Fallen Angel (12 page)

"Wool gathering, Miss Sinclair?"

Maddie's head came up and she slanted a glance at the rider who had silently overtaken her. Lord Deveryn, in skintight beige pantaloons and black riding jacket looked more handsome than any mere mortal had any right to, thought Maddie, and her eyes swept him from golden crown to mirror bright hessians with their dangling tassels. His mount, a massive black stallion, who looked as elegant and well-bred as his master, stamped restively as if impatient to be off. The stallion sidled closer to Maddie's mare and nuzzled her ear. Banshee's tail switched, and without warning, she pulled back her lips and nipped the huge beast on the neck. It reared up, but Deveryn brought its head down with iron control. Banshee whinnied and Maddie, her eyes bubbling with laughter, tried to suppress a giggle. She snorted.

"Like mistress, like mount, I don't doubt," said Deveryn, and he flashed Maddie a singularly charming smile. "Where are we off to this morning?"

"I," said Maddie, striving in vain to keep her lips straight, "I have it in mind to pay a morning call on the Moncrieffs." She had hoped to inject some ice into her voice, but knew that she had failed miserably. Deveryn's mount, she noted, was eyeing Banshee with covert interest, but that mischievous female had pulled back her lips in readiness to administer a biting setdown to the encroaching brute. Maddie found she could not restrain her laughter.

"Whoa, 'Thelo. Mind your manners and the lady will ignore you." Deveryn cocked a sardonic brow at Maddie. "Like master, like mount," he intoned with a suggestive smile.

"So I noticed," Maddie retorted, but for the life of her, could not keep her expression severe. She gave up the attempt. "Oh, come on, I'll race you to the causeway," and before Deveryn had time to gather his wits, she showed him her heels.

She expected him to best her, and was not well-pleased to find herself the winner of the contest. They dismounted and, finding that they could not easily traverse the wooden footbridge to the village, turned back to walk their mounts along the sands.

It was Deveryn who broke the silence which had fallen between them. "Why so glum? I thought you would be delighted to win our race."

"So I should have, if I had won it fairly.
Why
did you hold back?"

"To please you, though I can see I have failed in my laudable objective."

"Should I be flattered by such condescension?" asked Maddie crossly.

Deveryn laughed. "Oh Maddie. The more I learn about you, the more I . . . admire you."

"Ah," said Maddie gravely, "it were wiser if you would defer your opinion till you come to know my character better, my lord."

"Then by all means, let us rectify my ignorance. Tell me about yourself!"

"What?" She looked startled.

"I want to know all about you."

"What, for instance?" Her tone was guarded.

"Oh, I don't know. Anything will do. What was the first word you ever uttered as a child?"

"Are you serious?"

"Of course
I'm
serious. One can deduce a lot about a person's character from such small clues. Well?"

She gave him a glance full of mischief. "Are you sure you want to know?"

"Of course!"

"No."

"I beg your pardon?"

"No. That's the first word that ever passed my lips. My mother told me that it gave me enormous power."

"I can well believe it. It still does."

"What was the first word you ever said?" and she flashed him a quelling frown.

"After that, I don't think you'll believe me."

"What was it?" she encouraged.

"Yes!"

" 'Yes' was the first word you ever said as a child?" She was genuinely amused. "You're making that up."

"Yes," he responded gravely.

"I might have known it!"

"I wonder if our children will be conventional and say the usual 'mama' or 'papa?'"

"Don't!" she said with a note of distress.

For a moment, she was sure that he meant to take her in his arms, but he merely captured her hand and laced his fingers through hers. "What is your first memory as a child?" he asked softly.

"I . . .
I don't remember!" She was acutely conscious of the warmth of his hand in hers and regretted the impulse that had made her strip her gloves from her fingers.

"Think about it—your very first memory as a child."

"I remember that my father used to throw me up in the air and catch me," she said quickly.

"Did you like it, or were you terrified?"

"Both."

He turned to face her. "Did he ever let you fall?"

"Of course not." She was angry at herself for the short breathless answer.

"Neither shall I ever let you fall. Your fears were as groundless then as they are now."

The compelling warmth in his eyes, which he made no attempt to conceal, flustered her more than she cared to admit. She hastened into speech. "What of your family? Were you born and raised in Oxfordshire?" And she moved off, though she could not shake free of his grasp. He kept pace with her.

"Yes. I am the oldest and the only son in a family of five. Only my youngest sister is at home. The others are all married and have moved away."

"Four girls? I'll wager you were spoiled rotten," she said with so much smugness that Deveryn was constrained to smile.

"Now why do you say so?"

She grinned. "It shows!"

"In what way?" he demanded, and Maddie could not be sure if the indignation in his voice was real or feigned.

"You're so sure of yourself. You think the sun rises and sets at your whim. I'll bet you were never beaten as a child! I can just see it now—you like an eastern potentate with the girls in your family waiting with baited breath for some small suggestion to fall from your lips. I'm sure you never suffered from a lack of bedsocks!" she finished cryptically. "Well, am I right?"

He laughed. "You wretched girl! Closer than comfort! But my sisters call me Jason, as I wish you would, though only in private of course till I speak with your guardian. But that last remark about bedsocks is completely mystifying. What can you mean by it?"

Maddie ignored the allusion to her guardian and stated gaily, "Ladies are always busy with their needles, and fathers and brothers are usually the recipients of their efforts, so it seems to me."

"Not in my family! My mother and sisters are strangers to the domestic arts, more's the pity. Not one of them can sew a fine seam. They're bluestockings, every one of them." He went on in an outrageous undertone. "I'll
leave it to you to
spoil me with handmade slippers and gloves and so on. But Maddie, no bedsocks, if you please."

She ignored this further provocation and merely observed, "It's obvious you've never lived through a Scottish winter. If you had, you'd know that bedsocks are man's greatest invention after the wheel. What's a bluestocking?"

"What? Oh, it's a term to describe clever women, like my mother and sisters. You know, those ladies who eschew silk stockings and so on because their minds are set on higher things!"

"Don't you like clever women?"

"They bore me to death—with the exception of my mother and
sisters, of course," he added as an afterthought.

Maddie's expression was arrested. "How odd!" she said, and lapsed into a meditative silence. After a moment she asked tentatively, "You're not much interested in books and so on, I take it?"

"Certainly I am. But one wants something quite different in the conversation of a woman. Intelligence is necessary, of course, that goes without saying. But what man wants a steady diet of intellectual prosing?"

She could not suppress a smile. "Very few, I should imagine. It must be very difficult for you living in a household of bluestockings."

"Save your pity! I haven't lived at home in years. Besides, my sisters are mostly married and looking after their own households now. So my father has only two clever women to manage—my mother and young Sophie."

It was more the tone of his conversation than the words themselves which conveyed an impression of a close-knit family which looked with a tolerant eye upon the foibles of its individual members. Maddie could not help remembering her own lonely childhood.

"I always wanted a sister," she said wistfully.

"You'll have four of them, very soon, I promise you."

For a moment, a very fleeting moment, she surrendered to the temptation and imagined herself as part of a family such as Deveryn had described. It seemed to Maddie that she would have everything she had ever wanted in her life. She would also have Deveryn, the man who had wronged her father.

She pulled herself together and said mendaciously, "Thank you for the offer. But such clever girls as you describe would probably terrify the life out of me."

"I'll be there to protect you," he answered suavely.

"Thank you, no." A chill crept into her voice. "We were talking, as I recall, of our very first memory. I believe it's your turn."

His smile, though tender, conveyed an amused tolerance that did not endear him to Maddie. "My first memory is when my sister was born. She is two years younger than I. I shall never forget the morning my mother put her into my arms. That was the first miracle I ever experienced. The second was at Inverforth when you walked into my arms. I want another miracle, Maddie." His eyes were soft and sombre. "I long for the day when I cradle our first child."

She dragged her hand from his clasp and stood looking up at him, her bosom heaving. "No!" she exclaimed, but the picture his words conjured flashed into her mind, and she felt her womb contract painfully. "Never," she said through gritted teeth.

She saw the anger gathering in his eyes. "Why are you so stubborn?" He had her by the shoulders. "Why?" he demanded.

"You know why!"

"It's Cynthia, isn't it? You've heard something. Forget her Maddie. She means nothing to me. She never did."

She drew a deep steadying breath. "Then it's true." With everything in her being, she wanted him to deny it.

"Cynthia," he said with an indifference that sounded callous to Maddie's ears, "and women like her have nothing to do with us. Nor will I tolerate an inquisition into my past. Don't ask for the sordid details. In this, I will not indulge you."

Though his words incensed her, she preserved an icy front and spoke with as much dignity as was in her power to command. "You are mistaken, Lord Deveryn, if you think I am interested in your past. I take leave to tell you that your future holds even less interest for me. Perhaps," she added very softly and with a suggestive lift of her brow, "my own past does not bear close scrutiny either. But neither is my past or future any of your business. Kindly remember that."

His eyes flashed with a sudden anger, but he had himself well in hand. "What a provoking girl you are! You're determined to keep me at arm's length. Pretending to an experience you lack is not the way to do it, Maddie. But there, I told you that I would give you a little time to get used to the idea of marriage to me. Shall we continue our walk?"

Maddie took refuge in silence. She held herself stiffly, her eyes staring straight ahead. The viscount, however, soon drew her out of herself by asking knowledgeable questions of the houses in the area which had been designed by the architect, John Adam, and there were many since the Adam family was Scottish. To her chagrin, Maddie found that she did most of the talking, and what was worse, became so involved in defending the merits of Georgian architecture that she forgot that she was intent in depressing the viscount's ambitions.

She gave him a quick, searching glance as they came within sight of the path leading to the east pasture. His blue eyes, so innocently expressive, stared calmly back at her, and Maddie's suspicions were confirmed.

Piqued at her own gullibility, she quickly hoisted herself onto Banshee's back and waited with a show of indifference for Deveryn to mount up. The return to Drumoak was made in silence.

The horses were soon stabled, and Deveryn followed an unusually quiet Maddie as she stalked ahead of him to the back of the house. As she laid her hand on the latch of the door that gave entrance to the back kitchen, they were both startled by a ball of black fur which came streaking round the corner of the house. The ball launched itself at Maddie's feet where it lay panting.