My Fair Mistress (24 page)

Julianna inhaled audibly, lifting a hand to cover her mouth.

Rafe barely heard her reaction as the night came back to him, as clear and vivid in his mind as if it were all happening again…

The grandfather clock in the hallway rang once, the house hushed and still, dark in the early-morning hours. Rafe yawned, replaced the stopper in his bottle of ink, then set down his pen.
Time to catch a few hours’ sleep,
he decided, putting away his work for the morrow.

He’d been so rushed lately, what with the wedding less than a month away, and the distraction of the improvements he was having done to his new house here on Gracechurch Street. He wanted everything to be perfect for Pamela when she took up residence as his wife.

He was also busy rearranging his business dealings. The last few years had been lucrative, so much so he knew he would never again need to worry about a life spent laboring for a pauper’s wage. Yet he wasn’t satisfied; he wanted more, and knew with his skills that he could take himself farther than most people even dreamed.

Pamela would be by his side, loved and pampered. He would keep her dressed in silks and satins, and make sure her every need was met. And once they had a family, all of them would retreat to the countryside for part of the year. Already, he had begun renovations to the house in West Riding where they would reside.

And he had finally received his rightful inheritance from his father, long denied him while the St. George family had tried unsuccessfully to contest the will. He’d already invested the twenty thousand pounds he’d received, a sum that would provide further avenues upon which he could build his financial empire. Even more important, the money had come as a well-earned vindication, one that just might allow him to put the past where it belonged.

Yawning, he stood and began snuffing out the candles.

Outside, a clatter of horse hooves rang noisily in the street, coach wheels rumbling fast against the pavers. Instead of continuing past, though, the vehicle stopped, a man’s voice issuing a muffled command.

Moments later, a fierce pounding came at the door.

Who can that be at this hour?
he wondered. He certainly wasn’t expecting any visitors.

Knowing the servants were already abed, he strode out into the entry hall. Cautiously, he eased opened the door.

His jaw knotted when he saw who waited on the other side.

Standing near the open door of his black barouche, Burton St. George loitered on the sidewalk. Flanking him opposite stood one of St. George’s friends, Lord Underhill. Two more men sat inside the vehicle, their faces shadowy beneath the weak glow of the streetlights.

“What do you want, St. George?” Rafe demanded, irritation clear in his voice.

“Would you listen to that?” the viscount announced to his companions. “Do you hear the lack of respect in his voice? The disdain he shows for his betters?” He threw up an arm, his elegant black evening cloak tumbling back over one shoulder. “And here I am come to give you a gift, Pendragon.”

Rafe scowled, uneasiness creeping over him like the crawl of a clammy hand. What was St. George talking about? The two of them despised each other. His brother would never bring him a gift.

“Come, come gentlemen,” the viscount ordered in a sly tone, “bring out our little surprise.”

One man sprang from the coach, the other maneuvering inside to help him lift out a large bundle. Together they carried their burden, dropping it onto the sidewalk at the base of the stairs—an unidentifiable heap wrapped in an old brown woolen blanket.

Rafe’s heart pounded as he stared, imagining all kinds of dreadful possibilities. A dead dog, perhaps? Or a large rotted fish they’d procured from the refuse along the wharfs? Yet he detected no odor of decay, nothing but the faint, metallic sweetness of blood. If it was an animal, he reasoned, why the elaborate show? Why not simply fling the poor creature onto his doorstep and be gone, a loathsome prank well done?

“Are you not even going to take a peek?” the viscount taunted. “I know you’ll want to see what’s inside.” When Rafe made no move, St. George approached. “Perhaps you need some encouragement.”

Using the toe of his boot, the viscount gave the bundle a hard nudge.

A moan of agony rose up out of the blanket.

Dear Lord, is it human?

No longer hesitant, Rafe hurried down the brick stairs and dropped to his knees beside the huddled form. Drawing back the blanket, he gasped at what he saw.

A woman lay virtually naked, her bloodied, shredded undergarments all that remained of her clothing. Bruises in vicious shades of purple and blue and red stained her pale skin. Her eyes, lips, and cheeks were so swollen she was all but unrecognizable, her long, golden hair matted with sweat and dried blood.

Golden hair.

He swallowed down the bile that rose in his throat, hands trembling as he reached toward her. She whimpered at his lightest touch, shrinking away. As she shifted, her movements revealed a slender chain encircling her neck. Metal winked in the dull lamplight. A locket with its delicate sweep of forget-me-knots engraved on the front, identical to the one he’d given Pamela when they’d first been courting.

No!
his mind screamed in denial.
No, no, no, it can’t be her!

Tears scalded his eyes, clouding his vision as they streamed down his cheeks without his awareness. Then the voice of Satan whispered in his ear, silky and despicably self-satisfied.

“When we heard you were going to be married, Underhill, Challoner, Hurst, and I all wanted to give you something extra special. We decided that breaking in the bride would be just the thing. I must say she wasn’t terribly cooperative at first, but after a while she did plenty of moaning. A real randy little bitch, your fiancée. I’m sure you’ll enjoy having her warm your bed, unless you’re picky about using other men’s leavings.”

The viscount chuckled as if he’d made a very fine joke.

Rage, chilling and black, washed over Rafe. But instead of leaping to his feet and tearing into St. George, he knelt nearly paralyzed, his body quaking, a silent scream trapped in his throat.

“I warned you not to cross me, Pendragon,” St. George said. “Don’t ever make the mistake of doing it again.”

Footsteps moved away. Still frozen, Rafe forced up his head in time to watch the coach and its occupants race away, the sound of male laughter echoing obscenely into the night…

Rafe shuddered and returned to the present.

“That bloody bastard hurt her to hurt me,” he murmured. “And he succeeded.”

“Dear God,” Julianna whispered in horrified understanding, her eyes damp with sorrow.

His own eyes remained dry, his tears long ago burned away in the heat of his hatred and in his consuming need for revenge.

Julianna reached out and caught one of his hands, then led him to her bed. Drawing him down beside her, she slid her arms around him and hugged him tight. Leaning up, she kissed his cheek, then his temple.

“Tell me,” she murmured, stroking a consoling palm across his chest.

For a long moment he resisted, the memories too raw, too deep. But her quiet, simple entreaty called to some hidden need inside him. Without consciously realizing it, he began to speak.

“After they tossed her on my doorstep, battered and brutalized, I rushed her inside and called for the physician. She’d lost so much blood, we all feared she would die that night, but by some miracle she held on. Gradually, she began to recover, physically at least. She ate and slept. She went through all the motions of living. But the girl I knew was gone. She used to laugh all the time and smile. Pamela was one of those rare souls who never saw the bad in people. But those bastards stole that from her, snuffed out the light in her eyes.”

He paused, a leaden lump in his chest. “She couldn’t bear to look at me after that and cringed at my slightest touch. Not because it was me, but because I was a man, and it was men who had hurt her. There was nothing I could do or say to make it better. Hell, I couldn’t even give her the consolation of knowing her assailants were being punished.”

He pulled away and strode across to stand in front of the fireplace. Picking up a poker, he jabbed it at the unlighted logs in the grate.

“But surely you reported the attack to the authorities?”

He laughed, the sound hollow and bitter. “Yes, her father and I went to the so-called authorities and told them what those monsters did to her. They just stared at us and smirked, then asked what she’d done to tempt them. St. George and his friends were all respectable gentleman, wealthy, powerful men of privilege and importance. Who would believe the claims of a Cheapside watchmaker and a businessman of dubious parentage when pitted against the testimony of four wealthy aristocrats?”

“But you saw them! Middleton admitted to you what he’d done. What they had all done.”

“And all they had to do was deny it, assuming the constables had even bothered to ask. They didn’t, of course. Instead, they tossed me into a cell for making false accusations. They would have locked up Pamela’s father as well, but I convinced them to let me serve out his term along with my own. Two weeks in the London gaol.”

“Rafe, no!” She leaned forward, her expression one of shock and outrage.

That was the day he’d lost all respect for the law. The day he came to understand that a man had to take care of his own, and seek justice by whatever means he possessed.

“St. George and his fellow rapists continued their lives as if nothing had happened,” he continued in a chill voice. “They went on living with no apparent remorse, as if they had never violated a poor, sweet girl whose only crime was the mistake of loving me.”

Mercy, how I longed to kill them!
he thought, remembering those times. At first he’d ached to hunt them down, one man at a time, and put a bullet between their eyes. But he’d decided that was too easy, choosing instead to give each of them a taste of his own particular kind of misery. Years may have passed, but his revenge was starting to come to fruition.

Underhill and Challoner had met their fates, while the other two would soon face their own day of reckoning. A drunkard bent on his own kind of ruin, Hurst was nearly destroyed, while St. George was beginning to feel the squeeze on his finances, squirming as one investment after another mysteriously turned sour.

Seeing them all brought down would be sweet vengeance indeed.

“What about Pamela?” Julianna ventured softly. “You told me she died.”

“Yes. Those villains murdered her, just as surely as if they had come to the house and slipped the rope around her neck with their own hands.”

He turned and met her anguished gaze. “She hanged herself, three months after the attack. She’d…found out she was pregnant. There was a note saying she was sorry but that she could not bear the idea of having such disgrace growing inside her. She’d been a virgin before that night. She couldn’t expect me to marry her, to raise an abomination as our child. She told me she could not be my wife. Could never be anyone’s wife, since she knew she would not be able to bear the touch of a man ever again.”

Taking a deep breath, he went on. “Pamela wrote that she loved me. She even begged me to forgive her. How could she not understand she wasn’t the one in need of forgiveness? It was me. It still is me.”

“You’re wrong. You must not blame yourself.”

“Mustn’t I?” he challenged bitterly. “The fault was mine. If not for me, he would never have come after her. If not for the house, he would not have had a reason.”

“The house? What house?”

He paused before answering. “My mother’s house in the Yorkshire countryside, the home where I was raised.”

Julianna waited, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, as she watched emotions shift like passing clouds across his chiseled features.

Her heart ached for him, for all he’d lost and been forced to endure. She wanted to offer him comfort, but she knew right now he would not accept her consolation, would see it as pity instead of compassion. So she kept her seat, held her silence, and waited for him to tell her more in his own time and in his own way.

He prodded the logs again with the fire poker. Long moments passed before he set the brass tool back into its holder and turned her way.

“Despite the circumstances of my birth,” he began, “I had a good childhood. No matter the taunts and the fights other boys were forever picking with me, I knew my parents loved me, that they loved each other. My father spent as much time with us as he could, and he saw to it I had an education when the time came. He made certain my mother had a comfortable home with enough money for a few servants and as many fine gowns as she desired. But all she really wanted was him. I remember the way her face would glow whenever he came for a visit. And how she would lock herself in her room and cry after he left.”

Rafe thrust his hands into his trouser pockets. “I knew my father had another family. Another son and two daughters, my brother and sisters, whom I was never to mention or admit to having knowledge of. I thought of them occasionally and wondered what it might have been like had I been born the legitimate son and St. George the baseborn one. But by and large it didn’t trouble me. I loved my mother and our home. No matter what, I would never have traded either for all the world.”

He strolled toward her dressing table and perused the contents. As if needing to distract himself, he uncorked her bottle of rose water and raised it to his nose, closing his eyes for a pleasurable instant. With a careful hand, he stoppered the container and returned it to its place.

Drawing an audible breath, Rafe continued. “I knew St. George bore a resentment toward me, but until the time of my father’s death, I didn’t realize just how deep it ran. Papa died very suddenly, without any warning at all, the year I turned twenty. I was away at university and happened across the notice in the
Times.
”

His face tightened in obvious affront at the memory and the insult of not being notified of his own father’s death. “I learned that my mother was given the news in a far more brutal way. Only days after my father died, a pair of riders appeared. It was late January and freezing cold, with inches of snow blanketing the ground. The riders banged on the door, told my mother the viscount was dead, and ordered her to get out—and by out they meant right that minute. She wasn’t even allowed to pack a suitcase, nor take so much as a single belonging or memento. The house and all its contents belonged to the new viscount, she was told, Burton St. George.”