Moonspun Magic (24 page)

The problem was, Victoria decided, that he mixed perfect truth with nonsense. It was nearly beyond her to combat him.

Rafael's mind skipped ahead when she remained silent. He had so damned much to do. And frankly, he realized that what he would truly like was at least a month alone with his bride. His ardor seemed inexhaustible to him, and he would enjoy a problem-free period to indulge himself and her.

“Rafael?”

“Yes?”

“I want to go back to the cottage now.”

“I don't make a comfortable enough chair for you? Aren't the chair arms warm and strong and the seat soft and giving?”

She heard the laughter in his voice and realized this was one of those times when she wanted to hit him. She wanted to jump off his thighs, but she was suddenly afraid that her leg would lead her to more humiliation. He had to assist her.

“Could you help me, please?”

That was an odd request, but he quickly agreed. He stood, holding her close, and eased her to her feet. “Did you hurt yourself when you stumbled?”

She shook her head, her eyes on a level with his throat.

“I'd like to go back now, please.”

It wasn't, however, until much later that evening that Victoria knew the meaning of true humiliation.

Are you sick or are you sullen?

—S
AMUEL
J
OHNSON

“E
xcuse me,” Victoria said, striving for a calm she was decades away from feeling. She quickly shoved back her chair before Rafael could respond, and rose.

“Why? What the devil is wrong with you, Victoria?”

“Nothing. I'll be back shortly. Please continue with your dinner.” And she was gone.

Rafael frowned into his crystal glass of deep red wine, wondering what was wrong. She didn't seem precisely ill, yet since she'd come down for dinner she'd been quiet and withdrawn. It bothered him no end.

He took another bite of perfectly baked ham and chewed thoughtfully.

Victoria paused in the middle of her bedchamber and wrapped her arms around herself. Her belly was cramping and she had nothing to relieve the discomfort. She searched yet again for some laudanum. At least she could dose herself with that and sleep away the cramps. It was unusual for her to feel any discomfort at all with her monthly flow. It was marriage that had done it to her, she thought, grimacing at a particularly vicious cramp. She was unsuccessful in
her search. She drew a deep breath and walked back downstairs.

She paused in the open doorway until her husband looked up at her. “I'm tired,” she said, as if she were a reciting schoolgirl, “and I wish to retire now. I don't feel really well, Rafael, so I would appreciate your not coming—” Her voice fell like a flat stone from a cliff.

He looked at her a moment, his expression bland. He said in his sea captain's voice, and his father's, had he but known it, “What's wrong?” In the past, it was that tone that had always exacted instant obedience.

Victoria nearly blurted out the truth in that instant, but managed in the nick of time to keep her tongue still in her mouth. She stood there looking at him, her mouth shut.

“Victoria, I asked you a question,” he said now, his voice filled with virtuous determination. “You will answer me, if you please, now.”

“It's nothing at all of any importance. I simply need to sleep. I'll be fine in the morning.” That was nothing but the truth. She fidgeted a moment with the narrow bracelet on her wrist. “Do you have any laudanum, Rafael?”

That brought him out of his chair. He strode across the dining room and was appalled when she flinched backward. He stopped cold in his tracks.

“Why do you want laudanum? What the devil is wrong?”

She quickly slithered past him out the dining-room door. “It's not important. Good night.”

“If you take one more step, I'll bare your bottom and thrash you.”

All the wretched tears, she thought inconsequentially at that moment. It was her monthly flow that was making her so abysmally emotional and a stupid
watering pot. She hated it even as she felt the tears now, brimming in her eyes. “You can't do that,” she said, thrusting up her chin. He took a step toward her. “You can't. You have all my money, why can't you be satisfied? Why must you torment me?”

“Torment? I assumed that my behavior was motivated by caring and concern for your welfare. But I see that you don't wish that. Very well. You are ill? Well, then, go away and hide and bear it, please, in silence. I don't wish to be bothered. By the way, I don't have any laudanum.” With that, he turned on his heel and strode back into the dining room.

Victoria picked up her skirts and ran back to her bedchamber.

It was just past ten o'clock that night and Rafael was pacing the small library downstairs. He wasn't drunk, not even close. He'd consumed only a third of a bottle of brandy. Smuggled French brandy, of course. Excellent stuff. He paused in his perambulations and looked upward. What if she was truly ill? Bosh, he thought, shaking his head, she was too thick-headed and too stubborn to be sick. She had run, quite literally. She had run away from him, hadn't she? Still, it nagged at the edges of his mind, goading him until he couldn't bear himself anymore.

He changed from his clothes into his dressing gown, snuffed the candles in his bedchamber, and very quietly entered her bedchamber through the adjoining door. She hadn't drawn the draperies across the windows—she'd showed some sense—and he could dimly see her outline in the center of her bed. His intention, he told himself yet again, was merely to see that she was all right.

He stood over her, so still that he could have been an errant shadow. It didn't take him long to realize that she was fully awake. He said softly, still not moving, “Victoria, where do you hurt?”

“Please go away, Rafael,” she said, moving a bit further away from him on the bed. Slowly she eased her arms away from her belly, praying that he wouldn't notice.

It was a prayer in vain. “Your stomach? Your stomach hurts? Something you ate?” Then he touched her very gently, his fingers curling around her upper arm.

“No. Unlike you, I am different, and things happen to me that never happen to you.”

“Well, that's true,” he said slowly, taking apart her words in his mind and reshaping them to give them her true meaning. It wasn't long in coming.

“Ah,” he said.

She stiffened. Oh, well, it couldn't be helped. She gritted her teeth, hoping against hope that just this once he would keep still.

He didn't. Instead, she felt him lift the covers and slip in beside her. His big warm body was quite naked.

“No, I can't.”

“Hush, Victoria. I'm a very weary, concerned husband. Let me hold you. You'll feel better in the morning—you're right about that.”

And that was that.

She didn't say a word when he pulled her back against his chest, fitting her bottom against his belly, nor did she do anything but suck in her breath when his large hand lay lightly over her belly. The warmth was marvelous, and she sighed deeply.

Rafael listened to her even breathing in sleep and smiled to himself. He very softly kissed her ear and tried to make himself more comfortable. Poor little tyke. Then he realized that his ardor had been effectively doused for several womanly days.

“The sacrifices I make for you,” he said, more to
himself than his now-sleeping wife. He gently kneaded her belly until he himself fell asleep.

 

They left the following day just after luncheon, as Rafael had planned, after Mrs. Ripple's last attempt at a luncheon.

“How, I wonder,” Rafael said pensively, “can a body ruin perfectly good ham? Ham, I am compelled to add, that you and I had already baked to perfection?”

“Perhaps, it was the overabundance of some herb.”

“You're right. It was dill, I believe. Gallons of it. Perhaps I should have made her one of my special bread men, changed the direction of her culinary thinking—it could have only improved the outcome, I think.”

“Ah, here's Tom,” said Victoria, laughter in her voice.

Rafael heard it, and gave her a quick look. He studied her face for signs of any lingering discomfort, but found none. Her color was healthy, her eyes bright. He lightly touched his fingertips to her cheek. “You are feeling just the thing again?”

“Yes, certainly,” she said as she quickly climbed up into the carriage, not waiting for either Tom Merrifield or Rafael to assist her.

Rafael stuck his head in the open window. “Feel free to call a halt whenever you wish to. All right?”

“Yes,” she said. “Oh, Rafael, does Damien know that we are arriving in two days at Drago Hall?”

Rafael studied his York tan gloves for a moment, then said, “Of course. I wrote to him. I'm certain he'll welcome us as politely as a vicar.”

“I just bet he will,” she retorted. “As for Elaine, she will doubtless give a ball in our honor.”

“Not a bad idea,” Rafael said thoughtfully. Indeed it wasn't. He needed to reacquaint himself with all
the hot-blooded young gentry who abounded in the area. He needed to discover the identity of the Ram. A ball seemed the perfect start. “I'll speak to Damien about it very soon.”

She shook her head at him. “I was jesting, but I see that you aren't.” She wondered what he was up to. Something, of that she was certain. He had a purpose for returning to Drago Hall, one that involved more than a simple pilgrimage to his ancestral home. How would she pry it out of him? She was fast learning that when he wasn't busy charming her and others, he could be as closemouthed as a clam.

“We will leave Tom Merrifield at Axmouth. Do you remember my telling you about Flash Savory?”

“Yes, the fastest pickpocket in all of London.”

“He's the one. He will meet us at Axmouth, at the Sir Francis Drake Inn. We will keep Mr. Mouls's carriage and horses until we reach Drago Hall.”

“Flash will stay with us at Drago Hall?”

“Yes. I believe he will be of value to me.”

He was up to something, Victoria thought again as she watched him mount his stallion. Why else would he have this young man, Flash, at Drago Hall?

Flash was a young man of many talents, Rafael was thinking as he rode easily, his body swaying in harmony with Gadfly's canter, his thoughts roving outward to plans of attack once they reached Drago Hall. He would probably simply have to become one of them, he decided. Become a member of their ridiculous Hellfire Club. It seemed to him at the moment to be the only way.

And keep the peace, somehow, at Drago Hall. And protect Victoria.

They reached Drago Hall early Sunday afternoon. Rafael hadn't intended to feel anything at the sight of his boyhood home, but he did, deep stirring
feelings that made him want to cry with the loss of it. Nothing had changed, he thought, gazing about him.

The main hall was early Elizabethan, built by the first Baron Drago, Arkley Carstairs, in 1564 or thereabouts. Successive barons had added three wings to the central hall. It could have looked a rambling monstrosity, but Drago Hall didn't. It did go on, but in a compact,
reasonable
way, at least that was how Rafael's father had described it. Thank God, Rafael thought as he looked wistfully at a grooved and nicked maple tree he had carved on as a boy, the barons had all used the same soft red stone quarried in Stenalees.

Rafael's father had been content to widen the portico and the drive that curved in front of the Hall. He'd spared the oak and maple trees—indeed, Rafael recalled his being quite adamant about that, and the resulting drive wasn't at all the same width from beginning to end. It curved in here and there to protect a tree, and the effect was odd but charming.

Rafael's mother had believed Drago Hall to be too stark, too forbidding, and had planted every flower known to the southern coast of Cornwall. It had been a successful endeavor. Color abounded, softening the lines of the Hall, casting a welcoming aura over its rather severe facade.

“This is what I call a rich cove's dish,” said Flash, gazing about him.

Rafael smiled. “We should be comfortable enough for the short time we'll be here.”

Flash just looked at him, wondering what the captain was up to this time. He supposed he'd be told soon enough. The captain did things his way and there was no use prying at him until he was ready. Now, the captain taking a bride, that was something else. Flash looked over his shoulder for just a moment, and sure enough, there was Mrs. Carstairs
leaning out the window, taking everything in. Pretty girl, and saucy, giving the captain his gravy when it suited her. When he'd first met her the day before in Axmouth, he wondered if she thought he'd steal the silverware at Drago Hall, her greeting was so wary. Then Captain Carstairs had said, a wicked gleam in his eyes, “Now, Victoria, Flash here has promised me that he won't knobble a thing. Drago Hall is quite safe, I promise you.”

She was embarrassed to have her thought so baldly set on the table, Flash thought, but she'd quickly recovered and sauced the captain up quick as any general. “And what will he lift? Perhaps my valise?”

“He means ‘steal,' ma'am,” Flash said.

“I know what he means, Flash. It's just that he's a wicked tease. I'm glad to know you.” She thrust out her hand and he took it. “I look to you for information about him. I haven't known him all that long and I begin to believe there is a very perverse streak running the length of him.”