"No!" They all started at the groan from Edward. "Don't hurt Jenny!... Won't... let you!"
But Jasper's mouth twisted in a grimace of hate, his eyes never leaving Valcour's face. Lucy screamed as he rammed the sword deep into Edward d'Autrecourt's chest.
"Say farewell, Valcour," Jasper chortled, his finger tightening on the trigger.
Lucy flung herself in front of Valcour just as the weapon exploded. Fire blossomed in Lucy's shoulder, as the world became a fuzzy montage of scenes.
Edward d'Autrecourt's pain-ravaged face, the pistol he had held to Lucy's head clutched in his bound hands. The orange stab of the gun blazing. Sir Jasper shrieking in disbelief as the bullet slammed into his chest, tumbling him backward into the open grave. Valcour, wild with anguish, diving for his own weapon.
But it was over. Only the sound of Edward d'Autrecourt's strangled pleas shattered the deathly stillness.
"J-Jenny," he choked out. "I—I'm sorry. Didn't know Jasper... would come. I only wanted to take... care of you. But never... got anything right. Fool... weak fool, just like... always said..."
Her head spinning, Lucy edged toward the pathetic, broken man and took up his quaking hand. "It's all right, Papa," Lucy whispered, wanting only to give him some slight peace. "It's all right."
"You are... a good girl, Jenny. Like your... mama." He breathed once more, then his eyes rolled back in death. Lucy dropped his hand, waves of dizziness sweeping through her.
"Lucinda!" She heard Valcour as if from a distance, his hands—gentle, so gentle—scooping her up against his chest. "You fool! You damned little fool!"
Fire still raged in her shoulder as Valcour ripped open the torn fabric of her bodice, his breath hissing between his teeth in horror. Lucy could feel the sticky dampness of her own blood as he ripped off his shirt, wadding the fabric against the wound.
"Dominic." Lucy squeezed his name through numb lips as he tied the makeshift bandage about her. "You must... listen to... me. If I... die... not your fault. Blame self for... everything. Love you... Not your fault..."
"You're not going to die!" He gathered her fiercely into his arms and carried her toward the stallion. "I'm taking you to Harlestone. You'll get well there."
"Take me to... tower... room," Lucy whispered. "So beautiful. Music like magic. Want to hear... the rest..."
Her words twisted like knife blades in Valcour's chest. "Damn you, Countess! I order you not to die!"
"Always the... tyrant," Lucy whispered, aching at the pain in his voice. "But even tyrants don't always get their way."
Her head sagged against Valcour's chest, limp and lifeless. A wild, animal sound of grief split the night, seventeen years of pain bursting forth in the wake of the greatest anguish Dominic St. Cyr had ever known.
Chapter 20
For five days Valcour made certain the tower room blazed with candles, as if he hoped their constant brightness could keep encroaching death at bay. But the physician who had left an hour before had told Valcour that the crisis was near. The countess would either awaken or slip away forever.
Lucinda lay like the sleeping princess in a fairy tale, silent, still, heartbreakingly lovely on the bed Valcour had ordered the servants to bring to the chamber that nightmarish night he'd carried her up the winding stairway to the setting of his childhood anguish.
Not once had the earl left her side. His face was haggard, his eyes burning with exhaustion. His voice rasped, hoarse in his throat. Hour after hour he ordered his countess to open her eyes. He raged at her, pleaded with her, challenged her in ways he knew would have brought his defiant hoyden to fury in days before.
But she only lay there, growing paler and more still, as if the dream she was having was so beautiful she couldn't bear to be dragged back into the ugly reality that had all but engulfed her beside the stone-carved angel.
Valcour sat beside her, his fingers clasping a silver backed brush, gently smoothing the bristles through her hair. The silky strands curled about his fingers, so vibrant, so alive, the way they had the last night they had made love.
The thought of that magic night was almost too poignant to bear. The memory of Lucinda, her eyes wide with wonder as he loved her, cut Valcour more deeply than any lash ever could. He could have told her what he felt that night, confessed the raging emotions she had loosed in him. He could have opened his heart just a little and let her in. But no, he'd been too afraid, too raw to do so. And now it might be too late.
A strangled sound rose in Valcour's throat. How many times had he told her he loved her during this dark, desperate time? Now that her eyes were closed, her soft lips unable to receive his kiss? Now, when he couldn't reach her?
The brush trembled in his hand, hopelessness tearing through him. A soft sound made him turn to where Lady Catherine stood framed in the doorway.
She had arrived at Harlestone the same day Dominic had. And from the moment she had seen Lucinda, so helpless, it was as if Dominic could see her heart breaking as well. But in spite of all the anger, the fury, the resentment and ugliness that had been between Valcour and the woman he had blamed for his pain all these years, she had remained here, a gentle presence, always seeming to know when Valcour needed her. She had made broth to slip between Lucinda's lips and pressed Dominic to eat himself, saying he must be strong when Lucinda awoke. She had brought a blanket to wrap about his shoulders in the chill of the night and had held the basin of warm, rose-scented water while Valcour gently bathed his sleeping countess.
But never before had Lady Catherine intruded on the chamber without some reason, never before had she hovered there, unguarded love in her eyes.
"Her hair is beautiful, Dominic. So soft and silky beneath your hand. She looks like an angel lying there."
"An angel... should look beautiful, don't you think?" Valcour said, his throat thick.
Lady Catherine's voice was gentle, as if she understood his deepest fears, as she had when he was a boy. "She will not leave you. God couldn't be so cruel as to take her away."
"You, above anyone, should know how cruel God can be, madam. He gave you a husband you didn't love. He made you love a weak man who didn't deserve you. And he gave you a son so bitter he could never forgive you."
"You had reason to be hurt, to be angry. I made choices. It was only right that I paid for them."
"Forever?" Dominic curved his hand over Lucinda's cheek, a cheek pale and translucent as marble. "Is that how long I will pay for my mistakes?"
"Dominic, you did nothing wrong."
"I didn't love her until it was too late. I didn't guard her closely enough. This is my doing. All of it. If I had known what might happen, I would never have let her out of my sight for an instant."
"I know that, Dominic."
"She didn't trust me. How could she trust me after the way I behaved? An arrogant fool, a damned tyrant, never listening, never stopping to think. Do you know that is the last thing she called me, before she slipped away? I ordered her not to die, and she looked at me, those eyes, those damned eyes of hers so tender, so loving."
"She loved you from the first, I think, though she didn't know it. And you loved her."
"I never told her so. I was too caught up in my own stubborn pain. Too damned determined not to feel, not to let myself be vulnerable ever again."
"To the kind of pain your father and I caused you?"
Valcour turned away, stricken by the gentle anguish in his mother's voice. "I didn't mean to... hurt you, madam."
"And yet, no matter how much we have loved each other all these years, we have done little else. Why is it always so easy to see what we should have done after disaster has overtaken us? When it is too late to change anything? It seems so unfair."
"I never understood what it meant to love," Valcour admitted. "I never knew what you must have felt, how you must have suffered. I thought that if you had just put honor first, if you had only... only been strong, everything would have been all right."
"But that is true. I couldn't stop
loving Alexander. I wanted to. Tried to bury the feelings I had. But—"
"All my life I have battled to save my honor. But I would cast it all to the winds just to see my hoyden smile at me one more time." Dominic's voice broke, his fingertips brushing over Lucinda's pale lips. "Do you know how many times I've dreamed of Lucinda carrying my child? Of a son with her fierce courage, and a daughter with her eyes?"
"You will hold those babies yet, my son. I am sure of it."
"I love her so much. Want so much for some part of us to be joined together forever, so nothing, not even death could ever part us. That is what you felt when you held Aubrey in your arms, isn't it? I think I knew that, even as a child. And I feared that—that you must love Aubrey, the son of the man you loved, far more than you could ever love me."
"I have always loved you, Dominic. Loved you both. You were the single good thing in my life for so many years. Aubrey was a tangible piece of the love Alexander and I shared. You were both treasures. I only wished that you might love one another."
"I didn't want to love him. It hurt too much. When I did, it made me so angry... angry at myself and you, and... I didn't want to love anyone. But Lucy wouldn't let me deny the truth any longer. She forced me to see that I was a coward, that I was lying to everyone, especially to myself."
Dominic gently laid the brush on the satin coverlets and turned toward Lady Catherine, his soul bared, his anguish there for her to see.
"Mama." He whispered the word for the first time since he'd watched his father die. "Help me. I can't reach her, no matter what I say. I don't think I can live without her."
Dominic felt his mother's arms encircle him, and for once the earl of Valcour let someone else share his burden of pain. He buried his face against her breast, racking sobs tearing from his throat.
"There was a time when mere words were never enough for you. Do you remember, Dominic?" Lady Catherine murmured, stroking his hair. "A time when everything you felt deep in your heart poured out each time you touched the pianoforte?"
"I can't. Not anymore," he said in a pain-ravaged voice. "It's gone, Mama. I know it is gone."
"I don't believe that. I—No!" Her sudden cry of alarm made Valcour raise his face, half fearing Lucinda had slipped away.
But his mother stared not at the bed where Lucinda slept, but at the tower door.
Aubrey.
The boy stood, windblown and travel weary, the expression on his face leaving no doubt he had heard every tortured confession, every painful truth about his birth.
"No!" Valcour swiped his hand furiously across his eyes, feeling as if a giant fist had crushed his chest. The earl jammed himself to his feet and wheeled. He paced away, leaning against the pianoforte in an effort to steady himself. "My God, boy. What are you doing here?"
"I came as soon as I heard Lucy was hurt." There was pain in the boy's face, confusion, and yet a kind of understanding that made him seem older. Older because of the pain he had suffered at Dominic's hands. Older because of the burden Dominic had just inadvertently laid on the boy's narrow shoulders.
"Aubrey," Valcour rasped, "I didn't mean for you to hear any of this. I wanted to save you the pain."
"You told me that you love me," the boy said softly.
"I do. God help me, I do. Yet I hurt you again. Just like I always have, since you were so damned small."
"I'm not a child anymore. And now... now I understand so much better why..." Aubrey shrugged. "Why my father... Why you... it must have been a blow to your honor—knowing that I am a... bastard." The boy tripped over the word.
"The circumstances of your birth don't matter a damn to me. You're my brother. I love you no matter what my stubborn pride made me do to convince you otherwise."
"It's all right then." Aubrey smiled a little. "We can begin again. Once Lucy is well and you are settled, I'll come and—and dandle your babes on my knee. I'll be their dashing soldier uncle, who comes riding in with presents. I'll spoil them terribly, you know. I never have had any notion of self-restraint."
Valcour's eyes burned, his voice quavered. "I don't deserve another chance with you, boy. I was wrong, so damned wrong all these years. There is no way to make it up to you."
"There is: Make certain we don't waste another minute on regrets."
Forgiveness. It shone in those eyes that had tormented Valcour so long with whisperings of the past.
"You are a better man than I am, Aubrey. A stronger one. A more forgiving one." Valcour reached out his hand to his brother across a chasm of pain and misunderstanding, regret and faint hope. Aubrey clasped Valcour's fingers with his own. Then the boy did something he hadn't ever done before. He embraced Dominic with no fear he would be turned away.
* * *
The candles guttered in the sconces, but Valcour hadn't the will to change them. The silence in the room seemed so damned loud after the hours he had spent with the quiet solace of his mother and brother, the almost unbelievable gift of their forgiveness after his stubbornness, his coldness all these years.
It was such a vast treasure that he wondered if the Fates would be willing to give him any more, after all the time he had railed against them, hated them, scorned them.
He wondered if the final price he paid for his folly would be the loss of this woman, this defiant rebel who had breathed life and hope into his icy heart.
Valcour held Lucinda's hand in his, pressing it to his lips again and again. If he was to lose her, maybe, just maybe he could bear it if she knew how much she had meant to him. If she had any idea what he felt in his heart. That he loved her so much even death couldn't separate them, that she would live in his soul, a part of him forever. That he would be faithful to her the rest of his life and accept his own death with joy when it came, if it meant that he would be reunited with his hoyden countess again.
But how could he tell her? How could mere words ever express it? I remember a time when words were never enough. Lady Catherine's voice echoed inside him. When every emotion you felt poured forth in your music.
The music, Dominic thought, more terrified than he'd ever been in his life. That was why Lucinda had wanted him to bring her here.
What was it she had said? That the music had been magic. But he had abandoned the magic that had brought him so much pain. He had betrayed his gift, because it had brought him nothing but betrayal.
He closed his eyes, remembering her, an angel of music garbed in moonlight, a wraith bringing melodies to life, trying to discover the last strains of the unfinished music somewhere in the mists of her imagination, as if those strains were a delicious secret the tower room was keeping from her.
Was it possible that the music could bring her back? Reach her when mere words never could?
He had burned it. The last step in erasing it from his soul. He couldn't remember. He couldn't possibly after all these years. And yet if there were the smallest chance…
Sweat beaded Valcour's brow, his dark gaze trailing with restless wariness from Lucinda's face to the pianoforte.
He went to her, knelt down and pressed a kiss to her brow, then slowly went to the stool and sat down at the instrument.
His fingers trembled, as if he expected them to catch fire the instant he touched the keys. Instead, a ripple of sensation pierced through to his center as he forced himself to coax out a sound from the instrument.
His chest ached, and he closed his eyes, his hands motionless over the keys as he listened, strained to find the first webbings of melody.
It shivered to life inside him, flowing into every fiber of his being. Softly, so softly, he began to catch the wisps of music, turn them into beauty upon the keyboard.
It was as if he had opened an invisible gate inside himself, releasing emotions that hadn't been deadened as he had believed but dammed up inside him, waiting to break free.
How long he played he never knew, only felt the pulse building inside him, felt the waves carrying him away, away to the heartsick boy so afraid of being alone
. A boy who had known even before he discovered the affair between his mother and the music master he loved that his world was beginning to crumble, that the parents he loved so much did not love each other.
The inexpressible yearning drifted into a sound magical, as if every hope, every fear in that boy's heart were distilled into music, as if every anguish the man Dominic had ever known were pouring forth from his fingers, covering the tower room with magic. It tore away the last veiling on Valcour's wary heart. Poured forth everything, until he was empty, aching. When the final notes drifted to silence, Valcour braced his arms against the instrument he had loved so dearly and cried over the woman whose loss was breaking his heart.
He barely heard the awed whisper, so soft and frail and filled with wonder.
"It was you."
He turned to stare in disbelief into wide blue eyes, tears coursing down pale cheeks. Lucinda—not carried to the angels by his song but brought back to him.
He couldn't speak, terrified that it was some heavenly dream.
"It was you," she said again. "You wrote my 'Night Song.'"
Valcour's throat felt as if it was closed, and his hands trembled. "I gave it to your father as a gift the day you were born. I did that often—gave away little compositions... as if they could be of any value to any one."
"It was magic, Dominic. All those years, when I was frightened and lonely, when I was hurting, I felt someone comforting me through the music—like a hand stroking my curls, cherishing me. I thought it was my father who was reaching out with my 'Night Song.' But it was you. You who wrote it for me. You who made the magic."
"It wasn't enough. I wanted so badly to protect you. You were such a winsome little thing. That was why I couldn't tell him. Couldn't tell my father that d'Autrecourt had fathered Aubrey."
"You knew me when I was a child?"
"Not really. I only saw you once. I didn't know it, but my mother had come to London to tell d'Autrecourt she was with child. She and I were at St. James Park when I saw you, this little girl, barely two years old, splashing into the pond. You had escaped your mother and were trying to catch a swan."
The Raider’s Daughter Page 33
