“You will be feeling more the thing shortly,” Wrexham said. “I suggest you make yourself presentable so you can come with me and apologize to your wife.”
Lucian stared at his father. “God’s oath, are you out of your mind? I apologize? For what? Interrupting her while she was going to bed with her lover? Bloody hell, it is she who should be at my feet, begging my forgiveness. Not that I would ever forgive her.”
“Don’t be a damned fool, Lucian. You are behaving exactly as the Crowes want you to.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“That incident at the Kingsleys was set up, just as surely as the scene at Fernhill in which you were found in bed with Angel. I think we can be quite certain that the Crowes were again responsible.”
“You do not know what I saw.”
“I know precisely what you saw. You are very much my son. Your reaction is identical to my own nearly thirty-one years ago when I discovered your mama in very similar circumstances with Geoffrey Ames.”
“What?” Lucian exclaimed in outraged disbelief.
“It was the reason Ames left the country so hastily. When I told you why I had rejected you, I left out that part of the story because I thought no purpose would be served by telling you the sordid details. I did not want to chance you might think ill of your mother for she was blameless in that affair”—Wrexham’s lips twisted in a bitter half smile—”nonaffair actually.”
“Of course she was blameless,” Lucian snapped. “My mother would never have—”
“Aye,” his father said sharply, “she would not have, no more than Angel would have sought out Roger Peck.”
Lucian absently ran his hands through his tangled hair. “Mother loved you. Everyone could see that she had eyes only for you.”
“Everyone could see it but me. Just as everyone can see that Angel has eyes only for you. Once again, you are proving to me that you are my son by acting as foolishly as I did. Angel is no more deserving of your suspicion than your mama was of mine.”
“How did my mother convince you that you were wrong.”
“She could not, but I loved her so much. After a few days I came to realize how miserable and empty my life would be if I put her out of it.”
As miserable as Lucian’s would be if he did that to Angel. He ran his hand through his thick hair in frustration.
“In the end,” Wrexham was saying, “I forgave her for myself, not for her. I vowed that I would accept her word for what had happened, and that the subject would never come up between us again.”
“And?” Lucian asked tersely.
“And it did not for years.” Wrexham’s voice faltered. “But then as you grew up, you more and more resembled Ames, and I began to doubt. That doubt grew in me like a cancer. Sometimes, my son, I think that hell is of our own making.”
He turned hastily away, and Lucian knew that he was trying to control his tears. After a moment, he continued in a choked voice. “The worst of it is I was not the only one who suffered. So did your mama and, worst of all, you.”
The aching in Lucian’s head was subsiding. Wrexham’s remedy clearly worked. “You seem not to have the slightest doubt now that my mother was blameless.”
“If seeing your uncle had not been enough to convince me of that, Ames returned home two years after that. He had not long to live, and he told me he wanted to clear his conscience. He confessed to me that your mother would have nothing to do with him, but he was so obsessed with her that he had staged that scene with her for my benefit in the hope that I would be so enraged that I would cast her off. Then, he reasoned, because she would have nowhere else to go, she would give herself to him.”
Lucian swore viciously. “You should have killed him!”
“I thought about it. He had cost me not only my happiness but the son I had been so proud of. By then, though, I was wiser. I realized that was exactly what he wanted me to do. He was suffering terribly, and he hoped that I would end it for him. I did not.”
Wrexham fell silent, lost for the moment in a past he could not change. Then his eyes refocused on his son, and he asked briskly, “How did you happen to discover Angel in that bedroom at the Kingsleys’?”
“A footman told me she was there.”
“A short, stocky fellow with a wicked scar on his chin?”
“Yes,” Lucian admitted.
“Odd-looking sort for the Kingsleys to hire, don’t you think?”
In fact, that was exactly what Lucian had thought when the man had come up to him. He frowned. “What are you saying?”
His father responded with another question. “Do you know your wife’s handwriting?”
“Aye,” Lucian replied, thinking of her untidy scrawl. It was as impetuous as she was.
“Then look at this.” Wrexham thrust a sheet before him. “Is this it?”
Lucian glanced impatiently down at the neat, round letters that had clearly been formed with care. It bore no resemblance to Angel’s hand.
“No,” he said, then frowned as he began to read the words formed by those tidy letters and the signature.
His father explained, “This is the note that Angel allegedly sent Roger Peck, asking him to come to her in that bedroom. It was delivered to him by a footman with an ugly scar on his chin. Peck, too, wondered why the Kingsleys would employ such a rough-looking character as a footman.” Wrexham paused. “I checked and, in fact, they have never employed such a man.”
Lucian stared at his father sceptically, but within him, hope was bursting into pure, bright flame.
“It was that footman, by the way, who gave Angel a glass of punch that left her so lethargic and dull-witted that she did not question the woman who passed herself off as Lady Kingsley’s sister. The woman ‘accidentally’ ripped Angel’s gown half-off her, hurried her into that bedroom, and took her torn clothes, ostensibly to be repaired.”
“Bloody hell!” Lucian exclaimed.
“Ah, yes, the scenario sounds familiar, does it not?”
“But if Angel is so innocent, why the hell has she not made any attempt to see me since the night it happened.”
“Blame me for that. I counselled her to stay away until your temper cooled.”
“I would not have hurt her,” Lucian protested hoarsely.
“But neither would you have listened to her. You would have behaved as I behaved toward your poor mother, and it would only have exacerbated the tension between you and your wife. She is not the docile creature your mama was.”
Lucian smiled wryly. His father was a wise man.
“I knew, too, that after a day or two your rage would recede, and the loneliness and the wanting would set in. Do not look so surprised, son. Remember, I have been there.”
At last, Lucian could understand how his father had felt when he had been faced with strong evidence that his wife had been unfaithful to him. Lucian had reacted much the same way, and with perhaps less justification, for he had known that the Crowes would be eager to exact revenge after he had taken the Ashcott fortune away from them.
Lucian thought of how painful it must have been for his father to watch a son he loved growing up to resemble more and more the man he suspected of cuckolding him. After experiencing himself the jealousy and the terrible sense of betrayal and loss that had assailed him when he thought Angel had been unfaithful to him, Lucian could not say with certainty that he would have acted any differently than his father had.
Wrexham’s mouth twisted in a grim, downward-slanting curve. “I beg you, son, not to make the same mistake with Angel that I made with your mama. Believe me, in the end, it will be you who will be hurt the most. I know because I have been there, too.”
Lucian looked at the deep lines of sorrow etched in his father’s face, and his heart went out to him for what he had suffered. It was clear he desperately wanted to prevent the son he loved from making the same mistake he had.
All the years of bafflement and anger, of bitterness and hatred toward
his father dissolved in that moment of insight, and Lucian embraced the old man, hugging him to him.
And forgiving him at last.
Chapter 31
When Lucian noiselessly slipped into his father’s drawing room, his wife was standing with her back to him, staring up at the portrait of him as a child.
“Angel,” he said quietly.
She whirled around. Joy leapt in her eyes, replaced in an instant with wariness. She did not rush forward to greet him, but remained where she was, her usually expressive face cautious and unreadable.
Angel was not making it easy for him. He had hoped that she would throw herself into his arms the moment she saw him. As he crossed the room to her, he was uncertain of how best to proceed with her in her present mood. He tried teasing. “You hardly look the repentant wife.”
Her eyes narrowed angrily. “I have nothing to be repentant about.”
God’s oath, but he was making a hash of it. “No, you do not, and I ask your pardon for thinking you did,” he agreed gently. “But given the scene that met my eyes when I walked into that bedroom, should I not be forgiven for drawing the wrong conclusion?”
“Oh, Lucian,” she cried in an agonized voice, “how could you possibly think that I would betray your trust like that after I swore to you that I would never do so? You have sorely impugned my honour.”
He asked gravely, “Does this mean that you are going to challenge me to another duel?”
The thought clearly appealed to her.
It appealed to him, too, if only to see her charming derriere in those breeches. The thought had a pronounced effect on his own breeches.
“Perhaps I should, but you would win,” Angel conceded. “You were right when you said that it is not at all a just way to settle one’s disputes.”
He smiled. “I will let you win this time.”
“Why?”
“Because you are in the right. I should have known better than to doubt you.”
He opened his arms to her. “Won’t you come here, little love, where you belong.”
With a strangled sob, she rushed into them, and he kissed her as though he might never have the chance again and must make the most of this one. His hands moved over her, soothing her, caressing her, moulding her sweet body to his.
For a full minute, he revelled at having her safe in his arms again, but then a disquieting thought struck him. Would she ever be truly safe so long as the Crowes were free?
They had very nearly torn them apart three nights ago with one of their insidious schemes. They would concoct others.
Until they were imprisoned or, better yet, hanged for Ashcott’s murder, they would remain a threat to him and his wife and to their happiness. Lucian held her more tightly to him as though to ward off the danger.
He lifted his mouth from hers and coaxed, “Come home with me. Let me show you how sorry I am that I doubted you.,’
He led her into the hall, his arm about her shoulders, holding her possessively.
His father was waiting there. He grinned broadly at them.
Lucian told him, “I am taking my wife home.”
Wrexham nodded approvingly.
At the door, Lucian smiled at his father and said softly, “Merci beaucoup, mon père.”
Angel waited until they were in the privacy of the coach before exclaiming in high excitement, “You have forgiven your father?”
“Aye.”
She threw her arms around him, hugging him exuberantly.
When Angel entered the house on Lucian’s arm, a spontaneous cheer went up from the inordinate number of servants who were gathered in the vicinity of the entrance.
She felt her face grow warm and rosy. Anxious about her husband’s reaction to such impertinence, she cast a sidelong glance at him.
He grinned at her and whispered, “They are almost as happy to have you home as I am.” Then he said quietly to Reeves, “See that we are not disturbed for the rest of the day. Not for any reason.”
“Aye, my lord,” the butler said with a twinkle in his eye.
Lucian led Angel directly upstairs to their bedchamber. The door had not shut behind them before he was hastily divesting her of her clothes.
Suddenly shy, Angel protested, “Everyone will know what we are doing.”
“Aye.” He gave her a wicked grin. “And only think how it will relieve their minds to have this added proof that all is now well between us.”
As darkness enveloped the city, Angel lay happily in Lucian’s arms. She had never seen him as he had been with her this afternoon, as playful as a young boy, full of glee and mischief and of new and inventive ways to pleasure her.
He nuzzled her temple. “Did you enjoy yourself, little love?”
“As if you need to ask!” She smiled and said dreamily, “Papa used to tell me to look to the stars and I would find my earthly due, but he was wrong. It is in your arms that—”
She felt her husband’s body stiffen beside her. “What did your papa mean by finding your earthly due in the stars?” he asked in an urgent tone.
“I never thought much about it,” she confessed, startled by his reaction. “I assumed he meant that if I set lofty enough goals for myself, I would have a successful life.”
“Bloody hell!” Lucian exclaimed, leaping out of bed.
“What is it’?” she asked in bewilderment.
He grabbed her father’s telescope from the table where she kept it and began examining it closely. It was a simple design: two veneer cylinders—the narrower partially enclosed in the wider—with a reflecting mirror at the base of the larger cylinder, and an eyepiece near the top of the smaller.
Lucian removed the metal clip and two pins that held a metal ring in place around the base of the outer cylinder. The mirror dropped into his hand, and he stared into the telescope’s circular interior.
Peering over his shoulder, Angel could see there, carefully and neatly rolled around the wall of the smaller cylinder, a paper.
Lucian slid it out.
Angel stared at it, hope flowering within her. “Is it? Could it be?” she asked breathlessly.
Lucian grinned at her. “I will wager every pence I own that it is.”
He carefully unfolded the document and read aloud, “The last will and testament of Hadrian Winter, the sixth Earl of Ashcott.”
Lucian silently skimmed the rest of the short document, then grabbed Angel. He lifted her off the floor and whirled her around in sheer joy. “Belle Haven is indisputably yours now, my love!”
“I think you are as happy about it as I am,” she observed.
“Aye, I am. I swore to you that you would get it back, and I was beginning to fear I would not be able to keep my vow. I could not have lived with that.” He tenderly soothed back a lock of hair from her forehead. “My honour is as important to me as yours is to you. Besides I know that Belle Haven is the most important thing on earth to you.”
She smiled. “Not quite. That was true when I met you, but now I would trade Belle Haven and all the rest of my inheritance for you.”
He groaned and hugged her to him, laying her head against his shoulder and stroking her hair gently. “Don’t ever change your mind, little love. I thought that nothing could ever hurt me as much as when my father rejected me, but when I saw you in that bedroom with Peck . .
His voice failed him, but the pain in his silver eyes was so intense that it nearly brought tears to Angel’s own eyes.
“You must have patience with me, and try to understand how hard it is for me to trust even you, little love.”
In silent answer, she pulled his head down so that she could kiss him hard upon the mouth.
When the kiss ended, he lifted his head a little. “I do not think I would be responsible for my actions if I found my trust in you was misplaced.”
Angel stroked his bronzed face lovingly. “I swear to you upon my honour that it never will be.”
Lucian summoned Mr. Kennicott and gave him Lord Ashcot
t’s will.
The solicitor examined it. “This is it, no doubt about it. Your wife’s inheritance will be entirely hers without challenge now. This will end forever any claim by her mother or anyone else to a share of it.”
Lucian wished that he could see Rupert Crowe’s face when he heard the missing will had been found.
Kennicott asked, “Where did you find it?”
“In this.” Lucian showed him the telescope.
Kennicott shook his head in amazement. “So that is why he wanted it short and written on the thinnest paper I could find.”
After the solicitor’s departure, Angel and Lucian did not go out and accepted no callers for three days. They wanted no company but their own.
They talked of many things. Now that Lucian had opened his heart to her, he opened his mind as well. Until Angel had come into his life, he had been absorbed in the injustice of the past instead of the promise of the future.
Now he looked forward to the life they would build and the children they would make together.
But one shadow darkened Lucian’s happiness. So long as the Crowes were free, they were a threat to him and his wife.
On the fourth day, Lucian’s father called and informed them that he was taking them to Sir Percival Mather’s musical entertainment that night.
Lucian groaned. “Why the devil would you think I want to attend that?”
His father’s eyes twinkled. “I know very well that you do not want to. It is necessary, however, that you and Angel appear there to prove that all is well between you. Lady Selina and I have been able to keep the talk down by putting it about that Angel was taken ill at the Kingsleys and that is why neither of you has been seen publicly. But the longer you go without being seen together, the louder the talk will get.”
“You are right,” Lucian agreed with a sigh. “We will see you tonight.”
After Wrexham left, Angel told her husband, “I do not care to go to the musical either.”
“You will care even less when we get there. The music is always good, but Sir Percival invites too many people for the size of the room, which is hot and stuffy. It faces on an overgrown jungle behind his house that he calls his garden. I suspect one would need a hatchet to chop his way through it.”
Devil’s Angel Page 32