An Angel for the Earl

by Barbara Metzger

He left Lucky guarding his new charges, the dog being too exhausted to complain, and rode out with Hellraker along the planks. And that’s when he made another important discovery: the planks were no longer sitting in mud, they were underwater. The floods were still rising, and getting closer and closer to the barn. “No!” Kerry shouted into the stormswept night before his lantern went out.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “No!” Kerry raged again when he finally reached the Abbey. The rain hadn’t let up and no help had returned. Hermes knew how many porkers he’d already lost, but they’d all be gone by morning at this rate, if they weren’t already chilled and sickening.

  “It isn’t fair!” he ranted, shaking his fist at Lucy, who sat desolate on the window seat in the library, staring at the sheets of rain. “I worked so hard, as hard as I ever could. And for what? I tried, Lucy, you know how dashed hard I tried to do things right, to be a ‘good’ man. Look what good it has done me!”

  He tossed his wineglass into the hearth, only fractionally satisfied by the shattering crystal. “Where’s the justice, Lucy? Where’s the reward for good behavior? You were so busy looking for a code of conduct, an eternal truth. Well, I’ll tell you how life really operates: by the law of the jungle, that’s how. Dog eat dog. The strong prey on the weak. Winner takes all. And I lost, Lucy.”

  “But you didn’t, Kerry. You can’t know—”

  “Oh, I know I’m sounding like a petulant child sent early to bed when his older brother gets to stay up longer, but it’s so deuced cruel to have come so close and see it all washed away. And do not, if you have any sympathy for me at all, tell me that nobody promised that life was fair.”

  “Perhaps this is just a test, you know, like Job?”

  “To see how much punishment I can take before I throw in my hand? What’s next, locusts? Or was it boils? No matter, I fail. I fold. I quit. As soon as the rain stops, I’ll be on my way back to London and my life of indolence. There’s a lot to be said for pleasure-seeking, Lucy. You should try it sometime. Parties and plays, races and drunken revels. Elegant clothes that don’t get ruined the minute you step out the door. And women. Oh, yes, women. Females I can pay in pound notes and pearls, not with my title and freedom.”

  “You cannot mean that, Kerry. You were much happier here, with a sense of purpose and accomplishment.”

  This time he threw his fist at the fireplace, and derived little more satisfaction at the pain. “I mean it, Lucy. All I’ve accomplished is to give people a false sense of hope. You, too. So after I leave, you can go to your friends and you can be the one to complain of the injustice, that they linked your fate with a hopeless libertine. You never had a chance, poor innocent, and for that I am sorry, but I’m getting out of here.”

  * * *

  He left, but not for London. He went back out into the storm as soon as he had dry clothes and hot coffee. Wishing the pony cart stood a chance of getting through, the earl had to be content with loading more lanterns, a pistol, and some sacks on Hellraker’s still-damp back. He may as well fetch home breakfast before he left, Kerry told himself. And he couldn’t leave Lucky out there after the dog’s valiant efforts, especially when he knew the mutt couldn’t swim.

  The ride took even longer this time, the stallion being almost spent. Hellraker still didn’t like getting his feet wet though, so they got there, and the old barn was still standing.

  And they were not alone. Everyone was there, the laboring footmen, the young grooms, his tenants new and old, Johnny and some men in Westcott’s livery, Ned from the pub and Charlie the blacksmith. Even the vicar was filling grain sacks with dirt and handing them down the line to be placed around the old barn’s foundation. Some of the men were lifting Kerry’s gangplank and carrying the lumber to shore up the drainage ditch; others were busy with shovels, excavating new riverbeds for the water to fill.

  Over Lucky’s joyful greeting, Kerry swore he heard harp music, slightly out of tune.

  * * *

  And lilacs. The sound of harps and the smell of lilacs. And a wet, cold nose in his ear.

  “Get off the bed, damn you.” The earl pushed Lucky away. “Just because I said you could sleep upstairs where it was warm didn’t mean my bed, you boneheaded mutt. You weren’t that much of a hero!”

  Lucky wagged his tail and bounded off. Kerry opened his eyes. The sun was in them; Derek must have been in earlier to open the curtains. And put flowers in his room? Not even Derek would go so far. Besides, lilacs in November? He raised his head.

  Lucy was at the foot of his bed, bathed in the sun’s glow so that he had to squint to get a good look at her. She was all in white, adding to the glare, and she was trailing flowers. She was smiling like the cat in the cream pot, dimples and all.

  “All right, so I stayed,” he grumbled. “Don’t get your hopes up. I may still leave when the roads dry out.”

  She shook her head and smiled fondly. “No, I am the one who is leaving. I came to say good-bye.”

  Kerry sat up, then pulled the covers over his bare chest when he saw her look away. “What do you mean, leaving? You can’t go yet. Why—”

  “But my time is up, my lord. You knew I was only here for a short time.”

  “But your job is not done yet! I have no heir, no wife waiting to be fruitful and multiply the Somerfield brood.”

  “You’ll find the perfect girl in time. I’ve seen how you love children, and how Diccon and the little French cousins idolized you. You’ll be a fine father.”

  “No, I’ll have a relapse without you here as my conscience. I’ll…I’ll get foxed and seduce both the Prudlow granddaughters.”

  Lucinda laughed. “You’d have to be very castaway indeed.”

  “I’ll return to London on the instant, I swear,” he tried in desperation.

  “No, you love the land and people here now. You’ll stay and see them bloom under your care. Then you’ll return to London when it’s time to take your seat to speak out against poverty and climbing boys and cast-off veterans.”

  Kerry ran his hands through his uncombed curls. “Lucy, you can’t go yet! I’m no paragon of virtue. Goddamn it, I’m not,” he shouted as proof.

  “No, you are not,” she agreed with a little laugh, “but you do have a good heart that will see you through anything. You don’t need me anymore.”

  “Then stay because I want you, not because I need you. Please.”

  “I would stay if I could, you must know that, Kerry, but I have no choice.”

  Kerry tried to dredge up more convincing arguments, but he knew he was wasting his time. That glow around her didn’t come from the sun; it was still raining. And Lucy’s radiant smile wasn’t because he was half naked in bed, or because he saved the pigs. “Oh, Lucy,” he sighed.

  “It’s better that I go now anyway,” she said, trying to cheer him. “You know I couldn’t have borne the time when the piglets had to go to market.”

  He did manage a smile at that, the slightest lifting of his lips. “Whatever shall I do without you?”

  “You might try talking to the second earl. He really has a fascinating tale about when the east wing was built.”

  “To hell with the east wing and the second earl! They’re both rubble by now.”

  “Kerry, don’t be angry. You’ll forget in time.”

  “Never!” he swore.

  “Then remember the best times, that’s what I shall do. How you taught me to waltz, and gave me my first curricle ride, and how handsome you looked riding Hellraker the first time.”

  “With my nose broken? That was a good time? I always said you had some devilish queer notions.”

  She laughed. “Then what are your best times?”

  The earl thought a moment before saying: “Your smile when we waltzed, and your delight when you were up in the curricle, and how beautiful you looked when I first met you.” He could not speak past the lump in his throat. He paused, swallowed. “But mostly how you look today. Perfect.”

  �
��Because of you and your goodness. You wanted so badly to show me the pleasures of life, and you succeeded. I would have no happy memories to treasure without you.”

  “Dash it, Lucy, I only wanted to corrupt you, at first. And if you’re so happy, why are there tears on your cheeks?”

  “Why are there tears on yours?” she answered softly.

  He fumbled for a handkerchief on the bedstand and impatiently brushed at his eyes. “Soot from the chimney. We never did get the thing properly cleaned.”

  She sniffled. “Me, too.”

  “Oh, God, Lucy, I cannot bear to say good-bye. You are like a part of me, the best part of me.”

  “I know. You are the song that sings in my heart.”

  He gave a watery chuckle. “Off-key.” Then he reached out, trying to touch her. She stretched her hand out toward him.

  “Perhaps we’ll meet again,” she whispered.

  “Do you think so?”

  “I’ll pray that it be. Farewell, my dearest. I will always love you.” Their fingers almost met. Almost.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “What do you mean, barging into Fairview Manor like this? I won’t have any havey-cavey doings, even if you brought along a man of the cloth. Our own vicar’s already come and gone.”

  “Gone?” Lord Stanford cried out. “Lucy’s not…? She couldn’t be, I would have known somehow.”

  “Lucy?” Sir Malcolm Faire demanded. “Do you mean my daughter Lucinda, sirrah?”

  “She lives?” It was all he could do not to take the older man’s scrawny neck between his hands and shake him until his teeth rattled. “Tell me she lives!”

  Sir Malcolm sneered. “She lives. Though how it concerns a here-and-thereian like yourself is beyond reason.” He surveyed his caller’s gleaming Hessians, the high shirt collar, and embroidered waistcoat. “What could a London fribble”—he consulted the calling card still in his hand—“like the Earl of Stanford, have to do with that miserable wench upstairs who refuses to let go her hold on the thinnest thread of life?”

  At the shocked inhalation of the vicar at Kerry’s side, Sir Malcolm ground out: “Oh, I make no bones about it. Why wear the cloak of hypocrisy when everyone in the country knows the girl’s a wanton, and a murderess besides? The London papers must have given you every sordid detail of my disgrace, so you’d do better to wonder why I even bother with the trappings of mourning.” He waved at the crepe-hung mirrors, the black clothes he wore. “It’s so the prying neighbors leave me alone in my supposed grief! People with more courtesy than you stay away.” He turned to ring for a footman to show them the door. “I say the sooner the girl is in the ground, the sooner my shame can be put behind me.”

  “But, sir, she is your daughter!”

  “She is no get of mine!” Sir Malcolm thundered.

  The urge to murder the man grew even stronger in Kerry’s breast. Only the knowledge that time was running out, that it had taken too long to get to Derby, the roads were so bad, made him refrain. He took a deep breath. Nodding toward the card Sir Malcolm had tossed aside, he reiterated: “I am Kieren Somerfield, Earl of Stanford. I have brought a vicar and a special license, and I have come to marry your daughter.”

  “What?” Sir Malcolm gasped, growing red of face. “That’s outrageous! What perversion is this, with the girl at death’s door? And you”—he turned to the vicar—“how could you be part of this blasphemy?”

  Kerry answered. “There is no blasphemy, Sir Malcolm, no vile motives. My word as a gentleman.”

  “Your word? Why should I accept your word, my fancy lord? Oh, yes, I know you by reputation. I wouldn’t have let a rakehell like you near Lucinda in the best of times.”

  “But you’d let that old nipcheese Halbersham near her?” Kerry spat out.

  “How did you know about that? It wasn’t in any of the London scandal sheets.”

  “I know. I cannot explain how, but I know it all. Do I have your permission?”

  “No, blast you! I know your sort, gamesters and wastrels all. Here you are, dressed to the nines, your nose in the air, and run off your feet. You saw your salvation in the gossip columns and you’ve come to make a deathbed marriage to a poor, unfortunate heiress. Well, you shan’t have the wench, nor a shilling of my money!”

  Kerry clenched his fists so tightly, his nails cut through his palms. “If you know my sort, you know I am arrogant and overbearing and used to getting my own way. Pigheaded to a fault. And I wish to marry your daughter for reasons I could never explain and you could never understand. But none of them have to do with your blunt.”

  Sir Malcolm snorted, unconvinced.

  “What did your wealth ever give to Lucy when she was alive and well? Did it buy her pretty dresses and gay parties? Friends her own age or lovesick mooncalfs writing odes to her eyebrows? No. You were so afraid of fortune hunters you kept her from having any of the pleasures a young girl deserves!”

  Sir Malcolm looked away, but Kerry persisted: “Your money never made her happy, so keep it now, old man. I do not want a groat from you, only Lucy.”

  “A wager, that’s it, isn’t it? It’s not my brass you want, it’s some other scapegrace’s fortune you hope to win. That’s why a rackety London buck like you is here offering for a dying girl with no reputation.” He nodded to himself, like a vulture bobbing over a carcass.

  “If there was a wager, it wasn’t mine. Can’t you believe I have nothing to gain, except Lucy as my wife? If you have any human feeling at all, let me give her my name. Let me restore her honor in the only way I can.”

  “Honor, what honor? She has none.”

  Kerry ignored the other’s outburst. “I cannot kill that makebait who ran off with her, for he’s already got his just desserts. And I shall not call out a man old enough to be my father, although you tempt me, Sir Malcolm, you really do.”

  Lucy’s father took a step closer to the bellpull. The vicar clucked his teeth.

  “Stop, Sir Malcolm,” Kerry ordered. “Stop and listen. You know marriage to a peer, any peer, even one below the hatches, restores a girl’s reputation. Let me give her my name while there is still time. You don’t even want her. You’ve practically disowned her. So let her come with me. She’ll lie with my family in Wiltshire; you won’t even have a foot-stone to remind you that you ever had a daughter.”

  “And you say you won’t make any claim on her portion?”

  “If she lives, sign it over to our children.”

  “Lives? My word, the man is madder than I thought! The physician says it’s a miracle she’s held on so long. He swears she won’t last till dawn.”

  “Let it be on your head if she dies disgraced. I’ll worry about her living.”

  * * *

  Kerry had another skirmish on his hands, this time with Lucinda’s old nanny, whose gaunt frame blocked the door.

  “You cannot come in here. This is a sacrilege, wedding with a woman you never even met.”

  “But I do know her, ma’am, maybe the way one knows a dream or a figure from a novel, or…or a vision. I have no explanation to give you, just that I do know her. I know she is the sweetest, most loving person on earth, and she is being killed by unkindness. And the world would be a poorer place without her in it.”

  “But my lamb is going to die. I did all I could, spooning broth into her despite his orders, but she won’t wake up.” Nanny brought her apron up to wipe her eyes. “The doctor says it’s too late now. She never will.”

  Kerry’s eyes were damp, too. “Then at least I shall honor her memory by recalling all the good she has done, and placing flowers on her grave. She loves flowers, did you know?”

  * * *

  They held the wedding as soon as Nanny threaded some ribbon through Lucinda’s shorn curls and got a footman to fetch a bouquet from the indoor gardener.

  The Earl of Stanford took Miss Lucinda Faire to be his lawful wife, with two servants as witnesses, Sir Malcolm and his lady being otherwise engaged. Kerry stroked Lu
cy’s limp, emaciated hand and Nanny made the bride’s responses, until she got to the part about till death do us part. The vicar had to pause and wipe his spectacles while Nanny wept into her apron.

  It was done.

  Then Kerry sent Nanny off to bring hot soups, lemonade, sweetened tea. He climbed onto the bed beside Lucy’s still form, gathered her frail body into his arms, and began the final battle.

  “Hello, angel,” he murmured into her ear. “Do you remember me? I’m Kerry, the one who loves you. And you love me. You told me so, do you recall? Don’t worry, I’ll keep reminding you. I never did get the chance to tell you, my darling, because you left just when I was discovering that I had a heart after all.

  “You thought I could live without you, didn’t you? You said I’d be fine, but you were wrong. I won’t be fine at all. Oh, I won’t drink myself into oblivion more than two or three times a week, and I won’t return to my licentious ways, because you showed me how empty those passing pleasures are. I won’t even fall into mercenary habits, for you showed me things of infinite value, which will be as ashes without you. I’ll live, Lucy, but I will not be fine, I will not be complete. If you left, I’d have only half a life, for I need you, sweetheart, to show me the good in everything, to show me the rainbows, to fill those aching voids. I cannot be happy without you, Lucy. And you do care about my happiness, I know you do, for it was you who taught me about caring.” He paused to kiss her reed-thin fingers.

  “And you must love me very much, for you waited until I got here. Did you know I would come after you? I wish you’d done something about the wretched roads, then.” He tried to smile, and tried to get some broth into her. He was awkward, especially with her still in his hold, leaning back against his chest, but he would not put her down or let Nanny wield the spoon. He tucked another towel under Lucy’s chin and kept speaking softly.

  “Do you remember me now? I am Kerry, the one who loves you. Do you recall when we met and you told me you had no reason to live? Let me be the reason, angel. And our children and the life we can have together. We’ll fix up the Abbey. It might take decades, but who knows, we might find another Diccon whose parents will help restore the old pile. And I’ll show you all the good parts of London when Goldy and my mother aren’t staying in Grosvenor Square. You’ll make a splash in the ton, love, in your silks and satins, but I won’t let that horde of beaus too near you. I mean to be a doting husband. Very well,” he said as though she made comment, “you can call it a jealous husband. Oh, did I tell you that we are married? I didn’t even forget the ruby this time, but the ring is too big, so it’s back in my pocket. We’ll have to fatten you up like the piglets, mon ange. And we’ll keep every one of the little oinkers if you want. I’ll never eat bacon again, I swear.”