“Madam?”
She turned, her face wrenchingly hopeful. For an instant, she was the beautiful young mother who had read him fairy tales when he was ill with a fever. She was the dreamy-eyed woman who had sat in the tower room, stitching.
Valcour stared at Lady Catherine’s face, suddenly so young in the candlelight. “Madam, I am not worth a minute of your grief,” he said softly. Then he returned to his bedchamber and shut the door.
The earl of Valcour walked slowly to his bed and sank down on it, his mind filled with faces: His mother’s, still ravaged from pain long past. His new bride, angry and hurt, defensive, defiant. Deprived of her loving family, her sisters, her mother, the father who adored her.
The earl wanted to open the door that led to Lucinda’s adjoining bedchamber. Wanted to lose himself in the passion, the fire of her body, drive away the shadows that threatened to consume them both.
But Valcour closed his eyes, remembering a boy of twelve who had suffered the same separation, crushing loneliness, and had no way to stop his own pain.
How could he be expected to stop up the wounds of anyone else? Even his mother seemed appalled that he had taken Lucinda to wife—and to his bed. You are a good man, Dominic. You would not consummate a marriage with a frightened child.
He had made love to a woman, his wife, his countess at Harlestone. He had spilled his seed inside her and had lost some small, guarded part of his inner self. He had even dared imagine Lucinda swelling with his son, the heir Valcour, destined to inherit… a legacy of villainy, hate, weakness? A mother, desperately homesick, trapped into marriage by the stiff-necked nobleman who had forced her hand? A nobleman who had never wanted a son, never wanted to experience that link that proved his own destruction?
Lady Catherine had all but begged Valcour for an explanation for his actions. Had challenged everything he had believed about himself.
Now her question echoed mercilessly in his head. Had he truly married Lucinda out of some twisted thirst for revenge? Or to punish himself forever for what had gone before? Or had he married her because she stirred him in places no other woman had ever reached? Because he had wanted her with a ferocity that had stunned him from the first moment he realized she was a woman—a bold, brave, beautiful woman he had wanted to touch, to take? Had he looked into Lucinda Blackheath’s defiant face and fallen beneath the spell of an enchantress with sapphire eyes and a mouth lush and sweet as sun-ripened berries? Or had he been entranced by a fire maiden racing off to rescue a baby swan?
He had always been so carefully detached, so emotionally distant. Was it possible he’d wanted the hotheaded American beauty so badly he hadn’t given a damn how he got her in his bed?
If that was true, wasn’t he every bit as much of a monster as… Damn it, maybe it wasn’t too late to free himself from the uncertainties that were tearing him apart, to stop this painful quickening in his chest. Maybe there was still time to save Lucinda from himself.
But if he decided to do so, he could never kiss her again, never run his palms over her silky skin, find the secret places that made her gasp, cry out. Never fill her with his seed and risk the danger of his son or daughter taking root in her womb. Only then could he do what was necessary—send her back to her family where she belonged. Valcour expected to feel a sense of relief at the prospect. Instead, bleakness settled over him, cold and undeniable.
He closed his eyes in an effort to drive it away, but images danced across his dark lids: a tiny golden-curled hoyden of a girl wrestling with a bevy of dark-haired brothers, Lucinda teaching the child how to aim her blows toward their tender parts.
It would be mayhem. Insanity. Worlds away from the dignified existence Valcour had always anticipated for himself. Why did it suddenly seem far too appealing?
Valcour gritted his teeth, banishing the image from his mind. For over twenty years he had cultivated a wall of solitude, cut off anyone who could hurt him. He had dug an unreachable chasm to separate him from anyone who might see past the mighty earl’s facade to the vulnerable man who lay buried beneath.
Such strong needs couldn’t change in three short weeks. Couldn’t be obliterated by one taste of a woman’s mouth, one deep, delving thrust into her welcoming body. Could they?
But as Valcour stared at the door separating his rooms from those of his rebel bride, he couldn’t stop the fierce yearning inside him. The mighty earl of Valcour faced the most frightening truth he had ever known. For the first time since the disaster that had changed the course of his life, he did not want to be alone.
Chapter Fourteen
Lucinda stared down at the matched team of grays that danced like living poetry in their traces, and she wished she could snatch the reins from Valcour’s hands and steer the curricle away from the townhouse that loomed ever larger against the morning sky.
She had raced up the stairs of the Wilkeses’ London house a hundred times since her arrival in England, teasing Claree about her handsome husband, chattering about balls and soirees and dreams for the newborn country they had left behind. Even the specter of Alexander d’Autrecourt had not been able to dim Lucy’s bubbling enthusiasm for long in the face of this adventure.
But as Valcour drew the horses to a stop in the circle before the Wilkeses’ doorway, Lucy knew that facing Claree and John Wilkes this morning would be the most difficult thing she had ever done.
They would feel as if it were their fault that Lucy would never return to Virginia again. They would have to face their dearest friends with the news that their daughter was lost forever.
Lucy had always thought she was so infernally brilliant in her mischief, magically able to extract herself from any dilemma. For the first time, the Raider’s daughter had embroiled herself in a disaster from which there was no escape, one that had snared countless innocent people in its coils and dragged them down with her.
Her hands knotted together in her lap as the grays came to a halt and a groom bustled forward to take the lead gelding by the bit.
“Lucinda.” Valcour’s voice was soft, bracing. “Remember, you are a countess. It’s not as if you had run away with a stable boy.”
Lucy gave a broken laugh as she regarded her husband, resplendent in an emerald velvet frock coat and bone-colored breeches. “Eloping with a stable boy would be far easier to explain, especially to my father. You forget he risked his life to gain freedom from the English aristocracy. I can’t think John or Claree or any of my family will be pleased to hear that I have become the enemy.”
Valcour’s fingers gently caught Lucy’s chin and turned her to face him. “The war is over, Lucinda. We aren’t enemies any longer.”
“Aren’t we?” Lucy looked up at him, and for a moment she wondered what it would be like to be arriving at the Wilkeses’ flushed with happiness and passion for the man she had married.
A solemn light touched Valcour’s eyes. “I would have us be… allies.” He took her hand gently in his own warm, strong one.
No vow of eternal love, no claim of adoration. And yet, the words made strength seep into Lucy’s limbs, made her chin tip up just a little.
She reached up and stroked a ribbon of night-dark hair from Valcour’s brow. “Thank you for coming with me today. For being… kind.”
One corner of Valcour’s lips quirked. “I’d advise you not to become used to it, hoyden. I am everything you judged me in the past. Ill-tempered, impatient. Arrogant.”
“Perhaps we have something in common after all,” Lucy said.
Valcour squeezed her hand, then swung down from his seat. He waved away the footman who was hastening over to help Lucy descend from the equipage.
The earl’s big hands encircled her waist, warm and firm and strangely bracing as he swung her lightly down to her feet.
Already people were staring: the footmen, the gardener clipping a yew hedge, and other eyes Lucy could feel somewhere behind her. She turned to catch just a glimpse of ragged jacket, a boy’s dirty yet oddly familiar fac
e. Then he vanished so quickly she could scarce believe he had been there at all.
She wished that she could turn and chase the vanishing child, like she had chased butterflies when she was small. But there was no way to escape what lay before her. Better to get it over with as swiftly as possible.
Lucy sucked in a deep breath, the trip to the Wilkeses’ drawing room like that of a felon to the gallows. The censure in the butler’s eyes was quelled by one haughty lift of an eyebrow from Valcour. The housemaids skittered away despite their curiosity as the earl leveled them a chill glare.
Delivered to the drawing room, Lucy paced the comfortable chamber where she had spent many pleasant evenings, John puffing his long clay pipe full of Virginia tobacco, Claree dithering over whether to place a knight above an honorable at the dining table.
Lucy bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling and strained to hear the sound of footsteps in the corridor beyond. When she did, she was tempted to bolt out the window into the small garden below. The door opened, and Lucy’s hands knotted in the folds of her skirts.
Lucy’s worst nightmare about this confrontation couldn’t have prepared her for the sight of the Wilkeses’ faces. Claree was haggard, her eyes filled with self-blame. John Wilkes’s appearance was even more alarming. The eyes that had made English generals quake in their spit-polished boots were seething with an anger that superseded his relief.
“Girl, I should acquaint you with the end of a willow switch for what you’ve put us through!” John growled.
“I would not advise it,” Valcour said softly. “I’m afraid I would have to take exception to my countess being treated like an unruly child.”
“I take exception to this whole cursed marriage, but you didn’t give a damn about that, did you, my lord? I’d wager you think I should thank you for sending word that you were married before you posted a notice in the Gazette!”
“I know this marriage is a shock to you—” Lucy began.
“A shock!” Wilkes cried, wheeling on her. “Four days ago you were making calf’s eyes at Aubrey St. Cyr and mocking Valcour so perfectly you sent us all into fits of laughter.”
Lucy’s cheeks were feverish red. “Aubrey couldn’t make me a countess.”
“You expect me to believe that Pendragon’s daughter sold herself in marriage to become ‘my lady’? Your father all but gave his life so you could be free of English tyranny, and you come to England and embrace one of the very men who oppressed us!”
“Strange,” Valcour’s voice cut in, almost lazily, “I thought you had come to England to bury the hostilities between our two countries.”
Wilkes spun on Valcour. “I’ll thank you to mind your own accursed affairs. I am this girl’s guardian in her father’s absence.”
“And I am her husband. I will not tolerate anyone—even you, Mr. Wilkes—distressing my wife.”
Lucy felt a shaft of fear, the duel at the gaming hell playing out before her eyes. John Wilkes was beyond fury, and Valcour’s code of honor would endure no insults. “Please, it is over. Both of you. There is nothing to do but accept—”
John sputtered a string of curses. “You expect us just to shrug and excuse your behavior? From the first time I met you, girl, I heard the tales about Ian’s indulgence of your every whim. I dismissed them as rubbish. By God, I wanted to coddle you myself after all you had endured. But it seems the gossip mongers were right! You are insufferably spoilt, selfish!”
“The fault in this debacle lies more with me,” Valcour cut in.
“That is one judgment I don’t doubt!” John snapped. “You steal the girl away from your own brother, then send us an infernal note informing us she has married you! A man we know she despises! Don’t tell me you discovered some grand passion somewhere between London and Avonstea, Valcour!”
“I wanted her. I took her. It is done,” Valcour said stonily. “You need have no fear for her welfare. The wealth of Valcour will be at her disposal. She will have everything her heart could desire.”
“I see.” John snorted in disgust and turned to Lucy. “And I suppose you don’t desire to see your father and mother ever again, girl? I suppose you can forget Norah and the other little ones?”
Lucy felt as if her chest were going to burst with pain. “Valcour’s honor demanded that—that we marry.”
“Valcour demanded?” John stared into her face, as if he had risen from the haze of his anger and was really seeing her for the first time. “You don’t give a damn about British notions of honor, do you, girl? You don’t give a damn about this English cur?”
“Wilkes, that is enough.” Valcour’s voice was like tempered steel as he encircled Lucy in the crook of his arm. “I understand your shock, even your anger. And I take full responsibility for what has happened.”
“I’m not surprised. What did you do, hold a dagger to the girl’s throat to make her wed you?”
The barest tick of a muscle in Valcour’s jaw made Lucy’s knees quake with foreboding.
“What is the girl to you?” Wilkes charged. “She has little fortune of her own. She’s no aristocrat with ancestors reaching back to the accursed William the Conqueror.”
“You forget that her father was a d’Autrecourt.”
“Her father is Ian Blackheath. An American patriot!” John raged. “He nearly died fighting against tyranny! And I lost all hope of ever—” John stopped, but Lucy knew the sacrifice that was like a burning brand in the man’s chest. An eternally empty cradle. The knowledge that he would never be a whole man again. “Do you think that you can just storm in and take an innocent girl from her family? And because you are an earl, no man will dare to stop you?”
“Your anger will change nothing, Wilkes. Lucinda is mine. I will do right by her, I swear it.”
“I’ll take your oath and ram it down your throat with the point of my sword!” John grappled for the dress sword affixed to his waist.
“No!” Lucy cried out, diving in front of Valcour as Wilkes’s steel hissed from its scabbard. “John, he is a master swordsman! Valcour, you cannot hurt him! I have enough to answer for already.”
The earl’s hand closed about her arm, moving her out of his way. “This is between Wilkes and me.” The earl’s gaze never wavered from the American diplomat’s face.
“Please, for the love of God! Don’t do this,” Lucy cried out as Valcour slowly drew the lethal length of steel that had nearly sent Jasper d’Autrecourt to the devil.
Valcour held the sword before him, one hand on the hilt, the other fingering the tip. “Wilkes, I have killed men who have dared challenge my honor. I have wounded many more. But I have never cut down anyone for speaking the truth.”
“I’ll have your blood for this! Damn you, I—”
Lucy cried out, Claree shrieking as Valcour’s sword flashed in the morning light, a loud, ringing crack shattering John’s furious words as the earl slammed the blade against his own raised knee. The magnificent sword snapped in two.
Valcour took the pieces and placed them on a mahogany table. “I will not be responsible for a good man’s death, John Wilkes. And I cannot let you kill me. I’ve done Lucinda enough harm, without cutting down someone whose friendship she cherishes. It’s true that I don’t… love her.” He hesitated over the words. “But I will protect her. And make her happy, if it is in my power.”
“If you make her unhappy, by God, I’ll see you dead. I don’t give a damn if you’re the bloody king!”
“I will write to her parents myself, Wilkes. Explain everything. Perhaps they will not be so grief-stricken by Lucinda’s mésalliance once they know that she will be the wealthiest countess in all England.”
“You think you can put a price on a man’s daughter?”
“No. I know Lucinda well enough to be certain she is a rare jewel. Brave as well as beautiful. Loving if somewhat hot-tempered.” Valcour smiled, a little wearily. “You are the second man who has attempted to murder me in Lucinda’s defense, Wilkes. Such a hard-won
treasure would have to be cherished, don’t you think?”
John met his words with a stony silence.
“Now, we had best go,” Valcour said, offering Lucy his arm. She slipped her hand onto his green velvet sleeve, drawing strength from the warmth that seeped into her palm from his muscled forearm. “Mrs. Wilkes, if you could have your servants pack Lucinda’s trunks, I will send someone to fetch them tomorrow morning.”
“Of course.” Claree turned tearful eyes to Lucy. “Child, no matter what happened, John and I still love you. And so will your mama and papa.”
“Claree,” Lucy said in a shaking voice, “I didn’t mean for things to go awry.”
“Of course you did not, my precious. I—I only wish I had been more vigilant in guarding you. Your papa warned me of your escapades, but I didn’t believe him. You have an angel’s face.”
“But I was always called the devil’s daughter.” Lucy turned away from her dejected friend and hastened out of the drawing room, down the corridor. Tears stung her eyes as the sunlight struck her face. How dare it be so glorious a day when her life was crumbling to ashes all around her?
Valcour said nothing as he swept Lucy up into the curricle. He circled around to his own seat, and Lucy felt the curricle rock beneath his weight as he settled himself and then took up the reins.
Lucy glanced at the townhouse window, seeing Claree there, sad and hurt and alone. Lucy knew that the shadows in the older woman’s face would remain there a long time, the legacy of Lucy’s willfulness and stubborn pride.
The curricle lurched, the horses skittering nervously in their traces, catching Valcour off guard. But he calmed the animals with a murmur and the flick of his hand. Both Lucy and the earl were both so lost in their own silent misery that neither of them saw the shadowy figure dart from the yew hedge and catch hold of the curricle’s back brace. Neither saw the figure slip beneath the curricle’s box and cling to the underpinnings, just as the carriage veered into the London streets.
*
Valcour gave Lucinda the gift of his silence during the ride back to Hawkvale, and after. He pressed one kiss to her hand then let her go.
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