Moonlight Masquerade (11 page)

He stood his ground, not touching her. “This
was never a simple stroll, Christine. From the first, our times
together have never been simple. Last night taught me that you have
the right to know who, and what, you are dealing with when you dare
to be with me.”

“No! Whatever happened to you, whatever
great sin you think you are guilty of, you are different now than
you were before—I’m sure of it. You have to stop hiding yourself
away like some terrible criminal. Surely you have been punished
enough?”

Vincent’s large hand cupped the side of her
face, his fingers laced through her hair. “I had begun to think so,
Christine, until you landed on my doorstep. Now I believe my
punishment has only just begun.”

She wanted his arms around her, but he
continued to hold her loosely, denying her his strength. Slowly, as
they stood in silence, she gathered her own courage and voiced her
private conclusions as to why he hid his face from her, from the
world. “You have been injured in some way, haven’t you, Vincent?
The left side of your face, I imagine, as you are always so careful
to keep it averted from me. Were you in a duel?”

She could feel him taking a deep breath,
then releasing it in a shuddering sigh. His voice, when he spoke,
was deadly cold and emotionless. “I killed a woman, Christine. I
loved her, and my love killed her, and her brother quite rightly
took a horsewhip to me. When he was done my left arm was nearly
severed and my face—my face was cut.”

She lifted her face away from his chest to
look up into his eyes. He was staring straight through her, as if
she had already turned away from him. She could feel her head begin
to slowly move back and forth, silently contradicting what she had
heard.

His physical scars, no matter how terrible
they might prove to be, were secondary now. What was left of his
physical beauty was more than enough for a half dozen men. It was
the injury to his soul that was causing her this almost unbearable
pain. She had to prove that his scars didn’t matter to her. “I
don’t believe it. It must have been an accident. The brother was
wrong. You could never hurt anyone, especially someone you loved.
Please, Vincent, don’t hide from me anymore.”

She knew what she had to do. When he didn’t
move away from her, didn’t refuse her request, Christine slid both
hands slowly up his chest to touch the muffler that he had employed
to hide himself from her. He still didn’t resist, but only
continued to stare through her, his eyes devoid of emotion, as if
preparing himself to deal with the disgust his face would
cause.

Swallowing hard, her fingers trembling,
fearful of what she would see, she pulled the soft wool away,
baring his face to her in the brilliant sunlight.

There were three scars. Three long, thin,
white lines that mocked the perfection of his face and throat. One
seemed to trace the line of his jaw almost lovingly, to fade just
below the center of his chin. The second scar stretched from the
center of his cheekbone to the corner of his mouth, while the third
began just beneath his ear, to disappear into the collar of his
shirt.

Once, they must have been terrible. Once,
they would have been deep, and red, and very, very painful. Now
they were faded, almost attractive, as they lent a rakish maturity
to his youthful good looks.

Yet, as she stole a quick look into
Vincent’s eyes, she knew that he didn’t, couldn’t, see his scars
that way. To him they were still as they had been, raw, and
ugly—and a constant outward reminder of the heartbreak that had
caused them to be carved there in the first place.

She wanted to weep for him, but she knew he
wouldn’t understand. He would think she pitied him.

She wanted to rail at him for his terrible
self-inflicted punishment that far outstripped any revenge that had
been wrought by the grieving brother, but she couldn’t. This was no
time for a sermon.

Slowly, fearful that he might run from her,
she lifted a hand to stroke his cheek, desperate to heal the inward
scars that were a hundred times more damaging than these thin white
lines.

Standing on tiptoe, her body pressed tightly
against his, returning stare for stare, she tilted her head
slightly to one side and touched her lips to his, showing him
without words that, to her, he was still the perfect Vincent of the
moonlight, and still welcome in her life. As the heat of his mouth
melted her fears, she sighed, slowly allowing her eyes to flutter
closed.

Vincent’s strong right hand, raised in the
act of pushing her away, stilled, and formed itself into a tight,
trembling fist. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t make himself do the
right thing—the honorable thing.

He needed her too much.

Slowly his fingers opened, and he lowered
his hand to clasp her waist as he allowed himself to be pulled more
firmly into her embrace. His mouth crushed hers, hungry, searching,
seeking, tasting the forbidden fruit. She was so soft, so open, so
giving.

It was all so wrong.

It was all so right.

“Christine,” he breathed hoarsely when at
last the kiss was over and her head was once more pressed against
his chest. “Christine.”

“
Christine!
”

He felt her stiffen, then move away from
him. “It’s Aunt Nellis,” she said unnecessarily as he quickly
slipped the woolen muffler back over his face. “I must go. I—I
don’t want to go, to leave you like this. Oh, Vincent...” There was
so much she needed to say, so much he needed to hear.

“
Christine, where are you?
”

She kissed her fingertips, then pressed them
to his cheek. “Tonight?”

Vincent nodded, clearly not trusting his
voice, then stayed behind the tree, out of sight, as she walked
back toward the house, calling out, “I’m here, Aunt Nellis. Go back
inside before you take a chill.”

“Tonight,” Vincent repeated softly, dropping
to his knees in the snow to lift Christine’s muff and rub it
against his cheek. “Dear God, I have to put an end to this before
it’s too late—for both of us!”

V
incent took his
dinner alone while Christine and her aunt had their meal in the
formal dining room, thankfully situated at the opposite end of the
house. He had broken his promise to join them there, choosing to
hide himself in his study, away from Christine’s searching eyes,
safe from her sure-to-be-probing questions.

“She’s a child. A foolish, romantic child.
She has no real experience of love. She doesn’t know what she’s
doing, what she’s daring,” he told the uneaten food congealing on
his plate. “She sees me as a challenge. The poor, tragic reclusive
earl, hiding a scandalous secret, bearing scandalous scars. I
should demand that her aunt confine her to her chamber until the
roads are passable.”

He reached over to ring the bell that sat on
the table beside him. “Lazarus,” he ordered when the servant
appeared almost immediately, as if he lived his life just outside
the study door, waiting for his master to summon him, “kindly
convey my regrets to the ladies and tell them that I am indisposed
for this
entire
evening.”

“All evening, your lordship?” Lazarus asked,
clearly referring to Miss Denham’s proposed visit once her aunt was
abed.

“All evening, Lazarus,” the earl pronounced
flatly, motioning for the servant to remove the dinner tray.
“Surely my request wasn’t that convoluted. I wish to be alone. Just
leave the decanter on the table on your way out. I don’t care to be
disturbed again.”

“Very well, sir, if you think it’s for the
best,” Lazarus said, obviously approving.

“It is such a comfort to me, dear Lazarus,
to know that I have pleased you,” Vincent said softly as the
servant exited. He stood, shaking his head free of the hood he had
forgotten he was wearing, then allowed the cloak to shrug off his
shoulders onto the floor, to lie there, a swirl of black silk
blotted against the pale carpet.

He walked to the cabinet that doubled as a
writing desk and unlocked a drawer, pulling out a gilt-framed
miniature, then returned to stand before the fire.

The painting he held was that of a woman, a
very young, very beautiful woman. Her smile was warm, her blonde
head tipped forward demurely, her soft brown eyes gazing lovingly
at something or someone just outside the picture. The likeness was
so very lifelike, he half expected her to turn and speak to
him.

Arabella. How he had loved her. He had loved
her to death.

He studied the portrait for a long time. He
tilted it this way and that in the firelight, searching, as he had
searched for over four long years, looking for the flaw until he
found it, just as the artist had found it—just there, in her
averted gaze.

Arabella had been more than demure, more
than docile. She had been weak, too fragile to look life in the
eye. Why had he never noticed her instability, her emotional
turmoil, when there had still been time to save her?

Over the past four years Vincent had become
obsessed with the search for hidden flaws in what seemed to be
perfection, looking for proof of his theory that life was a liar,
that nothing was perfect, no matter how perfect it should appear.
Nothing was flawless, happiness was never permanent, no emotion was
to be trusted.

Vincent’s own flaw, as he saw it, had been
even deeper below the surface—hidden even from himself—carefully
tucked behind the “pretty face” Fletcher had so successfully
stripped to the bone. His flaw had been that he had loved too
much—his blind, selfish, destructive, all-consuming passion to
possess Arabella, body and soul.

Perhaps that was why he had accepted his
penance so willingly, almost gratefully. He had known that he was
guilty. He, and not poor, destroyed Arabella, lying in her grave
for over four years. The real crime hadn’t been hers. It had been
his. It was still his. It would always be his. Even now, when
Christine had become his reality, and his love for Arabella was
only a dim, painful memory.

But his scars, his useless arm, these were
more than memories. They were the permanent, outward reminder of
his guilt, and it was those reminders that kept him hidden away
here at Hawk’s Roost, where he could do no more harm.

“I’ll make sure you never destroy another
innocent young girl with that pretty face of yours,” Fletcher
Belden had shouted as he wielded his whip, his words cutting into
Vincent more painfully, more tellingly, than the leather thong.

But Fletcher Belden couldn’t have known that
a woman like Christine existed, a woman who would stumble,
unwanted, into Vincent’s life and dare to look past the scars to
see the man.

Vincent lifted his face to the ceiling, his
breathing tortured. “Once more, I love too much, want too much. Oh,
Christine, Christine. God help me, how will I ever find the
strength to let you go?”

T
he door to the
hallway had been carefully locked from the inside.

Every candle save one in the room was lined
up atop the small side tables that had been carefully pushed near
the far wall in order to help illuminate the carved wooden
paneling.

The remaining candle was in Christine’s
hand, and she moved it slowly up and down in front of the paneling,
searching for any slight distortion in the wood that would show her
the location of the hidden door.

“It has to be here,” she told herself as she
held the candle high in its holder, watching to see if the flame
would dance in a slight draft coming from the secret passageway
Hawkhurst had used to enter her room.

The yellow flame flickered, but only because
her breath had stirred it. “Blast it all! It has to be here
somewhere. It just has to!”

Setting the candle on one of the tables with
a frustrated thump, she raised both hands to the paneling, sticking
her fingertips into the wooden rosettes that decorated it, probing
for some hidden release mechanism. Nothing happened.