False Angel (21 page)

For as she stood just outside the curtained entry to the box, she remembered that Severne and Annabelle were there together, and so far as she knew, alone. There could be no question of her interrupting an embrace. It was quite proper for them to be alone there, the box, after all, could be seen from every angle of the hall, and thus they had no more visual privacy than they would if they were upon the stage itself. But perhaps they were discussing something important together, such as a proposal, Leonora thought She should not like to walk in on such. When it came to that, she didn’t wish to be the only other person in the box with them, either. So she stood by the velvet drape, and dithered. Until she heard him call her name.

He said it with warmth, with love. “Oh, Nell,” she heard him say, as one says the name of one’s beloved. “Oh, Nell,” he said it with a sweet pretense of exasperation. “Oh, Nell,” he said on half a laugh. There was such a wealth of tender, amused welcome in those two simple words that Leonora drew back the curtain and looked upon him with gladness and relief at this unexpected chance for homecoming. And as she entered, she saw him smiling down at Annabelle with such tenderness in that stern face as she had never hoped to see there, even for herself. It had been, of course, she realized, “Oh Belle,” that she had heard.

She had only just enough wit left to rock back the one pace she stepped forward. And she let the curtain slowly, soundlessly, drop back. But she did not take her hand from it, and she did not move another step. Instead, because she could not resist it any more than she could if they had been the fates discussing the actual date and place of her death, she stayed to listen to their murmurous conversation, even though it might cost her all her future joy in life.

But as it turned out, they weren’t speaking of love, or at least not the sort of love she’d feared they might be discussing.

“Yes,” Annabelle continued in a clear, confident little voice that was almost unrecognizable to her cousin, “for music is to the emotions as poetry is to prose. It is what happens when a soul or, indeed, a thought must sing. Or,” she concluded, in the more hesitant tones that Leonora knew so well, “at least so I have always felt.”

“But that’s quite a charming notion, don’t hang your head for saying it, little one,” the marquess commented in the same warm, tender tones. “In fact, you ought to write it down.”

“Ah well,” Leonora could hear Annabelle say, in eerie reprise, “after what I’ve just said, I suppose it would be better if I sang it, don’t you think?”

The Lady Benjamin found herself accosted in a dim stretch of hallway as she was making her way back to her box. A hand snaked out from a dark niche and clamped onto her arm in a sensitive place, above an emerald bracelet. Before she could call for Lord Benjamin’s help, since he never looked her way as they promenaded, she heard her sister hiss, “Sybil, here, at once.”

The lady bade her husband continue to their box without her and stayed to talk with her agitated sister. She eyed her sibling askance, for Leonora was as flushed and fervent as though she ran a fever.

“Since I doubt you’ve been bitten by a mad dog since we’ve left you, I assume you are in some other sort of dire distress?” Sybil asked coolly.

“Sybil,” Leonora said wildly, “I want to be rid of my cap and bells.”

“Ah,” said Lady Benjamin.

“At once, do you hear?” Leonora cried. “You must help me. I want to stop being a fool, and oh lord, Sybil, for the first time in my life I think I actually want to kill someone.”

“Oh splendid,” said her sister.

THIRTEEN

The slender volume lay unopened upon the table. Though ordinarily Leonora would very much wish to know what treasures awaited between the soft covers, they lay limp and closed. And not the promise of the vision of a dozen angels with the likenesses of her cousin, or a score more with her own dark face, would have tempted her to turn one page of Mr. Blake’s book right now. For her cousin’s angelic countenance was before her in reality, and she had far more curiosity about the answers that would fall from those actual lips, than she had for any wisdom contained in any volume, from any author who had ever lived or written.

“Why yes, of course,” Annabelle said calmly, although with some evident surprise, as though she were amazed that such a question need be asked at all. “Of course I intend to marry him. I have from the first.”

“But you said ... or at least I thought you seemed to think he was reprehensible, you seemed to think I ought not encourage him...
.”
Leonora faltered.

“Why, of course,” Annabelle replied with a little smile that was not remotely angelic upon her pale lips, “because I wanted him, and I thought it wouldn’t do for you to get in my way. Actually, as it turned out, cousin, you made it that much easier for me, and I thank you for it.”

Leonora did not reply at once. She could not. She only stood and gripped hard upon the edge of her dressing table so that the pain in her hands reinforced the reality of the encounter. For, she thought, if it were not for the fact that her fingers certainly ached, she might believe that she had fallen asleep waiting for Annabelle to come to her room as she had bidden her to do, and was merely dreaming this entire bizarre conversation.

She’d known from the moment she’d opened her eyes this morning that she must speak with Annabelle. Instead, she’d gone to visit Sybil, as they had hurriedly arranged to do the previous night. And nothing that her sister had said at their early morning council of war in Sybil’s ornate dressing room had changed her mind. All the schemes that Sybil had concocted in the night were unworkable, or at least, she’d known they were so for her. For she’d listened to plots that were far too Machiavellian, too complex, and too full of subversion for her to seriously attempt to follow for any longer than it took for her sister to lovingly detail them.

Sybil might well have been able to carry off the exquisitely convoluted deceptions that had to do with forged notes and double-edged comments, feigned disclosures and servants paid to spy, but Leonora knew she could not. It was, as she had finally sighed, turning down one last scheme that involved a great deal of skulking and lurking, admittedly her own fault Obviously, she wasn’t feminine enough to be up to such rigs, exactly as Sybil, who was very irate at her refusal, snapped at her so crossly. But, as she’d replied as she arose and prepared to take her leave, if it was indeed masculine for her to approach Annabelle and plainly ask for explanation, then she’d just have to be fitted out for trousers, for that was precisely what she intended to do as soon as she returned home.

And that was precisely what she’d done, not ten minutes before. She’d postponed luncheon and summoned Annabelle. Then her cousin had entered the room with her usual meek grace. Katie had been sent away, though Leonora didn’t doubt that her maid wasn’t somewhere in the vicinity with a tumbler up against an inner wall and her own wondering ear attached to that glass, for without doubt Katie was as feminine a creature as Sybil might wish her sister to be.

But then Leonora had never equated stealth and deceit with femininity, nor did she for one moment consider that her gender had any special proclivity or talent for such, either. She reasoned that oppressed creatures of any sort might well develop such tendencies, but she’d never considered herself particularly oppressed. Then, too, all her life she’d known that the gentlemen she knew the best and admired the most were likely her nation’s most superior spies. And none of them were remotely ladylike.

No, whether she’d been born male or female, Leonora knew she lacked the qualities necessary for effective espionage. She was a poor liar, an uncomfortable conspirator, and an abysmally bad actress. She regretted, but accepted these deficiencies in her character. They were, after all, the very reasons her life had been shaped as it had been. She became estranged from her father when she’d been unable to face him knowing what she did of his mistresses, and she’d given up the thought of marriage after learning of the hypocrisy evidently necessary to keep up the semblance of wedded bliss. From such painful experience, Leonora knew she was bad at semblances and worse at hypocrisy.

And so she didn’t count it as either brave or honorable to refuse to resort to deceit She simply realized that she had no other course but to face Annabelle squarely, and have the matter out in the open.

But she’d never expected Annabelle to be as candid with her. Nor had she expected Annabelle to be such an adept at the family trade as to make her own father appear to be merely an amateur.

Though it took a while for Leonora to frame her question, and longer still for her to actually nerve herself to ask it aloud, when she at last did, it didn’t seem to discompose Annabelle in the least.

For, “Oh,” Annabelle said softly, laying the book she carried down upon the table when she was told there was something more pressing upon her relative’s mind. And then, “Yes,” she had said without a blink when she was asked if it were true that she had literally quoted everything her cousin had said about music to the marquess, without ever crediting the originator of the commentary.

“Of course,” Annabelle had then said, smiling, completely undismayed at answering a question whose creation had turned her inquisitor’s cheek to flame, “for it was a clever thing to say, and I know nothing of music, I told you so, cousin. And I needed to impress him. He’s almost at the point of offering for me, and needs a bit of encouragement, you know.”

Leonora was so staggered at this calm admission that she didn’t even take affront when Annabelle then proceeded to thank her, with more evident amusement than she had ever shown on her bland, pale face, for making her task easier by encouraging the marquess’s company. Leonora only clutched at the dressing table to convince herself of her wakeful state and then, despite her amazement, managed to pluck the chiefest, most salient point from her cousin’s answer to ask, “But then, Belle ... that means ... has he asked?”

“Not yet, I told you,” Annabelle said with some perturbance before she smiled again and sweetly said, “but he will. Soon too, I expect. Shall we read now, cousin?”

She placed her hands over the book, and it was that sight, the vision of those two delicate white hands closing over the tan volume, just as two other strong tanned hands had doubtless closed over hers when he had given her the book, that spurred Leonora to action.

“Belle,” she said, shaking her head, not angry yet, but confused by the traces of evident amusement mixed in with the other girl’s calm demeanor, “I don’t understand you, I do not. All the while you were cautioning me against encouraging Severne, you were angling for his attentions? I can scarcely believe it of you.”

It might have been that Leonora only wanted her relative to lower her lashes over the brilliant gleam in her usually mild eyes. And had she done so and whispered, “Ah, cousin, but I cannot help it, it was my heart involved, and I never thought he’d have a thought for me,” Leonora would have taken it, and then left it. Forever.

Of course, she would doubtless have wept in private, and perhaps railed against fate. Perhaps too she would have been disappointed at her cousin’s parroting her favorite opinions for the purpose of fascinating her favorite gentleman. But she likely would never have said or done another thing about the forthcoming betrothal, except to offer felicitations and purchase a suitable bridal gift. She was used, after all, to self-denial and self-denigration. And defeat was such a frequent visitor that she commonly set a place for it each day at her table, and left a pillow for it on her bed each night.

“Ah cousin,” Annabelle sighed at last, just as she ought, “can I help it that he prefers me to you?”

But she said it with a smile, and she ended it with a comfortable little chuckle.

And during the statement her expression subtly altered. In that moment it held such a look of repletion and fond memory that it was almost embarrassing for Leonora to see. For it was more like the smile on the face of a confirmed voluptuary after a feast or an orgy than it was ever like that of a shy young girl’s memory of her lover.

And she continued to smile at Leonora, as though the joke were too rich to swallow up all at once. It was that which made Leonora realize that a theft had been committed.

Some little fragment of pride had been pricked by that smug and knowing smile. It was as though some crumb of self-worth refused to be swept away with all the debris of her hopes. It was then that she remembered that however much Severne might prefer Belle’s person, there was no question, she had heard it with her own ears, that it was
her
own words he had admired as they left her cousin’s lips. Whatever else was true, then, it was undeniable that her cousin had stolen her own thoughts in order to more easily steal away her own choice of gentleman. And though Leonora did not believe in herself, she did believe in justice, and where fate might go unchallenged, crime could not.

She did not ask if Annabelle loved Severne; with all of her inexperience in such matters, Leonora was never a fool, and that query would provide her cousin with far too facile and unanswerable an answer to give. She only asked calmly, with no trace of embarrassment now, since she decided it was a matter of ethics and not of the heart which she broached,

“Why do you want him, Belle? You did not at first, I’ll swear it. Is it because I did?”

Annabelle’s eyes widened and her brows went up in her characteristic response to surprise. But it wasn’t the propriety of the question that shocked her, it was the question itself.

“But he’s a marquess, cousin. He has a great deal of money and when his papa dies, he’ll have more and be a duke besides. Of course I showed no interest at first, for I didn’t know I had a hope then. But where in the world would someone like me ever get a chance at a marquess?” Annabelle answered in amazement “You can wed anywhere you wish, and if you don’t care to wed, you’ll still have a great deal of money.”

“But I introduced you to a great many young men with comfortable fortunes, Belle,” Leonora said reasonably, although she felt a chill wind blow across her soul at her cousin’s omission of the one word she had dreaded, but nonetheless expected to hear used in defense.

“Yes, you did,” the fair young woman admitted with a more honest, open smile, “but it will be better for me with Severne. He doesn’t expect much, you see. Once he has his heir, he’ll be content. And even if he’s not—” and here the young woman grinned as she picked up the volume of poetry—“he is, you see, the last man in all of England to do anything about it. Well,” she giggled, her pale face animated with her delight at her own jest, “he’s
had
one divorce, hasn’t he? He’s not likely to ask for another. No one gets two, you know. And I don’t think he’d murder for his freedom. No, he’d be the most complacent husband on earth, I think, don’t you? For he’d have to put up with whatever he got, wouldn’t he? And he’s got a title, and a fortune. I can’t see how I could do better. Really.” Annabelle shook her head for emphasis, and after one last little encouraging smile toward her cousin, she asked, “Now, can we read this book together, Leonora? I think it will be most interesting. Joscelin said you’d like it.”

Leonora took a tiny involuntary step backward. She gazed into her cousin’s wide, mild blue eyes and understood at last that there was and had always been something very odd about her cousin.

It was never a thing that was there for a person to see or comment upon. Even such voluble, verbal creatures as Katie and Sybil had been unable to precisely define more than their unease or dislike of something in the girl. But it would be the most difficult thing in the world to express, for there never had been any one thing in Annabelle to find fault with. It was not anything she possessed or did that caused the feeling of wrongness. The problem was the reverse. It was nothing that was in Belle. Rather, Leonora suddenly discovered, it was the lack of something that should have been there.

For here she had just calmly announced her larceny. She did not bother to deny her outright theft of the attentions of a gentleman she knew her cousin cared for. And there had been no word of love, or even of physical desire without love, which Leonora, remembering Severne’s reaction to herself, could now unhappily, well understand. It hadn’t been that lean, striking face, nor those piercing eyes, nor even that strong graceful frame that Belle had rhapsodized over. Nor had there been a word about his keen intellect, wry humor, or evident compassion. It was his purse she lusted for, his title she admired, and his sad history which brought her thoughts of future joy.

And now, having divulged all this, she smiled and asked Leonora to read the poetry of William Blake with her. Forgetting she was speaking with a rival, and still not willing to believe that she was dealing with a sort of monster, a human with one important piece left out, and that piece, for want of a better word, a heart, Leonora cried in confusion, “Belle! How can you? How can you say what you’ve said, and then expect me to sit and chat with you as though there was not a thing upon our minds?”

Annabelle looked up from the book, from an illustration of the face of one particular dark angel that Severne had said, somewhat wistfully, reminded him of someone, and looked directly into an almost uncannily identical pair of deep and sorrowful eyes before her.

“But we needn’t be enemies,” she said benignly. “I like you very well, cousin, and you have been very kind to me. After I am wed, I hope that we may still be friends, for indeed, I have no reason to dislike you at all. In fact, after I’m wed, I’d like you to visit with me often. And if it transpires that Severne should like you as well by then, I shouldn’t mind at all. Do you understand, cousin?”

As Leonora gaped at the slender girl, trying very hard not to understand, Annabelle went on softly,

“For you two are very much alike, you know. You both admire Master Shakespeare and poetry and music. Once I am safely wed, I vow it, cousin, I would not mind whatever you and Joscelin did together. You would find me, I promise, understanding, and willing always to look the other way. And I do not mean just when you two were having discussions,” she smiled, “for I am not blind, and have seen the way he sometimes looks at you. And as I don’t care for that sort of thing at all myself, I should not mind. Now, can we read?” she asked politely, holding out the book to Leonora.