Moonspun Magic Read Free Page A

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.
    Â 
    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. Thesteward 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 thefifteen-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