Moonspun Magic (27 page)

“Unfortunately I'm constrained to wait to prove to you that your decision to wed me is the wisest one you will ever make.”

“They are really quite good together,” Victoria said, ignoring him. Bitterness crept into her voice. “If Damien would but realize it.”

“I don't care, but he will realize soon enough that he can't have you.”

Victoria believed him. “He must realize that he will have to leave me alone now. Besides,” she added, her voice hardening, “I'm no longer a young virgin to be victimized. Surely he can't still be interested.”

“I would be,” Rafael said, his voice as serious as she'd ever heard. “What the devil does virginity have to do with anything? Actually, discovering you were a virgin was frightening. I was concerned about hurting you. No, very little fun at all.”

“Bosh. I don't believe you. Had I not been a virgin,
you would have berated me until I was deaf, then sent me to a moldering estate in Northumberland.”

“Along with some chicken blood,” he said.

“It's not amusing, Rafael.”

“All right, a bit of what you said does have a small grain of truth, but the theory is valid, I swear. Now, truly, Victoria, all I have to do is look at you and I want you. It's amazing, really. I've never felt anything like it in all my blighted years.”

Victoria didn't believe him. She turned her attention back to Damien and Elaine.

 

The Ram was pleased. He sat a bit apart from his acolytes, a term he dared not use in front of the eight men. They were all sitting near to the fireplace, snifters of brandy warming between their hands, and their male bodies were well sated. All of them thought they were so very wicked, carrying on in the black of night, the Ram thought, garbed in their black capes and black hoods. But not one of them had asked why the girl wasn't wide awake during her
woman's offering,
as the Ram had named this ritual.

No, they'd simply taken their turns, plowed her thoroughly, and now perhaps they would consent to whatever he, the Ram, wished them to do. His surprise had pleased them, of that there could be no doubt. It was a pity, though, that the girl couldn't have been procured in the same very proper way as the others. It could prove to be a bother. Possibly.

But who would believe a fourteen-year-old girl? Who would pay any attention to a girl's mother who had no husband and no sons?

The Ram dismissed the group. Their next meeting would be All Hallows' night. Johnny laughed and jested about flying a broom to the hunting lodge. Vincent wondered if he should bring a caldron and three witches. Let them laugh, the Ram thought. It
was a ritual he was teaching them, and they would attend him. Yes, they would. They went with wide yawns, and he could imagine their disinterest in the girl who lay sprawled spread-eagled on the oak table.

Of course he had taught them that she was a vessel, nothing more. An unconscious vessel. He would have preferred that she be awake during her initiation, but what was done was done. He didn't wish to, but he bathed the blood and seed from her and dressed her again.

It was close to an hour later that the Ram reached the girl's small house in St. Austell. The house was filled with light and there were men milling about. He cursed to himself, thought a moment, then left the girl in a narrow ditch some fifty yards away.

He rode home slowly, feeling anticipation for the morrow.

 

The following morning at ten o'clock, Victoria opened the door to the nursery.

“Torie! Torie!”

Damaris jumped to her feet and scurried toward Victoria. Victoria quickly leaned down and hugged her tightly.

“Torie, I've missed you . . . where did you go? Nanny said you wouldn't come back and then she huffed and said you married the master's twin, of all the strange things, and—”

“I'm back, Damie. That's all that matters.”

Suddenly the child stiffened and whispered, “Papa.”

Rafael smiled at the little girl. “Hello, Damaris.”

“You're not my papa. Who are you?'

“She is direct, if nothing else,” Victoria said, ruffling Damaris' silky black hair, her father's hair, Rafael's hair. And his face. “How do you know he's not
your father, Damie? Doesn't he look just like your father?”

“No.”

“Have I just been mortally insulted?” Rafael didn't wait for an answer to his rhetorical question. He dropped to his knees in front of the little girl. “I'm your Uncle Rafael. Can you say my name?”

“It's a funny name. Mine isn't.”

“Oh, I don't know. Damaris is rather unusual, just like Rafael.”

“Rafull,” Damie said. “It's easy. Papa never comes here.”

Rafael looked up at Victoria, a brow arched in question. When she merely shook her head, he asked Damaris, “Do you mind if I visit you here?”

“No, if Nanny doesn't mind, but mind you, she has to be in a good temper.”

“This, Rafael, is Nanny Black,” Victoria said, smiling toward the dour old woman. “Nanny, my husband, Captain Rafael Carstairs. Nanny came with Elaine upon her marriage to your brother.”

“Bark off the same tree,” said Nanny Black with a disapproving eye as the young man rose to his feet and offered her his hand. She took it.

“Not according to Damaris,” said Rafael. “She knew immediately I wasn't her father.”

“Only because the baron never visits the nursery.”

Victoria said to Damaris, who was tugging on her skirt for attention, “Should you like to go riding with your Uncle Rafael and me?”

The little girl shouted with glee. “Nanny. I want to go. I will go.”

“Little terror,” said Nanny Black fondly.

“Have you a proper mount, Victoria?”

“Toddy's well enough. Since I carry Damaris in front of me, I wouldn't want to ride that ill- humored brute of yours, Rafael.”

“Gadfly isn't ill-humored, he's simply spirited, like my bride. He knows I'm his master and he obeys me, just as—”

“I don't think Damaris will need a coat, Nanny,” Victoria said quickly, not paying any heed to her husband.

“Should you like me to be your servant until we get downstairs?” With his words, Rafael swung the little girl up on his shoulders. He settled her thin legs on either side of his face and grinned at his wife. “Ready?”

“Damaris,” Victoria said in a clear, very sweet voice, “be certain to hold on tight—to your uncle's hair.”

Rafael howled, more for Damaris's benefit than from scalp pain.

“Little terror,” said Nanny Black.

The three of them were met by Elaine in the entryway downstairs. “Where are you taking her?”

“Riding,” said Victoria.

“Mama,” said Damaris, and tugged on Rafael's hair, “this isn't Papa, it's Uncle Rafill.”

Elaine, Victoria noted, looked a bit pale this morning, and there were shadows beneath her eyes. She said, quickly, “Are you feeling all right?”

“No,” said Elaine. “I'm increasing, you know, Victoria.”

“Yes, I'm sorry. It's just that you look so beautiful, I tend to forget.”

Elaine relaxed visibly. “Do take good care of my daughter, Rafael.”

Rafael winced at a particularly enthusiastic tug on his hair. “If she doesn't do me in first.”

“Little terror,” said Victoria in her best imitation of Nanny Black, and Damaris went into gales of laughter.

“She does know how to control herself, does she not?” Rafael suddenly looked a bit worried.

Victoria said with a perfectly straight face, “For the most part. Only if she gets excited will she forget—”

Elaine interrupted, “Of course she is perfectly fine, Rafael. Really, Victoria, you shouldn't tease him so.”

“He deserves it,” said Victoria. “We're going to Fletcher's Pond, Elaine, and will have lunch there. I'll have Damaris back in time for her nap.”

It was Flash who lifted Damaris up to Victoria. “Your name is odd, like Uncle Rafull's,” Damaris told him from her perch in front of Victoria.

“Rifall, hmmm,” said Flash, giving his captain a drawing smile. “Well, then, little miss, you shall call me Mr. Savory. Doesn't that add a certain dignity? I'm a proper dignified person, you know.”

“You're funny,” said Damaris. “I'm ready, Uncle Refill.”

“Yes, ma'am. We will see you later, Mr. Savory.”

Victoria let Rafael go where he wished to. He drew his stallion to a halt every few minutes to view a prospect that he remembered from bygone years. At one point he turned to Victoria and said, “I believe Squire Esterbridge lives just over there. Should you like to visit him and his sterling specimen of a son? Old David, the bully-coward and spineless sod?”

She shook her head, frowning at him. What an odd thing to call David. He'd certainly been gullible, but he'd always been nice enough to her before that long-ago afternoon at Fletcher's Pond.

They rode finally into St. Austell.

“Ah, nothing has changed, nothing at all,” Rafael said, drawing his stallion in beside Toddy. “What's happening? Look at that crowd, Victoria.”

Victoria click-clicked Toddy forward and they drew nearer to the crowd congregated just at the edge of the town.

“Stay here,” Rafael said, and Victoria immediately urged Toddy forward, saying over her shoulder, “I know these people. I'll find out what's going on.”

Rafael frowned after her, but knew she was right. Actually, when one of the people in the crowd—Mr. Josiah Frogwell—an ancient relic who owned a local inn, spotted Rafael, he immediately said something to the man next to him.

Rafael heard the whispers and the calls: “Baron Drago” . . . “It's the baron.”

“Mr. Frogwell,” Rafael called out in a loud voice, “I'm not the baron. I'm Rafael Carstairs, his twin.”

The man's face immediately broke into a smile and Rafael wondered at it. Had his twin alienated the people of St. Austell? How? he wondered. What the devil had he done?

“Welcome home, Master Rafael.”

“The young master's home.”

Rafael grinned, then spotted young Ralph Bicton, a childhood playmate and the son of the local butcher. He was wearing a bloodied long apron and Rafael guessed he was now in his father's place.

“Is it really you, Rafael?” Ralph called, striding forward, wiping his hands, thankfully, as he did so.

Their greeting was boisterous until Ralph seemed to recall the difference in their stations. He withdrew a bit, allowing others to come forward. Victoria smiled and spoke, and responded easily even when confronted by Widow Meneburle, a garrulous sausage-curled matron of uncertain years and equally uncertain temper.

Finally, when Victoria could get in a word, she asked, “Why are you all gathered here, Mrs. Meneburle? Is something wrong?”

Mrs. Meneburle, her sausage curls bouncing beside her plump cheeks, stepped close to Toddy and said in a stage whisper that Rafael had no difficulty at all in overhearing, “It's those ruffians, Miss Victoria . . .
rather, Mrs. Carstairs”—this was said with an arch look—“aye those ne'er-do-wells have ravished poor little Joan Newdowns. Left her in a ditch. Awful, perfectly awful, and the girl can't tell who they were. They
drugged
her.” Mrs. Meneburle was excessively pleased at Victoria's gasp of horror, and added, coming even closer, “Do you know there were horrible bruises on the girl's wrists and ankles? They'd tied her down and treated her like a trollop. Poor, poor child.”

“But why is everyone standing here?”

Mr. Meledor, St. Austell's mayor, a florid, balding man who loved nothing more than to hear himself pontificate, said in his rich baritone, “I'm trying to gather information, Mrs. Rafael. We shall discover the identity of these dreadful men.”

“You attribute this rape to the group calling themselves the Hellfire club?” Rafael asked quietly.

“Aye, Master Rafael, we do. They ravish young girls—how many, we have no idea, for you see, they pay the girls' fathers to do it. Legal, I suppose, but revolting just the same. But then there was the young lady—a real mistake there—she wasn't just a simple maid but a peer's daughter, and that made everyone mad as hornets, and now poor little Joan Newdowns. The little maid really didn't understand, but her ma did and called for Dr. Ludcott. They'd washed her clean, as one might say, but Dr. Ludcott said she weren't a virgin anymore and there were still signs of blood and men's seed. It's got to stop, Master Rafael, yes, sir, it will stop.”

“Don't forget those bruises,” Mrs. Meneburle said, her eyes glittering.

“Yes,” said Rafael, “it must stop.”

Damaris began to fidget and Victoria quickly said, “Shall we be off now, Rafael? It's time for luncheon,
and Fletcher's Pond is a good twenty-minute ride from here.”