by Lydia Joyce
"Wisdom and cowardice are too often confused," Byron intoned.
That earned him an exasperated glance cast over her shoulder, but Victoria said only, "I suppose I should go down. There's nothing more to look at up here. We're both getting damp through, and it looks like the sky will let loose at any moment."
Byron reluctantly led the way back down the stairs. At the bottom, he extended his arm to Victoria, and they passed through the gap in the wall side by side.
And as if that were some kind of sign, the clouds let loose and the drizzle turned into a sudden downpour.
Victoria made a noise of vexation. "This will be the second time you're responsible for getting me soaked!"
Then, without warning, she pulled herself free from his arm and made an undignified dash for the shelter of the outbuilding. Before she reached its overhang, though, the sound of her laughter rang out over the hiss of the rain—not a sardonic bark at the futility of keeping dry but a reckless, joyful peal that seemed to surge from some force deep in the earth until it found voice in her throat.
When he ducked through the doorway a few seconds later, Victoria was standing hatless and dripping in the middle of the room, hanging her cloak from a peg on one of the roof beams. Even in the darkness of the rain-lashed shelter, he could see that her hair was completely disheveled, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed. She shot him a look that he knew was supposed to be reproving, but her glowing face betrayed her attempt at severity.
"I shall be lucky if I'm not ill for a week after this foolishness," she said.
Byron pulled off his own greatcoat and hat and hung them beside hers. "I doubt that you are inclined to infirmity."
Victoria snorted. "You might pretend to be contrite."
"I might if it weren't so obvious how much you enjoyed it." He unwrapped the scarf from around his neck and draped it over the coat.
To his surprise, Victoria actually looked abashed. "You heard me?"
"Like a bell. It was unexpected, to say the least." He made the last sentence suggestive, inviting her to provide an explanation.
She paused, her expression conflicted, then dropped her eyes to her hands as she slowly peeled off her gloves. "You've caught me out, I see." She laughed, but the sound was strained. "You must think me mad."
"Never." He took off his own gloves and caught one of her hands between his. His were cold from the rain, but hers was icy. He frowned. "Surely there's some firewood in here."
Victoria pulled her hand from his, looking around with more energy than his comment warranted. "Over there," she said, nodding to the corner where the shepherd's cot sat. She hesitated. "But should we use it? I should feel rather guilty if I thought someone else might go cold—"
Byron waved away her worries as he crossed over to the pile of wood, half hidden under the cot. "The shepherds go around to all their shelters a few weeks before lambing to make sure there are supplies. Besides, they aren't supposed to be using this building at all. Just think of it as rent." He looked at the charred spot of the fire circle on the floor, now darked with the rain that had fallen through the roof.
"By the door?" Victoria suggested.
Byron nodded and scooped up an armful of deadwood, carrying to the doorway, where he arranged it to one side of the threshold. He took a box of matches from his coat, and on the third try, he got the fire alight. Victoria drew near as the skipping, hiccupping flames moved from the tinder to catch the kindling, which burned with a steadier glow.
Her gaze slid to the doorway where the rain sheeted down. Byron waited patiently for her to speak, laying out the blanket, china, and picnic luncheon next to the fire.
Finally, she sighed. "Do you ever feel sometimes like there's a… a kind of rash in your blood? As if a piece of you just wants to fly away and never stop?"
He thought of the delicate sneer on Leticia's face when she had sat so calmly in her parlor and insulted him, of the insane impulse that had overcome him and driven him north into Yorkshire, riding like a madman—of the urge that had first sent him reeling into society after Charlotte's betrothal to Will Whitford and, even earlier, the fierce resolution to never reveal himself again after Will's display of horror-struck revulsion.
But that wasn't what Victoria was speaking of. He knew instinctively that what she said had nothing to do with that furious tumult of anger and despair that had seemed to wrest sanity from him. He thought of his childhood, of the days spent in darkened rooms when just beyond the thickness of the velvet curtains, there was an entire world of colors that he could only see in stolen glimpses when his tutors and nurses had turned their backs. He thought of how he would steal those looks again and again, drinking in blue skies and emerald lawns long after the sting of his face warned him to stop, how the next day, feverish and aching, the nursery maids would tut-tut over him, wondering how he could have possibly been burned… How could he have explained how the lawns and gardens, not even worth a glance to them, seemed to call to some smothered part of his heart? How could he tell them that he would trade places with the gardener's half-witted son just to be able to run barefoot and bareheaded across the grass with the sun kissing his face?
He glared out into the rain, the cloud-swathed sky only a shade lighter than dusk. This was his world—the hours when the sun was veiled by storms, the moments of winter dawns and sunsets when the light was weak and impotent. There was no use longing for sunshine, as that foolish boy had. And yet… a part of him still did.
Byron realized that Victoria had been watching him for nigh on five minutes while he stewed and stared. Her expression was guarded, as if she half expected him to make some sort of dismissive response, but there was another undercurrent to it, a flickering of something like sympathetic pain, as if she suspected that there might be more in his silence than repudiation.
"Yes," he said finally. "I think I know what you mean."
She nodded and ducked her head, and for a very long time, that was all that was said.
The rain had lightened from a downpour to a drizzle again. From the doorway, Victoria could see through it to the countryside below the hill, where a few sodden sheep huddled in the lea of a hillock and the smoke from chimneypots tangled in the gentle wash and was pressed back to earth. The chill air was so damp she could almost drink it, and she imagined mat it tasted sweet and brown, like the soil it smelled of. The clamminess that crept along her limbs was almost pleasant, because with only a small shift back toward the fire, she knew she could drive it away again.
"What will you do, Victoria?"
Victoria started, brought suddenly back to herself by the sound of Raeburn's voice. She considered pretending she didn't know what he meant, but that was pointless. "When I return? I will take each day as it comes. What more could I do? You have accused me of being false to myself. How true would I be if I began making plans when I truly have no idea of what I want?"
"Point taken."
Victoria turned to look at him, spurred by the same sense of division, of the distance between them that had been haunting her since she had arrived. "And you—what do you want?"
He smiled humorlessly at her from the shadows behind the doorway, where he had retreated when the rain first began to lessen. His hair had dried in wild tufts that stood out around his head, making his rugged countenance seem almost feral. "I am the Duke of Raeburn. What could I possibly want that I do not have?"
Victoria snorted. "The Dowager House to be finished. Raeburn Court to be habitable. All your lands to be profitable again. Perhaps not Leticia, but a wife. An heir, for you did not build the nursery for nothing. You want what everyone wants—happiness."
His expression darkened. "And you do not think that I am happy?" The words were quiet, but they had a warning tension in them that would have made Victoria change the subject two days ago.
No longer. She met him stare for stare. "No. I do not think you are happy, and I do not think that you ever have been. You're a hurting, lonely man, and the more you d
o to try to disguise it, the more you betray yourself. You admit that you drew up the plans for the Dowager House for yourself, not Leticia. You designed it on a dream, on an image of domesticity that is so… foreign to everything you've ever represented yourself to be that almost no man who thought he knew you could believe you had anything to do with it. You accuse me of robbing myself, but I am nothing next to you."
She stood restlessly. "You've heard my story. But you've kept yours so close to your bosom that I can't begin to fathom it. For three days now, you have asked all the questions. For three days, I have spread myself out bare for you, like an eager cadaver on an anatomist's table. No more." She shook her head. "Only once have I asked you a question of any substance, and that one question you refuse to answer. What do you fear? What has the world done to you—what could it do?—to make you lie and hide yourself away?"
Raeburn stood abruptly, looming over her with his face such a twisted mask of emotion that she thought for a second he might strike her. She recoiled instinctively, then stopped herself and deliberately straightened, lifting her chin in defiance.
"You will not frighten me into silence this time."
She faced his glare without flinching, his hazel eyes burning into hers. His mouth opened, then shut again, muscles bunching in his jaw. For an instant, a mere instant, she thought she saw him soften…
Then the moment was gone. He spun on his heel, turning his back to her and striding over to the horses. "The rain has stopped, and it is lightening. We must go." The words were guttural, ground out, and they made Victoria want to scream. But there was nothing she could do.
She sagged against the wall, defeated, as Raeburn tightened the mounts' girth straps. She had no hold over the duke, she realized bitterly. She only had the bargain, that flimsy piece of paper that kept them both at Raeburn Court for the space of a week. She'd allowed him to wrap his influence around her, to tease her secrets out of her, to make her almost believe that he cared… And when she asked for something in return, he gave nothing because their week was only a diversion, and he would put nothing into it he did not care to lose.
Fool. She knew she deserved a hundred names worse than that, but that was the only one she could come up with to begin to encompass the enormity of her self-delusion. Fool. The bitterness of it made her belly churn. She should have turned her back on the duke when he had first offered her that ridiculous bargain. She should have marched out of Raeburn Court and never looked back.
Why not now? she thought suddenly. Why couldn't she leave whenever she wanted? Raeburn himself had pointed her to the truth. She couldn't go on as before, and she had no intentions of it, so why should she stay here? She almost laughed with the freedom of it. Her brother had made his own bed—let him lie in it! As for her, she would leave this tumbledown ruin and its dissolute duke with the next mail coach. She'd leave him, and she'd never, ever look back.
The thought was both heady and sickening. She pushed away from the wall, suddenly lightheaded, and glared at Raeburn's back, still firmly turned against her. Her stomach clenched, and she clutched the door frame for support against knees that suddenly wanted to betray her.
One more chance, she told herself. I have to give him just one more chance.
"I will ask this only once more," she said, her voice trembling despite her resolve. "Byron Stratford, why do you shun the light?"
He stiffened, went utterly still. For four whole breaths, Victoria stood watching him, standing there as if he'd turned to stone. Then he seemed to shake himself, and he turned to face her. Victoria's stomach dropped at his expression, closed and terrible. Never had she seen such a cold light in his eyes nor such hardness around his mouth. Even before he spoke, she knew he would not answer her.
"You know you have no right to ask me that," he grated.
"No," Victoria agreed, her voice cracking on the word.
A hole seemed to open before her, under her feet, and she had the horrible sensation of sliding, falling, all while she was rooted in the doorway. "I have already admitted that I have no right at all, no more than you did to ask me your own questions. I can do nothing but repeat what you said and ask for your trust. After all, what will it matter in a week?" Her voice sounded distant, as if it were coming from someone else, far away.
Raeburn's face contorted. "And like you, I can choose whether to answer. You chose to speak; that is your own affair. I choose silence."
"Then there will be no week!" The words came out half gasped, half sobbed. She launched herself from the doorway and barreled past him, yanking her mount's reins from his unresisting hands and pulling the horse after her. The room seemed impossibly dark, and there was a ringing in her ears. Her breath rushed through her lungs, but she still felt like she was drowning. As she barreled past the pegs on which their outer clothes were hung, she snatched his wide-brimmed hat from the wall.
"Stay here. Cower in the shadows until night falls. But whatever you do, don't you dare come after me."
Victoria barely recognized her own voice, hissing with bile. Raeburn's eyes widened, and he took a step toward her, but by then, she was through the doorway and swinging onto her horse. She kicked her mount into a gallop as Raeburn burst outside behind her. She didn't look back—she would never look back—but she heard him skid to a stop and call after her.
No, she repeated grimly. She would never look back.
* * *
Chapter Sixteen
"Damn you, Victoria!" Byron roared. Victoria's only response was to lean forward in the saddle, urging her horse to an even more reckless speed. His black hat flopped from her hand like a wounded bird, and Byron cursed again, ducking back inside to fetch his own mount. He yanked on his gloves and swung into the saddle, sparing only a glance at the emerging sun before urging Apollonia into pursuit. With Victoria's head start, he would barely catch her before she reached the woods. But no matter what, he'd be damned if he'd sit helpless in a shepherd's shelter while she rode out of his life. She wouldn't leave until he was bloody ready for her to leave, and then only with his last words ringing in her ears.
She must have heard the sound of his horse's hooves on the causeway, because her riding crop tapped her mount's side and Princess put on another burst of speed. Byron ground his teeth and followed.
Then time seemed to trip. Suddenly, the horse and rider ahead of him were no longer galloping down the causeway but slipping wildly to the side and plunging down the slope, his hat whirring out of Victoria's hands as Princess lurched. The horse whinnied in terror, his hooves sliding over wet stone. One leg caught, and he pitched to the side. Still holding fast to the saddle, Victoria snapped through the air like the end of a whip. The horse met the ground with a sickening thud, his rider pinned beneath him.
Even from a distance, Byron could see Victoria's body go abruptly limp. He spat another curse, this one with the force of terror behind it, and charged down the causeway after them. He couldn't think—he didn't want to think—
Before he could reach them, Princess rolled to his feet. Victoria was pulled from the ground as her boot caught in the stirrup, but the horse shook himself, and her ankle slipped free. Princess danced away from where she lay sprawled, his eyes rolling.
"Oh, no you don't," Byron ground out, pulling up Apollonia, but it was too late. Princess gave a snort, turned tail, and ran back toward Raeburn Court.
"Hell," he said with feeling. Turning back to Victoria's form, he added, "And bloody hell."
He swung off his mount and dropped the reins, trusting Apollonia to stay where she'd been left despite Princess' defection, and slithered the six yards down the side of the causeway to where Victoria lay.
To his relief, she was sitting up by the time he reached her, clutching her ankle between her hands.
"Are you all right?" he asked as he skidded to a stop beside her.
She let go of her ankle, and the glare she shot him proved that the fall had done nothing to change her mood. "I will be fine." But the words we
re even more clipped than the glare could account for, and he suspected that the tightness around her eyes was as much pain as anger.
His own anger had been snuffed by the sight of her body flung beneath the weight of the horse. God, he might have lost her—He stopped that thought before it was fully formed, but still his belly tightened churningly, and lingering horror roughened his voice. "Princess is gone. Let me help you to Apollonia—" He started to slip a supporting shoulder under her arm.
"Leave me alone!"
The exclamation was so violent that Byron released her at once, rocking back on his heels as if he'd been struck. There was fury in it, but even more alarming, there was a catch that in any other woman would have made him think that she was dangerously close to tears.
Victoria pushed herself to her knees, then stood slowly, hissing harshly as her right leg took her weight. "I will do it myself," she said through gritted teeth. She took one unsteady step up the slope.
"Victoria—" Byron started, his fear for her changing into irritation now that she was safe. "Your ladyship, do not be foolish. You can hardly stand, let alone climb a hill unassisted."
"I do not need your help," she snapped, but even as she made her declaration,, her leg gave out from under her, and with a sharp cry, she fell to her hands and knees. Byron caught up to her as she knelt there, gasping, her fingers digging into the bracken.
"Let me help you up—"
"No!" She pushed to her feet and took another lurching step.
Byron's temper snapped. "Victoria, stop this childishness before you get us both killed!" He seized her elbow to steady her, but she turned, swinging at him, her face twisted horribly.
"Don't touch me!"
Her blow connected with his chest. It wasn't very hard, but between the punch and her turn, it was enough to wrench her elbow from his grasp and send her reeling backward. She put a foot back to catch herself, but the leg crumpled under her, and suddenly her expression turned from anger to fear as she pitched down the slope.