Fallen Angel (25 page)

“Say what you mean to say!” Gabriel snapped out at him, and the baron took an involuntary step backward.

“My wife informed me that you have seduced Verity and set her up in that house of yours in Somers Town.”

“And that is the truth,” a shrill voice said, and Gabriel turned to see the aforementioned Lady Wasteney standing in the doorway.

With his wife there to stiffen his spine, Lord Wasteney found his courage again. “So we shall have to ask you not to come calling here again, and if you persist in doing so, be warned that I shall instruct my servants to deny you admittance. If you possessed a shred of decency, you would realize for yourself that you cannot possibly be welcome in this house after you have so callously enticed my wife’s sister away and persuaded her to leave the protection of her own family. After all, there are limits to what can be tolerated, my Lord Sherington, even for a libertine like you.”

14

Lady Wasteney o
pened her mouth, but Gabriel forestalled whatever comment she had been going to make. His voice icy with disdain, he said, “I have neither seduced Miss Jolliffe nor enticed her into leaving. Moreover, I have not seen her nor heard from her since yesterday when I returned her safe and sound to this house after our morning drive, which was quite innocent and aboveboard.”

“Innocent? Do not think to deceive me, my lord,” the baroness said, a malevolent look on her face. “My sister is far from innocent, and you, of all men, must know that. Why, she has been brazenly parading around town these past several weeks in clothing provided by you. And do not try to deny it, for there is no way she could have bought that green cloak for herself. You paid for it, there is no doubt in my mind on that score, and what you have purchased with that gift is equally obvious.”

“A gift? Who has received a gift?” the daughter of the house said, merrily entering the room in caref
ul
ly studied
dishabille
. “Oh dear,” she squeaked in pretended surprise, “no one told me we had company.” Clasping her hands over her breast in the manner of an
ingénue
on the stage in Covent Garden, she continued, “Oh, this is dreadful. Now that you have compromised me, my lord, I suppose you are honorbound to marry me.”

To do him credit, Lord Wasteney looked utterly dumbfounded by his daughter’s wanton manner, but for her part, Lady Wasteney looked positively rapacious—quite enraptured by the notion that her daughter had so cleverly ensnared a rich earl.

But Gabriel was not called ruthless for nothing. “My poor deluded child, you could promenade down Rotten Row stark naked and hanging on my arm, and I would I not marry you.”

“Well, of course not,” she giggled, “for then my reputation would be in tatters like my aunt’s, and you would only be willing to offer me a carte blanche.”

Gabriel was strongly tempted to slap some sense into the silly chit, but instead he said, “I am not willing to offer you anything except advice, and my advice is that you would do better to retire to the schoolroom where you belong.”

With a fulminating scowl, Antoinette flounced over to the settee and cast herself down on it, apparently under the impression that if she sat there pouting long enough Gabriel could be induced to change his mind.

Easily ignoring her, Gabriel asked Lord Wasteney point-blank, “Precisely when did Miss Jolliffe leave this house?”

The baron looked uneasy. Apparently he was at last beginning to understand that he had been grossly misinformed. “I was not actually here when she left. You will have to ask my wife.”

Gabriel turned to the baroness, who was looking quite as sulky as her daughter. “She began packing as soon as she returned from her assignation with you and left before an hour was up. Such an ungrateful gel. After all we have done for her, to pay us back in such a fashion.”

“What prompted her to leave?” Gabriel asked, but Lady Wasteney was not willing to answer that question.

“I am sure I could not say. You will have to ask her that.”

“I shall be sure to do that as soon as I find her,” Gabriel said. “But in case it has slipped your mind, your sister has now been missing almost a full day. So I ask you again, where did she go?”

He was met with blank looks.

“Perhaps—” Lord Wasteney started to say, but he was interrupted by a commotion in the hallway.

For a moment Gabriel’s heart quickened, but even
while he was hoping that it might be Miss Jolliffe, Lord Wasteney’s nephews came bounding into the room.

“Ah, Lord Sherington, just the man we were wanting to see,” one of them said.

“That hunt master of yours is a most disobliging fellow,” the other one said. “Quite fussy about the least little trifle, and every day we hunted, he became more disagreeable. Why just two days ago, he told Bevis and me that if we even came within fifty yards of one of his horses or hounds again, he’d take a horsewhip to us.”

“I did my best to remain calm—simply told the insolent fellow that they were not, after all, his own personal horses and hounds, they were yours.”

“And
I
merely pointed out that since
you’d
invited us to make use of them, it was not
his
place to deny us their use.

“Then the chap had the audacity—”

“Cursed impudence, I call it.”

“—to fetch out his shotgun and threaten to pepper us with buckshot if we didn’t clear out of Gloucestershire altogether.”

Making a mental note to double the hunt master’s wages, Gabriel tried once more to bring the attention of the imbeciles and dolts surrounding him back to the matter which was of primary concern. “I am not interested in discussing hunting,” he said with exaggerated patience. “Miss Jolliffe has disappeared, and I am anxious to find where she has gone.”

“Verity? Disappeared?” one of the two young men asked, a look of bovine bewilderment on his face. “How odd.”

“Not the kind of girl to up and decamp,” the other one said.

“Must have been abducted, although that doesn’t seem much like Verity either.”

“She left of her own free will,” Lady Wasteney said with a sniff.

“And we have already determined that she did—um—er
—not
run off with Lord Sherington,” Lord Wasteney explained further, glancing sideways at Gabriel.

“So if it is possible for you to pull your wits together for a moment,” Gabriel said, “perhaps you might help I us reason out where she might have gone.”

Logical reasoning did not come easily to the two brothers, but after a suitable interval of forehead creasing and chin rubbing, one of them finally said, “If it was Antoinette who was missing, I would look for her on the stage at Covent Garden.”

Hearing her name mentioned, Antoinette piped up. “Lord Sherington has compromised me, but he has refused to marry me.”

When neither of her two cousins appeared to be interested in defending her honor on the dueling field, she resumed her sulking.

“But Verity hasn’t got the face or the figure to tread the boards. Doubt if she could even get herself hired on as an opera dancer.”

“Probably gone home to Northumberland,” his brother said, nodding his head as if pleased with his own cleverness. “Only place she ever does go.”

Giving up his efforts to extract information from the Wasteneys, Gabriel persuaded them—at least he hoped he’d managed to drum it into their thick heads—that if anyone inquired about Miss Jolliffe or came to call on her, they were to say that she was laid down in bed with a sick headache.

After another half hour spent fruitlessly questioning the servants—whose level of intelligence was in general vastly superior to that of the various Wasteneys—Gabriel was forced to conclude that the information he needed was not to be found in this household.

On the way home he cursed the baron and baroness, their posturing offspring, and the two buffled-headed young men. The servants, at least, had expressed genuine concern for Miss Jolliffe, and had vowed to report to him anything they might happen to hear through the servants’ grapevine, which rivaled the
haut ton
for speed of gossip.

Just as he reached Grosvenor Square it occurred to him that the logical place for Miss Jolliffe to have gone after she was thrown out by her sister—and Gabriel did not think for a minute that Lady Wasteney was innocent
in this whole affair—was to Mrs. Wiggins’s employment agency.

He stopped off at home only long enough to send all the grooms and footmen out to the various staging houses, with orders to concentrate first on the ones serving the north of England, but with instructions to ask questions at all of them.

Except for the green cloak, which according to Otterwall Miss Jolliffe had been wearing when she left home, the description of Miss Jolliffe was not going to be very helpful. She did not have the kind of looks that naturally drew masculine eyes toward her. But on the other hand, she would have no reason to travel under a false name, so if she was on a waybill, he would be able to pick up her trail.

Once the servants set off on their assignments, Gabriel drove himself to Cork Street, certain in his own mind that he would quickly discover where Miss Jolliffe had hidden herself.

“If she came to me seeking a position, I would have no difficulty placing her,” Mrs. Wiggins said. “But I have not seen her since the day she accompanied you here. Do you wish me to inquire at some of the other agencies?”

“I do not wish all and sundry in London to know that Miss Jolliffe has left her sister’s house,” Gabriel replied.

“Perhaps if I approach them under the guise of looking for a housekeeper for a client. I can make the job specifications so narrow that no one except Miss Jolliffe will meet the criteria.”

Frustrated that he could not take a more direct approach, Gabriel agreed that Mrs. Wiggins’s proposal might be effective. Returning home, he felt as if he had aged ten years in one morning.

He retired to his study, there to wait impatiently for the grooms and footmen, who returned one by one, none of them bringing any news of Miss Jolliffe. The last one arrived after midnight, having ridden north along the Great-North Road for the first three stages, just to be positive she was not on her way to Northumberland.

But no one in any of the staging inns or posting houses had seen her. No one remembered hearing her name, no one had any information—or indeed any interest in—a rather plain spinster with mouse-brown hair and gray-green eyes, who may or may not have been wearing a green cloak lined with fur.

Females were a curse and a plague, Gabriel decided three days later. Made from man’s rib, they were the source of considerable aggravation. And Miss Jolliffe, who had seemed to be superior to other women, was certainly proving to be most adept at driving him to distraction.

Despite his best efforts, which included hiring a Bow Street runner, Gabriel had not been able to find anyone who had seen Miss Jolliffe since she had packed her bags and left her sister’s house.

His anxieties had grown with each passing day, and unable to think of anything better to do, he had himself spent hours driving through the streets of London, searching the crowds for a figure in a green cloak.

The nights had been worse. The nightmares he’d had as a child had returned, precisely the same in every detail except one: in the dreams that had tormented him these last three nights, it was Miss Jolliffe he was desperately trying to find rather than his mother.

As a boy of ten or eleven, he had sworn an oath that he would somehow acquire the power to control his own life, and by resolution and force of will, he had finally banished the nightmares.

Yet now all his wealth, all his knowledge, all his power availed him naught. He was as helpless as he had been when he was a child.

And it was a woman who had brought him to this sorry state. He cursed Miss Jolliffe for what she had done to him and vowed to himself that when he found her again, she would never leave his side, even if he had to chain her to his wrist.

He eyed the untouched bottle of brandy sitting on the table beside him. No amount of resolution could keep his imagination from producing visions of Miss Jolliffe in terrible danger, and he knew how easy it would be to find oblivion at the bottom of that bottle. But he could not drink himself into a stupor of forgetfulness when she was lost.

Lost. Dear God, he felt like a ship whose masts were down, and whose anchor chain had parted. Without Miss Jolliffe, he was drifting, floundering, with rocky reefs all around threatening to destroy him.

He had to find her—he had to.

The pain cut too deep—deeper even than when he had learned his mother was dead and lost to him forever.

Suppose in a fit of despair, Miss Jolliffe had thrown herself into the river?

But when he thought about it, that idea was too preposterous for him to believe for a minute. Miss Jolliffe was too sensible, too reasonable, too practical to do anything like that. She was not irrational and prone to hysterics, which meant that whatever she had done, there had to be logic behind her decision. Which meant all he had to do was figure out rationally what that logic was, and he would be able to find her.

With renewed hope, he began to consider everything he knew about her character—trying to remember every word she had ever spoken to him. But his thoughts were interrupted by a tapping at the door.