Devil’s Angel

by Marlene Suson

  Lucian, much nettled to have his performance as a husband despairingly assessed by a servant and a stranger, demanded, “Who the hell are you? And why are you holding a gun on me?”

  “Name’s Orin. As for the gun, Sir Rupert has ordered trespassers shot.”

  “Sir Rupert would not consider his stepdaughter’s husband a trespasser,” Lucian lied.

  Orin laughed humourlessly. “Methinks you’re the one he specifically had in mind. He ordered the gates barred against both you and her.”

  “Are you going to shoot me?” Lucian inquired, sounding as though it was a matter of supreme indifference to him.

  “Only if you treat your wife badly.”

  “I told you I intend to take very good care of Angel.”

  “If you mean that, you’ll get her away from here before what happened to her father happens to her.”

  Alarm rippled through Lucian. “God’s oath, what are you talking about?”

  “Things weren’t right about the earl’s death.” Having heard Angel’s account of it, Lucian agreed. “Haven’t said anything to Lady Angela because it would only have upset her more, and I was afraid she would do something rash that would put her in danger, too.”

  A wise man was Orin

  “What things weren’t right?” Lucian asked tersely.

  “For one thing, the earl had not planned to go out that day until some mysterious note was delivered to him. Then he wanted the fastest horse in the stable saddled up at once. I never saw him in such a frenzy as when he rode out of here that day.”

  “Did Lord Ashcott say anything to you about what was in the note?”

  “No, but he was clearly beside himself that Lady Angela had not returned from visiting her old nurse. She should have been back an hour or more earlier. I thought perhaps he meant to look for her, but he did not go in that direction.”

  “I understand the note he received was never found.”

  “No, but he may have had it with him. I was one of those who found him, and it looked to me as though his pockets had been rifled. The pouch was missing, too.”

  “What pouch?”

  “When Lord Ashcott left here, he was carrying a leather pouch that looked to contain coin. I saw him put it in his coat pocket before he mounted his horse.”

  “But it was gone when you found him?”

  “Aye.”

  So a pouch of money, the note that had sent Ashcott to his death, and his will that left everything to Angel were all missing. Not for a moment did Lucian believe all this could be mere coincidence.

  He asked, “Does no one have any idea who sent the note to the earl?”

  “A woman, a stranger.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I tracked down the lad who delivered it. He lives in Lower Hocking. A woman he’d never seen before offered him five shillings to bring it here.”

  Sudden suspicion flashed in Lucian’s mind. “Did he describe her to you?”

  “Aye, he did. She was black-haired, dark-eyed, buxom, and I gather from what he said, certain of her charms.”

  Maude!

  “Orin, do you think that Ashcott was headed for the haunted cottage?”

  “Aye. No one who took the path he did could have been going anywhere else.”

  “How did you find him?”

  “Lying facedown on the path as it wound through a dense patch of woods a dozen yards from the cottage.”

  “Do you think his death was an accident?”

  “The doctor said it was.”

  “I want to know what you think.”

  Orin hesitated for a long moment, as though trying to decide whether he trusted Lucian enough to answer him candidly.

  “If a man is thrown from his horse on his face, he doesn’t hurt the back of his head as the earl did.”

  “God’s oath, you are talking murder!” Were the Crowes guilty of a far more serious crime than cheating Angel out of her inheritance? “Have you told anyone else what you have told me?”

  “I pointed it out to the constable, who warned me that if I spread malicious falsehoods like that, I’d be in a peck of trouble.”

  “Did you try to tell anyone else?”

  “Who was there to tell that would have believed me, other than Lady Angela?” Orin asked, his voice limned with frustration. “And I was afraid of what she might do if I told her.”

  A reasonable fear in light of Angel’s impetuousness.

  Orin stepped away from the tree and the moonlight fell on his face, allowing Lucian to see his features for the first time. They were wide and blunt beneath thick, unruly hair. Lucian judged him to be in his late twenties.

  “Lady Angela says you promised to get Belle Haven back for her,” Orin said.

  God’s oath, who could Angel have been talking to that this had already become common knowledge in the neighbourhood?

  Lucian studied Orin’s handsome face, strong and open. He was clearly highly intelligent, and his speech was that of an educated man, not a lowly stablehand. “You don’t talk like a groom”

  “No, but that is what I am now,” he said bitterly. Before Lucian could ask him what he had been before, Orin said, “You’d best not keep Lady Angela waiting any longer.”

  “My wife is fast asleep at the inn where we are staying. She will not miss me.”

  “She’s not at any inn,” Orin scoffed. “She’s waiting for you in her father’s library.”

  “She’s what!” Lucian exploded in mingled consternation and anger. “Bloody hell, I don’t believe it!”

  “Sh-h-h,” Orin cautioned him. “You’ll wake up the Crowes.”

  Lucian forced himself to lower his voice even though he felt like bellowing in rage at Angel’s blatant defiance of him. “I forbade her to come here tonight. It is too damned dangerous!”

  “Aye, it is, but you won’t get far forbidding Lady Angela.” Orin gave Lucian a sympathetic grin. “She loves adventure, and she has a mind of her own.”

  “So I am discovering,” Lucian said grimly, following Orin toward the corner of the mansion where one of the tall windows was slightly ajar.

  Orin gestured toward it. “You can go in through there. You’ll find Lady Angela inside. Get her to leave as quickly as possible.”

  “If I don’t kill her first,” Lucian muttered furiously.

  Orin’s face hardened. “Now, you treat her right, you hear. I don’t care if you are an earl. If you hurt her, you’ll answer to Orin. Don’t care if they hang me for it.”

  Lucian regarded his companion with strong suspicion. “Orin, are you in love with my wife?”

  “Everyone hereabout loves Lady Angela.” In the moonlight, Orin’s gaze met Lucian’s belligerently. “Isn’t anything the people of Belle Haven wouldn’t do for her.” He turned and stalked away.

  A mock orange planted next to the casement window that Orin had pointed out perfumed the area with the sweet scent of its flowers. Lucian opened the window wider. Breathing deeply of the pleasant odour, he pulled off his boots, hid them behind the shrub, and stepped through the window opening into the darkness of Ashcott’s library.

  As Lucian pulled the window shut behind him, he reflected with amusement that he had often dreamed of visiting this room where the scientific earl had done his writing, but he had never expected to do so by stealing in through a window.

  He caught sight of a flicker of light near the floor along the far wall of the large room. Between that flicker and the pale moonlight falling through the windows, Lucian had just enough illumination to thread his way carefully between the room’s furniture without bumping into it.

  The unsteady light was located between the back of a settee and a wall lined with books. Lucian, padding up on silent, stocking feet, looked over the back of the settee.

  Angel, dressed in the breeches and ruffled white shirt in which she had duelled with him, was sitting cross-legged on the floor, reading by the feeble light of a candle stub on the floor beside her. She was so abso
rbed in a book that she had pulled from one of the shelves that she did not notice him.

  Lucian was used to unquestioning obedience, and it had never occurred to him that his wife would not be as compliant to his wishes as his troops, servants, and other hirelings. He could not remember the last time someone had dared to flaunt his wishes.

  “What the devil are you doing here?” he hissed at her.

  Angel started violently, then whispered, “Oh, Lucian, it is you at last. What took you so long? I have been dreadfully worried about you.”

  “You have been worried about me?” he echoed in an incredulous whisper. “Bloody hell, it’s yourself, not me, that you ought to be worrying about.”

  “Why, because I disobeyed you?”

  “Because it is very dangerous for you to be here!” Even more dangerous than Lucian had thought before he had heard Orin’s sinister revelations.

  Lucian wanted to lash her verbally for having disobeyed him, but this was not the place and he had not the time to do so. Instead he asked, “What the devil are you reading so intently?”

  “My father’s journal. He wrote in it every day of his adult life, and all the volumes are here.” She gestured toward the bookshelves in front of her.

  Lucian noticed for the first time more than two dozen thick, matching leather-bound volumes. Each had a different year stamped in gold on the spine. How he would like to have examined them, but there was no time.

  “I need the candle,” he told Angel. “I want to see if I can find a secret compartment where your father might have hidden the missing will.”

  She handed the candle up to him, and he headed toward Ashcott’s ornate walnut desk.

  In the flickering light of the candle he caught sight of a steep, narrow staircase. “Is that the staircase your father had installed to his bedroom?

  “Aye, he liked to work at odd hours, and he had it put in so that he could come down here to the library whenever he wanted without disturbing anyone.”

  Ashcott’s desk was near the window through which Lucian had entered. It had seven visible drawers, three on each side and on top of them one larger drawer that extended the width of the desk. The broad top was bare except for a silver inkstand, a gold-framed miniature of Angel, and a small telescope.

  Lucian, holding the candle close to the portrait, wondered how long ago it had been done. Not long, he suspected, for Angel looked much the same in it as she did now. The artist had perfectly caught the lively, mischievous gleam in her eyes.

  Suddenly the muffled tread of footsteps sounded over his head.

  Lucian froze. “Who is using your father’s room?”

  “Sir Rupert.”

  “Wonderful!”

  “The footsteps stopped almost directly overhead.

  Lucian let a long minute tick by. When no further sounds were heard from above, he gently, noiselessly eased out the wide top drawer of the desk.

  Angel whispered, “I went through every paper in his desk three times, and Papa’s will is not there.”

  Lucian pushed his hand into the recess that had held the drawer and felt carefully around the top, bottom, sides, and back. There was no sign of a secret compartment nor of a document attached to any of the interior surfaces.

  He repeated the procedure with each of the side drawers. The last drawer that he pulled out, the bottom one on the right side, was four inches shorter from front to back than the others had been.

  Angel noticed the difference in its size at once. “You have found something,” she said eagerly, forgetting to keep her voice as low as she should have. “How clever you are.”

  Once again the dull clump of footsteps was heard above them. This time, they were moving toward the narrow staircase.

  Lucian swore silently and held his index finger vertically against his lips to signal Angel to remain absolutely silent.

  The footsteps stopped at what Lucian judged must be the head of the staircase on the upper floor.

  They waited as minute upon silent minute passed. Finally, the footsteps above them retreated slowly in the direction from which they had come.

  When silence had reigned for another minute, Lucian turned his attention back to the desk, feeling carefully about in the recess where the shortened drawer had been.

  Finally his fingers touched a small lever set in the frame. He pressed it, and the back of the recess dropped forward.

  With rising excitement, he reached into the secret compartment. His fingers closed first on a leather bag that from the feel of it contained only a few coins. He pulled it out, then thrust his hand back in.

  This time his fingers touched parchment. He slid the document out, praying that it was the missing will.

  “You have found it,” Angel whispered in elation.

  Lucian unfolded the parchment, but it was a certificate for shares in a joint stock company.

  Hastily he resumed his groping within the hidden compartment but it contained nothing else.

  The intense disappointment on Angel’s face was so heartrending that it was all he could do to keep from taking her in his arms to comfort her.

  He put the leather bag back in the secret compartment, closed it, and replaced the drawer.

  Each pier of the desk rested on four pawlike feet, leaving a space of two inches between the desk’s bottom and the floor. Lucian slid his upturned hand into each of those cavities to make certain nothing had been attached to the underside of the piers.

  Nothing had, but in the second cavity his fingers touched a ball of paper lying on the floor. Pulling it out, Lucian saw that it was merely a bit of cheap paper that had been crumpled up and discarded. Apparently it had rolled unnoticed beneath the desk.

  Most likely it would prove to be nothing, but Lucian shoved it into his pocket to examine later, when he had more time and better light.

  Rising to his feet, he asked, “Do you know of any other secret compartments your father might have had where he could have hidden his will?”

  “No,” Angel said, “but then I was not aware of the one in the desk.”

  He pointed at the telescope on the desk. “I assume that is the one you wanted.”

  Angel nodded.

  “Good. I want to take a quick look around, and then we will be on our way with it.”

  Lucian picked up the candle and started around the room, looking for any sign of other secret hiding places, but he saw none. He motioned for Angel to stay by the desk, but instead she trailed along beside him.

  When he reached the wall of books behind the settee, it occurred to him that Ashcott could have hidden the will in one of his books.

  The thought was daunting.

  Lucian stared in dismay at the row after row of volumes that lined the walls. It would take days to go through all of them.

  “Did your father have a book that was very special to him, one that he might have concealed the will in?”

  “I thought of that, and I went through all of his favourites after he died. I found several notes and old letters, but no will.”

  Lucian glanced down at the rows of leather-bound journals. “When did your father execute the will that is missing?”

  “After my brother Charlie died.”

  “What was the date of his death?” Lucian asked impatiently.

  “January 3, 1689.”

  “Do you know how soon after that your father made his new will?”

  “He went to London to do so two weeks after the funeral.”

  “Perhaps he left the new will in London.”

  “No, I told you, he brought it back here to Belle Haven, where he showed it to me and my uncle. That is how I know that in it he left everything to me.”

  Lucian reached down and plucked the volume stamped 1689 from the shelf.

  Tucking it under his arm, he said, “I’ll take this with us. Perhaps he wrote something in his journal that will give us a clue as to where he hid it.”

  Lucian resumed his circuit of the room.

  A
s they rounded the settee, Angel brushed against a heavy book lying precariously on a small table.

  He grabbed for it, but it fell to the floor with a crash that sounded as loud as a gunshot to his strained nerves.

  It was followed almost immediately by the thud of feet hitting the floor in the room above them.

  The footsteps moved hastily toward the staircase.

  Lucian measured the distance across the big room to the windows and knew they had no hope of making it to them before Crowe descended the steps.

  Snuffing the candle, Lucian grabbed Angel and pulled her down with him to the floor behind the settee. He pushed her as tightly against it as he could and threw his big body over hers. If Crowe discovered them and decided to shoot first, then ask questions, Angel would be protected by Lucian’s body.

  Although she made no sound, she squirmed a little beneath him, her soft curves teasing and tantalizing his body with their promise. He stifled a groan.

  Rupert’s footsteps trod heavily down the narrow staircase. When Angel’s stepfather reached the library, he went first toward the windows. Lucian, lying silently over Angel, thanked God that he had closed the one by which he had entered.

  Apparently finding nothing amiss by the windows, Lucian heard Rupert moving around the room. As he drew near to them, light from the candle he was carrying played over them as they lay huddled on the floor against the back of the settee.

  The footsteps stopped in front of the settee.

  Chapter 13

  Lucian tensed, anticipating the sudden pain of a ball or blade in his back. Beneath him, Angel seemed to have stopped breathing.

  For a long, long moment he waited. Then the footfalls retreated slowly, as though with each step Sir Rupert was stopping to look about him.

  At last, the door to the hall opened with a creak. Gradually the footsteps faded away.

  Lucian brought his mouth down to Angel’s ear and cautioned in the lightest of whispers, “He may come back. Don’t move, yet.”

  She didn’t.

  Lucian was acutely conscious of how heavy his big body must be over her delicate one, and he braced himself to take more of his weight off her.

  Two minutes later, as Lucian had feared, the footsteps returned to the library. They stopped in the middle of the room for a breathless minute before tromping up the staircase.