Fallen Angel (50 page)

He was stationed at the window in his mother's drawing room overlooking Manchester Square, mulling over in his mind how he could circumvent the proprieties and steal more than two minutes alone with Maddie.

"Damn the rain!" he said, and abruptly turned back into the room.

"What?" The Earl of Rossmere's eyes continued to scan the headlines of his morning
Times.

"The rain, sir," answered Deveryn. "It makes travel almost out of the question."

"Who's thinking of making a journey? You've only just got here."

There was no reply to this idle observation, and after a moment the earl's eyes lifted to study his heir from behind the screen of his thick lashes. "So you
are
anxious to get back to Crammond," he murmured, as if to himself. "I had wondered at this absence from town. Your mother tells me that you've been provisioning the place and have gone so far as to hire a full complement of retainers. If I didn't know you better, my boy, I'd say that you'd taken it into your head to settle down."

Max Branwell, the only other occupant of the room, turned away to hide a smile. "I'll ring for more coffee," he interposed diplomatically, and half rose from the comfortable gold brocade side chair which was pulled close to the blazing fire.

"Don't trouble yourself, Max," said the earl. "I'm perfectly certain that her ladyship has commandeered every last lackey in the house. No one is going to answer that bell-pull till after our guests have departed."

"What? Oh, quite."

Mr. Branwell sank back in his chair. He'd forgotten that the place would be teeming with people. The countess was hosting the annual open house for her Bluestocking Brigade where, for once, gentlemen were permitted to attend. Some, like himself and present company, were under orders to show their faces since there were always a few lively bucks in attendance who thought it great sport to bait the girls. The countess relied on her male relatives to lend moral support and smooth things over if the debate degenerated into an exchange of personal insults, which was more than likely since the countess invariably elected topics for discussion at these mixed affairs which fanned the flames of the proverbial war between the sexes.

The earl cocked a meaningful eyebrow at his son. "Well?" asked Lord Rossmere, pointedly.

Deveryn could not prevent the boyish grin that spread across his face. "In a day or two, sir, you may expect to offer your felicitations. For the present, I am not at liberty to say more."

Lord Rossmere folded his newspaper without haste and carefully set it on the small side-table which flanked his chair.

"You surprise me, my boy," he said in that same pleasant manner from which nothing, it seemed, could ever provoke him.

Deveryn stiffened imperceptibly. "Sir?"

Mr. Branwell became conscious of the subtle change in the atmosphere. With studied casualness, he again rose to his feet. "I'll swear," he said in a casual tone, "that a ball would require less fuss and bother than this do, yes and be much more enjoyable besides. I promised Mary I'd be there for the start. I'd best be getting on down."

Neither of his companions made the least attempt to detain him. Nothing was said until the door closed softly at his back.

"Do take a seat, Jason," said the older man, gesturing to the chair which Mr. Branwell had newly vacated. "I feel somewhat at a disadvantage when you stand towering over me. That's better," he went on when the viscount, after a slight hesitation, followed his father's suggestion.

The earl's blue eyes, deceptively lazy, studied the younger man for some few minutes before he offered, "Your mother has been a trifle anxious about you of late."

Deveryn, equally casual, ventured, "How so?"

"She's taken it into her head that you've become something of a libertine."

The viscount laced his fingers together and quirked one questioning eyebrow in a manner which was singularly reminiscent of his sire.

A small smile touched the earl's lips when it became evident that the younger man meant to preserve a noncommittal silence. "You don't deny it?" he asked at length.

"I thought I had when I admitted that I was on the threshold of matrimony," was the cool rejoinder.

"Which is precisely what has your mother in a pucker."

"I would have thought, sir, that the report of my nuptials would put her into transports. It's what she's been angling for these last several years."

"Very true. But some gabblemonger has frightened her into thinking that the lady you are about to offer for is, to be frank, quite unsuited to be the next Countess of Rossmere."

The eyes of the two men met. "By a strange quirk of fate," said Deveryn in a tone that belied the rigid set of his jaw, "the girl I happen to love is, in my opinion, eminently suitable to take her place in our family. However," and here he leaned forward as if to emphasize his point, "should it have been otherwise, if Maddie . . . if the lady of my choice had been, by birth, an unsuitable candidate, it would have made not a jot of difference. Nothing on God's earth could ever make me give her up."

The earl, having heard what he wished to hear, visibly relaxed. "Maddie? That would be Miss Sinclair. So . . . your mother thought as much when you were at Dunsdale. But since then there have been all sorts of disquieting rumours."

The viscount ignored this last comment and, picking up a discarded letter opener which he appeared to examine with some interest, said mildly, "So mother guessed it was Maddie?"

"Apparently. I thought perhaps the Heatherington girl?"

"She was never in the running."

"Ah, throwing sand in our eyes? It's as your mother suspected. Which brings me to something else she happened to mention. Your uncle Raeburn I'm told is courting the girl."

"He's decided to withdraw from the field," said Deveryn, and he carefully replaced the letter opener where he'd found it.

"Has he, by Jove! And how did you manage that, may I ask?"

Deveryn glanced at the earl from under his lashes. "I merely . . . explained the situation," he said gravely.

The earl's eyes were brimming with suppressed laughter. "And Raeburn stepped aside because he did not wish to stand in the way of true love? How very commendable!"

"Something like that," answered the viscount without elaboration.

A considering silence ensued as both men became lost in private reflection.

Deveryn's thoughts drifted to Raeburn Abbey and the interview which he'd had with the duke. He'd gone down almost as soon as he'd had confirmation from Edinburgh that his marriage to Maddie was binding. He'd half expected that the issue would be settled over dueling pistols. Raeburn, as he'd remembered, had seemed almost relieved when he'd told him bluntly that Maddie Sinclair was off limits to every man by virtue of her marriage to himself. The duke had assured him that he could count on his discretion, and had agreed to leave everything in his hands. He'd thought then that the whole matter could be settled very quickly and easily. And so it would have been, if Samuel Spencer had not disobligingly gone off to Paris on the spur of the moment.

"Mmm . . ." said the earl reflectively. "Why is it that I have this feeling you're concealing something behind that inscrutable expression?"

Deveryn assessed his sire with fathomless blue eyes which had deepened to indigo. "Soon, sir," said the viscount, "very soon, I shall be in a position to satisfy your curiosity."

"My boy," disclaimed the earl, "I hope I am not so vulgar. It's merely that . . ."

"Yes, I know. Mother!"

The two men exchanged amused glances.

"You see how it is," said the earl at his most laconic. "She can never be persuaded that her cubs neither need or want her protection. I've repeatedly told her that you've been through a war and know how to look out for yourself." The earl paused and chose his next words with care. "Much good it does. She seems to think that you've landed in a quagmire."

Startled, Deveryn sliced a glance at the older man. "A quagmire?" he repeated blankly.

The earl's voice was as smooth as satin. "I did mention, did I not, that several rumours are circulating? You must know, surely, that your name has been bruited about with that opera dancer's—what's her name?—not that
that
signifies in the least. No, it's the other dasher that's set your mother's teeth on edge."

"Dasher!" exclaimed the viscount, thinking of Maddie.

"Worldly widow, then," drawled the earl, relishing his heir's sudden loss of countenance. He could not resist adding another promising faggot to the blaze. "D'you think it's wise, my boy, to be so patently dabbling in the petticoat line when you hope to secure the hand and affections of another lady? Or perhaps Miss Sinclair doesn't mind? One can never tell with these modern misses."

A warm tide of colour heated Deveryn's normally saturnine complexion. Not since he was a boy in short coats and caught out in some devilment had he felt so acutely embarrassed. And, he thought, the implied rebuke in his father's words was so unjust. His converse with Cynthia Sinclair since arriving in town had been of a strictly business nature. He'd only been to the house on Baker Street a time or two, and at the lady's request to explain some minor matter of business respecting her income from the property in Scotland. He'd been careful, on every occasion, to take along Freddie Ponsonby and Lady Elizabeth Heatherington so that the proprieties had been observed.

That the two women had become fast friends had surprised him almost as much as it had gratified him. It was a friendship that he had encouraged since it relieved him of some of the burden of responsibility he felt for the lady's unfortunate circumstances.

It was also unfortunate that Maddie could not be persuaded to view the whole matter dispassionately. Even now, he'd heard the
odd comment
which
suggested
that
people
were curious about the lack of converse between the two women. He would not tolerate such vulgar speculation once he had his wife under his roof. Maddie would be civil to Cynthia Sinclair or he would play the heavy-handed husband. On this, there would be no compromise.

He became conscious that the earl was watching the play of emotions on his unguarded features. In stilted accents, far removed from his habitual nonchalance, he embarked on an abridged explanation of his involvement with Donald Sinclair's widow. His father cut him off in mid-sentence.

"No need to explain your conduct to me. Good grief, when I was your age—well, that is neither here nor there. At any rate, I put all that behind me when I wed your mother."

"Yes," interposed the viscount with an oddly twisted smile, "I had heard something of your unusual courtship, though, unlike you, I don't put much credence in rumour."

The earl shrugged negligently. "That's old history, What I did, I did for your mother's own good."

"It's true then?" asked Deveryn.

"Possibly. What have you heard?"

In other circumstances, the viscount would have had more respect for his sire than to confront him with ancient gossip which showed the earl in a bad light. Since he himself, however, felt somewhat put out by his father's blunt taunts, he saw no reason not to return the compliment.

"That you abducted my mother at the altar as she was about to repeat her vows to another man," he stated baldly.

"A milksop," averred the earl with a shudder of revulsion. "He would never have made her happy. Unfortunately, she would not admit to it. I was forced to take extraordinary measures to prove that I was the better man."

"Good God! Surely you didn't, I mean, you did wait till you were married before . . ." He faltered before the earl's stern eye.

"That, my boy, is none of your business."

Deveryn looked at his father in shocked silence. "And to think," he murmured, "that I . . ." He shook his head and then offered by way of explanation, "I can scarcely take it in, sir. You don't give the impression of being such a hot-blooded creature, and as for my mother, she hardly seems the type to inspire a man to such passion."

"One's children," droned the earl, "are always inclined to see their parents with blinkers on. However, to return to the object of this discussion-—your mother."

"I was under the impression that I was the subject of this discussion," quizzed the viscount.