Bewitching the Baron (12 page)

“Do not assume that I would judge you so harshly. I have been on the receiving end of such judgments too often to do that.”

“You and your aunt both, mother confessors. Telling you will do nothing to change what happened.”

“I never said it would. I did not mean that telling me would change the past, any more than praying will change God. The telling, and the praying, are to change yourself.”

“Ah, but I am quite enjoying my shame and guilt. I richly deserve them, and am not so ready to give them up.” He stood up, dusting off his breeches, and reached down a hand to her. “And it is much too lovely a day, and my companion far too beautiful, for hours spent morosely reviewing the low point of my life. Come, we shall return to Raven Hall for something to eat, and then I shall bring you home, chaste and pure, with all your illusions intact of me as a frightfully handsome, charming, and slightly mysterious man.”

She snorted, taking his hand and letting him pull her to her feet. “I do not think I am the one with the illusions.”

Chapter Eight

To Valerian’s dismay, Paul was sitting hunched over a bowl of soup, slurping loudly, when they came into the dining room. He paused mid-slurp and dropped his spoon back into the bowl with a splash and a clatter, his eyes going from Nathaniel to her, and back again. “Nathaniel. What a surprise.”

“Good afternoon, Paul,” Nathaniel said cheerily. “Are you enjoying your private dining, or would you like a bit of female companionship to enliven your meal?”

Paul cast a disparaging eye at her. “I would have thought you would much rather have her to yourself. And God knows, she will do nothing for my appetite.”

Whatever sense of well-being and comfort she had begun to feel in Nathaniel’s company collapsed with brutal abruptness. She suddenly felt the difference in her and Nathaniel’s stations, and that she did not belong at this table in her rough dress and stained leather shoes. It was as if she could feel each bit of grass and vegetation clinging to her clothes, and the inelegant picture she made with her braid hanging down her back, wisps of hair rubbed free.

“Surely you can forgive her for having seen you with your breeches down,” Nathaniel cajoled, not taking his friend seriously.

Paul grunted in response, giving Nathaniel a look of disgust little kinder than that he had given her.

Valerian narrowed her eyes. Nathaniel might not be aware that his friend was serious, but she certainly was. “Lord Ravenall,” she said formally, doing her best impression of a duchess, holding tight to her pride, “I am afraid I must decline your earlier offer of dinner. I will just slip down to the kitchen and beg a crust of bread before I go—I am much more comfortable down there than in these fine surroundings. Why, heaven only knows what a mess I might make of things!” She dropped a mock curtsy and swept away, her cheeks burning.

His hand on her arm swung her around before she had taken two steps, her skirts swaying with the force of his pull. She gave his hand a vicious slap without thinking, and he let go. Perhaps ladies did not hit. Their eyes met, and she saw the confusion there, and she almost relented. Then his eyes shifted to Paul, and she turned on her heel and stomped off down the corridor. She expected his hand or voice holding her back, but neither came. It was only Paul’s mocking laugh that followed her down the hall.

The way down to the kitchen was familiar to her from her many visits to the manor with her aunt. Familiar as well were James and Judith, king and queen of the cooking domain. She had not meant it when she had said she would go beg in the kitchens, but it occurred to her that it was not such a bad idea. Far better company was to be had down there than above stairs. James and Judith had always been kind to her, whereas most of the other staff gave her a wide berth.

Her feet tapped their way down the stone stairs, which had depressions worn into their surfaces from two hundred years of servants rushing up and down with platters of food. At the moment all that rushed up was the combined scents of roasting meat, pastries, and spice; and the clattering noise of kitchen workers at their jobs.

She banked her anger for the moment, seeking distraction from the hurt in the company of others—others who did not think her too dirty and poor to sit at their table. Let Nathaniel pacify his friend for the insult of having brought her before him while he ate. Fine! It served her right for forgetting she had no place in their world.

She poked her head around the corner of the doorway, observing James as he rolled out pastry dough on the large center table, other kitchen servants dashing to and fro like bees around their hive. His belly was as big as ever, covered by a food-stained, once-white apron. His thin, grey-streaked hair was pulled back over his balding head and tied off with a sad and scraggly strip of twine. “Good day, James!” she called.

He looked up, and his face creased in a smile that was missing the left half of its teeth. “Valerian!”

He claimed he had lost the teeth fighting brigands on a road outside Yarborough, and that he had narrowly saved Judith from their rapacious hands, but the truth was he had walked into a wall while drunk. Given his fondness for his own sweets, Valerian was not surprised his teeth had been so loosely anchored as to tumble out upon impact. Hygiene had never been one of his strong points.

“It has been too long since you have been down to see Hairy and me,” James said. “He misses you dreadfully, you know. He does not like anyone else.”

Valerian laughed, and went over to the huge fireplace with its low-burning, wood-scented fire. A huge chunk of beef turned slowly on a spit, the juices dripping into a pan beneath. A belt attached to a small wheel on the spit was in turn attached to the axle of a three-foot exercise wheel mounted on the exterior stone of the fireplace.

The black and white spotted dog inside the creaking wheel, loping to nowhere with his tongue hanging out, was the infamous Hairy. The wheel wobbled on its axle, and Hairy tilted his scruffy head and twitched a floppy ear as Valerian approached.

“Hairy, you lovely dog, have you been good?” His ears perked and his brush-like tail wagged, and he ran a little faster in his spinning cage, the meat jerking on its spit at the increase in speed.

“Lovely! Har!” James said behind her, loading up a plate with cheese and bread. “I have never seen a sorrier example of the species. Bred in a stinking midden, he was, with the manners of a rabid rat. We will be making bow-wow mutton of him one of these days, just you wait and see.”

Hairy cast a urine-yellow eye at his master and growled, his raised lip showing a broken canine tooth.

“Eat Hairy, indeed! ’Tis no wonder he bites you, if he must endure such threats and insults.”

“He bites me for sausages. Are you hungry, Valerian girl? I would rather feed you than that mangy piece of flearidden cur. Or any of these other louts,” he said, gesturing at his staff in general. Valerian noticed that several were taking the opportunity of his distraction to slip from the room for a break.

“I will eat only if you join me and tell me how you have been since I saw you last.”

“You mean since the new baron came. Ha! Cannot fool me. You want to hear the dirt.” James wrinkled his face in disgust at the plate he held, dumped the cheese and bread back where he got it, and started reloading the plate with tarts and roast beef. “Cheese and bread, paugh!” he grumbled. “Let
them
eat it, as do not work for their living.” And then, louder, “So, I must bribe you with gossip to get you to eat my food. Seems a poor trade.”

“Nonsense. You have the pleasure of my delightful company, which is worth any amount of gossip and pastry.”

“Give me Hairy any day.”

“Paul, what in God’s name is the matter with you?”

“With
me
? Nothing, My Lord Baron, Sir! ’Tis your brain I wonder at.”

“For bringing Miss Bright to my home for dinner? What do you have against her that you cannot treat her with even a modicum of civility, and this after she was kind enough to help tend your sorry ass?”

“I have nothing against her, except for the very real possibility that she is a witch and a poisoner, and has put you under her spell,” Paul said, his voice rising.

“My God, Paul, you must be joking,” Nathaniel said, genuinely astonished. “You do not believe that superstitious pap.”

“Do I not? I have been spending time at the inn in town and have heard all manner of ills spoken of that girl. When I see my friend poised to repeat the very errors that drove him from London, why should I not question but that something unnatural is afoot?”

“Miss Bright is nothing like Laetitia.”

“No. At least Laetitia was somewhat civilized and had a brother to defend her, for all the good it did either one of them. She also understood her place.”

“And what place would Miss Bright’s be?”

“Amongst her own kind, and well you know it. You cannot bring common girls home for dinner, having them think they have as much right to sit at this table as you or I. You would never dare such a thing in London.”

“You think you are so superior to her that you cannot share a table?”

“I am not judging her as a person, Nathaniel,” Paul said, lowering his voice and taking on a pedantic tone. “I am judging her as your society and mine would. What favor are you doing her by bringing her here and making her sit down to eat with you, waited on by those she knows as her equals? If we were anywhere but where we are, and I were anyone else, you would not have done it. Our peers would humiliate her, and her friends will hate her for the favors you show her.”

“She has no friends. If anything, it will help her to have these petty-minded villagers know she is in my favor.”

“And when you tire of her? What then?”

Nathaniel clamped his jaw tight, the heat of anger on his cheeks. “There will not be a repeat of Laetitia, do not worry yourself on that score.” He pivoted on his heel and strode off down the hall.

He found the stairs down to the kitchen, his boot heels making a racket on the hard stone steps. He slowed when he heard Valerian’s voice, and the answering laughter of a man. He had not quite believed her threat to go eat in the kitchen.

He came around the corner, observing her for a moment. She had a tart crust in hand, and was feeding it to the turn-spit dog. The cook—he could not recall his name—was eating one of the tarts himself, noisily sucking out the filling.

“My lord!” the cook gasped upon seeing him, inhaling a piece of fruit in the process. He coughed grotesquely, spitting bits of crust into the palm of his hand.

Valerian turned, and he saw the delight fade from her face at sight of him. For an instant he saw himself through her eyes, a finely dressed aristocrat with boorish friends, standing in the kitchen like a peacock in a hen coop, lording himself over the lowly, mundane birds. He felt out of place and unwanted, and then he saw the vulnerability in Valerian’s eyes, and the rest did not matter.

He went to her side, ignoring the surreptitious glances of those still present in the kitchen, and the continued hacking of the cook. “Come,” he said, his voice low enough to reach only her ears. “Let me take you into the garden where I can apologize for Paul.”

She flashed him a look that said Paul was not the only one at fault. “And for my own behavior,” he added. He bent his head closer to hers. “Do not—”

He was interrupted by a low growl, and he raised his head. The turn-spit dog, its face a mish-mash of black and white spots, was glaring at him with evil yellow eyes. He looked back at Valerian in time to see her smile at the beast’s disfavor. He took her hand, and dragged her only half-resisting from the kitchen, away from the eager eyes and ears of the staff.

The moment they gained the garden she pulled her hand from his and kept walking, tramping down a gravel path. He followed a couple paces behind her until they were out of sight from the house, hidden behind hedges and shrubberies, and then stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

“Do not touch me!” she snapped. “You have no right.”

“Valerian, I am sorry. Sorry about the way Paul treated you, and sorry that I did not immediately defend you. He was wrong to have been so rude to you.”

“And you were wrong to have asked me to eat with him. My lord.”

“Valerian—”

“Yes, I should call you by your title, for there is no use in my imagining any deeper intimacy between us. Mr. Carlyle did me the favor of pointing out the difference between our worlds. I have no place in yours, none at all.”

“There is no law against befriending one another. It is not as if we were being married, for God’s sake.”

“No, it is not, is it?” Her voice took on a false puzzled tone. “Just what are we to each other, Nathaniel? Do you want me as a mistress? A friend? You will have to explain it to me. I fear I have no experience with any of this.”

He was silent, searching for words to explain that which was not clear even to him.

“You do not know what you want with me, do you?” she snapped.

“I cannot categorize you, if that is what you are asking,” he said, still searching for his own understanding, for an explanation he could give himself for why he could not stand the thought of breaking off their acquaintance. “But God knows I want you.”

“For what, Nathaniel? Am I a friend to have lunch with, or a woman to seduce with a silver bracelet? What do you want from me?” she cried.

He grasped her face between his hands and slid his fingers into her bound hair, abandoning the effort at thought for that which his body already knew to be true. “This,” he said, and bending down he captured her lips with his own. She resisted for only a moment, then her mouth softened, and her hands came up to rest lightly, uncertainly on his chest. He deepened the kiss, moving against her mouth, dipping the tip of his tongue gently through her lips, allowing the intensity of his feelings to speak to her through his touch.

When he finally lifted his mouth he could feel her shaking, her hands tightly clenching the cloth of his jacket. “This is what I want,” he said.

“I see,” she whispered, her blue eyes enormous as she looked up at him. “This, and nothing more.”