False Angel

by Edith Layton

  But then there are always sour wedding guests, her papa said laughingly, they are as much an ingredient for a successful reception as a pinch of salt is in the wedding cake. And there are always envious guests, his papa agreed, which was well, he said sagely, for too much jubilation attracts the spiteful fates. The two fathers certainly seemed to be in need of something to balance their outsize happiness, for they were in raptures all the day. For they had been friends since they had been in short coats, the two dukes, Burlington and Stroud, and it was exquisitely satisfying for them to see their boyhood dreams of becoming true family become reality at last as their children were joined as they had been pledged.

  The fathers had a ready explanation for everything. And he, the young bridegroom, had believed it all, as why should he not? Her father said that she’d always loved him and wanted only him for her husband, and had known that he would, in time, make his offer. So naturally, there had been no point or need to her having a come-out, or going off to London town. And that made perfect sense.

  And of course, she was older than he, hadn’t she been betrothed to his late brother when they both had been in the cradle? In fact, after a conversation with his new father-in-law, and after a few cups of excellent punch at his reception, how sorry young Joscelin had felt for his long vanished brother, for to be deprived of life seemed this day to be no less pitiful than to have been denied the love of such an exquisite bride.

  So if he did not precisely love his bride, why then what of it? his father had whispered, as the two had last words before the young groom prepared to go off on his wedding trip. It might be that they would be as blessed as he and his own wife had been, his father confided, to have been picked for each other as man and wife by their respective families, and to have eventually discovered that they would not have wanted to have chosen any other for themselves. The fathers had seen to it that young Joss had met with little Sylvia now and again through the years, but it was as well that their homes lay half a kingdom apart. In fact, her father and his would have deliberately kept them apart if that had not been the case, so that shared childhood would not breed a shared contempt when they grew up.

  Seeing the happiness so large upon his father’s face, Joss could not regret what he had done. He didn’t love his bride, but he was young enough to expect that love would come to him as easily as every other good thing in his life had so far done. She was very pretty, and if she only giggled and looked at him with her great blue eyes large with awe and admiration each time they had met during the past weeks of their engagement, why then, that was as good as love to a lad scarcely past twenty. And if they’d never had any privacy, what with his father and her father and her family and her chaperone always hovering about the pair, why then, the ceremony today would remedy that. She certainly wasn’t the only lady ever wooed and won in society’s front window.

  A gentle, thoughtful boy, brought up in the shadow of a dead brother who might have been anything his devoted parents would have wished, Joscelin Kidd was ready to take on his several responsibilities. He wed where they bade him just as soon as he finished with his schooling, even bypassing the obligatory grand tour that most young gentlemen were treated to, so as to ensure his parent’s pleasure. It was never that he lacked heart or passion, it was only that he had been trained to put duty above all else.

  Only weeks after his university days were done, he was outfitted for his wedding day. There was only one thing done for his own convenience, and even that, he convinced himself, was for the success of his marriage. He’d been careful to complete all aspects of his education before his wedding day. He’d paid a visit to a certain famous female in the university town who had seen to a different sort of lessons. It had been such an enlightening experience that he had gone back several times to other instructresses in the same abode to be certain that he had got the information right

  So as he rode off in the flower-decked carriage with his new wife, the young marquess had high expectations for his future. He smiled at his suddenly silent bride, and still warmed from the glow of the punch, seeing the light from the setting sun giving radiance to her sweet pale face, he believed in that moment that he might very well learn to love her, and even remain faithful to her, and beget several descendants with her as well. For today everything seemed equally unreal and possible.

  Three days later, he brought her home to her papa and left her there forever, and rode down the wind to get home to his own father before the gossip did.

  For on his wedding night, after dinner in the remote hunting lodge that his father-in-law had prepared for the honeymooning couple, Joss had sat and watched the fire for a long while after his bride had gone off with her maid to prepare for bed. Then he went to his own chamber. When he came to her door at last, in his dressing gown, it was only so that he could tell her not to be concerned. It was foolish and pointless, he believed, for them to try to consummate the marriage as yet, for they didn’t know each other at all. And though he had been enormously successful with the professional young females he had obliged on even shorter acquaintance, he could not like the notion of visiting his own wife in the same spirit. They had their lives before them, he thought, there was no need to rush their fences. Having decided this, he felt it was a gesture Sylvia would appreciate, and then he discovered himself to be greatly relieved by it as well.

  So he told her all his reasons, as she sat up in her bed in her demure white gown that did not totally conceal the mature swelling of her breast, her golden hair all around her, and her great blue eyes fixed upon his face in wonder. She looked so charming he almost regretted his decision, and he told her that as well as he came to sit beside her and take her hand. As she did not reply, he brushed his lips against her slightly blushed cheek and breathed in her light perfume and sighed as he said again that he felt love was best attempted between lovers. At last she spoke, and when she did it was to say in her small high voice,

  “But aren’t you going to get into bed, Joss? Mama and Nurse said that you would, you know.”

  He repressed a smile at her naiveté, silently congratulating himself on his correct decision, and only told her again how it was with them. For, he explained patiently, they had only spoken of trivialities in the past when they had been together, and now they had all these days and weeks to become better acquainted, so that when they came together physically as man and wife, it would be a natural thing that grew from their emotions for each other.

  A slight frown marred her serenity and she said, a bit petulantly, “Does that mean you will not? But Mama and Nurse will be very angry, for they said that you would come into my bed tonight, Joss.”

  He had never felt less like a lover, especially since she had summoned up visions of her invisible but watchful mama and nurse and their eventual absorption of every detail of the union’s consummation, and so he told her, with a laugh to lighten his disapproval.

  But now she frowned, and her lower lip began to jut out, and she said peevishly, “Well, of course I shall tell them. I must, Joss. For they want to be sure I’ve done everything right so that you won’t be angry with me. Now you must come into bed with me, or they’ll think I’ve been a naughty girl. They told me what you must do,” she said sadly, “and they said that while you are at it, I mustn’t mind. I must only think of all the good things that they will give me if I behave while you do it. And then,” she said, brightening, “I shall have a new white kitten when we get home. Just like Puffin. Do you remember Puffin, Joss?” she asked eagerly. “He grew up and then he began to scratch up all of Mama’s chairs, so he was sent to the bam. But I shall have a new one if they are pleased with me.”

  He remembered Puffin. Suddenly he also remembered that each time that they had met, she had been very shy of speech, only asking him innocent questions, to which he had been pleased to reply endlessly, to all her family’s approval. And when he had coaxed her to talk, it had indeed been about Puffin, or her singing bird, or her new musical box. He had thought h
er as unspoiled and ingenuous as a child. Now he only sat and stared at her, and hoped against all hope that he would soon see a twinkle come into her eye, or her lips quiver at the jest that had become too rich to contain a moment longer.

  “But Sylvia,” he said softly, “we scarcely know each other. And if we are successful this night, there is every possibility that we might become parents by spring. I scarcely think it right that you take on the duties of mama before you property know the babe’s papa.”

  He smiled at her then, a gentle smile of sweet reason which softened his stern face and had always won him hearts in his past. But the smile slowly slid off his lips as she said, with just as much sweet reason,

  “Oh Joss, I know that we may get a baby. We’re married, silly, and married people get babies from the good angels. But babies are very pretty and you can dress them up like dolls. Anyway, Nurse will take care of them, she promised. And I was promised a white kitten if I lie very still for you tonight. And I promise I won’t cry if it’s nasty or if you hurt me. I shall name it Snowy, for Papa named Puffin and I didn’t like that name at all.”

  He promised her a kitten. In the end, after speaking with her until her eyelids grew heavy and the fire in the grate died down, he understood it was no joke, he realized there was nothing amusing in it at all. Then he promised her a white kitten, and a singing bird that you could wind up, and a new doll to take the place of the baby that he would never give her. All so that she would not cry. For she was, just as he had thought, a very sweet, ingenuous child. And always had been, and always would be.

  It had been the raging fever when she was five, her papa told him as he paced and blustered in his study after Joscelin had returned her to him. They had almost lost her then, and were grateful even when they eventually discovered that though she had held on to her life, she’d lost the ability to ever grow any older in her mind.

  They had never thought to tell anyone, but then, the duke had cried, wheeling about red-faced and angry to confront his new son-in-law, they had never lied about it either, had they? And there were worse things, he said, downing another brandy, than having such a biddable wife. And he’d had a chance to see for himself, hadn’t he?

  And they’d all grown used to it, and loved her so much that they honestly hadn’t seen any problem. And, he muttered eventually, as much to himself as to the back of the young man who strode from his house, she was their only child, their only chance at posterity.

  His own father had only grown very silent, and said, “Are you quite sure, Joss?”

  “Yes, Father,” he replied, and then, because he knew no other road but obedience to his parent, he said, while all his soul writhed, “I’m sorry. I expect I shouldn’t have flown off like that. I’d no right to burden you with it. I’ll go back with her, sir, but I won’t, I cannot have children with her. I know that Burlington is right, and that she’ll throw true and have normal babes, but I will not father them. I’ll not get a child with child. I’m sorry, sir, but that I cannot do.”

  But all his father had done was to throw him a startled look and say, “Don’t be a fool, Joss.” Then he had ordered up his horse and had traveled to see his old friend, alone.

  When he returned, he called his son to his study and told him of the divorce proceedings that would be set into motion.

  “But the scandal, sir!” Joss had said, aghast at how casually his proud father was proposing that the family’s good name be irrevocably stained.

  “The name is nothing against your life,” the duke said sternly. And during the next weeks and months and years, as the case dragged on, and more palms opened for more funds, and more mouths opened for more gossip, Joss came to understand that whatever else he had wrongly judged, at least he had not erred in his attempt to please his parent. For his father would not allow him to sacrifice himself on society’s high altar. So his father-in-law was persuaded, by means Joscelin never discovered, to allow the dissolution of the marriage to go forth. But one sacrifice Joss insisted on, for his own honor’s sake.

  A writ of A Vinculo Matrimoni was filed for in his wife’s name. And so that she would never have to testify, the Marquess of Severne swore before God and his peers that she was yet a virgin because he himself was impotent when he married her. Which was not precisely perjury, he told himself, for on that one night, at least, it had in a sense been true. Whatever it cost him to avow such a thing publicly, at least in this fashion she might have a chance, to wed again. For she was, withal, undeniably a sweet child.

  Of course, it made his life difficult. So difficult in fact, that he left his home for the grand tour, after all. Only this tour was arranged by a spymaster. And it may well have saved his life. For it is no easy thing for a young man to attempt to prove repeatedly to a sniggering world that he was, whatever else he had claimed in courts of law, yet a whole man.

  Even taking into account his extreme youth, the Marquess of Severne did not want to remember a great many things he had done during that time of his life. But he would never forget what the Viscount Talwin told him he thought of his actions the morning they had first met As the older man persuaded him to drink his fifth cup of strong coffee, he had mused, looking about the parlor of the brothel where Joscelin spent so much time that he could almost be said to have taken up lodgings there, that he considered the marquess’s way of life “... a valiant, amusing, but foolishly slow form of suicide.” And just as Joscelin had begun smiling at the jest, Talwin had taken a pistol and laid it on the table by his cup.

  “If you wish to do a clean job of it, so that your loved ones’ mourning will be over and done with sooner, you may avail yourself of this,” he had said, and as the shocked young man gazed at him, he had gone on casually, “but it seems a waste. Now, if you don’t mind risking your life, I might have a need of you. But only if you care to gamble with your life. Not, I repeat, never, if you only wish to lose it I have placed a neat suicide within your grasp with my pistol. But I offer you only the possibility of death, as well as honor, if you choose to live, and work with me.”

  Talwin had saved his life by giving it meaning, and now the gentleman he owed so much had a daughter who requested an immediate reply as to whether or no he would attend her ball as his guest. She was a female who would have caught his eye if her father had been the dustman. She had such pure physical beauty she made him eager as a boy to touch her, and her wit, spirit, and style delighted him as a man. She had attracted him so completely that he had been glad of the excuse her father gave him to leave Town on some trifling business before he committed the unpardonable crime of trying to attach her.

  He’d borne the viscount no malice, even as he’d obeyed him, shrugged, sighed, and packed his bags. However much he may have desired furthering his interest with the lady, he could scarcely blame her father for placing her immediately beyond his reach. Because, of course, he knew that a divorced man was not a fit suitor for a decent, well-born young woman.

  But was she so very decent, the marquess wondered? There had been that strange wildness that had forced her home her first Season. And that protracted stay in the countryside. Most peculiarly of all, it seemed that her father countenanced their continued relationship. For when he’d returned to Town, he had only mentioned Leonora once to her father, to end his own doubt, so that it could be out in the open and he could be warned away from her once and for all. But the viscount had only said, “Yes. We’re giving a ball for her soon. She’ll want you to attend, and I tell you, Joss, I should like to have you come as well. She’s a determined young woman with her own mind. But in this case, lad, I think you should know that I shouldn’t mind if she had you in mind.”

  But why should he not mind? the marquess thought, studying the invitation again, as though those simple, formal words might hold the answer for him. Did they think, for some reason he didn’t know, that she could not do better for herself? Lord knew he didn’t look for perfection in a female, as he didn’t believe it existed in the human condition,
and he certainly could not offer it in himself. But it had been his bad fortune that every female he had involved himself with, from his child bride to his cheats of mistresses, had been disastrously flawed. Still, with all his dark misgivings, he couldn’t find the flaw in Lady Leonora ... no ... he couldn’t perceive the flaw in Nell, he corrected himself with a smile. For he admired her entirely.

  So when he at last looked up at his butler to give him a reply, he was grinning widely. He’d decided that for once, for this one time, he would believe again, despite all the good reasons why he knew he should not. Because he had discovered that he needed to believe again. Just as her father had given him a new cause for his life those years ago, now again, when he required it the most, another member of the viscount’s family was gifting him with new hope for his future.

  “I’ll pen an instant reply,” the marquess said, rising and going to his writing desk. As he wrote, he smiled to himself at the light phrasing he used, thinking of how she would appreciate it, and when he handed the note to Wilkins, he said, “Give this to the fellow, and a few pieces of silver as well. It can’t have been pleasant, coming out on such a grim day, but he’s lightened mine so much he deserves a reward.”

  Wilkins hesitated, and then said, “I shall give the note to the young woman, my lord. But I don’t believe we ought to offer her money for her pains. I don’t,” he continued reprovingly, “consider it fitting.”

  “What young woman?” Joss said angrily, for one wild moment thinking that it might be Nell herself, out on some spree.

  So when he first saw the drenched young female standing, shivering and dripping, in his hall, he felt a queer relief that it was not Nell, that she was not so abandoned as to take leave of her senses and defy society again. If she had done so, then she would have given the lie to all that he was beginning to feel for her and think of her. Were she to act the madcap sensation seeker now, she’d become just another example of his wretchedly mistaken notions of those of her sex. His relief, however, was short-lived.