[Samuel Barbara] The Black Angel(Book4You) (12 page)

Adriana awakened with a strange sense of anticipation in her chest, and could not quite pinpoint the reason. It certainly wasn't the weather, which was cold and gloomy, threatening rain that did not quite fall. It could not be what awaited her brothers in London. In fact, thinking of that, she frowned. She ought to be feeling dread. Dread for them, dread for herself, dread all around.

But instead the slight, fevered sense of excitement clung to her as she washed and dressed, and directed her maid to pack the things she'd chosen last night.

"Not the red silk?" Fiona asked. "Nor the blue? The blue is so fair on you, milady."

"Only what I've set out, Fiona." She eyed the duns and browns and grays with satisfaction. Not a single, tiny splash of color among them. Perfect.

She bustled downstairs to have breakfast, the anticipation taking a little leap that faded all too quickly when she found only Phoebe in the room.

Nevertheless intent on good spirits, she said, "Good morning!" Laid out on the sideboard were kidneys and rashers, and piles of fluffy sliced bread and jam. Adriana filled a plate to groaning, her appetite whetted by the cool day and her eagerness to be on the road. She sat down with her sister. "Where is everyone?"

Phoebe's portion was far more modest, only a hunk of buttered bread and tea. "Julian and Gabriel set out very early. Cassandra went with them, to see to the house."

Adriana nodded. Not unexpected. "They won't go to the magistrate today, will they?"

"Oh, no. Julian said tomorrow would be soon enough."

Spreading her own bread thickly with strawberry jam, Adriana said lightly, "And Lord Glencove? Did he set out with them, too?"

"No." A faint, knowing glitter lit Phoebe's dark blue eyes. Adriana privately cursed the whole notion of sisters. "He's seeing to the coach and horses. He assumed you'd prefer a companion."

"I see." The anticipation in her lifted a notch. "Good. The girls are still abed?"

"As ever. Ophelia was still pouting late last night about being forced to stay home. Cleo is rather more understanding."

"And you? Do you mind staying behind?"

Her eyes widened. "Of course not! I loathe London."

"And there is the matter of a certain new vicar, after all," Adriana said archly. Knowing, after all, went both directions.

Phoebe colored faintly. "He is still only settling in. He'll need the assistance of the Ladies' Society to help. He's not even hired a cook yet."

The new vicar, a rugged man from the North, had arrived only last Saturday, to take over for the retiring man, who had married Adriana and Tynan. "Of course," Adriana said, and patted her sister's hand. "You've no interest at all in his broad shoulders."

"Riana!" Phoebe smiled slightly, but her calm had returned. "Not all of us think in such terms. And after all, the parish is overflowing with lovely, suitable young women."

"Of which you are one, my dear." Adriana put her hand on her sister's. "You're as lovely as any of them."

Phoebe smiled, shaking her head. "It's a very pretty lie, and I thank you." Done with the subject, she reached into her pocket. "I've had a letter from Leander. Would you like to hear it?"

"Of course." Leander was their cousin, raised with them from the time of his parents' death at six. He and Phoebe had been close to the same age and had become close during the terrors of the journey to and from Martinique. "Does he plan to pause in his wandering to visit us?"

"Not yet," Phoebe said with a smile, and put on a pair of spectacles, shook out the letter, and began to read aloud. It was bold and brash, a tale of adventures across India, filled with the sights and sounds and music of a distant land, a special sort of magic that belonged to Leander alone. Phoebe captured his tone of breathless, joyous excitement perfectly, and by the time she finished, they were both laughing.

"You read his letters beautifully," Adriana said.

Phoebe folded her spectacles and set them on the table, a faint smile giving her plain features a light-struck aspect of which Adriana was sure her sister had no awareness. "When I read of his adventures, I admit I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be Leander, to be male and filled with a spirit of adventure, and have the fortune to indulge it."

"But you do not even like to leave Hartwood, Phoebe."

"I know." She smiled, and gave a little shrug. "Still, one does wonder."

An authoritative booted heel sounded in the foyer, and Adriana felt the pleasantly simmering anticipation take a sudden, heated jump. Both sisters looked toward the door, and in strode Tynan—in a dark mood by the look of him. In place of the usual glint, there was only impatience in his eyes, and he was dressed for travel in that heavy black cape with its bright, embroidered edge, his hair tied back from that dark angel face. "Will you be wanting to leave today, my lady," he asked briskly, "or shall we brave the thieves and robbers along our way after nightfall, when we'll be ever so much easier for them to capture?"

Adriana shot her sister an amused glance. "I'm quite ready, sir. Let me fetch my cloak."

In good weather, on good roads, the trip to London could be accomplished in a bit less than two hours. On such a wet day, the ruts and mud would slow them considerably, adding at least an hour to the journey. Adriana pinned her hat in place, gathered a novel to amuse herself with on the way, and cheerfully bustled outside to the waiting coach. It was not quite the latest style, and the paint was appearing a bit faded, but Adriana had always loved the green plush interior and the well-sprung comfort, and she smiled happily in anticipation of a journey. Tynan waited with ill-concealed impatience as she kissed Phoebe, promised to write daily about developing events, and accepted a basket of food from Monique.

She allowed the footman to hand her up, then settled her skirts about her and put her book in her lap. Tynan climbed in behind her, and the door was closed tight. The coach, which ordinarily seemed quite roomy, seemed cramped with the length of his legs, the breadth of his shoulders, and that annoyingly pervasive scent of him, somehow exaggerated this morning by the dampness.

He flung himself back against the facing seat and peered out the window. Adriana looked out to wave with a gloved hand at Monique and Phoebe, who gave one last wave and hurried inside, out of the rain.

Then it was only the two of them in the rocking coach, the sound of the wheels and the clop of hooves and the patter of rain on the roof. "Bloody awful day for the coachman," Tynan commented.

"They'll be compensated, I assure you." His mood was dark indeed, she thought, and it somehow pleased her. She had suspected he had this brooding side—the Irish were famed for it, after all—and she found it was much easier to dismiss him when he glared out the window like a tomcat with his tail swishing. Men could be such children. She smiled to herself and picked up her book.

"What are you so cheerful about?" he growled.

Adriana looked up. "Why, I'm cheerful by nature, sir! And I do love being abroad of a morning, heading into town. I have not ventured far from Hartwood since my father died, and I find I'm rather pleased—no matter what the circumstances—to be off on a bit of an adventure."

"Mmmm."

"One might ask what's made you so ill-tempered." She said it lightly, edging the words with brightness, so he would know she laughed inwardly at him.

He only glared. One did not laugh at a cat, after all. "I loathe this journey. It bores me."

"I have another book," she offered, reaching for her bag, tucked beneath her skirts. She pulled out a bound edition of Voltaire's
Questions sur L'Encyclopedia
and handed it to him.

He glanced at it. "I don't read French."

"Ah. Well, then, take mine." She handed it to him.

Tynan took it, read the title, and she watched him attempt to hide his smile. "
Clarissa
." He lost the battle with his sense of humor, and he chuckled, the blue eyes lighting—finally—with that glint she'd grown to enjoy. "I assume you're reminding yourself of the evil intentions of rakes."

Adriana lifted her chin. "Exactly."

He returned the book. "I wouldn't want to hold you from your edification."

"I suppose you're one of those men who scorns romances in favor of those pompous tomes by Fielding and Defoe."

"And if I am, if I say that women have muddled the field of novels, and Richardson is an embarrassment?"

He'd begun in a slump, but with these words he straightened, as if warming to his subject.

Exactly as she wished. "Is that your claim or not, sir?"

"I'm an Irishman," he said with a lazy smile. "We're quite fond of romances."

"So you've read Richardson, have you?"

"Does that surprise you? I prefer the happy ending, myself. All these tragic endings…" Shadows flickered beneath the sooty lashes. "There's enough tragedy in real life for me, without seeking books with them."

She inclined her head. "Refreshing. Though I admit I do not picture you reading much at all."

A shrug, a restless shift in his seat. "I prefer to be busy at something," he agreed. "But my mother was often abed with various complaints. I often read to her."

Adriana felt a stillness press into her at the sudden vision of him sitting with his ill mother, reading. It made him seem too good.

"Her favorite," he said, and the word rolled from his tongue in that musical lilt, "was
Rasselas
."

"
A
very sad book indeed."

He shook his head. "She wept and wept over it. I can't think why a person would want to weep so."

A rut in the road jolted them roughly, and Adriana put her hand out to steady herself before she answered. "At times," she said quietly, her gaze fixed on the passing landscape, "it seems that's all there is to do. And it can be cleansing, in its way." She smiled. "But I suppose men do not have that freedom."

"No, I think not."

"Would it not be a relief, at times? Haven't you ever wished to howl and scream in grief or anger?"

The heavy lashes descended, hiding his reaction. "A man does not howl or scream. That's left to women."

Realizing the conversation had drifted into a realm that was rather darker than she intended, Adriana said, "So what is your favorite novel, then? Do you have one?"

"I don't care for novels, particularly. Laborious and too long. I prefer essays and humorists. Swift, for example."

"Of course." She smiled.

"And Shakespeare. Such pretty words—they roll in your mouth like some delicious parfait." He closed his eyes and quoted,

"And I serve the fairy queen;

To dew her orbs upon the green,

The cowslips tall her pensioners be:

In the gold coats spots you see;

Those be rubies, fairy favors,

In those freckles live their savors."

Adriana was captured by the rolling music of his brogue, snared by the obvious pleasure he took in having the words against that tongue. His closed eyes entranced her, and she found her eyes upon his lips.

"'I must go seek some dewdrops here,'" he continued. '"And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.'" He opened his eyes, grinning and clearly charmed. " 'Hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear,'" he repeated. "I loved that as a boy."

She blinked, forcing herself to straighten from the rapt posture she'd assumed under the spell of his voice. God save her from his quoting the sonnets! "Well done," she said calmly. "It somehow does not surprise me you quote
A Midsummer Night's Dream
—the fairy queen and all of that. You Irish do have that longing for magic, don't you?"

"It's what ails you English," he returned, grinning. "Too much reason."

"No such thing, sir. Reason, order, industry—that's what the world is made of."

His laughter boomed out of him, robust and glorious. Adriana shivered at the sound, and found herself quite unable to tear her eyes from him.

"It isn't that funny," she said.

"I think," he said, with eyes glittering, "that you resist magic for fear of letting it sweep you away."

She raised her chin, smoothed her skirt. "Not so. Superstition is wearying beyond measure. My maid, Fiona, can barely take a breath without some ritual attached. She put rue in the corners of my chamber."

"Did she, now?"

"Yes! And there's a candle for this and a charm for that, and a special blessing to say when you cross a particular part of a road, and an uncursing to do when a villager cackles." She rolled her eyes. "She's quite gifted and generally a very intelligent girl, so I allow her to do what she feels she must, but I vow it would be exhausting to remember it all."

He raised an ironic brow. "How generous of you."

Adriana looked away, chastened. Why did he make her always feel as if she were some silly, vain woman? She wasn't, she thought fiercely, and pointedly looked outside, turning now to heavy forest on either side of the road. The rain blurred the view a bit, making it appear to be a dream world, smears of the darkest green of pine mingled with the sudden splash of yellow on birch and ash. A red vine spread across a hedgerow, and at its foot bloomed a stand of wild crimson roses, vivid in the gray light.

"I've never seen so many flowers as grow in this country," Tynan commented. "Especially in the spring, but even now flowers are everywhere, in every tiny waste place, on every wall, in every garden in every inch of the towns."

Adriana glanced at him, wondering at this pleasant comment after the sharpness of the previous one. Was he attempting to make amends, or had she been too sensitive? She scowled. She was spending far too much time trying to puzzle him out. Deliberately draining her voice of any but the most polite of tones, she answered, "I imagine Ireland as very lush."

"'Tis green," he said. "Moss and grass and shamrocks everywhere, even in the water. But not flowers like this." He gestured with that long-fingered, beautiful hand toward the forest. "Not a flower in every corner."

"You'll like the town house, if you care for flowers. There's a conservatory, stocked with all manner of them—orchids and roses and lemon trees."