by Lydia Joyce
"Another one of your great-uncle's legacies?" she asked, more to make conversation than because she cared.
Raeburn shrugged. "Princess was intended for Leticia, but he'll suit you well enough, I'm sure."
"His name is Princess?" Her disquiet was buried in her surprise.
"Not, of course, his real name. The grooms at Chathamworth dubbed him that, and it was so appropriate it stuck." He grimaced. "You'll see what I mean."
"And the other?" She motioned to the tall black mare.
"Apollonia goes by no other name." He frowned at the groom. "Stephen seems to have neglected to bring a mounting block. Would you like me to help you up?"
"The day I can't mount a horse without assistance is the day I no longer deserve to be called an English lady." She swept by him and swung onto the saddle, her skirts swishing. She adjusted them with a tug and hooked her right leg over the support so both hung down the left side. She took the reins from the groom with a nod. Oh, how she had missed this! The feeling of contained power under her, the swooping freedom of muscle and flesh. It had been not even a week since she had last ridden, but it seemed like a lifetime.
Raeburn gave her an amused glance and mounted Apollonia with light grace. The mare tossed her head, more welcomingly than restively, and he nudged her into a walk. Victoria guided her horse abreast of him, and they started down the long drive.
"Is he always like that?" Victoria asked Raeburn, giving Princess a doubtful look. The gelding was prancing—no, mincing—along the road, neck arched and hooves high.
Raeburn smiled. "And now you know why he's called Princess. But no, he'll tire of it in half an hour, and other than his vain streak, he's quite a steady horse."
Victoria made a face. "I was hardly worried that I might fall off."
"Never been thrown, have you?" Raeburn asked blandly.
"I was practically born on a horse—of course I've been thrown." She smiled. "And kicked, and almost rolled over once by one sassy little mare."
"Quite the horsewoman," he pronounced solemnly. He gave her a narrower glance. "Let me guess—none of the rest of your family rides."
"How quickly you come to the crux of it! No, my mother hasn't been on a horse since long before my birth, my father's gout keeps his range short, and my brother prefers to race light carriages along the back lanes to terrify the local populace. I, however, ride."
"Almost every day," he guessed.
She looked down the slope of the bare hill, stretched out so invitingly below her. "Almost every day, for hours at a time."
They were silent for a long moment as Raeburn led them off the main drive and down a narrow side path. Princess wrinkled his nose and champed the bit at being asked to walk through the grass, but after his initial protest, he went calmly enough, only his ears indicating his disdain.
"Is it only to escape your family?" Raeburn asked finally.
Victoria smiled, a trace of her old trust returning for the first time since their dinner the night before. "I'd be a sad woman if it were, wouldn't I? No, I've loved to ride since the day Father put me on top of my first elderly, rotund pony at the age of three."
"You still remember that, do you?"
Victoria wasn't sure whether he was surprised or not, but she nodded. "Better than almost anything. At first, I was bored and cross because it was hot, the pony smelled bad, and I had a brand new doll waiting for me in the nursery. The groom led me around and around on the end of a lunging line until I was so heartily sick of it I started to develop some plan that would make mem take me back inside."
"And then?" Raeburn prompted.
"And then—they gave me the reins. And the groom let go. And suddenly, I was the freest thing in the world…" She smiled at the memory. "After that moment, they could hardly keep me away from the stables, and they had to give poor Nurse a stolid little pony of her own so that she could follow me across the grounds. But when I was seven and I got my first governess and Nurse had Jack to watch over, I convinced them to allow me to ride wherever I wanted. No nurse, no governess, no groom, no maids, no mother, no father. Just… alone. I could do whatever I wanted, and no one would frown or correct me."
"And what did you want to do?"
Raeburn's question brought her back to herself, and she laughed.
"Run wild like the Red Indians, charge down hillsides until it seemed my heart flew out in front of me. Be mad and reckless, everything a nice little lady is not."
Raeburn's look was meaningful. "You haven't really changed, have you?"
She sobered instantly. "No. I suppose not. I suppose everything has just dammed up inside until a half hour's dash isn't enough anymore."
That reply killed the conversation for several minutes, and they crossed the moor in silence, heather and furze brushing against their legs, catching at the fabric of their clothes. Eventually, Raeburn looked across at her and gave her a twisted smile. "Surely you aren't opposed to dashes now?"
His attempt at lightening the mood was transparent, but Victoria accepted it gratefully. She threw back her head. "Is that a challenge?"
In answer, Raeburn leaned forward in the saddle, and his mount jumped forward in a canter. Laughing, Victoria followed.
"No fair!" she cried. "I don't know where we're going!"
Raeburn grinned at her over his shoulder. "Not that it would much matter, anyway!" he shouted back.
Victoria gave Princess his head, and the horse galloped gleefully in Raeburn's wake.
An hour later, they emerged from a narrow wooded valley just as the first fat drops of rain began to fall. Victoria had asked why it took them so long to reach the ruin when it seemed so close from the garden; Byron had replied that it was indeed close—if one cared to scramble down a cliff to reach it. For the less nimble, this was the only way.
Victoria looked up. Ahead of them rose the mound of Rook Keep, a long ridge leading up to the broken shell of the old castle. From their angle, she could see that the shape of the hill was too regular to be natural and that the flat-topped ridge was the remains of a causeway.
It was only when Raeburn looked back at her, a smile on his face, that she realized she had stopped.
"Well?" he asked.
"Well, what are you waiting for? Lead on, before it begins to rain in earnest!"
Raeburn nudged his horse into a walk and started across the moor toward the looming black shape of the keep.
Victoria should have felt excited or at least curious, but as they approached, her feelings returned to the apprehension that she had felt the previous day. The keep looked less and less like a building and more like the stump of some great stone tree trunk that had grown from the ground, hill and all. It was blatant in its bulk, yet there appeared to be more shadows among its tumbling ramparts than there should be, more depths and heights than its size alone could account for. Wrapped in arrogant fastness, it seemed to defy her as it defied the surrounding landscape, rearing up against the cloud-tossed sky. Again, she had the strange sensation that there were answers there, among the stones, if only she could understand them. And those stones and shadows called to her even as they rebuffed her.
Her eyes were drawn involuntarily to the stiff shape of the duke, riding a horse-length ahead, and the inevitable comparison arose in her mind. She tried to shut the thought out, but the closer they drew, the more insistent it became.
The horses' hooves clattered on half-buried cobbles as they started up the ridge toward the keep, clacking and sliding across the slick stones.
"It was destroyed during the Civil War, you know," Raeburn said conversationally. "Even then, it had been uninhabited for a century, but since the manor house itself had long been indefensible, my Cavalier ancestors made their stand in Rook Keep."
Victoria said nothing, looking up into the broken shell and trying to guess which of the holes had been made by cannon and which by age.
By the time they reached the top, the sparse raindrops had turned into a steady drizzle. Directly
before them rose the square tower, but a little off to the side appeared a second stone structure, low and long, completely hidden from the ground by the curve of the hill. More surprising than the sudden appearance of building itself was the thick thatch that covered half the roof.
"Come this way," Raeburn said as he dismounted, smiling mysteriously.
He led his horse through a doorway in the low building, one of the animal's back hooves thudding dully as it caught on the edge of a half-buried stone. Victoria peered into the dimness, trying to see how large the clear space was inside, but even with the spreading cloud cover, it was too dark within to make out much of anything. So with a mental shrug, she dismounted and followed him in.
* * *
Chapter Fifteen
Byron watched from a far corner of the room as Victoria hesitated, blinking, in the doorway. Never one to leap into the unknown, he thought wryly as her eyes finally fixed on him and she led her gelding inside.
"I thought you said the keep had been abandoned for two hundred years," she said as she approached, looking up at the sagging roof above them.
Byron took her horse's reins and tied it to a post below his own. "It has been." He loosened the girths and gave each mount a pat on the shoulder. "But during lambing season, the temptation to use this building as a shepherd's shelter must have quickly proved too much." He gestured to the opposite end of the long room, where a burnt circle sat beneath a hole in the roof and a bare cot was shoved against the wall.
"Oh," Victoria said. Her mouth twisted in an arid smile. "I have lived over half my life in the country, and I only now realized that I know nothing of the planting and lambing and calving that is the life of the tenants on my family's estate."
Byron raised an eyebrow, amused at the idea of her running out in her nightclothes to the barn to witness the first birthing of an experimental generation of sheep or getting bloodied up to her elbows in a frantic attempt to save a beloved mare. "Not many ladies do. Nor gentlemen—few who hold more than five hundred acres know in any detail what's occurring on their estates."
Victoria's smile gentled, grew curious. "But you do."
Byron shrugged. "I needed something beyond debauchery to fill my youthful years, and since my great-uncle gave me free rein over four of his lesser estates, I had plenty to divert me." He gave her a sideways look. "Come. You wanted to see Rook Keep, and as yet you've seen nothing but the interior of an outbuilding."
"Gladly," Victoria said, looping the long, narrow skirt of her riding habit securely over her wrist. She followed him across the uneven threshold back into the drizzly day. "If I may be so bold, how many estates do the Dukes of Raeburn hold?"
Byron paused, offering her his arm. "Nine, including Raeburn Manor itself. I own several blocks of London and half a dozen near-worthless Bath town houses, too." She rested her silk-clad arm lightly on his, her soft kid gloves lying delicately on his wrist. "The lands are still extensive, though only five estate residences remain open to me."
"Oh? What happened to the others?" She spoke to him, but her gaze was fixed upon the stump of the tower rising directly before them.
Byron watched her covertly as he answered, gauging her reaction. "One, I demolished. It had little to recommend it if it had been in the finest condition, but as it was, it was not fit for habitation. The second, I let out to a shoe manufacturer from London who wanted a nearby country estate to further his social ambitions. The third is now a boy's school. The fourth has been entirely incorporated into a cheese-making enterprise."
Victoria looked at him then, surprise but no shock written on her face. "I would have thought, with the attachment you have toward the manor house here, that you wouldn't have wanted to let the other residences go."
He stopped and turned to fully face her. "It's all well and good to speak on about fine traditions and family history, but I plan to make my contribution to the legacy a group of profitable estates, not another list of debts." He took up her arm again and resumed their slow walk toward the keep. "Times are changing, Victoria. Fifty years ago, the dukes and earls of England were the greatest men in the world. Now even the richest could be bought several times over by the London businessmen." He smiled humorlessly. "We get our revenge by cutting their sons in Hyde Park and refusing to invite their daughters to our teas and balls, but if the truth be known, we're a little afraid of them, afraid mat soon enough we'll be the ones cut from their visiting lists." He gave her a sidelong look. "For all we know, Annie's children will refuse to recognize the next Duke of Raeburn, much to his chagrin."
Victoria shook her head, her eyes bright over wind-bitten cheeks. "Perhaps that is a balance for the weavers and smiths whose fate you lament. But it all seems too incredible. Even here"—she gestured to the monstrous ruins—"where I should be able to believe most easily in the downfall of our class." She smiled slightly. "But this should illustrate my point as well as your own. No matter how the mighty are fallen, they still retain a memory of might that is greater than the most fantastic achievements of the small."
"So you consign our heirs to decay and dissolution."
He laughed dryly. "I think I would prefer oblivion to that!"
They reached the base of the tower, and Byron stopped in front of a narrow fissure in the stone wall. "This is the only way in from this level. The wooden stairs leading up to the main entrance were lost long ago."
"Well, then," Victoria said, throwing back her shoulders in a parody of bravery, "allow me to lead the way."
She edged through the gap in the wall, then stopped dead.
"Oh," she said, her eyes wide as she looked around.
Byron peered over her shoulder. Even though he had visited the ruins a dozen times before, there was something almost sacred about the space that made him catch his breath. Outside, the wind-swept hill was bare and sere, icy drizzle whipped against the old walls, struggling weeds flattened and beaten even in the lea of fallen stones. But within the shell of the keep, there was a protected stillness, a hush that seemed almost unnatural. They stood on a narrow ledge that dropped away before them into what had been the cellars of the keep. The detritus of two centuries had collected on every flat surface—the treads of a moldering staircase, the decaying arches that had once supported wooden floors, in odd angles of stones that jutted out from the walls. And wherever there was soil, bushes and weeds flourished, forming a strange hanging garden that seemed to wrap the space in a kind of spell.
Victoria cast him a sudden, fey smile and hopped onto one of the tilting blocks.
"Is it safe?" she asked.
He looked up at her. "Not if you go jumping about like that, but last time I was here, it all seemed solid enough. There's a skeleton of a lamb down in the cellars, though—warning enough of what can happen if you aren't careful."
She raised an eyebrow. "I'm as nimble as a goat, not a lamb, but I'll take your warning to heart." A small leap, and she was perched on the bottom step of a stone staircase that wound its way up the wall.
Byron's stomach lurched at the way she balanced on the edge, but there was a challenge in her eyes, and he knew that if he said anything, he'd only provoke her into greater recklessness. So he just leaned against the wall with the best semblance of nonchalance he could manage. Victoria looked strangely at home among the tumbled stones, as if they called to a wildness within her. She would make a good ghost for such a place, he thought suddenly. There was something in her spirit that did not welcome peace.
"Aren't you going to join me?" she asked, her pale eyes bright and her head cocked quizzically to the side.
"As you desire," he murmured in mock acquiescence, shaking off his lingering sense of disquiet. He stepped up after her, his boots scraping against the rain-slick blocks.
She turned away and continued lightly up the staircase. Though Victoria kept up a pretense of carelessness, Byron's misgivings were slightly assuaged by the way she subtly tested each block before committing her weight. Still, Byron made it a point n
ever to be more than an arm's length behind her. If she slipped, he wanted to have at least a chance to catch her.
Ahead of them, the staircase grew less solid. Cracks began to appear in the steps, and farther up, chunks of stone were missing. Victoria paused for a long moment, and Byron was on the verge of ordering her down when she squared her shoulders and took two more steps to draw even with a window slit. There, she stopped, turning to face out over the landscape. Her expression changed as Byron watched, her customary guarded impassivity replaced by something more tender and almost awed. Muted sunlight angled through the window to illuminate her face, fine features picked out against the gray stone, the precise nose slightly upturned, the delicate lips relaxed for once and slightly parted, as if she were drinking in the wind. She was a creation of porcelain and light, shining with a vitality that could not be contained by mere flesh. Byron had a sudden conviction that, no matter what happened in the next three days, this was how he would always remember her—an ethereal creature caught in a defenseless moment.
Heavier clouds rolled in over the sun, extinguishing the soft light, and the moment was broken. Byron sighed. He should be glad, for greater darkness meant greater safety, but he could not suppress a pang of regret.
"It is very different from the rolling farmlands I'm used to, but no less beautiful, in its own way."
Byron smiled even though she couldn't see him. "Soon you'll be echoing the sensibilities of the illustriously monikered Lake Poets."
Victoria snorted without turning around. "If you're too much of a cynic for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, I am certainly too much of a cynic for Wordsworth and Coleridge." She glanced up the stairs. "I should like to go higher, but I don't dare risk my neck, coward that I am."