When Angels Fall (15 page)

If she could have summoned the courage to slap him, she would have, full across that wretched cheek. Instead, she reined in her anger and hurt and stared at him defiantly. “It’s not true, what gossip you’ve heard. And I dare you to prove it.”

“I don’t want to prove it. I don’t want to know.”

His fingers, which were clasped behind her neck, tightened. He pulled her forward in an instant. His lips moved down on hers, and though she vowed not to accept them, they caught her easily. Too easily. She released a small shudder, denying the sudden burst of emotion that now demanded satisfaction. Her hand went to his chest to
stop him, but her lame refusal just drove him further. His arms dropped to her waist and he possessively lifted her off the dirt floor to fall hard against his body. She was so close to him she could feel his heart pounding against his chest, but it was not beating nearly so wildly as her own traitorous one. His kiss deepened and he thrust his tongue ferociously into her mouth. Desperate, she ached to shun him, to turn him away, but it was as if they were fighting a war. And with every angry caress of her waist and every brutal movement of his lips, she found she surrendered another bit of ground. When she felt the beard-roughened texture of his cheek against hers, she knew she had lost another battle. When his tongue finally seduced hers to respond in kind, she knew, most definitely, the war was over.

Now the Pandora’s box that she had fooled herself into believing she had closed was open wide. She had controlled those restless, longing spirits for five years, and only at this very moment did she discover that they had been loose all the time. Waiting for the return of their master.

She tore her lips from his and grasped the tatters of her sanity. He was treating her as if he full well believed all the gossip about her—that she was just like her mother. He wanted her to surrender to his lovemaking like a wanton, and use her desire for him like a drug, a drug that she well knew could all too easily kill.

Without another thought, she struggled from his embrace and ran. He caught her at the door and forced her back to the harness-covered wall, and her rage at herself, at him, exploded.

“Still forcing yourself upon unwilling ladies?” Panting from the chase, she inflicted another wound. “You act the gentleman, but that’s all it is, an act—don’t you know that no amount of fine clothing and riches can make you otherwise?” She did everything but utter the word bastard and immediately she regretted her words.

Watching him, she saw Ivan’s face take on the hardness of granite, yet if she looked closer, she could find what she dreaded most. In his eyes was the slightest glimmer of hurt, the smallest hint of vulnerability. It was the only evidence that he thought what she’d said might be true—that he wasn’t good enough; that, in fact, the damnation his father had wished for him was his true and only path.

“Oh, God, stay away from me,” she gasped.

He pushed her away.

“Ivan—” she began, but he quickly silenced her. His hand grabbed her jaw and he forced her to look at him.

With deadly precision he said, “We’ll be finished when I’ve given the devil his due. Not before.”

“And what will that take?” she cried out, on the edge of hysteria. “What do you want from me?”

But he didn’t answer. Instead he walked to the stable door and opened it. Across from her a row of riding crops dangled in the invading breeze.

She closed her eyes and groaned. “I’m begging you, Ivan, stay away from me. Please stay out of my life. For if you don’t neither one of us shall survive.”

Then, as if the hounds of hell were at her back, she ran through the door, passing him without looking back.

It was a brutally cold day, and the promise of snow was fulfilled with the flourish of white flakes that fell outside the kitchen window. Lissa was helping Evvie bake a cake for George’s birthday. The atmosphere was warm and relaxed. The only tension arose when Lissa looked at the hearth and saw the two mastiffs napping as if they belonged there. One of them—Finn or Fenian, Lissa
couldn’t tell—released a long sigh of contentment. This irritated her beyond all reasoning.

“George, really, shouldn’t the pups return to the castle? They won’t make it if the snow continues to fall much longer. You don’t want something to happen to them, do you?” She turned to her brother, who was sitting at the kitchen table making a fort out of their Mason’s ironstone dishes.

“Ivan told me—”

“
Lord
Ivan,” she corrected crankily.

“
Lord
Ivan told me to keep them today since it’s my birthday. I promised him I would.” George looked up from his play. “I thought you liked them now, Lissa. I saw you give them a bowl of stew only yesterday.”

Lissa began dismantling the fort by putting the ironstone back on the pine hutch. She felt guilty for being so waspish, but it wouldn’t do to have George referring to the marquis in such familiar terms. The Alcesters needed to put distance between themselves and Ivan. The sooner George accepted that, the better.

“Yes, yes, well the dogs have grown on me a bit,” she began, “yet we mustn’t get too attached to them. Finn and Fenian belong to the marquis, not us. He may decide not to let them roam so freely in the future.” With that cryptic remark, she turned to the oven to check on the cake.

“It’s not done yet,” Evvie stated even before Lissa could open the iron door. Lissa put down the dishcloth she used as a potholder. It was unnerving the way her sister could tell time.

Restless, she went to the little window set high in the thick plaster wall. The cottage had been built hundreds of years earlier, before the necessity of keeping warm gave way to the necessity of light and ventilation. She wiped at the thick, wavy glass and, on her tiptoes, watched the snow fall on Nodding Knoll.

It was a beautiful sight. The church steeple rose in the
gray, snow-flecked sky like a sleek falcon on the verge of flight, and the thatched-roofed cottages seemed to nestle deeper into the ground as if they were fat brown wrens warming their young. She smiled. In her toasty little kitchen she felt safe and secure, but then her vision roamed to Powerscourt. Its ramparts towered over the whitework of the treeline. The castle looked even more magnificent beneath the silent lacy flakes of the first snow. Uneasily she turned from the window.

“No, I do think we should take the dogs back now, George.” Lissa ruffled her brother’s hair. “I know it’s your birthday, but they can’t stay here forever, and already I think it will be difficult getting them back to the castle. The roads are completely covered.”

“I don’t have to take them back.” George’s leg began to swing. Lissa wanted to shake him.

“Now why is that?” she asked calmly, but on the verge of anger. If Ivan had given him the dogs, why, she would—

“Ivan—
Lord
Ivan will be taking them home.”

“He’s coming here? Whatever for?” she asked, her voice cracking.

“Because it’s my birthday.” George looked at his sister’s pale face. “I know I shouldn’t have invited him. You don’t really like him, do you, Lissa? He said you would find the idea disagreeable.”

“But, George, why couldn’t you have invited Alice Bishop or Miss Musgrave?” she reasoned.

“I’m sick of girls!” He slid off his chair. George Alcester looked at both his sisters, who were lovely, yet hopelessly feminine. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stomped out of the room.

In his wake, Lissa and Evvie merely stood for moment in silence. Neither knew what to say.

Lissa finally cleared her throat. “He’s, no doubt, in
his room. I suppose I should apologize. I’ve put him in a terrible dilemma.”

“Ivan has been kind to him,” Evvie stated quietly. “And he does need companionship of those his own sex.”

“Yes, but looking up to Ivan is hardly the way—”

“
Lord
Ivan,” Evvie corrected.

Taken aback, Lissa looked at her sister. There was a twinkle in her sightless blue eyes. Suddenly Lissa burst out in laughter. “Have I been that witchy?” she asked.

“Well . . .” Evvie choked back her own laughter, then bit her lower lip.

“All right.” Lissa sighed, hating to give in. “
Ivan
can come here and pick up his beasts. And if he happens to come when we are cutting George’s cake, then I suppose it would only be hospitable to offer him a crumb or two.” She dreaded seeing Ivan after what had happened between them in the stable two weeks ago, but for George she would concede.

“I suppose that’s the Christian thing to do.” Evvie moved to the oven, picked up the dishcloth, and took the cake out. “It’s done,” she announced.

The two girls spent the next hour readying their cottage for their guest. Evvie plumped the cushions while Lissa dusted the mantel. Later they went to their rooms to bathe and change into their best tea gowns. Lissa felt better as the day progressed. Whenever she found herself thinking about Ivan and how passionately he’d kissed her in the stables, she would simply redirect her thoughts to her new suitor.

His name was J. Albert Rooney. She wasn’t sure what the
J
stood for, but it was probably for jellyfish, for, unfortunately, Albert was a mama’s boy through and through. She’d been acquainted with him for at least three years, yet most recently, whenever she’d see him in town, she noticed him glancing at her whenever his mother looked away. She happened to see him on the way to church two
Sundays ago, and this time she’d made it quite clear that she’d be amenable to his suit. While she had to admit that Albert succumbed to his mother’s wishes far too frequently, when she’d tossed him her first coy look, Albert had ignored his mother’s admonitions and pursued her.

She’d had dinner at the Rooney estate that very next evening and had even made plans to ask Albert to tea the day following George’s birthday. Albert was growing on her. Though he was awkward and painfully thin, he was also pliable, eager to please, and . . . wealthy. His father had passed on, leaving him three cotton mills in Manchester and a match factory in Leeds. Albert lacked a sense of humor of any kind, yet she found she forgave him this, especially when she found out that he also owned a small gold mine in Australia.

She thought of Albert as she pinned her mother’s gold brooch beneath her collar. No, he was not the man she dreamed about, he could never be that. But he had enough riches to take care of them all. And Ivan Tramore could not touch him. In fact, when she’d first dined with Albert, Lissa had brought up the subject of gaming and was delighted to hear him launch into a diatribe about its perils to modern society. She’d taken his arm and listened with rapt attention. She couldn’t have agreed more.

Happy that J. Albert Rooney was heading right for her snare, Lissa smoothed her chignon and prepared to go downstairs. It unnerved her to no end that Ivan had managed to stomp back into their lives. He’d gotten the upper hand in every encounter. But this time it would be different. She might be more afraid of him now than ever before, but she vowed she would never let it show. To Ivan she would be cool yet pleasant; quiet yet charming. She would endure his company for a snowy afternoon. And then he would go home. With that thought, she descended the stairs.

* * *

The running footman dashed through the white pines and down the path to the road. He skidded in the snow, but that did not deter him. On he went, to deliver his message to the Rooney estate.

When he reached the wide mahogany doors of the manse, he knocked briskly, then rubbed his arms for warmth. The doors were opened by a butler, and the footman briskly handed him the message he’d been sent to deliver. That task completed, he disappeared down the frosty lane, running as fast as he could.

“What is it, Brickens?” Mrs. J. Albert Rooney, Sr., looked up from her wheelchair as the butler entered the drawing room.

“A message for Mr. Rooney, madam.” The butler went to the man of the house, Mrs. Rooney’s son, and presented him with the vellum. On it, written in bold lettering, was the name Albert.

“Who brought it?” the matriarch demanded.

“A runner, madam. From what household, I could not tell. He was not wearing his livery.” The butler waited to see if there was something more. When there wasn’t, he left the room.

As Albert cracked the wax seal, his lips formed a thin line as he anticipated its message. In ecstatic disbelief, he read:

Albert,

It is urgent that I speak with you and so I ask
that you come to the cottage at precisely four o’clock this
afternoon. Discretion is the key, however, so I ask that
you share this with no one. Until then, I am,

Yours truly,

Lissa
        

“Well, what is it, son? Not bad news, I hope?” The stern invalid widow put down her needlepoint and looked
at her son expectantly. Albert quickly folded the note and placed it inside his frock coat.

“It’s simply a reminder, Mother. I promised a friend I would come to tea.”

“You will be back for dinner? I had Jamie stuff a partridge just for you.” Mrs. Rooney looked more than a little annoyed that her son hadn’t read the note to her.