The Veil of Night Read online

  He was splendid, even in the dim candlelight. His muscles bunched over his arms and across his chest, and his stomach was a hard plane, his wide shoulders narrowing to a neat waist where a dark line of hair disappeared into his trousers.

  "Oh," Victoria said involuntarily.

  He chuckled languorously, pulling her to him. This time, she did not resist. He reached efficiently through the open waist of her dress to the ties that held her petticoat and crinoline in place. A few tugs and they loosened—a final pull, and she was standing in her deflated skirt with her hoops puddled at her feet. The duke lifted her free. His chest was hard and smooth against her, the feel of his skin thrilling her searching hands. So long, so long… For a moment she felt other hands against her body, remembered words of ardor whispered in another voice. When her feet touched the ground again, she snaked her arms around him and bent her head to bury it against his body, just breathing the essence of him, exulting in the touch of flesh against heated flesh. She tasted him, running her mouth slowly up his chest, across the hard line of his jaw to his mouth. What matter whose touch? What matter whose mouth? His hands, which had been busy loosening her corset, stilled and drew her against him. He was like a wall of fire, solid and burning, engulfing her. She could not taste him enough, touch him enough, breathe him enough… His lips, his eyes, the line of his throat—all were beautiful.

  Raeburn was the one to finally pull away, gasping.

  "My God," he said. "And to think I planned to teach you a few tricks!"

  "Someone once told me the best tricks are the ones no schooling can teach," she said through the memories that swam up in her mind. "He said they are guided by desire and tempered by passionate intuition."

  "And is this passionate intuition?" His finger grazed her flushed cheeks, her swollen lips.

  "No," she said frankly, "merely animal lust, as I'm sure we both know."

  He resumed his work at her corset laces. "You are an enigma, Lady Victoria."

  She swallowed hard, aware of the enormity of what she was about to do—to forget a decade and a half of self-discipline, forget everything she had paid and everything she had gained. But alone in the dark with the duke, all that she had lived for faded into trivialities. Respectability, social influence, familial power—no longer did being the hidden hand of Rushworth hold any attraction. Instead, the years of personal privation and self-denial crowded in on her. Loveless, friendless, with only the distant acquaintances that polite society allowed. Passionless. Heartless. Safe.

  She looked up at Raeburn. His expression was hidden in shadows, but she had memorized his face with her fingers and her lips. Strong, remorseless, wonderful. Forehead damp with desire. He wanted her with a sheer carnality that took her breath away, perhaps as no man had ever wanted her before, and the knowledge of his need brought another wash of heat across her skin, leaving her tingling and near-trembling in its wake.

  He had finished loosening her corset, but he paused, watching her, searching her face.

  "You are thinking," he said.

  She laughed, but the sound was high and artificial. "I do that at times, your grace, but I always repent."

  "And of this, too, will you repent?" She could not tell if there was merely curiosity in his voice or if, perhaps, there was a hint of regret or even guilt.

  She shook her head, her hands spread across the smooth tautness of his chest. "My soul is not pure enough to allow for such twinges of conscience." The bitterness of the words was unexpected but genuine.

  Again, he scrutinized her. "And what precisely do you mean by that?"

  "Nothing," she said, pressing herself against his bare chest, willing him to let the matter drop.

  But he would have none of her distractions. He caught both her wrists and pushed her away. "We have all the hours of darkness for that—enough even for you." Though she couldn't see his face, she was certain he was glowering.

  She tried again. "Your grace, I didn't know what I was saying. It was the foolishness of the moment. It means nothing; there is nothing to talk about."

  He released one of her hands and began stroking the other gently, teasingly, as if to assure her that he hadn't forgotten the business of that night. She felt a flush creep up her cheeks; for once, she was grateful for the shadows in the room.

  "I have found that we reveal our most profound natures in our most thoughtless comments," he said.

  "Then I doubt you ever reveal anything, your grace; you are so nice with your words." The edge in her voice was not spite but a resentment at his prodding and a desire to deflect his attention. But she knew it was no use. Frigidity… oh, where was the wall of frigidity she once lowered so effectively between herself and the world? It had melted in the darkness of the gaudy tower boudoir.

  "Not often. Not now," the duke said, and he lapsed into silence, raising her hand to his mouth almost absently and kissing her fingers slowly, one at a time. She shivered. His tongue played between them, his lips traveling their length leisurely.

  He wanted her. She could feel it in every tense line of his body, in the twisting fire that his need stirred in her. She pursued her advantage. "Come, let's not talk." She stepped closer to him until their bodies met, tilting her face up mere inches from his.

  She could feel his smile against the back of her hand. "There will be time for everything, I promise you. From dusk 'til dawn."

  Victoria pressed her lips together stubbornly.

  He must have sensed her recalcitrance, for he sighed in an exaggerated manner. "Must you be so difficult?"

  "Yes," she replied without hesitation.

  He chuckled. "I shouldn't have asked." He reached out and touched her face with his free hand, caressing the length of it.

  She leaned into the touch, savoring the physicality of it. Keep it here, she thought. In the touch of skin, the caress of fingertips. Let all the rest be forgotten, just for

  tonight. But she knew better than to speak her thoughts aloud. Indeed, he was already continuing.

  "What I can't understand is how you can be so brave yet so frightened. Why the disguise, Lady Victoria? Why the bluster? Why the facade?"

  He did not seem to be teasing her; his voice was subdued and grave, almost as if he were musing to himself. Victoria bit back her facile answer. What could be said? There was a long moment in which there was no sound but the constant wash of rain against the roof and the wind among the eaves. The duke stood there, determinedly inquisitive and yet… not threatening. Not comforting, certainly, but not intimidating, either. He was almost familiar, as if she had known him in some other age or as if she herself was in him, distant and distorted. Two like spirits, caught in unlike bottles. She spoke on that thought.

  "You of all people should know. I know nothing you don't—the cipher's key is locked in here." She brushed his forehead with her fingers. "You look inside and tell me. Why?"

  Raeburn caught the hand on his brow and pulled her against him.

  "You can't shift things back to me so easily," he said.

  She laughed, trying to sound carefree, but she feared it came out rather strangled.

  But the brush of his bare chest against her naked arms soon dispelled her lingering sense of gravity, and she let it whirl away in a return of carnal need. She could feel his manhood pressing hot and hard through his trousers and was neither ashamed nor frightened; it was as it should be, she thought, a man desiring a woman in the darkness, the woman turning to the man to hold back the night of the mind.

  * * *

  Chapter Five

  Byron tugged the dress over Lady Victoria's head hurriedly, dropping it to the floor even as he began to unhook the metal fastenings down her corset busk. Lust made him impatient, but even more—far more, he admitted to himself—he feared what she might say if she were not distracted. You look inside and tell me. Why? How could she think she knew why he hid? How could she hope to understand the despair that plagued his days and haunted his nights?

  He slid the co
rset from her shoulders and pulled off her chemise in almost the same motion.

  Brazenly displayed before him, Lady Victoria faced him straight on, head tilted high and chin jutting out as if daring him to make a disparaging remark. High breasts, full for her spare body and firmer than most women her age; soft, sloping shoulders; smooth skin; slender waist—all consummately desirable. She held herself with a natural, sensual elegance, and he had the sudden conviction that this was a woman born to be loved. No wonder she hid behind ugly clothes and a cold smile. She had to embrace extremes just to counter her inherent erotic attraction.

  The thought of taking her in his arms, crushing her bare flesh against him and taking her mouth in his, sent another spear of desire into his groin. Yet he did not reach out for her, though his body cried out for release. She was bare to the waist, but it wasn't enough.

  "Take down your hair," he ordered.

  "What?" she said, her voice tinged with surprise.

  "Your hair. Take it down."

  After a moment's hesitation, she complied, her breasts lifting tantalizingly as she reached behind her head for the pins. She plucked them out swiftly and began to uncoil the tight bun. Then, looking at him measuringly, she stopped and shook her head one, two, three times until her hair tumbled down across her shoulders.

  Byron immediately saw the reason for her hesitation. Her face framed by a mass of pale waves, Victoria seemed suddenly younger, less certain of herself. The lines of her face, so severe before, now softened into delicacy, and even the set of her chin faded from belligerence to mere stubbornness. Without the armor of her tight bun, she was transformed into a creature both rarer and more vulnerable.

  Byron reached out and took a lock between his fingers. It was silk-fine, like fairy tresses, but the ends were unmercifully shorn at a length that fell just below her breasts.

  "You've savaged it," he accused, holding up the blunt ends as evidence.

  "There's no one to ever see it," Lady Victoria replied, but her eyes slid past his.

  He shook his head. "No." The lady before him was too complex for such reasons. Like her clothing and the cold manner she adopted, her hair was part of the disguise that kept the world at bay. "You cut it because you hate it. Because it's striking and beautiful, and beauty is dangerous." He lifted the ends to his lips and kissed them as Victoria watched, her eyes riveted on his hand. "I will find out why it's so dangerous before this week is up," he promised softly. "I will fathom your secrets and understand you, Lady Victoria."

  Her gaze never wavered. "Not before I uncover your own."

  He kissed her then, silencing her, pushing back the fear that she was right. Her mouth was ripe and sweet, her nipples brushing provocatively against his bare chest as she leaned into him. His hands tangled in the wild waves of her hair as he pulled her harder against him—one lock caught in his mouth, and he laughed and pushed it aside and kissed her again.

  "You are still wearing your shoes," he said when they separated. She was a tall woman—her heels brought the top of her head above the bridge of his nose.

  "Yes," she agreed breathlessly.

  He dropped to his knees, examining them more closely in the dim light of the single candle. "They have buttons," he said reproachfully.

  She laughed, and the sound had a reckless edge. "Yes. Many, many buttons."

  He snorted. "We'll just see what's to be done about that." He stood and swept her into his arms in a single, deliberately dramatic movement. She gasped but did not squeal in surprise as another woman might have done, and when he had deposited her on the divan, her next words were full of reproof.

  "You might have warned me."

  Byron shrugged, taking one narrow ankle into his lap. He unbuttoned the shoe efficiently and slipped it off, then took her other foot and repeated the process. He stopped and looked at her where she lay stretched along the length of the low sofa.

  Victoria's expression was expectant, her lower lip caught between her teeth. The air of lingering youth and fragility still hung about her—he could not think of her as a tight-laced spinster when she looked like that, nor even as a sophisticated woman of the world. Not childlike, certainly not, but vulnerable in a way that he never would have guessed when she first walked into the Teak Parlor.

  Vulnerable—and wanton.

  Byron was still holding her left ankle, so slender he could encircle it with one hand. He slid his hand slowly up her silk-clad calf, watching her closely. Her breath caught, then quickened. He paused at the curve of her knee, then untied the ribbons holding up her stocking and rolled it, ever so slowly, down and off. She shuddered slightly as his hand touched bare skin, and he lifted her leg to his lips, tracing it upward with his mouth to the crease of her knee. The skin was smooth, downed with soft hair. He smiled at her sigh and removed the other stocking. A tug at the pantaloon strings, another pull, and she was lying naked before him.

  Her legs were shapely, narrow at ankle and knee and full at calf and thigh, impossibly long, leading inevitably to the triangle of pale curls where they met. Too thin for fashion, he objectively knew, but at that moment, they seemed perfect.

  "I feel rather at a disadvantage," Victoria said, a tiny quaver in her voice. "You know, with me… like this"—she gestured at her nakedness—"and you… like that." She waved at his dark trousers, still fastened firmly around his waist.

  Byron laughed quietly. "Safest way to have you."

  Then he leaned across her body, brushing his lips against her stomach, the valley between her breasts, her neck, her mouth. Her arms slid under his as he reached her face, her hands encouraging him as their lips met. Soft palms and delicate, curved fingernails thrilled across his back as Victoria escaped his mouth and began an assault of her own, licking, teasing, nibbling, kissing every inch of his face, his neck. Her mouth was impossibly hot against his skin, as hot as the arousal that strained at his trousers.

  He rested his weight on his elbows and captured her face in his hands, cradling it he explored her mouth slowly, thoroughly. It was damp and sweet and inviting, soft and willing, like her body. Under him, she shifted, freeing her trapped leg so she held his hips between her thighs. He groaned and pressed his erection against her inviting heat, gathering her against him and devouring her mouth.

  Finally, their mouths separated, and he spent a long moment just breathing into her web-fine hair that lay softer than silk against his cheek.

  "I could get drunk off you," he muttered.

  Victoria didn't answer, but a moment later, he felt her fingers working nimbly at his waistband. He hardened more, if possible, as her hands brushed against his arousal in their work. The first button loosened, and then the next. He groaned and pushed off her, stepping away from the divan as he stripped off his shoes and socks, trousers and drawers. Victoria watched him, her eyes glittering and hooded.

  "Better?" he demanded.

  "Better," she agreed. She opened her mouth again but stopped, a blush so crimson even to be visible even in the candlelight creeping up her chest and across her face. She seemed to shake it off, and she spoke: "Come—come to me."

  Byron chuckled. "With pleasure." But instead of joining her on the divan, he knelt beside it near her feet. He began at her ankles, kissing, licking, teasing, then worked his way up the insides of her calves to her knees where he paused at the sensitive crease. She shivered delicately as he caressed the skin with his tongue and teeth. He passed more slowly up her thighs, where the flesh was softer, hotter. Her legs loosened, opening to him as he moved upward, closer to their joining. He paused at her nest of curls, as pale as the waves that spilled across her shoulders. He could hear her breath quicken, feel the muscles in her legs tighten against his shoulders in anticipation. He looked up. She was watching him intently, one hand gripping the back of the divan, the other balled at her waist.

  "Are you?…" she asked, surprise and anticipation mingling in her face.

  As an answer, he closed the space between them. He found the soft
folds among her curls and licked slowly, experimentally. Victoria gasped, and her hands seized his shoulders—not pushing or pulling, just gripping hard. He tasted her again, and this time her gasp had a sharp, sibilant edge.

  "More?" he whispered, knowing she could hear him even over her own ragged breathing.

  "Yes," she moaned. "Much, much more."

  He laughed and probed harder with his tongue, sliding between her folds into her hot softness. The hands on his shoulders tightened suddenly, her thighs widening and loosening as she arched her hips toward his mouth. He moved his tongue within her, her body exquisitely attuned to his rhythm. He adjusted his speed to her reactions, her rasping breaths, her clinging hands, her ankles tight about his waist. Absorbing himself in her, he sought the perfection that would send her plummeting—

  And found it. With a choked sound, Victoria went rigid and arched against the cushions of the sofa. Byron didn't stop, didn't even slow as she began to tremble, then almost convulse with every stroke of his tongue. She tried to speak, but the words mingled with inarticulate noises and emerged as nonsense. Still he pressed on, pushing deeper into her hot slickness as her hands constricted on his shoulders and she rocked and moaned.

  Finally, she collapsed, panting, and he pulled away. But the hands on his shoulders reached under his arms and urged him up as her hips tilted harder into him.

  "Now," she said, the word ground out between clenched teeth. "Please, now!"

  He came to her, but taking his own time, pausing to circle her navel with his tongue, to kiss her breasts as she shuddered under him. Finally, his mouth came even with hers. She pulled his head down, taking him with her lips, demanding, hungry. He was light-headed with need for her. It rushed through his veins, throbbed in his ears, centered in a single surge of blood and desire. Her body moved beneath him, hot and supple, begging for the release he held in his power.