False Angel

by Edith Layton

  FALSE ANGEL

  Edith Layton

  THE LIBERTINE LORD ... AND THE LADY Lord Joscelin Kidd, Marquess of Severne, was the handsomest and most charming nobleman in London—and the most notorious.

  Not only had he been divorced under shocking circumstances from a young and innocent bride, but since that disastrous event he had shown no scruples—and met no refusal—in conquering beauty after beauty.

  The lovely Lady Leonora Talwin had heard all the stories about him and understood them only too well, having seen from her womanizing father’s example how base and brutish men could be. Never, she vowed, would she fall victim to a rake like the scandalous Severne.

  But if Leonora thought she knew all too much about men, she knew far too little about her own foolish heart to daunt this lord who feasted on such feminine frailties.

  For Estelle and Irwin, who defy the laws of relativity.

  ONE

  It was the evening of a day that few in the city of London wished to see ended. Even free and blameless citizens regretted the onset of evening almost as much as the condemned in their cells at Newgate did, though those wretches might be expected to begrudge any dimming hour that swept them forward to a dimmer dawn. But it had been a pure fragrant spring day such as seldom came to the great city. Such had been its rarity that all who experienced it felt a certain sinking of their spirits even as the sun sank low, knowing that tomorrow, no matter how clement, would never be the same as this pristine day had been, knowing that like all innocents, Spring itself would be changed and sullied by its continued stay in Town.

  So the windows in the grand salon of a great house on a fashionable street in the heart of London this April night were thrown open wide and not even the most overbearing dowagers in attendance at the gathering there demanded that they be closed. There was no complaint even when the long sheer curtains bellied out on each puff of the soft breeze that blew through the room, though the ladies’ long narrow draped gowns belled out about their ankles and their feathered fans and elaborately dressed hairstyles were gently stirred as well. There was no need for any of the ladies present at the small soiree to take alarm, since Spring, like all artful newly arrived visitors, was on her best behavior and gave no hint of her true nature lest doors and windows be closed to her immediately.

  By fashionable London’s current standards, it was an intimate group that amused themselves at the Viscount Talwin’s townhouse this evening. But then again, by those standards, Wellington’s army being feted in the ballroom would have been simply called “a crush,” and Napoleon’s legions making do with a buffet in the garden would have been deemed “a squeeze.” A simple matter of some seventy-odd souls in the salon, sipping punch and ratafia, subsisting on lobster patties and cold collations while not attending to four musicians in a corner sawing away at some composition by Mr. Handel as they chattered, could hardly have been called notable, or even moderately impressive. So it was odd that the viscount himself, emerging from an upper room with four other gentlemen in tow, should pause upon the stairs as he saw the gathering below and whisper, “Oh Gad! I forgot Nell’s party completely. Now I’m for it. And so are you lads, so don’t snicker.”

  The gentlemen accompanying the viscount, arrested on the stair by the simple expedient of having their host come to a dead stop in front of them, did not precisely snicker at his distress. Rather it could be said that they wore various expressions of bemusement as they too looked down at the throng that could be seen at the foot of the great stair and across the wide hall. The polished doors to the salon had been thrown open as wide as the windows, and since the parquet floors of that room and the marble squares of the hall were both now completely covered by diverse slippered feet, only the footmen poised at the boundaries knew exactly where the salon left off and the vast entry hall began.

  The viscount scowled down at his nominal guests as he placed his hand on the banister and said crossly, “The deuce! I would’ve taken the back stair if I’d remembered. Even so, you’d think they’d have kept the doors closed so we could have had you fellows slip away unnoticed. There’s no hope of that now. But you see,” he went on, almost to himself, “they none of them were here when we began.”

  Since the gentlemen had been sequestered with their host in an upstairs room for upward of three hours, not one of them disputed his observation. Instead, they stood and gazed down at the crowd of people and waited for their host to take the next step. And as they paused for those brief seconds, the company below began to take note of them. It might have begun with one guest glancing upward for an instant and then continuing to stare, but like a field of ripened grain blown in the wind, each head raised in turn, as though in a rippling wave, until all the assembled guests were staring speechlessly back at the wordless quintet upon the stair. For one silent, horrid moment, the viscountess later confided to her husband, it seemed that there might be an enormous social gaffe in the making.

  But then the viscount smiled and waved a hand in salute to some unspecified person in the company and, with every evidence of pleasure upon his face, signaled that he was about to go down to greet his guests. However, it might be noted that under the cover of the general conversation as it picked up again, he said sotto voce to his companions upon the stair, “Terribly sorry, gentlemen. It was a bad mistake on my part. Accept my apologies. But if you don’t at least make some attempt at ‘how-do-you-do’s,’ my lady wife will have my heart on a skewer to serve up to the lot of them.”

  “I should think,” mused one of the gentlemen as they slowly descended the stair, “that she may well have it so anyway ... but for your introducing us to her guests, rather than for omitting to do so.”

  As his companions chuckled in agreement, the viscount said softly, “Nonsense, Joss, yon lot may have their tongues wagging for a month after this, but I assure you, she’ll be the envy of all her acquaintances for having had you at her little soiree.”

  “Ah yes,” the gentleman answered with a twisted smile, “we certainly do ensure a hostess’s social triumph.”

  “Why, yes, Joss,” another gentleman commented in low, fogged tones. “Having us present, is, I should imagine, very much like having someone fall dead at your feet at your dinner party. It may not enliven the proceedings, but it is sure to make them memorable.”

  As the gentlemen laughed, another of them said with some mock pomposity, “Why, speak for yourself, Jason, now that I’m a married man, I’m the soul of propriety.”

  “Why so am I, Sinjun,” the other answered sweetly. “But it hardly matters if you had married a saint or if I had taken holy orders and gone to live in a cave. I join Joss here in wondering that our host has the temerity to introduce us to his company. It’s our names, my dear, that account for our fame. Why, I hear that young ladies can still be sent to bed without dinner for so much as uttering them aloud.”

  “There is something about our names,” another of the gentlemen mused aloud, “that tends to ensure some mention of beds, isn’t there?”

  “You make too much of it, lads,” the viscount said with as much censure as if they had indeed been lads, and he their stern schoolmaster. And although he was only a decade or so senior to the oldest of them, and they none of them could fairly answer to the name “lad,” even the youngest of them, they left off their laughter and followed him in respectful silence. He paused before he reached the foot of the stair, then turned to face them with a sober face and said with some urgency, “Please don’t forget, lads, the business that we were about discussing upstairs was merely that, business. Investments, as we had agreed to say. Obviously, there’s no way to conceal the fact that we’ve met, even if we hadn’t been observed by this lot But it doesn’t matter if we’re not believed, it only matters that we are con
sistent. And you don’t have to stay if you don’t wish to, but please believe that I welcome you to my house, and always shall. I didn’t invite you to this affair tonight,” he concluded with a frown, “only because it’s merely a little ‘do,’ for my daughter and I believed you would have found such a gathering insipid.”

  Over the other gentlemen’s protests, the one called Joss said, just as seriously as his host had done, “Calm yourself, sir. I know I speak for all of us when I say we don’t take affront in the least. It’s your reputation and that of your daughter that we were concerned with, not our own.”

  As the other gentlemen agreed, the viscount said gruffly and with some trace of embarrassment, “Nonsense. I’ll introduce you to my family, and then you may stay or leave, as you wish. But there’s nothing to be concerned with.”

  Then, with as much cool presence as he would have shown if he were presenting his maiden aunt to the bishop, the Viscount Talwin crossed the room with the four gentlemen in tow. And then, true to his word, he proceeded calmly to introduce the four gentlemen, who possessed some of the most notorious, shocking, and dangerous reputations in the realm, to his wife, his daughter, and his assembled honored guests.

  It did, of course, make the party a sensation. A simple gathering that would have been forgotten in a week—except by those fortunate few who had managed to make an engagement, a wedding, or a liaison from the opportunities presented by the evening—instantly became one of the most talked about social affairs of the Season, for the four gentlemen were almost legendary figures, and an aura of delicious scandal hung about each of them. Although no one of them was so lost to decency as to have been totally unacceptable socially, neither did any of them have a pure enough background to have gained admittance to Almack’s this evening. Most disgracefully titillating of all, no one of them seemed to care a jot about whether they would have been or not. They were seldom seen at such strictly correct affairs as this one, but in all fairness, from the way they were goggled at as their host introduced them, even though they were quite correctly and soberly dressed, one could scarcely blame them for their disinclination to grace such gatherings.

  They were introduced by order of rank and age, so Jason Thomas, Duke of Torquay, made his bows first. His golden hair and his almost angelic smiling good looks still belied the reputation he had earned in his youth. But then, there was no way he could have earned his outsize rakish fame if he had been any less comely than an angel. Though no word of disrepute had been attached to him for all the years since he had wed and left Town to live in rustic, domestic bliss, his name still caused a stir, and his sidewise knowing smile showed he knew it well, and rather enjoyed the idea of it still.

  Cyril Hampton, Duke of Austell, came next, tall and straight With his serene and youthful face and curiously silver hair, there was only that faint air of reserve to lend credence to his reputation. But then too, one seldom said much when one was being introduced, and he appeared to like his host, so there would have been no need for him to exercise his lethal wit and stiletto-sharp tongue.

  The dark gentleman who stood as tall and proud as a Red Indian was the mysterious St. John Basil St. Charles, Marquess of Bessacarr. It was said that he had recently wed some lady that he had met upon one of his frequent clandestine trips to the Continent. And it was this that caused romantic young females in his vicinity to sigh, as much as the fact that he had always been as elusive and exciting as quicksilver.

  But when the last and most youthful gentleman, Joscelin Peter Kidd, Fifth Marquess of Severne, was at last announced, ladies of all ages who were watching grew wide-eyed. It was not only because two of the shocking gentlemen were already wed and the other remaining bachelor frightened them too much to even dream upon. It was because if Severne’s fame did not cause heads to turn, then certainly his appearance would have done so. And that reputation only seemed to enhance his appeal, for there was nothing like a disastrous impediment to give a fellow stature, sort of repelling females while attracting them, as Lord Bigelow whispered spitefully to a friend even as the marquess took his hostess’s hand. But his friend didn’t bother to answer, for everybody knew that Biggie had been trying to get Jane Turnbell to notice he was breathing for months now, and there she stood, breathing as hard herself as if she had run a foot race, and never taking her eyes off Severne for a moment.

  But no matter how fascinating the gentlemen were in sum, there was only so long a space that one could forget one’s breeding. By the time all the errant gentlemen had been presented to the viscount’s wife and daughter and relatives, there was no longer the faintest shred of an excuse for the rest of the company to press close and linger on in hopes of catching a wandering eye or a stray word. And if the assembled guests forgot that, there was always the stern eye of the master of the house himself to contend with. For when the viscount perceived how still and enraptured the audience of guests clustered about him had grown, he fixed those unfortunates nearest to him with such a speaking gaze that they fell back, glad to remember a friend across the room they wanted a word with, or suddenly desirous of another cup of that excellent punch.

  Thus the Incomparable Miss Merriman cast one last longing look at the Marquess of Severne and then bade one of her suitors to fetch her something cool and sweet. She simpered happily as two other suitors claimed at once that alas, there could be nothing cooler nor sweeter in all the land than she herself, but even as she did so, she moved imperceptibly toward the windows with her entourage, under the prod of her host’s unblinking stare.

  In fact, if they had no valid excuse to stay now, most of the company began to regretfully edge away. The Viscount Talwin might be a trim, slight, baldish, and bland-appearing middle-aged fellow, but he had an air of command. No one was too surprised to have seen the notorious quartet he had entertained leaving his private quarters, for rumor circulated about him as well. Nothing so shocking as that which attached to his infamous companions, but it was said that Talwin was deep in doings for the foreign office. It was whispered that he might even be a spymaster, but such rumors were common as fears of invasion in the spring of the year of Napoleon’s flight from Elba. So a wise man did not refine upon it too much, but then neither did a patriotic one speak it too loudly.

  Still, though the crowd around the viscount thinned after he introduced his gentleman guests, it did not disappear completely. There were always those who were impervious to any hint more subtle than a sword’s point. As it transpired, there was no gentlemen that cared to risk his host’s wrath tonight, but some of the ladies were undeterred. A dowager who wanted to show her daughter-in-law how liberal she was, since they had spent the afternoon wrangling over the older lady’s dislike of her granddaughter’s latest beau, demonstrated her broad-mindedness by immediately collaring the Duke of Torquay and badgering him as to the health and welfare of numerous relatives of his who had quit the planet decades before.

  The Marquess of Bessacarr, for all his famous skill at evasion, was similarly backed to the wall by a pair of spinster sisters who had known his late father and who now demanded to know the lineage of his new bride, as well as the size of her waist. This was either so that they could fashion a morning robe for her or to help them to ascertain whether her marriage had been imperative or not. The marquess could not tell which was their precise intent, since he could not have gotten a word past them edgewise.

  The Duke of Austell found the helplessness of these two worldly, roguish fellows when confronted by elderly and vastly proper females vastly amusing. Or at least he did until he found himself fixed by the rheumy stare of an ancient toothless social lioness who proceeded to question him in loud and quavering tones as to why he was as yet unmarried. Since he was not cad enough to insult a female of such profound years, and since he very much doubted whether she could have heard his insult anyway, he soon discovered once again why it was that he so often shunned such proper entertainments.

  And so it happened that at that precise moment, for only the b
riefest space of time, Lord Severne found himself standing completely alone in the midst of a roomful of company. His hostess had turned from him to say a word to her husband, and his host’s daughter and cousin had said good evening and now had been engaged in conversation with some earnest young man.

  It might have been because there was no one in his general vicinity that knew his family, such as chanced to know the others’. It may have been that those dowagers who did know his family yet disapproved of him so much that they refused him speech. It may even have only been that as he was not an easy fellow to approach, there were those who wanted a word with him who were presently steeling themselves to do so. But whatever the reason, for that brief time, he stood quite alone.

  This neglect did not seem to discompose him much. He stood and surveyed the room, casually taking note of the younger ladies, caught for a moment, as most men might have been, by the beauteous Miss Merriman. For she threw back her long white neck and gave forth her famous long rippling laugh at some sally some lucky fellow had made, and yet managed to cast the most roguish glance in the direction of the marquess at the same time. A most talented young woman, and a brave one as well. For while a great many females covertly noted the marquess as he stood alone, few dared attempt to attract his notice. He was quite good to look upon, but not a comfortable fellow in any fashion.

  He would have been noticed in any crowd even if he were not a little taller than most men. His hair was lustrous and thick and dark as night But that was all that was lavish about him. He was lean, his face so thin that his cheekbones stood out in bold relief. Yet he was not gaunt. Nature had not been stingy with him, so much as careful. His forehead was high, his skin clear and pale, his nose thin and straight, as were the brows which were etched above his wide, observant eyes. His lips were full and well defined. His features seemed to have been shaped with a fine keen steel blade, they were so cleanly delineated.