Fallen Angel (24 page)

"What have you told her?" she asked.

He watched as she carefully poured the cream into the small porcelain bowl he had just handed her.

"That you're to go to your grandfather."

She dipped her spoon into the porridge then immersed it in the small sidebowl of fresh cream. Surreptitiously, she slanted the spoon at an angle and managed to dislodge most of the porridge. It was an old trick from childhood days.

"What's the point in that?" he asked, indicating the two separate bowls of porridge and cream. "Why not simply pour the cream over the porridge?"

"I'm not sure. I think it's because the porridge stays hotter this way. It's the custom in Scotland."

"Would you like some sugar?"

Her lip curled. "Certainly not."

"Of course. Scottish to the backbone!"

An awkward silence fell to be broken eventually by his long sigh of impatience. "Maddie, I'm sorry for yesterday. I'm sorry for the way everything came out. You were upset. You had every right to be. I see now that you were in shock. Perhaps I didn't explain things properly. Naturally, we'll come back here for holidays. Drumoak isn't lost to you, you know. You'll always be welcome here."

"Thank you," she said with crushing civility. She stared at the glutinous mass of porridge. More than anything, she wanted to pick up the bowl and dump the sticky contents on his golden head.
You will always be welcome here.
His condescension was insupportable. She'd cut off her feet before she'd step across Drumoak's threshold as long as he was master here. She almost told him so. But more than anything, she wanted to appear as cool as a cucumber. She raised the spoon and opened her lips.

"Maddie," he said, forcing himself to speak calmly. "I'm doing this for your own good."

She thought she would choke as the lump of glue slid slowly down her gullet.

He tried a different tack. "I'm off to Edinburgh this morning. I want you to come with me. I have business to attend to, but you could do a little shopping. Splurge on yourself. I can afford it."

"Thank you, no. I don't feel up to much this morning." Especially not the porridge.

"It would do you the world of good," he insisted.

"I think I know better than you what's good for me." She wondered if he would think she'd lost face if she were to ask for the grilled kippers and kidney. Her eyes went longingly to the covered dishes on the sideboard. She became conscious that Deveryn's tone was earnest, his expression grave. She made an effort to attend to his words.

". . .
and Drumoak is not what you need, whatever you may think. Oh, I know, you feel safe here. This house is all you know. You're afraid to leave it, afraid of what you don't know." He flashed her a rueful grin. "If you're honest with yourself, you'll thank your lucky stars that I came along when I did. In another year or two, you were in a fair way to becoming as wooly as the sheep that graze these hills."

Every fine hair on the back of her neck rose like the fur of a cat which had been rubbed the wrong way.
Thank my lucky stars. Thank my lucky stars.
She was so angry that without thinking, she tipped a full spoon of the hateful cereal into her open mouth. She froze.

"Trust me, Maddie," he went on softly, mistaking her silence for acquiescence. "You'll like our life together. I promise you."

She gagged, then painfully, agonizingly, choked down the porridge. Her stomach heaved and she opened, her mouth, greedily drawing in air.

"Maddie, what is it? You look like a fish out of water." His hand reached across the table to grip her clenched fist.

The heaving gradually subsided and she shook him off. "Deveryn, don't you dare talk down to me as if I were a child! I'm a grown woman of nineteen years, and I
shall
have some say in the disposition of my future, d'you hear, I
shall
!"

"Sh . . .!" The smile was back in his eyes. "You're forgetting something, Maddie. I don't
always
treat you as a child. There are some areas where you have a natural competence. With a little tutoring you should do very well."

Her face was on fire. She did not know where to look. She gave up the pretense of eating and put up her hands to her burning cheeks.

"Please, can't we just forget that that night ever happened?" She was almost pleading with him.

He answered her carefully. "That I cannot do. Even you, naive as you are, must know that there are certain consequences to what we did together."

She looked at him blankly.

"Pregnancy, Maddie," he said dryly. "Babies are not found under gooseberry bushes, not even in Scotland."

"I never thought they were," she snapped back, her anger rising at his habitual mode of treating her like a child. She watched him from beneath slashed brows as he drained his cup.

Sudden inspiration came to her. She became involved in stirring the lump of congealed porridge in her bowl. When she heard the delicate chink of china on china, she lifted her eyes boldly to meet his.

"Rest easy, Deveryn. You don't have to marry me. I'm not. . . you haven't . . . there isn't the least likelihood that I'm breeding."

"What?" He scrutinized her carefully. No blush, no stammer, only a clear eyed determination. She would have to do better than that to gull an old hand like him.

"I don't understand," he said mendaciously.

Maddie swallowed. This was more difficult than she'd anticipated. Perhaps the viscount did not know about a woman's bodily functions. She tried to remember the words Mrs. Moncrieff had used on that long ago day when Malcolm had taken her to his mother because she thought she was dying.

"It's quite natural," she said seriously, "and nothing to fret about. Every month . . ." she faltered, her eyes narrowing suspiciously on the straight line of his mouth.

"Yes?" he intoned encouragingly. His eyes were as unclouded and as blue as a Mediterranean sky.

"Damn you, Deveryn. I am not pregnant. I am NOT! So you can wipe that smug grin off your face."

"Softly! Someone will hear you. I never said you were."

"Well, now you know I'm not!"

"If you say so."

"I do say so."

"All right!"

"You don't believe me!"

"What difference does it make?"

"What difference does it make?" She forced her voice lower. "Don't be stupid! We don't HAVE to get married now."

"Maddie, calm yourself. Whether you are pregnant or not is of the supremest indifference to me. Have some tea. It will sooth your nerves."

He poured her a cup and refilled his own. She delayed for just the right moment. He took a mouthful.

"How many women have you impregnated, my lord?" she asked artlessly, but there was nothing artless about her grin.

Deveryn choked. The scalding brew burned a path down his throat. It was a full minute before he could find his voice. "Maddie, for God's sake!" He coughed, then coughed again and brought his napkin to his lips. "None," he rasped out.

"None?" One eyebrow arched in a fair imitation of his own.

"None," he repeated emphatically. "I'm not a callow youth. I know how to prevent conception."

"I'm relieved to hear it."

He found her words mildly irritating. His eyes wandered over her. For a moment, he was tempted to let her take comfort in her false assumption. On reflection, he thought better of it. In the last twenty-four hours, he had quite deliberately cut the rug from under her feet. She had no one to turn to, nowhere to go but to him. To relent now would be to undermine his strategy.

"When you're an old married lady and have filled my house with children, I'll tell you how it's done. But till then, my love, I'll be doing my damndest to sire my sons on you."

"Then, the other night, you didn't . . ."

"No, I didn't. But by your own words, you have nothing to worry about." His lips twitched but-he asked gravely, "Perhaps you do—"

"What? Oh no!" Then as an afterthought, "Might I have?"

"Possibly. But if ever you do without my permission, I shall wring your pretty little neck."

"Oh." Her hand went nervously to her throat.

He was on his feet and bending over her, one hand propped on the table. "Be ready in ten minutes. The carriage should be at the front door by then."

"What?" She couldn't think when he was so close to her.

"We're going to spend the day in Edinburgh."

"I thought I told you . . ."

"There may be papers to sign." He knew damn well that there weren't any, at least not for her.

"Papers to sign? Why didn't you say so?"

When she reached her hand to the doorknob, he remarked casually, "Janet tells me you positively loathe porridge. If you're a good girl, I'll buy your breakfast when we reach town."

She swung to face him, her eyes snapping. "You knew," she
accused, "all the time you knew. Then why?"

"To teach you a lesson. Maddie, you would cut off your nose to spite your face. Everything you have ever wanted is within reach. It's yours for the asking. Don't let pride . . ."

The rest of his laughing words were covered by the reverberations of the door as she slammed it smartly on exiting.

It was mid-morning when Deveryn's carriage pulled into the busy courtyard of the White Hart Inn in Edinburgh's Grassmarket. High above, impregnable, like a watchful, menacing sentinel soared the towers and battlements of the ancient fortress. A private parlour was bespoken and breakfast procured. Maddie was soon drooling over heaped servers of braised liver and kidney, poached yellow fish and the ubiquitous oysters, an Edinburgh staple, so Deveryn was told. But it was the fresh cod's roe, boiled to a pink perfection and newly in season which finally broke down her cool and distancing manner. He left her absorbed in the difficult task of making a selection from the cornucopia of Scottish delicacies. His explanation that he would arrange an appointment with the solicitor and be back within the hour scarcely registered, he was certain.

He found the landlord's directions easy to follow since the castle was one landmark which could rarely be lost sight of. Keeping it on his left, he passed the newly drained Nor' Loch on the south side of Princes Street, Edinburgh's most exclusive shopping district. It was a far cry from the more familiar and elegant Bond Street. He'd heard that the city fathers intended to plant gardens of flowers where the Nor' Loch's stagnant waters had so recently fouled the air. The fetid stench still lingered. On that grey, blustery, sunless January day, as he shouldered himself into the wind between long rows of smoke-blackened tenements which rose to seven, eight stories high, he thought it would be hard to find a more dismal spot on God's earth than this misnamed "Athens of the North."

Forsythe's chambers were soon located on Hanover Street. Deveryn presented his card to a red-haired, spotty-faced clerk. When his name was announced, the result was immediate as it was predictable. Three bent heads came up and he was instantly bowed and scraped into Forsythe's inner sanctum as if he had been royalty. It left him amused and oddly piqued. His reception at Drumoak had been of a different order. Maddie, he decided, could do with a lesson or two on correct protocol.

After the obligatory handshake, Mr. Forsythe retreated behind his desk and indicated that the viscount should seat himself.

"Well?" demanded Deveryn without preamble. "Are you satisfied that my claims are legitimate?" And he removed the deed to Drumoak from his coat pocket and dropped it negligently on the leather-topped desk.

"Aye. There never was any doubt in my mind," admitted the older man grudgingly. Absently, he picked up the packet and tapped it against the open palm of one hand. "You've made a pauper o' the lass, there's no gainsaying. If her English relatives don't see fit to put a roof over her head, Miss Maddie will have to find some sort of gainful employment. I'm sure I don't know which one o' ye
scunhers
me more, that poor excuse o' a man she called her father, or," he paused, his eyes insulting as they ran assessingly over the viscount's impeccable person, "or this fine
specimen
o' the English aristocracy who steals the bread out o' the mouths o' babes."

The belligerent words startled a laugh out of Deveryn. "Tush man, give your conscience a rest. 'Stealing the bread out of the mouths of babes' indeed! If you had seen Maddie as I last saw
her . . ."
A slow smile curved his lips. "More to the point," he went on, striving for sobriety, "I have every intention of seeing that Maddie is gainfully employed, more gainfully, perhaps, than she wants to be—as my wife," he hastened to add, rightly interpreting the stormy expression which had kindled in the other man's eyes.