The Veil of Night Page 3

  Raeburn let out a short bark of laughter. Concealed by the folds of her skirt, her hands balled into fists.

  "Everyone has a price. What's yours? Respectability? Money? Power?" He shook his head, a stirring in the shadows. "Allowing your brother's debts to be forgotten until his inheritance… for you, that could mean any one of the three. Saving face, preventing the loss of precious capital, putting you in the position of rescuer. How much would you pay to save Gifford? Yourself?"

  She had the disturbing sensation that he was raking her with his eyes, examining her in every straitlaced detail from her knotted bun to her practical high boots with devastating intimacy, seeing under them—and, even more, beyond them, to the soul of the wind-mad woman who escaped the stifling parlors and drawing rooms of Rushworth Manor to gallop across the tenants' most distant fields. Yet more impropriety, she told herself, but something stilled her tongue as he continued deliberately, consideringly.

  "I believe you already have paid with your body, betraying yourself every day when you lock yourself into your misshapen corsets and high-buttoned dresses." His voice softened persuasively. "All I ask for is a week—a single week of a different kind of self-betrayal. And who knows? You might find it to be your true self, after all."

  "Your grace!" Victoria gasped, but more from reflex than horror, for she couldn't manage to put much distress into her tone. She had never been shocked by such suggestions, but now she couldn't even feel affronted. In spite of herself, she felt drawn to the mysterious, lascivious Duke of Raeburn, and mad as his idea was, it was more alluring than repellent. After all, she had come to rescue her family from the shame of her brother's penury, and that was exactly what the duke offered. And the price—the price was small, so small that the insignificance of it shocked her.

  When had the intricate dance of society politics begun to chafe? When had her ambitions to direct an earldom become restrictive? She'd given her life to those aspirations, and now that she held them in her hands, they seemed so meaningless next to the untamed, aimless yearnings that had always moved quietly within her. Now those yearnings surged up, and she stood dumbly, stunned speechless by the sudden, fierce desire for… freedom. She shook her head. It must be the storm stirring the wildness in her, tearing through her years of experience to set free the impetuousness she thought she'd buried with her youth.

  Raeburn continued, dropping his voice cajolingly. "Consider it. One week, and I shall allow Gifford to repay me at his leisure after he inherits. You return a heroine, and no one but you and I ever know of the bargain."

  "And of that week, how much is yours?" She could hardly believe she was pretending to consider his ludicrous offer, whatever mad desires thrummed in her blood.

  Raeburn chuckled richly. "Every moment is mine, but if you wonder how much of it will be spent in my bed—then the answer is however much I desire."

  Victoria tried to suppress the heat that crept up her face. The unveiled hunger in his voice stirred an answer in her midsection and deeper, in her mind and imagination. She tried to hold back the reckless urgings that told her to seize this chance—not for her brother Jack or for Rushworth, but for herself. What would it feel like if the duke touched her? What would it feel like, to be in the arms of a man again after so long? Despite his reputation for debauchery, there were no whispers that a tryst with the duke was less than pleasurable, and surely she deserved a little pleasure to remember in her declining years. Or so she told herself, but that cynical thought had no connection with the way her heart was beating in her ears.

  She'd made her choice, she reminded herself, stifling both the warmth and the restlessness that flooded her. But what if, just for a week, she could sample the alternative? She counted the days since her last courses; there'd be little chance of getting pregnant even if she were still seventeen. Not that any seventeen-year-old would know anything about counting days. She surely hadn't.

  She knew the dangers and the rewards of what the duke offered—could lay them out neatly, logically, and weigh the benefits of each path. But still she hesitated, for how should she measure the strange, mixed impulses that swooped drunkenly through her mind?

  "Come, my dear Lady Victoria," the duke interposed. "Do not be frightened. I shall hardly bite."

  That decided it. Even though she couldn't see his face, the ironic, condescending amusement in his tone was unmistakable. He wanted to seduce her for sport, to privately mock her as he unfolded the secret mysteries of love to a foolish, aging virgin. Defiance flared within her. He'd have her, right enough, and she him, and then they'd see who was the most surprised. She raised her chin defiantly and tried to find his eyes in the shadows.

  "Let me see you," she ordered.

  For a long moment, Raeburn didn't move, and she feared he'd withdraw his offer. Then he stood slowly and stepped into the light, turning sideways to the fireplace so the dim glow from the coals was cast upon his features.

  Her first impression was size. The duke was not the tallest man she had ever seen, nor the brawniest, but his presence filled the room so that he seemed to loom in a way her taller brother never could. She drew herself up in reflexive response and met his gaze squarely.

  From his remarkable voice, she had imagined his eyes to be equally arresting—a brilliant blue or emerald green, or even a steely gray. But they weren't. They were a muted, muddled color, brown or moss-colored or somewhere between the two, and for a moment, she was almost disappointed. But the duke raised a slow eyebrow, challenging her bold stare, and his eyes lit with a hard, glinting humor. Victoria knew then that a striking color would have been mere superficial adornment to distract from the controlled power that seemed to course through every line of his body.

  The lineaments of his face were bold and strong—almost crude, as if he'd been blindly carved of stone—but they were no less attractive for a lack of patrician daintiness. How old he was she could not guess: certainly younger than the roughened skin of his face suggested. It was not marked with the scarring left by youthful blemishes but with a deeper weathering, as if he had stood barefaced to wind and sun for a score of years. A massive brow, a heavy jaw, a body both broad and lean under a loose lounging suit.

  His appearance was certainly unconventional, but it was also compelling, as if there were some connection between them that made his smallest movements stir an answer within her own body. He advanced a step, and Victoria had to catch herself to keep from backing away. She raised her chin as he stopped.

  "Do I meet with your approval?" he said. The soft caress of his voice should have seemed out of keeping with his rugged appearance, but somehow it fused strength and grace, power and seduction. Victoria could not afford to lower her guard with this man.

  "You shall suffice," she replied curtly. "Now let us draw up a contract—signed and witnessed—and the week shall begin."

  Raeburn stared at her for a long moment, expression unreadable. "A contract?" he finally said. "How… sensible."

  He left her to wonder what that meant while he crossed to a small writing table. He lit a candle, drew out a sheet of paper, and began to write, the pale goose quill scratching and swooping across the page. His head bent over the sheet, unfashionably long hair curling over his collar. It was impossible in (he dim light to tell if it was black or merely brown, but 'Victoria had the rather sensational suspicion that it was as dark as midnight. What was she getting herself into?

  He finished writing with a final flourish and blotted the page before bringing it and the candle over to where Victoria stood. Lit from below, his face was even more harshly imposing, but she took the paper from him without betraying a tremor of uncertainty.

  "Thank you, your grace." In the flickering light of the candle, she scanned the page. The language was indirect enough to obscure the exact nature of the bargain but clear enough to make a breach of contract unambiguous. "Clever," she granted him grudgingly.

  Suddenly, the door burst open into the room, catching Victoria from behind and se
nding her lurching toward Raeburn. He caught her elbow and steadied her as the intruder apologized.

  "Forgive me, thy grace, thy ladyship. I've brought up the lady's luggage to the Unicorn Room, and thy grace's order has been brought in from Leeds."

  Victoria turned to face a tall, stooping man in a worn tweed jacket and pants that flapped around his knees.

  "Just in time, Fane," the duke said. "I have a contract for you to witness."

  Fane looked from Victoria to Raeburn as if sensing the tension in the room for the first time. "Of course, thy grace."

  The duke deftly plucked the contract from Victoria's fingers and guided her over to the writing table, still holding her elbow. His grip was neither gentle nor harsh, but firm and almost impersonal. It made Victoria feel oddly distant while at the same time stirring a twinge of desire that spread from her center to creep up her neck and face.

  Raeburn dipped the quill and inscribed his name boldly, handing it to her when he finished.

  Victoria stared at the words sprawled across the sheet. Once she signed, there would be no turning back. She thought of the touch of mouth on mouth, of body against body, and of the shame she would save her family through this, the greatest folly she had ever countenanced. She pressed her lips together, and before she could change her mind, she quickly wrote her name under his in her small, precise hand. Her heart beating in her ears, she passed the pen to Fane, who added his own prompt signature.

  "Finished!" said Raeburn, snatching away the sheet and handing it to Victoria with a flourish. "Fane, show Lady Victoria to her room." Raeburn gave her a raking glance that sent shivers up her spine. "She looks like a half-drowned kitten. I expect to see you at supper, your ladyship—and in better form. Until then, good day."

  And with that, he turned his back on her, radiating such a sense of feral triumph that her stomach lurched and she wondered if she'd regret her decision sooner than she would have imagined.

  Trying to suppress the tightness that coiled in her gut, she preceded the thin manservant from the room. As she followed him through the dark corridors, she had the feeling there was more unknown in the room behind her than in all the rest of the sprawling, rotting manor house.

  Victoria surveyed the bedchamber as the door clunked shut behind Fane. Her trunk squatted in the center of the floor, but neither Dyer nor her valise was in evidence.

  It was obvious why the chamber was called the Unicorn Room: an ancient, fantastic tapestry with figures of svelte ladies and cavorting unicorns dominated one wall from the shadowed ceiling all the way to the flagstone floor. Victoria thought almost longingly of the neoclassical lightness of Rushworth, the jewel-box rooms lined with damask and broad windows. The chambers she'd always considered confining now seemed an image of airy grace compared to this cell.

  The room was dark and cavernous, the gray limestone walls pierced only by the door and one slit of a window, and the newest of the spare furnishings was no more recent than the days of the Sun King. An unlit oil lamp on the night table was the only concession to modernity.

  Victoria wondered which generation of the Raeburn stewards had ordered the blue plumes for the canopy and which of the Raeburn women had embroidered the flowers and mythical beasts across the bed hangings and counterpane. The chamber seemed as darkly secretive as its master, and suddenly, Victoria felt very alone.

  What was keeping Dyer?

  She suppressed that childishly plaintive thought—plaintive with more than an edge of fear, she admitted to herself. It couldn't be time for dinner yet, after all. She'd just have to wait, clammy carriage dress and shadowy ceilings or no. At least she had the oil lamp. If she'd been left with a candlestick or, God forbid, a rushlight or torch, she probably would have worked herself into a fine state of nerves before her abigail came.

  Victoria crossed to the smoky fire sparking on the hearth, peeled off her kidskin gloves, and held her hands over the reluctant flames. As the stiffness left her fingers, she continued to study the room. It was very, very like the duke. Cold. Forbidding. Strangely beautiful…

  Their meeting had been the most unsettling she'd ever had. She'd felt as if she were waltzing on quicksand, yet somehow, almost magically, she never actually became mired. It was fortunate that she had abandoned her original plan of flattery. The duke wanted no obsequiousness: he craved a challenge. Which she was more than willing to give him, she thought with renewed irritation.

  Victoria sighed, ire dying at its birth. She'd made her choice, and a week in the duke's company still seemed more alluring than repulsive. Very soon, she would be in the arms of a man again, a man who, by all rumors, knew how to please a woman. A small shiver overcame her at that thought, a kind of queasy anticipation. If those rumors showed themselves to be true… But what of the others? He was certainly strange, and there were whispers of an inherited weakness of the mind or body, something not quite right that had haunted and misshaped him from birth. It all seemed far too grotesque and gloomy to her.

  She wished that she had met him before, in the days when he haunted the parlors of London, but their paths had never crossed. He had run in the fast set with her brother, and she had stuck fiercely to her own more conservative circle. Even so, thus far she'd seen nothing more sinister in him than an instinctive arrogance and an inclination toward melancholy. She wondered illogically if he ever smiled, genuinely smiled, and tried to imagine his heavy brow softened and his shifting hazel eyes lit with pleasure…

  She shunted her mind from that path, but it quickly hurled down another almost as disquieting. If the manor were one of the crumbling castles so ubiquitous in parlor novels, she'd be certain to find a hidden door behind the enormous tapestry, leading to a maze of secret passageways wending through the ancient depths of the dark fortress. For a long moment, she simply stood and stared at the wall, telling herself not to be ridiculous, but her sense of unease grew until there was nothing left but to check. She crossed the room, feeling foolish, her heel clicks echoing in the groin-vaulted ceiling. She faced the intricate hanging, trying to convince herself that there was nothing there. It was useless.

  With a sigh, she pulled back the tapestry—and found a blank gray expanse of stone. She pulled back the other side—and nothing again. No outlines of a door, no suspiciously deeper cracks, no strange wall sconces, no discolored places. Nothing but a wall. Half disappointed and half relieved, she turned away.

  Her wet dress, forgotten in the duke's formidable presence, was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. What could be keeping Dyer? Victoria tugged the bellpull by the bed, hoping that it would summon her lady's maid, or at least someone, from the depths of the house to help her undress.

  She put the contract on the night table and settled herself on the padded stone window bench to wait. Even with only the faint light from the fireplace, it was difficult to see past the reflections on the glass into the dark, rainy courtyard. She could make out only indistinct shapes—the long drive that terminated at the porter's house with the distant smear of the manor village beyond, and moving along it, the dark box of a carriage.

  A carriage? What would a carriage be doing, leaving Raeburn Court so late in the day? Victoria had the sinking feeling that it concerned her in a way that did not bode well. She watched as it rattled out between the gates and turned up the road toward Leeds.

  It was too much to hope that it contained the duke, breaking his end of the contract and giving her victory through forfeit. She knew nothing of the man, yet Raeburn did not seem one to bluff. Rather, he seemed the type to exact every last pennyweight from any deal. She put a hand on her belly at that thought, feeling the same-heady rush as when she balanced on the edge of a parapet, when the wind whipped suddenly between the trees, or when she galloped at breakneck speed across the fields. Moodily, she watched the carriage shrink in the distance, disappearing and reappearing as the road dipped and rose.

  There was a light rap on the door, and Victoria started and turned away from the window.


  "Come in," she called, composing herself.

  Expecting Dyer, Victoria was surprised at the entry of a young and pretty brunette maid. The girl bobbed nervously. "My lady rang?"

  "Yes… what is your name?"

  "Annie, my lady."

  "Yes, Annie. What happened to my abigail?"

  The maid bobbed again, swallowing hard. "I thought my lady knew…"

  Victoria's emotions, already strained, began descending rapidly into impatience. "You thought I knew what?" she prompted, attempting to project warmth and reassurance to calm the flustered girl.

  It didn't work. Annie hesitated for a half a dozen seconds more before she managed to say in a strangled voice, "My lady's abigail just left, on orders of his grace. She's to stay in Leeds until thoo joins her."

  The carriage! That high-handed, controlling bastard! Victoria spun, glaring at her reflection in the mullioned window, but in the darkening, rainy evening beyond the chamber, the road stretched long and bare. Alone!

  Lightning flashed, and a peal of thunder ripped the sky somewhere close. The exaggerated melodrama of its timing amused her despite herself, and the anger that had threatened to overwhelm her subsided into a simmer again. She turned back to the maid and raised an eyebrow. "I see. And who is to attend me, pray?"

  "I am, my lady." The maid all but whimpered.

  Victoria looked at her for a long moment, then .sighed. "Come along then, and help me dress. And stop shaking. I shan't eat you alive."

  Annie gave her an uncertain look, beginning to relax only after Victoria belatedly remembered that she hadn't accompanied her comment with the comforting smile she had intended and managed to dredge one up.

  "Aye," Annie said then. "Supper's at nine, my lady."

  Victoria's smile turned humorless as she regarded her pale reflection in the window. "Two hours are more than enough time to make myself presentable."

  If the Duke of Raeburn wanted a stiff spinster, a stiff spinster he would get.