When Angels Fall (13 page)

As if accommodating her foul mood, Wilmott kept his mouth shut for the rest of the ride to Violet Croft. They arrived there shortly, and Lissa quickly said their farewells. Once they assured themselves that George hadn’t caused too much mischief in their absence and was now properly in bed asleep, they both collapsed onto the parlor settee.

“Shall I make us some warm milk?” Evvie asked wanly.

“Wretched stuff. No, don’t bother. I won’t sleep tonight anyway,” Lissa murmured.

“Nor shall I—at least not until you tell me where you disappeared to after dinner. I was terrified when you didn’t return.” Evvie sat up. She reached for her sister.

“Wilmott cornered me in the passage. And then . . .” Suddenly Lissa couldn’t find the words to explain to Evvie her encounter with Ivan in the billiard room.

“And then what?” An awful thought seemed to occur to Evvie. “Wilmott didn’t . . . ?”

“No! Certainly not! I was with Ivan!” Lissa blurted out before she could stop herself.

“Ivan? He was with you?”

Lissa touched her sister’s cheek to reassure her. “I was trying to avoid Wilmott and while I was doing so, I had
the misfortune of running into Ivan. It was all quite innocent.”

“What did Ivan think of you and Wilmott? Did you inform him of your pending engagement?”

Lissa paused. “Yes. He was delighted, of course.” Ivan
had
been delighted, she reassured herself. It was a perverse delight but a delight nonetheless.

“I see,” Evvie answered flatly.

“Now enough about me!” Lissa gently shook her. “Tell me about Mr. Jones. He seemed quite taken with you. You both seemed to be having the most interesting conversation at dinner.” She stood up and swung the kettle over the coals at the hearth for tea.

“Lissa, is Mr. Jones really as handsome as you said he was at the Mercantile?”

“More so! He was quite dashing tonight! He was surely the most handsome man at the soirée!”

“No,” Evvie refuted, “he couldn’t have been. Not while Ivan was there.”

A small furrow appeared on Lissa’s brow. “But, Evvie, you forget, Ivan’s face has been . . . marred.”

“And that notorious scar seems only to have made him more handsome. After you left, Lissa, Adele couldn’t stop talking about his dark, dangerous looks. I suppose in some ways I’m lucky God has taken my sight. Oh, Lissa, can he truly be so terrifying?”

In the background, as if demanding an answer to the question, the kettle began its shrill whistle and Lissa rose to attend it. With her thoughts very far away and not on the task at hand, she reached for the kettle stand, forgetting the need for a pad. The hot swing scorched her palm. She clutched her wrist and moaned in pain.

“What is it?” Evvie asked, coming up to her.

“I’ve burned myself,” she whispered, her eyes welling with tears for the second time that night.

“Oh, dear. I’ll get some butter from the pantry.” Evvie disappeared and Lissa stared at her red palm. With
vivid clarity, she remembered how she had tried to touch Ivan’s cheek in the billiard room.

Now she felt as if she had.

Their money was running out. It was a fact that Lissa could no longer deny. She sat at her beeswaxed dressing table and counted the coins they had left. Already they had used Aunt Sophie’s last bequest. Now they were dipping into their savings, which over the years they had scraped together in order to move from Nodding Knoll.

Lissa always kept this money tucked in a violet-scented sachet. They dreamed of moving to some little town, in the Cotswolds perhaps, or renting a flat in London. They wanted to go anywhere that the Alcester scandal couldn’t follow.

Now their dreams were dwindling as fast as their funds. Lissa quietly took another pound note from the sachet. It was unusual for her to long for her parents, especially since that was to long for something she never quite knew. But now, with her near-empty sachet before her, she wished they were still alive. She wished they were around if only to let her lean on them, to hold her up.

She released a heavy sigh and shook her head. Wishing for her parents wasn’t the solution. As spoiled and self-indulgent as they had been, they probably wouldn’t be any help. On the contrary, she’d have two more persons relying on her to carry them through this difficult time. That would be unbearable.

Disheartened, she put the sachet beneath her mattress. She was simply going to have to make Wilmott marry her, and soon. Her wistful dreams of falling in love and having a family would have to be pushed aside. As if
reliving a bad dream, her thoughts drifted back to the night at the castle. Again she pictured Ivan Tramore’s hard visage shadowed in the dim light of the billiard room and the scorn in his eyes as he took her in his arms. No, there could be no more wistful dreams for her. Even now the shadow of debtor’s prison skulked in the foreground. According to her calculations, the Alcesters had about another month of fighting off poverty. After that, poverty would win.

“Lissa, come and see!” She heard George’s voice calling from the outside. Strolling to her bedroom window, she looked out and saw him standing in the yard below with, of all things, Ivan’s two mastiffs. She looked around anxiously for their master, but she didn’t see Ivan anywhere. Shaking her head, she ran down the stairs.

“George Alexander Alcester! What are you doing with those two beasts! And on a Sunday too!” she exclaimed as she threw open the front door.

“Lissa, don’t be mad. Ivan lets me take them if I promise to return the pups to the castle by evening.” George patted one dog’s head and looked to her for approval. He found none.

“Why do you call him Ivan? You should be addressing him as Lord Powerscourt,” she said fretfully.

“He told me to call him that. That’s his name. That’s what he said,” George answered.

“Dear Lord,” she whispered.

He gave her a strange look. He appeared as if he wanted to ask her a question but wasn’t sure if he should. He seemed to grapple with something before finally deciding to speak. “Lissa,” he began, “Ivan—er—Lord Powerscourt says he used to work for us.”

She was dismayed at the statement, yet hardly surprised. George wouldn’t remember Ivan, for he’d been less than four years old when the last of the Alcesters left Alcester House. She answered his unspoken question as best she could. “It was a long time ago, love.”

“When we lived at the big house?”

“Yes.”

George thought on this a moment. It appeared as if the thought of his sister having more of a past with Lord Ivan of Powerscourt didn’t rest well with him. He also looked as if he felt he should do something about it. Something to guard his sister. But from what, he couldn’t possibly know.

He suddenly scowled. In his most manly voice he vowed, “I shall take them back, Lissa. You don’t like the pups, because you don’t like Ivan—er—Lord Powerscourt.”

She gazed at her baby brother. Tenderness for him almost overwhelmed her. Yet that tenderness was laced with irritation. After all, children had a particularly wicked way of stating the obvious.

“It’s not that I don’t like Lord Powerscourt, George. I really don’t know him.”
Anymore,
she added truthfully to herself.

“I’ll take the pups back,” George stated, giving his sister a look that was much too knowing for his age.

She watched him turn and begin down the rutted little road that would lead to Powerscourt. The two mastiffs followed him quietly as if also admitting defeat.

She loathed herself then. She didn’t want to end George’s fun. She and Evvie had promised him a dog for years but had never quite gotten around to getting him one. Still, she knew she couldn’t bear for George or anyone to believe that Ivan Tramore unsettled her, unsettled her enough for her to cast away two of her brother’s playmates—beasts though they were. Suddenly she found herself calling out to him.

“George, why don’t you bring the dogs to the kitchen. Perhaps we could find a treat for them.” She opened the door further.

“Truly?” he asked with widening eyes.

“Of course,” she said with an uneasy smile. She let
her brother pass, and then, with a mute sigh of regret, she allowed the dreaded curs to walk through her immaculate parlor.

The following Wednesday, Powerscourt was again lit for guests. There weren’t many who came this night. Just a couple of fashionable swells from London named Hylton and Treadle, a wealthy bishop who’d crept away undetected from the neighboring parish, and, of course, Wilmott Billingsworth.

The men played whist in the library. After they cut, the bishop was the first to stand out. Already disgruntled by his luck, he procured a seat near the fireplace and impatiently waited for the first rubber to end.

After several rubbers, it was clear the betting was getting extravagant. Treadle was beginning to look relieved when it was his turn to stand out; soon Hylton was eager to join him. After another hour or so, even the bishop was looking a bit grim. He, however, played like the consummate gambler. Bishop Wright was sure his luck would turn with the next draw, even when Tramore, looking cool and detached, trumped again.

“I say, it’s a long ride back to London, and Treadle and I . . . well, it looks to be time to leave.” Hylton coughed and looked back at his young friend who sat near the fireplace.

“But gentlemen, I can provide you lodgings for the night. There’s no need to return to London. Surely you don’t mean to discontinue play?” Tramore countered.

“We must get back,” Hylton stated sheepishly. He rose from the table and Treadle joined him.

“We shall make good those notes, Powerscourt. I shall send a man as soon as it is convenient,” Treadle said, looking unspeakably relieved to be leaving at last.

“Of course, as soon as it is convenient.” Tramore stood and rang for a footman.

“No need for an escort. We shall notify them in the Hall to get our carriage.” Hylton opened the door for Treadle. They said their farewells, yet once they were gone, their voices carried in the passage.

“How much did we lose?” Treadle inquired worriedly.

“
Too
much,” Hylton answered, his voice grim. “I say we take a long sojourn to Paris and hope Powerscourt forgets we were ever here.”

As the two swells went farther down the passage, laughter broke out in the library.

Wilmott dabbed his eyes, teary from too much fun. “Good God! I’ve never played with anybody so incurably green! ‘I say we take a long sojourn to Paris’!” he mimicked. Laughter broke out again.

When the men finally sobered, the bishop looked crestfallen. “But now what are we to do? There goes our fourth, and I was hoping to cut some of my losses before dawn.”

Tramore looked at his nails. “We could always play
dummy.
”

“Dummy whist?” Wilmott interjected. “Why, that’s a brilliant idea. But you’ll have to play with me, Powerscourt. We’ll give James here a run!”

“Powerscourt shall play with dummy. I’ll not be given a run.” The bishop gave Wilmott a withering look. There would be no praying for Billingsworth’s soul this Sunday.

“Fine. Cut the cards.” Tramore poured himself another brandy, then handed the cut-crystal decanter around the table. When everyone had refilled his glass, it was time to draw.

The play went on for another hour. The stakes rose even higher. The bishop began sweating, and he used his coat sleeve to wipe his brow like a common gravedigger. Wilmott grew pale and a vein in his temple began to throb. Tramore remained cool, as always, and this began to unnerve his company further. Yet the game continued. The bishop was sure the next trick would turn their luck,
and Wilmott, by pride alone, was forced to see the rubber out. But when he had bet his last hundred pounds, the suspense was almost more than the elderly man could bear. Wilmott almost went into apoplexy while Tramore studied his every hand.

The last game of the rubber was brutal. Tramore raised the stakes to celestial heights and the bishop matched with every trick. Wilmott looked at his partner as if he were crazed, but the bishop’s eyes had suddenly acquired a gleam, as if a sign had been sent to him from the heavens that he was to go back to St. Albans a far richer man. The circumstance of the game was pulling Wilmott along like a tidal wave, and it was all he could do not to stop the final trick. The bishop watched with anticipation as Tramore played his last card. Already he was rubbing his hands together in glee. Wilmott saw this as a bad sign indeed, and he dreaded the card to be played. Powerscourt looked like a stone statue, his face revealing nothing. As he turned the card exposing its face, Wilmott felt the blood rush from his face.

“Trump,” Powerscourt stated.

The bishop’s mouth dropped open. His faith faltered altogether when the devil across from him played the final card. He would never be able to pay Powerscourt. Never.

“Look here, we’ve got to play another—” The bishop was cut off with a nod from Tramore.

“You’ll have to speak much louder if he’s to hear you.” Tramore glanced contemptuously at Wilmott. The bishop turned to his partner and shock loosened his jaw once more. Wilmott slumped over the card table.