“How can you be so certain after seventeen years?” Lucy demanded, her fists clenching in the torn cloth of her nightshift. “There couldn’t have been much left of his face. It could have been anyone lying in that coffin, rotting.”
Valcour’s gaze narrowed, but not enough to wholly conceal the sudden unease in his eyes. “What are you saying?” He sneered. “That the d’Autrecourts murdered some poor helpless bastard, dressed him in Alexander’s clothes, and buried him beneath a headstone with Alexander’s name on it?”
“Is that so inconceivable considering everything else they’ve done to protect their family name?” Lucy demanded, so close her bare toes brushed the tips of Valcour’s own. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there were the bones of some poor child in the coffin that was supposed to be mine. Maybe you should trundle yourself out again with your spade and dig that up as well, to make certain I am not dead.”
Valcour’s jaw squared, and she could see a vein throbbing in his temple. “Don’t be a fool.”
“Why shouldn’t I be? I certainly wouldn’t want you to change your estimation of my character, after the tender little scene we just played out. Of course, I can understand why you might be reluctant to go grave robbing again so soon, my lord. Maybe I will go out and exhume the coffin. Quite a unique experience, I would imagine, digging up one’s own grave. It should make quite an intriguing tale for the new countess of Valcour to share over the tea table. Unless, of course, I can dredge up a more interesting skeleton in the St Cyr family history.”
“The St. Cyr family skeletons are a dangerous lot, Lucinda. Tampering with them would be the biggest mistake you ever made.”
“Obviously you have no knowledge of my distinguished career. I’ve made a great many blunders, my lord. I’m not afraid to add another. This castle seems fairly bursting with secrets. Imagine the fun I could have, ferreting them out, displaying them to the world. I was a mere child when I discovered the secret that Ian Blackheath was the dread patriot Raider Pendragon. I even dressed up in his mask and cloak. It was quite entertaining.”
Valcour’s face was ice-white, hard as stone. “I am certain you would find it so. Unfortunately, your entertainment at the St. Cyrs’ expense will have to wait. We are leaving for London as soon as the coach can be brought ’round.”
“London?” Lucy couldn’t keep the astonishment from her voice. “But we just arrived here.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, there are a great many people who are quite worried about you. I have it on high authority that John Wilkes was ready to slay my brother and Claree Wilkes was all but hysterical with worry and remorse. After all, your parents entrusted your safety to them.”
His words sliced through Lucy’s carefully erected wall of belligerence, wounding her. She’d be damned before she let him see how deeply.
“And then,” Valcour continued ruthlessly, “there is Lady Catherine St. Cyr, who was distraught over all that had happened.”
“Lady Catherine?”
“The unfortunate woman who bore me. She needs to be told that all has been arranged satisfactorily.”
“Satisfactorily?” Lucy snorted. “That depends on your perspective.”
“I suppose Lady Catherine will take comfort in the fact that I have produced a daughter-in-law for her at last. I am certain she had despaired of me ever providing her with one.” There was something about Valcour’s face that belied his biting humor. “You will do nothing to upset her, girl. Do you understand that?” he said. “Hate me, revile me, curse me if you will. But distress her, and I vow, I will deal with you so harshly you’ll regret you were born.”
“I’m trembling with fear.”
“Do not mock me. Lady Catherine will be told nothing of this madness—nothing of your father’s supposed resurrection. Nothing of opened graves or mysterious letters.”
“Or else what, my lord? You’ll banish me back to Virginia? Lock me in the forbidden tower?”
Valcour’s mouth twisted with a savagery that took Lucy aback. “You wouldn’t be the first woman a Valcour imprisoned there.” He was potent danger, pure ruthlessness, towering over her. “Defy me where Lady Catherine is concerned, and I promise you this, my rebel bride: You will regret it for the rest of your life.”
Lucy laughed, tossing her curls. “I think it far more likely that you will be the one experiencing regret in the future, my lord. Regret that you forced me to marry you.”
Valcour spun her around, his hands closing with savage delicacy about her throat, his face a mask of cold fury. He didn’t tighten his fingers, merely curved them about the fragile cords of her neck, making her aware that with the smallest flick of his wrist he could crush the breath from her body. Lucy didn’t flicker an eyelash. She faced him, her eyes blazing defiance.
“Before you decide to match wits with me, girl, you might want to remember the night of the duel at Perdition’s Gate,” Valcour said silkily, running his thumbs from the base of her jaw down to the fragile hollow where her pulse seemed to be trying to beat its way through her skin. “I have had a great deal of practice dealing with people foolish enough to show themselves as my foes. I am as gifted in exacting pain from an enemy as I am at pleasuring a woman. Challenge me in this, and I’ll not be overly concerned about which sensation I evoke in you. Do we understand each other, Countess?”
Lucy had been bred in rebellion from the time she was three years old. She glared into Valcour’s eyes, a hundred plans for outright mutiny simmering in her mind. “I understand you perfectly, my lord,” she said with venomous sweetness.
Valcour released her and took up his boots, then walked from the bedchamber, his features cold, his jaw set. But the instant he shut the door behind him, the earl leaned against the wall of the corridor, his dark head arching back, his eyes shut tight, as he tried to block out the roiling images, the fierce emotions, that still reverberated through him.
But all he could see was Lucinda’s face, full of witchery and sedition. All he could feel were the fiery trails she had blazed across his shoulders and upon his chest with those hands that had woven such magic over the keys of the pianoforte.
She had been so damned beautiful, the edges of her nightshift white about breasts full and crying out for his mouth, her waist impossibly narrow, her hips a lush cradle that made a man want to bury himself deep. And her legs—they’d seemed to go on forever, slender and shapely, supple and seductive, wrapping about his body, dragging him fiercely against her.
She had been quicksilver in his arms, wildfire beneath his mouth, the wide range of emotion Lucinda gave to her fury, her righteous indignation and her temper had flowed into passion and desire like a river bursting its banks. Valcour had felt himself being swept away to places he didn’t dare contemplate.
And after a climax more shattering than Valcour had ever known, he had nearly been ready to release himself to that wild, uncharted world, seduced by the knowledge that he was the first man to have delighted in that lovely body. The first man to possess her.
Even as a youth, Valcour had considered feminine virginity to be not a precious gift but, rather, an obstacle he had no patience for overcoming. He had wanted women who were well schooled in the ways of male passion. Women who knew what they wanted in the bedchamber and were not afraid to take it.
But he had never suspected until he had seen Lucinda tumbled in his arms how astonishingly beautiful innocence could be. How bewitching it was to watch dark-lashed eyes widen in astonishment, berry-red lips quiver with pleasure, gasping as he dipped into that place no man had ever explored before.
He had never known that a virgin would give him back some fleeting wisp of his own innocence, remind him of the wonder of discovery.
And Lucinda had been wild with that discovery, greedy and bedazzled, generous and elated. She had given without fear, taken without shyness, opened herself for Valcour’s plundering with a courage and a passion that had almost made him forget.
And then she had surfaced from the
power of their climax, only to be jolted from the waves of honeyed pleasure and thrust again into reality and an emotional pain that dulled the star-bright luster of her eyes.
Valcour had watched the transformation from passion-tossed angel to heartbreak, his own chest raw with the awareness of what he had done to her.
He had wanted so damned badly to reach out to her, promise her anything to bring back the fragile yielding that had been in her face, the astonishment, the joy.
Only her outrage over her pilfered letters had saved him. Saved him from making an even bigger mistake than he had made in taking her to bed.
And her threats to reveal St. Cyr secrets had sent Valcour crashing back to reality—back to icy masks no one could penetrate, back to walls that kept pain out and imprisoned a hundred haunting demons of regret and guilt, betrayal and hopelessness. Back to the earl of Valcour and the hell he had built for himself brick by brick.
Valcour’s jaw knotted, his fingers still tingling with the silken feel of her throat, his gut twisting with disgust that he had even so vaguely threatened a woman.
But it had not even been the threat to tell Lady Catherine that had pushed him over some unseen edge.
It had been Lucinda herself, delving into places Valcour had never allowed any woman to go, touching emotions in him he hadn’t believed existed anymore.
Never before had he even been tempted to let anyone peek inside the walls that held him apart from the world. Never before had he forgotten that wall’s existence, even for a little while.
He had forgotten it in Lucinda’s arms. Forgotten it, only to have it slammed into his face again with the force of a Morningstar mace—and with as devastating results.
Valcour jammed trembling fingers through the tangled masses of his hair—hair that Lucinda had caressed, kissed, delighted in. Whatever the depth of pleasure their physical joining might hold, he must never again let himself slide so deeply into oblivion. He must never again let down his guard.
For allowing Lucinda to see into his own private anguish would not heal him. The walls of pain would merely close her in as well, suck her into the black abyss that had twisted Dominic’s life. And, like the most subtle poison, it could destroy them both.
Chapter Thirteen
Lucy sank onto the gilt bench in the entryway of Hawkvale House, feeling as if she had made the journey to London manacled to the axle of the traveling coach rather than inside it. Her joints were frozen knobs of pain, her neck crooked at an odd angle, and her stomach was snarling with all the refinement of a pack of starving wolves. Every inch of her body felt bruised by the bone-jarring jolting of the coach, Valcour having set a pace more hellacious than any even the impatient Lucy had ever endured.
It was all she could do to keep from crumpling into an ignominious heap on the marble floor in exhaustion. But she would cheerfully have stepped into a bath of boiling oil before she let Valcour know how close she was to collapsing.
It was her own stubborn fault she was in this state, she was forced to admit grudgingly. Valcour had said that they would set whatever pace she desired. Any time she felt the need to stop, she only had to signal, and everything would be done to provide for her comfort.
Unfortunately, he had finished this chivalrous offer by making the fatal observation that ladies were, by nature, not such stalwart travelers as men.
The words had no sooner left his mouth than Lucy had resolved she would die a slow and torturous death before she cried enough. She had informed Valcour that the swifter the pace the better she would like it. That she never traveled fast enough to suit her.
But, then, Lucy thought grimly, she had never traveled with the earl before. The coach had seemed a heartbeat away from overturning as it barreled down the road, Valcour riding on his infernal stallion beside it. The wind had been in his face, the sun shining overhead. It had added insult to injury, the fact that the arrogant aristocrat was the most magnificent horseman Lucy had ever seen, controlling the spirited stallion as if they were some mythical entity joined by the gods themselves.
Lucy had passed the grueling hours imagining the earl at her mercy and plotting all sorts of tortures to inflict on him. But as the trip wore on, the most diabolical vengeance of all seemed to be locking him in a jolting coach while he battled against calls of nature until he felt ready to burst.
Through it all, she had remained determined that she would never be the one who precipitated a break in the journey. And in the end, she had triumphed. But it had been an empty victory. The moment Valcour opened the door of the coach, he had let fly a string of oaths, scooping her into his arms and carrying her up the stairs and into the entryway of the townhouse. Lucy had made a feeble effort to resist, but in the end she had only been relieved when he’d plunked her down on a gilt bench tucked in a shadowy alcove.
She sat bleary-eyed and numb, while servants in midnight-blue livery bustled around her, taking her cloak and bonnet and Valcour’s Roquelaure. The footmen’s faces were blank, no sign of curiosity evident, as if their master arrived home at four in the morning with a runaway countess in tow every other Saturday of the year.
Yet how could it be any wonder the servants were so restrained, when their master looked for all the world as if he had just arrived home from a night of hazard at Whites?
Valcour was as perfectly groomed as Lucy was unkempt. The wind that had made her hair look like a ravaged straw stack had only tousled his dark tresses like the fingers of a lover. The sun had deepened the bronzed gloss that defined the planes and angles of his face. The tiny creases at the corners of his eyelids were faint, pale stars that made his eyes more intriguing.
Only the slightest whitening at the corner of his mouth betrayed the fact that the past three days had been a grim ordeal.
“Grayson.” Valcour’s voice shook Lucy from her thoughts. “You will awaken Lady Catherine’s maid and have her attend the countess at once. My wife will reside in the bedchamber linked to my apartments. Her smallest wish will be granted as if it were my own.”
Lucy glanced up at Valcour, wondering what significance the location of her chamber had. Would he visit her bed that night? From the day of their marriage, Emily and Ian Blackheath had slept together at Blackheath Hall. The huge tester bed with its crewel-worked curtains provided a serene haven from the outside world for Lucy’s parents. In that bed, Emily Blackheath had brought forth her babes to place in her husband’s arms. In that bed, the wounded Pendragon had been nursed through injuries sustained during the War for Independence. And it was on those pillows that Lucy had found her mother crying out her fears for him when he returned to the front lines of the war.
Now Lucy was herself a married woman, and yet there was no devotion, no love between her and the man who had taken her to wife in the church at Hound’s Way. Despite the passion that had raged between them, he was still a stranger to her. An enigmatic, intriguing, infuriating man, who made her feel things she didn’t want to feel, made her do things she didn’t want to do. Made her a fool who had all but killed herself on the journey to London just to spite him.
At the church, Valcour had offered to give her whatever time she needed to become accustomed to the physical side of their relationship. But now that the marriage had been consummated, she couldn’t imagine he would feel there was any reason for further restraint. The thought was both disturbing and alluring.
“I shall see to the lady’s comfort at once, sir.” The footman’s words shook Lucy out of her thoughts. The servant bowed to her. “My lady, if you will follow me?”
“Dominic!” The sound of a voice from the top of the stairs made Lucinda look up so swiftly a sharp pain stabbed into the base of her neck.
A woman who looked to be about fifty years old raced down in a flurry of primrose bedrobe, her soft gold hair falling about a heart-shaped face. Delicate features were ravaged by worry and sleeplessness, her beautiful eyes lost in great bruised circles. But Lucy knew in a heartbeat that the woman was the dreamy-eyed g
irl who had touched her heart from the abandoned portrait. Valcour’s mother. Or, as the earl had said, the unfortunate woman who’d borne him.
Despite the woman’s obvious distress, not so much as a muscle in Valcour’s face moved. He didn’t brush her touch away as she clasped his arm, nor did he seek to comfort her.
“Aubrey? Aubrey is safe?” she choked out.
“I told you I would make it right, madam,” he said. “And so I did. The boy is on his way to squander my coin on some prime horseflesh, I believe.”
“Thank God! And the girl is safely back with her guardians? I was so terrified! After you all spent the night unchaperoned!”
“It is permitted for a bride to spend the night with her new husband, is it not?”
“H-Her new husband?” Delicate cheeks went white. “But you said Aubrey was safe!”
“Felicitate me, madam. I have provided the house of Valcour with a countess at last.”
“A countess?”
“I was stricken by paroxysms of passion and married Lucinda Blackheath out of hand.”
The woman staggered back, her hands clenched against her breast as if Valcour had thrust in a dagger. “No! Dominic, tell me you did not—”
“That is hardly the kind of reception due my wife. You shall attempt to do better, madam.” Valcour went to the bench where Lucy sat and took her hand, drawing her to her feet. “Lady Catherine St. Cyr, dowager countess of Valcour, may I present the former Lucinda Blackheath, now my wife?”
Lady Catherine’s eyes were huge pools of misery as she regarded Lucy. Excruciatingly aware of her unkempt appearance, and the almost horrified fascination in the older woman’s face, Lucy stiffened.
She knew enough of aristocratic pride to discern that Lady Catherine must be aghast at her son’s mésalliance to a woman society would consider scarcely worthy to kiss his exalted boot. Lucy had seen the high price that had been extracted from her mother for committing such a crime. The anger that rose inside Lucy was not so much for herself but for the young Emily d’Autrecourt, abandoned, alone.
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