When Angels Fall

by Meagan Mckinney

  “Lord in heaven, look at you,” she whispered as she knelt at George’s feet. Her gloved hand touched a bruise near his eye, then she fingered the tear in his tweed jacket. Shaking with rage, she stood and faced Ivan. “Are these your mongrels that did this to him?”

  “Mongrels? My dogs are no mongrels,” Tramore countered, a ghost of a smile on his lips. He seemed about to dispute this further, but she was in no mood to let him. She had everything to fear from the Marquis of Powerscourt, but when her family’s safety had been jeopardized, her own concerns were cast aside. She lit into the marquis as if he were once again her stableboy.

  “How could you let these animals roam free? They’re a menace to society, and I shall see them properly restrained or I shall report them to the authorities—why,especially when they take to knocking over children—and—and—”

  “No, Lissa!” George pulled at her skirts. Behind him, the mastiffs were seated, their tails wagging only harder the more angry Lissa became.

  “—and mauling them!” She grabbed George to her and looked accusingly at the mastiffs’ owner. Her fury increased when Ivan seemed to be laughing at her.

  “The pups have nothing to do with Alcester’s condition,” he answered leisurely, his dark eyes glittering with amusement.

  “Thepups ?” she sputtered incredulously. She waved a hand at the huge canines who appeared to be listening to her with rapt facination. “You call these carnivorous . . .beasts pups? Why, look what they’ve done to him!” She pushed George out in front of her.

  Ivan only nodded to George’s burgeoning black eye. “You believe that just happened? I think not,” he stated. Ignoring her then, he turned to fetch his steed, which he’d left abandoned behind him.

  Begrudgingly she watched him walk away, his collected stance infuriating her more. She noted he was again dressed like a gentleman, attired discreetly in Nankeen trousers and a heavy morning coat of black flannel. He seemed so superior, even the blustery wind didn’t seem to dare whip at his hair as it did her own, which in her flight to aid George had come loose of her bonnet and hairpins.

  She pulled a silvery-blond lock from her face and watched Tramore. Unruffled, he walked his spirited mount back toward them. Only the slight puckering of the scar on his cheek proclaimed he flinched against the cold at all. Lissa was sure that, in contrast, the Alcesters looked like a pair of miserable wretches indeed: She shivered like a matchgirl beneath her threadbare mantle and George scowled belligerently as she tried to touch his bruised brow.

  “Did the dogs attack you then?” she finally asked her brother.

  “Finn and Fenian wouldn’t, Lissa. We’re chums,” George answered emphatically.

  “Finn and Fenian?” she repeated, then shot Ivan a distrustful glance. It was now obvious George and Ivan’s “pups,” as their master was wont to call them, were well acquainted. “Well, if not the dogs, then who ripped your jacket and blackened your eye?”

  George’s mouth took on a stubborn set. He hid his hands behind his back and when she grabbed one, she saw his knuckles were as swollen and bruised as his face.

  “You’ve been fighting, George, and you must tell me with whom. They will have to be disciplined. Was it a few of the lads at school today?” In concern, she ran her palm over her brother’s dark locks.

  “I hate them,” the boy burst out passionately.

  “Such harsh words.” She knelt again to face him. “But why do you speak them?”

  He again resumed his silence.

  Disheartened, she held George’s cold little hand in her warm gloved one. “Don’t fight them any more. Promise me? There’s nothing they can say about you that can hurt you. You know what I told you about sticks and stones.”

  “But it wasn’t me they were calling names today,” he uttered, his lower lip beginning to tremble.

  “Then there’s even less to quarrel about—”

  “They made fun of you, Lissa! And I won’t let them do it! They say you’re just like Mother. They call you ‘Lusty Lissa,’ and I hate it!” Seeing the look of horror pass over his sister’s beautiful face, George quickly dispensed with his manly demeanor and wrapped his arms around her neck. “I won’t let them call you that any more,” he vowed.

  Her hand touched his back. Shocked beyond belief at the schoolchildren’s cruelty, she could hardly give George the hug of reassurance he so desperately needed. She knew, in the back of her mind, that somehow she had to laugh the entire episode off and inform George that she didn’t need his protection, especially at the cost of a blackened eye. But that required a monumental effort indeed when her cheeks were as red as a fire iron and their one spectator was Ivan Tramore.

  She refused to meet Ivan’s eyes as she got to her feet. From the perimeter of her gaze, she could tell he had yet to remount. He merely stood by, reins in hand, listening to the discourse. When she recovered some of her composure, she took off her mantle and put it around George’s shivering body. She certainly didn’t need it when her entire body burned with shame and humiliation. Still unable to meet Ivan’s stare, she said to George, “I think we should get back. Evvie has promised to make us a chicken pot pie, and we shouldn’t be late.”

  George acquiesced, then unnervingly asked, “What does ‘lusty’ mean, Lissa? Why do they call you that?”

  She stiffened and her cheeks burned anew. Unable to avoid it this time, her eyes met Ivan’s. But there was certainly no solace to be found there. The expression in his eyes seemed to ask the same question: Why do they call you that?

  Beneath that stare, she wanted to clutch her little brother to her and thank him for trying to shield her. And if she could have, she would have sobbed on his shoulder, telling him that she did want his protection. Desperately.

  But she knew she couldn’t. She was a woman now, not a child. She was the protector now, not the protected. And when she did her crying, she knew all too well she would do it alone in her bed at night.

  “We’ll speak of this later, love,” she told him in a voice husky with unshed tears. “Right now we should get back to Evvie.”

  “Do allow me to escort you both home, Miss Alcester,” the marquis offered.

  If she had looked up then, she might have seen the barest glimmer of empathy in his eyes. She might have seen the marquis’s face hardened with anger that the townfolk of picturesque little Nodding Knoll were still so abominably cruel. Looking up, she might have seen these things, but she did not look up. Ivan’s presence alone mortified her. Meeting what she thought would surely be that dark, mocking gaze would completely undo her. So instead she backed away, saying “No—no, thank you.”

  “I insist.”

  Still without meeting his eyes, she gave him the only excuse she could think of. “I cannot be seen with you alone, Lord Powerscourt. It isn’t proper, surely you understand that.”

  “Of course,” he answered sarcastically. “You wouldn’t want your reputation further besmirched by being seen withme in public, now would you?”

  Angry, she finally looked up at him. “If I might remind you, Lord Powerscourt, I am an unmarried woman and am presently out here with you unchaperoned. Society deems it improper for you to see me home, not I.”

  His smirk told her what he thought of her answer. “Pray, do tell me, Lissa. Whendid the Alcesters become so concerned with their reputations?”

  “I do believe, my lord, that it all began five years ago. In fact,” she said furiously, “if I recall correctly, it was the nightyou left town.”

  “Ah, yes, it comes back to me now,” he snapped.

  “Very well then. We understand each other.” She nodded smartly, unable to bid him even a polite farewell. Then she took George in tow and walked quickly down the castle road, eager to seek refuge anywhere that was out of sight of Ivan Tramore.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Lusty Lissa.

  Groaning into her hands, Lissa tried to forget the name as she had tried to do a hundred times since George had told her about it th
e day before. But it would not go away. The children’s cruel nickname kept echoing in her mind until it had become her scarlet letter. Now she felt it might as well have been written on her forehead for all her efforts to erase it from her thoughts.

  She had certainly tried to make light of it in front of George. Later the previous evening, when they’d returned from the castle road, she’d explained to her brother what lusty meant—in the most gentle of terms, of course. She’d told him that the children were only saying that his sister found men attractive, and that it was nothing so terrible that he must fight them over it. She told him blithely to ignore their taunts, and she felt he almost believed her. Yet there was still that familial bond that proved them siblings. Even young George could see past his sister’s brittle smile and find the pain that made it so. Lissa knew this, and it only made the situation worse.

  To further her torture, Wilmott had insisted on escorting her to the soirée at the castle. He’d sent a note earlier that day stating that the Billingsworth coach would pick her up at eight o’clock that evening. It was now five minutes of that hour, and though she had dressed, she still wasn’t sure she could go through with it.

  How would she bear the humiliation? she asked herself blackly. The thought of having to look upon Ivan Tramore’s smug countenance was more than she could endure. She would look into those dark eyes of his and all she would find there would be disdain. He probably thought her a trollop. But she was as spinsterish as a woman of eighty! Her entire experience with men could be reduced to one single kiss. The terrible irony was that Ivan himself had given her that kiss, five years ago in the Alcester stables. Though Ivan’s kiss had hardly been chaste, it had most definitely been her last. Dowerless and scandal-ridden, she was not a prize catch. Men wanted her, she knew, but she was not one to dally outside the protection of marriage. Thus no respectable offers had come her way.

  But now there was Wilmott. With him there was hope. And for that reason alone she would endure this soirée. Determinedly Lissa looked into the mirror and pinched some life back into her pale cheeks.

  “Are you all right, Lissa? You’ve been so quiet all evening.” Evvie sat on the edge of her bed dressed in her finest apparel—a white wool gown with stripes of brilliant violet silk woven through it. The basque waist and ruched sleeves still fit her though the gown was made when she’d been only fifteen. Evvie looked quite enchanting with her sable hair dressed and curled and the matching white-and-violet pelerine wrapped snugly about her shoulders.

  “I’m just fine,” Lissa stated evenly as she clipped on a pair of Berlin ironwork eardrops.

  “Don’t let’s go,” Evvie suddenly implored her. “Wilmott will be so displeased to see me. He doesn’t know you intend for me to chaperone.”

  “I’ve my right to a chaperone. Those wicked children’s nicknames haven’t so soiled my reputation that anyone will begrudge me some respectability.” Lissa again pinched her cheeks. They were abominably pale.

  After picking up her lavender crepe shawl, she self-consciously covered her chest with it. Evvie had been blessed with a cooperative figure. Unfortunately Lissa had found it was highly inconvenient to blossom out of one’s dresses when there was no hope at all of buying new ones. Physically she was like their mother in all respects, including being endowed with their mother’s generous bosom. She practically spilled out of the slate blue taffeta neckline. Looking down at the sight she made, she was reminded of an old gent who’d come to one of her parents’ parties. Scandalized by the low necklines some of the women were sporting, the gent had told their butler upon leaving that he hadn’t seen anything likethat since he’d been weaned.

  Coloring, she wrapped her shawl well around her bosom and bared shoulders. She would claim she had a chill and not remove the shawl all evening.

  “I hear a carriage,” Evvie said in a worried voice.

  Lissa looked out the tiny, frost-covered window to the road below. By the light of the carriage lanterns, she watched the vehicle come to a halt at their cottage door. Immediately the driver jumped from his seat and helped Wilmott disembark.

  “They’re here.” Lissa took her sister’s hand and made her rise from the bed. She gave Evvie’s attire a final assessment, and, ignoring Wilmott’s loud knocking, she leisurely clipped a dangling thread from Evvie’s pelerine. Giving herself and her shawl a last look in the glass, she pinched her cheeks again before leading Evvie down the stairs and out the front door.

  The carriage ride was unpleasant. Wilmott made no effort to hide his displeasure at seeing Evvie. Only when Lissa shot him several icy looks did he finally quiet. But almost in retaliation, he took his seat right between herself and Evvie, crushing their skirts beneath him. Lissa looked over and saw Evvie’s lower lip tremble. She then looked at Wilmott, smiled a tight smile, and promptly vowed to ignore him for the rest of the ride.

  Her attention turned to the two women who sat facing her. Honoria and Adele were appropriately attired in brown satin. Each wore a necklet of pearls and garnet earbobs. Their hair was dressed as hers was, in a chignon pinned to the back of their heads. However, the Billingsworth sisters favored the old-fashioned look of wearing several fat curls in front of their ears. As Lissa watched them, Adele shot her a smug look, but Honoria almost seemed sympathetic to her plight. She didn’t quite smile, but she did seem less disapproving than usual, and her lips pursed in a rather friendly way.

  Lissa spent the rest of the short trip looking out the window. She dreaded the evening ahead of her. She was sure Wilmott’s abrasiveness only foreshadowed what was to come. Shivering, she clutched her thin shawl to her arms.

  The short trip to Powerscourt was soon over and the Billingsworth coach rattled over the drawbridge, through the barbicans, finally to stop in the castle’s bailey. Lit with torches, not gaslights, a hundred flames illuminated the courtyard and turned the sandstone a brilliant shade of gold. It was a heathen touch indeed, and Lissa had forgotten how primitive Powerscourt actually was. The castle was said to have been built in the twelfth century, given to the Irish Tramores by RichardCoeur de Lion for their help in storming the city of Acre. To the north the castle still retained the weathered ruins of the original keep.

  There had been many a marquis who had fortified its ramparts in ages past, but none of them had apparently done much to Powerscourt’s interior. Lissa recalled her visits to the castle with her parents, and she remembered quite clearly not liking the damp corridors and particularly the smoke-blackened Baronial Hall where Ivan’s father, grim and humorless, would receive callers. Thinking of how somber the old castle had been, something sad pulled at her heart. Now another marquis had come to embrace Powerscourt’s dark interior, to brood upon past injustices, and to perhaps become just as grim and humorless as his notorious sire.

  Already Lissa could picture Ivan sitting in his bleak dark Hall, never to laugh or marry, hug his children or love his wife. Things might have turned out differently. She’d spent nights dreaming of Ivan, imagining him as her husband in the innocent ways only a naive sixteen-year-old can. Now her dreams were not nearly so innocent, nor, unfortunately, her possibilities so endless.

  She looked at Wilmott as he escorted Honoria and Adele to the doors carved with Powerscourt’s ornate heraldry. Would they ever have children? She doubted it. Wilmott was far too old. Would she ever love him? A frown passed over her brow. Perhaps eventually she would find some fondness for him. But Wilmottwould make her happy, she vowed. Married to him, she would be able to take care of Evvie and George. In return, she would be a faithful wife. Though she might always be cursed by dreams of another man, a man with eyes as dark as the midnight sky, she would give Wilmott no reason to complain.

  And if that was all that heaven allowed, it would have to suffice.

  “Lissa, what does the castle look like? Is Ivan here? What is he wearing? Does he look as handsome as I picture him?” Evvie whispered in her ear.

  Shrugging off her pensive mood, Lissa whispered back, “
They’re just opening the doors, love. We haven’t got to the Hall yet. And I daresay the marquis doesn’t answer his own door.” Suddenly she exclaimed under her breath, “Good heavens!”

  “What is it?”

  Lissa couldn’t answer. When the huge carved walnut doors finally opened, she was overcome by surprise. Looking up from the great limestone stairs in the vestibule, she discovered the dark, shabby Hall was gone and in its place was a sparkling majestic chamber. Hidden for centuries by dirt and smoke, overhead more than a dozen quatrefoil stained-glass windows sparkled like jewels cast upon the ceiling. French medieval tapestries depicting the entire history of the Capetian kings hung over the triple fireplaces at each end. With six blazing hearths, gone was the perpetual chill, and now the Baronial Hall seemed almost as cozy as Violet Croft’s parlor. Five enormous carpets of Portuguese needlework warmed the stone floor, and four heavily upholstered couches covered with an invitingly thick Bordeaux-colored velvet lined each wall.

  If the sumptuousness of the decor didn’t sufficiently impress Powerscourt’s visitors, then the army of footmen that came to assist their entrance did. Each man was attired in full livery, their breeches of chamois, their coats of azure satin with long black shoulder-knots hanging to the elbow. There was even a “flash,” or black bow sewn to the back of each man’s collar—a vestige of olden times when men sported queues.

  One footman courteously reached for Lissa’s shawl. She gave a start, then shot the man an apologetic smile. Hugging the shawl to her, she discreetly moved from the footman’s reach and feigned interest in the Hall’s interior. Great pains had been taken to make the temperature quite comfortable and there was obviously no need for a shawl, but suddenly Lissa was overcome with insecurity. Watching Evvie remove her pelerine and hand it to a nearby footman, she panicked. What were they doing here? They were in Ivan’s domain now and she knew better than anyone how merciless he could be. With “Lusty Lissa” again reverberating through her mind, she knew she had given him more than enough ammunition with which to hurt her.