“As loquacious as ever,” Rafael said once he and Victoria were shown to their large airy bedchamber some minutes later.
She smiled at him, and immediately made her way to the window that looked toward the market square. Today wasn’t a market day, and the stalls were empty, looking somehow abandoned and forlorn. Rafael came up behind her and said softly, “Do you know what day this is, Victoria?”
“Your birthday?”
“No, my birthday is in January. I trust you won’t forget. No, today is a day of celebration. We can call it the Carstairs’ gratification ceremony.”
“Ah,” she said, feeling at once excited and embarrassed and very eager, the truth be told.
Rafael wasn’t blind or unversed in the moods of women. He smiled blandly down at his bride, knowing very well that the reins of control were firmly in his two strong hands. He wondered just how long he would tease her. Perhaps it would lessen the amount of time she would feel embarrassed around him in the future.
“Shall we change for dinner?”
Victoria could only stare up at him. “What?”
“Change for dinner,” he repeated patiently.
“But I thought that . . . “
“What, my dear?”
But Victoria hadn’t been raised to baldly state that she wanted her husband in her bed.
“You’re a bully,” she said, and pulled away from him.
“Very well, Victoria. I wish to speak to Mr. Rinsey for a few minutes before we dine. He is the Demoreton solicitor with whom I have been dealing.” He flicked a finger over her cheek and was gone.
18
Nature made him, and then broke the mould.
—LUDOVICO ARISTO
Perversity, Victoria thought as she ate her delicious roast lamb and suet dumplings across the small oak table from her husband, was more the prerogative of the male than the female. Rafael was regaling her, with all the enthusiasm of a male very pleased with himself, about this Mr. Rinsey, a bespectacled, stoop-shouldered gentleman who couldn’t manage to disguise the urgency of the sale of the Demoreton property.
Finally, when Mrs. Fooge had given them their rich apricot blancmange dessert, Rafael came to a final halt in his endless monologue. He cocked a black brow at Victoria
“Did you say something, Victoria?”
“Me? Say something? Speak when you are declaiming fit for the diplomatic service? Actually, I have been enjoying a fascinating internal conversation.” She broke off, her thoughts flying forward. She lowered her head and her hands fisted in her lap. It simply had to stop. It had to. There were no thick, full hangings on their bed upstairs. There was even a wide window that admitted, she well imagined, a surfeit of moonlight. And there was a brilliant half-moon this evening.
But she was still furious at him for his damnable distrust. He didn’t deserve any explanation from her, even though it should sink him in guilt. And perhaps revulsion. She knew at that moment that she wouldn’t be able to bear it if he looked at her leg and felt sickened. And she would know, no matter how he would try to hide it.
He hadn’t touched her sexually during the past five nights, save for holding her while she slept, and of course she’d worn a full flannel nightgown. But tonight, if he were to make love to her in the blackest pit on earth, he would still feel the dreadful ridged scar along the outside of her left thigh. She also knew that tonight he was impatient with her so-called ugliness and would touch every inch of her.
In an unconscious gesture her fingers went unerringly to the scar and slowly she began to knead the muscles through her gown and petticoats.
When she realized what she was doing, her eyes went to her husband’s face and she said, her voice sounding distressed to Rafael’s ears, “I’m very tired, Rafael.”
He wasn’t certain what kind of game she was playing with him, but he only smiled, refusing to join in. “You may nod off over your blancmange.” He gave an ostentatious look at his watch. “I will give you fifteen minutes, no more.”
She was more than aware of the determination in his voice.
“Stop it!” She jumped to her feet, her chair skidding over and falling with a muffled thud on Mrs. Fooge’s thick wool rug.
Her yell sounded very loud in the small private parlor and neither of them was surprised to hear Mr. Fooge call from outside the closed door, “Is anything wrong, Master Rafael?”
“Everything is fine, Mr. Fooge. My wife merely slipped, but she is unhurt.”
They heard a grunt, a flurry of low voices, then Mr. Fooge’s retreating footsteps.
Rafael regarded her from beneath lowered eyelashes. She was excessively upset, as if she’d just recalled something that bothered her immensely. What could it be? Before, she’d been excessively desirous of bedding him. Impossible for him to be mistaken about that.
“What has changed, Victoria?” He started, surprised that he’d spoken aloud.
“Changed?” she repeated in a wary voice, keeping her distance. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that you quite clearly wanted me earlier, but now you seem . . . well, terrified of bedding me. I am just a man, my dear, and am feeling justly confused.”
Victoria looked him straight in his beautiful eyes. “I don’t want you. Now, that is. I’m tired. Truly. I’m going to bed.”
He said nothing for many moments, merely looked at her. “Very well,” he said at last, stretching his arms above his head and leaning his head back. “Good night, my dear Victoria. Sleep well. I’ll wake you early. Mr. Rinsey will be meeting us at the Demoreton property at eleven o’clock in the morning.”
She stood there staring at him, feeling like a reefed sail on calm water. She wasn’t quite certain what she’d expected him to say or do after her announcement, but utter disinterest wasn’t on her list.
“Must I give you a good-night kiss?”
She fled from the private parlor, his voice echoing in her mind.
Victoria didn’t fall asleep for a very long time. It seemed to her at least a fortnight, but as she had no watch, she had no way of knowing.
Rafael looked down at her outline, clear in the moonlight from the window. She was sleeping soundly on her left side. Her hair was loose and fanned about her head on the pillow. Her right leg was drawn up, and that made him grin. It seemed that even in her sleep, Victoria’s body wanted to yield to him, to give him an unmistakable, quite splendid invitation.
He was quickly naked, his clothing folded neatly over the back of the single chair. As quietly as he could, he slipped under the covers beside her. The bed was thankfully firm and didn’t form a trough in the middle as he eased over next to her. She remained asleep, still on her left side. Slowly he began to inch up her nightgown.
“Silly little wench,” he whispered. She muttered something in her sleep and obligingly shifted her weight when he eased her nightgown over her thighs.
He gazed down at her long slender legs and her quite delicious hips. Round and soft, so inviting that he couldn’t keep his hands off her. He touched her as lightly as a moth’s wings, and when he couldn’t bear it any longer, he pressed his middle finger gently between her parted thighs, searching and probing and entering her finally. She was incredibly hot, small and tender, and he closed his eyes and groaned.
He eased down beside her and slowly guided himself into her. He couldn’t believe the feelings that slashed through him as she took more and more of him. Her smallness, the unconscious squeezing of her muscles that held him firmly, then drew him deep into her, made him nearly wild with lust. He wanted her awake now, and began to knead her soft belly with his right hand as he slipped his left arm beneath her.
“Victoria,” he said between light, nipping kisses on her right earlobe, her throat, her cheek. “Come on, love, wake up for me, feel me, yell for me.”
Victoria woke up. She was stunned. She didn’t move, but it was just for an instant. He was inside her and his fingers were now roving down her belly to touch her She was flooded with the
most wonderful feelings imaginable. “Oh,” she whispered.
Rafael pressed his palm against her, pushing her hips back against him, driving his member deeper. When his fingers found her, her breath exploded in gasps from her throat and she tried to twist around so he could kiss her.
“I can’t, Victoria. Shove back with your hips. That’s right. Now, just enjoy. You like this, don’t you?” His fingers deepened their rhythmic pressure and she quivered.
“Don’t you?”
“. . . I do like. . .“
“And this?” She felt his finger press inward, coming inside her with his sex, and she cried out, an eager, frustrated, wanting cry that made him feel like the lord and master of all the world.
Rafael increased his speed, his thrusts as powerful and deep as he could make them, all the while driving her distracted with his caressing and probing fingers. He felt her near her climax and concentrated on her movements, her reactions. When she broke, arching madly against him, crying softly, he thought he would yell himself from the wonder of it. Slowly he eased and soothed her; then, just when she was calming, he increased the pressure again.
To his immense pleasure, he felt her quicken and respond fully and naturally. And again he brought her to pleasure, only this time he joined her.
“You’re delightfully sweaty.”
Victoria heard his soft, drawling comment just outside her right ear. She wondered if she could speak. She could barely think. She was aware that her breasts were still heaving, as if she were starved for air. “Am I really?”
Well, three words that did make some sense wasn’t a bad beginning.
“Yes, you are.” He kissed her cheek and her throat. He was still deep inside her. “And you’re wonderful. You enjoyed yourself, Victoria.”
“Perhaps.”
“Twice, actually, and very loudly. I fear the walls of our room are rather thin. If we have neighbors, I do wonder what they are now doing. Or thinking.”
“Be quiet. I still don’t like you at all.”
“No liking, truly? And here I am still a part of you, a very deep part.”
She quivered, squeezing him inadvertently, and he moaned, his lips pressed against her shoulder. “Lovely,” he said, and wrapped himself tightly around her. “You’ve worn me to a bone, my dear. I believe I will nod off now. I’ve done my husbandly duty.”
Victoria found herself grinning in the darkness. Then she remembered her leg. Her breath caught in her throat. It was some moments before she realized that she was lying on her left side, that she’d been on her left side the entire time. He hadn’t touched her there, he hadn’t been able to. She’d been safe yet another time.
“I prefer to think of it as a wifely duty,” she said, and pushed her buttocks against his groin. She felt him tense and said, “Forgive me, I’m simply getting more comfortable.”
He laughed, kissed the back of her ear, cuddled closer, and was soon deeply asleep.
Victoria wasn’t. She felt him leaving her, slowly, but still he held her very close. She felt the thick hair of his chest against her smooth back. It felt good. Everything about him felt good. And exciting. And tantalizing. His legs were curved into the hollows of hers. She sighed.
“But I can’t be on my left side all my life,” she said in a small, very tired whisper to the now-silent bedchamber.
“Hmmm? Go back to sleep, Victoria,” came Rafael’s voice. “It’s still dark. We don’t have to get up yet.”
They reached the town of St. Agnes in good time the following morning. As Flash negotiated the narrow cobbled streets with more enthusiasm than skill, Victoria was leaning halfway out the carriage window, interested in everything.
Rafael pulled Gadfly alongside the carriage. “Look yon, Victoria. This is called the Stippy-Stappy—those long-stepped terraces of tin miners’ cottages. The men set off to work their shifts in West Kitty, Wheal Kitty, Blue Hills, just to name a few of the larger tin mines.”
“How do you know so much about these mines? Stippy-Stappy and the names?”
“I’m a manly man and thus automatically know these things,” he said.
“And that book I see in your pocket?”
The cobbled street narrowed and Rafael was forced to pull Gadfly ahead of the carriage. They turned onto High Street and Victoria marveled at the row after row of slate and granite cottages.
It was but a short distance to St. Agnes Head and the Demoreton property. Flash turned the carriage off the narrow country road some ten minutes later and they bowled down a narrow weed-infested drive to a Queen Anne manor house that was so entangled with ivy that Victoria felt a flood of depression. However would the interior look? she wondered, sinking fast in gloom.
Mr. Rinsey was just as Rafael had described him, and the manor house was a dismal place, to be sure, the Demoreton family having moved out some three months before, when another party had offered for the house, then met an untimely end before the sale could be finalized.
“So, unfortunately, the house has been empty,” said Mr. Rinsey apologetically. He was sweating profusely, Victoria noted, feeling quite sorry for him.
She said to Rafael, “It has possibilities if one hires a good dozen gardeners with shears to clear away all the ivy.”
“I agree. A baker’s dozen. Come inside and let’s see what’s in store for us there.”
They toured the house. The rooms on the ground floor were dark and gloomy, fulfilling Victoria’s pessimistic expectations, but with the removal of the ghastly cabbage-rose wall coverings in the main drawing room and the burning of the intensely ugly puce brocade draperies that hovered over nearly every downstairs window, the main floor would become charming. As for the rooms above stairs, they were, to Victoria’s mind, nearly ready for occupation, save for the musty, closed-up smell. The master bedchamber was a huge L-shaped room filled with light and a clear prospect of the distant cliff and the ocean.
“I think our bed should go right there,” Rafael said in her ear, pointing. “We could wake up and go to sleep looking at the ocean.”
“That’s a wonderful place,” she said, and gave him a smile that made him want to toss Mr. Rinsey out on his solicitor’s ear and toss his wife onto her back.
The grounds hadn’t enjoyed a gardener’s hand in many a month, but again, Victoria thought, there were possibilities. Excitement grew within her. Drago Hall wasn’t hers, never had been. But this could be hers and she could place her mark on it.
“Where are the ruins of that castle?” Victoria said.
“Wolfeton? Just over there, if I’m not mistaken. Excuse me, Mr. Rinsey. We’ll return shortly.”
It had been a mighty medieval keep, the east tower the only one of the four not completely crumbled. Massive and tall it was. And dangerous.
“This was the inner bailey,” Rafael said, “and that was where the great oak doors used to be. Can’t you just imagine the lord riding his huge destrier going into battle yelling ’De Moreton! De Moreton!’ ”
Victoria’s eyes were as dreamy as her husband’s voice. “Yes, and I recall that keeps of this size housed literally hundreds of people. Is there a graveyard hereabouts?”
“Probably, but I don’t know where.”
“It will cost us a lot of money to refurbish the manor house,” Victoria said carefully, stopping to look up at Rafael.
“Yes, and even more money to get the tin mines back to full operation.”
“We would need the ongoing income from the tin mines for the upkeep of the property.”
He smiled down at her. Smart lady, his wife. No problem with tin mining, even though it smacked of trade. He had a great deal of contempt for those gentlemen who turned up their blue-blooded noses at men like himself who had earned their own fortunes. It appeared his wife held his views.
Victoria fell silent. They walked to St. Agnes Head along the well-worn footpath. Rafael sucked in his breath and pointed. “It’s at least a thirty-mile sweep of the Atlantic coast and we can see all of it
. That is St. Ives, and far distant is Trevose Head. It’s exquisite, isn’t it?”
“Yes, and untamed and savage and exciting. I should like to live here, Rafael.”
“Should you, now, Victoria? Well, perhaps we can manage it.”
“Do you wish to take the part of my inheritance from the trust for our children? We could put it to better use now, I believe.”
He gave her a very affectionate, tender smile. “You and I will sit down and make out interminable lists. Then we will see what amounts we need. All right?”
She nodded happily, and walked to the very edge of the cliff. She said over her shoulder, “Do you truly believe you would be happy here, managing our tin mines and not captaining the Seawitch?”
“To faraway, exotic places where beautiful women abound?”
“I wish you would let out your brain another notch.”
“Very well, ma’am. Yes, I think so.”
Victoria smiled at him, and he watched her run her hand over a stunted bowed tree just to her left. He watched her draw in deep breaths of the wonderfully sharp ocean breeze.
He wanted to tell her in that instant that he knew he could be content anywhere so long as she was with him.
Rafael stood where he was, saying nothing, continuing to watch his wife. She was proving to be an ideal mate, he reflected. Passionate in his bed, sharing his tastes and his dreams. Yes, all was going just as he wanted. Except for that damned confession of hers. And that ugly malformed toe—or whatever the devil she considered ugly about her body. He’d meant to look early that morning before she’d awakened, but she’d been awake and dressed before he’d cracked an eye open.
“I’ve decided to keep you, despite everything.”
He’d come up noiselessly behind her. She felt him draw her against his back, and relaxed against him.
“Why?”
“If I told you the truth, the complete sequence of my male thoughts, I’m afraid you might try to hit me over the head and toss me down the cliff.”
She turned in his arms and grinned impishly up at him. “What did you mean by ’despite everything’?”
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