Fallen Angel (36 page)

"You'll have your chance to quiz him later in the week," said Lady Mary, studiously involved in stirring the silver spoon in her teacup. "He's to be at a small house-party my mother has arranged at our country estate in Oxfordshire. As I understand, your grandfather has accepted an invitation on your behalf."

Maddie was quite overwhelmed at this signal honour. She scarcely knew Lady Mary, yet the girl was cultivating her acquaintance. Her pleasure could not have been greater if she had been invited to Carlton House by the Prince Regent himself.

It was her first glimpse of Dolly Ramides which robbed her of her newfound equilibrium. She had been prevailed upon by Lady Elizabeth Heatherington, she who was known as "The Toast," to go riding in Hyde Park at the fashionable hour of five o'clock in the afternoon. Although the girl was an acknowledged beauty, Maddie could detect no affectation in her, and she did not hesitate to accept the invitation. Like Maddie, the girl sat her mount as if she'd been born in the saddle and complained of the decorous pace and the two grooms who kept a wary eye on their charges. It amused Maddie to see the court which Miss Heatherington attracted, an honour she was given to understand the young lady heartily despised. It seemed that they could not walk their horses a few paces before they were halted by some admiring beau or other.

And then, just as suddenly, they were deserted. The throng of admiring cicisbeos showed the two ladies their heels as they spurred their mounts across the turf to a dashing phaeton which had drawn up at their approach. The sole occupant of the carriage was young, strikingly beautiful, and so elegantly attired that Maddie, in her spanking new chocolate brown riding habit, felt suddenly like a little brown wren.

"Well!" exclaimed Miss Heatherington in affronted accents. "Those beastly fribbles! There's only one thing you can depend upon in the male animal and that's his monumental inconstancy!"

"She's very beautiful," murmured Maddie. "Do you know her?"

The beauty tossed her head. "I know her. You might say that she is my counterpart in the demi-monde."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Dolly Ramides. She's an opera singer, and as I hear, the toast of that other world in which our menfolk are so much at ease but to which we ladies are not privy. She's Deveryn's lightskirt. I'll wager that that phaeton cost him a pretty penny or two. We should be grateful to Miss Ramides. She makes an excellent diversion. What do you say we put these sway- backs through their paces and damn the consequences?"

"I'm game," declared Maddie, suddenly reckless.

It was wasted exercise as the two girls later agreed. The mounts which their respective guardians' grooms had seen fit to provide for them could easily have been outrun by any old lumbering Clydesdale straight off the farm.

"A tortoise could have shown a better leg than this old slug," complained Maddie to Duncan as she slapped the reins into his hands before stomping into the .house.

But her temper, she knew, was not ignited by anything so paltry. Deveryn had done this to her. Fickle, fickle Deveryn! He might at least have had the decency to wait till the irregularity of their situation was sorted out. She was glad that their marriage had been kept secret, else she would have been the laughingstock of the town! Insufferable man! If she never saw him again, it would be too soon for her. When she found her thoughts speculating on what the viscount might have been up to in the month since she had seen him, she lost patience with herself.

There was plenty to occupy her, and for the day or so that remained before her departure for Oxfordshire, she spent every spare minute working on the paper Lady Rutherston was to give at the next meeting of the Bluestocking Brigade. She found numerous examples in her reading to support Catherine's thesis that the lot of women in classical Greece was not a happy one, and not substantially different from the unhappy fate of the women of her own class and era. Her studies did nothing to lesson her ire with her so-called "husband."

It was with something akin to relief that she greeted the day of her departure for Oxfordshire. Lady Mary and her husband, Mr. Branwell, collected Maddie in their own comfortable carriage. The drive down was uneventful, though pleasant, the countryside rather drab as was to be expected for February. She thought Oxfordshire rather pretty, but nothing to write home about. She hoped that one day she might say as much to Deveryn.

The Rossmere's house, on the other hand, quite bowled her over. She had seen grander houses, but nothing to compare with it in charm and comfort. The room which was assigned to her could not have pleased her more. French doors gave onto a pretty wrought iron balcony, very small and of little use in winter, but in the summer months she could imagine it filled with crocks of flowers. She thought the influence probably Italian. A Romeo and Juliet balcony, she decided. But wonder of wonders was the door to the right of the French windows which gave onto a small closet with its own tiny window high on the wall. Here was housed an elaborately carved mahogany commode. Under the lid, she discovered the ubiquitous chamber pot. Nothing in the house was ever to impress Maddie as much as this one small indication of gentility. At Drumoak, the chamber pot .was kept under the bed. In her grandfather's house in Curzon Street, each bedroom had a commode which was sheltered by a silk screen. But this—this was luxury on a scale she had never imagined.

The rest of the house, what little she saw of it before Retiring, pleased her almost equally as well. She thought that a week in such pleasant surroundings would prove an agreeable respite from the woes that plagued her. In her mind's eyes, she consigned to perdition the men who sought to order her life— Deveryn, her grandfather, and, in some unspecified way, even her father. She went to bed with an easy mind for the first time in weeks and tumbled quickly into sleep.

When she descended the stairs the following morning, her step was light, her smile sunny. She was neither surprised nor dismayed to learn that she was the first to be up and about. At Drumoak, she'd been accustomed to being out on the links with Banshee before the house stirred. A footman directed her to the stable block. She hummed a little tune under her breath as one of the grooms led out a gentle-eyed chestnut with a flash of white between her ears. Until she proved her mettle, Maddie knew she would rate only the most docile mounts for her enjoyment. One did not argue with one's host's head stud- groom. She thanked him prettily, and decorously used the mounting block to hoist herself onto the mare's back, then waited demurely till an undergroom led out his own mount.

"Flash," as the little mare was predictably named, might not have been the equal of Banshee in stamina and speed, but oh! it was glorious to feel the motion of the mare beneath her and hear the pounding of hoofbeats against turf as they sped across the wide expanse of parkland. Only the roar of the sea in her ears could have improved on what was almost perfection.

Up and up they raced toward their goal: Duncairn at the summit of the broad and fertile valley of the Rossmere estate. They slowed to traverse the home wood, then Maddie gave her mount its head as they crested a series of gentle rises, swiftly approaching the stone cairn which marked the summit. The wind in her face, the smooth motion of her mount, the sunshine beating on her back, all combined to make Maddie forget that she was in unfamiliar territory. As Flash's long limbs stretched out to crest the final rise, Maddie did not think to slacken her pace. She heard the groom's warning shout at her back. Almost simultaneously, she saw the low wall of a ruin dead straight ahead. Too late to rein in, she dug in her heels and prepared to make the jump. Flash decided otherwise. The mare plunged and stamped and came to a sudden quivering halt and Maddie went sailing over her mount's head to the other side of the wall.

Strong arms gripped her shoulders. "You little idiot! Don't you know better than to go charging blindly into the unknown?"

She knew that she was dazed. The groom's rough voice sounded remarkably like Deveryn's. She blinked up at him.

Strong fingers moved over her limbs, testing for broken bones. "For God's sake, say something."

There could be no doubt. The voice belonged to Deveryn. She tried to speak, but the fall had winded her. When the air finally rushed into her lungs, she said weakly, "She's no hunter, is she?"

He laughed, a sound of mingled relief and exasperation. He hauled her to a sitting position and propped her against the wall. "Wait here," he ordered.

His instructions were redundant. Maddie was too sore to do more than breathe, and even that was painful. When he returned, her eyes were closed and her head lolled back against the stone wall.

"Sweetheart!" he said urgently. "Say something."

She opened her eyes slowly and felt the cool of his wet handkerchief as he bathed her face.

"What happened to the groom?" she rasped out.

"I relieved him of his duty almost as soon as you left the stable yard. You never once looked back to see who was following you."

He bathed her face with almost lover-like tenderness. By degrees, Maddie came to herself. Breathing became easier, her thoughts clearer. She struggled to free herself of his clasp.

"Don't tell me you're one of the guests for this house party?" she groaned.

He sat back on his haunches, studying her. It was evident she had suffered little hurt from the tumble she had taken. The softened expression grew harder.

"No, I live here," he said.

She looked at him blankly for a long, unfocused moment.

"Dunsdale, as I may have told you, is the family seat of the Earls of Rossmere."

He could almost see her mind making connections as first disbelief, then doubt, and finally comprehension illumined her dark eyes.

"Then Lady Mary is . . ."

"My sister," he finished for her.

"And this is all a . . . hoax—a ploy to get me here?"

"Not exactly. I arranged for you to be included on the guest list. Everything else is just as you surmise."

She'd thought for an awful moment that they were to be the only two people on the estate.

He rightly interpreted the relieved expression and said dryly, "I only wish! For what I have to say to you, madam wife, is not for the tender ears of gentlefolk." His voice rose to a roar. "You damn well deserted me! And that I should have to resort to subterfuge to get my own wife under my own roof is beyond anything! I knew you would not come at my invitation. And you can wipe that look of martyred innocence from your face! I have every right to be angry with you, and you know it."

Though she flinched, she said with only a barely perceptible tremor, "Whether or not I am your wife is debatable. Furthermore, I did not desert you. I had no choice but to obey my grandfather's summons since you warned me that our marriage should be kept secret, or don't you remember?"

"Gammon! You could have delayed till I returned from Edinburgh. You could have left a note. You were punishing me for Cynthia."

She was struggling to her feet, pushing away his hands as he made to help her. Her voice came back to her in full force. "I'm not punishing you, Deveryn, I'm severing the relationship. Those marriage lines aren't worth the paper they're written on, and you know it."

"We sealed the bargain with our bodies, or had you forgotten? That means we truly are married." His voice was dangerously quiet.

"Piffle! If that were so, you would be married to half the ladies in London! Yes, and the ones who aren't ladies either."

She caught the slight widening of his eyes, and the hint of a snarl behind the teeth bared in a grin.

"You're addiction to hyperbole would be laughable if it weren't so vulgar. No one has ever accused me before of being a womanizer."

"Before what, Deveryn? Before Grantham?" she recklessly challenged. Damn! She hadn't wanted him to know that his tryst with another woman affected her with anything stronger than bored indifference.

He surveyed her for a long moment through narrowed eyes. "It never ceases to amaze me how you gently bred girls contrive to pick up any dirt that is going. What have you heard?"

She didn't want to talk about it. What she wanted was a warm bath and a hot toddie and Janet's shoulder on which to cry. But the wall was behind her and Deveryn blocked her line of escape. His hands clamped on her shoulders.

"I got it from an eye witness," she blurted out.

"Who?" His fingers tightened on the soft flesh of her arms.

"From Duncan. He was there, at the Falcon. You should be grateful to him, you and what's her name, Dolly Ramides? He stopped two of them before they could tear you apart. Don't worry! I've warned him in future not to interfere in what doesn't concern him."