Everything that he had worked and sweated and sacrificed for during the past fourteen long years had been lost because of her treachery. Never had he been so duped by a female.
Lucian longed to strangle her with his bare hands.
Angel, clutching the covers up to her chin, met his searing gaze of contempt and hatred with a look of hurt puzzlement.
Even now that she had betrayed both him and her “dear friend” Kitty, Angel managed to look so damned sweet and innocent, just like her name. God’s oath, had there ever been a more misnamed female?
Her huge blue eyes gave no hint of her perfidy but managed to look terribly confused and wounded. This was the first time he had seen her hair down. Long and thick, it was the colour of rich chocolate, and it hung about her shoulders in tangled waves.
Lucian treated the gaping, censorious faces surrounding the bed to the savage scowl that had helped win him the appellation Lord Lucifer.
In that voice of command that had propelled frightened, reluctant men into battle, he ordered the onlookers out of the room. They proved no more willing to disobey him than the soldiers under his command had. Slowly they filed into the hall. Only Lord and Lady Bloomfield and the Crowes remained behind.
A dull throb tormented Lucian’s head, no doubt from the drug in the wine that Maude had insisted he drink.
The thought of the buxom maid made him grind his teeth in fury. How could he have been such a bloody idiot? He should have suspected her. She was so forward in seeking his attention, but then so were a good many other women who were not trying to give him a Judas kiss.
The hall quickly filled with a crescendo of excited voices. This would be one of the most delicious, talked- about scandals of the year—or even the decade.
Bloomfield closed the door, shutting out the hubbub.
Lucian looked at the Bloomfields and said in a voice that defied them to challenge him, “I am betrothed to your daughter, and I intend to marry her.”
Kitty’s mother seemed to swell with indignation. “You dare to say that after revealing yourself to be so debauched that you would seduce a sweet, innocent child like Angel!”
“My dear,” her husband said placatingly, “perhaps you are being too hasty in your judgment of Vayle.”
Bloomfield was desperate not to lose his golden ticket into the king’s good graces, Lucian thought in disgust. The wily, ambitious viscount would do anything, make any concession, if it would further himself.
“I would hear Vayle’s explanation,” Bloomfield continued. “We owe it to him and our daughter to listen to it.”
Her ladyship turned an indignant eye on her spouse. “We owe him nothing but our contempt! This man seduced our daughter’s innocent friend in our own home! And he did so on the very night that we and our friends were celebrating Kitty’s betrothal.”
Even though Lucian was innocent of her charge, he much preferred Lady Bloomfield and her honest anger to her husband’s hypocritical stance.
The lady continued, “We all saw how Vayle singled Angel out last night for special attention at the ball.”
Aye, he had, Lucian thought, cursing himself. Angel had been the only woman other than his betrothed and her mother with whom he had danced. Now his kindly action would be taken as further proof that he had been intent on seducing her.
One more nail in the coffin of his dead dream of achieving vindication in his father’s eyes.
“Vayle has humiliated our daughter and us,” Lady Bloomfield angrily told her husband, “and he has ruined Angel!”
“I did not ruin her.”
Her ladyship regarded Lucian scornfully. “The evidence is incontrovertible.”
“To the contrary, it must be controvertible since I did not touch her!”
No one would believe that, though. Nor did Lucian expect them to. Not with those damned bloodstains on her night rail.
He turned to Angel on the bed beside him. “How very kind of you to warn me of the Crowes’ plot against me.” He spoke in a voice so low that only she could hear, but it oozed with scorn and sarcasm. “Did you think that if you warned me of the plot, it would go easier for you after I was forced to marry you?”
She looked at him with such wide-eyed innocence that had he not known better, he might have believed her blameless. He marvelled at what a fine actress she was. He ground his teeth in fury. Well, by God, he’d give her something to think about—and to fear.
“Did you think I would not beat you after we were married?” He gave her a hard, cruel smile. “Well, you were wrong.”
She recoiled as though he had already struck her. Then anger sparked in her eyes, and she cried, “You are very, very wrong to think that I would marry you!”
Not for an instant did Lucian believe her.
“What nonsense is this, girl,” her stepfather blustered. “Of course you will marry him.”
Angel’s chin rose to an obstinate angle and her brilliant blue eyes radiated defiance. “No, I shall not! He is betrothed to Kitty.”
Her stepfather gave her an ugly look. “You should have thought of that before you sought out his bed, you little slut!”
Lucian’s eyes narrowed. Now that Sir Rupert’s rapt, scandalized audience was gone from the room, his dear, sweet innocent had suddenly become a slut.
She was also clearly deviating from her stepfather’s script for her. Was it because Lucian’s threat to beat her had frightened her? She did not look fearful, though, only stubbornly defiant.
“I will not marry you,” she repeated even more emphatically.
He wished to hell she had shown a bit of the backbone she was displaying now when Crowe had sought her aid in his plot against Lucian.
“If you think I will marry my best friend’s betrothed, you are mad,” Angel cried. “I would never do such a terrible thing to Kitty.”
Sir Rupert, his face thunderous, snarled, “You will do as I say!”
“No, I will not!” Angel cried, undeterred by the anger in his expression that boded ill for her.
The door to the hall that Lady Bloomfield had closed was flung open with such force that it banged against the wall. Kitty, in a violet silk wrapper, her hair a cloud of spun gold drifting about her shoulders, flew into the room.
Bloody hell, Lucian thought. This farce needed only her to be complete.
At the sight of her betrothed in bed with her friend, Kitty let out a most unladylike screech of pure fury. “I heard that . . . I could not believe it . .. but now that I see it with my own eyes . .
To Lucian’s surprise, Kitty scarcely seemed to notice him. All her attention and her wrath were directed at her friend. “How could you do this to me, Angel Winter?” she shrieked. “How could you humiliate me like this!”
Angel, her face a study in horrified disbelief, cried, “Kitty, I would never knowingly do anything to hurt you. You must believe me.”
“As if I would believe anything that you told me! I regarded you as my friend, fool that I was. And you have repaid my kindness by seducing my betrothed in my own home.”
Kitty regarded Angel with abhorrence. “You have always been so jealous of me! This is your way of getting even, is it not? Well, you have succeeded, you dreadful creature.”
Angel stared at her friend with such an agonized, heartbroken gaze that Lucian actually felt a tinge of sympathy for her despite his own anger at her.
Kitty screamed, “You are evil, heartless, conniving ... !“ Suddenly she lashed out with her hand and would have slapped Angel had not Lucian, with the lightning reflexes that had several times saved his life in battle, grabbed her wrist and held it.
She gave him a terrible look. He dropped her wrist, belatedly realizing that by instinctively protecting the little witch who had betrayed and trapped him, he had further damned himself in his betrothed’s eyes.
Kitty turned and ran from the room, slamming the door hard behind her. Horace Crowe hurried after her.
Lucian turned to Angel. Tears ran unheeded dow
n her cheeks. She looked so confused and vulnerable and forlorn that Lucian felt a sudden, irrational impulse to comfort her.
You damned fool, he told himself furiously. Look at what the conniving jezebel has done to you!
It had taken her only a few minutes to render for naught fourteen long years of struggle and sacrifice on his part to prove to his father that he had wrongly judged his younger son.
She was so damned good an actress that she ought to go on the stage with the other whores!
Angel croaked brokenly to Lady Bloomfield, “I did not .. .“ Her voice failed, and she could not continue.
Lady Bloomfield grabbed Angel’s cotton wrapper from the foot of the bed and held out her hand to the girl. “Come with me to my apartment.”
“No!” Rupert Crowe protested, stepping forward. “I will not permit you—”
Her ladyship cut him off. “You will not presume to tell me what I may do in my own home,” she said, giving him a look of such loathing that it seemed to freeze his tongue. “Now get out of my sight before I have you ejected from my house.”
Crowe, apparently unwilling to put her threat to the test, departed.
When he was gone, Lady Bloomfield again held out her hand to Angel. As she obediently slipped out of Lucian’s bed, the sheer lawn of her night rail clung to her like a second skin, revealing her full, firm breasts, tiny waist, and the shapely legs that he had admired when she had swung across the creek. For such a petite girl, her body was exquisitely proportioned.
Lucian felt his own body’s response. Had he lost his mind? How could he possibly feel desire for a girl who had ground his most cherished goal into dust?
Lady Bloomfield helped Angel into the wrapper, then led her toward the door.
The girl looked so miserable that Lucian wondered whether the Crowes had somehow forced her to go along with their plot.
A flicker of hope sputtered within him. Angel was a brave little thing. He remembered how she had laughed as she had swung, suspended from a rope, across the roaring creek. Perhaps now that the Crowes were gone, she might summon up the courage to tell Kitty’s mother what had really happened.
Lucian called, “Lady Bloomfield, get her to tell you the truth of what occurred in this room. I swear that nothing happened between us.”
Frowning, Lady Bloomfield paused and asked Angel gently, “Is Lord Vayle’s claim that he did not, er, lie with you the truth?”
Angel looked perplexed by Lady Bloomfield’s question. Lucian held his breath. After fourteen years, it all came down to this. His fate lay in her hands.
Angel hesitated, but when she spoke it was with ringing firmness. “Of course, it is not true! How can you even ask me? You have seen with your own eyes that he lay with me.”
The nascent sympathy that had been budding in Lucian for her died an instant death.
The damned, unprincipled liar! He would make her regret her perjuries.
She would soon rue this day as much as he did.
Chapter 6
“Now that we are alone, Angel, there is something that I must ask you,” Lady Bloomfield said, her face grave.
She had brought Angel to her own large bedchamber, sent a servant to bring them tea, then settled her on a comfortable settee by the windows that looked out over Fernhill’s formal garden, with its topiary and parterres.
“How did you come to be in Lord Vayle’s bed?”
“I do not know,” Angel replied, embarrassed by how foolish her answer sounded.
“Tell me the truth, child. Did Vayle coax you into it?”
“No. I don’t know how I got there.” Angel stared down at her tightly clasped hands in mortification. “When I went to sleep I was in the bed with the green silk hangings in the room you always gave me. But when I awoke I was in his room and his bed.”
Lady Bloomfield’s frown deepened. “How is that possible?”
Angel wished she knew. She had the uneasy feeling that what had happened might somehow have been her fault. Clearly, Lord Vayle thought it was. Could she blame him for that when it was she who had been in his bed?
“Have you ever walked in your sleep, child?”
“Not to my knowledge. Oh, dear heaven, do you think that I could somehow have walked into his room in my sleep and got into bed with him?” Angel blushed with shame.
“No, it seems quite impossible to me.”
A footman arrived with a silver tea service and blue-and-white porcelain cups. He placed the tray on a small walnut table in front of the settee and quietly departed.
Lady Bloomfield poured tea into one of the cups and gave it to Angel. She took it gratefully, hoping that it would help relieve the odd, throbbing headache that had plagued her since she had awakened.
As Lady Bloomfield poured tea for herself, she asked, “When you awakened in Lord Vayle’s bed, was he, er— touching you?”
“Aye,” Angel could feel her face growing hot at the memory of the delicious pleasure she had felt lying in his arms. “He was hugging me very tightly to him.”
“Dear God Did you attempt to get away from him?” Angel remembered how she had tried to do so only to have Lord Vayle’s arms tighten around her. “Aye, but I could not. He was too strong.”
Lady Bloomfield looked aghast. “Dear heaven, and because he was too strong, were you then forced to, er—lie with him?”
Angel was surprised that her hostess would ask such a foolish question. It was perfectly obvious that if she awakened beside Lord Vayle in his bed that she was lying with him.
She set her cup down on the walnut table. “Aye,” she replied, although saying that she had been forced to lie with him was not entirely accurate. After all, he had been asleep, too.
Angel was about to explain this when Lady Bloomfield seized her hands in her own.
“You poor, dear child,” she said pityingly. “He must have hurt you terribly.”
Angel, thinking of how he had tightened his grasp painfully when she had tried to wiggle away, answered truthfully, “No, only a little and then only for a moment.”
Tendrils of excitement curled in her at the memory of how pleasant it had been lying in his arms. “After that, I enjoyed it very much,” she confessed with an embarrassed little smile.
Lady Bloomfield looked astonished. “You did? Oh, my poor sweet child, I am glad for that. Often when a woman lies with a man for the first time, the experience is agonizing for her, especially if he does not love her. At least Vayle was not such a monster that he Her mouth hardened in a thin, determined line. “However, the sooner he marries you the better.”
“But he will not marry me. You heard him say he would not.”
“Do not let that trouble you. Whether he likes it or not, he will marry you.”
“I do not want that,” Angel protested. From the recesses of her memory, she recalled her father’s repeated admonition: “Never marry a man who does not want and love you, my precious Angel, for he will make you miserable. You deserve better than that. You deserve a man who will cherish you.”
Not a man who called her a “horror” to her face.
She shivered as she recalled the rage and loathing with which Lord Vayle had regarded her. She would never marry a man who felt that way about her, and especially not when he was betrothed to the girl who had been her closest friend. Her heart still ached at the memory of Kitty’s outburst when she had seen Angel in Vayle’s bed.
“I will not marry him,” Angel said firmly. “He belongs to Kitty.”
“He forfeited any right to her when he slept with you under our very roof.” Lady Bloomfield took a slow sip of tea from the blue and white porcelain cup. Then, as though fortified by it, she said, “I will be blunt with you, child. I preferred Kitty to marry David Inge, but my husband would not hear of it.”
“Why Mr. Inge?”
“Because he loved Kitty.”
“But surely Lord Vayle must have lost his heart to her, too, or he would not—”
Lady Bloomfield interru
pted her with a snort. “I strongly doubt that Vayle has a heart to lose.”
“But everyone has a heart,” Angel protested, much shocked.
“Not Vayle! On the other hand, David Inge would make Kitty a kind and loving husband.” Her mother sighed. “But she is still too young and fickle to appreciate how important that is.”
“Papa thought it was very important, too.”
“Nobody knew better than your father the price of marrying a spouse who did not love him. Poor man.”
Lady Bloomfield absently traced the abstract pattern on her teacup with her index finger. “What is saddest is that Kitty truly cared for David, but then Roger Peck, Lord Peck’s son and heir, deigned to pay her heed. He is disgustingly rich as well as handsome and charming. Women throw themselves at his feet.”
“Did Kitty?”
“No, but he swept her off hers. Kitty was so proud that she had captured him—or thought she had. Roger quickly lost interest in her, as he does in every woman. I had warned her he would do so, but she would not listen. Then Vayle, who was considered a great marital catch, appeared, salving Kitty’s pride.”
But now, Angel thought mournfully, it had been savaged again by the scene this morning in Lord Vayle’s bedroom. “Poor Kitty, I have unwittingly hurt her, and I would not have done so for the world.”
“In truth, this morning’s incident could prove salutary if it helps her realize the worth of a man like Inge, who loves her.” Lady Bloomfield poured more tea into Angel’s cup and then into her own. “Not that I want you to marry Vayle either. I had hoped for a kinder, gentler man than Lord Lucifer for you, but there is no help for it now.”
“Why not?”
“Because he has mined you. That unfortunate scene in his bedroom this morning destroyed your reputation beyond repair. You may be certain our guests will tell the story everywhere, and then no man would dream of marrying you.”
Angel, who knew nothing of the conventions of society, stammered, “I don’t understand why I am ruined.”
“Dear child, if an unmarried girl sleeps with a man, no other man will have her as his wife. She must never have lain with a man until she goes to her husband on her wedding night. Did your father never explain that to you?”
Devil’s Angel Page 6
