False Angel (17 page)

Annabelle did not answer. She only looked steadily at Leonora. In those moments, when she was fixed with her relative’s wide, unblinking stare, Leonora often felt uncomfortable, for she liked a face that gave one a clue as to what was beneath.

“I think you are right,” Annabelle said at last, “and it is too sunny a day for Richard Crookback. The other day, when we were at Lady Sybil’s tea, one of the ladies mentioned another poet, one I didn’t know about. I wanted to ask you about him immediately, but I didn’t wish to interrupt your conversation then. For you know everything, I think, cousin.”

“Oh well, oh really,” Leonora said, speechless because she was so unexpectedly flattered and pleased. For if she had lost everything else, it was good to be reminded that there were some things that fate and fickle gentlemen could never rob her of, that there were some things that were entirely her own: her wit and her erudition.

So she turned an interested face to Annabelle, who said, furrowing her brow in remembrance, “The lady asked me what I thought of William Blake, and I didn’t reply, for I’m sure I’ve never heard of him. Have you?”

“Why how delightful!” Leonora cried. “But who was she? The lady that asked, I mean. Because I’ve always loved his little books, and I’ve never met another who had enjoyed him, aside from my father, that is to say, and I should love to know her.”

“I can’t recall,” Annabelle said apologetically. “There were so many ladies there, and all talking at once, I recall.” “Well, no matter,” Leonora said happily, “for I’ve not read him in years, and just the thought of his work cheers me. He’s a very simple fellow, Belle, and his poems are so slight that you think them childish until you begin to think about them, and then you realize that like a child’s statement, they have all the wisdom in the world within them, only not done up in all the flowery trappings that some of our poets like to use. And he illustrates his books as well. My father keeps his copies in the library downstairs, I believe. Come, let’s have a look at them.”

There were two volumes in the library and Leonora first read some selections from one, and then gave the book to Annabelle to scan while she picked up the other.

“It’s the contrast,” she said, engrossed in riffling through the little book, “the marked contrast between the two books, between innocence and experience, just as he says, that I find most interesting. For example, you recall that one about the lamb? Well, here is one about a tiger, and—”

But she wasn’t fated to finish her statement, for a faint background noise she hadn’t attended to before resolved itself into the undeniable sound of a throat being carefully cleared. When she looked up at the second impatient, “A-hum,” it was to see the butler awaiting her attention.

“The Marquess of Severne has come to call, my lady,” he announced, “and your father wishes you to join him in the little salon, if you would.”

“Oh,” said Leonora, as she snapped dosed the book and lay it absently upon a library table. “Then you must go to him, Belle. Go on, I’ll just stay and read for a bit,” she added, looking about her awkwardly, and then gesturing stiffly to the rows of books upon the wall.

“But cousin,” Annabelle said with something very much like amusement, “it is not my father who requests my presence.”

“But it is you that Severne has doubtless come to see,” Leonora stated bluntly.

“Yes,” Annabelle said reasonably. “So then, I think we must both go.”

He must have been surprised that she had come, Leonora thought, for he looked hard at her the moment she entered the room. She was perversely glad that she had worn a bright gypsy crimson gown this afternoon, for it did make her seem more blatant than Annabelle, in her soft dawnblush pink frock. And if that is what he thinks me, she told herself, lifting her head, then that is what I shall appear to be. He had come to call for Annabelle three times in the past weeks, twice to pay proper morning visits, once to take her for a sedate ride about Town, and he had monopolized her conversation at two social affairs. And all the while he had studiously ignored herself. Then let him have his milk-white maid, Leonora thought, and when in time he begins to lust for his spicier wicked ladies, I shall be glad that he can never have me.

They made their curtsies, and they made their bows, and the viscount made polite chatter for the four of them. It was he who took on the major burden of the conversation since his wife was occupied with her afternoon nap, and neither young woman seemed about to speak, and the marquess appeared for once to be uneasy. He answered his host readily enough, and commented sagaciously about the weather, just as he ought, but his face was still, and he never turned his head in Leonora’s direction again. In fact, she thought with a spurt of anger, she’d like to have fired off a pistol over her head just to see him startle and stare at the one place where she knew he would not.

Since he was not observing her, she had time and to spare to covertly gaze at him. He wore a dark gray jacket over his white shirt and silver and gray waistcoat, his breeches were a dark gray, and his high black hessians gleamed. He seemed rapier keen, even leaner than she’d remembered, and when he smiled at something her father said, she saw the angular planes of his face shift, and when he looked at her cousin, she saw the brilliance of his eyes soften.

“Oh would you, cousin?” Annabelle asked.

“Well, I certainly can’t offer objection to Severne’s plan to take you ladies in his new barouche for a short spin about the park,” her father said at once when Leonora did not reply. She understood again why it was that he was considered such a perfect diplomat, for she’d been so busy watching the marquess, she’d never heard the conversation at all. Then she had time to gather her wits as her father added, “Of course, as it’s an open carriage, there can’t be any gossip about such a jaunt, and then too, from the way he’s been going on about those new cattle of his, I doubt he’d be interested in anything else, even if it was to be a ride at midnight in a carriage with black curtains over each window.”

After the marquess had done denying such a lack of appreciation for beautiful ladies, Leonora said coldly, carefully, and concisely, “Ah, too bad. For I’ve a mountain of correspondence to catch up with. But Annabelle, you go, please do.”

As Annabelle looked to her cousin, with a great deal of shy hesitation, Severne took up the fair girl’s hand and echoed, with great warmth in his rich, deep voice, “Oh yes, Annabelle, you go, please do.”

Even as Annabelle dropped her lashes over her eyes and flushed prettily and hung her head, Leonora looked at their linked hands and took in one steadying breath. For she noted that it was a strong and slender hand that captured Annabelle’s. And when he raised it, to bear Annabelle’s hand to his lips, his soft white cuff fell back, exposing his wrists. Then she saw that his wristbones stood out prominently, almost like those of a boy who’d come into his growth too fast. That one unexpected glimpse of him made her remember that it had not been so very long since he’d left his boyhood behind and that he was, no matter how aloof and mannered he appeared to be, yet vulnerable, yet very human.

Leonora saw him reluctantly loose his grip from her cousin and, still gazing at his hand, she remembered its touch upon her in the darkened garden. Then she thought, just as a gentleman she’d recently read about had thought of his lady, and with fully as much longing, “O that I were a glove upon that hand ...” before she recalled herself and was shocked and sickened to her soul by her own unlooked for, uncalled for, and passionate reaction.

Leonora was very glad to see him assist Annabelle up to his carriage’s high seat, and she did not need to pretend her smile of relief as she waved good-bye to the pair when the equipage went off down the street. Only then, only when she let the window curtains fall back into place, did she hear her father’s voice.

“We’ve been invited to Torquay’s house for a week in the country. Severne’s to come as well.”

“I don’t wish to go,” she said stonily, not looking at her father, but only gazing empty-eyed at the empty street.

“I want to go,” her father said softly, “and he’s asked if Annabelle may come. I’m afraid,” he said, pausing to note how her eyes closed momentarily, as though in pain, “you must come as well. It will not look right if you do not.”

“The devil to what it looks like!” she blurted, opening her eyes to give him a look of blazing rage and sorrow.

His own eyes held anticipation as he suddenly recognized the spirited girl who stood before him. She stared at him and said in a rush, as though the words sprang unbidden from her lips, “Father! Father, I ...” And then she looked more closely at him. Her shoulders slumped and she said quietly and patiently, on a long exhalation, “Yes. Yes, of course you are right.”

He began to explain the arrangements that had been made for the visit, while all the time she stared out the window. And he thought, with a rising of his own spirits, that for the first time in a long time, he’d almost had his daughter Nell back with him again.

“Thank you very much,” Annabelle said quietly, “for asking for me when the viscount was with us. My cousin could not help but to allow me to come when I was asked when he was present. Not,” she said suddenly, putting her gloved hand to her lips in horror, “that she would have denied me the treat, of course. Please forget what I said, my lord, oh please do.”

“Consider it forgotten,” the marquess said in subdued tones, never taking his eyes from the street in front of him, though his horses handled as easily as trained animals from Astley’s circus. But then, he had not said very much to her, nor looked at her at all since they’d driven away from the viscount’s house.

“I was glad that you asked me to accompany you today,” Annabelle said at length when he did not attempt to speak with her again. “The morning had been so lovely, and yet I could not leave the house to take in the air. My cousin needed my services, of course, and that always, must always,” she corrected herself, “come first with me. But you mustn’t think I’ve been dull. Fortunately, I had some time and so entertained myself by reading last night. And again fortunately, you came to ask us out today.”

“And what have you been reading?” the marquess asked dutifully as they approached the park.

“Rereading Richard Crookback,” she said with more enthusiasm, in the spirited fashion she often employed when discussing books, he noted.

“Richard Crookback?” he asked with a smile, glancing over toward her. “Whoever composed that work?”

“Why Master Shakespeare,” she said a bit uncertainly.

“Ah yes,” he breathed, smiling at her, “that Crookback. And what was a nice child like you doing up all night with a villain like that?”

“Why,” she replied with a pretty show of her teeth, “I must confess that I prefer his company to many heroes’. He’s so dangerously seductive, you know.”

He laughed aloud at that, and glanced at her as she sat beside him, so simple and neat, this poor oppressed child, with her unexpected depths.

They chatted about Shakespeare’s immoral king as they drove through the gates of the park, and passers-by smiled at the charming couple the dark-haired gentleman and the pretty fair lady made, until they saw that it was Severne and some unknown young female, and then they either pitied or envied her heartily, depending on their age and gender.

“Then,” the marquess said as he relaxed and let the horses step lightly down the park drives, since there was no room or need for them to hurry, “I can understand why you took up my invitation. It’s only natural, since you have such a fondness for wicked fellows. But you must certainly have a care for old Iago then as well, confess it, don’t you?”

She grew very still and then said softly, “But I haven’t met him, so I could not say.”

He laughed at the queer, quaint way she related to literary characters, before he saw the quick look of rue that she shot toward him. Poor victimized child, he thought, of course she would find such fictional company as real as life, considering her lonely circumstances. But before he could gloss over his laughter, she spoke up again.

“But I did spend some time with your friend Mr. Blake,” she said.

“And did you two get along well?” he asked.

“Oh yes!” she enthused in her breathy little voice, becoming animated again. “But we are old friends. I have always loved his poems. They cheer me. They seem so ample, slight, and almost childish at first, until you begin to think about them, and then you realize that like a child’s statement, they have all the wisdom in the world in them, only not done up in all the flowery trappings some of our poets like to use.”

“ ‘Little lamb, who made thee?’ ” he quoted softly, gazing at her, this odd, sad little Sit-by-the-cinders with her unexpected wealth of emotions and sensitivity, and taste in literature which so neatly matched his own.

And seeing the particularly fond and warming gaze he bent upon her, she ducked her head before she looked up straight into his knowing eyes, and gave him back a knowing smile.

ELEVEN

The anteroom was so magnificent, Leonora rationalized, that anyone might understand why a person might be reluctant to leave it Certainly, she thought glumly, as she paced its salmon-and green-, gray-and gold-patterned mosaic tile floor, a guest might be expected to admire it, and so would not be considered to be sulking or hiding, or even brooding if she were discovered hovering here alone, rather than being out on the wide lawns in the bright sunlight with all the rest of the company.

In fact, she remembered distinctly that when Annabelle first stepped into Grace Hall, she’d stopped in her tracks, disregarding her host and hostess, and stared about as if she were entering the kingdom of heaven for the first time, and not merely a duke’s country house. Although, to be fair, Leonora thought, gazing about the huge anteroom with its gold-figured canopied ceiling supported by marble columns, there was nothing “mere” about the Torquay home, not in any nook or cranny, or for all she knew, mousehole of it.

The thought of a great gilded ducal mousehole cheered her a bit, and she wore a slight smile as she slowly paced across the inlaid floor again, just as she’d done only moments before. Her own home was stately and she’d always cherished a tiny but steady flame of pride in its comforts and long history of service to family and country, but, she thought, there was no question that it wasn’t a patch on this place.

It wasn’t only the size and luxury of Grace Hall which struck a visitor, it was the warmth that seemed to permeate every inch of it. There was such happiness here that it was
almost a tangible thing, a light that supplemented the spring sunshine that shone through the long windows and a glow to increase the effect of the fires laid in the many hearths to take the chill from the long cool evenings. If there were few homes in the land with the splendor of Grace Hall, there were doubtless fewer still that held such a merry, loving couple as its duke and duchess.

Leonora had never seen the duke do more than touch his lovely wife’s white hand in public, nor had she seen the duchess more than smile wistfully at her golden-haired husband when he wasn’t looking. But still they managed to convey their mutual adoration far better than had all the titled lords and ladies Leonora had ever seen subtly fondling each other in all manner of places in exhibition of their infatuation. They showed their devotion even better, Leonora thought, than did all the footmen and their wenches she had seen at their usual slap and pinch and giggle when they walked out together. And they displayed their interest in each other even better still, she decided spitefully, than Severne and Annabelle did when they played at cards together in the long evenings, or when he walked with her in the gardens in the late afternoons, or when she spoke low and lingeringly with him in the last hours before they parted company for the night.

“I want to go home,” Leonora thought then, with a sudden, sharp pinch of sorrow at her heart that momentarily took her breath away. But it really was too much, she thought, turning her face to a small window and looking out sightlessly at the radiant day, far too much for her to bear even for nobility’s sake. Because, she realized, though it is never good to run from one’s problems, one doesn’t have to take up lodgings with them for life either.

Severne wanted Annabelle, Annabelle desired Severne, that was all she knew, and that was all she needed to know. She didn’t have to watch that lean, graceful form bending over that big-eyed, white-faced girl like a willow over a reflecting pool, each day and every night, in order to constantly feel the exquisite bite of the exquisite irony of their meeting. Nor did she have to see the look in those dark blue eyes when they rested upon the light blue ones of her cousin to realize that she must soon rehearse all the congratulations she’d thought to visit upon some other gentleman, any other gentleman, who she thought would have spoken for Annabelle.

And there were times, and often, when she knew he looked upon her as well. Perversely, those were the worst times of all. She winced at what he must think then. If he hadn’t held her in his arms perhaps she might be able to accept the thought of him embracing Annabelle. If she hadn’t tasted his lips perhaps she could bear to think of them framing his declaration to Annabelle. But as it was, there was no doubt in Leonora’s mind that in order to have accepted Annabelle, he must first have totally rejected herself.

It was not pleasant to remember that one night in a darkened garden she had let him know without speech or reservation, that she could not withhold anything of herself from him. It was, however, far worse to know that he rejected all he’d been offered, which was only all that she could possibly give. Although she’d never done more with any man than she had done with him that night, she’d never before wanted more from any man either. Yet on that night she’d realized that she would have been willing to have him know her entirely, not only in body, but in mind and heart as well. But as it transpired, he’d gone on to show her that he quite literally wanted no further part of her at all.

So though she’d only been at Grace Hall for four days, it was four centuries too long for Leonora. It might have been that the loving atmosphere of the great house increased her own feelings of loss and loneliness. It might have been that she couldn’t have borne the sight of her fantasy lover carrying off her poor cousin no matter where she was. She no longer knew, or cared. She only knew that she did not care to watch it go forth for one day longer.

That was why she continued to pace the anteroom while all the others were at some great mock archery tournament upon the broad green lawns. She had come this far only to discover that like an insulted child at a birthday party where she’d not been included in all the games, she simply didn’t want to play with any of them for one moment longer.

Leonora was wondering whether a sudden attack of stomach distress or a spuriously strained ankle was a better excuse for the packing she meant to begin as soon as the sun set, when her sister came drifting into the hall like an animated tall cool white fountain, spilling lace and scent all about her.

“How tiresome,” Lady Benjamin sighed, “to find you actually mooning about the house, just as Katie said. I’d thought it only her usual impudence, but it’s no more than the truth. Heavens, Leonora, where is your backbone, my girl?”

“I must have left it in London, so I’m going back for it tonight,” Leonora said gloomily, not looking at her sister at all, but only mindlessly tracing the lead in the glass around a knight’s head in one small side window, with one finger.

“Absolutely not,” Sybil said firmly. “Nothing could be more disastrous. It would be gauche, it would be m bred, and it would be foolish as well. A general does not desert the field until the battle is clearly over.”

Leonora spun around at that and looked at her sister. For a moment Leonora had thought that she was actually referring to her problem with Severne, but then she realized, seeing Sybil’s expressionless face, that she was only indulging in a bit of metaphor. Sybil, Leonora thought, with some annoyance beginning to tinge her overall feeling of despair, was a very civilized person, and so would only concern herself with what was done, rather than with what was actually felt, by all those who surrounded her.

“I don’t regard a social week in the country as a battlefield,” Leonora said testily, “and so I don’t mind losing such skirmishes. I’m leaving, Sybil, and I don’t expect anyone to accompany me either. I’ll take Katie, and leave Annabelle here with you and mother, and see you all when you return to Town. Then,” she said darkly, “I’m going home to Lincolnshire for good. London’s not for me.”

“I see,” Sybil said thoughtfully, coming close enough to Leonora so that she felt enveloped in a cloud of patchouli. “Then I am to assume that Severne’s not for you either? Don’t gape at me like a startled owl, Leonora. I don’t know why it is that whenever I speak with you about anything that is not to do with gowns or fashions, you stagger back amazed. And as it is, any sensate being would be aware of your emotions for Severne.”

But since Leonora hoped that she’d been extremely circumspect and terribly subtle in relation to her feelings for the marquess, she only said at once, and somewhat stiffly, “I haven’t the slightest idea of what you’re talking about, Sybil. It’s only that I’m most awfully bored here.”

“Don’t be childish, Leonora,” Sybil snapped. “One of your better qualities is that you so seldom lie. Which is all to the good, since you do it so very poorly. I’m very disappointed to find you exactly as your impudent Katie said, ‘moping about like you’d just lost your looks.’ Leonora,” Sybil said, fixing her sister with a steady stare and showing her concern by the uncharacteristic forceful gesture of raising one finger for emphasis, “the duchess sent me to find you, and now I find myself most disturbed at what I’ve discovered. I cannot believe that you are content to hide away while that Greyling creature snatches Severne out from under your nose.”

Leonora looked away to where she’d been fretfully fingering the design of the window. “But I thought you did not care for the marquess,” was all that she could think to reply.

“I cannot care for his history,” Sybil admitted, “but father admires him greatly. Lord Benjamin himself says that he’s a worthwhile fellow, despite his past Then too, he is titled, wealthy, and intelligent, and I do not deny that his looks and manners are very taking. You could do worse, my dear. And so I should be ashamed of you, sister, if you allowed that wretched chit to outmaneuver you in this.”

Leonora knew that it was useless enumerating Annabelle’s qualities, since Sybil thought the girl both underborn and underbred. And though she thought that her sister might be a very good tactician, she doubted that she knew much of the workings of the human heart. Still, she was touched by her concern and tried to frame an honest answer.

“Dearest Sybil,” Leonora said, as she tried valiantly to keep her voice level and her eyes dry, “I am pleased that you care. But if you cannot get a horse to drink even after you’ve led him to water, how can you assume that the gentlemen are any less opinionated than those noble beasts? Dear Sybil, don’t you see, Severne has a care for Annabelle.” Then she had to pause to bite her lower lip so as to steady it.

“So it would seem, would it not?” Sybil replied calmly. “But then I have seen how much of a care he has for the chit when you are in the room, and how much less he has when you are not. Yes. My dear Leonora, if you assume such expressions repeatedly, in the fullness of time you may well be mistaken for an owl. Were I Miss Greyling,” she mused, a pleased expression coming over her serene countenance, “I should not be pleased at all at how my suitor’s attentions waxed and waned at the entrances and exits of another lady. And though it would not be the first time that a gentleman declared for one female simply to get the attention or the angry reaction of another, I should hate to see it happen in this case. For Leonora,” she said with emphasis, her voice becoming stern, “I would consider it a reflection upon our family name, were you to meekly accept this.”

Leonora gazed at her sister for a long moment. She couldn’t believe half of what Sybil had said, but there was so much to be hoped for in it if she did, and so much humor in it, even if she didn’t, that she felt her sorrow retreating before Sybil’s proud stare.

“Well Sybil,” she said at last, “if it is a matter of family honor...”

“I believe that it is,” Sybil said calmly, and then adroitly turning the subject, before the mistiness growing in her sister’s eyes resolved itself into something embarrassing, she went on, “And I recall you were always adept with the bow. They are having an archery tournament and I let our family down very badly. I never took to the sport, you know, for fear of developing unsightly musculature. You didn’t seem to care, although, to be sure, you were very young then,” she said handsomely, willing to give Leonora some credit since she herself had won the most important point.

Their father had been mad for the sport when he was young, Leonora recalled nostalgically, as had every gentleman of the quality, following their young and handsome Prince’s lead. But even as Prinny had grown stout and sedentary, interest in archery itself had died, along with all the other dreams of that golden youth. Yet though The Royal British Bowmen society had disbanded decades earlier, the passage of time had done nothing to blunt the viscount’s enthusiasm for the sport at which he excelled. When his son had been too small to pass the skill along to, the viscount had been pleased to tutor his daughters on long summer afternoons. Though Sybil had always eschewed any sport or activity which might present her at less than her smoothly perfect self, Leonora had taken to the bow at once, for it was inextricably linked in her mind with her father’s interest and approval.

“Annabelle and Severne comprise one team, Father and I another,” Sybil went on, noting her sister’s interest. “The duchess is entertaining her children, and so won’t come within leagues of the target area, and Torquay has said that he will only play if the teams are even. You, of course, will be on Father’s side. And then the duke must take Severne’s team. They protested that the odds would be uneven, with two men on one side and only one on the other, but Father only agreed, saying that once you took up the bow, all the others were lost Severne,” Sybil said, as she began to step out into the hall, and Leonora followed, so anxious to hear what was going to be said next that it was as though she were drawn from the house on a long invisible lead, “Severne did not believe this, and has offered to bind up one arm to make the odds more even.”

“Oh has he?” Leonora said militantly, forgetting that it was a gentle spring afternoon, and that all the words, as well as the tourney itself, were jests.