When Angels Fall (30 page)

“A doll?” Lissa stared at him, beset by worry. Her father was talking like a madman. She hadn’t played with dolls in six years.

“Father, you must be thinking of Evvie.” She tried to smile. “But even Evvie is now too old to play with dolls.”

He seemed not to hear her. He continued, acting as if she were still a little girl. “No, no, I was thinking of you,
Lissa love. You’re my beautiful little girl—the exact image of your mother. And I’ve been thoughtless, child. I don’t know how to make it up to you.”

“Please listen, Father—”

“No, no. I shall send the butler out to get you a doll this very night. Even if it’s the last thing I do.” He went to the claret-colored silken bell pull that hung in the corner. She barely stopped him in time.

“No, Father!” A tingle of fear went down her spine. She grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “Please don’t send Cheatham to London on this errand. You’re tired. You must sit down.”

“I’ve let you down. You wanted a doll!” He began to get distraught.

“But I’m too old for dolls, Father. Don’t you see that?”

He quieted. “You mustn’t act older than you are, child.”

“But it’s true,” she said, trying to reason with him. “You and Mother were going to give me my debut this spring. I’m almost old enough to marry.” She thought painfully of Ivan. “And old enough to be kissed.”

“Kissed?” His face suddenly turned angry. “And have you been kissed?”

She didn’t know whether to answer him or not. But he was her father and she couldn’t lie to him. “Once,” she whispered.

Without word or warning, he slapped her. Tears of pain and fear spilled down her face as she clutched her sore cheek. In horror, all she could do was look at him. He had never treated her like this before. Never.

He grabbed her, tears running down his face also. Suddenly he was contrite and he sobbed. “You must never accept another kiss, you promise me, my little girl?”

“What have I done?” she asked.

“You mustn’t turn out like your mother! It’s sin enough that you look like her!”

“What—what has she done?” she stuttered, now not at all sure she wanted to know.

“Rebecca—my lovely Rebecca!” He sobbed into his hands. “I never—I
never
wanted to believe what others said. I laughed, I tell you! When I heard such rumors! But it’s true. It’s all been true. My angel has fallen. Committed the most ugly of crimes! No denying it now. I found her myself in that man’s bed . . .” His voice trailed off and he no longer seemed aware that there was another person in the room. His sobbing came in long, wretched gasps and he appeared to be in a world of his own, a world that was dark and inconsolable, as dark and inconsolable as Lissa’s had suddenly become.

She touched his shoulder and thought of all the servants’ gossip. She had always believed the stories were false, products of cruel and vicious tongues. But now they were true. And there was no running from them any longer.

She stood there, her expression a mixture of denial, fear, and shock. She ached to tell him he was wrong about Rebecca, that her mother hadn’t hurt him, but she couldn’t deny the wounds when her father stood bleeding before her. He was completely destroyed, and now, knowing why, she felt destroyed too.

“No, Father, don’t cry any more,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. “It will be all right. We’ll all make it right again. Mother”—her voice caught in a sob— “Mother is sorry—I know.”

As she hugged her father, a part of her began dying inside. Perhaps it was the last clinging remnants of her childhood, or perhaps it was simply her belief in angels. She didn’t know, nor did she care. Her face turned pale and grave, and she ceased her crying for the tears seemed to freeze in her eyes. Helpless, she tried to get her father to at least look at her, but he was a thousand miles away, in a world of his own, full of darkness and despair. He pulled from her only to weep bitterly into his hands.
When it was clear that there was nothing she could do, she finally left him to his grieving and slipped out of the drawing room.

In the dark hall, with her father’s sobs the only sound, Lissa wondered if she might go mad too. There seemed nowhere to turn. She couldn’t bear Evvie’s learning of this, nor the servants. And she couldn’t go to her mother.

Rebecca
. The very name made her feel sick. Her mother had done something evil indeed. Lissa remembered her father’s slap. She touched her tender cheek. Perhaps even she was to come to the same end. In agony, she recalled Ivan’s kiss. It had frightened her, true, but it had seduced her as well.

Looking around the dim hall, she felt the great marble walls closing in on her. Her whole life seemed to be tumbling into ruins.

She ran to the mahogany and glass front doors. Opening them wide, she let in great gusts of cold air. A wind had kicked up and there seemed the promise of rain in the air. Suddenly all she wanted was to leave. She wanted to gallop like a madwoman across Alcester’s fields. And never come back.

Running, she made her way to the darkened stables. It was Saturday night and she knew most of the grooms had gone to the pub in Nodding Knoll. The stables were deserted when she arrived, and it only took her five minutes to light a lantern and tack up her mount. Dancing was in a rare temper with the wind beating at the stable’s clapboards, but she was glad to see he bore no ill effects from their jump three days before. She mounted on the block, paying no mind that she had no shawl or mantle to keep her warm. Somehow keeping warm didn’t seem to matter. Getting away seemed the only thing worth doing.

With crop in hand, she gathered up the reins. The wind banged the doors and Dancing seemed ready to bolt.
She was about to give him his head when an arm reached out and took hold of her pony’s bridle.

“What are you doing, you little fool?”

Pale and frightened, she looked down and found Ivan reaching for her reins. He was furious.

“I’m going for a ride!” she cried out, backing Dancing into a corner.

“What is this madness? You dismount this second!” He held Dancing’s head and reached for her waist. He was obviously hoping to pull her down, but she refused to let him. She was going to escape, if only for an hour, and he was not going to stand in her way.

“Ivan, let go of Dancing’s bridle!” She whipped her pony’s flanks and he reared. Enraged, Ivan held on.

“You spoiled brat, you do as I say!” he said as the pony tried knocking him aside.

“I shall not! Ivan, get out of the way!” Fury crackled in her eyes. She was no spoiled brat. Her world had just crumbled to dust and nothing made sense anymore. Nothing. She was so frightened that she wanted to run as far as she could go and never look back. And he was not going to stop her.

“You aren’t to go out there tonight, girl! Has one kiss left you addled?”

A cry of frustration caught in her throat. In warning, she raised the viciously thin tip of her riding crop. If anything, he, and her feelings for him, contributed to her confusion as much as her mother’s infidelity.

“How dare you tell me what to do!” she cried to him, jerking away the reins.

“You’re too much of a child to know what’s good for you! Now get down!”

“You’re nothing but a servant, do you hear?” she sobbed. “Nothing but a lowly stableboy!”

“You haughty little miss!” he snapped furiously. “You think you’re so above me! Well, I’ll see you brought down a peg or two. Now give me those reins!”

“No! I said let go and let me be off!” she demanded.

“Get down!” He lunged for her once more and she raised the crop even higher. When he had her, she screamed. Then, instinctively, she slashed the crop right across his face.

He stumbled back, clutching his left cheek. A moan escaped her lips when she saw the blood oozing between his fingers.

“Ivan!” she cried out, beside herself that she had hurt him so.

“You bitch,” he said though clenched teeth, his eyes closed in pain.

Free from any hold, Dancing was anxious to be off and she had a hard time controlling him. She backed him into the corner where he reared. She meant to try to help Ivan; she even had thoughts of dismounting, when Ivan made one last attempt to keep her in the stables. Though obviously hurt, he reached for the reins, his bloodied hand covering her own. But half crazed from all the traumas that had befallen her, she instantly rebelled. She tore free of his grasp and gave Dancing his freedom. The pony galloped from the stables, taking her into the inky, windswept night.

O sing not you then, lest the best

Of angels should be driven

To fall again, at such a feast

Mistaking earth for heaven.

BEN JONSON,

“Musicall Strife:

in a Pastorall Dialogue”

Remembering the entire episode again was like tearing a bandage from a festering wound. Lissa’s tears wet the Marquis’s brocaded counterpane that she lay upon, and in her grief-stricken heart she wished she could drown in them. Vaguely she thought she heard Mrs. Myers come into the chamber, then discreetly leave, but Lissa hardly paid any attention. Her sobbing seemed never to end, especially when she thought again of how cruelly Ivan had just treated her; and the reason for it: the scar she had viciously inflicted upon him for the rest of his life.

When Dancing and she had left the stables that night, no one had found her until dawn. She was at Georgette’s Leap overlooking the sound when Mr. Merriweather finally caught up with her. She was quiet and sorrowful as he told her of the grooms, including Ivan, who were scouring the countryside looking for her. Then, in grave silence, the stablemaster told her there had been a tragedy at Alcester. Without asking another question, as if she somehow already knew what it was, she followed him back to the estate without uttering a sound.

It was a brutal remembrance. She had not been allowed inside the drawing room to see the bodies, but over the years she had heard enough gossip about the incident to glean a picture of her parents’ last moments on earth. Both were shot in the skull. Her father was in the armchair, the pistol beneath his outstretched hand. Rebecca had been found with her head on her husband’s lap, as if her last gesture had been begging him for reason. In her grasp she held a note that Lissa now kept in her jewelry box. It was in her father’s hand and it said simply:

I lived for you—I died for you.

They were buried two days later in the Alcester cemetery with those very words inscribed on their tombstone.

Lissa never saw Ivan. The other grooms told her he had taken off for parts unknown the moment he was told she’d been found. She’d been heartbroken by his absence, but her whole world was so wrenched apart that his leaving became just another hurt. Eventually she seemed to go numb. Yet the one thing she could not get rid of was the terrible guilt that stabbed her whenever she thought of the riding crop and that last night in the stables.

The first year after her parents’ death was the worst. Lissa quickly found out what a tenuous existence they really led. Her father had left no will and there was no solicitor to look after the estate. Nor were there any relatives. Alcester House soon slipped from her grasp. She quickly found out when a death occurs the bill collectors come like crows to pick at the corpse. The collectors’ cries refused to be silenced, and soon the remaining Alcesters were living at Violet Croft with only the funds left them after all their parents’ debts were paid.

It was certainly a step down from their previous lifestyle, but Lissa would have traded all the wealth in Britain if she could have just saved her parents, if she could have just prevented the illness that had later left her sister blind; if she could have kept her brother away from the cruelties of the children at school. But she hadn’t been able to prevent any of the tragedies that had befallen her family.

And then there was Ivan to grieve over. Her thoughts of him hardly diminished at all in the five years she spent at Violet Croft. She devoured every bit of gossip about him as a beggar devours crumbs. When she’d heard Powerscourt had finally recognized Ivan as his own, she’d been secretly thrilled. Ivan was finally getting justice for a mean life. She heard about his decadent life in London after he received his inheritance, and his wildness saddened her.
But her only truly unhappy moment came when she’d heard he was to return to Powerscourt. She knew he was coming to open old wounds. And to show how absolutely their fortunes had been reversed.

Now, as she clutched the Genoa silk counterpane, she wondered how she would carry on. It was brutally obvious that Ivan felt no tender emotion for her. Though it broke her heart all over again, she knew there was no way to make him love her.

She sat up and numbly picked up her cap. She pulled her fingers through her knotted tresses. Chagrined, she wondered what Mrs. Myers thought of this whole episode. Surely the housekeeper knew something was afoot. Undoubtedly her reputation was diminished, but there seemed nothing she could do about it. Her hand trembled while she repinned her hair. Clutching together her bodice, she headed for the door.