by Lydia Joyce
"I know," Byron said shortly. He had not returned to the Unicorn Room since Mrs. Peasebody first reported that Victoria had briefly regained consciousness.
The doctor sighed and replaced the spectacles on the end of his nose, tilting his head up to peer through them at Byron's face. "You should be keeping cold compresses on that, your grace."
"Yes, I know," Byron repeated. "Thank you, Dr. Merrick. Mrs. Peasebody will send for you if you're needed again before morning."
"Yes, yes," the doctor muttered, still examining Byron's face. Then he shook his head slightly and shuffled down the stairs toward the bedchamber that had been prepared for him.
Byron leaned against the door as soon as the old man tottered out of sight. Inside, he could hear the low murmur of voices, Mrs. Peasebody's constant flow punctuated by Annie's more hesitant responses. Neither was the voice he wanted to hear, the one that had last rung out clearly in a rejection of him and everything he offered. Then there will be no week!
Could that same voice, laced with fury and bile, be the confused, thick voice that had cried out for him through opium dreams? He shook his head, rolling it against the door. He could not puzzle it out. Not now, with the pain of his face sliding between his thoughts, unraveling them before they could take shape. All he knew was mat he could not answer her call. When the fever broke and the drugs stopped clouding her mind, she would issue a second rejection, as clear and cutting as the first had been furious, and he would not bare himself to that. Not again.
He closed his eyes against the burning in his face and deeper, in his gut. No, whatever he did, he could not let her see him.
Nightmares still clung in tatters around the bed when Victoria finally opened her eyes. The room was swathed in darkness, and it was a long moment before she realized where she was. She had a dazed recollection of worried servants, a hoary old man with a thoughtful expression, and warm drinks of beef tea, laced with something more bitter that washed away the pain but sent her into dreams full of confusion. And before that, the shove that sent her hurling down the side of the causeway. Her shove. And the expression on Raeburn's face as she wrenched away…
She pushed back the stifling blankets, nudging rag-wrapped bricks away from her body and letting the blessedly cool night air caress her naked flesh. Her head throbbed dully whenever she shifted, and there was a constant, warning ache in her right ankle and hip, but her mind was clear if sleep-heavy and her eyes, now that they had adjusted, could make out vague shapes in the darkness, blacker shadows and coal-gray patches that she struggled to reassemble into her memory of the room.
Then it came. That stirring that was more felt than heard or seen in the darkest corner of the room. She strained her eyes, but the blackness swallowed everything. Still, under the scents of camphor, lamp oil, and the ashes of the fire, she thought she caught a hint of sandal-wood.
"Raeburn," she said, the name coming out like a breath. "You came."
Something happened in the shadows, a stiffening or cessation of movement so minute Victoria had not realized there had been any movement to begin with. And then silence, stretching out thin and taut.
And nothing more.
For a long moment, she held herself tense, hardly daring to breathe. But there was nothing but the heavy darkness that wrapped around her, pulling her down under its smothering weight. She fought it second by second, but slowly, inevitably, she slid toward the beckoning oblivion of sleep.
On the edge between dreams and waking, though, she thought she heard a sigh and a whisper: "I couldn't help myself."
Dawn found Byron back in the cave of his bedchamber. Exhaustion and pain had finally made him powerless against Mrs. Peasebody's badgering, and he had stumbled back to the Henry Suite, ostensibly to get some rest. But now, sprawled on the bed, he could not sleep. His face stung despite the chilled, Wet cloth he had placed over it, but worse were his thoughts. They buzzed through his head like hornets, angry and circling, without respite.
Why hadn't he stayed away? He'd planned to visit her only for a moment, he had promised himself—while Victoria was asleep, when she'd never know. But that moment had stretched into minutes, the minutes into an hour, and she had awoken.
And she had known.
That thought sent a surge of something indescribable through him, some strange emotion that left his senses humming and his mind jangled. She had known, and she had called his name, and he had… done nothing. He had been incapable of response. What could he have said? "Yes, I am here, but you have seen me for the last time." And if she had asked why—why he was there, why she would never see him again—what would he have answered then? The mere thought of lying to her made him sick, but the truth he would never confess again. Once was enough.
The honesty of children is a dangerous thing, he thought bitterly. But at least it kept him from having to repeat a lesson that was hard enough to swallow once…
It had been a dark and wind-torn day, with just enough rain to stir the trout while not being enough to keep young boys indoors. Just a few months shy of public school—a route only one of them would take, as fate would have it—Byron and William Whitford had made the most of their last days of freedom. Byron's weakness had come upon him years before, so Will was well used to his neighbor and best friend's eccentricities and knew the cloudy day would be one of their few remaining chances to play together outside.
How many times Byron had wanted to confide in Will the exact nature of his disease! How many times he had started to speak and been held back by the memory of the warnings of his mother and nurses! It was well he said nothing, for that summer day would prove that the revelation of his secret was the death of his innocence.
Bundled up to his nose and with a broad-brimmed hat, Byron followed Will to their favorite spot on the stream and settled under the spreading branches of an ancient oak. They played the part of serious anglers for all of half an hour, and when that met with no success, they began amusing themselves around the stream as boys do—wading in the knee-deep current, skipping stones, racing sticks. Byron kept to the shadow of the oak and kept a sharp watch on the sky, but the day showed no signs of brightening. Finally, the boys sprawled belly-down on the wet grass and talked about their plans and expectations for school and cursed roundly their parents' blindness in insisting that each follow his father's footsteps, Byron at Eton and Will at Harrow. Slowly, their talk drifted away into silence, and they fell asleep.
Byron had woken to agony. As he slept, the tree's shadow had moved and the sun had come out, searing half his face, the backs of his calves, and even the soles of his feet. His cry of pain roused his friend, and as Byron tried to explain, words tumbling over each other, Will's eyes got only wider and wider as his face grew tight in a mask of horror until he stumbled to his feet and ran away.
A groom had eventually found Byron wrapped in a ball of misery at the foot of the oak, his face so blistered he could barely open his mouth to speak, his feet too tender to walk. He still had not healed when Will left for Harrow and school began at Eton, but he no longer cared. He informed his mother of his intent to remain at home for his education, regardless of the special precautions Eton had agreed to take. She had not had the heart to refuse him and had engaged the first in a series of tutors.
Byron never breathed a word of what had passed between him and Will, but it was a breach that never healed. For the next decade that Byron had remained in his parents' house, he and Will met half a hundred times at dances and dinners during the breaks between terms. Always, Will would avoid his eye, slipping to a far corner of the room and pretending to be engaged in animated conversation with some county matron or debutante. Once or twice, Byron caught Will looking at him with an inscrutable look on his face, but they never spoke again. Not even when Will had become engaged to Charlotte Littlewood, the woman Byron had thought he wanted to marry.
Was he foolish? Byron asked himself for the thousandth time. Had he taken the shock of one young boy too much to heart? B
ut Will had not been any young boy. He'd been Byron's closest friend, his only friend, his confidante in almost everything. Will had accepted every' oddity of his behavior without question… until the moment of discovery. If his closest childhood friend reacted to his weakness with such revulsion, how could anyone else be expected to accept it?
Even 'Victoria. Especially Victoria, who accepted nothing without turning it, weighing it, picking it apart first.
But still, even with his old shame fresh in his mind, even with the searing pain reminding him every instant of what stood between them, he could not steer his mind away from her.
And when, finally, he slipped into dreams, everyone there wore a mask of her face.
* * *
Chapter Eighteen
When Victoria woke the next time, daylight was streaming through the windows of the Unicorn Room and she was wrapped again in blankets up to her chin. She lay staring at the canopy for a long moment, limbs too heavy to move.
The light and the soft, out-of-tune humming that was coming from the hearth told her Raeburn was no longer there, and Victoria couldn't suppress a surge of disappointment. That presence, that voice—had she heard the voice?—they had been enough to make her believe, if only for a moment, that he had forgiven her.
Forgiven her for what? she demanded of herself. She'd done nothing wrong except leave, overstepped no boundaries he hadn't crossed time and time again. Yet the memory of his twisted expression held her answer. She had hurt him. As strange as the idea seemed, she knew it was true.
Yet he had followed her. She clung to that fact. He had followed her despite their argument and his aversion to the sun. A jolt of guilt shot though her. Someone had carried her from the keep to the manor house. It could have only been Raeburn. Had he found his hat? Were his eyes hurt? Would he come to her again?
Speculation would get her nowhere. With sudden decisiveness, she pushed all but the bottom layer of blankets off and sat up, wincing as her head protested the movement and pain lanced up from her ankle.
The humming stopped abruptly, and a moment later, Mrs. Peasebody was at her side.
"No, no, no, my dear, you can't be getting up yet!" she protested.
Victoria's bladder said otherwise, and she told the housekeeper so. In another five minutes, she was back in bed, mis time clothed in her nightdress and propped up against the headboard. Mrs. Peasebody rang for the doctor and spent the time before he arrived fussing over her until Victoria wondered how much of her headache was from the blow and how much from the housekeeper. But she held her tongue because she knew the old woman meant well, and the rings around the housekeeper's eyes attested to a long and sleepless night on her account.
The doctor arrived just as Victoria was finishing the last of the gruel Mrs. Peasebody had pressed on her. Victoria had never much cared for porridge of any type, and she had no appetite that morning for anything, so it was with relief that she set down the spoon as the elderly man tottered in.
He was, as she had expected, the solemn, hoary-bearded man she half remembered from the night before. He showed Mrs. Peasebody out, then ordered Victoria to lean forward so he could inspect the lump on her head.
He prodded it delicately, occasionally harrumphing. Finally, he released her and nodded. "Just as I thought, though it's easier to tell now that the swelling has reduced. Shallow cut, almost certainly no fracture. It will be tender for a few days longer, but there should be no lasting damage." He peered at her keenly over the rims of his spectacles. "No dizziness, your ladyship? No problems with memory or movement or speaking?"
"I have hardly been allowed out of bed, but there are none to my knowledge," Victoria replied, bemused by his grandfatherly efficiency.
The doctor harrumphed again. "Then let's have a look at that ankle." He unwrapped the bandage and removed the splints that supported it, but he did not try to bend it, merely squeezing it gently with one cool, papery hand as Victoria gritted her teeth against the pain. He made a noise of satisfaction and rewrapped it with practiced speed. "It's broken, of course, your ladyship," he said conversationally. "A simple fracture, so you should stay off it and keep it wrapped for six weeks, and you'll be right enough again. I would, however, recommend against falling off horses in the future."
"A recommendation I fully intend to take to heart," Victoria replied dryly.
The doctor nodded and put the back of his hand against her forehead. "Still a touch of fever, I think, but that should pass soon. If you're in too much pain, I've left opium drops with Mrs. Peasebody."
Victoria shuddered, remembering the dark dreams that had pursued her through the night. "No, I'm sure I shall be fine."
"Then you may begin to resume more normal activities tomorrow, but you shouldn't try to walk for another month. Two weeks more with a cane, and then you can remove the bandages for good." He patted her hand, rose, and turned to go.
"Wait," Victoria called as he reached the door. "How-how are the duke's eyes?"
The doctor looked back at her over his shoulder, surprise written on his wizened face.
"His grace's eyes? His eyes are perfectly fine." He turned away again.
"And where is he now? If I might ask?"
"Sleeping, I should hope, your ladyship," the doctor replied. "He's doing as well as can be expected, considering, but he's as stubborn as his great-uncle."
And before Victoria could frame another question, he left.
Byron knew he would have to look in the mirror eventually, but he could not bring himself to it. He slouched in the chair in his office nearest the grate with a cool cloth across his throbbing face. He would have happily thrown the cloth into the fire if removing it wouldn't make his face hurt worse; he had little faith in its healing abilities beyond the temporary assuaging of pain.
What would he look like after it healed? He remembered his great-uncle's face with a shudder—there was not an inch of skin that wasn't thick with netted scars, his ears and bulbous nose deformed with them. Then Byron would be an exile in truth; he could not appear in society twisted and deformed, confirming all the ugly stories he knew circulated about him. He imagined spending the rest of his days in the Dowager House alone, a monster amid its beauty. He could find no amusement in the incongruity.
Even if he were not so marked this time, there was no guarantee that he would be preserved the next. No, it was best for him to become used to being a recluse now. Perhaps then isolation would smart less when he had no choice.
At least he had sent that damned doctor packing with his poultices and plasters. The man had made Byron's great-uncle his life study and seemed to feel he had some ownership over Byron because of it. Dr. Merrick was a good man, a compassionate man, but all of his poking and prodding and experimentation—useless, like those of the dozen doctors Byron had seen before him—made Byron want to strangle him. It was bad enough suffering from such a weakness; it was far worse to be confronted with someone who seemed to find it an endless source of fascination.
He had every right to be angry with 'Victoria. After all, if she had not stolen his hat and then shoved away from him when he was trying to help her… But to Byron, her part merely seemed a piece of the greater irony of his life.
Victoria would be all right, Byron comforted himself. Dr. Merrick had assured him of that. Even if Byron would never see her again, he would not have to bear the guilt of sending her away with some injury that would never heal. Will, Charlotte, Leticia. God, did he spoil everything good thing that ever happened to him?
Byron closed his eyes under the cloth and tried to force his mind toward sleep, but it was a long time in coming.
"Tell me more about the old duke," Victoria said, looking out over the front drive and, in the distance, the collection of cottages that was the village and the burnt-out shell of the smithy. Mrs. Peasebody had protested her rising from bed, but Victoria had too much of a headache to read and felt she would go mad if she had to spend another hour staring at the unicorn tapestry while the hou
sekeeper knitted and fussed over her. Especially when her mind kept straying to the warren of dark passages and the man who lurked deep among them…
So Victoria had hopped over to the window with the housekeeper's assistance and sat on one of the seats built into the wall, her leg propped on the stone seat across from her. Staring out of the window was an improvement—at least the undulating landscape did not seem so intimately, inescapably a part of Raeburn as every stone of the manor did.
"What do you want to know, thy ladyship?" Mrs. Peasebody asked.
"I don't know." Anything that will distract me from thinking of his successor. She shook her head, banishing the thought, and her eyes fixed on the charred remains of the smithy. "Tell me about him and Annie's mother," she said, picking a subject at random.
The rhythmic click-click of Mrs. Peasebody's knitting needles slowed. "Well, dearie," the housekeeper said after a moment's pause, "there's not much to tell, I suppose, and what there is to tell is more than I ought to be telling. Not that I suppose it can do any harm, but it doesn't seem right, spreading stories about the dead. But if thy ladyship wants to know—"
"I do."
"Polly was a chambermaid, of course. I believe I told thee of that."
"You did."
"Well, she was. And I suppose the greatest ambition that ever crossed her mind back then was to become a parlor maid. She'd never hoped to marry, dearie. She wasn't pretty, though I'm the last woman to say an unkind word, as thoo knows. As a matter of fact, most would call her downright homely. That alone would make it hard enough to catch a man, but with three brothers, she had no expectations, and she was a little slow in the head. Kind, mind—let no one say I did not grant her that—kind, but slow."
"Then why did the duke want her?" Victoria asked, curious despite herself.