False Angel (25 page)

“It’s nothing to do with your father,” he said. “I was leaving because I didn’t think you’d want to look at me, much less speak with me, after our last encounter. But I think it only fair for you to know,” he put in quickly before she could speak, “that I’d planned to begin to insinuate myself into your life in these next weeks.

“If you were going to stay in Town, I’d have found so many excuses to visit your father every day that the poor gentleman would have thought I’d run mad. Either that, or he’d have to believe that there was such a sudden influx of suspicious foreign nationals I wanted his advice about that they were thronging the streets and piling up outside my door. And I’d have run you to earth so often in Hatchard’s and at the library that you would have had to become as illiterate as Annabelle to escape me.”

But she winced when he said “Annabelle,” so he went on rapidly, “If you went home to the country, I’d have employed more drastic measures. It’s as well your father spoke up, since I’d have disliked laming a horse just to get entry to your house. Leonora,” he said, “Nell. I came back to Town to say good-bye to your cousin and all her hopes. I had hopes of my own, you see. But I remember, indeed, I can scarcely forget, that I am a divorced gentleman. If that is what distressed you when I last offered, and still does, I shall leave right now, and understand.”

“I’d never refuse you for that!” Leonora blurted, “not when that was what attracted me to you in the first place. That is to say,” she said, miserably aware that her reaction to him was causing her to misspeak herself again, “I admired you for it. I did,” she insisted, seeing one dark eyebrow shoot up. “It occurred to me then that you were the least hypocritical man in society. For you refused to live a double life as so many gentlemen do, and chose the harder, yet more honorable path, in spite of all the hardships it caused for you.”

“Ah Nell,” he sighed, understanding a great deal not only from the conviction in her ringing words, but from her flushed face and shining eyes. Though the Marquess of Severne might have been duped by a pale little female, he had often served his country admirably as an excellent spy.

He’d survived by his wits before when his life had been at stake, and now there was something at risk which he valued above that. So he paused to frame an answer for Leonora with as much care as if he faced an assassin with a primed pistol, for he knew her to be armed with a few words that could annihilate his future.

He remembered that the Viscount Talwin was famous among his gentlemen friends as a fellow with a roving eye. And though the viscount was sometimes affectionately mocked by those same gentlemen for his notoriously absurd taste in female companionship, he was no less admired for all that. But that was the gentlemen, and that was their way. Watching the viscount’s daughter make her impassioned speech on hypocrisy and a double life, Joscelin thought it no great feat to venture a guess as to the reason for it.

He answered her at last in soft, sad tones. “Nell, believe me, there was nothing particularly brave or noble in what I did. Were it only a matter of not getting on with my wife, I would doubtless have stayed in the union anyway and suffered it, as so many others do. I’d like your admiration, but I’d like to earn it. In this, there was no merit. I’m only a man who couldn’t live an impossible lie.”

“Father told me of your circumstances,” she said, “and it’s only a matter of degree, isn’t it? After all,” she said, smiling, “what would be a possible lie?”

“Any one that I did not have to tell you,” he answered. The room grew still, and he looked at her so intently, and her dreams seemed so suddenly possible after all her recent fears, that perversely, she doubted the truth of her perceptions.

“Nell,” he asked softly then, “this is very important. If you wish me to leave, I shall. And I’ll not be back, I promise, for I’d never plague you. But I’ve been remembering you all this past week. I cannot believe I only imagined what I saw in your eyes, and felt upon your lips. Nell, for the last time, shall I stay?”

“Please,” she asked anxiously, “don’t feel that you must say these things because you admire my papa, or because you still think you compromised me. You really scarcely know me, you know,” she added nervously.

“Oh do I not?” he demanded, relaxing, and dropping his air of tense watchfulness. He crossed his arms and asked challengingly, “Mercutio is your favorite character in
Romeo and Juliet,
is he not?”

“Why, yes,” Leonora admitted, “but please believe that my papa will understand if you leave now as—”

“And,” he asked, stepping closer to her, “William Blake is one of your favorite poets? And baroque music is one of your chiefest delights even as
Richard Third
is your favorite play?”

“Why, yes,” Leonora breathed, amazed. But the look in the marquess’s eye was so startling that she stepped back the pace he’d come forward. It hardly mattered. For he scooped her up into his arms and, looking down into her dark troubled eyes, gently smoothed the hair back from her brow.

“I’m so glad,” he sighed when she did not attempt to break free. “I couldn’t believe that I was such a fool as to fall completely in love with a woman who only excited my every sense and who merely made me yearn to make love to her each time that I saw her. Although,” he breathed, as he brought his lips closer to hers, “that is not so terrible a thing, I think.”

When he at last had regained enough poise and control to look into her eyes again, they were unfocused and smoky with desire. “You turned me down once,” he whispered as he held her tightly, as if to dare her to attempt to leave him now, “but then I deserved it, because I lied to myself and to you. And my only excuse is that Belle’s lies made me feel an idiot for continuing to want you. Then too, I think I tried to pretend I was forced into what I really desired, to quiet my own fears and trick myself into happiness.”

He paused, and then said, all at once, with no trace of laughter, “I want you, Nell, don’t make me plead for you.” He was so serious, his face so suddenly still, and he wore such a look of anxious entreaty that Leonora was appalled that she might cause him pain.

“What do you want me for?” she replied softly.

“Don’t be coy,” he said on a note of despair, “although doubtless I deserve it. I want you for your wit, and your beauty, and your—”

“No, no,” she said at once, horrified, putting her finger across his lips to silence the flattery. “I meant, be plain with me, please. Do you want me for your mistress? For your lover? Perhaps only for—”

“Nell!,” he growled, shaking her none too gently, “I want you for my wife.”

“Oh good,” she sighed as he felt her relax in his arms, “I had to be sure, you see. I was so afraid I’d have to tear this dress. And it’s a particular favorite of mine.”

“Wretch,” he laughed as he saw where she lay her hand, on the top of the low bodice of her frock. “But don’t bother,” he whispered as his hand covered hers and her eyes widened, “for I shall be delighted to do it for you.”

SIXTEEN

The young woman sat alone in the luxuriously appointed carriage. She kept one hand on the strap by the window to prevent her swaying as they rode over the narrow, bumpy country road. She watched the sheep and hedgerows that they passed with a slight smile upon her lips, but when the carriage halted and the door swung open and the gentleman came in, her smile grew wider still.

After planting a tiny kiss upon the tip of her nose as a greeting, he sat beside her, and as the coach started up again, he took her hand in his and said,

“I’ve your father’s full permission to accompany you, alone, for the remainder of the journey. But as that’s only an hour or so more, it’s hardly a boon. Still,” he said consideringly, “remembering what you were capable of achieving in a deserted library in far less time, I’m hoping you’ll look upon these moments in a swaying carriage as a challenge.”

She said nothing, but smiled at him so warmly that this time he took far more than her hand in his. Yet, when he raised his lips from hers, he muttered a most unloverlike, “Damnation.”

He sighed and then asked, “Are you as sorry as I am that we aren’t wed, Nell? I haven’t heard you railing against fate, and now and again I get the uneasy notion that you don’t mind, that perhaps you’ve changed your mind.”

When her lips were free again, Leonora drew back from the kiss she’d instantly given him. She looked into the softened, bemused face of the marquess and said simply, “No, I don’t mind in the least. For, as I calculate, we shall be wed in precisely five days, six nights, and four and a quarter more hours.”

“Thank you,” he murmured, brushing his lips against the back of her hand. “A chap needs a bit of reassurance sometimes, you know. Confound your sister Sybil,” he breathed without heat, as he studied the great sapphire on the finger of the hand he held, turning it to the light.

“No, there was truth in what she said, Joss. If we wed precipitously from St. George’s in the heart of Town, then everyone would suspect our haste. Better that we marry from home, among our friends, and when word gets back to Town, it will only be that it was a summer wedding,” she said, losing her calm assured tone at the last as she watched those well-shaped lips linger at her fingertips.

“Ah well,” he sighed, “if she believes that a marriage contracted by the infamous Marquess of Severne, attended by all his fell companions, with the Duke of Torquay as his best man, will go unremarked, I shall not argue with her. Though I can’t shake the unnerving idea that the news may eclipse that of Bonaparte’s recent rout in certain circles. He’s only a Frenchman, after all, and can’t be expected to know better, while we’re home-grown villains. Still, I suppose she’s the right of it,” he added with a bitter wrench to his lips. “Since you’re marrying a fellow with such a shocking reputation, we must, of course, avoid all extraneous talk.”

“Don’t forget, you’re marrying a lady with a shocking reputation too,” she interrupted, for she could scarcely bear it when his face assumed that cold, troubled look. “What was it Papa said when you asked if he objected to his daughter’s marrying a divorced gentleman? Ah yes. ‘And you met her in a brothel once, I’ve been told,’ ” she mimicked in uncanny replication of her father’s laconic tones. “ ‘Clearly, my lad, you two deserve each other.’ ”

He laughed, just as she’d wished, but then said with the merest trace of uneasiness, “I worried about that, too, you know. No really, Nell, until I discovered that your anxiety to be quit of London those years ago was because of your opinion of modern marriage, I’d sometimes wondered if those few moments at Mother Carey’s mightn’t have alarmed or influenced you unduly.”

“Well!” she huffed with every evidence of annoyance, as she sat bolt upright. “We haven’t attempted anything that athletic, not to mention comprehensive, but I’d like to know if I’ve given you any cause for complaint as yet. Are you changing your mind, Joss? Getting cold feet? No,” she said, suddenly serious, staving him off with two hands against his chest. “Truly, Joss, have you any worries about it, is there a deficiency in me? No, tell me first, before you show me.”

“I’ll tell you,” he said with more than a hint of threat in his eyes, “that the only deficiency is in your reason if you can’t see that I should have to be dead for a week before my feet grew that cold. And my only worry is that you’ll come to your senses before I manage to securely wed you. And that you’ll damage your arms if you don’t employ them more intelligently. Yes, like that.”

After a long while, Leonora raised her head a fraction from his shoulder. The sky was just beginning to take on the paler, thinner look of twilight. “Joss?” she said softly.

“Yes?” he replied, smiling, called back from some happy thought of the future.

“I really thought you were going to marry her,” she murmured, and he didn’t ask who, for they neither of them could yet easily speak her name, but she could feel his muscles tighten beneath her cheek.

“If I had to go to the Indies for the rest of my life, I would not have,” he said grimly.

“Oh, I know that now,” she said, “but, you see, I thought she was so beautiful, so delicate, so lovely. I don’t know if you can understand it, but she looked so ethereal, and I felt, have always felt, so earthbound. She was light, and fair and dim, and I, so dark and ... Ah, how can I explain it? Poets sing about her sort of looks, Joss.”

“Do they?” he asked casually, although he knew this was important to her, and was thinking on it deeply. “Well,” he said carefully, “I wouldn’t know about that. Consider Shakespeare.”

“Oh Joss,” she laughed, “if you quote that sonnet about his dark mistress, the one about her hair being nothing like the sun, but being like dark wires or some such, I’ll shout for my papa to come and drag you away. It’s a nice bit of verse, but although it’s the opposite of what he intended, I’ve always considered it lowering to a dark lady’s spirits.”

“I wasn’t thinking of it at all,” he smiled, for he’d been doing his homework, “rather I was remembering what he had a certain favorite of yours named Mercutio say. Don’t you recall?” He laughed. “Why, when he talks about what ails his friend Romeo, he says of his infatuation with Juliet, ‘... He’s already dead: stabbed with a white wench’s black eye.’ I know precisely how he felt,” he added, delighted with the soft, wondering look that came over her face.

“Well!” he eventually paused to breathe, after she had done showing him how much she appreciated his taste in literature and lovers. “I shall have to tell Sybil at once. The gossip was all true. What a depraved, passionate creature you are,” and then he added fervently, while he was still able, “thank heavens.”

The carriage was jolting so very badly that the fair-haired young woman had to hold on to the strap in order to keep herself upright. A summer shower had rattled overhead for the past hour, and now the narrow North Country roads were so pocked by other passing traffic that the wheels constantly caught in holes and splashed through ruts.

Annabelle held on tightly, for she knew that she would soon arrive at her destination, and wished to present as clean and neat an appearance as possible. This time, she would be a lady. She had the fine clothes Leonora had given her and a little money put by, enough to hire this private carriage and some left over, for she was very careful with it. The maid and the landlord at the inn last night might have scowled at their meager gratuities, but Annabelle was tight-fisted and never gave money when she didn’t absolutely have to. It was a wonder that the viscount had given her any at all, but Leonora had asked him to, and they had all been so relieved to see her go that it was done and she was gone before anyone had second thoughts.

There was, after all, no one who would dare bring charges against her from her past, and she knew, in the unconsciously clever way that she knew so much, that so long as she left quickly, she would be able to leave quickly. Silly asses, she thought, remembering those she had just left behind, and then, because she had left them behind, she forgot them, as she did all things that did not immediately concern her comforts.

She would go to the Baron McAllister, whose name and address was in the family bible, for she’d remembered it exactly from the moment the butler had read it to her last week before she’d left London. Perhaps because it was so uncluttered with symbols, her memory was faultless. There was no need to read, just as she’d always known, just as she’d told her parents when the village schoolmistress cast her out in anger, and after the tutor they engaged cast her out in tears. Not when one could remember so much and so easily. As it had been simplicity itself to repeat a page immediately after Leonora read it to her, it was nothing at all to remember the direction of the McAllisters.

She would announce that her maid had gotten ill, and she would tell them a tale about London relatives who had attempted to marry her off, for her expected legacy, to an evil, avaricious old marquess. Yes. Then she would tell them of her sadly orphaned state, and show them the family bible so that they could see that they were very distant relations of her mother’s. Yes. Then she’d tell them of the dear old lady she’d companioned, who’d died and left her all the money that would come to her on her thirtieth birthday, or her wedding day, whichever came first. Yes, that would do, she was tired of being a poor relation. And as it hadn’t been successful again, it might now be unlucky besides.

She looked down at her neat and elegant blue walking dress, and her fine little ice blue satin slippers, and then she paused with a frown. For she’d splashed through mud this morning when she’d entered the carriage and some had dried in a clot on her left slipper. A fine young lady would not countenance this, and since whenever Annabelle became something or someone, she became it completely, she rummaged in her portmanteau on the seat beside her, searching for something to wipe the mud off with.

She found a lace handkerchief and hesitated, for lace was dear, and she was frugal. She put it back and fished out an old shawl a moment later, but it was good wool, and had no holes and might last a while longer. Finally her fingers closed upon something familiar and she smiled. She’d used this before, a few times before, on this long journey to Scotland, and with any luck, there was enough left of it to use now, for it was worthless.

Annabelle pried off her slipper, and frowning with concentration, scrubbed away at the caked-on dirt with one of the last pliable leaves she’d torn from the soft-covered volume. It was of such a high cloth content that it was easy to work into a flexible rag. When she had done, she sighed with satisfaction and put her slipper back on. She lowered the coach window and just before she let the bit of crumpled paper blow away on the wet wind, she looked down at it. A familiar, sad, and great-eyed dark face gazed back at her.

Annabelle considered it and then, as spray from the window blew back in her face, she smiled. Silly cow, she thought, and let the paper go, to journey down the wind.

It blew away from the onrushing coach, and a rainy gust carried it down the road for a fair way. Then it settled in a gully left by the lead horse’s right hoof, and lay trembling half in the brown water. The dark angel wept ink tears for a moment, and then slipped slowly down into the mud. At the last, only the title that Annabelle could never read and that had found her out, remained above the ooze. And then the proud signature of Mr. Blake, and then the words “Book of Moonlight,” sank to become one with the road that the hired carriage hurried away from.