Seducing an Angel

by Mary Balogh

  It was a lovely early summer day with just enough fluffy white clouds to offer the occasional welcome shade and prevent the sun from being too scorching.

  Stephen did not mind the crowds. One did not come here in order to get anywhere in a hurry. One came to socialize, and he always enjoyed doing that. He was a gregarious, good-natured young man.

  “Are you going to Meg’s ball tomorrow night?” he asked Constantine.

  Meg was his eldest sister, Margaret Pennethorne, Countess of Sheringford. She and Sherry had come to town this spring after missing the past two, despite the fact that they had had newborn Alexander to bring with them this year as well as two-year-old Sarah and seven-year-old Toby. They had decided at last to face down the old scandal dating from the time when Sherry had eloped with a married lady and lived with her until her death. There were still those who thought Toby was his son and Mrs. Turner’s—and both Sherry and Meg were content to let that sleeping dog lie.

  Meg had backbone—Stephen had always admired that about her. She would never choose to cower indefinitely in the relative safety of the country rather than confront her demons. Sherry himself had never had much difficulty engaging demons in a staring contest and being the last to blink. And now, because all the fashionable world had been unable to resist attending the curiosity of their wedding three years ago, that same fashionable world was effectively obliged to attend their ball tomorrow evening.

  Not that many would have missed it anyway, curiosity being a somewhat stronger motivating factor than disapproval. The ton would be curious to discover how the marriage was prospering, or not prospering, after three years.

  “But of course. I would not miss it for worlds,” Constantine said, touching his whip to the brim of his hat as they passed a barouche containing four ladies.

  Stephen did the same thing, and all four smiled and nodded in return.

  “There is no of course about it,” he said. “You did not attend Nessie’s ball the week before last.”

  Nessie—Vanessa Wallace, Duchess of Moreland—was the middle of Stephen’s three sisters. The duke also happened to be Constantine’s first cousin. Their mothers had been sisters and had passed on their dark Greek good looks to their sons, who looked more like brothers than cousins. Almost like twins, in fact.

  Constantine had not attended Vanessa and Elliott’s ball, even though he had been in town.

  “I was not invited,” he said, looking across at Stephen with lazy, somewhat amused eyes. “And I would not have gone if I had been.”

  Stephen looked apologetic. He had just been on something of a fishing expedition, as Con seemed to realize. Stephen knew that Elliott and Constantine scarcely talked to each other—even though they had grown up only a few miles apart and had been close friends as boys and young men. And because Elliott did not talk to his cousin, neither did Vanessa. Stephen had always wondered about it, but he had never asked. Perhaps it was time he did. Family feuds were almost always foolish things and went on long after everyone ought to have kissed and made up.

  “What is it—” he began.

  But Cecil Avery had stopped his curricle beside them, and Lady Christobel Foley, his passenger, was risking life and limb by leaning slightly forward in her flimsy seat in order to smile brightly at them while she twirled a lacy confection of a parasol above her head.

  “Mr. Huxtable, Lord Merton,” she said, her eyes passing over Con before coming fully to rest upon Stephen, “is it not a lovely day?”

  They spent a few minutes agreeing that indeed it was and soliciting her hand for a set apiece at tomorrow evening’s ball, since her mama had only just decided that they would go there rather than dine with the Dexters as originally planned, but she had already told simply everyone that she was not going and consequently was positively terrified she would have no dancing partners except dear Cecil, of course, who had been her neighbor in the country forever and therefore had little choice, poor man, but to be gallant and dance with her so that she would not be an utter wallflower.

  Lady Christobel rarely divided her verbal communications into sentences. One had to concentrate hard if one wished to follow everything she said. Usually it was not necessary to do so but merely to listen to a word here and a phrase there. But she was an eager, pretty little thing and Stephen liked her.

  He had to be careful about showing his liking too openly, however. She was the eldest daughter of the very wealthy and influential Marquess and Marchioness of Blythesdale, and she was eighteen years old and had just this year made her come-out. She was very marriageable indeed and very eager to achieve marital success during her first Season, preferably before any of her peers. She was likely to succeed too. If ever one wished to find her at any large entertainment, one had merely to find the densest throng of gentlemen, and she was sure to be in their midst.

  But she had her sights set upon Stephen, as did her mama. He was well aware of it. Indeed, he was well aware that he was one of the most eligible bachelors in England and that the females of the race had decided this year more than in any previous one that the time had come for him to settle down and take a bride and set up his nursery and otherwise face his responsibilities as a peer of the realm. He was twenty-five years old and was, apparently, expected to have crossed some invisible threshold at his last birthday from irresponsible, wild-oat-sowing youth to steady, dutiful manhood.

  Lady Christobel was not the only young lady who was courting him, and her mother was not the only mother who was determinedly attempting to reel him in.

  Stephen liked most ladies of his acquaintance. He liked talking with them and dancing with them and escorting them to the theater and taking them for drives or walks in the park. He did not avoid them, as many of his peers did, for fear of stepping all unawares into a matrimonial trap. But he was not ready to marry.

  Not nearly.

  He believed in love—in romantic love as well as every other kind. He doubted he would ever marry unless he could feel a deep affection for his prospective bride and could be assured that she felt the like for him. But his title and wealth stood firmly in the way of such a seemingly modest dream. So—though it seemed conceited to think so—did his looks. He was aware that women found him both handsome and attractive. How could any woman see past all those barriers to know and understand him? To love him?

  But love was possible, even perhaps for a wealthy earl. His sisters—all three of them—had found it, though all three marriages had admittedly made shaky beginnings.

  Perhaps somewhere, somehow, sometime, there would be love for him too.

  In the meanwhile, he was enjoying life—and avoiding the matrimonial traps that were becoming all too numerous and familiar to him.

  “I believe,” Constantine said as they rode onward, “the lady would have been happy to tumble right out of that seat, Stephen, if she could have been quite sure you were close enough to catch her.”

  Stephen chuckled.

  “I was about to ask you,” he said, “what it is between you and Elliott—and Nessie. Your quarrel has been going on for as long as I have known you. What caused it?”

  He had known Con for eight years. It was Elliott, as executor of the recently deceased Earl of Merton’s will, who had come to inform Stephen that the title, along with everything that went with it, was now his. Stephen had been living with his sisters in a small cottage in the village of Throckbridge in Shropshire at the time. Elliott, Viscount Lyngate then, though he was Duke of Moreland now, had been Stephen’s official guardian for four years until he reached his majority. Elliott had spent time with them at Warren Hall, Stephen’s principal seat in Hampshire. Con had been there too for a while—it was his home. He was the elder brother of the earl who had just died at the age of sixteen. He was the eldest son of the earl who had preceded his brother, though he could not succeed to the title himself because he had been born two days before his parents married and was therefore legally illegitimate.

  It had been clear from the start th
at Elliott and Con did not like each other. More than that, it had been clear that there was a real enmity there. Something had happened between them.

  “You would have to ask Moreland that,” Constantine said in answer to his question. “I believe it had something to do with his being a pompous ass.”

  Elliott was not pompous—or asinine. He did, however, poker up quite noticeably whenever he was forced to be in company with Constantine.

  Stephen did not pursue the matter. Obviously Con was not going to tell him what had happened, and he had every right to guard his secrets.

  Con was something of a puzzle, actually. Although he had always been amiable with both Stephen and his sisters, there was an edge of darkness to him, a certain brooding air despite his charm and ready smile. He had bought a home of his own somewhere in Gloucestershire after his brother’s death, but none of them had ever been invited there—or anyone else of Stephen’s acquaintance, for that matter. And no one knew how he could have afforded it. His father had doubtless made decent provision for him, but to such a degree that he could go off and buy himself a home and estate?

  It was none of Stephen’s business, of course.

  But he did sometimes wonder why Constantine had always been friendly. Stephen and his sisters had been strangers when they suddenly invaded his home and claimed it as their own. Stephen had the title Earl of Merton, one that Con’s brother had borne just a few months previously, and his father before that. It was a title that would have been Con’s if he had been born three days later or if his parents had married three days sooner.

  Ought he not to have been bitter? Even to the point of hatred? Should he not still be bitter?

  Stephen often wondered how much went on inside Con’s mind that was never expressed in either words or actions.

  “It must be as hot as Hades under there,” Constantine said just after they had stopped to exchange pleasantries with a group of male acquaintances. He nodded in the direction of the footpath to their left.

  There was a crowd of people walking there, but it was not difficult to see to whom Con referred.

  There was a cluster of five ladies, all of them brightly and fashionably dressed in colors that complemented the summer. Just ahead of them were two other ladies, one of them decently clad in russet brown, a color more suited perhaps to autumn than summer, the other dressed in widow’s weeds of the deepest mourning period. She was black from head to toe. Even the black veil was so heavy that it was impossible to see her face, though she was no more than twenty feet away.

  “Poor lady,” Stephen said. “She must have recently lost a husband.”

  “At a pretty young age too, by the look of it,” Constantine said. “I wonder if her face lives up to the promise of her figure.”

  Stephen was most attracted to very young ladies, whose figures tended to be lithe and slender. When he did finally turn his thoughts to matrimony, he had always assumed he would look among the newest crop of young hopefuls to arrive on the marriage mart and try to find among such crass commercialism a beauty whom he could like as well as admire and whom he could grow to love. A lady who would be willing to look beyond his title and wealth to know him and love him for who he was.

  The lady in mourning was nothing like his ideal. She did not appear to be in the first blush of youth. Her figure was a little too mature for that. It was certainly an excellent figure, even though her widow’s weeds had not been designed to show it to full advantage.

  He felt an unexpected rush of pure lust and was thoroughly ashamed of himself. Even if she had not been in deepest mourning he would have felt ashamed. He was not in the habit of gazing lustfully upon strangers, as so many young blades of his acquaintance were.

  “I hope she does not boil in the heat,” he said. “Ah, here come Kate and Monty.”

  Katherine Finley, Baroness Montford, was Stephen’s youngest sister. She had perfected the skill of riding only since her marriage five years ago, and was on horseback now. She was smiling at both of them. So was Monty.

  “I came here to give my horse a good gallop,” Lord Montford said by way of greeting, “but it does not seem possible, does it?”

  “Oh, Jasper,” Katherine said, “you did not! You came to show off the new riding hat you bought me this morning. Is it not dashing, Stephen? Do I not outshine every other lady in the park, Constantine?”

  She was laughing.

  “I would say that plume would be a deadly weapon,” Con said, “if it did not curl around under your chin. It is very fetching instead. And you would outshine every other lady if you wore a bucket on your head.”

  “Dash it all, Con,” Monty said. “A bucket would have cost me a lot less than the hat. It is too late now, though.”

  “It is very splendid indeed, Kate,” Stephen said, grinning.

  “But I did not come here to show off the riding hat,” Monty protested. “I came to show off the lady beneath it.”

  “Well,” Katherine said, still laughing, “that was clever of me. I have squeezed a compliment out of all three of you. Are you going to Meg’s ball tomorrow, Constantine? If you are, I insist that you dance with me.”

  Stephen forgot all about the curvaceous widow in black.

  2

  IT took very little effort on Cassandra’s part to learn of Lady Sheringford’s ball. She simply looked about the fashionable area of Hyde Park until she saw a largish group of ladies—there were five of them in all—strolling along the footpath together and talking quite animatedly among themselves as they went. Cassandra led Alice toward them and then strolled along ahead of them and listened.

  She learned a great deal she did not wish to know about what was most fashionable in bonnets this year and about who looked well in such hats and who looked so dreadful that it would really be a kindness to tell them if only one could summon up the courage. She learned about the endearing antics of their children—each one trying to outdo the others. The antics were endearing, Cassandra suspected, only because their victims were nurses or governesses rather than the mothers themselves. It sounded to her as if every single one of the children described was a spoiled brat of the first order.

  But finally the tedious conversation yielded a harvest. Three of the ladies were planning to attend Lady Sheringford’s ball tomorrow evening at the home of the Marquess of Claverbrook on Grosvenor Square. A surprising venue, that, one of them observed, since the elderly marquess had been a recluse for years and years before he had finally left his home again to attend the wedding of his grandson three years ago. He had not been seen since. Yet now there was to be a ball at his house.

  Rumor had it, though, apparently, Cassandra learned without being at all interested, that he spent a great deal of his time in the country with his grandson and his great-grandchildren. And that his granddaughter-in-law, the countess, had learned how to coax him out of the sullens.

  Lady Sheringford’s ball at the Claverbrook mansion on Grosvenor Square, Cassandra recited mentally, committing the relevant details of the conversation to memory as she tried to ignore the myriad irrelevant ones.

  Three of the ladies were going, though none of them wanted to, of course. It was really quite incomprehensible that a lady as respectable as Lady Sheringford had been willing to marry the earl when he had behaved so shockingly just a few years before that he ought never again to have been received by decent folk.

  Gracious heaven, he had even had a child with that dreadful woman, who had left her lawful husband in order to run away with him—on the very day he had been pledged to marry her husband’s sister. It really had been a scandal to end all scandals.

  The three were going to the ball anyway, though, because everyone else was going. And really one was interested to discover how the marriage was progressing. It would be surprising indeed if it were not under severe strain after three whole years. Though no doubt the earl and his lady would put on a show of amity for the duration of the ball.

  Two of the ladies were not going. One
had a previous engagement, she was relieved to report. The other would not step over the doorstep of a house that contained the Earl of Sheringford even if everyone else was willing to forgive and forget. Even if someone were to offer her a fortune she would not go. It was most provoking that her husband positively refused to attend any balls when he knew that she loved to dance.

  Better and better, Cassandra thought. The Countess of Sheringford lived under a cloud cast by the earl’s reputation as a rake and a rogue. It was unlikely they would turn anyone away from their doors, even without an invitation. Though clearly the earl’s reputation was going to bring more guests to the ball than it would drive away, curiosity being the besetting sin of the ton—and probably of humanity in general.

  The Sheringford ball would be it, then. It was tomorrow night. Time was of the essence. She had enough money left for next week’s rent and for food for another couple of weeks. Beyond that there was a frighteningly empty void in which money would need to go out but none would be coming in.

  And she had dependents as well as herself to house and clothe and feed. Dependents who could not, for various reasons, provide for themselves.

  Alice walked silently and disapprovingly at her side. Cassandra had shushed her as soon as they had started strolling ahead of the five ladies. It was a loud, accusing silence that she held, though. Alice did not like this at all, and that was perfectly understandable. Cassandra would not like it if she had to stand helplessly by while either Alice or Mary plotted to prostitute herself so that she could eat.

  Unfortunately, there was no alternative. Or if there was, Cassandra could not see it, even though she had lain awake for several nights looking for one.

  She glanced around as they walked, feeling a little as though she were at a masquerade, her identity effectively hidden behind a mask and domino. Her black veil was her mask, her heavy widow’s weeds her domino. She could see out—dimly—but no one could see in.