenants richer, but it will do nothing for the weavers or the cabinetmakers or the smiths. I can't make this world work for them. I feel like there must be an answer out there somewhere, but I just can't see it." His hands clenched into fists.
"None but the tenants are yours to worry about," she pointed out.
That quiet, practical voice cut across his circling thoughts, and he smiled despite himself. "I sound like a throwback to the days of Edward the First, don't I? The lord who rules his people with judicial disinterest and paternal care. A ridiculous sentiment, I suppose."
Victoria looked at him for a long moment, reading self-mockery and bitterness in his gaze. She kept her expression bland and spoke with careful lightness. "Possibly, but a noble one."
Raeburn blinked, his face going blank, and just stared at her.
"Has no one ever called you that before?" It was Victoria's turn to be surprised.
"I—No. Never." Amusement overcame astonishment in his expression, and he laughed. "Nor have I ever begun to consider myself such except in the most literal, ducal sense of the word."
"Then perhaps you don't know yourself as well as you think."
Raeburn snorted. "When one has as little to occupy his mind as I, one comes to know oneself better than one might like. You have only known me for a few days, Victoria; perhaps I have been on my best behavior and you are the one mistaken."
Inevitably, Victoria's mind returned to the question she had asked in the carriage. "Perhaps. You tell me remarkably little for as much as we speak."
Raeburn's face darkened as he caught her meaning. "Forget it, Victoria," he said softly. "Forget that you ever asked me anything. Most of all, forget there was anything to ask."
Victoria pressed her lips together and shook her head. "I can't do that You know it's impossible."
She must have betrayed more of a reaction than she had thought because his expression softened slightly. "Will you at least believe that my silence was not meant to hurt you?"
Victoria made her voice go cold. "How could it hurt me? After all, we're the merest acquaintances on all levels but the carnal." She hesitated, but the simmering anger he had roused within her pushed her onward. "And if you thought your choices were to speak or to wound and yet you still chose silence, I do not see why you now seek absolution. You chose the easiest path, believing that you would tread on me to reach it. So what expectations of forgiveness could that wide-eyed insult entitle you?"
Raeburn's mouth tightened. "Once again you cut nicely to the heart of the matter."
There was a warning in his voice, but Victoria ignored it. "I have become skilled at disseminating disillusionment. If you wish forgiveness—since you believe there is something to be forgiven—then there is a solution: Answer my question."
A mask slid over his face, and Raeburn stood abruptly, his chair tipping back with the sudden motion and righting itself with a thud. His eyes never leaving hers, he stalked around the table. Victoria had the fleeting thought that this time she had pushed him too far—this time something had broken within him. He reached behind her and pulled her chair away from the table, spinning it in the same motion until she faced him squarely. She realized she was gripping the arms so tightly that her knuckles were white, and she relaxed her hands with effort, fighting to keep her expression bland even as she felt the blood rush into her face. Even then, though, she could not entirely ascribe her reaction to fear and anger; she felt a second warmth flood across her body that had nothing to do with ire and everything to do with his nearness, the furious heat of his body as he loomed so close over her. She tipped back her chin in defiance, whether at him or at her own reaction, she did not know. Raeburn's face darkened even more.
"You are not the master here." The words were not shouted as she had expected, but his whisper chilled her more than the loudest roar. Suddenly, all her answering anger
flooded away—so uncharacteristically that for a moment she was left mute and reeling. Without that balancing fury, she tottered against the attraction he exerted over her—tottered, and fell.
"I am not," she agreed quietly. His hands gripped her chair back, and he leaned over her so that his face was a scant six inches from hers.
"And you have no right to interrogate me."
"None."
They fell into silence, Raeburn glowering down at her as she battled the lightness in her stomach and returned his gaze levelly. The edge of his cuff slid against her cheek, and she shivered against the prickling awareness that rushed across her skin.
That only seemed to anger him more. "You will not manipulate me. Get up." He emphasized his point by grabbing her arm and all but dragging her to her feet. She gasped at the tightness of his grip, but he ignored her, pulling her across the room and shoving open a door to another windowless room. For an instant, Victoria had the ludicrous impression that she was caught in Bluebeard's castle, but it fled as swiftly as it had come when the light from the front room seeped past him to reveal the shadowed furnishings of an austere bedroom.
She turned toward Raeburn when he released her, but he kept his back toward her as he lit the lamp sitting atop a low bureau. As soon as it was burning steadily, he shoved the door closed. Only then did he face her.
"We had an arrangement."
"I have kept it," Victoria said simply.
"You have asked for more."
"And you haven't?"
His eyes glittered in the orange light of the lamp. "Take off your crinoline. Now."
Now that he was away from her, Victoria could think again, and her irritation sparked anew. She returned his look glare for glare and began unbuttoning the front of her dress, her movements abrupt. She shoved down that other feeling, that weak tenderness, and tried to smother it under layers of ire.
"No. Just your crinoline."