Lucian started into his coach, then stopped as he realized that Angel was not in it. “Where is Lady Vayle?”
One of the outriders nodded his head toward the corner of the inn.
Angel was talking to a gaunt, young woman huddled beneath the inn’s eaves with a whimpering baby in her arms.
Lucian hurried across the wet, slippery cobbles toward them. The woman’s thin clothing was soaked through. So was the tattered blanket in which the baby was wrapped. The mother was shivering uncontrollably, and he recognized the baby’s mewling from his war experiences as that of a starving infant.
The pair wrenched at Lucian’s heart. Poor miserable creatures. He reached into his pocket for some coins.
His wife unfastened the red wool tippet that she was wearing and handed it to the woman.
Lucian would have been happy for the poor creature to have it had it not been the only cape of any sort in Angel’s virtually nonexistent wardrobe. He took hold of the garment as it was changing hands and pushed it back at his wife.
“Keep it,” he told her brusquely. “It is a cold, wet day, and you will need it yourself.”
“Not as much as she and her baby do!” Angel cried defiantly. “Her husband died a month ago, and she has nothing. She came here seeking a job as a chambermaid, but the innkeeper would not hire her because she has a babe.”
Angel tried to hand her cape back to the woman, but once again Lucian intercepted it.
“They need shelter and food more than your tippet,” he said sharply. “Go to our coach. I will handle this.”
She started to protest, but then she saw the coins in his hand. She gave him one of those brilliant, approving smiles of hers that embraced her entire face. It warmed Lucian like a blazing fire.
She left him with the woman. As his wife retreated quietly across the cobblestones, he wondered whether she had any idea how captivating that smile of hers was.
Lucian gave the money to the woman, then led her inside the inn, where he had a quiet talk with the proprietor.
When he emerged a few minutes later, he was alone. He quickly crossed the courtyard and climbed into his coach.
In answer to his wife’s inquisitive look, he said gruffly, “The innkeeper has changed his mind about hiring her.”
Lucian’s coach lurched forward. He settled back on the leather seat beside Angel. Beneath the tippet, she was wearing the same plain black gown that he had first seen her in.
Before he could present his wife to London society, he must buy her a suitable wardrobe and hire someone to tutor her on how to behave. It was not that he was ashamed of her. Far from it. But he was determined to protect her from those wicked wits, cynical and debauched, who would delight in cutting such a sweet, naive innocent to shreds. He had never felt so protective of anyone as he did of Angel. He told himself that it was because he had given her his name. She was his responsibility now.
Lucian studied Angel critically as she looked out the window at the chalk downs. At his behest, she was wearing her long, chocolate hair down, caught with a ribbon at the back of her neck instead of in that dreadful knot. With the right wardrobe and hairstyle, his wife would be an eye- catching young lady.
The coach, travelling at a rapid pace, rounded a sharp curve, throwing Angel against him. He automatically braced himself with his feet and put his arm around her.
She had the most disconcerting effect on him, he thought, striving to control his body against its unwanted response to her nearness. He had only to catch her fresh scent or have her sweet little body slide into his, and he was as randy as a young strut.
Her proximity to him in the coach had been continuing torment.
It had been even worse at night at the inns where they had shared a room but not a bed.
Lucian had sworn to himself that he would not take Angel until he was beneath his own roof at Ardmore, and he was not a man who went back on his word, even to himself.
But when he had made that promise he had expected to reach Ardmore the next night. He had not counted on two miserable nights on the road.
Lucian hoped to hell that Tom was right about their reaching Ardmore this morning.
He could not stand another night of torture.
The delay had served one good purpose though. Angel was considerably more relaxed with him now. She no longer referred uneasily to his size nor cast nervous glances at his breeches.
He smiled down at his wife. Seemingly oblivious to the coach’s uncomfortable jostling, she was looking intently out the window, her eyes eagerly searching the Hampshire hillside for some fresh discovery.
It was not long in coming.
“See the beautiful butterflies.”
He looked in the direction she was pointing and caught a glimpse of a pair with purple wings and white markings.
Angel said, “I believe they are purple emperors, but I cannot be certain.”
Lucian had expected the journey to Hampshire to be as tedious as his ride from London to Fernhill with Kitty had been, but instead Angel had kept him entertained with her commentary, curiosity, and enthusiasm.
Her fascination with new sights and people; her innocently astute, often humorous, observations; her discernment for even the smallest detail, whether it be a butterfly or a flower, delighted him. Nothing, not even the subtlest differences in the countryside or in the people’s dress, eluded Angel’s big, bright eyes.
She might be naive but she was remarkably observant. He thought of the observations her father had recorded in his Journal of Belle Haven, and smiled. She was definitely the scientific earl’s daughter.
A few minutes later she turned to Lucian, her face again alight with curiosity.
“We are coming to an inn that has a most intriguing sign, my lord—”
“Lucian,” he interjected automatically, as he did every time she addressed him formally in private.
He leaned toward her and rested his cheek against her soft, silken hair, seizing this small excuse to touch her. He had taken advantage of every opportunity to do so the past two days to accustom her to his touch.
The inn’s sign, hanging from a tall iron post, was decorated with a picture of a many-branched tree. A crowned head peeked from among its foliage at two armour-clad soldiers marching beneath. The name, “Royal Oak Inn,” was painted beneath the scene.
“What do you think the picture signifies?” Angel asked. “I suspect it recalls an incident at the battle of Worcester when King Charles II escaped with his life by hiding in an oak.”
“I knew you would know,” she said admiringly.
After passing the inn, the coach hit a bone-jarring stretch of rough road, and Lucian’s arm again went protectively around his bride. He was proud of her fortitude and pluck. Not once had she complained about the travails of the journey: the terrible roads, the awful food, and the discomfort of the wayside inn where they had been forced to stop last night.
What a nightmare it would have been with Kitty. He shuddered at the memory of the trip from London to Fernhill with his former betrothed.
Kitty had alternated between boasting interminably about the pedigrees of the people who would be attending the betrothal party and complaining about the dreadful hardship she was being forced to endure on the journey.
Lucian had been able to stand her for only three hours before he had abandoned the coach for the saddle horse that he had brought with him for the ride to Ardmore. The horse still accompanied them, but not for anything would he have traded the coach and Angel’s lively company for it.
The vehicle’s pace flagged, and Lucian frowned irritably. “Why the devil are we slowing down?”
“You are an impatient traveller,” Angel remarked. “I am,” Lucian agreed. The coach rounded a curve, then picked up speed again. “I am used to travelling as a soldier on horseback. I find the slower pace of a coach irksome.”
“Do you miss the army?”
“No, I am delighted to be done with it.” The king had tried to tal
k him out of resigning, but Lucian had been adamant. “I hate war,” he confessed.
“I would hate it, too, but it must have been exciting to visit foreign lands. You have seen so much.”
Too much, Lucian thought wearily, remembering the horrific scenes of war. “I prefer England. When I landed at Torbay with William, I was delighted to be back on English soil again.”
“So you accompanied the king when he came to claim the throne.”
“Aye, I was with him on the march to London.” Lucian longed to lower his head and kiss Angel’s beguiling lips, but he held himself in check, fearing he would not be able to stop with a few kisses.
Angel said wistfully, “I have never even seen the sea.”
“I have seen more of it than I wanted—especially when we were becalmed.”
“You are so eager to reach Ardmore,” Angel observed. “You must love it very much. What is it like?”
“I have no idea,” Lucian replied. “I have never seen it.”
“Never seen it,” Angel echoed in surprise. “How long have you owned it?”
“Only a fortnight.”
He had decided to acquire it as both an investment and as an alternative country home should he find the proximity of Sommerstone to Fernhill and Lord Bloomfield too tedious. Now that Sommerstone was lost to him, Lucian was glad he had at least one estate to call home.
“What possessed you to buy it when you had never seen it?”
“My parents visited there when I was about twelve. They returned with glowing stories about how lovely the estate and its house was.” Lucian’s father, who was not easily impressed, had confessed to envying its owner, Lord Ackleton, such a handsome property.
When it was offered to Lucian, who had never forgotten his father’s fondness for it, he was delighted to snap up a property that his sire would have liked to own.
“Who owned Ardmore before you?”
“Lord Ackleton.”
“Why did he sell it to you.”
“He did not. Ackleton’s dead. He was hanged five years ago after he had the bad judgment to join Monmouth’s insurrection.”
When King Charles II had died in 1685 without legitimate issue, his brother, James II, had ascended the throne. Charles’s illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, had led a rebellion against James to try to win the crown for himself.
It was soon crushed. Ackleton was hanged along with many others who had supported Monmouth, and his lordship’s estate was seized.
Then a fortnight ago, King William, in recognition of Lucian’s services to him, had offered him Ardmore cheap, and he had bought it.
Lucian’s coach slowed as it passed a long train of pack- horses plodding along single file. Each animal was loaded down with heavy baskets.
“I counted thirty horses altogether,” Angel said as they left the train behind and the coach again picked up speed.
She fell silent for a moment, then she turned to Lucian and said with one of her sunny smiles, “Tell me about your family.”
He stiffened. “I have none.”
Her eyes widened. “You mean you have no living relatives, none at all?”
“No, I mean that my family is dead to me.”
She looked perplexed. “I do not understand. Are your parents dead or are they not?”
“My mother is. She died fourteen years ago.”
“And your father?”
“I do not talk about my father,” he said in an Arctic voice.
“You sound as though you hate him!”
“I do,” he said bluntly.
He saw the shock register on his wife’s face. He realized that to Angel, who had adored her own father, his answer must seem inconceivable.
She burst out, “How can anyone hate his father?”
“In my case, he made it very easy.”
“But you loved him once very much—I can tell.”
How perceptive she was. “Aye,” Lucian admitted, “when I was small, I worshiped him.”
Then he had followed his adored father around, tagging at his heels like a small shadow.
“He favoured my older brother, Fritz. I thought at first it was because Fritz was his heir that Papa concentrated his attention on him and had less and less time for me with each passing year.”
As the two Sons grew older, it was Fritz that their father questioned about his lessons. It was Fritz that their father took riding and hunting with him. By the time Lucian was fifteen, Wrexham paid his younger son no heed at all, no matter how hard the bewildered boy tried to win his approval.
Lucian’s hands clenched unconsciously into fists, and he said hoarsely, “I finally had to concede what my father had been making abundantly clear to me for years—he hated me.”
“Surely, he did not hate you!” Angel protested. “But he did. He even told me he did.”
“How terrible!” Angel looked as though she were about to cry for her husband. “How could he?”
Her small hands closed around his large one, squeezing it hard, in an instinctive gesture of sympathy and consolation that touched his heart as it had not been touched in years.
Lucian had never before told the story of his father to anyone, not even Selina, and he had never intended to tell it. He was amazed that he was confiding it now to Angel.
She was holding his hand hard with her own. Her expression was so full of compassion and commiseration for him that he suddenly felt as though a burden had been lifted from him.
“God knows I tried every way I knew to please my father, but the harder I tried, the more I seemed to alienate him.”
“Did he never explain why?”
Lucian shook his head. “When I asked him, he told me only that I was not worthy of his love.”
“Perhaps your father was incapable of love. I think my mother was.”
“Oh, Wrexham was very capable of it.” Bitterness edged Lucian’s voice. “He loved Fritz.”
“How do you feel about your brother?” Angel asked quietly.
Although Lucian had been jealous of his father’s preference for Fritz, he could not dislike the brother, two years older than himself, who had inherited their mother’s cheerful, amiable nature.
“I am very fond of him,” Lucian admitted. “He lives with his family on a small estate in Hertfordshire that he manages for Wrexham.”
By the time Lucian was nine, he had been the bigger of the two brothers. He had outstripped his older brother mentally as well, and it was Lucian who had helped the plodding Fritz with his lessons.
When Fritz heard that his father had disowned Lucian, he immediately wrote his brother to tell him how unhappy he was about it and asking him why their father had done it. Wrexham had told Fritz only that he had “the best reason in the world for doing so.”
For several months after that, Fritz sent Lucian money saved from his own allowance to help him. The sums were small, for their father had kept his heir on a tight financial leash, but they been a godsend to the destitute Lucian. He had hated, however, being beholden to his father’s favourite. As soon as Lucian made enough money from gambling to get by, he wrote Fritz that he no longer needed his help.
Their letters grew less frequent, mostly because Lucian would let his brother’s go unanswered for months at a time.
After Lucian came back to England with King William, Fritz wrote time and again begging his brother to visit him in Hertfordshire, but Lucian always found some excuse not to do so. He had never even seen his brother’s wife or their two small children.
Angel inquired, “How did your father feel about your mother?”
“Wrexham adored her.”
“Then why would he hate you, her son’?”
“I have thought about that question for years, but I still do not know the answer.” Lucian stared bleakly through the window at the passing countryside, then confessed, “I have never told anyone this story before.”
“Why not?”
“I guess because I was ashamed,” Lucian
said with a candour that surprised himself. “I never understood why Wrexham hated me, but I felt that it had to be my fault.”
“Did you ask your mother if she knew why he felt as he did?”
He had. Lucian still remembered with acute pain putting that question to his beautiful, loving, gentle mother. She had cried as though her heart were broken, and he had been the one who had ended up comforting her.
“She told me that the fault was my father’s, not mine, but she would not say why he felt as he did. She insisted that it was nothing I had done. Nor could I do anything about it except pray to God to grant me the strength to bear this trial He had seen fit to impose upon me.”
“Your mother should have told you why your father felt as he did, especially if it was nothing you had done,” Angel said disapprovingly. “You had a right to know.”
“She said I was too young yet, but she promised she would tell me when I turned eighteen.”
“But she did not?”
“She died when I was barely sixteen,” he replied, careful to keep his voice devoid of the emotion he still felt when he remembered that tumultuous, terrible year.
Two months after his mother was buried, his father had forced him into the army and washed his hands of him.
Nothing—not the laurels Lucian had won on the battlefield, not the fortune he had accumulated off it, not the rank and great power he had attained—had been able to erase the memory of that day fourteen years ago when his father had cast him off, telling him bluntly that he never wanted to see him again.
The young Lucian, still grieving for his newly dead mother, had stared at his father in agonized disbelief. “Papa, you act as though you hate me.”
“I do,” Lord Wrexham had said coldly.
“Why?” Lucian had whispered brokenly.
Instead of answering, Wrexham had turned on his heel and left his stunned son staring after the father he had once adored.
In that moment something had died within the boy. He saw that love was a weakness, a weapon that others used against him. He swore to himself that he would never be weak again, never trust again.
From that day forth, he had encircled his heart with a protective moat that could not be breached.
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