False Angel (24 page)

“But I thought,” Annabelle said, too amazed to feel more than the first faint stirrings of rage, “I thought you had a care for me.”

“Why, so I do child,” he replied, “have I not just shown it?”

“I thought,” she said, looking directly into his eyes, her own blazing, and her voice rising, for she was quick to recuperate from any shocks, “that you had a different sort of care for me.”

But then she saw something spark in those dark blue depths that sobered her, and she went on, in a smaller, quavering tone, “You led me on, Joscelin, you did. Money,” she said, brushing away the hand that still proffered the envelope, “is not what I expected from you. Indeed,” she said, trying for the highest stakes, for as any true gambler, she’d accept nothing less, “you insult me and what I thought we had for each other by offering such.”

“Ah, Belle,” he sighed, playing for time, for he had been afraid that she might think this, but hadn’t really expected her to voice it. Instead, he’d thought any objection she’d make would have to do with her finding some impropriety in taking money from him, and had only prepared arguments to convince her of the rightness of it. But honesty, he told himself, you promised yourself honesty this time, so he then said, as gently as he could,

“Belle, it’s true that I may have given you some expectations. And I apologize if that’s so. You were not entirely wrong, for I’ll confess there was a time when I didn’t know my own mind. But I do now.” He looked down into her drawn face and continued as sadly as though he were telling her of the death of a loved one, which in a sense, he realized with a certain pang, perhaps he was. “I like you very much, Annabelle. You are wise and your mind is a good, inquiring one, and I have delighted in communing with you. Yet, with all I feel for you, my dear, I do not love you. At least, not as one must love a wife. And you deserve more. I know you will someday find it,” he said quickly, aghast himself at the clichés he found himself taking refuge in uttering. “This check will help you to do so,” he concluded with relief.

She stood still, her head thrown back so she could meet his eyes, as motionless as an alabaster figurine. Then, as he began to wonder why she did not reply, she spoke. “You do not have to love me,” she said through tightly held lips.

He gave a small start. The conversation was taking on a nightmarish quality. It was true that he had shown her some attentions. He’d given her a book, seen to it that she was invited to a house party, and often kept her company. But a gentleman could send cartloads of flowers, invite a young lady to a dozen house parties as well as balls and fetes, sit with her through everything from dinner to the Opera, and make no offer without bringing shame upon himself or her. He might arouse expectations, but not disgrace, since society conceded that expectations were not promises.

He had not, after all, held her in anything but conversation, and had never met with her in secret, or ever intimately embraced her. He’d never even kissed her, as he’d been both embarrassed and oddly repelled at the mere idea of it.

It was Leonora he had compromised, and he’d already attempted to make proper reparation for it. But he scarcely knew what to say to this poor child, who was trembling with insult. It was true that he once entertained a notion to take her to wife, but only for the briefest time before he recognized the truth behind the impulse. He never guessed she might be enamored of him, and he was not insensitive to such matters. He thought her only eager for the sanctuary he could provide her; she’d never shown a hint of any warmer emotion, and he couldn’t believe it was only shyness which prevented her. There’d never been any of the evidences of love that could usually be detected, indeed, which could not be hidden, in her voice, or expression, or eyes. Even now, he doubted the validity of her emotions, and put it down to her inexperience with men.

“Belle,” he said, as he struggled with a sudden, sick sense of shame, for he felt as though he’d enticed a child, “please, understand. I’m in a position to know that love is most important in these matters.”

“It’s someone else you love then?” she demanded, still frozen in affront, still, he believed, wounded and stiff with rejection. He knew that feeling very well, and so said, as he had not thought he would, “Yes.”

And then, because he felt it might be less hurtful if she understood it was none of it her fault or brought about by any failing in herself, he said with a shrug,

“But much good it will do me, for she’ll have none of me, and she may well have the right of it. For we’ve never been able to remain at peace with each other beyond the turning of the tide. So I shall take myself off this summer and repair my estates, and then perhaps when autumn comes, if the world and the little Emperor permit, I’ll travel abroad for a time.

“I’m a shocking sort of fellow, really. I can’t seem to either stay in, or get into a marriage very successfully. Clearly, wedding cake is not my dish,” he commented wryly. “But come, Belle, accept the check,” he said more seriously, “for whether or not you can believe right now that it’s equally as much proof of my esteem for you as a wedding ring might be, and likely a much better bargain as well, I think when you reflect upon it, you’ll agree that there’s no real reason not to take it.”

But Annabelle had been standing arrested, thinking furiously, and when he’d done speaking, she opened her eyes very wide indeed, and cried out, as though she’d had some dazzling revelation, “Leonora! It’s been Leonora you’ve wanted all along, hasn’t it?”

And when he only smiled and shrugged again, since this was not a subject he wished to discuss with her, she accused, “But how could you? After all that I told you about her?”

“Well, there you are,” he sighed, stepping back a pace, leaving the envelope upon the table and spreading his hands in a gesture of defeat. “Now you see how narrowly you escaped. I’ve come to see that most of the polite world was right in their judgment of me. I must not be a very good fellow. For with all you’ve told me, I cannot dislike her, even though I know I ought. I cannot dismiss her from my thoughts, even though I suppose I’d rather.

“You tell me she’s cruel,” he said regretfully, “and I excuse it by thinking it only thoughtlessness. You say she berates you constantly, and I absolve it, thinking you are too sensitive. And though you tell me you’re abused, I see the pretty gowns you wear and am only relieved to see no bruises. There’s no help for it, Belle.

“It’s not just temptation and desire,” he explained, “they’re old companions, and I know their faces very well. No. I am entranced by her entirely. And I think, shall always be. Whatever else I am, unfortunately, I’m not quick to love, nor, believe me, despite my sordid marital history, am I swift to fall out of that love. I’m depressingly constant, whether the object of my affections deserves it or not. So you see, it’s to my worse credit that I still want her, and for the best that she refused me, and far better still that you’ll be free of us both.”

He gave Annabelle a self-mocking smile and was relieved to see her move at last and smile back at him. She shook her head as though in amused acceptance of an incredible fact. But when she spoke at last, his own smile faded.

“No,” she said softly, still shaking her head in denial, “no,” she said again, as though to herself, “it won’t do. No. I’m sorry, Joscelin,” she said, gazing up at him steadily, “but it’s far too late. You will marry me, you know. It would have been better had you offered, but it makes no difference, not really.”

She raised a hand to stop him from speaking, and as he watched, at first in incomprehension and then in appalled disbelief, she, still smiling, put her hand upon the top of her bodice and then, with one quick motion, tore it downward. The sound of the thin material being rent was as a small shriek in the quiet room. She quickly pulled the pins from her hair and sent the bright ribband tumbling with the shower of her light hair, which she shook around her face. And then, as one pale, pointed little breast rose clear from the ruins of her frock and he saw the thin red marks of her fingernails begin to appear on its milky white surface, she smiled, and said a little breathlessly,

“You see, Joscelin? Not even a great marquess can win free of this coil. No, the viscount won’t be able to ignore this attack even though I’m only his poor, distant, neglected relative. He’s just across the hall with Leonora, you see. And you just have time enough to think of how you’ll tell them I misunderstood when you became carried away with your lovemaking while making your offer. Or else, you’ll have to make that offer entirely in front of them—oh yes,” she urged him, as she saw his eyes, “attempt to still me, do. That will look even better. No? Then,” she went on in a sort of glad fury, “I shall scream now, I think.”

The marquess paled as Annabelle, giving him one last bright look, drew in her breath.

“Oh save your breath, my dear, and our ears, as well,” the viscount said lazily, rising from one of the tall wing chairs in the window niche. “And Leonora, you can take your hands from your ears now, it’s all over.”

“My poor lady there,” he continued, as he walked to the astonished couple by the long table, “she was in agonies of embarrassment when you walked in and began to speak, Joss. She was all for either announcing our presence or crawling out of the room on all fours, but I silenced her. I simply had to stay to listen. Occupational hazard, I fear,” he mused. “Cover yourself, child,” he said in a kindly aside to a dazed Annabelle as he shook the marquess’s hand. “You’ll take a chill with half your person falling out of your dress.”

“You were supposed to wait in the drawing room,” Annabelle breathed as she pulled the edges of her gown together. “You said you’d be there. You deceived me,” she wailed.

“Yes and no, my dear,” the viscount replied calmly. “I angled for a little fish and caught a whale. We left you a note telling you our direction, child, propped up on the mantelpiece in the drawing room. But we didn’t label it with your actual name,” he said gently, “we addressed it to ‘Our Dear Little Cousin.’ Yes,” he went on, seeing the dawning comprehension in her eyes, “it was a test. For if you saw ‘Annabelle’ or even ‘Greyling’ upon it, you’d know enough to have the butler or the housekeeper read it to you, as I’ve discovered you’d always done with all other such notes.”

The marquess closed his eyes, as though he’d received a blow. “Ah!” he said before he opened them to reveal the dark dismay reflected there. “Well, sir, have you any further revelations as to my idiocy?”

“No, I think I’ll allow Leonora that pleasure,” the older gentleman said simply, “although she was the one who passed hours reading Shakespeare and Blake to her cousin, without ever an inkling of anything amiss, not even when her cousin always had some different and creative excuse for not reciprocating. So I daresay she’ll not gloat too much at your obliviousness. Her credulity persisted to the point that she believed me mistaken when Annabelle stepped in here, and was about to apologize for the trick, when you came in.

“But then, I might never have twigged to Annabelle’s deficiency myself,” he said expansively, “if I hadn’t misread the title of that volume you gave her, and then was amazed to find her agreeing with my mistake. It seemed more than a polite gesture when she completely changed the name of a book to spare my feelings.”

“Actually,” he went on, “I’ve quite a dossier on my desk, ten closely written pages that I was prepared to show you if you’d been caught in her net. Our little Annabelle has been a very busy, very naughty little girl.”

Annabelle smiled as he shook his finger at her, for she was sensible enough to accept defeat, and just inhuman enough to be immediately prepared to see what she could salvage from the wreckage of her plans.

“In fact,” the viscount admitted, “I find myself rather grateful that she never considered politics amusing, for she’s got quite a flair for it, I think. There’s blackmail and extortion among other things in her interesting past. Come, my dear,” he said, turning his attention to Annabelle, “we’ll have the housekeeper fetch you a shawl, and then we’ve a great many things to discuss, you and I.”

“All right,” Annabelle said simply. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking back at the marquess with every evidence of deep regret, “that it didn’t work.”

After a moment in which everyone in the room paused, except for Annabelle, who was occupied with rubbing at the scratch marks on her breast, the marquess said quickly, “Well, then, I expect I’ll be going as well if you have no further need of me, sir.”

“I should think not,” the viscount said over his shoulder as he steered Annabelle into the hallway. “I should think you’ve some explaining to do yourself. For I believe I just heard you make an offer for my daughter, even though admittedly, you did make it to another female. It’s most irregular, and I’m not enough of a social arbiter to decide how it should be handled. But I’ll leave you to work it out with her.”

When the viscount left and closed the door behind him, Leonora at last stepped from the window enclosure and said immediately, and in very grieved accents as she twisted her hands together in her skirts, “Pray don’t listen to my papa, he has an odd sense of humor. You needn’t stay. I understand completely, I assure you. You said what you did to Belle to be free of her attentions. I quite understand.” She wore a simple blue afternoon frock, and her hair had not been dressed, rather it had arranged itself like a dark corolla about her expressive face. She looked, he thought, not only every bit as lovely as he’d remembered her in all his thoughts this past week, but also extraordinarily fresh and vivid, perhaps even more so in contrast to the cold, wan child who had just attempted to ruin his life.