As ever was the case, the speed with which Coquette’s heart beat increased as he looked at her. Silently scolding herself for allowing his profound attractiveness and allure to affect her so, she determined she would attempt to read the letter aloud while brushing over anything her eyes beheld that might give Valor cause for scorn.
“Very well, milord,” she said. Over the past week, Coquette had begun to learn the importance of standing firm in Valor’s presence—not firm in denying him, but firm in not displaying the profound effect his intimidation had on her. She was becoming quite adept at pretending confidence.
Carefully, she broke the seal of the parchment and unfolded it.
“My dearest Coquette,” she began. She could feel his gaze burning into the side of her face yet resolved to seem impervious. “It is well I hope this finds you. Dominique bids I ask you concerning the tapestries Father mentioned. Are they as wonderful as she dreams?”
“Are they?” Valor asked.
“Yes, sire,” Coquette answered. “They are.”
He nodded, proud and pleased by her answer.
“Continue then,” he ordered.
“So much has transpired in the few short days since you quit Bostchelan. There is so much to tell,” she read on. She paused, feeling a frown at her own brow. She did not quit Bostchelan—she was pressed to leave!
“It vexes you,” Valor said, “the fact she implies you chose to leave.”
“No,” Coquette lied, entirely unsettled by his uncanny ability to sense her thoughts. “I…I only wonder what so much has transpired. I have been gone but ten days.”
“You’re counting them, I see,” he said. A mischievous, knowing grin spread across his face.
“I will continue,” Coquette said, angry with the blush rising to her cheeks.
“Yes. Do,” he said.
“Two days ago, Father’s three new ships arrived heavy-laden with such wealth of commodities you can not imagine it—every conceivable textile, silver, gold, spice, antiquities! And you should see the gowns brought over for the three of us sisters you have left behind you. Father is happier than I ever remember him being, Coquette! And his happiness is our own. We are moving, as well! I cannot tell you where yet. It will be such a surprise when you visit us for you to see where we will be living. Father is more wealthy than ever any of us have imagined!” Coquette paused, hurt by Elise’s lightheartedness, by her father’s utter happiness while she lived under the roof of intimidation and disdain. Distracted by her own miserable reaction to the contents of the letter, she entirely forgot to not share it fully aloud to Valor.
She continued to read. “Henry Weatherby has asked for Inez’s hand only this morning! Father has given his permission, of course. Though Henry is not so wealthy and titled even as your Valor was, I believe Father is content enough in his own wealth now and in seeing you so rightly settled that his heart is softened toward Henry. Further, I think he has begun to worry none of the rest of us will marry, and he will not be rid of us! I do worry for you, Coquette. Yet Father assures me your Lord of Roanan is not so dark as his reputation attests and that you will be well cared for and happy. He says you will be a great lady, and though this seems to irritate Inez and Dominique somewhat, it eases my heart on your behalf. I do wonder though…how could your lord, that is to say, your husband—for it reaches our ears you are already wed—how could he threaten to murder our father on one day, yet earn Father’s praise in the next? It is a mystery I am certain you have solved by now, and so I will sit here at the side of the sea of Bostchelan and imagine you happy and as the beautiful, grand Lady of Roanan. It is the only way to ease my mind on your behalf, Coquette. I send my love to you in this letter and hope to see you again one day soon. I miss you so! Lovingly Yours, Elise.”
Coquette swallowed the emotion in her throat. It was true Elise cared for her. Had she not cared enough to write the letter? Still, the shallow nature of her father and sisters was painfully evident in its contents. She was hurt by the lighthearted tone of the letter, humiliated when she then realized she had read it fully to Valor.
“A letter to contemplate, indeed,” Valor said then. “Henry Weatherby, is it?” Valor asked. “For Inez, the eldest? Henry, who has no title and little wealth to speak of, is worthy of Inez. The oldest sister chooses who she may, and your father consents, while the youngest was given no choice even for the wealthy and soon-to-be titled man who asked for her hand.”
“Henry…Henry cares for Inez,” Coquette quietly insisted. Still, his words rang too true in her ears.
“Henry? Care for Inez?” Valor exclaimed. “Henry Weatherby is a puff! A puff who cared only for you, if memory serves. And yet he is worthy of Inez, the eldest, when I, wealthy and soon to inherit my father’s title, was not worthy of the younger?”
“Father’s heart has softened. Perhaps because of my own unhappiness at his refusing you.” Coquette ventured to defend her father, though in the moment she felt little like doing so.
“His heart is not softened!” Valor fairly roared. “He as much as sold you to me! To a stranger, he thinks!”
Coquette stood, glaring at him as tears filled her eyes. “You threatened his life, and I chose to come!” she told him. She watched as Valor’s jaw clenched tight with fury. He was withholding words, she knew. He was considering what he would say next rather than roaring what his temper urged him to say.
“And there it is before you,” he said. “You claim your own unhappiness at your father’s refusing me—claim he is softened because of it. And yet I will tell you this of it—your father does not know I am Lord of Roanan, and with my own mouth I assured him I would treat you badly. Yet he bid you come to me—your life for his—and he gives Henry Weatherby Inez’s hand! And there, still, you long for his company? Your sisters bathe in luxury and wealth, happiness and home, while you endure Roanan, and still you long for them instead of…” He paused, his teeth grinding with rage. He tugged at his cravat, loosening its knot and stripping it from his neck as he unbuttoned several buttons of his shirt. He breathed a heavy sigh and said, “Yet in truth, I had no siblings on which to slather unconditional adoration. I had no father worthy of admiration. You have no father to be admired as well. Yet you are a woman, and women are softhearted. Still…” He stood then, slamming one powerful fist on the table before him. “Are you so blind as this? Your father values wealth beyond anything—even beyond you!”
“You are wrong! He values his children!” Coquette cried. “You would have killed him! My sisters and I would have fallen into ruin! Does he not deserve happiness and wealth for being willing to give his life for us?”
“But that is where you are mistaken, my beauty,” he growled. “He was not willing to give his life for you. He was not willing to give even less.”
Coquette covered her ears with her hands. Yet the gesture did not stop the truth of his words from echoing in her mind. “What kind of daughter would allow her father to be killed for her sake?” she whispered.
“It was for the sake of thievery, not for the sake of you,” he said.
“It was a rose, Valor!” she cried at him. “He only took a rose!”
“Did he?” he asked, infuriated still. “What did he take from me—a rose? Nay. He took my life when he refused me you! And you were content in it! Better I am the beast I am now in your eyes than should your father be disappointed in rebellion from you then!” His eyes narrowed as he glared at her. “And you will not call me by that name again!”
“I was not content in it!” she cried, ignoring his last command. “I was not!”
“You were content in it!” he shouted. “Standing so wilted, so bewildered as I lowered myself to beg you away with me! It is well I remember it.”
“Do not speak to me of contentment,” she cried, “for you do not know it by sight, it is sadly obvious. Yet I will speak to you of choice—of the choice to remain true to myself, for I became no hateful beast who would threaten lives over one fading rose!”
He continued to glare at her yet remained silent. She fancied there was confusion in his eyes. Had her words touched him somehow? In the next moment, she was assured they had not.
Angrily sweeping his arms across the table before him, he sent silver spattering to the floor, china splintering into shards. Striding to her, he took her chin none too gently in hand and said, “Tomorrow you will ride with me to Roanan to set the tongues of gossips to wagging their wild ways. And then—sleep well this night, woman. For the next will be spent in my company!” Picking up the china plate on the table before her, he hurled it across the room, watching as it shattered against a wall. “Victoria!” he shouted. “Victoria!”
Coquette brushed the tears from her cheek, trembling as she stood in the presence of his rage.
“It was once you trembled with joy and desire when I was near. You may thank your father for the reason you tremble now,” he said, his voice still angry but void of the roar it held only moments before.
“You have chosen the reason I tremble now, milord,” Coquette said. “Place the blame where you will—yet you have chosen it.”
He said nothing, only continued to breathe heavy, angry breaths.
“Yes, milord?” Victoria said, entering the dining hall. Her eyes widened as she looked at the smashed china and scattered silver.
“I have…I have found myself in a fit of temper,” he said, attempting to steady his breathing. “See that milady is well fed and found comfortable in her bed.”
“Yes, sire,” Victoria said. “Will you not take dinner then, milord?”
“I have no appetite for dinner,” he said. Then speaking to Victoria yet glaring at Coquette, he added, “My appetite runs to merchants’ daughters, and it seems I cannot escape it.” He stormed from the room, leaving fury, rage, and loathing in his wake.
“Are you well, milady?” Victoria asked.
“I am,” Coquette said.
She was surprised in it herself, for Valor had become an entirely menacing apparition. And yet something in her could not wholly release the memory of the man she had known and loved. Something in her desired to battle with him, as if battling the demon he had become would unearth who he once had been. Further, her very soul knew he would not harm her being, even for his display of angry temper.
“How you are well and so utterly composed I cannot fathom, milady,” Victoria said, stooping to retrieve the scattered silver. “Such an unruly boy’s tantrum is in him at times. Godfrey and I can but wonder what has made him thus.”
“You do not know?” Coquette asked. She had assumed Godfrey and Victoria both knew Valor’s history—Valor’s and her own.
“No, milady. It was three years past milord arrived to claim the title and wealth of Roanan. Though his anger and darkness have steadily increased, he has never spoken of what reason was given to it.”
“Yet you serve him faithfully,” Coquette said. “And I sense there is more to your loyalty than mere price.”
Victoria looked to Coquette. She seemed to study her, weigh her trustworthiness a moment before speaking. “Forgive me, milady—but I sense there is more to your enduring than is evident as well. Perhaps it is we, all of us, know there is more than the dark beast in him,” she said.
“Still, his temper is far too violent,” Coquette said, skirting agreement. “His indulgence toward violence frightens me.”
“Has he harmed you?” Victoria asked.
Coquette looked to her, seeing an expression of rather daring on her face. “No. Never,” Coquette said. “But he threatened my father. Even his life.”
“Threatening is far different than acting, milady,” Victoria told her. “You need not fear him.”
“I know it,” Coquette admitted.
“Now, let us away to the kitchen. You need a good meal,” Victoria said, placing a comforting arm about Coquette’s shoulders.
Sleep did not come easily to Coquette that night. As she lay in bed into the latest hours, her mind was alive with contemplation. She had read Elise’s letter again. Over and over she had read it, Valor’s words echoing in her thoughts each time she did. Yet her father loved her, she was certain. And still, Valor’s judgments rang true in her mind. Her father had chosen to give Coquette’s life in place of his own—and that being if Valor truly intended to kill him. Something in the back of Coquette’s mind had begun to question whether Valor was capable of killing her father.
Threatening is far different than acting, milady. Victoria’s words reflected truth. Yet Coquette could not believe her father would send her to wed he whom he believed to be a stranger if anything less than his very life were at stake.
She tossed in her bed, determined to contemplate other venues—her father’s willingness to give Henry Weatherby Inez’s hand in marriage, for instance. Flatly he had refused Valor Coquette’s hand three years previous. What now made him so willing to accept such as Henry Weatherby? Perhaps it was simply as Elise had implied in her letter; perhaps her father worried his daughters would not marry if he did not lessen his standard or expectation in sons-in-law.
Coquette shook her head, trying to think of something else. And then—then it began—the moisture in her mouth increasing as she thought of Valor. For all his cruel fury, for all his apparently wicked ways, she could not chase the handsome vision of him from her mind.
“He is a beast!” she whispered aloud to herself, trying to evoke visions of his anger. Yet the vision most prevalent in her mind was that as he had appeared the morning after their wedding. He had emerged from his bathing rooms, damp-haired, loose-shirted, bootless, and the memory gave her cause to sigh with admiration.
She closed her eyes, reminiscing likewise the last time she had seen him before her father had refused to bestow him her hand.
Valor had come upon her in the gardens of her father’s house in Bostchelan. Taking her in his strong arms, he smiled down at her, loving desire apparent in the warm amber of his eyes. Gently pressing his mouth to her own, he had whispered, “I love you, Coquette de Bellamont. And I will have you—at any cost.”
Now, lying in her bed at Roanan, Coquette’s heart beat more rapidly as her memory lingered on Valor’s whispered kiss—the light touch of his tongue to her lips as he spoke the words, the feel of his breath warm in her mouth.
“He is a beast!” she told herself again. “Cruel, void of feeling save hate and anger!”
Yet as she at last began to drift into much-needed slumber, it was the vision, the memory of Valor’s kiss, whispered with such adoration and love—it became the fabric of her dreams.
The Attentive Lover
The cool air of morning was refreshing, invigorating in its promise of the change of season. Coquette could not help but smile at the sight of squirrels gathering food for their winter stores, the first few splashes of crimson high in the tops of the oaks. Her mount was lovely, a strong bay mare called Meg, and she kept pace perfectly with Valor’s black Goliath. She loved the sound of the leather of the saddles and cinches as they rode.
Valor had said little since they rode out from the manor house for Roanan. He seemed thoughtful, somewhat anxious, but Coquette was determined to enjoy the day. Lingering in the back of her mind, however, was Valor’s threat of the evening before—that she would spend this night in his company rather than in her own chamber. Still, she would face whatever night brought when night did bring it. For now she was away to Roanan, and she was happy in the knowledge.
“As do I, you will bear the brunt of gossip,” Valor suddenly said, “much of it cruel, highly embellished—malicious even. You must grow a thick skin to it.”
“What sort of gossip, milord?” she asked.
She could well imagine, for she knew the gossip that had widely circulated in Bostchelan concerning Valor’s father. Still, was it gossip when so much was truth? So she felt obliged to ask him, for she wondered what gossip was spread regarding her own husband.
“The sort that makes for im
moral accusations and lends excuses to those unwilling to own to their mistakes,” he said.
She looked to him, fancying he was uncomfortable in speaking to her about the venues of the gossip he anticipated.
“Are you similarly accused as was your father?” she asked, with thinly veiled impertinence. A vision of his being so obviously comfortable in addressing her as she sat amid his bed linens entered her mind. He seemed little disconcerted speaking to her as she sat wearing only her nightdress. Her father’s low expectations of Valor entered her mind, as did the immorality of Valor’s own father. Yet she battled such thoughts, for was she not questioning her own father’s character of late?
“I am similarly accused,” he stated. “And often.”
“There was truth in the gossip regarding your father,” she ventured, her hands suddenly trembling with trepidation. She would not believe Valor had taken on his father’s low character and immoral habits. She would not! Yet he was so much changed; she feared his answer in that moment.
“You’ve no need to remind me of the low character of my father,” he said.
“I meant but to ask you…to inquire if…” she stumbled.
“You want to know if the gossip is as true of me as it was of my father,” he finished for her. He looked at her, the angry amber of his eyes flaming with indignation.
“I did not mean to offend you, milord,” she mumbled, ashamed at her own implication.
“They may say you will quit me in two months in favor of some other lover,” he said. “They may even name him for you. Perhaps they will name my man, Godfrey, as your lover. Will that make it truth—that they have named it to be so?”
“Of course not!” Coquette exclaimed, blushing to the very tips of her toes. What an inference! How could he even concoct such wild ideas in his thinking?
“Then in that you have your answer to the truth of my character,” he said, “for albeit your father insisted my father’s nature would come to full fruition in me, it has not.” With one more glaring look at her, he growled, “On, Goliath!” The enormous black horse took to an immediate gallop, leaving Coquette and her mare far behind.
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