An Angel for the Earl (2 page)

Her father was coming. The magistrate had sent for him; Leon had sent for him. Leon did not love her; her father did not love her either, but he was her father. He'd take her home, where she could burn this gown and have a bath to rid herself of the stench of Leon and this place and the blood. Nanny would put something on her cut lip. But there was no reason for Sir Malcolm to see Leon or this second-rate inn or the blood. Sir Malcolm hated anything tawdry or unkempt, anything that did not fit into his orderly universe.

So Lucinda decided to go home. She was bound to meet up with her father on the road, and anything was better than staying here, with Leon upstairs. The blanket still around her shoulders in lieu of her cape, Miss Lucinda Faire walked out the unattended front door of the inn, gathered the reins of a horse left tied there in the excitement, mounted with the aid of a handy barrel, and rode into the pitch-black night.

* * *

The doctor was not hopeful. “She is badly concussed from the blow to her head when she fell off the horse, and then there is the congestion of her lungs from lying out in the cold all night and half the day. The most worrisome, however, is that your daughter has not regained consciousness for two days. I fear that the shock from the other, ah, unfortunate events have sapped her will to live. Coupled with the physical injuries, I cannot be optimistic in my prognosis.” The physician did order her hair cut, lest the heavy tresses drain what energy the poor girl maintained, and he did bleed her, to relieve the swelling. “That's all I can do, Sir Malcolm. If she does not wake up on her own…” He shrugged. “Now we can only pray.”

“Pray for the devil to claim his spawn,” Sir Malcolm muttered as he sent the doctor on his way.

Sir Malcolm never did ride toward the inn. When the captain's note was delivered, he sent his wife to search the girl's room. She'd packed a valise; no one came and forced her to run off with a blackguard extortionist. He tore up the note. When the messenger came from the magistrate, babbling about how Captain Anders was dead, his daughter Lucinda responsible, Sir Malcolm replied, “I have no daughter.” And when they brought her battered, frozen body home, he almost had them deliver her to the poorhouse or the church or the livery stable, he cared not which. Only his wife's whispered, “What will the neighbors think?” kept him from slamming the door on the poor fool of a magistrate who'd spent hours searching the countryside for the jade.

Lady Edwina looked at her husband across her daughter's still form in the big bed. “No one will have her now, not even Halbersham.”

“No matter, you heard the doctor. If she hasn't woken by now, she likely won't. If the fever does not carry her off, she'll waste away unless someone spoons sustenance into her. Likely a futile effort anyway,” he said. Sir Malcolm glared over at Lucinda's old nanny. “So we need not try too hard. Is that clear?”

Lady Edwina wrung her thin hands. “Oh, the shame of it all. There's no dressing this up in clean linen, not with half the county hearing about it already. What will I tell our friends?”

“Nothing. We simply won't receive anyone for the week or two this should take. Then we can go away.”

They left the darkened room, discussing the merits of Jamaica versus Greece. Only Lucinda's old nanny stayed behind, weeping.

Chapter Two

Kieren Somerfield, sixth and possibly last earl of Stanford, was a tidy person. He conscientiously wiped his Hessians on a faded Turkey runner in the marbled hall of Stanford House, Grosvenor Square, and carefully draped his caped greatcoat over the back of a Queen Anne chair that was missing an arm. Sweeping the lamp left burning there for him in an arc, he made sure everything in the grand entry was in order: no valuable pictures on the wall, no ornate candle sconces, no Chinese urns filled with hothouse flowers. Kerry shrugged his broad shoulders. Poverty as usual. He made his way to the study at the rear of the house, one of the few rooms in the mansion currently in use.

'Twas easier to keep clean this way, more considerate of Demby, his man-of-all-jobs, few-of-them-by-choice. The earl owed his only servant so many months' back wages, Demby must be staying on for room and board. That and the scarcity of positions for a groom whose hands shook so badly he took half a day to tack up a horse, or a valet so palsied 'twould be a death sentence to ask him to shave you. The neckcloths Demby tied more likely ended under the earl's ear, and his cooking more often landed on the kitchen floor than on the table. The man had sworn off drink, though, and did manage to get Stanford's clothes pressed, his mail delivered, his bed made up, the stable mucked out, and his watch redeemed from the jeweler when the dibs were in tune.

The earl hadn't known the hour for some weeks now. It was obviously time to get his life in order.

In his study Kerry rekindled the fire, then gathered scraps of paper from his desk, his drawers, his pockets. Fastidious as ever, he made neat stacks of the letters and notes.

The first pile was for tradesmen's bills, complete with dunning notices for payments in arrears: the grocer, the vintner, his clubs, a coal dealer. A great percentage of these bills were from the finest tailors, bootmakers, and hatters in London. The earl was very particular in his dress, particularly for a man with pockets to let.

The next bundle was for debts of honor. He smoothed out the crumpled notes from his pocket and penciled in some figures on others. These were gaming debts, vowels, chits—fortunes owed to other members of the sporting class. Since inheriting his father's honors, along with the fifth earl's debts and mortgages, Kerry had made his living by his wits. They'd gone begging, too. His horses were like to trip at the gate, aces seemed to have a magnetic attraction to his opponents, and the dice could be round, for all the mains he hit. Hell, these days if he wagered the sun would rise on the morrow, likely the world would end today. But somebody would be around to collect, he was sure.

He got up to pour himself a brandy from the decanter left on the mantel. When he got back, the stack of vouchers on his desk looked even taller. Taller than his own six feet, taller than a mountain. Kerry swallowed down his glass and tried, unsuccessfully, to recall if there was any gudgeon on earth who owed him money.

The next batch of papers were all official-looking documents. The earl did not need to read the letters from his bank enumerating his mortgages or the interest payments due. The bank wrote to him often enough that he had the figures memorized. As for his account balance, well, the bank did not waste postage when there was nothing to report. Downy birds, those banking fellows, his lordship thought, pouring another glassful. They watched every last groat.

The final pile consisted of letters, which took another brandy to open and read. His steward at his seat in Wiltshire reported two more of the few remaining tenants—and their rents—moved off to better-yielding lands, half the fall harvest lost to flooding, and the roof of Stanford Abbey itself about to collapse.

The dowager Lady Stanford, Kerry's loving mother, wrote a brief, affectionate letter in which she fondly recalled that Kerry's properties were in disrepair, the earldom was in danger of extinction, and his way of life was not conducive to a doting mama's mental well-being, but she was, as always, contributing what assistance she could. Of course, those were not the exact words she used. Hers were more like
gudgeon, popinjay,
and
wastrel,
with demands he marry an heiress posthaste, before she was forced to pawn her last piece of jewelry just to keep a roof over her aching head. And, by the way, she'd concluded, all of the housemaids had left because Aunt Clara was talking to Uncle Nigel again.

Uncle Nigel, his father's younger brother, had gone overboard on a fishing expedition when Kerry was barely seven, some twenty years ago, Aunt Clara was positive Nigel's spirit haunted Stanford Abbey, waiting for her to join him in the Great Beyond. As expected, Aunt Clara's letter was full of Uncle Nigel's advice and pronouncements: Nigel thinks the roof tiles can be repaired, Nigel thinks the south quarter fields can be drained into a ditch across the home woods. If Uncle Nigel knew so much, Kerry wondered, how come he never learned to swim? And why the deuce did he have to leave his widow without a feather to fly with? In Kerry's poor, dilapidated nest, no less.

Aunt Clara's final remark, that his mother was keeping company with a smuggler, he ignored. The Countess of Stanford and a personage called Goldy Flint? Even Kerry's befuddled mind rebelled at that notion. The woman was as queer as Dick's hatband, that was all. The two widows cordially loathed each other, giving Kerry another excuse to avoid visits to the ancestral pile, if overwhelming debts and impossible demands were not enough.

The papers were all neatly arranged, corner to corner across the desk. On the top of the piles of bills and notices the earl placed his assets: the last bottle of brandy, a handful of coins from his pocket, and some lint. He opened the bottom drawer of the desk. He had no way of repaying his debts, no stake to make another wager, nothing to send to keep the abbey from crumbling into dust. No heir, no hope. He did have his father's prized dueling pistols. Kerry tenderly placed one of the silver-sided Mantons in the exact center of the desk.

* * *

“Drat. He said this task was hard, not impossible.”

“Demby? Is that you, man?” The Earl of Stanford squinted into the shadows at the other end of the room.

“And I should have known better than to believe that devil. There isn't a male anywhere a girl can trust, living or dead.”

“Demby, if you've brought one of your dollymops into my study, I'll—” Kerry's words were cut off by a cough as his nose and throat were assailed by an awful stench. “Gads, something must have died in the chimney. I wonder if the sweeps will come on credit,” he muttered as he went to open a window. The smell of rotten eggs and boiling tar abated somewhat, mingling with London's usual rank odors. He took a deep breath of the cold night air to clear his eyes and his lungs—and his head.

“That's right, enjoy the cold now; it's the last you'll know for a long, long while if I can't do my job.”

Kerry spun around. There
was
a woman in the room, and what a woman. This wasn't one of Demby's barmaids either, not if he was any judge of the demimondaine. This luscious creature had to be one of the highest-flying birds of paradise on three continents. She was small, but shaped like a goddess, with flame-colored hair trailing down her back. The shimmering red-gold gown she wore was so sheer, he could see the nipples painted to match her lips and her nails and her toes. Gads, the brazen baggage was barefoot. Kerry licked his suddenly dry lips. “I am sorry,
chérie
—you'll never know how sorry—but I just cannot afford your services tonight. I do admire your, ah, initiative, though…”

“Afford my…?” She gasped, which served to lower the neckline of her gown into near nonexistence. “You think I'm a…Oh, my, I'll
never
succeed.”

“
Au contraire,
my dear, I think you'll be a bigger success than Little Harry. You could have every buck in London at your feet in a sennight, if that's your goal.”

“Well, it isn't. My assignment is to lead you to the path of righteousness!”

Kerry laughed till tears came to his eyes. “Congratulations, my dear. That's the cleverest remark I've ever heard come out of a whore's mouth.”

“I am not a…what you said, and this is not a laughing matter, my lord. Your whole life, for all eternity, could be decided tonight, and mine along with it. I just
have
to get you to renounce your life of sin.”

“You? Ma'am, I beg to tell you, you make a very unlikely evangelical. Why, you could lead the Archbishop of Canterbury straight to hell with one blink of those incredible green eyes.”

“Me? Drab little Lucinda Faire?”

“Fishing for compliments, are you? Drab? Have you looked at yourself recently?”

“Well, no. You see, I have this problem with mirrors. I can tell, however, that this dress is like nothing I've ever owned.” She ran her hands along the silky material over her thighs. His lordship didn't breathe again until she murmured, “It feels rather nice.”

Rather nice? Kerry swallowed, hard.

Lucinda was twirling one of those fiery curls in her hand. “And I am sure my hair was never so red, just a streaky kind of blond. And it never took a curl like this. It must be the heat.”

His lordship was fairly overheated himself, watching her. Before he grew too uncomfortable, he tried to get her to leave again. “This has been pleasant, miss, a truly novel approach, but I really have other business tonight, as I am sure you must also. If you would just come this way.”

Instead of following him toward the door, the female seemed to drift toward his desk. Her hand reached out for his pistol. “I killed a man, you know.”

By Zeus, she was a Bedlamite! What a shame, for such a beauty. She must be someone's mad relative escaped from confinement. Zounds, he didn't want to send her into hysterics by shouting for Demby. He didn't want to end up shot either. “Miss, please, come away from there. That's a very delicate mechanism.”

“Will you listen?”

“Yes, yes, anything.”

Lucinda stepped away from the desk, but floated gracefully out of his reach. “I did kill a man, truly,” she began, and started to tell Lord Stanford about how her parents were very strict, and how they had arranged her marriage to a crotchety old man.

“I'm sure they meant well,” he said, trying to hurry the tale along and not believing a word of it, or this whole bizarre occurrence. “The road to hell, you know. Paved with good intentions.”

“No, it's not. It's paved with rakes and libertines, reaching and grabbing and slobbering over you.” Then she told him about Captain Anders and the elopement with a sadness in her voice he couldn't help wishing gone. When she got to the part of how Anders confessed it was all a pack of lies to get her father's money, and how he wanted to ruin her to complete the plot, Kerry found himself wishing the bounder were still alive, so he could shoot him.

An actress, that's what she was, he decided, gathering his thoughts again, an incredible actress who almost had him believing that farrago of nonsense. She'd gone from seductress to lunatic to innocent child in a matter of moments. One of his friends must have hired her for his entertainment. Kerry smiled at the thought of what kind of entertainment was in store, if she was as talented in bed as she was in the drawing room. Then her words drew him back.

“So I hit my head. Now, for all intents and purposes, my father's especially, I am dead.”

“Dead? You mean you're a ghost?” Actress, he'd believe, prostitute definitely, but this was too much. She was back to being dicked in the nob.

“No, not exactly a ghost, since I'm not precisely dead yet. You see, things have been fairly slow at the Gates these days, what with the peace talks and the new smallpox inoculation, so they decided to hear my case before the fact, as it were.”

“They?” Kerry had heard one should always humor a madman. “What happened to St. Peter?”

“Oh, he took the pleasant job of welcoming new arrivals. He leaves the messy details of deciding who goes where for the women to handle. Typical male, don't you know.”

Kerry's mouth was hanging open by now. He could only repeat: “The women?”

“Oh, yes, they run everything. Anyway, St. Joan was there, and St. Ermintrude, and that Queen Medea for the opposition. But they couldn't decide. I
did
disobey my parents, and I
did
cause Captain Anders's death, directly or not.” She paused and looked down at the hands clasped in her lap. In a near whisper she confessed, “And I did know lust. I wanted him to kiss me, at first.”

“A kiss? You call that lust? Why, every red-blooded female—”

“So I was destined for hell,” Lucinda interrupted. “But I had led an exemplary life before then, and I was truly sorry Captain Anders was dead. I could not regret pushing him, of course, only the result of it. So the angels struck a bargain with the demonesses.” She looked up and smiled, showing perfect dimples. “I can go to heaven if I save you from hell.”