Fallen Angel (16 page)

His words in some small measure seemed to have a conciliatory effect. Deveryn removed himself from the doorway and allowed Malcolm to pass. But his only comment was, "We shall see you safely on your way."

Under Deveryn's hard stare, Malcolm's fingers fumbled when tightening his mount's girth, and to Maddie's nervous flow of conversation, he replied in terse monosyllables. He thought, rather resentfully, that Deveryn's hauteur was a trifle excessive. But he assumed that the viscount saw himself in some sort as standing in the role of Maddie's guardian. The thought mollified him slightly.

When he rode out, he turned in the saddle and gave them both a small, stiff salute. Maddie waved back, and after a moment lifted her skirts to tread the path back to the house.

Deveryn's hands clamped on her shoulders. "Not so fast. You have some explaining to do," and he wrenched her round to face him. "Your conduct is inexcusable."

"Look to your own conduct!" she shot back, struggling to break free of his painful hold.

He turned her in his arms so that the light from the stable lamp illumined her features. He studied her angry expression for a moment, and then he said calmly, "Cynthia quite deliberately set out to cause trouble between us tonight. She is a clever, devious woman. She is also beautiful, and knows how to use that beauty to ensnare men. In an unguarded moment, my interest was caught, but only for a moment. I can't promise you that I shall never look at other women again, Maddie. But I swear that when I do, it shall be from a distance."

Irrationally, the one thing that her mind fastened on was the fact that he had called her stepmother "beautiful." Her own claim to distinction, supposing she had any, was in the breadth of her education but she did not think that Deveryn, or any man for that matter, would be impressed if he should learn that her command of Greek literature and philosophy was considered exceptional.

"If Cynthia is clever," she scoffed, "I must be a genius."

He laughed. "That's better," he said.

"What's better?"

"It gratifies my vanity to know that I am not the only one to be eaten by jealousy. But have a care, Maddie. You came within a hairsbreadth of having your pretty little neck wrung this evening. If I hadn't felt myself in some sort to blame for bringing your anger down upon my head, Moncrieff would be nursing a sore jaw or worse on his ride home tonight and you would be foregoing your morning gallop across the sands for a good sennight or more."

"Don't," she said between her teeth, "impute to Malcolm and me the depravity of your own relationship to my stepmother."

He kissed her then. It was almost inevitable that he would. He had some vague idea of offering her reassurance. But when his lips touched hers it was like flashfire—the spark to dry tinder, an instant, explosive conflagration flaring out of control.

He had found her in the arms of another male, and the spectacle had unleashed some dark and sinister emotion, some primeval drive that was not to be denied. With lips, tongue, hands,' and body easily breaching her defences, he ground himself into her, branding her as his woman, claiming her as his mate. More than anything, he wanted to tumble her there, in the orchard, and enter her body, possessing her fully, irrevocably binding her to him. That the instinct was purely primitive in nature, he did not doubt.

Maddie could no more resist that fierce onslaught than she could resist a raging whirlpool. As if she were drowning, sucked into the dark, turbulent depths of his passion, she clung to him. In some dim recess of her mind, she understood the origin of his need to dominate her senses. Her own instincts took over. He belonged to her. She would make it so. Moulding her softness to his hard body, offering everything that was feminine in her to this maleness, unconsciously, she enticed him to do more.

Deveryn felt her surrender all through his body, and a fierce masculine exultation swept through him. Only then did he wrench himself from the embrace. For several moments, he stood motionless, visibly controlling himself. Maddie turned her face into the lapels of his coat.

When he finally had command of his breathing, he said, "Nothing is going to stand in the way of our coming together. You know that as well as I do. Deny it if you can."

She shook her head mutely.

He tilted her head back, framing her face with both hands. "Maddie, I wish we'd met under different circumstances, no truly," and he placed his thumbs against her lips when she made to argue with him. "What's done is done, and an ocean of regret won't wash out one moment of it. But don't ask me to regret Cynthia. If there had been no Cynthia, there would have been no reason for me to come to Drumoak. And if I had not come to Drumoak, how should I have found you?"

His hands slid down her arms till his fingers laced with hers. "You're shivering. This is really not the time or place to settle things between us. We'll talk everything out tomorrow."

She could not know what it cost him to let her go. He wondered at his own self-restraint and decided wryly that their nuptials could not come too soon for his comfort. To touch her, to kiss her, was to put himself to a test he had never before experienced with any other woman. It was a test he did not think he could safely weather again.

It was the heady perfume of roses, sweet and pervasive, which alerted Maddie to the presence of the other woman in her bedchamber. She was in her nightclothes, in the act of selecting a suitably dark frock for the day ahead, when the lingering fragrance of apples from the open clothes press was gradually overlaid by a stronger, less pleasant aroma. Maddie turned her head.

"Cynthia!"

Her stepmother stood just inside the door. Though the sky had long since lightened to dawn outside the window, and a lone candle burned resolutely on the mantlepiece, dark shadows still hovered in the corners of the room. Even so, Cynthia's elegance and beauty were clearly evident.

"May I sit down?" she asked, and at Maddie's mute nod, glided to the stool beside the dressing table.

Maddie's eyes narrowed on the elaborate coiffure of dark glossy ringlets which framed a perfectly oval face, and she wondered, with a stab of envy, how it was possible for a woman to appear so consistently without a hair out of place. Selfconsciously, she ran one careless hand through her short crop of curls and regretted, not for the first time, that papers and hot tongs could never induce her own wilful locks to lie just as she desired.

"Do sit down," said Cynthia.

The softly spoken command acted on Maddie like a douse of cold water. She became conscious that she had been staring, and a sudden warmth suffused her cheeks.

"Th-thank you," she managed, and obediently seated herself at the foot of the unmade bed, then was furious with herself for allowing the older woman to act on her as if she had been a tongue-tied miss just out of the schoolroom. She strove to compose herself.

"How old are you Maddie?"

"Nineteen."

"You seem younger."

Maddie felt the other woman's critical scrutiny, and she pulled the edges of her dressing-gown closer together. She did not take her stepmother's comment for a compliment, and she remained silent.

"I can give you ten years, you know," Cynthia continued.

"So I understand," Maddie responded, and a flicker of warning passed over her when she observed the smile, so patently solicitous, which touched Cynthia's cold lips.

There was an awkward pause, and Cynthia's eyes roved the room, coming to rest on the small miniature which hung above the cluttered lady's writing table. It was a portrait of Maddie's mother. She contemplated it for a few moments longer before turning her gaze on Maddie.

"Your father wanted me to be a mother to you. I'm afraid I never did have any talent in that area. Pity. But I don't believe in repining for the impossible. You never would have accepted me, you know."

"True. My mother's place could never have been filled by another woman." The foolish hope, at fourteen years, that her father's young bride would have made a friend of her was long forgotten.

"Then how fortunate that I never made the attempt." The retort was etched with amusement.

"I presume," said Maddie coldly, "that there is some point to this conversation?"

"I'd forgotten what a straightforward girl you are. 'Frank to a fault' your father used to say. The point I am making is this: you are sorely in need of a mother's guidance at this moment." A lift of one hand silenced Maddie's protest. "You aunt is an estimable woman, I don't doubt. But her experience of the world is sadly limited. Little as I relish the role, it falls to me to give you a word of warning."

At this point, Cynthia hesitated, and Maddie queried with mock politeness, "Yes? In your role as a woman of the world, you have some gem of wisdom to impart to me?"

There was an edge to Cynthia's quick reply. "Take my advice. Stick to young puppies like Malcolm. Deveryn is a predator. He devours little lambs like you for breakfast."

"If I'm not mistaken," said Maddie, parrying the thrust and lunging in her turn, "the viscount means to offer for me."

Cynthia's stricken look, quickly masked, was not lost on Maddie, but it did not bring the surge of triumph she might have expected. For some inexplicable reason, her ire was all for the absent Deveryn.

Cynthia took a few moments to consider Maddie's shocking revelation. When she spoke, her voice was soft, not scathing, not incredulous, but quietly persuasive.

"That it would be a triumph for you, I don't deny. A man of Deveryn's rank and fortune is expected to choose his consort from one of the noble houses of England. You would be the envy of other women. That goes without saying. But ask yourself, Maddie, whether or not you would be happy."

"Why shouldn't I be?"

"Come now! You're surely not such a green girl. In plain terms, your place in his life would be negligible; your purpose merely to provide the heir to continue his line. You would be one among many. I don't doubt that for the moment his palette is whetted by your . . . innocent appeal. That will soon pass. The appetites of such a man are soon sated. My dear, you would be miserable."

Cynthia had touched Maddie on a raw nerve. She knew that her experience of men was negligible. And never, in her short life, had any gentleman remotely resembling the worldly viscount come within her orbit. She had witnessed, only the night before, how easily he had been seduced by her stepmother. That he held a powerful attraction for Maddie also, as she did for him, was not in question. When he touched her, she could not think straight. But she wanted so much more. To be just one among many was not to be thought of.

Besides, nothing of any real significance had changed. She had sworn, wildly and a little hysterically perhaps, to be revenged on the man who had wronged her father. Having

come to know Deveryn as a real person, she knew that she could no longer execute that design. Nevertheless, to be on intimate terms with the man who had driven her father to such lengths—she still harboured the suspicion that he had taken his own life—she knew could never sit well with her conscience. But she was not about to tell her stepmother so.

"Your concern for my welfare is most gratifying, though perhaps a trifle belated. You may be sure that I shall give your words the consideration they deserve," and she rose to her feet as if to indicate that the interview was at an end.

Cynthia was not to be dismissed so easily. She too rose to her feet. The curl on her mouth was clearly contemptuous. "Imagine yourself in Deveryn's milieu! Have you forgotten that you were like a fish out of water when you were last in London? Your manners and conduct may do very well for this provincial backwater, but I make no doubt that in polite society you would be considered farouche—an object of ridicule. Deveryn would soon come to his senses, to his great regret!"

The sneer in Maddie's voice matched exactly the older woman's tone. "That's as may be. But do you, dear stepmama, think yourself better fitted for the role of the viscount's wife? Or perhaps you don't aim so high? Are you reconciled to your place? As I hear tell, in spite of your ambitions, you've never climbed higher than his bed."

Cynthia's eyes narrowed. "So," she said consideringly, "your father told you about Deveryn and me."

Maddie did not deny it, but she was sorry that she had revealed so much. She remained silent.

After a moment, Cynthia shrugged philosophically. "It's as well that you know. Jason may want you for his wife, but it's to me that he will turn when boredom sets in. Think on it Maddie." Her smile was taunting. "The pleasure would be all mine."