by Lisa Cach
“Get it off me! Aieee, my hair, my head!”
Valerian lifted her head, listening, eyes going wide. “Oh, Oscar, no.” She dropped the book and scrambled up just as an auburn-haired woman stumbled into the clearing, swiping her hands at Oscar, who beat his wings about her ears in an attempt to become airborne with her hat.
“Finders keepers! Finders keepers!” Oscar cawed.
“Bad bird! Release her at once, Oscar. Oscar!” Valerian ran to the woman, searching for a handhold on the madly flapping bird.
“Waaaa aa aa aa. . . .” Oscar wailed in protest as she tried to pry his talons free of the silver lace trim of the hat.
“Stop it, stop it,” Valerian scolded, her cheeks red with mortification. “I do you a favor by letting you out, and look what you do! Do you want to spend our entire stay in my rooms?” At last she got him disentangled from the woman’s hat and hair, and transferred to her own shoulder. “Ah, madam, I am so very sorry. He meant no harm.”
The woman stood bent over, hands on her knees, body shaking, her face turned down as she caught her breath.
“Are you all right?” Valerian asked, becoming concerned.
“Mother! Mother, where are you?” a child’s voice cried from down the path.
“Lady Stanford!” a woman called.
At last the woman stood straight and raised her face, and a peculiar hiccoughing gasp escaped her as her eyes moved from Valerian’s face to Oscar, once quickly over Valerian’s dress, then back to her face again. “He is yours?” the woman asked.
“I am afraid so, yes,” Valerian admitted.
The woman stared for a moment longer, eyes wide, then dissolved into laughter. “Good lord, I have been attacked, and had my hat ravished by a lady’s pet crow.” She put her hand up to her coiffure, and the tatters of lace hanging from her hat.
“Raven, my lady,” Valerian corrected, lips twitching. “He meant you no harm. It is just this passion he has for shiny things.”
“Oh ho?” Another trill of laughter ensued, and then the owners of the calling voices stumbled into the clearing, a finely dressed woman and a little boy about six years old.
“Mother?” the little boy asked, running up to the woman, “Are you all right?”
“Lady Stanford, are you injured?” the other woman asked.
Lady Stanford wiped delicately under her eyes with the edges of her index fingers, removing the tears, chuckles still rumbling in her chest. “Good heavens, yes, Lucas, I am all right. And no, Catherine, I am not injured.”
“Oscar is a superior bird,” Oscar said.
The little boy’s eyes widened, and he sucked in a breath, shaking with excitement. “Ohhh, he talks! Mother, did you hear him?” He tugged at her skirts.
“Yes, I heard.”
Valerian lifted Oscar onto her hand, and knelt down on the grass in front of the boy, ignoring her skirts. “If you are very gentle, you can pet him,” she told the boy.
Lucas looked up at his mother for permission. Lady Stanford nodded, and the boy reached out a quivering hand. Oscar tilted his head, and Lucas jerked back his hand.
“He will not hurt you,” Valerian said. “He has been petted by many, many children.”
Lucas reached out again, and this time stroked Oscar’s back three quick times.
“Biscuit!” Oscar declared, making Lucas jump. “Poor hungry bird. Pooooor hungry bird.”
The women laughed, and Valerian smiled. After an unsure moment, Lucas smiled too, and stepped closer to get a better look at Oscar.
“Did you train him yourself?” Lady Stanford asked. “I did not know that ravens could talk.”
“I have had him since he was a chick,” Valerian explained, keeping her eye on Lucas and Oscar. “Ravens are intelligent birds. Smarter than parrots.”
“Can we show Clary?” Lucas asked, his fear all but gone. “She would like to see him. Can we?”
“We could not impose on this lady,” Lady Stanford said.
Valerian glanced up at the woman. “Who is Clary?”
“My daughter Clarissa. She is confined to the indoors, I am afraid. She is recovering from a nasty cold.”
“She loves birds,” Lucas said.
Valerian stood up, giving her skirts a brief shake that did nothing to remove the damp spots over the knees. “It would be no imposition to show her Oscar. I know how bored children can get, stuck indoors. I would be happy to provide her some entertainment.”
“Really, I do not think I could ask such a thing. . . .” Lady Stanford said, trailing off with a hopeful look on her lovely face.
“Nonsense. It shall be my pleasure, and ’twill be little enough to amend for the fright Oscar gave you. I insist.”
“Well, if you insist, then I should not be so rude as to disappoint you.” Lady Stanford smiled, and Valerian found that she could not resist returning the expression.
“Have you bedded her then, and gotten her pregnant, like you did the last one?” Nathaniel’s father, the earl of Roth, asked, his face red with anger as he stood stiffly in front of the fireplace.
“She is not pregnant, and she is nothing like Laetitia,” Nathaniel said through his clenched jaw, hanging onto his temper by a thin thread.
“You can understand why your father might think so,” his mother put in from her damask-upholstered chair. “After all, she is from no better a background, and from what you have said, has no family but a cousin who is married to a cobbler. She does not sound particularly suitable to be the next countess.”
Nathaniel closed his eyes, drawing on his patience. “She is intelligent and kind, with a natural grace and beauty. She is well-educated and generous, and every inch a lady.”
“It sounds to me as if you are infatuated with the girl,” his father said, his tone thick with disapproval. “You are in no state to make a rational decision on the matter, if you are thinking with your breeches and not your head. This is just the situation that got you into trouble last time.”
“Listen to your father,” his mother said. “I do not know why you insist on choosing your women from the lower classes. Do you purposefully mean to hurt us?”
“For the last time, she is nothing like Laetitia. The situations are not in the least alike!”
“You are deluding yourself if you think not,” his father said. “Perhaps you want to marry the girl because you messed things up so badly with that other chit, eh? Perhaps you think you can do it over with this one, make things right somehow, atone for what you did to Laetitia by offering to marry this girl. Have you considered that?”
“That is not true,” Nathaniel protested, but even as he said it felt the subtle sting of truth. It was certainly not the whole reason he wanted to marry Valerian, but he could not deny that his guilt over his last affair had changed him, changed how he chose now to deal with Valerian. The man he had been a year ago would have thought nothing of keeping her as his mistress.
“Is it not?” his father asked. “Even though you know this Miss Bright is unsuitable, you could have married her without our permission. I think you want us to tell you you cannot, to make your choice for you, so you can absolve yourself of responsibility and tell yourself you did all you could this time around. What other reason would you have to be here, seeking our approval?”
Nathaniel looked at his father, and when he spoke his voice was flat. “Because she will not have me. She believes she is an unsuitable choice of wife for a baron, and does not even know I will inherit the earldom. She believes that my family would never accept her, nor my friends, and thus there is no future for us.”
Both his parents were silent at that proclamation, and then his father grunted. “Well. It sounds as if she may be a step above that Laetitia wench, after all.”
“If she will not have you,” his mother asked, “then why are you here?”
His father answered for him, speaking slowly as if deciphering a mystery. “ ‘Twould seem he thinks that if he can get our approval, he will be able to per
suade her to marry him.”
“Well, he must be deluded to think we would help with that,” his mother scoffed.
“I think the fool truly figures himself in love,” Lord Warrington said.
Nathaniel laughed despite himself, and rubbed his face with his hands. Good lord, somewhere along the way he had lost his mind. How had he ever thought that he could enlist his parents’ aid in getting Valerian to marry him? A more lamebrained scheme he had never had.
His laughter would not stop, and he stumbled over to a chair and dropped down into it, his legs sprawled out before him. He was dimly aware of his mother frowning at him.
“I do not know what has gotten into you,” she scolded, then got up to leave the room. “Talk to him,” she said to his father, as she paused at the door. “I begin to think he is not right in the head.”
How right she was, and she did not even know the half of it. He should have carted Valerian off to Scotland the same night her aunt died, and married her before she had the sense to refuse him.
Instead, he had bungled the entire affair. Even his relationship with Valerian had suffered as a result of his efforts to be honorable. He had been keeping her at arm’s length, for fear that his desire for her would overwhelm his intentions if he let her closer. And this, when she needed him most.
He had been an idiot. His parents would never see past her lack of a titled family. “I do not suppose it would make any difference to you if I said her grandfather was Charles II, would it?” he threw out.
“I do not know why it should impress me that one of her parents was a bastard.”
Nathaniel nodded, aware that he must have a moronic grin on his face. “You have always been friends with Thomas Carlyle. You must have run in the same circles in your youth. You probably met her mother or aunt. They went by the name Harrow at the time, Theresa and Emmeline. Their mother was one of Charles II’s mistresses at one time, although it did not stop her from later being murdered, accused of witchcraft.”
Lord Warrington narrowed his eyes in concentration, then widened them suddenly.
“The very same,” Nathaniel said, seeing that his father did indeed remember the sisters. “It truly would be a scandal to marry her, coming from such a family. And do you know? I do not care.”
“I would have no choice but to cut you off,” his father said coldly. “I would disinherit you.”
“You do not have the power. The title will go to me, no matter what you do, as well as the family seat. Raven Hall is already mine, God bless Great-uncle George and his lack of heirs. I need neither your money nor your approval.”
“You forget who has the upper hand here,” his father said, but Nathaniel could hear the hint of desperation in his voice. “You can give up your family, but you will not get your woman without us.”
“I certainly will not get her with you. It seems to me I stand a better chance alone.” He felt his spirits lift giddily at the prospect. He could not please both his parents and himself in this. There was no reason to continue to try. It was his own conscience that mattered: It was his own life that had to be lived.
He stood up. “Good-bye, Father.” He saw the look of disbelief in the older man’s eyes, and turned away.
“Oscar is a greedy guts,” five-year-old Clarissa said, feeding him another piece of broken biscuit. “Oscar is a greedy guts.”
“Greedy guts,” Oscar repeated, and Clarissa laughed until her laughter turned into a hacking cough.
“Perhaps that is enough excitement for one afternoon,” Lady Stanford said.
They were in the nursery, Lady Stanford, Valerian, Clarissa, and Lucas. Valerian had discovered that Catherine was in fact Lady Stanford’s personal maid, despite her elegant dress. She was down in the kitchen, feeding Tilly.
“No, Mother. Please, a little longer,” Clarissa wheezed when she had the coughing under control.
Valerian saw the indecision on Lady Stanford’s brow and added her own coaxing to Clarissa’s. “A little longer will not hurt,” she said. And then, after a moment, “I know something of children’s ailments. Would you mind if I looked more closely at Clary?”
“The doctor has been here several times. The cough, it seems to linger no matter what medicines he brings.”
“My own father was a doctor. May I check her? I will do no harm.”
“Of course you would not. Yes, please, if you know anything that might help, I would be grateful to hear it.”
Valerian gave her a reassuring smile and went through the motions of a brief examination, relying more on her internal senses than what she saw on the outside. Clarissa’s attention stayed on Oscar, so much so that she seemed oblivious to Valerian’s touch.
Valerian heard the nursery door open as if from a distance, and ignored the sound, and the soft voices that followed, focusing her thoughts deeper within herself and within Clarissa’s sick body. She found the illness in the child’s lungs, embedded deep within, and felt how her body fought to rid itself of the inflammation. The battle was presently a stalemate, masquerading as the relatively harmless aftereffects of a cold.
The power to heal flowed through Valerian’s blood, stronger than she had ever felt it before, and she could not have restrained it if she had wished to. Her hands warmed, and she felt the force of her ability flood the girl’s lungs, absorbing the inflammation and sending strength surging through the child’s body.
She took her hands away and opened her eyes. Clarissa looked up at her in puzzlement, and touched the place on her arm where Valerian’s hands had rested. “It tingles,” she whispered to Valerian.
“I know,” Valerian whispered back. She straightened, and turned to find that Lady Stanford had been joined by an older woman. They were both watching her: Lady Stanford with curiosity, the older woman with suspicion and bad humor.
“She is on the mend,” Valerian said. “I would not be surprised to see her up and about within a day or so.”
“Dr. Garrick said it would be at least a week yet before she should be let out of bed,” the older woman said. “I think we would do better to trust his opinion. Or are you a doctor, too?”
Valerian saw Lady Stanford tighten her lips, but she could understand the older woman’s distrust, and smiled gently. “Merely a doctor’s daughter, who has seen dozens of similar cases. Please do continue to have Dr. Garrick examine her. I would never expect you to take the word of a stranger.”
“Grandmama, did you see Oscar? I want a raven just like him,” Clarissa said, her voice clearer than it had been minutes before. “He talks.” Clarissa held a piece of biscuit up, out of Oscar’s reach.
“Pooor hungry bird,” Oscar said.
The older woman raised her eyebrows.
“He attacked Mama’s hat,” Lucas added from the other side of Clarissa’s bed, where he was sitting on a wooden chair, feet swinging.
“Did he indeed?”
“She screamed and screamed and ran through the park so fast that—”
“Lucas, that is enough,” Lady Stanford interrupted. “I am sure that Grandmama does not wish to hear the entire story.”
“On the contrary.” The woman sat, a hint of a smile softening her features. She gestured to Lucas, who slid off his chair and ran to her, climbing up onto her lap. “It is a fascinating story, and it sounds like one I should very much like to hear. But first, perhaps introductions are in order?”
Lady Stanford colored. “Of course. How remiss of me. Mother, this is Valerian Bright, who is in town to visit a friend. Miss Bright, my mother, Lilith Warrington, the countess of Roth.”
Valerian felt the blood slowly drain from her face. Lady Warrington’s smile disappeared, her face growing hard as she slowly stood, not even looking at Lucas as she set him on his feet.
Valerian stood as well, and lifted Oscar onto her hand, feeling her heart thumping in her chest. “Your pardon, Lady Warrington. I would not have come here if I had known whose house it was. I shall leave at once.”
“Mis
s Bright? Mother?” Lady Stanford said. “I do not understand. Do you know each other?”
“We know of one another,” Lady Warrington said softly. “This is the woman your brother has foolishly determined to marry. And you can see what a schemer she is, to have worked her way into your confidence so quickly.”
Valerian breathed deeply through her nose, seeking calm. She liked Lady Stanford, and would not have her thinking ill of her. “Please believe me,” she said to Lady Stanford. “I had no idea you were Nathaniel’s sister. I could not have known. Forgive me.” She moved quickly to the door, opened it, and rushed down the corridor, Oscar flapping his wings to keep his balance on her hand.
“Oh, Oscar,” she whispered under her breath, as she found the stairs and fairly ran down them. “Of all the hats in all the city, why hers?”
“Rrrraww,” Oscar answered.
“Foolish, foolish bird,” Valerian said, her throat tightening.
“Miss Bright, wait!” Lady Stanford called from behind. Valerian did not pause, finding the next flight of stairs and hurrying down them, the heels of her new shoes clacking on the marble. She had never intended to meet his family. And doing so by accident, with her defenses down. . . .
“Eee-diot! Eee-diot!” Oscar cawed, and lifted off of her hand. “Baron Ravenall!”
“Oscar, no!” Valerian stopped, watching in horror as Oscar took flight in the grand foyer of the house. One of the sliding wooden doors that had been closed when she arrived was open now, and framed in the opening stood a startled Nathaniel.
“Oscar? What?” was all he had the chance to say before Oscar alit on his shoulder and started pecking at the lace of his cravat. Nathaniel paid no attention, his eyes seeking her out where she stood frozen on the staircase. “Valerian? What in God’s name—”
“What in—” another male voice echoed, and a man who could only be Nathaniel’s father came up beside him, shoving the other sliding door wide, his dark eyes taking in the raven and then Valerian. Valerian heard the footsteps of Nathaniel’s sister and mother behind her, and then they, too, halted on the stairs.