Fallen Angel (4 page)

She thought of Mollie Drake, and she smothered a giggle. Poor Mollie had spoiled her chances of snaring the viscount by committing an appalling blunder. Mollie, unfortunately, was clever. Though she had been well-educated, and could quite easily have found a position as a school mistress, the excitement of treading the boards and the luxury of life on the fringes of the ton as some well-breeched lordling's paramour held greater appeal for her. Deveryn had been attracted to Mollie's flaming beauty. What a pity that, thinking to impress his lordship, Mollie had opened her lovely mouth and capped one of the viscount's quotations from Shakespeare. She had thought to captivate him with her superior intelligence. Poor Mollie had not known what was generally acknowledged—that the viscount abhorred clever women! No wonder! His mother and four sisters were reputed to be unashamed bluestockings! The gentleman was obviously suffering from a surfeit of clever conversation. His tastes ran to something quite different. Miss Ramides thanked her lucky stars that no one could accuse her of being a clever woman.

As Deveryn embarked on a flow of easy conversation, she relaxed against the leather squabs and let the liquid sound of his voice, low and indolent, fill her with pleasure. Her eyes became drowsy and shifted to take in the unusual spectacle of
Hyde Park crowded with pedestrians and open carriages on a fine afternoon in the middle of winter. But though there were scores of smart phaetons and dashing curricles which were tooled by handsome young gentlemen who threw her shamelessly admiring glances, her eyes were most often drawn to the man at her side.

Jason Verney, the Viscount Deveryn, attracted as much attention as did the lady in his carriage. How could it be otherwise? Miss Ramides asked herself. The man was simply ' divine. He boasted a beautiful head of fine, flyaway hair the colour of new minted gold guineas; eyes like aquamarines, or was it sapphires?—she could never be sure; gold-tipped lashes that fanned those wide-set enigmatic eyes with heart-stopping effect; and finely sculpted bones which gave him the look of an English thoroughbred. But it was that mouth, she decided, which had earned the viscount the soubriquet "fallen angel": full, generous lips tucked up slightly at the corners, but on rare occasions breaking into a slow smile which could melt the ice in the coldest feminine heart. It could very easily make a woman forget that she was playing hard to get. Her ruminations were interrupted by a languid drawl.

"Dolly, don't stare so. I'm beginning to feel like the fatted calf that's been selected for the return of the prodigal son."

Miss Ramides regretted that she had never mastered the maidenly art of blushing. Nevertheless, she batted her long curly lashes and dropped her eyes in a fair counterfeit of confusion, and she hid her pretty face behind her enormous fox muff. The ghost of a smile returned to the viscount's bored lips.

"Gawd luv us, guvn'or! It be her ladyship, yer mother with yer sister." The shrill cry of warning came from his lordship's young tiger, a cockney lad, who was perched up behind.

A crested open landau approached the viscount's curricle from the opposite direction. Miss Ramides quickly glimpsed two elegantly gowned ladies, though their costumes, she noted with a degree of satisfaction, were not of the first stare. She affected an interest in a stand of trees on the far horizon.

The carriages drew level. The viscount's mother, the Countess of Rossmere, had a welcoming smile on her face. As her interested gaze took in her son's travelling companion, the
smile gradually faded and she also affected an interest in the horizon. But Deveryn's young sister, a schoolroom miss of sixteen years or so, was not so shy. She looked with avid interest at the "lady" who accompanied her brother, and as the carriages passed, she was seen to wink broadly at the viscount.

"Minx!" he said under his breath, but his lips twitched.

The chance encounter with his mother and sister, though unfortunate, in no way disturbed his lordship's equilibrium. A single man approaching his thirtieth birthday, so he surmised, must be allowed to sow a few wild oats. His mother, though scarcely approving, knew how to turn a blind eye to the occasional opera dancer or lightskirt she might chance to see in her bachelor son's carriage or on his arm in some public place. Had the countess but known it, Deveryn's purpose in escorting the beautiful Dolores to the park when it was sure to be crowded was calculated to spare pain, not only to his mother but to an innocent man he felt he had in some sort wronged.

Deveryn wished to scotch the ugly rumours which were circulating that he had taken up with a married lady who moved in his own circles. Such a thing, he knew, would scandalize his family, and confirm the worst suspicions of the lady's husband, though as yet her name remained a mystery. Deveryn meant to keep it that way. And, he reasoned, the best way to scotch an old rumour was to start a new one.

There was one other reason which spurred the viscount's determination to be seen escorting a bevy of beautiful women around town. The affair with Cynthia Sinclair was long over. He wished to convey that message, not only to all the tittle- tattlers of the ton, but to the lady in question. He could not now say what had possessed him to break one of his own cardinal rules—to eschew married women, virtuous or otherwise. And Cynthia Sinclair must certainly be numbered among the latter. The husband, as he understood, had removed to Scotland, but the lady was proving something of a nuisance. Hence the drive in the park with the most coveted prize of London's demi-monde. Deveryn was resolved that Cynthia Sinclair must be brought to the realization that her persistence in pursuing him would not be rewarded—quite the reverse.

As the viscount's curricle neared the frozen water of the Serpentine with its plethora of noisy skaters, Deveryn was hailed by the occupant of an equipage very similar to his own. Lord Blanchard, of an age with the viscount, gave him a very good day, and the lovely who was seated beside him greeted Deveryn's companion with only a little less cordiality.

Lord Blanchard's tiger was instructed to go to the heads of his lead horses, a very fine pair of matched bays. The two ladies were assisted down and, as they took a short stroll on the frozen grass verge exchanging commonplaces and surreptitiously casting hard calculating glances at each other's elegant costumes, Lord Blanchard came round the side of the viscount's rig.

"My thanks to you, Jason, for putting the sweetest little goers in my way."

Deveryn's eyes lazily flicked to Blanchard's handsome team. "Don't mention it, Toby. Glad to be of service."

Blanchard seemed to be having some difficulty framing his next observation. Deveryn's languid eyes beneath their hooded lids became a shade brighter.

"Jason, I hope you don't mind . . . what I mean to say is, I don't wish to give offence . . . Dash it all, Jason, you know what I'm getting at! Am I or am I not at liberty to offer my protection to Miss Roland?" Blanchard's soft brown eyes came to rest on the pert little redhead who walked the turf with Miss Ramides.

Deveryn kept his expression grave. "I know of no reason why you should not."

"You've no objection?"

"No, why should I?"

Blanchard looked to be immensely relieved. "I thought as much. But at White's last night the betting books were open, and some hefty wagers were made on which little ladybird would finally capture your fancy. Miss Roland's name was among those mentioned."

The viscount looked amused. "How many are on the list?"

"Four, as of yesterday."

"Only four? I must be slipping."

Blanchard's expression was faintly quizzing. "I say, Jason. What's your game?"

"No game."

Blanchard's face brightened. "You wouldn't, by any chance, care to put me in the way of a little inside information?"

"Toby, a word to the wise. If I were you, I shouldn't bet on any of them."

Lord Blanchard looked blankly at his friend's impassive countenance. After a moment, he shook his head and chuckled. "Jason! You're outrageous. Shall I see you at Watiers for dinner?"

"Indubitably!"

"Do you see your parents soon?"

"Yes, on Sunday for the obligatory dinner
en famille."

"Convey my compliments to the earl and countess."

"Of course."

The ladies returned and Lord Blanchard very gallantly handed them up to their respective carriages.

A couple of turns around the park were sufficient for Deveryn's purpose. In other circumstances, he would have acted with more discretion. To flaunt his inamorata had never been much in his line. But it pleased him to think that his liaison with the mysterious married lady, like yesterday's news, was already forgotten.

There were but few things in his life that the Viscount Deveryn regretted, and his affair with Cynthia Sinclair was one of them. The regret was not for himself, nor for the lady, but for the husband who had been so negligently cuckolded. It should never have happened. Nor would it, if Deveryn had not been misled into thinking that Sinclair and his wife went their own separate ways quite amicably. It had suited Cynthia Sinclair to promote that piece of fiction.

He had severed the relationship the day he had observed Sinclair at White's, drinking himself into a sodden stupor. It was Toby Blanchard who had volunteered the information that rumour was rife that Sinclair's wife had taken a young lover.

"Well, 'twas to be expected, don't you know?" Toby had commented. "She's twenty or so years younger than Sinclair. Poor bastard! I think he really loves the jade."

Deveryn said nothing, but he felt a rush of pity for the empty hulk of a man who was intent on drowning his sorrows. But with Deveryn, where there was pity, contempt was not slow to follow.

A week later, he was to tangle with Sinclair at Watiers. The man was obviously in his cups and spoiling for a fight. Deveryn had wondered, fleetingly, if Sinclair suspected him of being his wife's lover. That notion he soon dismissed. A wronged husband was more like to call him out, not sit down at a faro table where his enemy held the bank and lose everything but his shirt to him.

It put Deveryn in a very delicate position. With anyone else he would have simply pocketed his winnings and walked away without a backward glance. Fortunes were won and lost every day in the gentlemen's clubs in St. James. But some vestige of conscience, or something he could not name, would not let it rest. When Sinclair returned from Scotland, it was Deveryn's purpose to contrive a rematch and lose everything back to him. Only then would he feel shot of the whole sorry affair. After that, Sinclair was one name he hoped never to hear of again.

He dropped the incomparable Dolly at the theatre in good time for that afternoon's matinee performance. When he made no attempt to make a future engagement, the lady could not quite hide her disappointment. Even Deveryn wondered at his own lack of interest. Beautiful women, like thoroughbred horses and fine Sevres porcelain, had always been one of his passions.

He returned to his rooms in Jermyn Street to dress for an evening on the town. Martin, Deveryn's valet, noted that his master was in a thoughtful mood. It would have shocked that old family retainer to the core if he had devined that the viscount was reflecting that life of late had become so jaded that Sunday dinner with his family had become the bright spot on his calendar.

Dinner
en famille
in the Verney household was habitually an informal affair. The rigid etiquette which prevailed in the dining rooms of the high sticklers of the ton were, by mutual consent, eschewed in that family in favour of a very free and easy converse. Other grand houses in town might boast of an
haute cuisine
which few could equal this side of the English Channel. Such things meant little or nothing to the Verneys, or so the countess averred. At her board, sparse courses and plain fare were the rule. She reasoned that an
haute cuisine
might very easily distract from an occupation at which all the Verneys were known to excel. In that household, debate, or "family squabbling" as Deveryn once affectionately disparaged it to his newest brother-in-law, was honed to a fine art. And truth to tell, at the conclusion of many a dinner, few would have been able to recall what had been consumed only minutes before.

There were not many outside the bounds of this unusual family who could be comfortable in such circumstances. As the three elder Verney girls had acquired husbands over the years, it had afforded the viscount no end of unholy amusement to observe the horror of each of his brothers-in-law when first introduced to the manners and modes at his mother's table. To politely confine one's conversation to the person on one's left or right hand was considered the stupidest kind of folly. One joined the debate and argued one's point of view with vigour, or one was left to vegetate in silence. No topic was consciously selected. No subject was considered too trivial or so elevated or delicate that it could not be argued with relish. Most often, a casual remark made in passing was taken up and within minutes, the battle was joined. Though Deveryn might sometimes cavil at the bland dinners and highblown conversation which were to be found in his parents' residence in Manchester Square, it was remarked that he rarely subjected his family to the slightly contemptuous cast of countenance which he commonly presented to the world.