Her grace of Avonstea waited until the footman had shut the door behind her, then she turned to Lucy, the fury in her eyes a living thing. “Who are you, and what do you want?”
“I am Jenny d’Autrecourt, Alexander d’Autrecourt’s daughter,” Lucy said. “Your granddaughter.”
“Jenny d’Autrecourt has been dead for seventeen years! You are a craven impostor! If you’ve come to cause trouble, I vow to you the might of Avonstea will crush you!”
“Perhaps you might have been able to do so yesterday, your grace,” the earl’s voice cut in icily. “However, I would not recommend distressing the lady further unless Avonstea cares to cross swords with me.”
“You—you who cut down Jasper!”
“I spared his life. But I promise you that if there are any further attempts of violence against this woman, I will show no mercy.” Even Lucy was stunned at the virulence of his words. “She is the countess of Valcour,” the earl said. “My wife.”
Wife. The proprietary emphasis he placed on the word “wife” filled Lucy with an odd sensation of disappointment. Of course he would care for his wife, in much the same way he would care for his horses: see her fed and housed with a good measure of grain and given the respect due one connected to the mighty earl.
“This woman has played you for a fool, Valcour,” the dowager duchess accused. “She is nothing to me. Not a drop of d’Autrecourt blood runs in her veins. I swear it, or may Satan himself take my soul.”
“An interesting prospect,” Valcour said. “However, in my estimation, your spirit is so vile that even Lucifer would shun you. To steal a child from her mother. To cast aside an innocent girl because of your own selfish pride is the most despicable crime imaginable.”
Blue veins stood out starkly against the dowager duchess’s pale skin. “How dare you accuse—”
Lucy stepped forward, meeting the old woman’s gaze with her own. “My mother found me in Virginia twelve years ago, where she married the patriot Raider Pendragon.”
The dowager duchess’s eyes widened.
“I’m certain you remember, Grandmama. You were trying to have her murdered at the time, so she could never discover your treachery.”
The old woman gasped, her lips curling back from her teeth in a feral snarl. “How dare you come here spouting your lies?”
Lucy met her gaze levelly. “I come by invitation.”
The dowager duchess’s fingers clenched about the wheels of her chair. “You’re mad!”
“Am I?” Lucy watched her intently. “Someone sent me a box filled with my father’s belongings three months ago. Someone wrote me this.”
Lucy slipped her hand into her reticule and extracted the cryptic poem she had received in Virginia. The noblewoman imperiously snatched it from her hand.
“Lucinda,” Valcour’s voice cut in. “What the devil—”
“I received a box with the miniature in it, a watch, and some music my father had written. I told you.”
“You told me you had received a box of your father’s things. I assumed your mother had given it to you, that they were some keepsakes she had saved.”
“My mother had nothing left of my father’s. She’d pawned everything in an effort to feed us, didn’t she, Grandmama?” Lucy’s voice dripped with loathing, her eyes never leaving the duchess’s face.
The woman’s gaze slashed dismissively down the elegant script, and for a moment Lucy expected her to crumple the page up and throw it away. Instead, those blue eyes widened in shock.
Georgianna d’Autrecourt’s hand trembled. “Where did you get this?”
“I have told you. It arrived three months ago in Virginia. It was directed to Miss Lucinda Blackheath on the outside of the package. But inside… inside were notes to Jenny d’Autrecourt.”
“No. I don’t believe…” The dowager duchess turned away, shaken. “He could not have… have sent…”
“He? Who is he? My father?”
“Your father is dead!” Valcour let fly a disbelieving oath and snatched the missive from the duchess’s fingers.
“People have a strange way of coming back to life in this family,” Lucy flung back. “Now Grandmama, I want to know who sent this to me.”
“Surely you can’t believe it was anyone here! You are supposed to be buried in the family crypt! That Blackheath person who found you threatened to expose the whole tale of your abduction if we ever dared approach you again! After all these years, why would we attempt to contact you?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that I did as the letter instructed. I went to the gaming hell to meet with this… this man, whoever he was. I saw him there. But circumstances were such that I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. Now he’s disappeared, and I don’t know where to find him.”
“Find him… yes. Someone must…” The dowager duchess seemed to forcibly steady her hands. “He is a dangerous madman masquerading as my son.”
“My God.” It was Valcour’s voice, almost sickened with disbelief. When he raised his face to Lucy’s, what she saw there made her stomach twist into knots. “Damn you, girl, I expected the truth! Why didn’t you tell me—”
“This is my affair. It’s none of your concern.”
“You’re my wife! Being stalked by some insane maniac posing as your father!”
“He might be my father.”
“No! Alexander died of fever,” the duchess said. “I buried him in his blue frock coat, the one he wore when he was presented at court. We slipped his signet ring from his finger, and the watch that I had given him on his sixteenth birthday…”
“This watch?” Lucy withdrew the timepiece from her pocket and dropped it into the duchess’s lap. The woman’s fingers closed convulsively about it.
“Dear God, he must know…” She cut off her statement, her eyes chilling, her face falling into icy lines.
“Know what?” Lucy demanded. “Tell me—”
“Philip!” the dowager duchess cried out, the footman racing in at her command. “Take these… these people away from me! Take them away!”
“No!” Lucy dropped to her knees before the old woman and clutched her birdlike hands. “I’m not leaving until you tell me what you know! Is my father alive? Blast it, is he—”
The duchess tore at Lucy’s grasp, trying to free herself, when suddenly the old woman’s eyes locked on Lucy’s hand, the glittering circlet of rubies gleaming on her finger.
“Why don’t you demand your answer of this?” The duchess twisted the ring until Lucy gave a gasp of pain. “The legend says that it can tell you all you need to know.”
“Legend?” Lucy asked. “What…”
“The legend of the magic ring. Surely that empty-headed mother of yours must have told you. It has been the mystic love token of the d’Autrecourts since the Middle Ages.”
“There must be some mistake. I didn’t receive it from my mother. Unless she pawned it and…” Lucy glanced at Valcour, her heart stopping at the expression on his face.
It was as if she were staring into a shattered mirror, reflecting horror, anguish. Stark betrayal.
“Valcour, I…”
“You will see the earl and his… countess out,” the duchess commanded the footman. “They shall never be allowed to enter this house again.”
Lucy started to protest, but Valcour stalked to where she stood, his hand closing in a bruising grasp about her arm.
“No! Let me go! I have to find out!”
Valcour all but dragged her out into the wide entryway and down the stairs. He flung her up on his stallion and then mounted behind her, his arms like steel bands encircling her as he drove his heels into the horse’s sides.
Lucy struggled for a heartbeat, swearing, clawing at him, but as the stallion raced at breakneck speed across the countryside, self-preservation won out over her fury.
The hills blurred, stone fences became wisps of gray beneath the stallion as he leapt them effortlessly, in spite of his heavy load.
Lucy’s chin bumped the steely muscles of Valcour’s arm and she bit her tongue, tasting blood. The whole world seemed a whirling mass of color and emotion, fury and confusion. When the horse was suddenly reined to a shuddering halt, Lucy felt as if she were still hurtling through space.
Valcour shoved her from the horse, and she stumbled, grabbing the nearest solid object to regain her balance. Thorns sliced her palm, as velvety petals were crushed between her hand and a rough-carved block of stone.
She fell to her knees before it, her eyes focusing on a crude yet beautiful angel etched into what looked to be a tombstone lost in a tangle of rose vines. She pulled away a mass of blossoms to read the inscription.
Jenny d’Autrecourt, sleep, beloved angel.
Lucy couldn’t keep from staggering to her feet, backing away. She slammed full force into Valcour’s solid chest.
“Damn you, are you insane?” Lucy rounded on him, sick horror reverberating through her.
“Only temporarily. I should have known better than to trust a d’Autrecourt. But I’ll not be deceived another moment. You will tell me everything! Every goddamn thing you know about this madness. Alexander d’Autrecourt—alive? Alive!”
For a heartbeat Lucy was truly frightened by what she saw in his face. “I don’t know anymore than what I told you and the duchess back at Avonstea,” she said, groping for something, anything, to use to regain her mental balance. “But perhaps we should ask my wedding ring for the answers, my lord—this legendary love token of the d’Autrecourts.”
For an instant, Lucy thought Valcour would strike her.
“Take it off,” Valcour snarled.
“It’s my wedding ring, remember? The one you forced onto my finger? Exactly how did you come by it, my lord? And why does it make you look as if you want to murder me.”
“You’re not the one I’m tempted to throttle.”
“Then who is?”
Valcour slammed his fist into the more impressive monument that rose up behind Jenny d’Autrecourt’s small marker. “A ghost. A goddamn ghost that will give me no peace!”
Lord Alexander d’Autrecourt, Lucy read the letters carved in stone. Died of fever…
“Damn him!” Valcour raged. “Hasn’t he taken enough already? I’d sell my soul to the devil to be free.”
Lucy stared into eyes that were black pools of agony, a face as tormented as that of Lancelot when Guinevere was sentenced to the flames. But what flames were searing the earl of Valcour now? Torturing him until Lucy was certain he would gladly have exchanged them for the devil’s own?
And why did she feel as if she were being sucked down into the inferno at his side?
Chapter Ten
The crofters called Harlestone the Castle of Sorrow, claiming that it was haunted by a Saxon lord who had laid a curse on the bold French chevalier who had stolen his land.
But Dominic had always believed that there was a far more logical reason for the castle’s dismal history. One that had nothing to do with ghosts or curses.
Rather, it had to do with the corrupt nature of the St. Cyrs themselves. Arrogant, greedy, with a pronounced streak of cruelty, they had brought sorrow down upon themselves by their own actions, generation after generation.
Somehow it seemed fitting that Dominic had brought his new bride here, to spend their wedding night among a hundred silent reminders of other St. Cyr disasters.
For despite the battle Dominic had waged to escape the St. Cyr legacy, he had added his own chapter to the tradition of infamy by forcing this unwilling girl to be his wife. But Lucinda had had her own revenge. For through her Alexander d’Autrecourt’s hand had reached out from the grave, dragging Dominic toward the past he had buried so long before, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Dominic raked his fingers through the dark masses of his hair, his eyes gritty with exhaustion as he sat at the desk in the dim study that lay in the deepest reaches of the castle.
At Avonstea, Dominic had threatened the dowager duchess with the might of Valcour. Now that daunting might would be turned to another task: searching out the hell-spawned bastard who had written the letter to Lucinda and sent her the mysterious box. The madman who believed he was Alexander d’Autrecourt.
Dominic capped his inkwell and shoved the chunks of sealing wax aside. He had done everything possible tonight. He had placed Lucinda in the capable hands of Harlestone’s housekeeper. Then he had barred himself in this room. He had worked for hours, drafting letters, sending the swiftest messengers he could find to carry those letters to London to alert his most trusted hirelings to the problem. He had let the dowager duchess know that any attempt to harm Lucy would result in calamity for the d’Autrecourts. He had instructed his solicitor to spare no expense in searching for information at Perdition’s Gate.
He had confronted this crisis with the same determined resolve with which he had faced a dozen other challenges in his life. The one thing he had not done was face the possibility that Alexander d’Autrecourt might truly be alive.
What a hellish possibility. If there were the remotest chance that it was true, wasn’t there one more letter Dominic should write? One more person he should alert to the possibility?
He closed his eyes, picturing his mother as he had last seen her, half out of her mind with worry in Camilla’s drawing room. Lady Catherine’s delicate features had been savaged by her anguish. Her hands had shaken, clutching Dominic’s shirtfront, as if pleading for strength.
How could he send a letter to the Valcour townhouse in London? Tell her… what? That the security he had worked so hard to give her had been an illusion? That their secret was no longer safe? If Alexander d’Autrecourt were alive, he could destroy all that Dominic had fought for. Destroy Aubrey, his mother, and the beautiful, innocent young woman who was even now waiting in the great bedchamber for a husband who had forced his ring upon her finger.
No, not his ring. Bitterness seethed inside him, a fierce sense of betrayal surging through his body. Even that circlet of rubies was tainted by d’Autrecourt’s poison.
And she had known. His mother had known.
Dominic sat down again and took up the quill. Tell her all, a savage voice inside him said. She deserves to suffer with the truth after what she did.
Valcour dipped the point of the pen into the ink, then wrote: My lady, Alexander d’Autrecourt may be alive, a circumstance that might prove rather awkward for you, considering the fact that his ring is now on my bride’s finger.
Dominic tore the paper to bits, then stalked to the fire and hurled the scraps into the flames. How could he condemn his mother to such an agony of uncertainty, no matter what she had done?
There was no way of knowing for certain if Alexander d’Autrecourt was alive. No way of being sure that the grave on the windswept hill was empty. Unless…
Valcour stilled, his eyes flashing to the window. The stars were just beginning to appear, bloodless wounds in the underbelly of night. And for a heartbeat, it seemed as if the shadows themselves were waiting, testing the earl of Valcour, to see how far he had fallen from grace.
Valcour’s jaw tightened. How could he even contemplate such an act? He had battled so hard for his honor, had struggled to hold it through countless storms. And he had done so, damn it! He had.
But how could he risk not knowing what lay inside that grave? Images swam before Dominic: Lady Catherine’s features, so bruised by sadness. Aubrey’s tear-streaked face at the inn, anguished, broken. And Lucinda, facing her cruel grandmother with such regal courage. The visions were thrust away by another, more vivid one—that of a fifteen-year-old boy, lashed by rain, a sword clutched in his hand while he faced the man he had trusted, cared about… the man who had betrayed him.
Blue eyes haunted Dominic, stricken, agony-filled eyes. God, how he had wanted death to close them forever. To see those eyes, robbed of flesh, vacant sockets staring into nothingness. To see the hands that had glided over the pianoforte’s keys with such gra
ce, now tiny bones, crumbling to dust. How could he face that?
Dominic’s fists clenched. How could he refuse to do so? He had to make certain the nightmare begun so many years before was over. The unspeakable act he would commit tonight was necessary, damn it. Inevitable.
He shoved himself to his feet and stalked from the study.
A bright-eyed footman sprang to attention in the corridor. “May I be of service to my lord?” the youth asked with great eagerness.
“You are new here, are you not?”
“I’m Randolph Jarvis’s son, my lord. Worked here since my pap’s died three years ago. Sure’n you must remember you hired me an’ my brother Tim, my lord? Saved us all from the poorhouse, my mama said. Course, you’ve not been to the castle since, so I could thank you myself.”
“Do you know how to keep your mouth shut, boy?”
“I be the soul of discretion, my lord. You can wager your last groat on it.”
“I am going to make a far greater gamble than that. I have a most important errand to accomplish, and I need two strong, trustworthy men to help me.”
“Randolph Jarvis’s sons be ready to help you, my lord.”
“Then fetch your brother and get a brace of spades. Meet me by the stable in half an hour.”
“Spades? I don’t understand.”
“You will continue to be baffled, from the beginning to the end of this escapade, and beyond. It is my wish.”
The youth shrugged. “Whatever you say, my lord. I’d dig clear down to the devil hisself to repay you for what you did for us.”
“You won’t have to dig quite that far,” Valcour said then watched as the boy hurried down the hall.
Valcour watched him go then drafted a quick note.
Lucinda,
You shall be spared my company at dinner this evening. The castle is in ill repair. You will remain in the suite of rooms assigned to you.
Dominic St. Cyr, Earl of Valcour
Lords of the Isles Page 168
