Lords of the Isles

by Le Veque, Kathryn

  There was something so tragic in the unfinished music. Lucy took the first melody she had played and began again, letting the music draw her deeper this time, farther. Every fiber of her being reached out into the night, trying to grasp the thread the composer had lost when he had set the piece aside. With all her strength, Lucy listened for the magic, the haunting strains that seemed to dance in a rose-hazed mist all around her. Measure by measure, note by note, it curled through every pore in Lucy’s skin and sank into the marrow of her bones, to lie, heavy and pulsing, in the soft, secret center of her spirit.

  Again and again she played what her father had written, each time probing deeper, staying longer in the half world of magic he had woven.

  All the longing, all the loneliness, all the fear hidden inside her rose to lodge in her chest, burning there in embers of need. Joy and hope sparkled, tantalizing, just out of reach, promising fulfillment if she but had the courage to reach out, take it.

  Take what? Lucy wondered dizzily, her eyes closing, the music now as much a part of her as the tiny crook in her smallest finger, the flash of temper in her eyes, the shimmering gold of her hair.

  The music was possessing her in ways that summoned up the grief she had been fighting for so long, the nameless yearning that ate inside her. She didn’t feel the tears run down her cheeks as her pain flowed through her fingertips and was given flight in the music. She didn’t see the first rays of dawn drizzle pink and mauve patterns upon the window ledges.

  She was so lost in the glittering web of music that she would not have known if a dragon were attacking the castle walls.

  She didn’t notice the sound of footsteps echoing on the ancient stone stairs. She didn’t hear the anguished sound of denial that rose in the throat of the man who stood framed in the stone entryway, his boots mud-spattered, his eyes filled with silent agony, as if she had just torn away the last piece of his soul.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dawn was tinting the sky with the most delicate paint box colors of rose and violet when the earl of Valcour trudged wearily through the castle door. It was over. He was certain he’d remember for the rest of his life the hellish vision he had seen when the Jarvis boys pried the lid from the dirt-encrusted coffin.

  As a boy, Dominic had concocted a hundred grisly fates for the musician who had betrayed him: fierce duels with sword and pistol, tortures worthy of the Inquisition. But tonight, staring down into the sunken, empty sockets, the frayed remains of a neckcloth tied about Alexander d’Autrecourt’s fleshless throat, he had felt only a numb relief.

  His nemesis was dead. There would be no whirlwind of scandal, no fresh pain for Lady Catherine, no danger to Aubrey. And for Lucinda, there would be no reunion with her father.

  Valcour felt a momentary stab of empathy for the woman who lay in the bedchamber above. But he quelled it ruthlessly. She was better off this way, never having to meet a father who could only disappoint her. Never having to face ugly truths that would scar that brave, brash heart of hers, bring shadows into those bright blue eyes.

  It was likely that she had spent the entire night tossing and turning, fretting over this mysterious stranger who’d contacted her in Virginia. A stranger who was obviously some scheming bastard embroiled in a plot Valcour couldn’t figure out as yet. But he would be damned before anyone harassed the countess of Valcour. He’d be damned before he allowed anxiety to dull Lucinda’s eyes.

  Resolved to end her suspense as quickly as possible, Valcour strode up to the bedchamber assigned to her, meaning to rap on the door and tell her all that had transpired that night. He arched a brow in surprise at the partially open door.

  “Lucinda,” he said quietly, not wanting to startle her. He started toward the curtained bed but stopped at the small desk that sat beneath the window. The first rays of sunlight illuminated writing supplies that were scattered across the glossy surface.

  Valcour’s gaze was snagged by one of the pages, and for an instant he half expected some dramatic letter telling him that Lucinda had run away. As he read the page, he almost wished she had fled. Fled so he could be angry instead of feeling a grinding sense of pain and despair as he read what she had written.

  Dearest Mama and Papa,

  You know how much I have always delighted in concocting surprises for you and the girls. This time, I must say, I have outdone myself! I am countess of Valcour, mistress of a grand castle. I dare say Papa believes such a title will cure me of my mischief and make me quite dignified, but I assure you that when you come to see me in England, I will be the same scapegrace Lucy I have always been. My only regret is that I shall miss seeing the new baby, Mama. Norah will have to play the role of big sister now to all the girls. But even at six years old, I was quite accomplished at fomenting disaster, and I’m sure with practice she will be a deliciously naughty child. If she is in need of any advice as to such, tell her to write me a letter.

  You must take care of yourself, Mama. You know how Papa worries about you in your time of travail. He uses up the entire family measure of distress so that none of the rest of us can say how much we worry about you and love you without sounding redundant. But I do love you, Mama. I pray for your safe delivery every day.

  Papa, you must not plague yourself with anxiety over me for one minute. England is not such a dastardly place after all. And being a countess has its advantages. I can order people about as much as I please, and they must do as I say.

  The writing was flowing, delicate, but splotched where tears had obviously fallen to wet the page. Valcour felt an odd squeezing sensation in his chest, not because of what Lucinda had written, so much as what she had left unsaid.

  Not a word was spoken of the frustration, the anger, and the fear she must feel. Nothing was said of her loneliness, or his ruthlessness in forcing her to marry him.

  There was no blame or scorn or pleading for rescue from home. Yet there was a peek into the Lucinda that Valcour had not bothered to know. Another life, an ocean away. She had a father who obviously adored her. A mother who was about to give birth to a new babe. That mother would receive this letter, telling her that this golden-curled hoyden of a daughter was virtually lost to her across an ocean divide. And there was a little sister, one Lucinda had taught devilment, who would barely remember her in time.

  Not to mention the fact that this new babe would never know its eldest sister at all.

  Had Lucinda sobbed herself to sleep, racked with the grief of losing everything she had known? The thought made his throat swell. He turned to the next page and read on.

  As for my husband, he is more wonderful than anything I have ever dreamed of. Brave enough to ride with Pendragon’s raiders. Dashing and bold, with fierce dark eyes and black hair. Papa, do you remember the stallion you gave me for my eleventh birthday? The one everybody said would break my neck? That is what Valcour reminds me of. He is arrogant and stubborn and seems untamable, and yet I love him so much that when he is with me he is the most tender of men.

  Mama, being in love is every bit as wonderful as you promised me. I am sure, in time, I will not miss all of you so much.

  Valcour’s chest burned, his fingers clenching on the page he held. Never had he felt more like the ruthless bastard so many had named him. Salvaging his honor had been so blasted important he’d been blind to anything else. He hadn’t even listened to Lucinda’s claim that her parents loved her so much her mistakes would not matter, that they wouldn’t care about society’s conventions. He had been so certain he was doing the right thing in marrying her. Taking the only possible course of action. But now, reading the words Lucinda had written to comfort her loving parents, Valcour knew a bitter surge of regret. He was no dashing, bold hero, able to shower Lucinda with love. He was no man to cherish her, as her family had. He couldn’t give her the kind of future she had written about in the letter. But he could stop being so damned harsh with her. He could find some gentleness inside him to repay her for all he had taken away.

  His v
oice was roughened by uncharacteristic tenderness as he crossed to the bed and drew back the curtain. “Lucinda, don’t be alarmed. It’s Valcour. I—”

  The words died in Valcour’s throat as a shaft of light from the window pierced beyond the curtain. He stared down at twisted coverlets and tumbled pillows, but there were no golden curls tousled across them, no tear-stained face buried in the cottony mounds. The bed was empty.

  Valcour swore, his jaw tensing. The sympathy that had flowed so briefly inside him was replaced by a simmering anger. Where the devil had she gone? He’d told her to remain in her rooms. She must be somewhere nearby. By God, she wouldn’t dare defy… Valcour stopped, arrested by a sudden certainty that his new countess would be exactly where he told her not to go. Blast the infernal woman!

  His gut twisted with unease. He made quick work of lighting a candlestick and started down the corridor, calling her name. The gallery door was open, and he flinched at the idea of Lucinda pawing through these portraits, images that gave him nothing but pain. The painting in the corner, stripped of its dustcover, made Dominic’s chest ache. He stalked toward it, intending to yank the covering back on, when suddenly he heard it. Music drifted down from the tower like the most illusive of sorceress’s spells.

  Dominic rushed up the stone stairs, his chest feeling like an open wound, his throat closed in spasms of memory, as the haunting music drew him closer to the chamber high above.

  Agony flowed through Dominic’s veins as he crested the stairs and stood in the doorway he hadn’t entered for sixteen years. It was as if he had never left it. Everything, to the smallest detail, was exactly the same as it had been. Except for the woman who sat in the light of guttering candles, her hair flowing in loose skeins of gold down her back. Lucinda’s lithe body was bent over the keys, her head tilted just a little as if listening to the directions of angels.

  Angels, or the most subtle demons in hell.

  The music was a delicate whipcord biting into Dominic’s soul. Each wisp of the melody brought to life by Lucy’s gifted hands sliced inside him like fragments of something shattered—no, someone shattered.

  The boy who had come here to dream and to laugh and to sit at that instrument and try to translate the tumult of emotions in his breast into music. The boy who had longed for his beloved father, far away on a diplomatic mission for the king. The boy who had listened eagerly while his mother read hastily scrawled letters from mysterious places like Turkestan.

  It was as if Lucinda had torn out his heart and held it, exposed. It was as if she had trespassed not on his property but in his spirit. And yet, somehow, there was a promise of release—a release such as he’d never known.

  He was so damned confused. He wanted to shake her, wanted to go to her and drag her into his arms. He wanted to bury himself in her courage, her beauty, the wild sweetness that he’d tasted so briefly on her lips in the garden. He suddenly wanted to spare her from what he had found on the windswept hill of the graveyard.

  But he stood silently as the music built to a crescendo, carrying him higher, flinging him farther into emotions he had tried so long to deny. The sensation was painfully vivid, like a candle flame thrust close to his eyes, or plunging through thin ice into a raging winter river.

  It would have been so easy to release what little hold he still had on his feelings, let out the passion, the pain, the desperate need to reach out, touch her, tell her… That she was exquisite? That she was music incarnate? That never in his life had he been moved as deeply as he was by the sound of her hands caressing the pianoforte’s keys?

  But some dreams were too beautiful to survive the ugliness of the real world. He dared not let her music fill up the winter-cold void that was his heart. The realization stripped away the magic Lucinda wove through her song, leaving Valcour as bereft and angry as a starving man led into a banquet he could never taste.

  It had been the devil of a day: the wild ride to the inn, the forced marriage, the battle with the d’Autrecourts, and, later, the grisly task of digging up Alexander d’Autrecourt’s grave. All he had asked of Lucinda was that she remained in her chamber, where they would both be safe from the ghosts that entwined their pasts. All he had wanted was to ensure her peace of mind, put her at ease.

  But she had to barge into places that were like an open wound to him. She had to sit like some golden-haired enchantress at the pianoforte and make it sing as if possessed by angels. She had to send out her music to burrow into the secret reaches of Dominic’s soul.

  Damn her to hell! He didn’t have a soul anymore. Didn’t have a heart. He had deadened it, ruthlessly and thoroughly. He wouldn’t have this accursed woman breathing agonizing life into something he had battled so hard to kill.

  Something burst inside him, tearing a snarl from his chest. “How dare you!”

  Lucy leapt up as if the pianoforte had bitten off her fingers, her knee bumping hard against the wooden edge of the instrument. She gave a choked cry of pain, then stood there, frozen, one hand pressed to her breasts, the guttering candles shining orange-gold light through the thin fabric of her nightshift, turning it nearly transparent.

  Dirt smudged her small naked feet, and there were dried tracks of tears along her cheeks.

  She’d been crying. Crying over the letter he had found in her room, crying over the music she had been spinning with the mastery of a sorceress.

  She looked like a sleepwalker wakened too suddenly. She looked like a fallen angel, her full breasts delectable swells beneath the cloth of her shift, her throat graceful and delicate and white, her legs so perfectly shaped Dominic’s hand burned to touch her. But to touch her would be the most dangerous risk Dominic St. Cyr had ever taken.

  “I ordered you to stay in your rooms.” Each word was heavy as stone.

  He could see her gathering her wits, driving back the misty dreams that had been pouring from her fingertips and mustering her courage in their place. She shook back the tumbled gold curls, her chin lifting in that now-familiar gesture of defiance. “I came here specifically because you forbade me to.”

  “You’re my wife. You’ll do as I say.”

  “I’m the countess of Valcour. If I want to dance naked on top of the parapet, I will, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.” Those blue eyes shimmered at him, defiant, lovely. “You had my father’s things and you never told me,” she accused.

  “There was nothing of your father’s here.”

  “Then what is this?” Lucy grabbed up the parchment and thrust it toward Valcour.

  Valcour looked down at the ink-blotted music. He crossed his arms over his chest, refusing to touch the pages.

  “It’s fit for nothing but the rubbish heap.”

  “You said my father was a mediocre musician. This is brilliant. But, then, what would a man like you understand about passion in this music? You who have no feelings at all?”

  Feelings? How long had he labored to deaden the roiling emotions inside him? The only possible way to kill the ferocious pain? What could this girl know about what it had cost him to construct the wall of ice that kept him separate from the world that had all but destroyed him? And how could she guess that the pages in her hand had opened countless wounds he had hidden for so long?

  With an oath, Valcour snatched the pages from her hand and thrust them over the candles that glowed in the branched candlestick on the pianoforte.

  Lucinda shrieked in pain and fury as the paper ignited. She dove for the music, all but setting her golden curls aflame as she battled to reach it, but Valcour held the music high above her head, his arm rigid, tiny sparks showering down his hand, burning small holes in the white linen of his sleeve.

  “You bastard! Give them to me! Give them!” She was sobbing hysterically, clawing at his arm, kicking at him, fighting like a hellcat. But the flames devoured the pages, eating them down to the tips of Valcour’s fingers.

  He grasped Lucinda’s arm with his other hand, holding her away from him. Then he dropped the
charred remains of the music to the floor and crushed out the glowing orange that rimmed the blackened pages with the heel of his boot. The music crumbled into ashes, like the dreams of the boy he had once been.

  Lucy fell to her knees, scrabbling for the few scraps of unburned paper, tears flowing down her cheeks, her fingers blackened with soot. She pushed herself to her feet, her eyes seething pools of hatred.

  “I might have forgiven you for forcing my hand in marriage,” she said in a terrible, measured voice. “I might have forgiven you for being a cold-hearted bastard. But I will never,” she said, her voice quavering, “never forgive you for this!”

  “Perhaps next time you will do as you’re told.”

  “Go to bloody hell, my lord!” She spun around and started to bolt from the room, but Valcour grabbed her. Her skin was silken beneath her thin gown, a wild pulse beating in the hollow of her throat. Valcour’s mouth went dry at the feel of her, the scent of her, cinnamon and rebellion, honey and defiance. The need to crush those berry-red lips with his own made Dominic’s head spin.

  Unnerved by his need, he gritted his teeth, clinging to the red haze of his fury. “I’ve already visited hell tonight, Lucinda,” Valcour said. “I found your father there.”

  “What?” She shrank back as if he had slapped her. The globe of one breast brushed against Valcour’s rigid forearm, the nipple a dusky rose just visible through the thin material of her nightshift.

  “Your father is dead.” Valcour forced his voice into steely accents. “I am certain of it.”

  “No! You saw the duchess’s face. She was terrified when I showed her the letter I had gotten. My father is—”

  “He’s a pile of moldering bones in a worm-eaten frockcoat, just as the dowager duchess said.” The words were deliberately cruel. The only way Valcour could keep himself from dragging Lucinda into his arms, delving his hands into her hair, and kissing her until everything vanished: the room, the specter of her father, his own overwhelming sense of foreboding.