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There was no sound now. She could see his face changing as he came to understand the sound, see him becoming slowly enraged as he realized that she had locked him out. The door was strong and thick as Drago Hall itself. It wouldn’t yield.

  She held her breath, waiting for him to call out.

  Her heart pounded—loud, fast strokes. Could he not hear her heartbeat? Feel her fear of him?

  She could see his gray eyes, darkening now, dilating with anger and cold in the night gloom of the vast eastern corridor. In the daylight they would be as light and clear as Ligger’s newly polished silver.

  “Victoria?”

  His voice was soft and compelling. She stuffed her fist in her mouth, not moving.

  “Open the door, Victoria.”

  Now the master’s voice, threaded with steel but still quiet, soft-sounding. She’d heard it rarely, normally directed at servants, and they’d been frantic to obey. She remembered once he’d turned on Elaine and spoken to her in that tone. Bright, strong Elaine had cowered.

  What to do? She couldn’t answer him. Perhaps he would believe her asleep. The thought of him believing that she was deliberately disobeying him made her flesh crawl.

  She’d come to live at Drago Hall at the age of fourteen after the marriage of her first cousin, Elaine Montgomery, to Damien Carstairs, Baron Drago. Victoria, starved for affection, had adored him then, seen him as the hero, the perfect gentleman, and he’d treated her with careless affection, giving her the kind of attention he occasionally bestowed on Elaine’s pug, Missie, or his small daughter, Damaris.

  But no longer.

  When had he begun to look at her differently? Six months ago? Nanny Black had teased her about being “late to grow on the stalk.” Whatever stalk was in question, evidently Damien now believed her grown enough. She wanted to yell at him, scream at him to leave her alone. She was his wife’s cousin, for pity’s sake. Didn’t a man owe loyalty and fidelity to his wife?

  The minutes passed. He said nothing more. Her heart continued to pound in slow, loud strokes. The door handle rattled again suddenly, then abruptly stopped. Her breath caught in her throat. She heard his footsteps going away now, fainter and fainter down the eastern corridor.

  She remembered suddenly the summer that one of his hunters had hurt its leg in a trap. He’d shot it. Then walked away, tossing his gun to one of the white-faced grooms.

  She had to do something. Because if she didn’t, he would win. He would trap her and do just as he pleased with her. She would tell Elaine, she had to tell her cousin. Even as the thought sifted through her mind, she was shaking her head. Tell Elaine that her husband wanted to ravish her young cousin? She swallowed, picturing her humiliation when Elaine laughed at her, shook her head, and berated her for spouting such ridiculous, such mean nonsense. And she would. Unlike her husband, she was loyal and faithful.

  She couldn’t stay here at Drago Hall. Not now.

  Victoria lowered her face into her hands. She was shaking, but there were no tears. The feeling of helplessness was paralyzing. No, she thought, shaking her head, no. How could he want her? It made no sense. Elaine was beautiful, with her lustrous black hair and her pale green eyes, and accomplished, her fingers nimble with needlework and the keys of the piano-forte. And she was carrying his child, his heir, as he said every day now, as if saying it over and over would produce the male child he wanted. Elaine was his wife; she had no deformities. Surely he knew about her leg, Elaine must have told him. Victoria touched her fingers to the ridged scar on her left thigh, probing lightly at the now relaxed flesh, the smooth muscles. Once, when she was fifteen, she had run away from a teasing Johnny Tregonnet, run too hard and long, and Elaine had seen the result—muscles knotting, bunching beneath the jagged scar. She’d tried to be kind, but she’d been repelled at the sight.

  How could he possibly want her? She was ugly, as defective as that poor hunter he’d shot.

  Very slowly Victoria eased down under the goose-feather quilt. The night was long. She was cold, inside, so cold, and she was afraid.

  She thought of David Esterbridge, but four years older than her almost nineteen. He’d proposed to her three times since the previous January. He was kind to her, generously persistent, weak, and the only child under his father’s thumb. She didn’t love him. But what else could she do? At least David would protect her. She would make him a good wife. Yes, she would. She would marry him and he would take her away from Drago Hall.

  Away from Damien.

  There were eight men in the beam-ceilinged drawing room of Treffy, the small hunting lodge owned by the old infirm Earl of Crowden. The caretaker had died and no one had told the old earl’s steward. The steward wouldn’t have cared in any case, for Treffy was falling apart and the old earl’s heir surely wouldn’t want the expense of putting it to rights. The lodge had been built in 1748, in the boring time of George II, and it was small by the standards of the time, boasting only seven rooms. It was, further, too isolated for most tastes, set in the middle of a thick maple-tree thicket. It was only three miles from the town of Towan, and Towan but half a mile from Mevagissey Bay. There was always the smell of the sea in the air, a feeling of dampness that lingered on clothes, and on the seats of chairs, and in the bed linen, what there was of that left.

  The eight men weren’t concerned about dampness that night, or about any other lack of Treffy. In three minutes it would be midnight. They were ready, prepared for the upcoming ritual. Each had a preassigned position, each was to be standing facing the long table.

  Rites and rituals, that was what the Ram demanded. Nothing was spontaneous. All actions were governed by rules, rules that the Ram had made and continued to make or change or modify when it suited him.

  All eight men were dressed in black satin robes, their heads encased in black satin hoods. There were slits for their eyes and holes for their nostrils. There were no mouth openings. The satin was thin enough so that their speech was easy and not slurred. Their moans were perhaps muffled a bit, and that was as the Ram wished it.

  The Ram had a book, a thin blood-red-vellum-covered book that only he could read. It was his guide, he would say. No one questioned the Ram anymore.

  All enjoyed the wickedness of anonymity.

  All were enjoying the spectacle of the fifteen-year-old girl who was lying on the scarred old oak table, her hands and feet pulled away and bound easily but securely with soft leather cords. She was clothed only in a long black velvet gown, her feet bare and clean, thank the powers.

  She wasn’t particularly toothsome, one of the men had remarked, but the Ram had only shrugged and said, “Her body more than compensates for the plainness of her face. You will see. She is also a virgin, as the rules state she must be.”

  What the Ram didn’t say was that he had duly paid the girl’s father ten pounds for her virginity.

  And so they were waiting. The Ram had said that midnight was the hour she was to be broken in. They’d drawn lots from the pottery bowl, an ancient piece the Ram said had come from a ship of the Spanish Armada, blown to bits by Queen Bess’s sailors, and wrecked off the shores of Cornwall.

  The Ram very calmly walked to the table, bent down, and kissed the girl full on the mouth. She whimpered, but no more. She’d been fed enough drug to do nothing more. Slowly the Ram walked to the end of the table. He freed her ankles, and slowly, as if to a strange cadence, he pushed her legs up, bending her knees until her feet were flat on the table. He told her to keep her legs open.

  He looked at one of the men, the one who had drawn the first lot, and nodded. Johnny Tregonnet was ready, more than ready, he was eager, and he was rough as he drew up the girl’s gown, baring her to the waist.

  The Ram had once stated, “A woman’s uses are below her waist. Her breasts are nothing but a distraction.”

  No one knew if he had taken this from the red-vellum guidebook or from his own capricious nature. No one really cared, though a sight of really full breasts would have titillated some.
/>   She bled as she was supposed to. Not copiously, for she was a peasant girl. The Ram remarked that peasant girls were like the stolid, gritty animals they tended. He then motioned for two of them to hold her legs wide, for she was growing tired.

  She was deeply asleep from the drug when the eighth finished. It didn’t matter, said the Ram easily. It was better that a woman remain silent. It was a blessing.

  The men were relaxed and drinking steadily now. This part of the ritual was a bit of an annoyance. To drink their brandy, they had to turn their faces away, lift their hoods, drink, then lower the hoods back into place before turning back to face the others. Each turned to look at the girl upon occasion. She lay in the shadowy light from the fireplace, now lightly snoring from the surfeit of drug the Ram had fed her.

  The Ram sat a bit apart. He drank sparingly. He’d given them this girl to keep them in line. None of them, he mused many times, had the depth of spirit to truly become part of the rituals that nurtured a man’s soul. They were allowed to plow a girl only when he deemed it proper, and at no other time. He’d quoted from the book on that point: “The man’s sex is to prove to the female that he is the dominant, the master, the superior of the species.”

  The Ram told them further that such proof wasn’t all that necessary in terms of repetition, for women knew themselves mastered, knew themselves the inferior, knew themselves the weaker.

  Several of the men doubted that sincerely. Particularly the two who were married. The Ram, as if sensing their recalcitrance on this point, said strongly that the drug didn’t diminish the female’s knowledge that she was mastered, it merely kept her from voicing her beliefs too loudly, which would be an irritant.

  No one knew that the girl’s father was ten pounds richer from this night. That was the Ram’s private counsel. It would have lessened their sense of wickedness if they’d known.

  Vincent Landower wondered aloud if the girl could be pregnant. He looked at her as he spoke. She was still snoring, her legs splayed, the velvet bunched below her breasts. He thought a pregnant woman as appetizing as a gutted trout. And he voiced aloud his revulsion.

  The others laughed, but the Ram didn’t. He said it would be interesting, his voice pensive, if she were. Which one of them would the child resemble?

  “Perhaps our leader,” said Johnny, guffawing loudly. “Yes, a Ram. That would shock the neighborhood!”

  The Ram ignored that bit of levity and said after a few moments, “We will not meet until the first Thursday of October. At that meeting you will enjoy a surprise. That evening, after the surprise, I will tell you of our plans for All Hallows’ Night.”

  Paul Keason, who had drawn the fourth position, felt in private moments that any emphasis on satanism, on cults, and on warlocks and covens was bloody nonsense. He didn’t want to be a budding satanist or warlock. He wanted to push the limits of what was wicked and unlawful and leave it at that. He suspected that most of the men felt the same way. But to achieve what it was they wished, they had to pretend serious interest in all the Ram’s rites and rituals, which were becoming more elaborate and complex as time passed. All Hallow’s Night was a night for an innocuous party, that was all. He looked at the Ram, relieved that he couldn’t see his expression. Then he recalled the promised surprise. Another girl, more than likely. Perhaps he would draw the first lot instead of the fourth. He looked over at the Ram, sitting silently, looking as dignified as one could in the ridiculous black hood and long full robe. He wished the Ram hadn’t made that particular rule. No one was supposed to know who any of the others were, which was silly. All of the men knew each other, with or without the hoods.

  But no one knew the identity of the Ram.

  The Ram saw that the girl was slowly regaining her senses. She was twisting a bit and ruining the artistic position he’d arranged her in after the eighth had spilled his seed in her. He frowned. He didn’t appreciate her detracting from the solemnity of the group, from their quiet fellowship. He waited a few more minutes, then raised her head and fed her a bit more of the drug in a cup of brandy. The brandy trickled down her chin. He shut her jaw. She would sleep now through the night. He rearranged her limbs to his liking.

  At precisely one o’clock in the morning, each of the eight rose, placed his right hand on top of the red-vellum book, raised his left hand over his heart, and feeling like a complete fool, recited the speech the Ram had taught him. It was blessedly short, so despite the amounts of brandy consumed, it wasn’t beyond any of the men’s capabilities.

  “We are the masters of the night. We extol each other and our power. Only we know of ourselves. We are silent. The world knows only of our deeds, and they are awed.”

  The Ram nodded gravely when the recitations were finished. He said his own speech alone, his voice going deep to give the words a more moving, vibrant timbre. He was the Ram and he was the master of masters. The name suited him. He nearly forgot to keep his voice disguised, so moved was he at his own performance.

  2

  The Blue Boar, Falmouth, Cornwall, September 1813

  To dispute with a drunk man is to debate with an empty house.

  —PUBLILIUS SYRUS

  “You drink any more of that swill, and Flash and I will have to bury you here.”

  Rafael cocked a black brow at Rollo Culpepper, his first mate and longtime friend. “Swill, my dear fellow? This is the finest French brandy. Old Beaufort assures me he smuggles only the best. Just another little bit, I think. Lindy!”

  “More like a bloody keg,” Flash Savory said, observing the huge snifter Rafael was holding. He wondered if he could snatch the snifter without Rafael knowing it. A pickpocket of the first order from the advanced age of five in London’s gin-soaked Soho, Flash still boasted many unusual talents, but convincing his drunk captain to leave the ale house wasn’t among them. He knew why the captain was getting drunk as a lord, knew as well as Rollo did. The captain was feeling cut loose and useless after five years of danger, excitement, and doing things that made a difference to the war. That was it: the captain no longer felt that he mattered. Whatever he did now wouldn’t change or alter what was happening in France or in Italy or in Portugal. And he was back in Cornwall, back where his damned twin brother, curse his eyes, lived and lorded it over everyone. A bloody shame about that Whittaker being a French spy and telling folk about the captain. Ruining everything he did. Flash felt a shiver of fear remembering that Whittaker—or whatever the bloody Frog’s name really was—had nearly succeeded in killing the captain. Well, he’d lost, damn him. And Flash was now caretaker of the mangiest, most perverse, most randy damned cat that ever sailed quite happily aboard a ship.

  “Lindy!”

  Flash tried wheedling. “Now, Captain, don’t you know that old Hero doesn’t sleep well when you’re not aboard? He meows and carries on, and the crew can’t sleep either, what with all his bloody racket, and—”

  “Flash, go away. Now. You and Rollo just go away.”

  Rollo leaned forward, resting his elbows on the tabletop. “Look, Rafael—”

  But Rafael wasn’t looking at him. He was grinning at Lindy, a toothsome barmaid whose ample endowments were difficult to ignore even if a man were sober and bent on abstinence.

  “Ye want more, do ye, my fine lord?”

  “I’m not a lord, Lindy. I’m not an anything now. No, wait, that isn’t true. Hero needs me, won’t sleep without me, you see.”

  Rollo snorted and Flash’s fingers suddenly started itching. He didn’t understand it until he saw the prosperous-looking merchant come into the taproom with his bulging pockets. He forced his attention away from those bulging pockets back to his captain, and stuffed his itching fingers into his own breeches’ pockets.

  “Well, tonight you don’t need this Hero,” said Lindy, and poured him more brandy.

  Rollo snorted again, then clamped his lips shut. They’d managed to limp the damaged Seawitch into Falmouth harbor the previous day. She’d been crippled in a freak, very v
icious storm just a day beyond the Channel. Rollo guessed that Rafael, in addition to his other worries, wanted desperately to continue to St. Austell, to Drago Hall, but the papers he was carrying were bound for London, and according to Morgan, they were urgent. He looked at Rafael’s abstracted expression and knew the captain was trying his best to bury his unhappy thoughts in a brandy grave.

  “’Tis a comely man ye are, Cap’n. Aye, comely.” Lindy ignored both Rollo and Flash, her full attention on Rafael.

  “Balm for a man’s soul,” Rafael said, and downed the remainder of the brandy. “More balm, Lindy.”

  “It grows quite late, Captain,” Rollo said. “Flash is right; you should come back to the ship and—”

  “I suggest the both of you nursemaids take yourselves back to the Seawitch and sleep with that blasted cat.” He smiled vacuously up at Lindy. “I shall spend the night here in Beaufort’s very comfortable inn. It is comfortable upstairs, isn’t it, Lindy?”

  “Unbelievable comfort, Cap’n.”

  “There, you see?”

  Rollo threw up his hands.

  Flash withdrew his still-itching hands from his pockets and looked wistfully toward the steadily drinking, quite inattentive merchant. The urge to lighten the merchant’s pockets wasn’t as strong as it used to be, thank the powers. He’d be twenty in four months. Rafael had promised him that when he became twenty, all urges toward criminality would disappear. He believed Rafael implicitly.

  “Ye’re a divil, Cap’n,” said Lindy fondly. She ran light fingertips through Rafael’s thick black hair. “Aye, a divil.”

  Rollo rolled his eyes. “Come on, Flash, let’s get back. He’ll be all right.” The two men left the Blue Boar, the prosperous merchant, and their sodden captain.

  “He’ll be all right,” Rollo said again.

  “He might not be the divil,” said Flash, a gamin smile lighting up his thin face, “but he’ll feel the very divil tomorrow.”