The Veil of Night Read online

  Once more, he took her swollen lips, returning in full their passion, tasting her mouth, her tongue with his own.

  "This will hurt a little," he managed to warn her, but she only shook her head, half laughing as she gasped for air. He could not wait to interpret her response—denial? amusement?—as his need seized him. He took the invitation of her tilting hips and slid into her slick tightness, almost losing control as he buried himself in her heat.

  There was no barrier, no stronghold of virginity to interrupt his entrance. Once again, he'd misjudged this strange, contradictory woman, he thought, but even that realization could only distract him for a moment.

  Victoria moaned and pushed against him until they met. He started to move within her, but she tightened her grip on his arms.

  "Not yet," she said hoarsely. Her face was strained, but she seemed to savor the anticipation of it, the enjoyment of expectation heightening the glory of the moment. She closed her eyes, going somewhere inside, away from him.

  Byron realized suddenly that it was not enough for there to be pleasure given and taken. He wanted Victoria to be aware of him, as aware of him as a man as he was of her as a woman. She was beautiful like that, he realized—beautiful with her face drawn in the grimace of lovemaking, beautiful with her slight curves laid out beneath him, beautiful with her tightness clasping him intimately, as if she would turn them both into one marvelous animal. But he did not want her to plunge into ecstasy alone. He wanted her with him as she went over the edge—he wanted to be a part of that beauty at its climax.

  He kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her lips.

  "I'm here," he whispered. "Look at me. Remember—I am with you."

  She opened her eyes and met his gaze. "For now," she agreed, a wry smile twisting her lips.

  He kissed them smooth again and began to move slowly, surely within her, long strokes that carried him from the edge of her entrance until they met, again and again. She gasped with every thrust, a sound of mingled pleasure and need.

  "For tonight," he agreed, and after that, there was no breath left for speaking.

  He quickened his pace as her hands urged him on, until he reached a rhythm that sent her quivering and gasping against him. He could feel the trembling in her thighs, the goose pimples that crawled across the flesh of her arms as she tightened them about his body, pulling her harder against him. She clung to the apex for half a dozen strokes, a dozen, and then he abandoned himself as they fell together, the hot rush of release leaving him weak and heavy-limbed as they slowed, slowed, stopped.

  Finally, after a long moment of stillness, he pulled away. Her hands reached out, as if from some instinctive need to bring him back, but she let them drop as soon as they brushed his skin.

  He found a piece of clothing—his shirt, he realized. He shrugged. In the name of chivalry, nothing was too great a sacrifice, he thought ruefully. He cleaned himself, then reached between Victoria's legs as courteously as he could and repeated the service for her.

  He looked up at her as he set the shirt aside. Her hair was tangled madly around her head, her pale blue-gray eyes enormous in her delicately boned face, with a touch of gratefulness there that oddly stirred him.

  He was spent like he hadn't been in years with any woman, but suddenly, he didn't want to send her packing off to her room. Not yet.

  He arranged some of the pillows into a semblance of a bed, then pulled a coverlet off the back of another of the divans.

  Wordlessly, he returned to Victoria's side and bent to scoop her into his arms. She held on as he carried her over to the pillow bed and lay her gently upon it. Then, still in silence, he lay down next to her and pulled her firmly against him, his chest to her back, her buttocks snugged against his groin. Then he pulled the coverlet over them both.

  He drifted off to sleep with her warm length against his, and his dreams were haunted by the ghosts of lavender and black-clad sylphs.

  Between dreams and waking, Victoria had the strange sensation of levitation, of movement through darkness and half-glimpsed rooms. But she was not afraid. Around her, in her waking dream or sleeping wakefulness, were strong arms, and she knew instinctively that they would not let her fall.

  * * *

  Chapter Six

  Victoria woke to sunlight and a timid rap on the door. After a moment of confusion, she realized she was in the Unicorn Room, tucked snugly under the blankets. After another, she realized she was naked, and the events of the night before came rushing back. She lay still, dazed by the memory of it—wonderful, terrible, frightening. What had she done? And what would she give to do it again?

  She bit back a curse as the knock came again, more insistent.

  "Come in," she said, levering herself up against the pillows while keeping the counterpane tight around her shoulders.

  Annie the maid slid in and closed the door behind her, looking even more frightened of Victoria than she had the first day.

  Victoria stifled a frown. That was not a good sign.

  "His grace thought thoo might like to eat in thy room whilst thy wardrobe was being finished," Annie said, cringing behind a heavy-laden tray.

  "My wardrobe…" Victoria repeated stupidly, looking around the room for her trunk. It was gone. "My wardrobe!"

  Annie flinched, rattling the teacup against its saucer. "His grace promised that thy original clothes would be returned to thee when thoo leaves." The maid hesitated.

  "But…" Victoria prompted, her unease growing.

  Annie had the look of a trapped rabbit. "His grace—that is, his present grace's great-uncle kept three seamstresses at all times for his lady guests. His present grace has set them to sewing curtains and linens and the like for the Dowager House, but now he's having them make a few dresses for thee." She sucked in a breath, as if to steel herself for the next confession. "And there's the corsetry. His grace had some ordered from thy spare garments when thoo came. It ought to be up from Leeds by noon."

  "He has ordered corsetry?" She almost sprang out of bed before catching herself. The gall of that man! Stealing her clothes while he reordered her life to his satisfaction, effectively imprisoning her in her room with no more deserving target for her ire than a shrinking girl-child. As if the events of the night before had given him some obscure right over her!

  No, an insidious little voice reminded her, she had given him the right when she had signed their agreement. But to think that just hours ago, she had almost trusted him, and then he had almost immediately taken advantage of her. That was a mistake she'd never repeat.

  She controlled her voice before Annie fainted dead away from sheer terror. "Please bring me the tray, Annie," she said. "Then you may go. It appears I will need no help dressing this morning."

  Byron sat in the study of the Henry Suite, wading through the nightmare of ledgers and diaries and scraps of paper that were his predecessor's financial records. Though he had lived in the manor nigh on two years, Byron could still not think of the chambers as his. They had been inhabited far too long by other men who had left their impressions upon it more indelibly than he could ever hope to. That was the secret of Raeburn Court, he had finally decided; it always made one feel a stranger.

  And yet he did not hate it. That was what never ceased to amaze him. He grumbled about it, railed against its inadequacies, but he could not actively dislike it. The first time he'd seen the building, summoned to his great-uncle's side at the impressionable age of twelve, he'd seen the hideousness of it, the sprawling wings of every imaginable age of architecture appended to the main mass of limestone at haphazard angles. Yet even then, it had called to him. Even then, it had whispered of secrets and darkness and ancient passions burned into the rock. So when his great-uncle, in one of his rare lucid moments, had lectured him on his duty to restore the building to its former grandeur, he had been honestly able to promise to do as much as he could in his lifetime. The man had seemed feeble then. Who knew that it would be nearly a quarter of a century before Byron
set foot in the manor house again?

  And now here he was, trying to do the impossible by turning this derelict ruin into a house suitable for the seat of a duchy. As heir presumptive, he had been given free rein with half a dozen other estates and had turned them into profitable enterprises, and now he found himself pouring the fruits of the last two decades of labor into a project that would take his lifetime.

  Still, he was hardly poverty-stricken, whatever he might have told Lady Victoria. Even with the capital tied up in various investments, he had a neat five thousand a year to live on. Hardly extravagant, but manageable. Damn Gifford, anyhow. Byron remembered the man's smug smile shot over the head of Byron's betrothed at Lady Kilmaine's soirée. That smile told Byron that Gifford knew exactly what he was doing; it had been a challenge, a mockery, a prediction of the future, all wrapped into one. And all the while, the faithless, fickle Leticia had leaned toward Gifford with her wide green eyes gazing up at his inattentive face.

  The quill bent dangerously in Byron's hands, and he loosened his grip with effort. Gifford would pay. Perhaps not as Byron had hoped originally, if his sister kept her end of the bargain, but if nothing else, the man was a good investment. The gouty earl would die soon, and Gifford would spend the rest of his life in debt to Byron.

  Byron sighed and shunted his thoughts along more pleasant paths. Such as Lady Victoria, who had probably just finished dressing. She was doubtlessly more than a little peeved at him for the replacement of her wardrobe, but he'd be damned if he'd spend the next week with her trussed up like a mournful crow. Still, he hoped she wouldn't throw anything at Annie. The girl would surely have a fit of hysterics and would have to be carried down to the servants' hall, such as it was.

  Usually the chase of a woman drove him, the consummation of a successful seduction merely the concluding paragraph of the tale of pursuit. But Victoria was different. Conquest only made her seem more elusive. Conquest! He snorted. It would be best to first ask who was conquering whom. He'd had women who were desperate for him before—and even more women who had pretended to be—but Lady Victoria's hunger had seemed to encompass him only by the felicitous circumstance of their coinciding presence. Still, it wasn't until the moment of consummation that he had realized that her experience extended to more than a few stolen kisses.

  He shook his head and glanced at his pocket watch in the low light of the oil lamp. Time for dinner. He stood and strode to the dining room, darkly anticipating the meeting with Lady Victoria, looking forward to countering her anger with an offhand word, a dismissive wave that would send her into a fit of rage and make her lose the iron control she seemed to value so highly.

  When he arrived in the room, she was not there. But Mrs. Peasebody bustled in with an important expression on her flushed face, and he knew the news would not be good.

  "Yes?" he prompted, taking his seat as the housekeeper hovered with self-conscious deference beside his chair. Even Mrs. Peasebody's silences seemed to be louder man those of other people.

  She cleared her throat. "Thy grace, I hardly wish to be a bother. I know how busy thoo must be, with the records and accounts and renovations and that. Why, thy grace, if it was just me, I shouldn't say naught. Never one to put missen forward, me."

  "Yes, Mrs. Peasebody," Byron interjected, knowing that she could go on in that vein for another five minutes if she weren't redirected. "Your humility and discretion are an example to us all. What is it?"

  "It's only her ladyship," the woman fluttered, oblivious to irony. "Why, I hardly know how to tell thee. I thought of ordering Cook to hold dinner, but I know thoo is so very par-tic-ular about when thy meals are served, and then I thought, 'Senga, my lass, thoo'd best go to the duke and tell him, and let him decide.' So that's what I've done." She beamed at him proudly.

  Byron reminded himself that snapping at her would be like beating a spaniel for whining—it would be inexcusably brutal and would only serve to make matters worse. "I see that, Mrs. Peasebody, but what you've yet to tell me is what exactly is to be decided."

  "Oh, thy grace, that's why I've come. Her ladyship won't be coming down to dinner as she's still being dressed. Why, I gave Annie a right good scolding for her sloth, but there's naught to be done about it."

  "I see," Byron said, frowning at the white expanse of tablecloth before him. He'd pegged Lady Victoria as the efficient type, not one to hover around the dressing table for half a day. She must be doing it to spite him. He considered holding back dinner, but he'd eaten the cook's food cold before and had no desire to repeat the experience. After all, Lady Victoria was no reason to inconvenience himself. "Have a tray sent up for her, then, and tell her that I shall be joining her as soon as I am finished with my meal." If that didn't inspire her to faster efforts, he didn't know what would.

  "Oh, thy grace, does thoo think it wise? I mean to say, she is a lady, and to enter her room while she's in dishabille"—she pronounced it dis-ha-bil-lay—"why, it couldn't be proper." She opened her mouth to say more, but she must have caught the expression on Byron's face, for she shut it again and just nodded. "I shall just go and tell her," she said in a whisper that was loud enough to travel fifty feet. Then she bustled out, passing the kitchen maid, who bobbed to the housekeeper before setting a hot meat pie before Byron and leaving out again.

  Byron picked up a fork. With Mrs. Peasebody's usual inefficiencies, Lady Victoria's food would be tepid at best by the time it reached her, and he was not above feeling a small surge of satisfaction on that account. He realized belatedly that he probably should have at least informed her of his plans for her attire, but he shrugged off the tug of guilt. She'd signed the contract. She'd known what she was getting herself into. A week in his company, a week in his power—if it was dissatisfactory, there was nothing keeping her at Raeburn Court.

  With that thought, he took a generous bite of beef pie and settled back in his chair. He'd see Lady Victoria again soon enough.

  Byron rapped perfunctorily at the door to the Unicorn Room, then opened it without waiting for an answer.

  Lady Victoria was alone, perched on the edge of an enormous Elizabethan chest with a tray balanced awkwardly on her knees. The lavender silk he'd selected for her morning dress was perfectly suited to her, he saw immediately; it brought out a golden cast to her hair and gave her pale eyes a clear depth that was muted by black. Her hair—that was another change. He was surprised and pleased to see fashionable curls in an arch around her face and a neat whorl at the back of her head. But when she looked squarely at him, he suffered a less pleasant revelation.

  Her cheeks and lips were heavily rouged, her eyelashes and brows darkened in almost comic relief against her fair skin.

  "Your grace," she oozed sweetly, her usually sensual voice transformed into something high and rasping. "I hardly expected you so soon."

  He crossed to the window and pulled the heavy drapes closed before turning to glare at her, folding his arms across his chest. "Of course not, your ladyship," he said in a voice he knew stated the exact opposite.

  "Why, I was hoping to come down and join you for dinner, but I fear Annie hadn't finished dressing me." She fluttered her hands at her hair. "You know how important it is for a lady to look her best."

  "Wash it off," he said flatly.

  Her eyes widened in false innocence. "Your grace?"

  "Wash it off," he repeated. "Now. Or I'll do it for you."

  She tittered. "Why, your grace, I thought you'd appreciate my efforts. After all, it was you who sent down to Leeds for underthings more suited to a wharf-side doxy than a respectable lady." Though a saccharine smile remained pasted to her face, her last words were acid-laced.

  Byron frowned, foreboding growing within him. "Whatever do you mean?"

  Her eyes narrowed and the smile fell off her face. "This," she snapped, pulling up a corner of her skirt where her stocking peeked above her sturdy boot.

  Red didn't do the color justice. Scarlet, flaming, even crimson—all of those be
tter described it. Byron looked up to her face again, a white mask of fury under the ridiculous paint, then at the offending ankle.

  "My dearest Lady Victoria," he said firmly, determined not to laugh, "I can assure you that I sent no specifics to the corsetiere. I merely made a list of items and asked that they be suitably attractive." His voice wobbled on the last word, but he plunged bravely on. "The corsetiere and my late great-uncle evidently had very different… tastes in corsetry than you—or I, for that matter."

  "You mean to say this"—her wave encompassed the hidden parts of her underpinnings as well as the terrible stockings—"was accidental?"

  "Yes," Byron said fervently. She still looked at him skeptically. "If you disbelieve me yet, please take into consideration your lovely morning dress. For your dresses, I left much more detailed instructions." Her expression began to soften. Byron leaned back against the wall and quirked an eyebrow at her. "If you would like, I shall allow you to dye my drawers any color you please in retribution."

  That did it. Incredulity warred with amusement on her face, and finally she burst out laughing. The sound thrilled up his spine—beautiful, musical sound, every bit as luscious as he had imagined it to be. He raised his other eyebrow, surprised at the freeness of it coming from this restrained woman. Images of the night before flashed across his mind. Not that restrained, he corrected himself.

  "Bring me the facecloth," Lady Victoria said when she could speak again.

  Wordlessly, he wet it in the room's washbasin and handed it to her. She scrubbed the paint from her face, her expression carefully bland. With a hard look, she gave the cloth back to him.

  "If you try another trick like replacing my wardrobe, your grace, whatever the outcome or intentions, I shall dye your entire wardrobe colors you never imagined existed."

  "I consider myself duly warned," Byron said gravely.

  "Good," she replied, then smiled, her face lighting brilliantly. Her pointed chin and sharp features gave her a strangely impish appeal, and Byron found himself watching the transformation with fascination.