A man’s voice spoke from behind her. “An illuminating display, Miss Cardiff.”
She whirled to face the witness so well concealed by the darkest shadows at the edge of the house.
She couldn’t see him, but she knew who he was. She would recognize that voice, the way he spoke her name, anywhere. “Mr. Lawrence. I didn’t realize you were there.” If she had, she would have walked to a place where she could enjoy her rage in private.
“That had occurred to me.” His voice sounded vilely amused. “Miss Cardiff, if you’re going to be a governess, you’re going to have to learn to control that temper.”
How did he know she intended to be a governess?
Someone had been talking about her.
Or he’d asked.
Either way, she was annoyed. “I assure you, Mr. Lawrence, I keep my temper under very firm control.” Usually. When I know I’m being observed.
“Really?” His steps were silent, but his voice was closer. “I would have sworn I just observed a violent flare-up.”
He was a swine. But what did she expect? She knew what he was. The bastard son of the Viscount Grimsborough, shoved down society’s throat: a horseman, a gambler, a philanderer from whom no woman was safe.
“What are you doing out here?” Did he have a woman with him in the shadows? Was he seducing someone and she interrupted?
“What was I doing out here?” His voice grew hard, moody. “Much the same as you, Miss Cardiff, much the same as you.”
He was out here to cool his temper? What would make him angry? When she’d met him that afternoon, he’d been irritatingly entertained by her and by his sisters.
“Your display made me long for a fan to break,” he said. “That looked satisfying.”
He was right. It was satisfying, although now she was sorry she’d destroyed the pretty, frivolous thing that had cost her so much of her meager allowance, the one piece of her costume that was truly hers.
He moved to stand beside her at the rail, and she could see him now, a dark shadow clad in black with a touch of white at his cravat, a face barely visible in the darkness, and eyes that observed her with nerve-racking intent.
She was tall.
He was taller.
She took a deep breath.
He smelled good, clean, like cut grass and fresh air.
Out here, alone, in the dark, he behaved like a gentleman.
But would a gentleman make her bunch her fists in the silk of her skirt, aware of the rasp of thin, cool thread against the delicate skin of her fingers? Would a gentleman make the sounds of music and conversation fade from her consciousness? Would a gentleman make the memory of Lord Meredith diminish to insignificance?
She thought not. “I should go back in.”
“To be further accosted by some doddering old fool?”
So much for her hope that he hadn’t heard her tirade.
Gathering her skirts, she said, “I shall take care to avoid doddering old fools.”
“And run away now to avoid me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she snapped. Hm. Perhaps her control was not so firm as she had hoped. “I am not avoiding you, sir; I’m doing what any young lady would do when surprised by a gentleman in a lonely place. I am retreating to protect myself from gossip.” Then, trying to inject some humor into the simmering atmosphere, she said, “I suppose I should be grateful that a prince has found me tonight, but unfortunately, I’ve never believed in fairy tales.” She started to walk away.
His hand unerringly caught her wrist and yanked her to a stop. “To what are you referring?”
She blinked in surprise and … Oh, dear … Had she spoken hastily and in malice? “I’m referring to the stories you told your sisters about being an exiled prince.”
Stories that had caused her a great deal of private amusement. “Now, if you’ll excuse me— ”
“Belle told you I was a prince?” He did not sound equally amused, and he didn’t let her go.
Belatedly, Victoria realized he might not relish his sister’s gossiping about him. “She said a king, but I thought since I was referencing a fairy tale— ” She was babbling, she realized, because he held her wrist.
“How many other giggling schoolgirls did she tell?”
For the first time since he’d joined her, she heard the crack of rage in his voice.
His grip on her wrist remained the same: loose, but inexorable. She felt a chill slide up her spine. “No one. I assure you, sir, she meant no harm.”
“And how many did you tell?”
Now her rage crackled. “No one! Why would I?” She wrenched herself out of his grasp. “I don’t find you interesting, and I assure you, I didn’t take her story seriously.”
He stepped in front of her, stopped her when she would have stormed off. “You have a waspish tongue and not a lot of good sense.”
Beatings from her stepfather and her harried mother’s advice had taught her to tame that waspish tongue.
She’d had no choice.
Yet here she was, thoroughly angry, defiant in the face of Mr. Lawrence’s aggression. Why this bastard Grimsborough son made her rage, she didn’t know. Perhaps she cast him in the role of villain, putting him in the place of Lord Meredith. Which was foolish beyond belief, yet despite her attempts to stop them, words bubbled up in her and she flung the truth in young Lawrence’s face. “I 38
don’t understand you. You’re the illegitimate son of the Viscount Grimsborough, raised in his household, given the kinds of opportunities most of us would kill for.”
“And a father most men would kill to avoid.”
Victoria knew what he said was true. In the depths of night, she and Belle had shared stories of the fathers who had ruled their lives, who dismissed them as un-important, who sought to crush them with indifference.
And Belle had told Victoria that Grimsborough had been one hundred times worse to his son because Raul was his son. But right now, Victoria wasn’t in the mood to be fair. “Are you never satisfied with your lot? To be better educated, better fed, better clad than your fellow Englishmen, yet still you expect worship for imaginary royal blood coursing through your veins.”
“A waspish tongue,” he repeated, “and not a lot of good sense.”
Outraged, she said, “I am one of the most sensible women I know!”
“You’re a fool of unimagined proportions.”
He pushed her toward the rail, lifted her off her feet.
With a shock, she realized he was right. She was a fool.
It was fifteen feet to the terrace and the marble floor below. If he let go—
Chapter Six
As Victoria teetered on the rail, she flung one arm around Raul’s neck. She wrapped her fist in his cravat, crushing the starched knot. Opening her mouth, she prepared to scream.
And he kissed her. Not the first gentle, pleasant kiss of her girlish dreams, but a hot, angry, openmouthed kiss that swallowed her shout and shocked her senses.
He wanted to murder her. She could taste it in his rage.
And she could taste something else.
Passion.
Not like the slimy Lord Meredith, but a searing heat, burning away all the extraneous emotions, catapulting her into sensuality, setting her innocence ablaze.
She scrabbled for balance. For freedom. Started to bite his marauding tongue.
But before she could, he jerked his head up, muttered, “Bite me and I’ll throw you over the edge.”
He sounded so furious, so menacing.
Then, belying his threat, he swung her around, put her feet on the floor.With his arms around her, he pushed her back, and when he had her trapped between his body and the wall of Grimsborough Abbey, he kissed her again.
Each kiss was brief, bitter, sharp, volatile, like gunpowder set alight, as if Raul and Victoria were two elements that together resulted in explosion after explosion. Each kiss tasted of restlessness, of frustration, of a longing to fly free.
His? Hers? She didn’t know. She knew only that each time he lifted his head, thought returned to her mind, she suffered the burn of shame, and she tried to speak, to shove him aside.
Then he kissed her again, and another detonation set her on fire.
At last he stopped, and in the darkness, she could hear him panting.
She was panting, too, torn apart by a need she had never imagined.
The granite was cool and rough against her exposed shoulder blades.
He held her tightly, too tightly.
She should scream, cry, struggle… .
But she liked this.
Why? What perverted part of her liked feeling his chest heaving against hers? How could she experience the warm sense of safety in the arms of a man who had threatened to toss her off a balcony? What madness made her experience an affinity to a bastard driven by some unexplained rage to lust?
It was as if she understood him. As if she, Victoria Cardiff, sensible and prosaic, had found the one mate who would allow her to be the woman she truly was… .
Then he sighed. Relaxed. His grip around her waist loosened, became a warm cradle of comfort. He leaned into her again, but this time he cupped her throat in his hand, nudged her chin up with his thumb, found her mouth with his, and kissed her … differently. His fury had evaporated, become something more. His fingers stroked the hollow behind her ear, caressed the sensitive, satin skin of her jaw.
His lips pressed against hers, no longer rudely invasive, but coaxing her in gentle strokes, reminding her how he had looked when she first saw him: too handsome, with sunshine gleaming on his dark hair, turning his tanned skin golden, making his green eyes glow with sinful promise. For the first time, their passion no longer felt dangerous, no longer seemed as if it would blow them apart with its violence, and with the transformation, the tight anger that held her in its grip eased.
Distantly, she heard the music of the party, knew that somewhere people were talking, laughing, eating, drinking, behaving as civilized human beings should. As Victoria herself always did.
But out here … the warm air was redolent with the rich scent of night-blooming nicotiana, the darkness enclosed them seductively, and the slow heat of Raul Lawrence made her blossom, made her reach for him with her body, with her heart. She eased herself against him, tilted her face to better fit their mouths together, and answered him with the touch of her tongue to his lower lip.
“Witch,” he whispered against her mouth. “I knew …
when I saw you today … you would enchant me.”
His kiss this time was deep, intimate, seeking something. Seeking everything.
And she gave it to him, allowing him the freedom to discover the way her breath quivered in her lungs, her startled reaction to his tenderness, the drift of desire that rose with every brush of his tongue against hers.
Her previous tension had slid away. Now it returned, no longer incensed, outraged, but more of a striving toward some unseen goal. She didn’t exactly know where they were going, only that she wanted to get there soon … and with him.
It seemed to her that this man was like her: wounded, yet fighting, seeking comfort and giving strength, and for the briefest moment she wondered how it was possible, when they had so little in common, that their souls combined with such sweet heat.
After many long moments, he once again lifted his head. His fingers caressed her throat, then fell away.
He put distance between them. Not a lot. But enough to allow the chill of reality to touch her.
What was she doing?
She still held his cravat in her fist. Her arm was still wrapped around his neck. Her lips stung and her skin felt hot, swollen, as if this new thing he had set alight had burned her from the inside out.
And suddenly, she saw herself as others would see her— an opportunist, using her friendship with Belle to advance herself into the position of mistress to a wealthy man. In other words, she was behaving exactly as Lord Meredith had believed she would.
With a whimper of horror, she loosened her grip on Raul.
He stepped back. “Miss Cardiff.” His voice was concerned. Concerned, as if he feared she would demand something from him: jewels, a home fit for an opera singer. “Miss Cardiff, I must beg your pardon for my inopportune act.”
He was apologizing. Apologizing for the things they had done together.
Brittle anger galloped over the top of the horror.
“You! You!”
He waited, but when she said no more— how could she? She was incoherent with shame— he continued. “I had no right to mock you and your temper when mine is so uncontrolled. I freely admit my fault.”
He was not only apologizing, but he had been the one to call a halt to this impetuous display of … of …insanity.
For that, she wanted to slap him.
Instead impulsive words burst from her, too loud, too harsh, cruel and unjust. And she knew it. But she didn’t care. She knew only that she wanted to hurt him as he had hurt her. “You, Mr. Lawrence! Do you imagine you are somehow better than Lord Meredith? Forcing a kiss on me, threatening me with death, making me respond when you know I have no experience, possibly ruining me for any decent employment? And why?”
“Again, I express my regrets.” His voice was not quite as conciliatory now. “My father made me angry.”
“Your father, your real father, made you angry? Isn’t that too bad?” She took a breath, knowing she would regret her temper. She always did. But right now she had a choice: Say the wrong thing, or cry. And she would not cry, not in front of Mr. Lawrence. “I know men like you.”
“Do you?”
No. Not like him, really. Like her stepfather, who would gladly have kept her at home for the rest of her life to care for her stepsiblings, until she was bitter and old and all the bright, shining promise of the world had passed her by. But she couldn’t be fair now. Not to Mr.
Lawrence, who had apologized for what had felt to her like the meeting of two souls.
She was the world’s biggest fool. “Men like you,” she said, “are bullies who use their power to enforce their will, who can’t control their anger, who make excuses for their brutality.” She braced herself, waiting for him to slap her as she so richly deserved. Waiting for him to prove he was as ruthless as she claimed.
Instead, he said, “How you must hate knowing a false prince, a brute, and a bully made you respond to his kisses.” His drawl mocked her, drove the righteous fury from her lungs.
Because it was true. She had responded. Exalted. Explored.
And she was ashamed. Ashamed of her passion, and ashamed of the hot words that had betrayed so much of herself and lashed so brutally at a man who had done nothing so dreadful except to give her pleasure. To give her a taste of what she could never have.
Gathering her borrowed silk skirt in her hand, she whirled and stalked toward the ballroom.
Chapter Seven
On the road in Moricadia
Three years later
One of Victoria’s two charges sidled up to her and tugged at her arm. “Miss Cardiff, the forest has eyes.”
“What, dear?” Victoria pressed a cool, wet rag to Mrs. Johnson’s bruised arm.
“This forest has eyes,” said Effie urgently. Victoria glanced up.
The trees hovered hard against the edges of the road to the Moricadian capital, and beyond those edges, little sunshine pierced the dense canopy of green. Victoria could see why the fanciful sixteen-year-old might think so. “It certainly looks that way, doesn’t it?” Victoria asked.
Shivering, the girl huddled close to her mother. “I saw them. Eyes watching me.”
“No, dear.” Her mother smoothed Effie’s blond hair back from her thin face. “It’s just your imagination.”
“They hate us,” Effie said.
“Oh, Effie. Don’t be ridiculous.” Maude, who was seventeen and imagined herself the height of sophistication, sat in the carriage, her dignity, her clothes, and
her imagination intact. “The trees are not alive. Are they, Miss Cardiff?”
Victoria looked around.
The road to Tonagra, Moricadia’s capital city, was well tended, but steep and winding, with unexpected drop-offs and narrow places that had made Victoria hold her breath. An unexpected falling log had rammed the lead traveling coach, tearing one wheel off its axis, making the coach careen off the road and almost over a precipice, bruising Mrs. Johnson and making Mr. Johnson bluster in his anxiety about his wife.
Victoria and the Johnson daughters had been in the second coach and had barely stopped in time. The third coach— the baggage coach— and the three maids who attended the Johnson women had arrived late to the scene. All the Moricadian men had leaped out and gone to work to right and repair the coach. The native driver insisted the accident was just that, a random occurrence.
But Victoria looked now at the log.
It had been freshly sawed and dropped. To disrupt their passage? But why? And the forerunners were muttering among themselves. They were all strong men, tall, thin, with smooth, dark-tanned complexions, black hair, and dark eyes.
They reminded her of … of Raul Lawrence. Stupid to be thinking of him, but this was, after all, where he had removed himself and his horses. This was the country where he had claimed to be a king.
The letters she’d received from dear Belle had confessed their father was furious with his ungrateful son, that all ties had been cut, that the girls had been forbidden to communicate with him, but word from English people doing the Grand Tour was that Raul supported himself in a splendid manner.
Victoria was so glad for him.
She took a calming breath, erased the sarcasm, and tried again.
She was glad for him. Calmly, coolly glad for him.
Truly, she was.
The kiss— or rather, those kisses— had happened a long time ago; three years, to be exact. But for months after, she had spent the nights awake, thinking what she should have said, what she should have done, how hard she should have slapped him, the way she should have shamed him with her quiet reproachfulness, thinking up any scenario except the one where they kissed passionately and then flung bitter words at each other like two spoiled, emotional children.