Devil’s Angel

by Marlene Suson

  He turned to the boy. “What is your name, son?”

  “Michael.”

  “Mine is Vayle.”

  The boy looked puzzled. “Like what a woman wears?”

  The earl’s mouth curled in amusement. “More or less. Do you bowl?”

  “I like to, but Papa says I’m not good enough to play with him.”

  “I am not very good either,” Lucian said, reaching down and taking the boy’s small hand in his own large one, “so perhaps you are good enough to play with me.”

  Angel smiled as she watched him lead the boy toward the inn door. Her husband definitely was not as heartless as he thought himself.

  Many of the villagers who had been attracted by the commotion in the wagon were thronged about the door, talking excitedly and waiting for some word on Nellie’s condition.

  When Lucian and the boy reached the door, the people around it hastily fell back, and a sudden silence fell over the gathering. Angel, watching through the inn’s windows, saw the gaping crowd outside part and make way for them. It reminded her of Moses at the Red Sea.

  Angel turned away from the windows and went into the common room, where she took a chair in a corner. Once seated, she turned her attention back to the little girl in her arms, reassuring her over and over that her mama would be all right.

  Gradually both the child’s shivering and her sobbing stopped, but she continued to cling to Angel, who held her close and rocked her.

  Two middle-aged women with frantic faces rushed into the inn. “Where is my Nellie,” one of them demanded of a chambermaid carrying a pot of water.

  The maid told them to follow her, and all three females disappeared down the hall.

  A few minutes later one of the women, plump and motherly, reappeared, looking about anxiously. Her hair was tucked beneath a white cap, and her warm brown eyes bespoke a kind nature.

  When she saw the little girl in Angel’s arms, peacefully sucking her thumb, her lined face relaxed into a smile.

  She came over to them. “Little Lucy, here ye be.”

  “G’an’mum,” the little girl exclaimed happily. Her face broke into a broad smile, but she continued to cling to Angel, showing no inclination to forsake her anus for those of her grandmother.

  “Where’s yer brother gone, Lucy?”

  Angel answered for the child. “My husband took him to the bowling green to distract him from his mother’s suffering that he can do nothing about. How is she?”

  “The babe’s making its way into the world. Lucy, me child, where did ye get that cape?”

  “It’s mine,” Angel explained. “She was shaking so from cold and shock that I wrapped her in it.”

  “‘Twas most kind of ye.” The woman held out her arms to Lucy, but she turned her face into Angel’s dress, still sucking her thumb.

  “She likes ye,” her grandmother exclaimed in surprise. “She don’t usually take to strangers.”

  “Is Nellie your daughter?”

  “Nay, she’s me son James’s wife. Mary Ilton’s me name.”

  Angel wondered why a woman so large with child as Nellie would have been travelling about the countryside, and she never scrupled to inquire when she was curious. “Where had Nellie been with Lucy and Michael?”

  “Visiting James. Me told her not to go with the babe so near its time, but the poor girl, she misses him so. He works the fields on the far side of Lord Cardmon’s estate, nearly four leagues from here, and they don’t see each other but once every other month. This poor little ‘Un”— Mrs. Ilton gestured at Lucy—”scarcely remembers her father from one visit to another.”

  Angel, ever practical, asked, “Why do Nellie and their children not live with him there?”

  “They’d not have a roof o’er their heads,” Mrs. Ilton replied, her lined face tightening in bitterness. “His lordship, he don’t worry none that his workers have no homes for their families nor how they’ll feed them on the wages he pays. Two pounds a year is all me son gets.”

  Angel was shocked. She knew for a fact that workers at Belle Haven were paid considerably more than that because she had kept the estate books for her father since she was fourteen. He had tried to teach her brother to do it, but Charlie had had no head for figures.

  Lord Cardmon sounded like one of those landowners whom Angel’s father had contemptuously castigated as “bloodsucking leeches.”

  Ashcott had been of the school that held a man fortunate enough to be born to a great estate was responsible for the people on it and their well-being, and he had instilled that philosophy in his children.

  Angel looked down at Lucy. Her eyes were growing sleepy. Still wrapped in Angel’s red tippet, she nestled her head in the crook of her benefactor’s arm, her copper curls bright against the black of Angel’s sleeve.

  “Me James was a groom in Lord Ackleton’s stables like his father and grandfather afore him ‘til Ackleton was hanged. All of us been asuffering ever since for his treason,” Mrs. Ilton said. “In Ackleton’s day, most all us in the village worked at Ardmore. Now there’s no work to be had ‘cepting with Lord Cardmon, who would get blood out of a stone if he could. Not that Ackleton was much better, but at least he gave us roofs o’er our heads.”

  Such as they were, Angel thought, remembering the sagging thatch she had seen.

  “I gather you worked at Ardmore too, Mrs. Ilton?”

  “Aye, me did. Me would have been housekeeper there by now if Ackleton hadn’t gotten himself hanged”

  She paused, her lined face turning bleak. “And now we’re to have a new lord. They say he’s the worst of the lot. The stories they tell about him’s enough to curdle me blood,” she confided, her apprehension for the future plain in her expression. “They say if we thought ‘twas bad afore, we’ll soon think it were paradise itself to what it’ll be like under the new lord. Such a cruel, hard man, he is, that he’s called Lord Lucifer. They say he be the devil himself.”

  Angel wanted to leap to her husband’s defence but, in truth, she knew so little about the stranger to whom she was married that she could not say with certainty what kind of master he would make. Would he would treat his people with kindness and generosity as her father had or would he be a miserly tyrant like Lord Cardmon? Lucian professed to have no heart, but she had already discovered otherwise, and she did not think he would be like Cardmon.

  She looked down at Lucy, who had fallen soundly asleep in her arms, her face tucked against Angel’s breast. “Poor darling, she is worn out.”

  “Let me take her.” Mrs. Ilton held out her arms and Angel relinquished her burden carefully, so as not to awaken the child.

  “‘Twas kind of ye and yer husband to trouble yerselves with a stranger’s children.” Mrs. Ilton examined Angel with curious eyes. “Why are ye here?”

  Angel, knowing that the woman would be terrified if she learned that she had been confiding her fears of Lord Lucifer to the devil’s own wife, said noncommittally, “I came with Lord Vayle.”

  The woman took in Angel’s shabby, wrinkled black dress and said, “So ye work for Lord Lucifer,” she said, clearly mistaking her for a servant. “Is he as bad as ‘tis said?”

  “He has been very kind to me,” Angel murmured uncomfortably, “and I am certain he will be to the people of Ardmore as well.”

  He would be if Angel had anything to say about it.

  And she intended to have a great deal to say. She would not stand by and watch innocent people being abused and mistreated, not that she thought her husband would do so.

  “What work does your husband do for Lord Mrs. Ilton’s question died on her lips as the plump young woman who had accompanied the midwife hurried into the common room.

  She told Mrs. Ilson, “Ye have a new grandson, Mary, a fine little lad. He’s on the small side but it’s to be expected, coming into the world early as he did.”

  “And Nellie,” Mary Ilson asked.

  “Weary, but fine.”

  Mary Ilton called to the
villagers by the inn’s door, “Nellie’s had a son and all is well.”

  A cheer went up from the group. Clearly the Ilsons were popular members of the community. The excited voices outside the inn gained volume as they discussed the birth.

  Then abruptly they fell silent. Angel looked toward the windows. Outside the crowd was parting hastily to make way for her husband.

  Chapter 16

  When Lucian strode into the inn with Michael at his side, Mrs. Ilton gaped at him. He did look elegant, Angel thought, in his perfectly tailored fawn coat decorated with gold braid and a long row of gold buttons down the front.

  Michael’s face lit up when he saw his grandmother, and he rushed up to her.

  “Is mum all right?”

  “Aye,” Mrs. Ilton assured him, “and ye have a new brother.”

  “See, I told you she would be fine,” Lucian said, coming up behind the boy. He held out his hand to Angel. “Now that you have relinquished the child, we can resume our journey.”

  Michael looked up at his new friend with a bright grin. “Me beat him, gran’mum,” he cried proudly.

  The hard lines of Lucian’s sharply carved face had relaxed, and Angel caught her breath at how handsome he looked. He winked at his wife, then smiled indulgently at Michael, and she knew that he had deliberately let the boy defeat him.

  She remembered her husband coming instantly to the aid of Michael’s mother, of his generosity with the young widow at the Wild Boar Inn, of his obtaining for his wife the telescope she so wanted.

  A wave of gratitude and pride washed over Angel for this man she had married. He was a man of integrity, generosity, and honour. She sensed that he would make her an excellent husband if only she could crack the protective shell in which he had encased his heart.

  In that moment, Angel realized that she was falling in love with him. She remembered Lady Bloomfield’s warning against doing so, but Angel was convinced that he had considerably more heart than either that good lady or he himself thought he did.

  And Angel intended to win it.

  She recalled Papa telling Charles, who had always been more timid than his sister, “You can do anything that you set your mind to.”

  Angel would follow Papa’s advice. She would set her mind to making her husband fall in love with her.

  Mrs. Ilton was staring at Lucian uncertainly, an unpleasant suspicion clearly gnawing at her.

  “He’s got an odd name, too, gran’mum,” Michael confided. “Veil.”

  Mrs. Ilton turned horrified, accusatory eyes on Angel, now standing beside her husband. “Ye said Michael was with yer husband.”

  Lucian said quietly, “I am her husband.”

  Mary Ilton stared at him in stunned disbelief.

  Lucian smiled wryly at Angel. “Apparently, you have not introduced yourself, Lady Vayle.”

  Poor Mrs. Ilton turned a deep shade of burgundy and looked as though she wished the earth would swallow her—or at least her tongue.

  “Been discussing me with my wife, have you?” Vayle asked in amusement.

  The poor woman looked so distraught that Angel was greatly relieved when Lucian told her with a sardonic smile, “Do not worry, Lord Lucifer won’t hold it against you.”

  The front wheel of the coach dropped into a deep mud hole, sending up a spray of muck and flinging Angel against her husband.

  As Lucian’s arm tightened around her, a red brick mansion came into view on the hilltop ahead of them. Angel bit his body tense at the sight, and he craned his neck eagerly for a better look. It was a sprawling affair with three gables along the front boasting oriel windows.

  The hard set of his face softened into pride and excitement as he had his first view of the only estate he had ever owned.

  The coach suddenly jolted to a stop. Their way was blocked by an iron double gate supported by two stone piers covered with lichen. The left half of the gate was hanging askew, half-off its hinges.

  A brass plaque attached to the pier on the right side of the gate was so badly in need of polishing that Angel could barely make out the single word on it: “Ardmore.”

  Lucian’s frown deepened at the sight of this neglect.

  Tom dragged the gate open, and the coach drove through, following what must have once been a handsome road winding up the hill. Now it was overgrown with weeds.

  Turning to her husband, Angel saw that his face was dark and forbidding. His silver eyes were as cold and bleak as winter.

  When they reached the hilltop, they were met by dead parterres that marked the withered remains of an elaborate formal garden.

  The house itself, imposing at a distance, was less so viewed close up. It looked more derelict than welcoming.

  The slate roof had gaps in it where tiles were missing. A quarter of the glass panes in the mullion windows were cracked or broken out. Those that were still intact were encrusted with what looked to be years of grime.

  The massive oak front door, low arched and honey in colour, stood ajar.

  Lucian, his face by now as ominous as the sky before a storm, jumped out of the coach and rushed up to the door, leaving Tom to help Angel down.

  As soon as her feet touched earth, she hurried after her husband, following him inside.

  Angel found herself in a great hall devoid of furnishings. The charred remains of a long-dead fire lay in the blackened fireplace. Dried leaves and dirt had blown through the partially opened door and littered the stone floor around her feet. Giant cobwebs decorated every corner of the room.

  Lucian shouted, “Is anyone here?”

  His cry echoed unanswered through the silent hall.

  Angel’s heart went out to her husband as she saw the disillusionment, dismay, and anger in his eyes at the condition of his new estate.

  He strode angrily toward one of the doors that led off the hall. She hurried after him, lifting the skirts of her gown to keep them out of the dirt that covered the floor.

  The rooms off the great hall were as filthy as it had been. Unlike it, however, they had some furniture in them, although most of the pieces had been overturned or upended as though for sport.

  Angel studied the dreary wall panelling, so dark it was almost black, that added to the interior gloom. Her gaze travelled up to the grime-encrusted plasterwork of flowers and wreaths on the ceilings. She could see that it had once been a very handsome mansion. With proper cleaning, restoration, and servants hired and trained to maintain it, it could be again.

  They wandered into the kitchen, a large room with a long planked oak table, flanked by wooden stools. It also boasted several smaller tables and a large array of pots and other cooking utensils.

  Everything from the pots to the stone floor was covered with dust so thick that it must have taken years to accumulate.

  They inspected the pantry that held rows of neatly stacked dishes and glasses, coated with grime.

  “I cannot believe this,” Lucian muttered in disgust. “I was assured that the estate was in the hands of a most capable agent who was keeping it in good repair.”

  Beyond the kitchen, they discovered a back staircase and followed it up to the next floor.

  Its finest chamber was a large bedroom furnished with an assortment of oak clothes presses, cupboards, chairs, and a massive oak bed with an intricately carved canopy, headboard, and footboard. It had been stripped of its hangings, but at least its mattress, beneath a dirty sheet, remained.

  Seeing the look on Lucian’s face, a mixture of disappointment, outrage, and revulsion, Angel’s heart ached for him. She remembered the unconscious pride in his voice as he had talked about the first estate he had ever owned. And now to find it like this.

  Her mouth tightened in determination. She would hire Mary Ilton and some of the other people from the village to help her clean and restore it. With their help, she would make it into a place of which her husband could be truly proud.

  But first they must have a place to sleep tonight.

  She set about s
earching for bedding in the cupboards.

  “What are you looking for?” Lucian demanded.

  “Clean linen for us to sleep on tonight,” she said cheerfully.

  He looked at her as though she had lost her mind. “You cannot think I would require you to stay here in this… this pigsty,” he said in a voice of loathing. “We will not stay here tonight—or perhaps ever.”

  “What shall we do?”

  “Stay at the Golden Lion Inn tonight and leave for London in the morning.”

  He lightly brushed back a curl that had fallen across her cheek. Warmth curled in her at his touch.

  “I am sorry, little one. I had no inkling we would find it like this or I would not have brought you here.”

  “‘Tis not your fault.” Angel gave him a bright, reassuring smile and said optimistically, “It is only dirt. Once the house is cleaned and set to rights, it will be every bit as handsome as it was in King Charles’s day.”

  “You have more faith in its promise than I do. It would be a monumental, if not impossible, task to restore it to its former grandeur.”

  Desperate to lighten his gloom, Angel cried eagerly, “You will be proud of it, I promise you.”

  She might be an innocent when it came to men and marriage, but she knew how to manage a great house. She had been running Belle Haven to her father’s exacting standards since she was fourteen. “If it is agreeable with you, Lucian, I will hire several women from the village to help clean it.”

  “Hire an army, if you wish. I will not quibble about the expense, although I suspect it is throwing good money after bad.”

  Angel was determined to prove his suspicion wrong.

  Lucian took her arm. “It is time to go back to the Golden Lion.”

  When he handed her into the coach, he did not climb in after her.

  “Are you not coming with me?” she asked.

  “No, I want to inspect the rest of my great estate,” he said with a contemptuous, sarcastic twist to his final words. “I will join you at the Golden Lion later. Tell Ratliff to give you his best bedchamber. If you are hungry, order food. Do not wait for me.”