[Samuel Barbara] The Black Angel(Book4You) (4 page)

There was only room for the sense of the Black Angel beside her, towering over her, both taller and broader than she'd first thought. Not stout, but hale—wide in the shoulder, deep in the chest—arms and legs hard with the strength of a vigorous sportsman. Adriana had been tall her entire life, and disliked this sudden sense of small powerlessness he gave her.

Against the wool of his coat, her fingers grew damp, and beneath his sleeve she felt the ungiving muscle of a man who did not take his horses lightly. His boots clicked authoritatively against the stones, while hers only whispered. When they arrived at the doors to the chapel, one of her favorite places in the house, Adriana discovered that not even the ancient hush and stained glass could give her peace this day.

Throughout the short ceremony, she held herself rigid, eyes fixed upon the sloped shoulders of the village parson who'd been summoned for this task. Her groom seemed not to notice the trembling of her fingers, only stood next to her, straight and strong, smelling of damp wool and coriander and something evocative and musky she could not name. From the corner of her eye she kept catching on the vivid embroidery on the edge of his cloak, an extravagance that somehow frightened her.

The service went quickly, and abruptly it was time to solemnize their agreement with the kiss of peace. Adriana was forced to turn toward him and raise her eyes and look again in that face.

That face.

Lush, untamed black hair framed it, hair that misbehaved in the damp, and tumbled heathenlike down his back. The face itself was made of lean angles and winged brows and a mouth created from the fantasies of maidens. She remembered an old story, told by her Irish nanny in Martinique, about the beauty of Irish kings. This face, unholy in its beauty, would have ruled all.

But it was his eyes that were most dangerous. Eyes of clearest aquamarine, not quite blue, not quite green, gazed down at her, eyes whose faintly mocking expression revealed both his intelligence and the easy seductive flirtation of a rake. But just as she had in that brutal moment outside on the stairs, Adriana saw again the darkness that lurked in the depths of that impossible color. To her despair, she found it made him all the more attractive.

Oh, God, did he have to be so beautiful?

He lowered his head, and against all her will, Adriana's gaze fell to his mouth. Kisses. From the first, kissing had ever been her downfall. As a young girl, she'd restlessly imagined kissing the beautiful stable boy, had found a way to do it, and it was even more delicious than her fevered imagination had anticipated. Malvern had seduced her with his sweet, sweet kisses.

And neither of them had had a mouth like this one. It made no pretense to sweetness or innocence. It was a wide, mobile mouth, but the worst of it was that the upper lip, crisply cut, arched ever so slightly over the seductive lower in an arrangement she found desperately erotic.

As if he noticed her fixation, one side of that mouth quirked, very slightly, and he bent his head to kiss her. She clenched her teeth hard against it, and the mouth that met his was hard and unyielding. It was mercifully brief, but even the brush of that mouth over her own was promising. He would, she knew in an instant, kiss as if kissing could change the world.

"Such a warm welcome from my bride," he murmured, cocking one brow.

She cocked one of her own and lifted her shoulder the slightest bit in imitation of the ennui she'd seen in the women at Cassandra's salons. "One cannot expect passion from a stranger."

His face shuttered. "Especially for an Irishman." His voice was so low, none but she could hear it.

She frowned. "I do not understand your meaning, sir."

"Then you are far more naive than your past would lead me to believe."

Stung, she raised her chin. "Do not ever speak of that again," she replied.

A pause, so brief it could barely be discerned. Then he gave her a curt nod. "So be it."

Tynan circled the party warily, taking the measure of this new group. In the wide, windowed ballroom a string quartet played minuets, and when the guests were not eating the feast laid out on tables around the edges of the room, they danced and flirted and laughed. With some amusement, he noted that the two youngest girls, Ophelia and Cleopatra, dazzled the young men who'd come from the surrounding country to celebrate the wedding. Soon, he thought with proprietary ease, the girls would need husbands of their own.

The plain Phoebe circulated, pausing now and again, gesturing for new wine here, a stool for a gouty baron's foot there. A gentle hand on a shoulder, a beatific smile at an old man's joke, snagging a child to retie a ribbon that had come undone. In Phoebe lived the heart of the family.

The redheaded sister had left soon after the ceremony in order to arrive in London before dark. Tynan thought it just as well. Someone told him she held salons in her town house, a center of the artistic and creative communities. He'd do well to avoid that set, and Cassandra herself. The fire was too tempting.

Sitting stiffly to one side was Adriana, her hands folded tightly in her lap, her face unyielding. She had not eaten that he'd seen, nor taken a sip of wine. When their eyes caught, her gaze sidled away in a rush, as if she were frightened.

Tynan pursed his lips, measuring her from his post across the room. Of all the sisters, she seemed the least likely to have fallen prey to the talents of a rake, but 'twas fact that she had, and that her brothers had killed the man in a duel.

Which had led to him standing here now. Though dueling was strictly outlawed, it was not a crime ordinarily punished by juries—especially a nobleman avenging a sister's honor.

But the murdered man in this case was a bastard born to a mistress of the King's brother, and that mother cried out loud and long for justice for her fallen son. Should Julian St. Ives, twelfth Earl of Albury, and his half brother Gabriel, ever set foot on English soil again, they would be arrested.

Tynan saw Phoebe pause by her sister and put a hand on her shoulder. Lady Adriana nodded at something she said, and accepted a cup of brandy pressed into her hand.

Again, he tried to see some hint of passion or the promise of sensuality—anything—that might have sent a powerful youth into wild pursuit of this woman when all the beauties of London had been available to him. He could see nothing. Nor could he discern any hint of the recklessness that might have led a well-bred young lady to give in to such machinations. He saw only the straightness of her spine, the stiffness of her neck, the unsmiling rigidness of that unyielding mouth.

Still, there had to be something. And whether or not he discovered it, he had promised her father to be a husband to her, and though the old man asked no more than he would have from any businessman, Tynan had been very fond of James St. Ives. In his honor, he would at least try to create more than a mockery of a marriage.

Tugging on his coat, he lifted his glass and carried it over to her table, aggressively straddling a chair beside her. Tossing hair from his eyes, he said, "Good evening, wife."

A pulse beat in her throat. "Good evening."

He lifted his glass and took a swallow of fine port, then gestured with it toward Cleo, dancing with splendid form. "Tell me about your family," he invited, knowing it was a rare woman who could resist talk of her siblings. More than one maid or matron had been wooed to his bed by just such a gambit.

"Do you mean my family, sir, or specifically Cleo?"

He inclined his head in acknowledgment of a point scored. "Touché. Cleo, of course. The rest is clear enough."

"She's beautiful, isn't she?" Lady Adriana said quietly.

Cleo wore a turquoise silk gown, a color that glorified her flawless golden skin and black hair, which had been swept into a tumble of curls that teased at the joining of neck and shoulder, a breathlessly graceful spot. "Indeed," Tynan agreed.

"I worry about her," Adriana confessed, and he found in her voice a quality that was appealing. A richness that would lend itself well to singing. "She has not yet come to understand that—" She broke off, sighed. "She and Ophelia have shared a perfect childhood. Ophelia will go on to marry a duke, or at the least, an earl, while Cleo will have to content herself with a tradesman or even less. A man who will have no sense of the finer things Cleo loves."

"Did your father not consider that?" He sipped his wine again. "I assume she is his daughter."

"Yes, she is." A faint smile touched her lips. "My father adored her, as he loved all his children, and he wanted her to have what he could give. He did the same for Gabriel."

"Gabriel." Tynan frowned. "Your brother?"

"Half. He's the oldest of us all, born also to Cleo's mother."

"Ah." He nodded. "But 'tis an easier world for a man than for a woman," he said. "No matter the race of the man."

She glanced at him, and he spied the sharp intelligence in her eyes. "It is rare enough that a man knows it."

He shrugged, uncomfortable suddenly under that sharp gaze. "Did your mother not object to your father's mistress?"

"He had no mistress while she lived, sir." She swiveled her proud head. "My father served in the wars and was given a plantation for his efforts. As a second son, he had few prospects in England, so he settled in Martinique, to make what he could of his life. There he met Cleo's mother and they had a child, who was Gabriel." She looked at Tynan down her aristocratic nose. "He granted both mother and child their freedom, and gave Gabriel all that he desired. He loved them, sir, because he was not blinded by the world's values."

Tynan grinned at the lecturing tone, and sipped his port. Finding the glass empty, he gestured for another, which was quickly delivered. "But in the end, he betrayed them, did he not?"

She made a noise of outrage, a tsk. "He did not! His brother died, making my father Earl, and he came home to do his duty and find a wife with whom to make an heir. Gabriel and his mother wanted for nothing."

"And your mother did not mind?"

"She forgave him his youthful indiscretions." Now her face softened, and she warmed to the family legend. "He met her at a cotillion. She was quite beautiful." She gestured to the small, tiny blond sister who danced elegantly with a London fop. "Ophelia is her very image, and my father was smitten on sight. Theirs was an honorable love, rare, but true. While he was married to her, he did not stray."

"So how did the lovely Cleo come about, hmmm?"

"My mother traveled with him to Martinique one year," she said quietly, her face turned from him, "and en route conceived a child. The climate did not agree with her, and although she managed to deliver Ophelia into the world, she did not survive the birth."

"So your father took refuge in the arms of his mistress."

Her gaze moved back to him, even and calm. "She saved him, I think. He was quite mad with grief and guilt."

A strange pluck of emotion ached in his chest at the steady honor in her face as she said that. He felt chastened without knowing why. And suddenly he thought of his twin, his black-shrouded body on a litter carried by grim-faced villagers up the long hill to the estate. He bowed his head.

"My father could not bear to return to England and the life he had shared with my mother," Adriana continued, "so he sent for us, and we lived there four years. Gabriel and Cleo were part of our family. When we returned, because of the brewing war in the colonies, they came with us." She gestured to a tall, straight black woman in a brightly colored cotton gown. "So did Monique."

Intrigued in spite of himself, he asked, "Did you like living there?"

Her gaze flickered away. "It changed us."

"Did it, now?" Tynan leaned forward, hearing something in her voice. "How did it change you, Lady Adriana?"

He saw a shift in her eyes, a worry, and then her posture softened, and her neck seemed longer as she inclined her head. He thought of a swan. Her nostrils flared, as if she scented wild blossoms and humid evenings, and her gaze focused on something distant. "It changed everything," she said softly. Then her lips tightened and she shook her head, as if in rejection. "Everything."

For a brief moment Tynan spied the tall leafy plants, vowed he could feel heat and wet against his flesh. The rigidness that had lived on his spine since his brother's murder eight months before eased the smallest bit. A tiny bit of the bitterness he slept with slid away from his mouth, and for the space of five heartbeats he longed to sustain himself on something besides hatred.

Then the music ended abruptly, and the polite clapping and soft murmurs of approval from the dancers interrupted him. He realized he was leaning close to her, thinking not of himself and his goals at all, but some far distant land he would never see—and longing for it.

But it was a colony, as Ireland was, and the love Adriana felt for the land as a colonist was not the same pleasure the slaves forced to work the land would feel. Contained in her body was all that he loathed—and he would do well to remember it.

Tynan straightened. "Well, much as I enjoy your story, my lady, perhaps it is time we… retired."

It caused her a moment's discomfort, quickly hidden. Smoothing her black skirts, she raised an imperious chin. "First, sir, tell me why you have married me."

"Your father asked it."

The steeliness in her eyes did not fade. "You waited a year to offer."

Tynan discarded the easy lie—that he'd waited out of respect for the mourning period. For one long moment he met her gaze, wishing briefly once again that she were in some way a little more attractive. From his pocket he took a heavy, engraved ring, set with a ruby, and put it in her hand.

She made a small, choked noise. "Where did you get this?"

"A peddler, believe it or not. He came straight away to my estate, knowing there'd be no one else in the district able to pay for such a prize. I recognized it immediately, and wrote to you the very same day."

Now there were deep sparks in her hard eyes. "What good is it to you if he's dead? The title will pass forever out of reach."