Fallen Angel (11 page)

"Sir?" she asked, and stared pointedly at the hand which was clasped so securely around her wrist.

Deveryn shook his head and a tendril of blond hair fell across his forehead. "What a complete hand you are! Cool as ice, and as prickly as a hedgehog! Who would suppose that last night, in my arms, you were as warm and affectionate as a lost puppy?" There was a smile in his voice.

Though her insides were shaking like one of Janet's bramble jellies, Maddie was very proud of her performance, and managed, in slightly affronted accents, "I beg your pardon?"

The viscount moved off along the corridor and Maddie was obliged to move with him. "Why did you run away from me last night?" he asked softly, and he halted before a portrait which hung in a particularly dark corner of the passageway. Anyone catching a glimpse of them would think they had stopped to admire the artist's work.

"I never saw you in my life before today," said Maddie in a fierce whisper.

The exaggerated sigh which fell from Deveryn's lips was overlaid with impatience. "The smell of apples," he drawled, "is strong in my nostrils."

"Oh!" said Maddie, and her face took on a wary aspect.

"And I've met Janet," he added for good measure.

"Janet?"

"You mentioned her last night."

"I don't recall. . ." she broke off and looked up at him. Her lips thinned. "Janet is not an uncommon name in this part of the world."

A slow grin spread across his face. "I should advise you to abandon that tack," he said gently. "You left me any number of clues to your identity. And I don't suppose you're suffering from an attack of amnesia. Now, shall we begin again? Why did you run away from me last night?"

Maddie's pulse soared and her throat went dry. For a fleeting moment, she was tempted to give in to the soft persuasion of that beguiling voice and unburden herself completely. The impulse died stillborn when she chanced to look up at the portrait they stood under.

It was a picture of herself as a child of six or seven years painted in far happier circumstances. She was dressed for riding and proudly sat the back of the first of a long string of ponies that her father had supplied for his equestrian daughter over the years. A wave of nostalgia swept over her.

Her mother, as she remembered, used to chide her father for spoiling her, and had complained in fun that she was beginning to feel jealous of her own daughter.

"Whom do you love best, Maddie. Papa or me?" her mother used to ask, and Maddie's solemn reply was unwavering.

"I love you both EXACTLY the same," and she had wondered at her parents' peal of laughter and her father snatching her in his arms and throwing her high in the air till she shrieked for him to stop.

The question and answer became a family ritual, and though Maddie could not then fathom what prompted her parents to repeat the question over and over, she was wise enough to know that her answer pleased them both unreasonably.

"Maddie is so loyal,' her father used to say, and she would skip away thinking that she was the centre of the universe. When had she discovered, she wondered with a quick stab of pain, that she was a mere speck on an insignificant planet signifying nothing? She felt the sting of tears at the back of her throat and swallowed hard.

Her voice, when she spoke, was in the cultured neutral tones that five years of elocution lessons at Miss Maitland's Academy invariably inculcated in the pupils of that establishment. "I ran away from you because you frightened me. You would not release me when I asked you to. When the opportunity presented itself, I grasped it."

He looked at her for a long considering moment. "That's not it," he said levelly. "There's something else. You've heard my name before, haven't you? What have you heard?"

"Nothing good," she was moved to answer on a rash impulse, and she wrenched her hand from his grasp. She took a step backwards.

"I can tell you are going to try to make this hard for me," he said, and waited in vain for her to take up his challenge. "There's no need, you know. I am not the same man I
was . . . oh . . .
a second before I met you. Don't ask me how I know, I just do. Maddie?" he reached for her, but she jerked away. He let her go.

"I'll give you a little time to get used to the idea," he said reasonably, "but you will learn that patience is not one of my virtues."

His unshakable confidence was an insult in Maddie's eyes. "Frankly, I'm not interested in hearing about your virtues or your vices. I have more important things to occupy my thoughts."

He laughed. "Maddie, don't be frightened. Really, there's no need. I shall be as gentle a lover as you would wish me to be."

"Are you asking me to be your lightskirt?" she goaded, and his smile of affected patience rankled her all the more.

"You learn very quickly, don't you? I suppose I have only myself to blame for introducing you to that word." His eyes went suddenly serious. "Don't provoke me, Maddie. You'll discover that I have a ferocious temper. I hope you never see that side of my character. Really, you won't like it."

"Dinner," she intoned coldly, "is at five. You can't miss your room. It's the last door at the end of the hall." She picked up her skirts and left him with a perfect view of her straight back.

His eyes, bright with laughter, followed her as she slowly descended the long staircase with a dignity that he was certain was assumed for his benefit. When he saw that she had no intention of further acknowledging his presence, he turned on his heel and made for the door she had indicated.

It occurred to him that Maddie might have heard something of his affair with Cynthia. He hoped she had not, but the thought scarcely disturbed him. It was evident to him that Maddie was abysmally ignorant of the ways of the world. In all probability, the girl exaggerated the importance of such women ii*a man's life.

Perhaps she believed him fickle or unable to form a lasting attachment. The thought brought a grin flashing to his lips. Was it only the day before yesterday that he had been of the same opinion? He marvelled at the turn of events which had converted him from his cynical persuasion. Her appeal to his jaded palette mystified him as much as it amused him. Maddie was scarcely in the style of the sophisticated women of the world who had attracted him in the past. And really, he knew nothing about her, though that would be soon remedied. It was that air of vulnerability which she had unwittingly revealed on their first meeting and which she now took such pains to conceal which had ensnared him, he decided. No, that would not do. There was no explaining it. But it was frightening to think that the girl had suddenly become as necessary to him as the very air he breathed.

As his valet bustled about the room shaking out his master's fine tailored garments, hanging them in the commodious mahogany press, Deveryn stretched out full-length on top of the feather bed, his hands clasped loosely behind his head.

As was to be expected, this room was in no better case than
the others he had observed—scrupulously clean, and smelling of beeswax, he was willing to concede, but reinforcing that first impression of genteel poverty which had been so evident from the moment he had stepped over the threshold of the house. Maddie, he mused, would be quite overwhelmed when she discovered the estate to which she would be raised by her marriage to the Viscount Deveryn.

The storm which was forecast by Sam, Drumoak's shepherd, was to last for several days. Drifts of snow whipped up by the persistent winds from the Firth of Forth made the roads, impassable in places. No visitors came to call. There were no excursions^ the village, no carriage rides in the countryside to relieve the long hours of tedium. Though it would be an exaggeration to say that Drumoak was completely cut off from the civilized world—Maddie always managing to exercise Banshee along the sands of the Forth Estuary—it was close enough to the truth to force the residents of the house to fall back on each other for conversation and amusement during the long winter evenings.

Maddie was at first dismayed at the prospect of entertaining the two people she most detested in the world. She did not see how she could behave naturally in the circumstances, and was certain that she would betray herself before very long. Her fears were groundless. It was Deveryn who made the forced confinement easier to bear, and where the viscount exerted himself to please, he could not fail to charm.

Though Drumoak was a house of mourning, he gave it as his opinion that there could be no harm in bringing out the cards for a quiet game of whist, or opening the piano for some music of an evening. Maddie soon discovered that Deveryn's preferences carried more weight than her own, which surprised her a little, especially with the servants, for the abstemious Scots were known to look askance at any form of frivolity and they regarded card-playing as an invention of the devil. But Deveryn had become the favourite of the hour.

This was borne in on Maddie one evening as she rose from the pianoforte after accompanying herself in a particularly haunting melody—a lament for the Scots who fell as they fought the victorious English on the bloody field of Flodden. Deveryn and Cynthia were playing a quiet game of picquet and Aunt Nell sat roasting herself at the coal fire, her knitting needles clicking furiously.

Deveryn's eyes met Maddie's with a silent question.

"I'll find Janet," she told him, "and arrange to have tea brought in."

"No need for that," he said. "Pull the bellrope."

"It doesn't work," Maddie explained.

"Nonsense! It works for me. Martin, my valet, always answers to its summons."

"English ears," said Maddie dryly, "must be different from Scottish ears."

"Are you admitting, Miss Sinclair, that English ears are better?" he asked quizzically.

"Not better, my lord. Merely boxed more regularly, I don't doubt." And she injected a touch of malice into her drawl.

His eyes laughed up at her as he stretched and uncoiled his long length from the confining chair. He moved toward Maddie with slow, feline grace. "Watch it, my girl," he said in a soft undertone. "You're outnumbered here by your English enemies three to one. And don't think I wasn't aware of the veiled insult in that last folk song you performed so charmingly. If anyone's ears are going to be boxed, I shall make certain that they are yours." He sauntered to the bellrope and jerked on it impatiently.

Maddie sank back on the piano bench and smiled to herself. The smirk was wiped from her face when Janet entered after a few minutes.

"You see?" said Deveryn quietly in her ear as he brought his teacup for her to refill. "A little perseverance is all that was necessary. A tad more English confidence is all you lack," and he grinned from ear to ear.

Maddie could not suppress her own answering grin. It died when her unwary glance caught the look of cold calculation in her stepmother's narrowed eyes. It was evident to Maddie that it would take very little to make Cynthia jealous. The woman was obviously in love with the viscount. Having reminded herself of Deveryn's connection to her stepmother, Maddie had little difficulty for the remainder of the evening in retreating behind a wall of glacial reserve.

Nevertheless, honesty compelled Maddie to admit that she had occasion to be grateful to the viscount for smoothing over several awkward moments with her stepmother when the two women came to points over the running of the household. Maddie could scarcely contain her impatience for the reading of her father's will. The uncertainty about her future was having an inevitably unsettling effect upon her. And Cynthia's confident assumption that Drumoak would pass into her hands brought Maddie's temper flashing to the surface. It was Deveryn who adroitly managed the two hostile women, to Aunt Nell's heartfelt relief.

By degrees, Maddie's painfully uncertain feelings for the viscount resolved themselves into a reluctant toleration, tempered she knew, by an admiration she could not suppress, try as she might. U nder the circumstances, it seemed expedient to declare a truce until such time as Deveryn and her stepmother had quit Drumoak. Maddie was also sensible of the ancient claims of hospitality which enjoined a host to offer protection to strangers who shared his hearth. Though her ultimate design for revenge was temporarily set aside, it was by no means abandoned, so she told herself.

Such were Maddie's thoughts as she wheeled Banshee in the direction of the sand dunes on the first fine morning that she had enjoyed in several days. It was her intention to push on as far as the village if it were possible. A full sennight had elapsed since Malcolm's message had been delivered to her, and, with a thaw setting in, she was hopeful of finally making it through to the manse. But how different were her thoughts on this occasion from that other time, only seven days before, when she had been desperate to share her sorrow with the playmate of her childhood. She was conscious of a new constraint in herself which, in some vague way, had its origin in the night she had unwittingly walked into Deveryn's arms. That Malcolm had been displaced in her affections was not something Maddie was willing to acknowledge.