“From all reports, you were in love with a French opera dancer a month ago,” Valcour said, flicking an imaginary crumb from the lace at his wrist. “The fortunate thing about adolescent hearts is that they are astonishingly resilient. I predict you will forget Lucinda before the month is out.”
“Forget her?” Aubrey was trembling with rage. “She’s mine, damn you! Mine! You can’t have her!”
“Aubrey, we are not children squabbling over some plaything.”
“Don’t you dare mock me! I won’t let you make her miserable! She’s far too fine and brave and beautiful for a cold-hearted bastard like you!”
Valcour’s fingers tightened around the cup. “You are right in that. She is far above my touch. But there are times even we cold-hearted bastards get more than we deserve. She is the countess of Valcour. There is nothing you can do to change that.”
“I can make her a widow, by God!” Aubrey’s eyes were wild, desperate, as he fumbled with the dress sword at his side. The blade rattled as he stripped it from the scabbard. “Damn your hide, Dom, you will fight me! Draw steel!”
Valcour took a meditative sip of coffee. “The only weapon I have at the moment is a rather bent fork. I think it would be a most inglorious way to die.”
With a cry of rage, Aubrey flung a chair out of his way, the steel tip of his sword brushing the frothy lace of Dominic’s neckcloth. The lethal point trembled, tearing the delicate web.
Valcour’s gaze locked with Aubrey’s desperate one, not so much as an eyelash betraying the fact that a blade was mere inches away from his heart. “Are you going to kill me, boy?” Valcour asked softly.
“You betrayed me! You forced Lucy to wed you! I know that you did! The world will be well rid of you!”
“Then plunge the blade home. Think of the hero you’ll be, saving a beleaguered heroine from your wicked brother.”
The weapon was shaking more wildly, tearing at the linen of his shirt. Dominic made no move to lean away from the point of the sword. His eyes never left Aubrey’s tortured face.
“I hate you!” the boy almost sobbed.
“I know. But are you capable of driving that blade through my heart?”
Sweat trickled down Aubrey’s temples, his breath coming in harsh gasps. “You deserve to die for what you’ve done!”
“You have my permission to send me to hell.” Valcour’s gaze never left Aubrey’s face. The boy’s lips were quivering, ragged sobs rising in his chest. “Do it, boy,” Valcour murmured.
Seconds spun out into eternity—an eternity of agony in Aubrey’s eyes, an eternity of watching him battle inside himself only to discover that he hadn’t the will to drive the blade home.
After a long moment, Dominic took up his napkin and dabbed at his lips. “I don’t mind being murdered in the middle of breakfast, as long as it is done expediently. However, you know how impatient I am with delays. I’m afraid you will have to kill me some other time.”
He reached out, pushing aside the blade with the wadded-up piece of linen. A sob racked Aubrey’s whole body as Dominic disengaged the weapon from his hand.
The earl placed it on the table.
“Aubrey.” The mockery was gone from Valcour’s voice. “I know you won’t believe me now, but driving the blade home would not have made you more of a man. Lucinda is my wife. This whole miserable affair is over.”
Valcour rubbed the stiff muscles in his shoulder, feeling jaded and weary and old beyond his years. “I have put the finest coach available for hire at your disposal. I would suggest you go to London by way of Lord Norton’s estate. It is widely known you’ve had your eye on the team of matched grays he has been bragging about. Feel free to purchase them at once. Tell Norton I have no concern about their price.”
“You think you can just dangle a new trinket in front of me and I’ll forget her?” Tears were running down the boy’s face. “I’ll never forget! Never!”
“Long memories have always been the curse of the St. Cyrs,” Dominic said quietly. “Why should you be spared?”
It was an hour after Aubrey’s coach had rattled out of the inn yard that Dominic found his new countess, not in her bath, or taking air in the inn’s garden, but in the stable, crooning over Ashlar.
Dominic watched her from the shadows, where she couldn’t see him. The mask of defiance was stripped from her lovely features; the wild hoyden girl, so brash, so reckless, looked distressingly vulnerable, where no one but the gelding could see her.
She was dressed in a simple gown of white muslin, touches of rose embroidery along the neckline of the bodice seeming to have stolen all the color from her cheeks. The smudges had been scrubbed from her flawless skin, and her hair had been washed and brushed until it shone like a coronet of gold. Her hand glided down the horse’s black nose, the light filtering through the window making the rubies in her wedding ring glow like fire.
But it was her eyes that made Dominic’s heart trip. Eyes filled with grief in an unguarded moment of quiet despair. Could he have expected anything else?
He had told Aubrey there were women who could be seduced by a title, and God knows, Dominic had met more than his share of those who would have bartered away their soul to be countess of Valcour. But this young woman, as proud and strong and brave as the goddess Athena herself, cared nothing for the prestige his name could bring her. Cared nothing for him at all.
Why was it that the knowledge twisted something tight about Dominic’s heart?
“The people here will take wondrous good care of you while I’m away,” Lucinda said to the beast, laying her cheek against its glossy neck. “I’ve told the groom that you are to have nothing but the finest oats to eat, and that he is to put the poultices on your poor leg every three hours. I know you dislike the smell of the herbs, but they will take the pain away.”
The gelding nibbled at the end of one of her ribbons.
Dominic’s throat tightened as the sunlight revealed a sheen of moisture in those incredible blue eyes. “I’m a countess now,” Lucinda said in a choked voice. “Everyone must do as I say.”
There was something heart-wrenching in those simple words. She didn’t bemoan her fate or rail about the circumstances that had brought her to this pass. Dominic wanted to cross the straw-strewn space between them and draw her into his arms. Tell her that she could ask to put a diamond collar about the moon and he would see that it was done, if it would only drive the shadows from her eyes.
Instead, he moved soundlessly backward, then, after a moment, reentered the stable, making so much noise they probably heard him a county away.
It was a far different Lucinda who faced him as he strode toward her. Her neck arched proudly, her lips firm, her blue eyes frosted like winter-kissed meadow flowers. “I wanted to be certain the horse would be cared for. The servants said that Aubrey left before I had finished my bath. He must have forgotten all about Ashlar.”
“He was on his way to look over a new team of grays. If it would please you to take this horse off his hands, I doubt he would raise much objection.”
“And what objection did he raise to my becoming your wife?”
Her gaze was unforgiving, and Valcour squirmed inwardly, feeling as if the ugly scene in the parlor was reflected in his eyes.
“He was not pleased. But I trust he will recover in time.”
She said nothing.
“Lucinda, there is a coach waiting to carry us away from this place. I have an estate called Harlestone a day’s travel away from here. It will be a suitable place for us to stay while you rebuild your strength.”
“You agreed to take me to Avonstea.”
“I can see no reason to go charging off—”
“I could see no reason we should marry. But here I stand, wearing your ring.”
“I will honor my promise to take you to the d’Autrecourts,” Valcour said. “I just think it would be wise for you to wait a little while, recover from the… excitement of all that has happened the past day.”
“I’ve been waiting to confront the d’Autrecourts since I was ten years old. I’m not willing to wait any longer. Valcour, I want this first meeting with them over with. Can you understand?”
Dominic closed his eyes, remembering a fifteen-year-old boy who had left his father’s fresh grave to challenge the enemies of Valcour.
He was silent, long minutes that seemed to spin out for much longer. For the first time that he could remember, the earl of Valcour bowed to the desires of someone other than himself.
“It shall be as you wish,” he said.
*
From the time Lucy was ten years old, her nightmare had had a name. Avonstea. The ducal seat of the d’Autrecourts, the grand mansion to which her desperate mother had gone to plead for help for her dying husband and starving child.
A hundred times Lucy had tried to dredge an image of the grand estate from the dark recesses of her mind. But it was forever lost to her, like the sound of her father’s voice, the image of his face. She had filled in the gaps in her memory by picturing the grand estate in her head, imagining it to be some dark, hideous place. Grim stone walls, mortared with the ground-up bones of any who dared defy the mighty aristocratic dynasty. A carriage drive of sharp rocks that led to walls guarded by grotesque gargoyles, and hollow-cheeked servants with their tongues carved out so they couldn’t tell the d’Autrecourts’ evil secrets.
But as Lucy stared out the coach’s window to where Avonstea rose in palatial splendor, it hardly seemed possible that such a beautiful place could be the lair of a villain.
Lucy swallowed hard, her gaze flitting suddenly to the massive bronze lion that stood guard beside the d’Autrecourts’ door. Slivers of memories pierced her, echoes of her childish screams reawakening inside her. She had been terrified of the lion’s fangs, the feel of someone’s arms dragging her away from her mother. She could hear her mother sobbing as she stumbled down this very road, leaving Lucy behind.
I’ll come back for you… I’ll come back…
But her mama hadn’t come back. Lucy remembered waiting and waiting, her face pressed against the window. She had screamed all night. Screamed and screamed until her throat was raw and her eyes felt like fire from crying. A woman had come then, her face like carved ice above a gown glittering with jewels. Lucy could remember that face staring down at her with loathing. She could feel the crack of the woman’s hand against her cheek, the bite of a ring cutting Lucy’s tender skin.
You’ll never see her again! the woman had vowed. She’ll not have even the smallest part of my son.
Lucy shuddered, stunned by the clarity of the memory, all the emotions of the terrified child she had been pulsing through her with a power that made her tremble, made her throat close.
She had expected to march up the stairs to Avonstea like a conquering warrior, haughty, scornful. She hadn’t expected her stomach to be threatening rebellion, or her mind to be suddenly struck with a craven impulse to turn the coach around and flee down the road faster than she’d come.
She curled her fingers into the folds of her dress in an effort to steady herself, but at that moment the image of the bronze lion was blocked from view by Valcour astride his magnificent stallion. For hours the earl had ridden as if he were a pagan god of thunder astride the fiercest storm, his cloak streaming out behind him, his sinewy thighs flexing about the stallion’s gleaming saddle.
She had been grateful beyond belief when he’d chosen to ride instead of make the trip in the close confines of the hired coach with her. But much as she hated to acknowledge it now, she was also glad to see those stalwart shoulders, those fiercely intense eyes as she teetered on the brink of her mystery-shrouded past.
The door opened, but it was not the postilion who offered his hand to help her down. Her new husband reached into the coach, his hands spanning her waist as he lightly drifted her down onto the ground.
Lucy kept her gaze fixed on the diamond stickpin in his neckcloth and tried to keep her knees from knocking together.
“You’re ash pale,” he said, crooking his finger beneath her chin and turning her face up to his.
Lucy gave a sick little laugh. “I suppose that’s to be expected. After all, I am a ghost.”
“You’re no ghost, Lucinda.” His voice was as bracing as a blazing fire after wandering lost in a blizzard. He rubbed the tips of his fingers against the ridge of first one cheekbone, then the other, as if trying to coax color into the skin. “You are a strong, brave, beautiful woman who has come to confront the people who tried to destroy you. Remember how helpless you were, Lucinda. At their mercy. Remember what they did to you. As God is my witness, I’ll not forget.”
Lucy was stunned by the fierce protectiveness in those ebony-lashed eyes. Never in her twenty years had Lucinda Blackheath leaned on someone else’s strength. Now Lucinda St. Cyr slipped her hand into the crook of her new husband’s arm as they mounted the stairs.
A footman in scarlet livery opened the door, his gaze flicking over Lucy with patent scorn before he glanced at Valcour.
The sight of the earl affected the servant as if a tidal wave had just crashed over the man’s head. “M-My lord Valcour,” the servant stammered. “You are not welcome here.”
“My wife desires to be presented to his grace of Avonstea and his mother, the dowager duchess.”
The servant tugged at his neckcloth. “The d-duke? He is something of a recluse, as you know. And at present, he is—is… unavailable. As for her grace, the dowager duchess cannot be expected to tolerate the company of the man who nearly murdered her son.”
“The devotion and family loyalty of the d’Autrecourts has always been a source of… amazement to me,” Valcour began, but Lucy stepped forward, her chin held high.
“The dowager duchess will receive me.”
“Who are you?”
“Her granddaughter.”
“Her grace has no living grandchild.”
Lucy allowed a chill smile to play about her lips. “Then I must have risen from the dead. Tell her grace that Jenny has come home.”
The servant glanced from Lucy to Valcour’s implacable face then cleared his throat. “I will inform her grace of your arrival, but I cannot promise that she will see you. If you would care to wait in the silver drawing room.” He gestured for them to follow. Lucy stepped into the chamber indicated.
Sunshine illuminated French wallpaper on which shepherdesses had been painted, their crooks dangling from elegant fingers, while sheep frolicked about their feet. Porcelain candlesticks carried through the theme, ruddy-cheeked boys playing flutes for their ladies, rapt smiles painted on their china faces.
She stepped over to touch an exquisite gold box that was lost among a dozen other trinkets on a small table. “Do you know that the value of this box could have kept my parents warm and safe and fed for more than a year? I can’t imagine what it must have been like for my mother to come here, to beg… beg in an effort to save my father and me.”
“I am certain it was the most difficult thing she had ever done,” Valcour said.
“No. The most difficult thing was the moment she walked away from me. Left me here, while she… she wandered away with nowhere to go, no means to feed herself. She was willing to sacrifice all for me.”
“It is one of the great tragedies of all mothers, I think,” Valcour said quietly.
“I prefer to consider it a triumph. My mother is the most gentle person I have ever known. And the bravest. I always wanted to be like her, but…” Lucy shrugged. “I don’t have the strength to meet adversity with her quiet courage. Instead I kick it in the teeth.”
“If you aim for adversity’s teeth, Lucinda, I can say from personal experience it should consider itself most fortunate.” Valcour hesitated for a moment, his eyes flicking impatiently to the door.
Lucy paced into the block of sunshine shaped by the window, an alcove partitioned off from the remainder of the room by a blue velvet curtain. Instinctively, Lucy glanced
behind the fabric partition, her breath whooshing out in a gasp as she caught a glimpse of something half hidden in the shadows.
Her hand whisked back the curtain, the light spreading in a glistening pool over the polished wood surface of a pianoforte.
A crewel work chair embroidered with the three muses was positioned as if begging someone to sit down, while the keys of the instrument drew Lucy’s fingers as inexorably as the poisoned spindle had tempted the fingers of the sleeping beauty in the fairy tale.
Had this been the instrument at which her father had picked out his first awkward notes? At which he had first been struck by the beauty of the pianoforte’s soul and been compelled to try to release it so that others might hear that beauty themselves?
Lucy could feel Valcour’s eyes upon her, but she couldn’t stop herself from sliding into the chair, her fingers curving over the keys, touching them gently, lovingly. A misty, melancholy sound rippled out.
She hadn’t touched an instrument since leaving left Blackheath Hall, and the music was like the caress of a long-lost lover, the warm embrace of a trusted friend.
The tiniest sound made Lucy freeze, turn to see Valcour watching her, a terrible stillness in his face, his eyes holding the silent torment of a man feeling the ropes of the dreaded rack tighten about his wrists and ankles.
She had entered this house with a hundred childhood fears clustered around her. But she was far more frightened by the expression on Valcour’s face at this instant.
“Wh-what is it? Valcour, I…”
Her stammered query was lost in the sound of the drawing-room door opening, the footman standing aside with a flourish. “Her grace, the dowager duchess of Avonstea.”
Lucy had always imagined that the unspeakable crime the dowager duchess had committed would somehow be inscribed on her face—harsh lines and thin lips, narrow eyes and a squat neck. But the woman enthroned in an invalid’s wheeled chair seemed as if she had cast dice with the devil himself and won eternal youth.
Flawless skin was pulled with astonishing suppleness over a bone structure that would have done a Grecian statue proud. Her eyes were disconcertingly like those Lucy saw in the mirror every morning, except that where Lucy’s were filled with restless energy, the duchess’s were filled with cool disdain.
Lords of the Isles Page 167
