Valcour slammed his knotted fist against the window ledge in frustration. No, blast it, he wouldn't let her inside those secret places he'd fought so hard to keep safe. He wouldn't let her reach past the earl of Valcour and into Dominic St. Cyr. Dominic, the dreamer, who had closed his eyes to everything but beauty until it was too late.
His jaw clenched as he caught a glimpse of scarlet ribbon and creamy gown, golden curls capturing the sunlight as Lucinda wandered toward the stables. There was something almost pensive about her, something fragile and beautiful and so tempting. For an instant Valcour was tempted to shove the mountains of work from his desk and follow her. Where, though? To a place he could be hurt again? Destroyed? A place where the tiny piece of himself he'd been able to save would be crushed beneath the weight of his emotions?
Calling himself three times the fool, Valcour stalked back to his desk. He would have to fight to keep his distance from the girl, battle the imps of mischief that twinkled in her eyes, the stubbornness that clung about her delectable little chin. He'd have to fight the innocence, the passion that glossed her lips, and the courage that was evident in every line of her supple body. Most of all, he would have to shield himself against the Lucinda who had reached out her arms to him last night—a sorrowful angel, who made him want to keep her safe in his embrace forever.
Valcour had faced countless men on dueling fields, their swords but a whisper away from his heart. But already he could feel the weapon Lucinda wielded against him slipping past his guard, plunging to the hilt, leaving him wounded in a way he had never been before.
A soft rap at the door made Valcour start, and he turned to see a gawky young footman in the entryway. "My lord, you have a visitor."
"I don't give a damn if the whole of England is at my door. Send them away."
"But sir, it's Master Aubrey, and he..."
Hellfire, as if Valcour wasn't being tormented by enough demons. The last thing he'd expected was for Aubrey to press for a confrontation after all that had happened. Always before, Valcour had practically been forced to drag the boy into his presence, as if Aubrey were a felon awaiting a death sentence. But this would not be like all those other meetings.
Everything had changed between them forever during those frozen moments when Aubrey had held his sword point one flick of his wrist away from Dominic's heart.
"You will send Mr. St. Cyr in at once."
The footman bowed. After a moment, Aubrey came through the door. All signs of the scapegrace boy who had driven Dominic to madness were gone. His neckcloth was immaculate, tied soberly beneath his chin. His blond hair was caught sleekly back in a ribbon at his nape. Even his frock coat was a sober dove-gray. But it was his face that made Valcour's chest ache unexpectedly. The boy was gone. The man who stood before Dominic had been altered forever by heartbreak and betrayal. Heartbreak and betrayal at Dominic's hands.
Valcour rose and gestured to one of the wing-backed chairs before the fireplace. Aubrey clasped his hands behind his back. "I prefer to stand."
Valcour shrugged, taking the chair himself, trying to gather up the icy detachment that had always served him so well, keeping everyone at a distance, even his only brother. "As you wish."
"I've come to tell Mother goodbye."
"Goodbye?"
"I've joined the Eleventh Hussars. I leave for my post within the week."
"The Hussars? The devil you have!" Valcour bolted from the chair. "If I'd wanted my brother in the damned army I would have bought you a commission."
"It is not your decision to make, sir."
Before, Valcour would have diffused into cold fury, brushing the words aside as a boy's dramatics. But he only glared at Aubrey's resolute features, feeling damned helpless.
"What is this? Some foolish romantic notion about getting your head blown off because of unrequited love?"
"I've just decided that it's time to discover what I'm made of."
Valcour started to bite out a retort but was stopped cold by the fierce resolve in Aubrey's eyes, a quiet determination like nothing Valcour had ever seen before.
"If you want to follow the drum, I'll buy you a commission. You can begin as an officer."
"That is not necessary, sir. For years you've made it clear to all of London that I'm a millstone around your neck, and I've done nothing to change their opinion, acting like a weak-spined wastrel. But I'm not destroying myself in order to spite you any longer. I relieve you of all responsibility for me."
Valcour stared into his brother's face and saw a reflection of the boy Dominic had been—saw the icy mask settling over Aubrey's features, sensed the withdrawal. The idea of this boy retreating into the chill reaches where Valcour himself had found haven was more disheartening than anything the earl had ever seen.
The boy turned and started to walk away.
"At least let me give you money," Valcour said. "Enough to begin on."
Aubrey stopped and turned. "No."
Valcour struggled to hold on to his temper, keep his voice even. "You've taken money from me before. This is no different."
"Everything is different now. You see, I never realized how much you hated me until you married Lucy."
"Hate you?" Valcour echoed, stunned. "You think I married Lucinda because I hate you?"
Aubrey's eyes were stone cold, reminding Valcour with chilling clarity of his own. "What other reason could there possibly be?"
The earl's chest filled with fury at a situation neither of them could control. An enmity that had been almost inevitable from the time Aubrey was laid in the St. Cyr cradle, a living symbol of all that Dominic had lost.
"I asked what other reason there could possibly be for what you have done," Aubrey repeated in frigid accents.
The blood drained from Valcour's face and he grabbed the edge of the chair to brace himself, his fingers crushing the cushions. "I can't explain. Just believe me when I tell you I married Lucinda, not because I hated you, but because I care about you."
"Do you know how much it would have meant to me to hear that when I was five or ten or twelve?" Aubrey said. "Then I might actually have believed it. But I'm not a child anymore, listening to fairy stories and waiting for happy endings."
"You have to believe me in this," Valcour insisted. "Wedding Lucinda would have been a terrible mistake for both of you, one beyond your imagining."
"Why? I love her. You don't. Make me understand."
Valcour was only now beginning to understand the depth of pain he had caused this boy, the earl's eyes having been opened by a hoyden mischievous as the devil's own.
There were scars from a thousand subtle rejections in the boy's face. For seventeen years Dominic had driven Aubrey away from him by whatever means necessary. He'd ignored him, scorned him, dismissed him as a fool. And all the while, Valcour had hidden behind the lie, claimed he was trying not to cause the boy pain. Could the truth hurt Aubrey more than what Valcour had already done?
The truth? That he is a bastard? That the mere sight of him was agony for me, because it was as if I were staring into the eyes of the man who betrayed me?
Valcour's mind filled with the image of Aubrey, a golden-curled moppet toddling toward him, arms open, an adoring smile on his face. Let me start over, Brother. The plea was a ragged cry from Dominic's soul. This time I won't turn away.
But it was too late to begin again. The only reason to tell Aubrey the truth now was a selfish one—Valcour's attempt to salvage what little relationship he had left with the boy.
He roiled with self-loathing. He didn't deserve another chance after all the pain he had caused Aubrey. Aubrey, the one true innocent in the betrayal that had spun out at Harlestone Castle so many years before. Valcour turned from his brother, his shoulders sagging with soul-deep weariness and regret. "You are right, Aubrey," he said, covering his face with his hand. "I can never make you understand."
Aubrey said nothing for long minutes, and Valcour heard him start toward the door, but at that moment th
e portal swung open, a familiar feminine voice making Valcour wheel and Aubrey stop where he stood.
"Dominic?" Lucy called, hastening into the chamber, a pinched look about the corner of her mouth. "Something has happened, I need to tell you—Aubrey." She froze, her gaze darting from Valcour's face to Aubrey's and back again. The worry in her face deepened, the rich blue of her eyes filling with compassion as if she could peel away the chill facades on both men and put her soft palm upon the pulsing source of their pain. "What a—a surprise."
Every word seemed to twist a knife blade of pain deeper into Aubrey, and Valcour could see that the boy's hard-won dignity was crumbling at the sight of Lucy's animated face. The boy swallowed convulsively, his broken heart in his eyes. "Lucy, are you well?"
There was tenderness, sympathy in Lucy's face, a kind of softness about her smile. "Yes. I'm better than well. I'm truly happy."
Valcour stared at her, stunned. She crossed to Valcour and slipped her hand into the earl's own. Warmth throbbed through him, comfort from the feel of her fingers, touching him, holding him.
"I know that you're still getting over your heartache, Aubrey," she said softly, "but this has all worked out for the best. You see, I care for your brother in a way I had not imagined before. I promise you, there is no place I would rather be than at my husband's side."
Could she know the fiery pain she had dashed across the boy's battered heart? Could she know the astonishment, the wonder that now enveloped Valcour's own? The earl reeled from the force of emotions so different, so painful, so heady and wondrous. A maelstrom of emotions where there once had been none.
"I'm certain someday that you will find a lady you will love far better than you believe you loved me."
Did Valcour imagine it or were Aubrey's eyes glistening with tears? "Then I suppose there is nothing more for me to say except goodbye." Aubrey took her hand and kissed it.
Lucy watched him go, feeling suddenly shy, strangely unsettled. Valcour was regarding her with hooded eyes. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to intrude."
The corner of Valcour's mouth ticked up in a weary smile. "Aubrey and I had said all there was to say. Lucinda, it was good of you to tell the boy things that will help him forget. Even if they were untruths."
"Untruths? But when we married, you told me you required two things of me. One was that I told the truth."
She met his gaze, saw the quiet panic in it, the trembling sense of yearning.
"Dominic, can you guess the most harrowing experience I ever had?"
"Harrowing? Since I met you in a gaming hell in the worst stew in London, I can't begin to imagine."
"I was only eight years old. I had been alone for so long. Thought that—that I was so wicked and ugly inside that no one would ever love me."
Valcour cupped her cheek in his hand. "Poor little hoyden."
"You see, when I was dumped in Virginia no one wanted me, not even Pendragon. Children can be dreadfully inconvenient in a nest of sedition, you see."
Valcour's mouth tipped in a tired smile. "I can imagine."
"I stole a doll to love. A fashion baby from a millinery shop. I didn't realize English spies were using them to pass messages. I didn't realize that the shop was the station through which the messages passed."
"I would imagine that made things somewhat interesting."
"The vicar says that sin will be punished and virtue is its own reward. But you see, my mama was the lady who owned the shop, though I didn't know then that she was mine. She came chasing after the doll and fell in love with Pendragon—the very Raider the English were trying to catch. If I hadn't been the naughtiest child imaginable, they never would have found each other."
"It is a lovely story, Countess."
"Anyway," Lucy continued. "I adored this doll, you see, kept it to love. But a doll doesn't love you back, Valcour. Especially when it's contraband, hidden in an apple barrel."
The earl chuckled, a hoarse, sad sound. "So what happened to this seditious stolen doll?"
"One night I mustered all my courage. I wrote a message to Pendragon and I slipped into his bedchamber and left the doll and the note for him there. I've never been so frightened, before or since."
"What of, angel?"
"You see, I told him he could have the doll back. I had decided to love him and my mama instead."
Valcour's dark eyes brimmed with tenderness and a kind of desolation. "You were very brave, little one."
"Valcour?"
"What, hoyden?"
"I just want you to know that—that I have decided to love you too."
Valcour's features went still, his eyes awash in sentiments so raw and new that Lucy felt herself sinking deep into something she dared not name. "No, hoyden. You mustn't," he said in a gravelly voice. "I'm not a man with a clean heart to give you. I have nothing—"
"You have a great skill with oranges," Lucy said, glancing up at him through the fringe of her lashes. "And you are gentle and tender and brave and..." Tortured, a voice cried out inside her. Hurting so badly it breaks my heart. "I know you are hurt, and afraid, and... and that you think there is ugliness inside you," Lucy said. "But there is so much beauty, if you would just let me show you."
"Even a wood sprite like you couldn't find beauty in this place." He drew her hand over his heart. "It's empty. Been empty far too long."
"If it were empty, Dominic, it wouldn't hurt so much right now," Lucy said softly.
She leaned forward to press a warm, sweet kiss against Valcour's chest, let her love pulse through him, a silent pledge. Then she turned and left him alone.
In the corridor, she flattened her hand against the note concealed in her pocket. She had fully intended to share the message with Valcour, enlist his help. But how could she add more worry to that pain-ravaged face? How could she force him to battle her demons when he was still so raw from the confrontation with Aubrey, so stunned by her declaration of love?
After all that had happened, she couldn't bear to bring any more worry to this man who had stolen her heart.
She would slip out tonight and find some way to finish this entire matter the way she had so many other adventures: alone. It wasn't as if the stranger she had seen at the gaming hell could hold any danger for her. She was the Raider's daughter. She had been neck deep in intrigue and skullduggery while other girls were still stitching samplers at their mama's knees. She would put an end to this mysterious haunting that had begun when she opened the box in Blackheath Hall. And then she would begin the greatest challenge the Raider's daughter had ever faced.
Teaching the Hawk of Valcour to love again.
Chapter 17
Valcour struggled with his work until well after dark, not even bothering to stop to eat. He had told himself it was imperative he finish what he had started, complete the necessary tasks. But in that place buried in his gut, where he couldn't lie to himself, he knew that the dread earl of Valcour was hiding from a slip of a girl with golden curls and eyes blue as a fairy stream. A woman who had pressed soft lips to his chest and murmured words that had wounded him, defeated him, entranced him.
I have decided to love you. Just like that, with a snap of her fingers. Without doubts or fears or any inkling of the heartache she had opened herself to. Without any idea that she had just made the most devastating mistake of her life: giving her heart to a man without the courage to love her in return.
Always, Valcour had faced his own shortcomings with the same ruthless clarity he did everyone else's. He didn't cringe from the knowledge that he was ruthless, cold. That he was unforgiving and sometimes cruel. But he hadn't expected that there was another shortcoming lurking behind it all: cowardice.
But the truth was that after Lucinda's confession of love, even his library was not far enough, not safe enough a haven for him to hole up in. No, he was damned certain he should go upstairs, have his valet dress him, then go off to one of his clubs. Spend the night in one of those familiar male bastions, as far away as p
ossible from Lucinda's magic. Her silky seduction, not woven of her generosity beneath the coverlets, but rather the heady seduction of being loved, of being needed. Of letting go of all the shields, all the defenses, and being not Valcour the ruthless, the cold, but Dominic—a man who needed this woman who loved him.
Valcour swore, then stood and took up the single guttering candle. He paced up the stairs and into his own room. But before he could rouse his valet, he heard a sound. A soft moan drifted from where the door between the earl's chamber and that of his bride stood ajar.
"Lucinda?" Valcour called softly, his brows lowering as he flattened his hand on the panel and shoved it open.
"Dominic?" Her voice seemed so faint, so fragile, Valcour's heart plummeted. Candlelight spilled across the pathetic figure huddled in the big bed. Her face was flushed and warm above the lacy edge of the shift that rippled beneath her chin. Her eyes were half closed in the faint light of a single candle, while a hot brick wrapped in flannel was cuddled close to her middle.
He had seen his countess enraged and spouting defiance; he had felt her tenderness, her anger, and her scorn. Never had he seen this vibrant, animated beauty look so listless.
"Lucinda, I'm going to summon up Mrs. Bates at once. She has some skill at physicking—"
"No!" Lucinda cried out, looking alarmed. "No, please don't! It would be so humiliating. I will be fine, Valcour. I promise you."
Valcour sat carefully beside her on the bed. "Ho now, Countess. There is nothing humiliating about being ill." He stroked back a silken strand of her hair, felt it cling to his fingers the way her loving curled about his soul. "I insist that you—"
"No!" Her lips quivered, and Valcour felt a wrenching in his chest.
"Countess, let me help you. At least..." He stumbled over the words. "Perhaps it would be comforting if I were to lay down beside you? Hold you?"
"You can't! You mustn't! Oh, do go away!"
For a woman who had just been making tender declarations of love, she seemed rather unobliging. Valcour couldn't fathom why her words stung so badly.
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