Moonspun Magic (17 page)

“Believe it,” he said. “You are as poor as you were when you punished Damien by running from him. How much is it you still have? Fifteen pounds? I wager that won't get you all that far.”

“I don't believe you,” she repeated. No, she wouldn't believe him, she couldn't. It couldn't be possible.

“I suppose,” he said brutally, “that you could sell your body. You are young enough and beautiful enough to find yourself a generous protector. Unless, of course, you're pregnant. Are you with child, Victoria?”

Her fingers closed around a particularly ornate Chinese vase sitting in isolated splendor on a table. She saw red, whirled around, and hurled it at him.

It is not enough to aim, you must hit.

—I
TALIAN PROVERB

R
afael ducked quickly enough to save his head, but not quickly enough to spare his upper arm. The vase struck hard and bounced off, shattering against the wooden floor.

He unconsciously flexed his arm, saying nothing. Victoria was standing rigid as a stone, her eyes on the floor, on the shards of vase.

He heard himself say very calmly, “You have an excellent arm and a good aim.”

“I wish I had a pistol.”

“If you did, and you had the gall to aim it at me, I would thrash you senseless.”

“A man's threat,” she said harshly, “just as a man uses his strength to ravish an unwilling woman. You are all despicable. I had believed you different, more fool I. Good-bye, Captain Carstairs. You needn't see me off in the morning.” She gave him a mocking little salute and turned the door handle.

“Don't do it, Victoria.”

She simply shook her head, not looking back at him. Then, abruptly, he was behind her, his hand pressed against the door above her head. She stood perfectly still, knowing that sooner or later he would tire of this game of his and allow her to leave.

“I don't understand you, Victoria,” he said, and she heard the bafflement in his voice. “My God, I didn't believe anything Damien had spewed out, until . . .”

She said nothing. It should have occurred to her sooner, much sooner what Damien had done. After all, his slander had worked well with David Esterbridge. Why not employ the same device with his brother?

“You yourself told me. You said you had a confession, something you should have told me before we married. You don't intend to deny that now, do you?”

“No, I don't deny it,” she said dully, still facing the door. “I did have something to tell you. But it isn't important now.”

He looked down at the top of her head, frowning ferociously.

“What would you possibly have to confess to me if not the fact that you weren't a virgin? If you will recall, I was nearly to the point of initiating you into lovemaking. Initiating. God, that's a jest on me, is it not?”

“So that is what you were talking about,” she said, more to herself than to him. “I did wonder. I didn't understand.”

“Stop your infernal playacting.”

“I wish to go to my room now. I must pack my things.”

“I told you, you won't get very far with a paltry fifteen pounds.”

“It isn't your concern. I stole twenty pounds and you managed to steal fifty thousand. You have made yourself quite a bargain, Captain. Surely you should be content with your gain.” She shook her head and laughed. “I was the fool, an utter fool to believe you different from your brother.”

Something wasn't right here, and Rafael frowned, again wallowing in confusion. He didn't move his hand from the door. “I'm not like my brother,” he said finally.

“Are you not? He's a ruthless, lying bastard. You chose to believe him rather than believe me, your wife. That tells me quite enough about your character, or lack of it.”

“Very well, then. If you weren't going to confess your lack of virginity to me, what was your confession? What could you possibly confess that would have aught to do with anything, particularly in the midst of our lovemaking?”

“Be content, Captain. You are now a much richer man than you were but two days ago.”

He felt primed for violence, his frustration was so great. He grabbed her shoulders and turned her savagely around to face him. “What was your confession?” He ground out the words, shaking her shoulders.

“Go to the devil,” she said very precisely and very calmly.

He frowned down at her. He said slowly, thoughtfully, “I can prove what your confession was or was not. I can prove to myself that you are a virgin. Or that you are not.”

“Don't touch me, Rafael.”

“I am touching you. You are my wife. I can do just as I wish to you.”

He lowered his head and tried to kiss her, but she jerked away and his mouth landed in her hair. He grasped the knot of hair at her nape and held her. He kissed her hard, trying to force her mouth open.

She began to fight him, hitting her fists against his chest. When his tongue thrust into her mouth, she bit him. He lifted his head, anger and pain coursing through him. She was pale, taut, her eyes dilated.

“So, you are no different from your brother. You would force an unwilling woman. You're an animal.”

She swiped her hand across her mouth to remove the feel of him, the taste of him, and he saw the disgust in her eyes.

Her action enraged him. “You little hypocrite. You were so wild for me last night, I doubt you will play the unwilling maiden for long. You felt only my fingers on you last night, not my mouth, not that you needed that, you were already so wet and hot and—”

She lost control. She drove her knee into his groin.

He gasped, stared at her, knowing the pain he felt now would soon be unbearable. “I wish you hadn't done that,” he said before he groaned and fell to his knees, his hands clutching at his belly.

Victoria didn't wait another instant. She was through the adjoining door, slamming it behind her. There was a key in the lock and she quickly turned it. Slowly she stepped back. She was trembling. She didn't know how long she had stood in the middle of her bedchamber, not moving, when she heard him striding toward the outer door of his bedchamber. Her eyes flew to the door that gave onto the corridor, and she ran quickly to it. She turned the key just as she heard his footsteps stop on the other side.

Rafael's fist was raised to pound on the door. Slowly, as reason returned, he lowered his arm. He said very quietly, “Open the door, Victoria.”

“No,” she whispered. Then, louder, “No.” In that instant she pictured herself lying terrified in her bed, Damien calling to her from behind her bedchamber door. It was too much.

“I will kick the door in if you don't open it this second.”

Very quietly Victoria fled across her bedchamber to the adjoining door. She unlocked it and slipped
into his bedchamber, locking the door on his side. Her heart was pounding, but she was smiling grimly.

Her sense of triumph disappeared but moments later. Dumbly she watched the hall door open, watched him stride confidently into the room. He closed it softly behind him. “I thought you just might try something like that. No more escape for you, Victoria. Don't even try it. Another thing, dear wife. You try to unman me again, and I will tie you down and show you not a whit of consideration. Do you understand me?”

She had lost. She felt an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Futile, she thought. Everything I try is futile. She looked at his angry set face from across his bedchamber. Slowly she sank to her knees. She crouched against the wall, her head buried against her thighs. She didn't cry; the pain was too great, her sense of loss too overpowering.

Why didn't she simply tell him about her leg? But she knew the answer. He had believed his brother's filth. She didn't owe him an explanation. He didn't deserve it. He deserved nothing. She didn't even hear him walk to her, she was so lost in her own misery.

Rafael stood over her, his hands on his hips, his legs spread. She deserved a beating, he thought, but the sight of her huddled on the floor against the door unnerved him. Slowly he dropped to his knees beside her.

“What was your confession?”

She felt his hand on her upper arm and flinched away. But he didn't release her. “What was your confession?” he repeated. “You will tell me—something—or you will spend the night here on the damned floor. I mean it, Victoria.”

To his surprise and chagrin, she shook her head, not saying a word.

“So, you can't even think of a convincing lie.”

Suddenly she raised her head from her folded arms and said, “Are you a virgin, Rafael?”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Are you?”

“Don't be ridiculous, Victoria, I'm a man.”

“And a man always wins, does he not?”

“I didn't,” he said, bitterness filling his voice. “Not this time, not with you.”

She looked him straight in the eye. “Are you going to rape me?”

He sighed. “No, I'm not like that.”

“I don't want to spend the night on the floor. May I go now to my room?”

“Not until you tell me this confession of yours.”

She gave a brittle laugh. “Very well, I will tell you, all of it. I am really known as the trollop of St. Austell. Damien was only one lover in a very long line of men. There were so many, it's difficult for me to remember . . . I began quite young, you know, perhaps as young as you, a man. I was, ah, not more than fourteen when this very virile stableboy took me into the loft. I shall never forget how he kissed me, how—”

“Stop it.”

Rafael jumped to his feet. “Get out,” he said finally, very softly. “Get out of my sight.”

I have won, at last, she thought as she forced herself to rise. Her leg, cramped from the position, knotted, and she had to grasp the door handle to keep from falling.

Rafael didn't notice. He'd turned away from her.

She gave him a last bitter look and slipped into her room. She didn't lock the door. There was now no need.

Very early the following morning, Victoria quietly opened her bedchamber door, looked up and down
the corridor, and slowly pulled her valise out of her room. It wasn't much heavier, she thought with a sad smile, than it had been when Rafael saved her from the smugglers. How very long ago that seemed. A lifetime, at least a lifetime of feeling. As quietly as she could, she crept down the corridor to the staircase. She paused a moment, staring down into the gloomy entranceway. Of course Mrs. Ripple wasn't up and about yet. She prayed Tom slept in the house and not in the stable.

Quietly, slowly, she made her way to the oak front door, unlocked it, and slipped through into the chill, foggy early morning. She pulled her cloak more closely about her and half-dragged her valise toward the small stable set at a right angle to the cottage.

She had every intention of taking his stallion, Gadfly.

Her chin went up. She also intended to go to London, to Mr. Westover. Surely Rafael had lied about her inheritance. Surely it could not simply all be his, just because of a few words spoken by Bishop Burghley. No, nothing could be that unjust. She'd had the long night to refine her plan. She wasn't stupid and knew well enough that her leg could bear only three hours of riding a day. It would take her at least four days, then, to return to London. And that, she thought now, a bit uncertain, would most certainly eat up her fifteen pounds.

She slipped into the warm, dark stable. She smelled leather, linseed oil, hay, and horse. Comforting smells. She found Rafael's stallion, and spoke softly to him, wishing now she'd had the nerve to fetch some food from Mrs. Ripple's kitchen. As she slipped a bridle over the stallion's head, her wedding ring sparkled in the dim light. The beautiful sapphire, circled with small perfectly cut diamonds . . .
Slowly she smiled. She had more than fifteen pounds. She would hock the ring.

She eyed the saddle, then squared her shoulders and hefted it onto the stallion's broad back. He snorted, dancing a bit to the side of his stall.

“Hush,” she said. “Please, don't move, that's right. Hold still now, Gadfly. Good boy.”

She tightened the girth, then slowly led the stallion from the stall. She managed to lift the valise to the saddle and slip the leather handles over the saddle pommel.

“Hold still now, boy. We'll be gone in just a moment.

“I doubt that, Victoria.”

Victoria whipped around to see Rafael standing in the doorway of the stable, his arms crossed over his chest. He was wearing only a pair of breeches and a white shirt. His feet were bare.

For a moment she could think of nothing to say. She'd been so quiet. She laid her cheek against the saddle, willing him to magically disappear, willing him to be a nightmare.