by Lydia Joyce
"Ach, dearie, it isn't the way thoo's thinking—not this one, at least. The old duke left us servants alone and brought up his entertainment from the villages and Leeds. No, Polly became his nurse after the one he hired from London left him. They used to talk for hours, a half-mad old man and a dimwitted village girl, and I suppose after a while, he didn't seem so crazy and she didn't seem so stupid."
Struck by the housekeeper's unaccustomed directness, Victoria looked away from the window to where Mrs. Peasebody sat in front of the hearth, her knitting lying forgotten in her lap. "Did they love each other?"
The housekeeper shook her head. "I don't know if you could call it love, exactly. Not much of my business, anyway. But the duke never did change his ways, and Polly never seemed to expect him to. They were both very lonely people, though, and I think, after a while, they understood each other. And when little Annie came along and Polly died a few months later, his grace saw to it that she was raised and cared for."
"Did she know who her father was?"
Mrs. Peasebody shrugged. "No one kept it a secret, though his grace never said nothing about it. A close-mouthed one he was, if there ever was one! But the day before he died, he saw Annie alone. I never asked her what he said. Reckoned it was none of my business."
Mrs. Peasebody lapsed into silence, and Victoria returned her attention to the window, where she stared out at the slash of the road and village below and thought of the masters of Raeburn Court.
* * *
Chapter Nineteen
The light that spilled through the windows of the garden room was still anemic with the early hour, but Victoria drank it in as if it were as rich as treacle. As if its touch could erase the memory of another, more tender caress, as if its warmth could replace the sharper heat of need and skin on skin…
Beyond her stretched the terrace, and beyond that the wild gardens she had wandered only three days before. Victoria tried to forget all those things. Her eyes were fixed on the antics of a pert, round robin, but no matter how she tried to set her mind on the tilt of the small, gray head, the touch of the sun across flicking feathers, it always escaped to scuttle back into the shadows of the house to the man who hid there. It was over, she told herself again and again, but each time she did, something within her rebelled, and she knew it was no use.
Though her head no longer hurt except when she touched it or turned too quickly, she felt like it was wrapped in layers of blankets, insulating her from the world, making everything around her seem unreal, almost dreamlike. She leaned against the back of the Bath chair, lying back onto the pillow snugged beneath her head. The old duke's Bath chair, Mrs. Peasebody had said. She thought she could still smell the old man on it, a mixture of stale opium, camphor, and decay clinging to the wicker as if to remind her that not even that much was hers.
"My lady?"
Victoria looked up from her sightless staring to find Annie in the doorway, a piece of paper clutched in her hands.
"My lady," the girl repeated, "there's a letter for thee." The maid crossed the room and handed it to her with exaggerated care, as if even such a small motion could somehow injure her. "I could call Mrs. Peasebody to read it to thee…"
"No need," Victoria assured her. The envelope bore her mother's hand, and Victoria's fingers clung to that small proof that the rest of the world still existed beyond Raeburn Court's walls.
"Does thoo need anything else? More breakfast? A book?"
"No, Annie. That will be all, thank you."
Annie scurried out. Victoria stared at the letter for a long moment. Soon, very soon, she would be tracing the missive's path back to Rushworth. Soon, she would escape the waking dream of Raeburn Court for the usual round of county parties and then, close on their heels, another season in London. She had spoken only two days before of her determination not to fall into her old patterns of behavior, but now it no longer seemed worth fighting. The routines were ingrained with the years. How much easier it was just to drift along as before. What was so worth fighting for, after all?
She opened the letter, noting that her mother's handwriting was even shakier than before, and began to read.
My most precious daughter,
How go things in the north? I forgot you were gone this morning and went to look for you, but Jack reminds me of these things, the good boy that he is.
Today I wandered about the garden. I am writing you from the gazebo overlooking the pond. Jack is here with me—he will not leave me alone these days, the dear boy. My headaches have returned, worse than ever, but you mustn't worry about me. Jack tells me you are straightening out some business matter, though what matters you could possibly straighten, I have no idea.
Please come home when you can. I suddenly find myself missing you,
Your loving Mamma
Victoria frowned. If the last letter had been odd, this one was far stranger; it seemed impossible that her mother had written such a rambling missive. Her sense of unreality returned, stronger than ever; there could be nothing beyond the manor house, and her incipient departure would be a plunge into utter unknowable darkness…
She sighed at herself, shaking her head at her own imagination, and tried to blank her mind of everything but the pattern of sunlight on the flagstones of the terrace.
Byron stood in the shadows of the doorway. From his angle, he could see nothing but the pale top of Victoria's head above the curve of the Bath chair, her hand lying over one arm with a piece of paper dangling from her fingers. The pale, smooth hair and the white hand drooping like a wilted lily—they were enough to make his chest tighten, so small and lost in the musty old room.
He should go, he knew. He couldn't come to her—not with sunlight streaming through the windows, not with his face still feeling-tight and painful, not with the mass of welts and blisters he knew his face to be. But he did not stir. He simply stood and watched as seconds ticked by into minutes. Victoria didn't move, didn't even twitch a finger, and Byron thought that perhaps she had fallen asleep.
Footsteps echoed up the corridor, and he stood aside to let Annie duck past. Victoria turned her head as the girl entered the room, her face still blocked from Byron's view by the high wicker back of her chair.
"I came to see if thoo was needing anything, some tea, a pillow for your foot."
"No thank you, Annie. I'm fine as I am. You may go." Her voice was quiet, but Byron felt a great disconnection in it, as if the woman were speaking from some far away place, and he wondered if she'd been taking the opium the doctor had left for her.
Annie turned back toward him and hurried by in her apologetic way, and he was left alone in the doorway again. For a long moment, Victoria sat as if frozen. Then the top of her head disappeared from view, followed by her hand, and it was a moment before Byron realized that she must be cradling her forehead in her palm.
It was time to either speak or leave, he knew, and he hadn't the strength or sense to turn his back on her then. So he spoke.
"Lady Victoria—my sweet Circe." He hadn't planned what he would say, and the endearment escaped like a sigh.
There was a rustle as if Victoria had stiffened suddenly, and then her voice. "Yes?" The question was soft but incredulous, as if she were doubting her own senses.
"I must speak with you."
"About our bargain." It was not a question. "I understand. I have broken the terms of our agreement, and so my presence here is no longer welcome. I apologize for inconveniencing you, and I assure you that I will leave as soon as I am well enough to travel." The words grew faster as she spoke and ended in a kind of breathless rush.
"No." The word spilled out of his mouth before he could stop it.
"Pardon?" Now there was a new stillness from the chair, tense, wary.
"No," he repeated harshly. "You will not go. The contract is not broken unless I say that you have spent these past two nights contrary to the way I desired you to spend them. I say no such thing. The contract is still in force."
&
nbsp; The top of her head appeared again; she had straightened. "But I left, and I have been injured—"
"You attempted to leave. But you didn't. The contract was not broken."
Silence stretched out between them, and finally she asked, in a voice as thin as spun glass, "Why, Raeburn? Why do you want to keep me here? I am no good in your bed now."
Byron scowled, then winced as his expression pulled tender flesh. "Because I've become accustomed to you, I suppose. Because I want the full balance of what you agreed to the day we met." Because I want you, for whatever time is left to us.
There was another pause.
"Would you—would you come out where I can see you?"
Byron's heart contracted, and he had to take a breath before answering. "No. You won't see me again before you leave."
Silence, interminable silence, and then a ragged gasping sound, and Victoria's bead disappeared behind the chair back. The sound came again, and Byron realized that she was weeping.
About him.
He had a mad impulse to rush into the room, to scoop her into his arms and tell her she would never, ever need to cry again—
But the sun poured mercilessly through the window, the sun that had seared his face, the sun that would expose him to her for what he was—a scarred monster, a freak—and so he did not move. He did not dare do anything but stand for a long moment, his own rasping breath drowning out Victoria's quiet sobs. Then, unable to bear it any longer, he spun on his heel and strode blindly through the corridors, seeking the oblivion of darkness to swallow him, to wash through him, until there was nothing left but a shell.
He did not know how much later it was when he found himself in the windowless bedchamber of the Henry Suite. He had not consciously sought it out—he had not meant to direct his feet to any place as he paced through the endless, winding corridors, but he arrived nevertheless. The room was pitch black, but Byron knew he was one step to the right of the bureau, three long strides from the bed. His skin burned in darkness in two long trails of fire, one down each cheek, an insistent reminder of the wreckage of his face.
He reached out and found the lamp. His hand hovered a moment beside it before he forced himself to lower it and close his fingers around the matchbox he always kept there. One strike, and a few seconds later, the lamp flickered to life. He watched the flame's dance for a long moment before raising his eyes and meeting his reflection.
From halfway down his forehead to nearly his chin, his face was an angry red mass, welted as if a brand had been drawn across it time and time again, and blisters clustered thick about his eyes. But the eyes themselves were unchanged, staring wetly back at him. Wetly… In wonder, he lifted a shaking hand to his cheek, and his fingers came away damp. The salt of the tears still seared the raw flesh, but the pain was subsumed in wonder. He could not remember the last time he had cried. Not for Leticia, not for Charlotte, not even for Will. Then, anger and hurt had balled up so hard in his stomach he thought he would vomit, but he had never shed a tear.
Good God, who was this woman who could do such things to him?
It was late. There was no clock on the mantel, and her watch had been taken away with the rest of her clothing at the beginning of the week, but Victoria did not need those markers of time to know that many hours had passed since sundown. Only the dimmest glow came around the edges of the fire screen, and the sounds of the manor evening had faded long ago. The lamp beside her bed was turned down too low for reading. Victoria did not care; she was in no mood for such distractions.
Exhaustion made the room blur and the shadows in the corners take on strange and dancing shapes, but the ache in her ankle and her head kept her from succumbing to the tugging current of sleep. She closed her eyes, mesmerized by the red patterns of light flickering across her eyelids and the sounds of the wind rushing around the rooftops and towers of the manor house. Her tired mind gave the patterns form, half imagination, half hallucination, and the wind seemed to carry snatches of whispered memories—of Walter, of her fifteen years imprisoned in her own fear, but most of all, of the duke.
She tried to shut them out and think of something else, but the faster she retreated, the harder they pursued her. She fought her way back toward wakefulness, but weariness dragged at her mind and pulled her farther under.
She did not know how much later it was when she realized there was only darkness on the other side of her eyelids. The surprise of that discovery was enough to yank her alert. Her eyes flew open, but in the barely discernable glow of the fireplace, she could make out nothing in the room. Still, when she strained her eyes toward the darkest corner, where she had sensed—or had she imagined?—Raeburn's presence before, she thought she could again make out the hint of a shadow that could not be explained by the intersection of the walls.
For a long moment, she just lay there, watching him. This time, she swore she would not be the one to speak first. This time, he must break the breathless silence—if he really was there.
The coals in the fire grate stirred suddenly as an unseen log collapsed, and Victoria started at the noise. For an instant, a stream of sparks lightened the darkness fractionally, just enough that the shadow in the corner became a vague outline, too solid for imagination, and she knew it must be him.
"You said you wouldn't meet me again," she said before she could stop herself.
"I said you wouldn't see me." His voice, strangely rough but unmistakable, lanced through her.
"And I still cannot." Joy, relief, and fear jumbled in Victoria's gut so she could not begin to say which was uppermost.
"I know." Raeburn left the corner, his shadowy bulk moving across to her bedside.
Victoria struggled to sit up, but he placed a restraining hand on her shoulder. She gasped involuntarily at that contact and seized it, the first tactile proof of his presence since her fall. His palm turned upward, away from her shoulder, and he wrapped her hand in his. His touch was firm, and some shivering little part of her stilled at its warmth.
"Why are you here?" She wanted to make the question a demand, but it came out scarcely stronger than a whisper.
His hand tightened. ."I could not stay away from you."
Victoria laughed unsteadily. "Yet as you pointed out, you have not broken your word. I cannot see you."
She felt him stiffen, heard the minute rustling of his clothes at the infinitesimal jerk. "You asked me why I shunned the light."
Victoria shook her head even though she knew he couldn't see it, her throat thickening, choking her. "What does it matter? I am here for a handful of days more, and then I am gone forever. Why should I want to know?" There was bitterness in her words she had surely not intended.
"You did the day before yesterday."
"Yes." The monosyllable sounded forced in her own ears.
"Do you still?" He continued before she could speak. "I don't ask whether you ought—just whether you do."
Victoria swallowed. "I do."
"Then I will show you."
"Raeburn—" she began, but he had already let go of her hand, and an instant later, a match flared. "I have given it up. You needn't—"
But then the match touched the wick of the oil lamp. It caught and golden light burst from it. After a moment's blindness, Raeburn's face swam into view, wary hazel eyes, hawk nose, hard mouth… and across the middle of his face, cracked red skin and pale blisters swelling and distorting those familiar features into something grotesque.
"My God," Victoria gasped, her stomach lurching. She reached out automatically, jerking back when he flinched away from her touch. His mouth grew even harder, and something flashed in his eyes, something like pain or accusation. "My God. I didn't know, Raeburn—I never guessed… this." Her own face seemed stretched tight in sympathy, and she balled her hands into fists and buried mem in the bedclothes to keep herself from reaching for him again. "I swear I meant no harm; I swear I never would have done anything to hurt you on purpose."
The duke just stood ther
e, towering over her mutely, his eyes glittering in the flame.
She felt sick—sick at herself, sick at what she'd caused. Still she babbled on, her desperation growing in the face of his silence. "You must believe me. You do believe me, don't you? Raeburn—Damn you, say something!"
An abrupt, shocked silence closed around them after her outburst, the air still vibrating with her oath. Raeburn opened his mouth, closed it, then swooped down so abruptly Victoria had no chance to react. Suddenly, she was in his arms, her head pressed against his chest, breathing in the scent of him as he clutched her to him.
"God, Victoria, I thought you'd hate me," he ground out into her hair.
"How could I hate you? I'm the one who hurt you—"
"You didn't know, and it was my choice. I could have searched for the hat. I could have taken you back to the shepherds' shelter."
She loosened her grip on his coat and pushed away gently, looking up into his face. "But you didn't. You knew this would happen, and yet you didn't stop and look."
Raeburn shook his head and said, "How could I? You were injured—dying, for all I knew."
"But I had left," she whispered!
"You had tried to leave," he reminded her.
"And it didn't matter?"
He pulled her against him again, rocking her gently. "It mattered more than I can express."
Her throat tightened. "Why didn't you just say? Why not just tell me when I asked?" Victoria shook her head, rocking it gently against his chest. "I told you everything you wanted to know, yet you gave me nothing in return."
Raeburn stilled, his hands sliding down her back to her elbows. "And you felt betrayed."
"Not betrayed, not exactly. Cheated, more like. But how else was I to feel?"
He gave a laugh, short, barking, and humorless. "I never considered that, profound egotist that I am. I only thought of what you would think of me—"
"And what would that be?" Victoria looked up into his blistered, swollen face again and saw pain there that had nothing to do with his injuries.