No, he had not. How terribly unjust, Angel thought, to be ruined simply because she had lain on a bed beside Lord Vayle. It had been very pleasant to snuggle against his warm strength, but not that pleasant.
“Poor child, Vayle has callously robbed you of your honour.”
Angel did know how important honour was. Her papa had emphasized over and over to her and her brother Charles that honour was a man—or woman’s—most priceless possession.
Papa had told them that honour involved many things. They must always do what was right and be honest and fair in their dealings with others. They must always be kind to everyone, generous to those less fortunate than themselves, and responsible for those dependent upon them. But most important, they must never allow anyone to cast aspersions on their character.
“If any man does so,” Papa had told Charles, “you must call him out. That is why it is so important that you learn to fence well, for that is how you defend your honour. You must never permit a man to challenge your honour without demanding redress.”
When Angel had learned that her father did not intend for her to learn to fence too, she had been indignant.
“But, Papa,” she had asked, “is not a woman’s honour as important to her as a man’s is to him?”
“More important,” her father had said, a caustic edge to his voice, “but a woman has a different way of protecting her honour than a man does.”
“What is that, Papa?”
“She will have nothing to do with any man who cannot or will not offer her marriage. She knows that such a man is a scoundrel and intends to rob her of her honour.”
“And how will he do that?” Angel had asked in puzzlement.
“By whispering sweet lies in your ears.”
“What kind of lies?”
“He will shower you with compliments and blandishments that are as false as he is, and then he will ruin you. Know him for what he is, a man with no honour.”
Now Angel was confused. Lady Bloomfield said Lord Vayle had stolen her honour, yet he had not whispered sweet compliments to her. None at all. Instead he had called her a horror.
She was baffled as to what she should do. Had Lord Vayle cast aspersions on her integrity, she would have known immediately she must call him out and defend her honour.
Her father, always loath to deny her instruction on any subject her brother was taught, had given in to Angel’s pleadings and permitted her fencing lessons. She had proven to be far more skilful than Charlie, who had been clumsy on his feet.
Lady Bloomfield studied Angel over the rim of her teacup. “Are you certain, child, that you have no notion how you got into Vayle’s bed?”
“None at all.”
“Tell me everything you remember before you went to sleep.”
“Maude and I had both gone to bed and—”
“Who is Maude?”
“The maid Sir Rupert insisted I must bring with me.”
“If she was with you, she must know how you got out of your room,” Lady Bloomfield exclaimed, ringing a bell for a servant.
Of course, she must. Angel should have thought of that herself, but the dull throbbing in her head seemed to have made her exceptionally dull-witted this morning.
When a footman answered her ladyship’s summons, she told him, “Find Lady Angela’s maid, Maude, and bring her to me at once.”
“Aye, m’lady,” he said, rushing off.
“Perhaps I won’t have to marry Lord Vayle after all,” Angel said hopefully.
“If you do not marry him, Angel, you will be condemned to a life of lonely spinsterhood, without husband or children of your own.”
“But ... but you said earlier that I might already be with child,” Angel said in confusion.
“That is true. Whenever you lie with a man as you did with Vayle, you can become pregnant.”
“I did not know that.” Angel wondered again why Lord Vayle had refused to tell her how babies were made. He should have told her instead of getting upset.
Angel smiled happily at the thought that she might be going to have a baby of her own. She adored children. She loved playing with them, and she loved teaching them. She had set up a classroom at Belle Haven to teach the offspring of its dependents to read and write. Her most cherished dream was to have children of her own to love and raise.
“Oh, I hope I am going to have a baby!” she burst out with a sunny smile.
“Then you had better hope, too, that Vayle will marry you.”
“Why?”
“If he will not, you cannot keep your baby. It will be sent away.”
Angel was horrified. She jumped to her feet, too agitated to sit. “No one will ever take my baby away from me!” She had never been so determined about anything in her life. “Never, never, never!”
Her own mother, even before she had deserted her family, had paid her daughter no heed. All Angel’s life, she had longed for the mother’s love that she had never known. She would never permit any child of hers to suffer that fate.
“Then,” Lady Bloomfield said quietly, “you will have to marry Vayle.”
Angel was aghast at the choice she faced. She would never give up a baby of her flesh, but neither did she want to marry a man who felt the hatred and contempt for her that Lord Vayle did.
Lucian knocked on the door of the room that he had seen Maude come out of the previous day.
No one answered.
He knocked again, but still there was no response.
Lucian gently tried the door. The knob turned easily. He checked to make certain the room was empty, then slipped inside, and shut the door behind him.
It was small but elegantly outfitted. The drapes and the bed hangings were of green silk. Both the bed and the cot beside it were unmade. A large oak wardrobe and a chest of drawers stood side by side against the wall.
He tried the chest of drawers first, going through it quickly. The first drawer held a pair of boy’s breeches. Lucian frowned, wondering what breeches were doing in a room supposedly being used by females.
The second drawer was empty. The bottom one contained a dirty old pillow that should have been thrown out long ago. It was so covered with dust that it looked as though it had been rolled through a dustheap. How odd that anyone would have bothered to save it, Lucian thought as he shut the drawer.
The wardrobe contained a boy’s white shirt, ruffled down the front, and two black garments, which Lucian recognized as those he had seen Angel wearing yesterday. It did not surprise him this was her room. Maude had obviously been in the Crowes’ employ. After the maid had drugged him, she must have fetched Angel to come to his bed.
Lucian examined the shabby clothes in the wardrobe with distaste. Both dresses were clearly hand-me-downs that had once belonged to a larger woman. He wondered whether Angel had a single presentable gown to her name. If she had, she surely would have worn it to the ball last night.
He had thought that her father must have been a rich merchant who had made his money in trade, then died unexpectedly, leaving his foolish wife a rich widow and the prey of an unscrupulous man like Rupert Crowe. But Angel’s sorry wardrobe indicated her family had little or no money.
Lucian massaged his head with his fingertips. It still ached from the drug that had been in the wine.
A pretty young chambermaid came into the room. “Beg pardon, sir, I am to make the bed. Would you be wishing me to come back later?”
“No, do it now. Can you tell me where I would find the maid who came with the guest staying in this room. The maid’s name is Maude.”
The girl’s eyes widened in dismay. “Oh, sir, did she prig something of yours?”
Only his honour and his most cherished dream! “Why do you ask me that?”
“Because Rosie, one of the other maids, saw her sneaking away at dawn’s first light, carrying a small bag. Then Rosie thought she heard the Sound of a horse galloping off, and Maude, she ne’er came back. Rosie told Mr. Timms, the butler, and he wa
s afeared she prigged some of the guests’ jewellery. No one’s complained of anything gone missing. But why else, I ask you, Would she sneak away like that?”
So I cannot wring a confession Out of her as to how Angel really came to be in my bed. Lucian remembered how nervous Maude had been while she was trying to seduce him. She just might prove to be the weakest link in the Crowes’ scheme. With a little persuasion, financial or otherwise, she might be induced to betray what they had done.
Lucian had to find her.
It would do him no good, though, to look for her now. Dawn had been hours ago. By now, she Would be many miles from Fernhill, and he had no idea in which direction she had gone. Furthermore, she had undoubtedly been instructed to remain in hiding for several weeks
But Lucian would locate her if it took him the rest of his life. And when he did, one way or another he would get the truth out of her.
He went back to his own room, where he discovered David Inge waiting for him.
Without preamble, David demanded angrily, “How could you hurt and humiliate poor Kitty like this?”
Lucian wearily rubbed his aching temples. He was tired of being regarded as the villain in this piece when, in fact, he was the victim. “I did nothing!” he snapped.
“Damn you, Lucian, how can you say that when you have broken Kitty’s heart!”
“As she broke your heart when she jilted you!”
“But at least we were not formally betrothed. You publicly humiliated Kitty. How could you seduce another woman on the very night you were celebrating your betrothal to Kitty?”
“You will not believe this, but I have no notion how that girl came to be in my bed.”
“You are right, I do not believe it. It is not like you to act like that, Lucian. Were you foxed?”
“No, I was duped and drugged!”
“You?” David was incredulous. “You are too clever for that.”
“As it turns out, I am not as clever as you think. Damned fool that I am, I underestimated the Crowes. I told you they meant to prevent my marrying Kitty, and now they have succeeded.”
Murderously angry as it made Lucian, he knew that he must wed Angel. The repercussions of not doing so made his head ache even worse than it already did.
He told David how he had found Maude in his room and had acquiesced to her wish to drink a toast.
“The claret was clearly drugged. I passed out immediately afterward. When I came to, my bedroom was crowded with shocked onlookers, and Crowe’s stepdaughter was in bed beside me.”
Lucian looked with revulsion at the unmade bed where his dream of vindication—and fourteen years of striving— had died.
He strode angrily past the rumpled bed to the windows that overlooked the front entrance to Fernhill and stared grimly out. Dark, threatening clouds blotted out the sun, matching his own mood. Already a few drops of rain were spattering against the leaded glass panes.
Below him, guests were leaving. The gala celebration that had brought them here had come to an abrupt, untimely end—and one very different than anyone could have imagined.
Lucian watched the cream of society being helped into their carriages, undoubtedly rushing off in the hope of being the first back to London to spread the deliciously scandalous tale.
Although Lucian was innocent of despoiling Angel, no one would believe that after the very public scene her stepfather had staged.
Especially not when the damned little liar kept insisting that he had slept with her.
David asked, “What does the stepdaughter say?”
Lucian’s jaw clenched as he remembered Angel’s words to Lady Bloomfield in the hall. “The perfidious little witch insists I slept with her. I give you my oath I did not—even though the skirt of her night rail was liberally stained with blood. I also stand unjustly convicted of stealing her virginity.”
“Odd’s fish,” David exclaimed. “You will have to marry her or you will be ostracized by society.”
“Aye,” Lucian agreed. “I knew that the moment I saw the blood on her night rail. I must marry her, not because I ruined her, but because the world erroneously thinks I have. And under the most scandalous and public of circumstances.”
If Lucian did not marry her, he would most likely lose his royal patronage. The king would be furious with Lucian when he heard the story, and the queen, a pious woman, would be even more unhappy and disgusted with him. If he did not wed Angel, he would be even more unwelcome at court than Bloomfield was.
Both the Crown and polite society would brand him a dishonourable cad unworthy of their notice.
Much as it infuriated him to be forced to marry such an unconscionable liar, he had worked too hard to achieve his present position of eminence to throw it away now.
Behind him, David said, “That bastard Crowe made certain you had a large audience. He woke everyone on the pretext he was looking for his stepdaughter. He claimed her maid had just come to him after awaking and discovering that the girl was missing from her bed.”
“The maid who has conveniently disappeared.” Lucian turned away from the window to face his friend. “I trust that you will comfort Kitty for my loss. The only good to come out of this day’s disaster is that you will be free to court her again.” The corner of Lucian’s lip curled up in a grim half-smile. “You ought to be well pleased by what has happened.”
“I am not!” David cried. “I do not want to see you tricked into marriage when you did nothing wrong.”
“But society perceives I have, and in society perceptions are everything.”
Lucian cast a revolted glance at the tumbled bed that had been the downfall of his ambition. “What irony! Only yesterday I told you how a man in my position marries for rich estates, an alliance with a prestigious family, and impressive bloodlines for his heir. Now I am trapped in a wasted marriage that will bring no benefit: no estate, no dowry, no powerful alliance, and a bride of very dubious bloodlines.”
“What do you know about the girl’s parentage?” David asked.
“According to Lady Bloomfield, Angel’s father was an eccentric recluse and her mother a notorious wanton who was as selfish as she was faithless.”
“Clearly she must be stupid, too, or she would never have married Rupert Crowe,” David observed. “He has made himself so notorious that no intelligent woman would consort with him.”
And this was the wretched family, Lucian thought angrily, that he was being forced to marry into.
But the most agonizing realization was what Lucian’s father, Lord Wrexham, would think when he heard of this day’s events. His lips hardened in a thin line. It would reassure his father that his judgment of his younger son had been justified.
Lucian still remembered the shattering day his father had disowned him and sent him away to the army.
Penniless and hard put to live on an officer’s inadequate pay, Lucian had turned to gambling to support himself. He excelled at games that involved skill as well as chance.
Rather than squandering his winnings, he had shrewdly invested them in building, shipping, joint stock companies, and other speculations that in time had made him a very rich man.
Although the military was not the career Lucian had wanted, he distinguished himself on the battlefield with his courage and the tactical brilliance that stood him in such good stead at the gaming tables, and he had quickly risen to high rank.
He had also endured years of mud and dust and wretched rations, of blood and gore on the battlefield and tedium off of it. He had come to hate the stench, waste, and carnage of war.
Through it all, the one thing that had kept him going, that had driven him to excel, had been his determination that someday he would force his father to admit to him that he had been terribly wrong in his judgment of his younger son.
And now, just as his goal was within his grasp, all those years and the sacrifices he had made were for naught.
Sommerstone would never be his. Instead of it again belonging to a Sandfo
rd, it would remain in Bloomfield’s hands.
Any hope of marrying into the family that had rejected his older brother as beneath it was now dead.
And this day’s fiasco would re-enforce Wrexham’s contempt and hatred for his younger son.
Lucian longed to smash his fist through the wall in his fury and frustration at what the Crowes and that devil’s spawn misnamed Angel had cost him.
Lucian might have underestimated the Crowes, but they had underestimated him even more. He would not be able to escape the marital trap they had set for him, but in the end he would have his vengeance. He was not nicknamed Lord Lucifer for nothing.
He told David, “Tell Rupert Crowe that I will marry his wretched stepdaughter. I do not trust myself to see him without killing him.”
“Knowing Crowe, he will demand a marriage settlement,” David warned.
“Tell him the only thing I will settle on his accurst stepdaughter is my name. Nothing else.” Lucian’s hand settled ominously on the hilt of his sword. “Except perhaps my sword through his body.”
David nodded, then asked softly, “How do you feel toward the girl?”
“How do you think I feel toward her? I loathe her!”
“Not a sentiment conducive to a long, happy marriage.”
“The marriage will be neither long nor happy,” Lucian said savagely.
“What do you mean?”
“I will marry her because I must, but as soon as I have done so, I will take her to Ardmore and leave her there to repent her sins against me in lonely isolation. Once she is there, I intend never to set eyes on her again.”
He would still make the trip to his Hampshire estate that he had planned, but now he would take his unwanted bride with him and dump her there.
“Angel will be my wife in name only and not even that for very long if I have my way,” Lucian told David. “I intend to find Maid Maude, and one way or another I will get a full confession out of her about how I was tricked into this situation.”
Devil’s Angel Page 7
