But in spite of her impatience, she curbed the impulse to go charging off earlier than planned: She had worked too hard and waited too long to risk ruining her chances of escape tonight by growing careless.
She had planned this expedition with the precision of a general throughout the past week, while the rest of the house had been in an uproar preparing for the coming ball. Her bundle of masculine clothes had been tucked behind a pillar in the garden just that morning, ready to be snatched up at a moment's notice. And she had spent countless hours charting the movements of the grooms so she would know at what time the stable would be most deserted.
She considered it a heavenly gift that Claree had planned the ball for Thursday night—the appointed time she was to rendezvous with the mysterious stranger in the gaming hell. And although Lucy had failed in her mission last time, she was resolved that tonight she'd not allow even the devil himself to stand in her way.
The devil...
She felt a tingling awareness beneath her skin, something dark and enticing stirring inside her, as her memory filled with the image of eyes black as Satan's soul, a mouth tempting as sin.
The earl of Valcour's mesmerizing features danced like some sensual dream inside her mind. His face was cold and arrogant. His eyes were burning, intense. The carnal heat of his mouth seemed so seductive that Lucy had spent the past week wondering what it would be like to taste it.
It was absurd, this curiosity. A result of too many sleepless nights. Yet, even in his absence, the fascinating English lord had tormented her, taunted her, dared her—to what, she did not know.
Lucy drew deeper into the shadow of the curtain, raising trembling fingers to the exquisite likeness of Alexander d'Autrecourt she had pinned in the froth of lace at her breasts when she'd dressed three hours earlier. She had worn the ornament in vague hopes that one of Claree's guests might recognize her father's face and comment on it. Of course, it had been ridiculous to hope that the English would stop peering down their noses long enough to remark on something so small and delicate.
Especially when they had such a deliciously fresh scandal to sharpen their teeth on.
Lucy nibbled at the corner of her lip, scraps of conversation she'd heard earlier that night echoing in her memory. She must have listened to a dozen accounts of what had happened in the now notorious "duel at the gates of hell." It had taken all Lucy's willpower to keep her own mouth clamped shut as each story grew more fantastic than the last, the truth lost in embellishments so ridiculous she was certain her baby sisters would not have believed them.
But, truth to tell, she could almost have been grateful for the flurry of gossip, since it provided such a convenient distraction to aid in her escape. She could have been grateful, if it weren't for the grudging sympathy she was beginning to feel for the earl of Valcour's brother, who was the butt of the constant jests.
Still, Lucy thought with grim determination, this wasn't a night to go crusading on behalf of some English boy she'd never even met. She had to keep her mind fixed on her purpose. To find the mysterious man who had disappeared into the twisted alleyways the week before. To discover the secrets that had been hidden in the vague, sorrowful blue eyes she'd glimpsed so briefly before Valcour had ruined everything.
She pressed her hand against the pocket hidden beneath her silver-tissue gown and heard the soft crackling of the parchment she had concealed there. But even this scrap of music he had left behind in the gaming hell saddened her. For when her fingers had tried to coax the melody out of the pianoforte, she discovered that whatever creative fire Alexander d'Autrecourt had once had had vanished. Gone like the serenity that wreathed his face in the painted miniature.
"Pardon, Miss Blackheath." The sound of a voice at the edge of the curtain made her turn, and she saw a man with a ruddy face and lecherous eye sidling into her haven. "I would delight in claiming you for this dance."
"Please, go delight someone else," she said with a beatific smile. Then she hurried from the alcove, leaving the gentleman gaping. She glanced one more time at the clock, relieved to see that it was time to make her escape.
With great effort, Lucy restrained herself to a casual stroll toward the door, fully intending to make an exit without another interruption. But just as she rounded an urn full of roses, she glimpsed a crowd of raucous men, their laughter tinged with a nastiness that raked her nerves.
Lucy gritted her teeth, quickened her step. She might even have managed to pass them altogether if she had not caught sight of their quarry. A golden-haired youth near her age stood like a man facing his executioners, his face rigid, his cheeks as white as the froth of neckcloth tied beneath a boyishly smooth chin. But it was his eyes that pierced Lucy like a dagger thrust. They caught hers for a heartbeat—filled with abject misery—then flashed away as if the humiliation were too great to bear.
"I envy you, Aubrey!" said a sly-looking fool. "It must be very convenient to have a brother like Valcour."
Lucy missed a step, her gaze returning to the boy. Aubrey? Surely this couldn't be the brother Valcour had supposedly been defending. The boy was as different in appearance from the earl as sunshine to midnight. And yet at first glance, who would guess that Lucy and Norah were sisters?
She paused, pretending to rearrange the lace at her wrists while she stole another glance at the boy. He was young, but a man nonetheless. Old enough to make his own choices. No wonder his pride was so battered by what had happened. Lucy felt a swift jab of anger toward Valcour.
"Chalmers, haven't you heard?" A portly youth with a purple wig cuffed Patch on the back. "Valcour is like a mastiff trained to attack anyone who distresses those he is responsible for. Perhaps we had better warn that little opera dancer who rejected Aubrey's suit last week. Aubrey may set his brother on her for revenge!"
Lucy flinched in sympathy as two hot spots of color darkened the boy's cheeks. "I wanted nothing more than to match steel with d'Autrecourt," he snapped. "The instant Sir Jasper is recovered, I'll meet him. By God, I will."
"Sir Jasper will refuse to meet you after his tête-à-tête with the point of your illustrious brother's sword. D'Autrecourt may be a fool, but he's not suicidal."
"It is I who will fight."
Disbelieving laughter rose from the crowd.
"Of course you will, my treasure," Purple Wig chortled.
"I've told you a dozen times, I knew nothing of Valcour's plans until it was all over!" Aubrey said.
"That's not the way Filby told the tale," Patch sneered. "He said there was a blond gentleman at Valcour's side when he came to d'Autrecourt's table. Everyone knows how nearsighted old Filly is, but there can be little doubt it was you."
"Damn it to hell, it wasn't! There was a private party at Bridgeton's. I was there all night. Mirrivile can attest to it!"
"Your bosom friends? How convenient. We know exactly how objective they would be."
Swearing inwardly, Lucy charged into the breach. "It is as he says," she announced in a clear voice.
The men wheeled to face her, none more stunned than the earl of Valcour's brother. Eyes that had been filled with fury and misery widened in surprise.
"A thousand pardons, miss," Patch said with such annoying obsequiousness that Lucy was tempted to loosen his teeth. "It's not our custom to discuss such inappropriate topics in front of a lady as lovely as yourself."
"I am unfamiliar with English customs, sir." Lucy peered up through thick lashes. "Is it considered appropriate for gentlemen to spread lies about an incident as long as there is no lady present to stop them?"
The patch quivered with anger at the corner of the man's thin lips. "Certainly, miss, you do not mean to infer—"
"I'm not inferring anything. I'm stating quite plainly that you are spreading vicious and unfounded rumors."
Lucy delighted in the man's cheeks puffing out, scarlet with outrage.
"You see," she continued, "I am intimately acquainted with the young gentleman Valcour dragged into his infamou
s duel. And I promise you it was not Lord Valcour's brother. The earl was acting on his own dictatorial impulses. I'm astonished you didn't guess as much at once. Surely you must know his despicable temperament better than I."
"Damned disrespectful way to talk of an aristocrat!" Purple wig sputtered.
"We have had a great deal of practice at it in Virginia." Lucy gave him her sweetest smile. "Tell me, can you think of a better way to describe such a high-handed interference in his brother's affair? He tore Mr. Aubrey's reputation to shreds with no thought of the man's honor. It seems to me you should be defaming Valcour's character for his inexcusable indifference to his brother. If any man behaved so abominably to me, I vow I would make him sorry!" Lucy tossed her curls.
The company gaped at her outburst, but Lucy didn't care. She had brought color back to Aubrey's cheeks.
There was a questioning light in his eyes. For an instant, his lips tipped in a vulnerable half smile.
"I must thank you for your defense, milady, though I'm uncertain how I came by it." He gave a courtly bow. "May I present myself? Aubrey St. Cyr. Your servant."
"St. Cyr?" Lucy echoed a little faintly. Her fingers strayed to the miniature at her breast. "Of Harlestone Castle?"
"I sincerely hope not," Aubrey said with a warm smile. "I fear it's in such bad repair that it's fit only to house the family ghosts at present."
"But someone must have lived there."
"At Harlestone?" Purple Wig scoffed. "It's nothing but a crumbling pile of rubble with a few tapestries for the mice to chew on."
"There are a few servants who still live there to oversee the lands, I think." Aubrey cut in. "And my brother, the earl, keeps a suite of rooms in decent repair for when he must visit the lands. But no one has truly lived there since I was two or three years old. Why do you ask?"
Lucy looked away. "I... have a bit of music that was supposed to have been written for someone there. I was curious."
"I'm sorry, but we St. Cyrs are a notoriously tone-deaf lot from all accounts. Not a one of us has ever played or sung a note to my knowledge." He shrugged. "I'd like to help you, miss, but I'm afraid I can't.”
"Which should be no surprise," Patch interrupted in an annoying nasal drawl. "You'll find that Mr. St. Cyr can't even help himself, let alone someone else, my beauty. You are the ambassador's houseguest, are you not?" He tried to take her hand to kiss it.
Lucy snatched her fingers away as if he had the plague and favored Aubrey with her most dazzling smile. "Lucinda Blackheath," she said with a curtsy. "My friends call me Lucy."
Aubrey smiled back, raising her hand to his lips. "Then I shall call you Lucy too."
"It is the least you should do, St. Cyr," Purple Wig said in pompous accents. "Since the lady has charged to your defense, berating us about things she doesn't understand. Miss Blackheath, you can hardly be expected to comprehend how great a value we Englishmen place on honor, when you come from the wilds of America."
"We Americans understand the British concept of honor very well. You should also be aware that we don't shrink from pointing out tyranny when we see it."
"Tyranny!" Patch echoed, a round of gasps erupting from those around him. Lucy took deep satisfaction in the way their faces paled, their eyes widened. Aubrey looked ashen as well, but Lucy could not resist burying her verbal thrust to its hilt.
"Tyranny, sir," she enunciated in accents that would have done Patrick Henry proud. "The earl of Valcour is the most loathsome, arrogant, insufferable monster that I've ever had the ill luck to stumble across. Thankfully, we Americans have ways of dealing with tyrants."
The chiming of the clock brought Lucy to her senses. But she couldn't regret that she had stepped in, although it had cost her precious time.
She spun on her heels, fully intending to make good her escape. But she slammed headfirst into a solid wall of muscle, garbed in velvet. Hands caught her arms to steady her, but she couldn't raise her eyes from the disturbingly familiar diamond stickpin glinting up at her with mocking brilliance from her captor's neckcloth.
God, no! Not again! The fates couldn't be so unfair.
"Valcour." She squeezed his name through her lips and tilted her head back to meet dark eyes, their fierce intelligence all but concealed beneath narrowed lids.
He was magnificent: his sable hair unpowdered, caught back in a thin black ribbon, his broad shoulders covered in amber velvet with touches of rich gold about the collar and buttonholes. His waistcoat was the tawny color of a lion's mane, accenting his powerful physique. The scar on his face only made him more dazzlingly handsome, more intriguingly dangerous.
He might have been a pirate, or some reckless knight of the road, if it hadn't been for the aura of cold arrogance he wore like a mantle. For an instant Lucy couldn't breathe.
Some emotion darted like quicksilver across the earl's patrician features, but it was gone so quickly Lucy wondered if she'd imagined it. His lips curved in a smile that was unbridled mockery.
"I am waiting with baited breath to find out exactly how Americans deal with tyrants," he drawled. "Something distressingly primitive, I would imagine."
Suddenly Lucy wanted him to know exactly who she was, "I would be happy to refresh your memory, my lord," she said.
"That would be most unwise, little one," Valcour cut in silkily. "But, then, it is my impression that you aren't half so wise as you are... beautiful."
Lucy stiffened against a strange curling sensation in her stomach as those intense eyes swept from the white roses twined in her golden curls to the silver-gilt tip of the slipper that peeked from beneath the hem of her petticoat.
"Valcour, I'll not have you tormenting her!" It was Aubrey charging to her rescue, his eyes filled with defiance.
"I am merely all eagerness to renew my acquaintance with the lady, Aubrey. You see, my introduction to Miss Blackheath was the most singular one I've ever experienced from an... er... female."
"There is a tale behind it, your lordship?" Purple Wig piped up. "Do tell!"
Valcour smiled with a barely veiled warning. "I am the soul of discretion, Willoughby. And I am certain Miss Blackheath will reward me for my virtue by giving me the honor of this dance."
"It's quite impossible!" Lucy said with a wave of her hand. "I cannot..."
Lucy's words trailed to silence as her eyes locked on the implacable lines of Valcour's face. He said nothing, merely arched one dark brow.
Lucy wanted to drive her slipper into Valcour's shin, to turn and flounce away, but there was a subtle threat in Valcour's hooded eyes that made her aware of exactly how disastrous it would be if Valcour revealed her part in the debacle at the gaming hell a week before.
No gentleman would do such a thing—but hadn't Lucy witnessed firsthand exactly how ruthless this particular nobleman could be?
Seething, she lifted her chin with the dignity of a queen and allowed him to lead her to the floor. She satisfied her raging temper by digging her nails as deeply as possible into the villain's forearm.
Valcour's eyes flicked to her hand. "Wasn't it you who told me that it is always unwise to react in anger, Miss Blackheath? Or should I say, 'Mr. Dubbonet'?"
"I don't get angry, my lord," Lucy said with acid sweetness. "I get revenge."
He swept her into the line of dancers and made her an elegant bow. "I am quaking with trepidation."
Lucy dropped into her most insolent curtsy. The strains of the minuet usually triggered Lucy's most romantic dreams, carrying her far away, until her partner faded into a misty haze, the man necessary but insignificant in comparison to the music.
But as she dipped and circled tonight, every nerve in her body sizzled with awareness of Valcour. Valcour's hand brushing hers, Valcour's lean, powerful body circling with predatory grace. Something earthy obliterated the airy sensation she'd always had in the dance before—Valcour's cold drawl building fires inside her.
She was reacting to him because of her anger, she reasoned, coming about to meet that
ruthless gaze again. Anger at his intrusion, his insufferable conceit.
But she had felt anger with great regularity in her twenty years. And she had never felt like this... as if she were dancing on the edge of a precipice, waiting to topple off.
The sensation infuriated Lucy, and she glared up at the earl's impassive face. "Well? What the devil did you want to dance with me for?" she demanded. "And don't say it's because you think I'm lovely or want to renew our acquaintance or any other such rot. If you do I'll... I'll..."
Valcour's lips twitched. "Kick me?" he provided.
"It occurred to me." Lucy touched his hand as if it were a viper and circled gracefully. "Unfortunately, it's near impossible with all these petticoats getting in my way."
Valcour chuckled, a rich, husky sound that seemed to burrow into Lucy's chest. She was not the only one affected. His lordship's reaction created a sensation, the couples around them gaping as if he had just pulled the chandelier down upon their heads.
"All right, madam," Valcour said at last. "I am dancing with you because I have a marked aversion to surprises. And discovering that I had involved a lady in a duel—a duel in a most unsavory setting, I might add—is exactly the sort of surprise I detest the most. As if that was not distressing enough, I discover that this lady was not some street urchin but, rather, the guest of the new American ambassador. You can't blame me for being intrigued."
"You can go on being 'intrigued' until you're eighty, my lord. One would think you English would have learned your lesson after the War for Independence. People who go poking their aristocratic noses into a Virginian's business get them snapped off."
What amusement had shown on Valcour's face vanished. "You will tell me, girl. The whole story."
Lucy tossed her curls. "I'll tell you when I feel like it. You can't frighten me like you do your poor brother, my lord."
"Ah, yes... poor beleaguered Aubrey, tyrannized by his wicked elder brother."
Lucy managed a stiff smile at the Countess Maine and made a delicate dance step with her slippered toe. "You humiliated him!" she muttered to Valcour under her breath. "Perhaps you've been too busy to notice, but people have been jeering at him the whole night!"
The Raider’s Daughter Page 6
