Fallen Angel (41 page)

He used his hands on her hips to hint her into motion. She caught on quickly.

"Maddie, this is . . . this
is . . .
agony."

His features were carved in sensual lines, his eyes half closed. Perspiration beaded his smooth upper lip. Under her hands, the muscles of his shoulders strained taut.

"Good Englishman," she taunted. "I want you to suffer. I'm not forgetting all the points you scored last night at the dinner table. Besides, there are centuries of old scores that have still to be settled."

She came down on him slowly, showing no mercy.
"This,"
she said, "is for Sherrifmuir, and
this
is for Harlaw, and . . ."

"Maddie, Maddie," he protested through gritted teeth, "those were only skirmishes."

"Oh, very well then. Though I'd thought to save the battles for later.
This
is for Flodden Tield, and
this
is for Culloden, and
this
is for Wexford."

His fingers sank into her flanks to still her movements. "Maddie,' he said hoarsely, "that last was in Ireland."

"Oh, I'm broad-minded," she crowed.

Without warning, he hooked one powerful arm around her waist, and he swept her beneath him, their bodies still coupled. He took his weight on one hand, and carefully swept tendrils of unruly locks from her face. Their breathing was ragged. His eyes were soft with emotion.

"Maddie," he said, "you're doing this all wrong. Let me show you.
This,"
he said, and buried himself inside her,
"this
is because I love you, and
this
is because I love you, and
this

"Jason," she said, "Oh Jason!"

He took her pleasure cry into his mouth.

Maddie's morning sickness continued to assail her for the first hour or two immediately after waking. As a result she took to eating sparingly and changed the hour for her daily ride to early of an afternoon. The nausea conveyed little to her except perhaps that the change of cuisine at Dunsdale was in some perplexing way upsetting to her digestion. Only Rosie was privy to the discomfort the girl endured, and since Maddie was an unmarried lady, or so Rosie thought, she said nothing that might have alerted her to the proper origin of her bothersome disorder.

Deveryn, who might have divined the cause of Maddie's complaint at once, was not in a position to know, for although he came to Maddie's chamber every night to exercise his conjugal rights, he was careful to leave long before the first pale shaft of light lit up the eastern horizon.

Before long, Maddie began to dread his nightly visits. She soon came to feel that no pleasure on earth could ever compensate for the distress she experienced with Deveryn's relations. With Lady Mary and Sophie, she was able to be natural, but with the earl and his countess, she felt tongue-tied and utterly wretched as if she had in some sort betrayed their trust, which she felt she had. Her wretchedness was compounded by the fact that Lady Rossmere seemed to go out of her way to make her feel at home and invited confidences. Maddie could not conceive a happier home nor a more convivial family, and the more she came to like and respect the Verneys, the more odious did she judge her own conduct. She took to avoiding her hostess's presence whenever she could do so without giving offence. If Lady Rossmere noticed, she did not remark upon it.

Deveryn brushed off Maddie's misgivings with an indifference which she could not like.

"Don't you feel any guilt at all for what we are doing?" she asked him one night as he methodically removed his garments.

"What are we doing?" he asked.

"We're deceiving your family."

His eyes caught and held hers in the dressing table mirror. She could not read their expression. She laid aside the comb she had been idly pulling through her hair when he came to stand behind her. His hands cupped her shoulders and he dragged her back against his thighs. He leaned over and brushed her lips with his own in a long lingering caress.

"Come to bed," he said.

"You haven't answered my question."

"It won't be for much longer. Now come to bed. I've been impatient for you since the moment I left you this morning."

"Is this all you can think about?" shea sked, but she allowed him to lead her to the bed just the same.

"Yes," he said simply. "Does that shock you?"

It did, but he did not wait for her answer, and very soon thereafter, it was all that Maddie could think about as well.

Deveryn's devotion to Maddie in the long hours of the night was matched by an equal indifference which he displayed on other occasions. His neglect was a small source of irritation, not least because he seemed to have attached himself to Lady Elizabeth's court of admirers. It would have surprised Maddie to learn that only two people present misconstrued the viscount's mild interest in the beauty—herself and the lady in question.

Lady Elizabeth's glacial reserve seemed to have melted at the edges, but Maddie could not be comfortable with someone whose regard was demonstrably fickle. And since Lady Elizabeth's preference seemed to be for masculine society, and she was scarcely able to show her face before one or other of the gentlemen attached himself to her person, Maddie's dislike was very easily concealed.

She threw herself into all the entertainments which were laid on and particularly enjoyed an excursion to the university town of Oxford, only an hour's drive away. She remembered that Malcolm had complained that his year at the university there had been a waste of time and that the undergraduates spent more hours in bawdy houses than they did at their studies. Her eyes avidly scanned the red bricked buildings but could detect nothing that did not appear eminently respectable.

The week drew quickly to a close and the houseparty began to break up. Mr. Scott was the first to take his leave. The other guests were due to leave on the Monday morning, but Mr. Scott had a boat to catch. He could never endure the tedious carriage ride from London to Edinburgh and was in the habit of taking the boat trip from Leith to Wapping whenever there was reason to come to London, a much more comfortable means of transportation as well as speedier, so he informed Maddie. He adjured her to try it some time and she promised to give it some thought.

She was sorry to see him go and thought that the dinner conversation would be predictably flat without his rapier intelligence and store of anecdotes to entertain the company. She had come to look upon the unusual Verney dinner debates as the high point of the day. She never knew what to expect. The subjects varied from the sublime to the ridiculous, but were unfailingly entertaining. Sometimes, where she felt she had some competence, she argued her point of view with vigour. At other times, she sat in silence, absorbing everything and filing it away for future reference.

It was a remark of Lady Caro's which got them started that evening. Apropos of nothing, she shocked the table by observing, "I have no creed. Truth is whatever I think it is,"

The debate that raged after that deliberated challenge was fast and furious. Maddie listened in silence for some time and lost her patience. It seemed to her that everyone was talking in circles.

At one point, she struck in, "Lady Caro is right in this, at least: if there is no God, then everything is permissible. The fault in her logic is when she says that she has no creed. That
is
her creed."

"D'you mean," asked Toby Blanchard in some perplexity, "that if there is no God, then there is no right and wrong, and we can each go our own way?"

"Certainly, I do," Maddie stated unequivocally.

"Oh, I say, that's a bit far-fetched."

"If there is no God," challenged Maddie, "we are each free to go to the Devil in whichever way pleases us."

The counter-attack was instantaneous.

"What about common decency?" someone interjected.

"And a gentleman's code of honour?" said another.

But Maddie stood her ground. If she did not come off the victor, she took some comfort in knowing that she had at least fought her adversaries to a standstill.

"My dear," said the countess in a lull in the conversation, "where did you learn your philosophy?"

"From my minister, Mr. Moncrieff, Sunday by Sunday, as I listened to his sermons."

"I think I see your object, Miss Sinclair," said William Lamb with a thinly disguised sneer in his voice. "You would have us all become 'enthusiasts.' Is that not so?"

There was no more derogatory word he could have chosen. To be called an "enthusiast" was tantamount to being labelled a fanatic, or worse—a Methodist.

"No," demurred Maddie. "That was not my object. If anything, I merely wished to provoke you into thinking where your creed might not ultimately lead you."

"I salute you," he returned in the same disparaging tone. "And I envy you your principles. To be so absolute in one's conviction of right and wrong must have its own compensations. You will not take offence, I trust, if I continue to prefer my consolations?"

"Oh no," she responded, affecting a light tone to cover the prick of conscience his words had suddenly evoked. 'Theory and practice are two different entities. We are not so very different, after all." She studiously avoided Deveryn's gaze and became absorbed in pleating and unpleating her discarded table napkin. She was glad when Freddie Ponsonby turned the conversation into less argumentative channels.

"Good grief, Jason," he exclaimed, "I'd no idea one could get an education merely by attending church. Remind me sometime to take it up."

"I'll remind you now," said the viscount. "Tomorrow is Sunday. Naturally, there will be services in the chapel."

Freddie groaned and joined in the hilarity that was made at his expense.

Maddie chanced a quick look at Deveryn. He gazed at her dispassionately for a long moment then turned his attention to Lady Elizabeth. Maddie saw his lips move, but his words were drowned out by the heated conversation that was taking place between Freddie Ponsonby and Max Branwell. The beauty listened in silence as Deveryn concluded what he had to say, then she angled her head back and gurgled with laughter, her eyes slicing to Maddie. Maddie gave them both the back of her head.

Lady Caro sought her out later in the drawing room. She looked a little shame-faced.

"Sometimes," she said, "I say things just to shock people. I really am a believer, you know, and quite, quite devout."

"I guessed as much," said Maddie.

Lady Caro edged closer, endeavouring to make their conversation as private as possible. "Your Mr. Moncrieff sounds quite out of the ordinary. I wouldn't mind having him for my spiritual advisor. As it is . . ." she flashed a quick glance at her husband who, along with most of the gentlemen, including Deveryn, was paying court to Lady Elizabeth, "as it is, William just confuses me. It is he who has no creed, you know."

Maddie murmured something appropriate, but she felt far from comfortable at being cast as the recipient of Lady Caro's confidences. She sensed that the older girl looked to her for some sort of direction on the strength of the stand she had taken at the dinner table, and she felt like the worst sort of hypocrite.

When Deveryn came to her that night, he found her standing in the middle of the room, tears streaming from her eyes. He'd been expecting something of the sort after the conversation at the dinner table.

"There's no need for tears," he said, cradling her gently in his arms. "And they won't change my mind."

"What we're doing is wrong," she choked out.

"No."

He lost no time in undressing them both and leading her to the bed.

"Jason . . . please . . . don't."

His mouth cut off her weak protest, and his hands soon flamed her to a quivering, eager passion.

He used her as he'd never used her before, as if her initial reluctance had roused some demon in him that demanded she yield him the total control of her body.

"Tell me now," he said through deep, harsh breaths, his voice almost savage, "tell me now that you don't want this," and he held her at bay with one palm against her breasts, pushing her into the pillows, and he stroked her voluptuously to a mindless, rapturous climax.