Angel in Scarlet

by Jennifer Wilde

  Angel in Scarlet

  Jennifer Wilde

  For Kerry, Kathy and Janelle

  and for their grandmother

  with all my love

  Book One

  Angie

  Kent

  Chapter One

  As I walked across the field toward Greystone Hall with my basket of eggs, I told myself I wasn’t at all afraid of The Bastard. Oh, he was bound to be a bad ’un, probably scary as all get out, but I didn’t believe half the things they said about him. Eppie Dawson swore she had seen him with her own eyes, claimed he was a giant, claimed he had actually breathed fire! A great pack of lies, that. I might be a year younger than she was, but I had a lot more sense than that silly goose. Eppie Dawson was thirteen and thought she was so bloomin’ superior just because she’d already started bleeding. Couldn’t talk about anything but hair ribbons and boys, that one. Gettin’ the curse once a month might thrill her to death, but I was glad I didn’t and hoped I never would. Who needed the aggravation?

  Across the field I could see the high gray stone wall that enclosed the grounds and gardens of Greystone Hall. I could see lofty green treetops beyond the wall and even caught glimpses of the uneven, multileveled blue-gray slate roofs studded with tottering orange brick chimneys and a forest of sooty black chimneypots. Greystone Hall was two miles beyond the village, and I’d never had a proper look at it before. The Merediths kept themselves aloof from the common folk, although naturally they were the chief topic of conversation in the village. I’d heard about ’em ever since I could remember, felt I knew ’em, though I’d laid eye on nary a one.

  Lord Meredith was fifty-seven, a grim, sullen soul who pinched every penny till it squealed and cared for nothing on earth but his greyhounds. He had married Lady Meredith after he came back from Italy with his bastard son, and she was said to be a mite too fond of her liquor, as well she might be, married to a man like that. The Nephew, who would eventually inherit, was a rake, recently expelled from Oxford—spent most of his time in the gambling halls and brothels of London, they said, spent precious little time in the noble halls of learning. Master Clinton was nineteen—today was his birthday—and no comely lass was safe from his clutches, one heard. His features could be clearly discerned on the faces of any number of bastard babes in the area, Eppie informed me. She said he was ever so handsome with fair blond hair and smoky gray eyes and a wonderful, muscular physique. Seen him herself, she said, though I suspected she was probably making it up. If she didn’t watch out, our Eppie was likely to end up with an unwanted babe herself, though Master Clinton wasn’t likely to look twice at her silly face. Bleedin’ she might be, buds she might have, but she still resembled a gawky giraffe.

  Lord Meredith loved his greyhounds. His lady loved her brandy. Master Clinton loved his card games and wenches. And then there was The Bastard, and he loved torturing little children. Loved to catch ’em trespassing on Meredith property, they said, and after he’d tortured ’em to his heart’s content he fed ’em to the greyhounds. All the children in the village were terrified of him—except me. I wasn’t afraid of anyone. I might be just twelve years old, my chest might be flat as a board, but I was smart enough to know people loved to make up outlandish tales about their Betters. The Bastard wasn’t a Better, of course, being born out of wedlock, but I guessed you could call him one by association. He was Lord Meredith’s son, even though his mother was an Italian woman no better than she should be. She had died when The Bastard was born, which was why Lord M. had brought him back to England.

  The Bastard was sixteen years old, three years younger than the heir, and he had rooms over the stables because Lady M. wouldn’t allow him in the house. He was rough and dirty and surly as a bear, I knew—my stepsister Solonge had seen him walking down the lane and told us he was utterly uncouth—but he didn’t breathe fire and I seriously doubted he had ever tortured a poor mite. No one had actually seen him doing any of the foul things he was supposed to do. That was all just talk, and ignorant people dearly loved to talk. Not just the children. The adults were even worse. They talked about us, too. We weren’t gentry—though my stepmother made preposterous claims about her aristocratic French ancestors—but my father was an educated man and educated folk were the brunt of almost as much talk as the bluebloods.

  No, I wasn’t afraid of The Bastard. Not at all. Didn’t feel the least bit of apprehension as I crossed the field, swinging my basket of eggs. I had seen the fancy carriages passing through the village yesterday, marvelous carriages filled with marvelously attired gentry coming to stay at the Hall and celebrate Master Clinton’s birthday, and I was determined to have a closer look at those elegant creatures in satin and lace. There was to be a garden party this afternoon, and I intended to climb the wall and climb up in one of the trees and spy for a while. Wouldn’t do any harm. Wouldn’t hurt anyone. No one would be any the wiser—except me. I read about those people all the time, in books and in the newspapers and magazines that flooded our cottage every month, shipped from London at great expense, and now I would see for myself how they looked and how they acted.

  There was a Big World out there. My father was always telling me that. I had never been to London, never been more than a few miles outside the village, but I knew all about that Big World and one day I planned to be part of it. Eppie Dawson and her ilk might be content to live and die in the country, rusticating, never knowing about the Big World, never caring, but I was different, always had been. All that reading had ruined me, my stepmother claimed, though no one was more eager to shake the dust of the country from her skirts than Madame Marie. If it were left up to her, we’d all leave for London tomorrow. Me, I was content to wait, to read and observe and prepare myself.

  The field was lavishly strewn with wild daisies, like tiny gold and white heads peeking up out of the grass, and I was tempted to put my basket down and gather daisies and forget all about spying. Not that I was afraid. Of course not. The Bastard would probably be cowering in the stables—they wouldn’t want him in evidence with all those beribboned aristocrats traipsing around the gardens—and the greyhounds would undoubtedly be leashed, but … well, it was a bold plan, terribly risky, and if I got caught there’d be hell to pay. My father would grin and shake his head and go back to his reading, but Madame Marie would have conniptions and rave and rail for a week. Marie was always looking for an excuse to criticize me. Never had to look very far, either. I had always been a Thorn in Her Side. With two perfect, perfectly gorgeous daughters like Solonge and Janine, she hadn’t much patience with a skinny, scrawny, feisty and unruly lass like me. Maybe if I’d been pretty it wouldn’t be so bad, but I was plain as a mud fence, as she was never loathe to remind me.

  A bunch of daisies would look lovely in the book room, I told myself. Father would appreciate ’em. He loved flowers. Loved trees, too, and sunsets and long, dreamy walks. When he wasn’t reading he was taking long walks and dreaming and contemplating ideas. Ideas were all well and good, Marie grumbled, but they never once put food on a table or clothes on a back and here she was working her fingers to the bone in this hideous, uncivilized village no one had ever heard of while her Dear Husband idled away, teaching classes at the local school, scribbling on a history of the Assyrians that would Never Be Finished and Not Caring what happened to his impoverished, put-upon family. Marie had married Beneath Herself, as she was never loathe to remind him.

  Maybe I would just pick some flowers and carry ’em back to the cottage and not spy on the gentry after all. Marie would have one of her fits if I was late, she needed the eggs, and I’d learned a long time ago that it was better not to deliberately rile her. I had already been gone almost an hour—it was a long walk to Granny Clempson’s farm, but Granny
had the best eggs, brown, speckled, always fresh, the best cheese and butter, too, and Marie would buy from no one else. I could pick the daisies and take the eggs on home and … and maybe I could slip back out later on. The party was sure to last for hours, and there were even to be fireworks tonight. Everyone in the village was talking about it.

  Come on, Angie, I told myself. You ain’t gettin’ cold feet now. Aren’t getting cold feet. If you were going to talk and act like a bumpkin, Father informed me, you might as well be one. I might live in the country, but I bloody well wudn’t a bumpkin. Wasn’t a bumpkin. It was bloody hard to remember always to speak properly when Eppie Dawson and everyone else you knew talked like hayseeds. Much easier to drop your “h’s” and final “g’s” and use words like ain’t and wudn’t. I was forever slipping.

  Taking a deep breath, I crossed the rest of the field and set the egg basket down carefully at the foot of the wall. It was quite high and made of rough gray stones all piled together, half covered with moss and lichen. Climbing up it was easy as could be in my bare feet. I never wore shoes unless I had to. Scampered up it in no time, I did, then pranced along the top until I came to one of the big trees with limbs reaching out in every direction. Swung up into the tree nimble as an acrobat, crawled along a limb until I could get a good look at the gardens through the thick leaves. Felt at home in trees, I did. I’d been climbing them ever since I could remember. My legs were always scratched from bark and twigs, and I was always tearing my skirts. Marie grumbled about that, too, of course. Her daughters had never climbed a tree in their lives. It wasn’t ladylike, and Solonge and Janine were perfect ladies, ever so refined. At least Marie thought so. I could have told her a thing or two about her little paragons.

  Peeking through the leaves, I was bitterly disappointed. The party was obviously being held in the gardens on the other side of the house, and although I could hear distant titters and muted laughter I couldn’t see a bloody thing but the house itself and the empty gardens below. The house was enormous, grand and gray, kinda run-down lookin’, impressive nevertheless with all of them—those—leaded glass windows and the fancy white marble portico in front. Just caught a glimpse of it from where I was perched. Bleedin’ waste of time, I thought. All this trouble just to see the house and a bunch of gardens that sorely needed attention. All shaggy and overgrown, they were. Shrubs needed pruning. Flower beds needed thinning. The marble bench beneath the white wicker trellis was stained with moss, too, and the trellis itself was drooping from the weight of the climbing pink roses.

  Might as well go home, Angie, I told myself, and then I saw the lady in blue velvet. She was strolling toward the bench, coming from around the back of the house, and she was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, even more beautiful than Solonge or Janine. Scooting forward a little, gripping the limb with my knees, I stretched out flat on the wide limb and peered through a hole in the leafy canopy, the lady and that part of the gardens framed in pale, hazy green.

  She was a little older than either of my stepsisters. Solonge was fifteen, Janine seventeen, and this woman looked at least eighteen, quite mature, but maybe that was because of the cosmetics. Her eyelids were a shadowy blue-gray, her cheeks cleverly flushed, her lips a deep shell-pink. A small heart-shaped black satin patch was pasted on her right cheekbone, and her lashes, I saw, were much longer, much darker than nature permitted. Her eyes were a clear, lovely blue. Her rich, abundant hair was black, piled carelessly atop her head and caught up with a blue velvet ribbon, two long, thin tendrils curling over her temples and a cascade of waves spilling down in back. I recognized at once that her careless coiffure was the ultimate in style, painstakingly perfected by fashionable hairdressers in London.

  Her blue velvet gown had a very wide skirt, a very snug waist and a bodice cut so low you wondered what held it up. The long, tight sleeves were worn off the shoulders, leaving them bare as could be. Never saw so much naked flesh, so much bosom exposed. Why, if she happened to sneeze she’d pop right out! Stylish women in London must catch a lot of colds. The lady paused by the trellis and sighed, toying with one of the drooping pink roses, looking a bit nervous, as though she were afraid someone would jump out and yell “Boo!” What a gorgeous, exotic creature she was, like something out of them—those—magazines Solonge and Janine were always porin’ over. You could tell she was gentry, near naked though she was. She sighed again and her bosom heaved. I held my breath, expecting those full, milky white mounds to escape their velvet prison.

  Footsteps approached. The lady turned, gnawing her lower lip, more nervous than ever. She tore the pink rose from the trellis. Loose petals showered over the walk. I could smell the heady fragrance perfuming the air. The lady lowered her lashes and straightened up and looked ever so demure, pretending she didn’t hear the footsteps. A moment or so later the man strolled into sight. I caught my breath, so excited I feared I’d fall out of the tree. Clinton Meredith was handsome, so handsome you could scarce believe it.

  I knew who he was at once, of course. Couldn’t be anyone else—not with that thick, pale blond hair, as shiny as silk, heavy waves pulled back from his face and tied at the nape of his neck with a thin black ribbon. Not with those glorious gray eyes the color of smoke and those broad, flat cheekbones. He had a long aquiline nose and very full pink lips and his eyelids were heavy, drooping low, giving him a lazy, sleepy look. At least six feet tall, he was built like one of those Greek athletes I’d seen in picture books, lean and muscular, all supple grace. Never saw a man so fair. Looked like a bloomin’ prince, he did, in those elegant clothes. His polished black pumps had silver buckles and his stockings were the finest white silk. Knee breeches and frock coat were of pale sky-blue satin. His white satin waistcoat was stitched with tiny flowers of sapphire, black and silver, and white lace ruffles cascaded from his throat, frothing over his wrists.

  “Ah, the fair Laura,” he said. “Fancy finding you here.”

  His voice was deep and throaty, reminded you of thick honey. A voice like that’d make a girl lose her senses, I thought. Made you think of bodies. Made you think of bedrooms. Made you think of those erotic engravings in the French books Father kept on the top shelf—Boucher, Fragonard, Watteau. I loved to pore over ’em, turning the pages in amazement.

  “Looking lonely and a bit pensive,” he continued, seeming to caress each word. “We’ll have to do something about that.”

  “I shouldn’t have come,” she said.

  Her voice was flat and tony and rather nasal, a proper aristocratic voice. Reminded me of metal scraping. Not at all pretty. He didn’t seem to mind. He grinned and moved closer and lowered his lids even more and looked like he wanted to eat her up. She stepped back, bumping into the trellis. More pink petals scattered to the ground. Clinton Meredith chuckled. The snug fit of his sky blue satin breeches left no doubt about his feelings for her. Rarin’ to go, he was, bulgin’ against his breeches like a randy stallion and hard as a rock.

  Some people might wonder how, at twelve, I knew so much about such matters. Well, raised in the country you couldn’t help knowin’ about ’em with bulls and cows and stallions and mares and other animals copulatin’ all over the place. A person’d have to be blind. Too, country folk are a lot more frank about sexual matters than town folk. Right bawdy, they are, always talkin’ about who’s doin’ what to whom and how often. In addition to that, I read every chance I got, and Father had never tried to keep me from reading certain books. We owned all the novels of Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding and Daniel Defoe—I’d read Roxana and Moll Flanders before I was ten, Tom Jones, too, and you got quite an education from books like that. We also had the complete works of Aphra Behn, and there were things in there that’d make you blush right to the roots of your hair. I’m not sayin’ I understood it all, but I knew what was what and then some. Eppie Dawson couldn’t hold a candle when it came to such knowledge, even if she was already bleedin’.

  “I’m very glad you did come,” Clinton
Meredith crooned. “It’s my birthday, you know. I deserve a special present.”

  “I—I really must get back,” the lady protested, though I could tell wild horses wouldn’t have made her budge an inch. She was breathing rapidly, breasts heaving against dark blue velvet, and her shoulders were trembling slightly. Oh, she was every bit as excited as he was. It just wasn’t as obvious with a woman. I clutched the tree limb with arms and knees, peering down through the frame of leaves. Both of ’em were all primed up for humpin’. Would they? I could hardly believe my luck.

  “No one’ll see us here,” he said. “They’re all on the other side of the house, drinking champagne, eating cakes. Don’t be shy, Laura love. Here, give us a kiss.”

  He took hold of her arm and pulled her to him and Laura looked horrified and tried to pull back and he chuckled again and wrapped his arms around her and gave her a rousing kiss, bending her at the waist, fairly devouring her lips with his. I’d never actually seen anyone kissing like that, except in the erotic engravings, and it was something to see, I can tell you. She kept struggling and trying to get free and he kept tightening his arms around her and swinging her to and fro, their lips glued together the whole time, and it was more like they were wrestling than showing affection.

  When he finally let her go she looked all weak and helpless and he looked triumphant and pleased with himself and she sank down on the marble bench and stared at her lap and he moved around behind her, smiling to himself, his eyes full of … of something I couldn’t quite recognize. It was like he was the hunter and she was the prey and he had her in his sights and was ready for the kill. He leaned down and curled one arm around her slender white throat, drawing her back, resting his cheek against hers, and his free hand reached around and slid into the bodice of her dress and one of those large, milky teats popped out with his fingers curled around it, squeezing the soft flesh. The nipple was bright pink and seemed to grow, seemed to strain as his thumb and forefinger pinched it.