Fallen Angel (5 page)

The countess was highly gratified that evening to have three of her five offspring and one son-in-law sit down to dinner. By virtue of the nuptials of the three elder daughters and Deveryn, the eldest of her brood and the only son, having set up his own establishment long since, the Verneys considered themselves a scattered family. Lady Sophie, at sixteen years and still in the schoolroom, was the last fledgling left in the nest, as her mother would have it. Lady Mary, the third girl, and her husband, Mr. Max Branwell, a darkly handsome young man in his mid-twenties and the latest addition to the Verney ranks, made up two of the party. Though married for only a six month, the young couple had come up to town to travel with the earl and. countess to Dunsdale, the earl's seat in Oxfordshire. There was to be a family reunion when the two eldest girls with their husbands and children would make up the rest of the party.

Conversation was all of the absent members of the family whom the countess missed dreadfully, especially the grandchildren. By degrees, interest shifted to the newlyweds and to their new home in Hampshire. The countess, behind the screen of her long lashes, watched the young couple with interest. The earl observed her ladyship's small smile of pleasure and rightly devined that the mother of his children was well content.

The covers were removed. The port and glasses were brought out. But the ladies did not excuse themselves and repair to the drawing room as they would have done if more exalted company had been present. Conversation momentarily lagged.

It was a chance remark from young Sophie which proved the catalyst for the debate which followed. She merely observed that her best friend's sister was soon to be married, an innocuous remark which passed without comment. She named the groom. A tepid interest was kindled.

"Roger Templeton?" repeated the countess. "That rake-hell? Juliana's wits must have gone a-begging to contemplate a match for her daughter with the likes of that rakety young ne'er do well!"

"He's very rich," disputed Sophie, "and handsome too."

"And completely ineligible as a suitor," declared the countess with crushing finality.

"What makes you say so?" demanded Sophie, her petulance rising. "All the girls are mad for Roger."

"Yes dear, I'm sure they are, but from what I hear, it's ^mutual. The boy is not ready for marriage yet. He merely thinks to do his duty by providing an heir for his aging sire."

"Careful dear," reproved her husband with a chuckle, "You'll give Jason the notion that he's free to remain a bachelor indefinitely." He exchanged an amused glance with the viscount. So close was the resemblance between father and son that a stranger, seeing them for the first time, could have made the connection easily. "I have a whim to dangle the next in line to the title on my knee before I die."

"So do we all, dear. But the point I am making is that it were better for a man to choose a wife for love, rather than her suitability to be the receptacle for his heirs." The countess was known to call a spade a shovel.

"Why are men so fanatically committed to propagating their line?" The earnest question was asked of the table at large by Lady Mary.

Like all the Verney girls, who took after their mother, she was small in stature, of somewhat sallow complexion and owned that her rather nondescript crop of light brown hair, which was cut and curled in the current mode, was best described as "mousy." Such failings in their parts was scarcely noted in their sum, for all the earl's clever daughters boasted what their papa was used to call "countenance," hazel eyes alive with intelligence set in finely sculpted bones which made an arresting impression. Nevertheless, the countess was sometimes heard to sadly express the sentiment, when her eyes idly wandered to the handsome figures of her husband and son, that she and her lovely daughters would show to better effect if they had not been saddled with a couple of demi-gods for relations.

Lady Mary's eyes came to rest on her brother and she repeated her question. "Well? Why do men set such store in begetting heirs?"

"How should I know?" Deveryn parried. "I didn't invent the tradition. It seems to be handed down from one generation to another as a sacred trust, more's the pity."

"By men, of course," his mother exclaimed. "I think it must be instinct. Men marry for heirs, women marry for love. Well, there's some Greek play, I forget the name of it, which shows the folly of men's logic. The betrayed wife revenges herself on her husband by bringing his house to extinction."

"How does she do that?" asked Sophie.

"I forget," replied the countess evasively.

"Well, you're wrong about Roger," said Sophie, ruthlessly bringing the subject round to what most interested her.

"Georgie said that when Lottie and Roger saw each other, it was love at first sight."

Mr. Max Branwell opened his mouth and spoke without thinking. "Piffle! There's no such thing!" and he groaned inwardly when he realized that it was he who had opened with the first salvo. He waited in some trepidation for the counteroffensive to begin.

The countess crushed her napkin in her hand and
threw
it on the table. "My dear Max, just because some things are beyond your ken does not signify that they do not exist. I have never been to China, nor am I like to be. If I were to deny its existence, I should make myself a laughing stock."

Deveryn took pity on his stricken brother-in-law and interjected humourously, "What, Mama! Did you fall in love with
pater
at first sight?"

He looked down the length of the table at his father and grinned wickedly. The earl, whose attention was focused on her ladyship, was seen to smile enigmatically.

"Certainly not. I found your father a loathsome creature, not without just cause, I might add."

The earl and his countess exchanged a long challenging look, though from experience, the other members of the family did not doubt for a minute that their parents were in perfect charity.

Lord Rossmere passed the port decanter to his son-in-law. "Not in front of the children, dear," he droned. "Personal reminiscences of that nature should not intrude on after dinner conversation."

"Am I to understand, Mama," asked Lady Mary, "that Roger Templeton has now become an eligible suitor simply by virtue of having fallen in love with Lottie?"

"Of course. Love makes all the difference in the world."

"Love," murmured Deveryn absently. "The currency of poets and philosophers since the dawn of civilization."

"And theologians," remarked Sophie daringly, remembering the vicar's homily that morning on a text from St. Paul.

"Romantic love," mused Mr. Branwell, quite forgetting that he had made up his mind that on no account would he ever again allow himself to be drawn into a debate by his clever

Verney in-laws. "Idealized by the poets, trivialized by the philosophers."

"And the theologians," added Sophie sagely.

"Poets, philosophers,
and
theologians," declared the countess, "with few exceptions are misogynists at heart. Well, look at Byron, Socrates, and St. Paul. You can't tell me that they liked women."

"You'-re generalizing dear," reproved the earl.

"What about troubadors and courtly love?" interjected Mr. Branwell with an unaccustomed show of heat.

"Codswallop! They didn't know women at all. They set-us on pedestals. Men, very stupidly, though conveniently, I might add, throughput history have divided the members of my sex into two distinct classes—good women and the other sort. The one they marry, and the other—well, you know what I'm getting at. Romantic love, real love, cannot flourish in such a climate."

The countess's knowing glance came to rest on her son. Deveryn acknowledged the hit with a slight inclination of the head, but he did not pick up the gauntlet his mother had thrown down. Mr. Branwell did that.

"But there
are
two sorts of women!" he exclaimed flatly.

His wife's hazel eyes flared to a dangerous hue. "That's all you know! It is men who make these distinctions and set women against each other. Given my druthers, I'd rather be 'the other sort!' To be a mere receptacle for producing some man's heirs doesn't appeal to me at all."

The earl's cool voice soothingly prevailed. "I think 'love' just got lost somewhere in the shuffle. You ladies seem to think that you have a monopoly on the subject. If given half a chance, I think that we poor males might attempt a rebuttal to all the charges that have been levelled against our sex." He looked a question at his son.

"Don't look at me," said Deveryn and put out a hand, palm up, as if to ward off an attack. "Since I disclaim any experience of the phenomenon," he continued outrageously, "I declare myself a skeptic and leave it to those who know better to convert me to their dogma." He raised his glass in salute to his mother. "To be perfectly frank, Mama, I'm not at all convinced that China is not simply the figment of some rich cit's imagination. I've yet to see any profits from a certain trading company in which I invested rather heavily some time since."

From such modest but promising beginnings a full scale attack was soon launched. But beneath the viscount's easy cajolery, and blandly offered commentary, the countess, a perceptive and watchful mother, sensed a cynical persuasion which troubled her a little.

As Deveryn shrugged into his heavy greatcoat and accepted his hat and gloves from the porter before departing for home, the countess descended the graceful sweep of the Adam's staircase and presented him with a slim volume.

"Greek philosophy, Mama?" The eyebrows shot up "I should have expected a small tract from the Bible." The countess was known to be devoutly religious.

"Milk before meat," she countered with a faint smile. "And don't forget, it was a work of the pagan philosopher, Cicero, which led to St. Augustine's conversion. Read it, though I know you're familiar with the work. I thought you might be especially interested in what Aristophanes has to say."

Her cool lips lightly brushed his cheek. "Now be a good boy, and don't get into mischief." It was a parting comment that Deveryn had been used to hearing from his mother since he was in short coats.

"I'll try." Even the response, he thought wryly, was automatic. He slipped Plato's
Symposium
into his coat pocket and fervently hoped that the work was in translation. His Greek he knew to be shockingly in want of exercise.

When Deveryn climbed the stairs to his rooms above the apothecary's shop in Jermyn Street, he almost choked on the stench of roses that permeated the air. Only one woman of his acquaintance used such a sweet cloying perfume.

"Damn!" he muttered under his breath, and pushed into his lodgings. He impatiently stripped off his outercoat and gloves and handed them to his man.

"It's all right, Martin. I know I have a visitor," he said curtly, waving aside his valet's apology, and without another word, he followed the trail of perfume down the hall and into his study.

Cynthia Sinclair, looking ravishingly elegant, turned as the viscount entered. She quickly replaced the Sevres porcelain figurine which she had been examining, and looked up with a melting expression.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded peremptorily. "And without benefit of abigail?"

The melting violent orbs hardened a trifle under the harsh assault. "Jason," she said baldly, "Donald is dead."

For the first time, he noticed that she was decked out in black from wrist to throat, and the gown was more demure than he had ever seen her in.

Though her words shocked him, not a flicker of emotion showed on his saturnine countenance. "My condolences," he said simply. "Won't you sit down and tell me how and when it happened?"

He pulled out a chair and she accepted it gracefully. But he did not seat himself near the lady. He moved to the fireplace and leaned an arm along the length of the marble mantel. One booted foot came to rest on the rim of the brass fender.

The fire had been allowed to die down, but the room, of moderate proportions and boasting an ornate black and green Aubusson on the floor, was still quite warm. Cynthia Sinclair, who had never before dared enter the viscount's hallowed portals, had already taken inventory of the room's accoutrements and bric-a-brac. Though she thought that it was a very respectable room, it was more old fashioned and restrained than she preferred.

"You have a fine collection of Sevres porcelain," she observed conversationally.