The Black Angel (The St Ives)

by Barbara Samuel

  And she thought of her love, of Tynan, for whom she also fought today. "En garde," she cried, and thrust.

  And they were engaged. Stead quickly saw his opponent was no girl playing dress-up, and they settled in to a deadly serious fight. A thrust, a parry, a block and a strike point to Stead, one to Adriana. In moments they were sweating. Adriana heard only her own breath, and the clank of metal to metal. Her being narrowed to this, to deflecting the slit-eyed ferocity of Stead's hatred, to giving vent to all she had endured. He cut her, high on her left arm, and the sleeve grew sticky with blood. She thrust and caught his side, only a glancing blow, but enough that he stumbled backward momentarily, and then she rushed her advantage home, dancing forward on quick feet. But he recovered with a swift upswing, and Adriana found herself very nearly without a sword.

  But she, too, parried, and they were off again. Weariness weighted her arms after a time. Her shoulders burned with effort. Sweat prickled on her scalp. Her breath grew ragged and she fought to avoid the slightest sign of retreat. Stead was tired too, and with a blunt animal cry made a murderous thrust toward her belly.

  Adriana swiveled sideways and simultaneously thrust her own sword, and in one sickening moment she felt the sword sink into flesh. A low dark murmur went up from the onlookers, and Gabriel was somehow grasping her arms, pulling her backward as Stead wavered in place, cold shock on his face.

  He put his hand on the place and pulled it away, staring in disbelief at the blood on his palm. "It appears you have bested me," he said, and fell.

  A surgeon rushed forward with his bag, and there was a sudden commotion, people dispersing quickly. Adriana dropped her sword, and all at once her entire body began to tremble, hands and knees and hips.

  She raised her eyes to Gabriel. "Did I kill him?"

  "Only if we're exceedingly lucky. I saw it go in—it was flesh only."

  And as if to give weight to the words, the surgeon helped Stead to his feet. Adriana reached for Gabriel's hand to brace herself, her trembling increasing. Was this reaction? she thought wildly. Exhaustion? If she fainted now, like some swooning maiden, it would bloody ruin everything.

  "Gabriel," she whispered, "hold me up. I fear I am going to faint."

  He made a motion with one hand, but Adriana was only aware of gritting her teeth against the encroaching fuzzy blackness at the edge of her vision. She inhaled deeply, but it only made her more lightheaded. Gabriel, behind her, was the only point in the world she could find, and she felt him holding her as the world spun. She kept her eyes open, staring hard at a world narrowed to a small slit as she breathed in and out very slowly, willing herself not to faint, to make her watery body remain upright.

  Then into that narrowed world haloed with that fuzzy black came Tynan, but not Tynan, dressed in a peasant's garb, his grass-stained shirt open at the neck and an expression of unholy fury on his face. She reached for him, grateful, no matter how angry he was, to see him.

  But the motion jolted free the pain that she had not until that moment acknowledged, a wave of slightly nauseating pain from her shoulder to her wrist, and in surprise she looked down and saw that her entire sleeve was soaked with crimson.

  Blackness engulfed her vision. Strange, she thought, feeling herself fall in slow motion, she'd always thought fainting would be like sleeping, but it wasn't. It was fuzzy and confusing and it made her head ache, but she was distantly aware the whole time. Aware of her body simply refusing to support her, of strong arms catching her, of the cold, damp grass below her when she was stretched out. She was amazingly dizzy and there was an odd sort of buzzing sound in her ears, or maybe only her head. She felt the sleeve being ripped away and heard a low, Irish curse.

  She turned her head slowly and opened her eyes. "Tynan," she whispered.

  But he did not smile. Did not kiss her, as she hoped. He raised his heavy curtain of lashes and revealed only the same anger she'd seen a moment ago. She'd wounded his pride, she thought vaguely. "I had to," she said. "Don't you see?"

  Gabriel's hand smoothed over her head. "All's well, Riana, but we've got to take you to a surgeon. Can you sit up?"

  With his help she did so. And there, kneeling before her was the woman with the extraordinary eyes. A long black lock of hair fell out of her cape as she flung the coat around Adriana's shoulders and pulled it tight. "Well done," she whispered, and squeezed her hand.

  Then she was gone in a swirl of skirts.

  "Who is that woman?" Gabriel asked.

  But Adriana only shook her head. "I don't know."

  Then Tynan was lifting her in his strong arms, and even though she knew he would not welcome it, she put her hands on his face and kissed him, hard on the mouth. There was nothing he could do to stop it, and she felt the rigidness in him as he stiffly resisted, but then he was kissing her back, fervently, before he drew away.

  "This will not be so easily solved as that," he said, and lifted his chin, shutting her out.

  * * *

  The surgeon had to be roused from his bed, and he muttered furiously about modern morals when he saw the dueling victim was a woman. But he gave her brandy and stitched her up neatly.

  Outside, Gabriel took their horses, and Tynan put Adriana in a carriage and climbed in behind her, bringing with him his grim, bristling anger. It stung more than she wished to acknowledge, even through the cocoon of exhaustion that was spinning ever more thickly about her.

  She leaned back, putting her head on the wall, and resolved not to beg him for his forgiveness. He knew the facts as well as she.

  It was he who broke the silence as they rocked along the streets, now coming alive with full morning. "You might have let me know where you were." The lilt in his words was doubled. "So I didn't have to wonder all night if you were dead."

  For that she truly was sorry. With an effort, she raised her head. A lock of hair fell in her face and she brushed it away. "I do apologize for that, Tynan. I feared what you would do if I told you what had happened."

  "Ah." Bitterness edged the words. "It was all right if I worried myself half sick. It was all right if you made a bloody fool of me in the eyes of all the men in this town." He lifted a brow. "It was all right as long as you did what you felt needed doing."

  During the long hours waiting for dawn, she had expected him to be angry with her. She had certainly anticipated that his pride would be wounded. But there was more here, something she could not in her depleted state quite decipher. "I did not mean to hurt you, I swear it."

  "You don't ever mean to hurt anyone, do you, Riana? But you do what you like and never think."

  "I cannot fight with you now." She sighed, shaking her head. "You can't have had much sleep, either. We should sleep, and then things will be clearer."

  "You are not listening, Adriana. I do not intend to wait around while you get your beauty sleep so you can restore yourself to cause more damage in the lives of the people around you. I've never met such a selfish creature."

  That one sailed home, an arrow piercing her straight through the heart. And out of fear of revealing how much power he had to hurt her, she reacted with anger. "If standing up for myself when a blackguard like him had the nerve to put his hands on my body without my leave is selfish, then so be it. But I'll wager here and now that no man in London will dare try it again."

  "Perhaps you can tease them into it, Riana, and you'll duel weekly to the accolades that will no doubt pour down upon your pretty head."

  "What a plague! Do you hear yourself? Men think nothing matters but their own blessed pride and their tender little hearts and their desires." She clenched her jaw. "You're all so focused on every tiny little thing that you don't have time or room in all that preening manhood for a spare thought for the wishes of your wives and daughters." She slammed her hand down on the bench seat, the full swell of it coming into her chest now. "What is it that you want, Tynan? Some sweet little creature to flutter around, pampering you and hanging on your every word? Someone you dress up, lik
e those French dolls you took to my sisters?"

  His jaw was set so hard it drew the cords in his neck, and his hand lay in a tight fist in his lap. "Are you quite finished?"

  "No!" she cried. "I have hidden my face for five years out of shame. I've ducked and tried to avoid facing all of it. I regret hurting my father. I regret that my hotheaded brother saw fit to kill the fool, and that they felt they had to leave. But would any of that have transpired if my name were James instead of Adriana? If I were a lord instead of a lady?"

  And still his face was unmoved. Adriana felt a cracking inside, for she saw that she was fighting now for the man she had truly fallen in love with. Earnestly, she leaned forward. "You know it would not have, Tynan. You know it. And you know in your heart that you do not wish one of those proper little dolls to love. That you would never be happy with one of them." She reached for his hand, and touched, on his wrist, a string of beads. He jerked away abruptly.

  She stiffened. "I see." She leaned back, feeling the ache in her arm, the weight of no sleep on her spine.

  He tucked the beads in his pocket and bowed his head for a long moment. In spite of everything, she wanted to put her hands in that thick hair, wanted to press a kiss to that crown. He let go of a breath and raised his head. The anger was muted, replaced with pain. "Adriana, perhaps this is as good a moment as any for me to tell you what I have hidden."

  "No," she protested. "Not like this. Not when I am so weary and you are so angry."

  "Blast and damn!" He caught sight of something beyond the coach, and bolted toward the door, his hand on the catch. Before the vehicle was even fully stopped, he'd hurtled out, crying out a name.

  Adriana stayed where she was, peering out the window to see what could have caused such a reaction. A tall, sturdy, black-haired man, travel-stained but prosperous enough in a striped broadcloth traveling costume, stood on the stoop, and Tynan rushed up to him, putting his hands on his arms urgently.

  Without taking her eyes from the pair, she moved to the door and let the coachman help her down. "Come in and my butler will pay you," she said, worry rising at the cry that came from Tynan at whatever news was delivered. She was not quite equal to a run, but moved as quickly as she could. "What is it?"

  He turned, and an expression of utter defeat was on his face. "The glassworks were burned to the ground. A dozen men were within." He bowed his head. "I must go."

  "Oh, Tynan," she whispered, and put her hand on his arm. "I am so sorry. Of course you must. I'll come with you."

  "No." That cord on his jaw showed once again, but he put his hand over hers gently enough, and his eyes had lost their bitterness. "I want you to go to bed. Now." He swallowed. "And you must stay with your brother, else all this will be for nothing."

  Julian. She closed her eyes, torn exactly down the middle. But she nodded. "It will only be another few days, then I will come."

  "I'll write to you as soon as I arrive, giving instruction."

  Dread filled her, but mindful of the scene they were causing by standing out in the open this way, she only squeezed his arm and ducked her head. "Do not leave without bidding me farewell," she said, suddenly urgent.

  He nodded.

  "Your word, Tynan."

  "You have my word." He nodded to Fiona, waiting to bustle her within, into a steaming tub of water.

  Inside, the girl clucked over her bruises and the wound, and rubbed healing salve onto all of them. Then, wrapped in a flannel gown that seemed insufficient to warm her, Adriana crawled into her bed, ordered the fire stoked and chocolate brought to her. But before she could even properly adjust the pillows into the nest she so enjoyed, she was flat out, dead asleep.

  * * *

  Tynan, too, needed a bath and a rest and a hot meal. He settled for a shave and a wash while Seamus readied his bags. He'd left Thomas Flynn, a manager at the glassworks, in the dining room with a plate of eggs and rashers and a pile of snowy white bread from the ovens of the cook, one Mrs. Josephine Moody, whose talents in the kitchen could go a long way to healing almost any ill a man could face.

  But before he joined Thomas, Tynan sat at his writing desk and took out a quill and pot of ink. He sent Seamus down to eat his fill, too, before they left.

  In the silence left behind, he wrote:

  Adriana—I could not bear to wake you. He paused, his chest hollow, and tried to think what else to say. That he was angry, but with himself? That her actions had shown him the falseness of his own?

  That he could not ask a woman he loved with such depth to take on a life that would be so much more difficult than the one she'd won for herself here?

  Some part of him knew it was only despair putting such dark thoughts in his mind. That warning of doom had not been over Adriana at all. He had known it when the duel ended and his nerves only screamed the louder that the doom still lay ahead, and here it was. The glassworks burned, the Catholics within turned to corpses. All of his own work, all the hopes of the men he'd employed, dozens of them, gone in the flames of hatred.

  In that moment when Thomas had given him the news, Tynan realized how vain his journey here had been. Vain in every sense of the word, vain because it had been pride that led him on a fool's errand, vain because it was his arrogance that made him believe he could overturn hundreds of years of ill-feeling simply because he decided it was time.

  He belonged to Ireland, and there he would go. There he would spend his fortune. He'd put his hands and heart to work there, spend his fortune doing what he could, spend his political intelligence helping to build a true freedom from the straw Irish Parliament.

  The times and his obligations required that he maintain his lie, and it grieved him a little. But too many others would be hurt if he declared himself Catholic—he would lose his own lands, and all the lands he held in his name for the Catholics in his county. For Aiden's memory, he wished he could declare himself boldly, but he'd been given a task, and serve it he would. God knew his heart.

  Grieved and lost, he picked up the quill and wrote quickly. Then he sealed it with his ring and carried it to Fiona. "Do not wake her," he said. "Give it to her later."

  Fiona took the note with a troubled expression. "Begging your pardon, milord, but she'll be most sorely grieved if you do not tell her yourself. It was the last thing she said before she slept."

  He closed his eyes. "I cannot wake her and still do my duty," he said with more frankness than was proper. As if to shake it away, he pressed a false smile on his face. "You made her a beautiful Cáer."

  She fingered the note. "Thank you." She bobbed mechanically.

  "Where is your home, girl? May I take your people some news of you?"

  Her eyes flew open. "Oh, yes, milord!" She paused. "If you wouldn't mind, I've some stockings to send my sister. In County Meath?"

  "Aye. Fetch them. I'll wait."

  She scurried down the hallway and up the stairs at the end. Tynan stood outside Adriana's door with his hands linked behind his back, staring at the handle as if it would turn itself. Like a cat, he thought, and scowled.

  He opened the door and entered silently. The smell of her hung in the air, lavender and toilet water and a hint of musk that was the alluring natural essence of her skin. At her bedside he stopped. She lay on her side, her head buried in the pillows, and her breath was so deep as to be nearly invisible. A scrape marred her cheekbone, and a purple and yellow bruise radiated from it, creeping over her eyelid, joining with the blue circle of exhaustion below. The sight gave him a physical pain, and abrupt violence rose in him again.

  As it must have in her. He only imagined what had transpired. She had experienced it.

  He smiled. And triumphed.

  Here was the unadorned, unhidden face of Lady Adriana St. Ives. A woman whose passion showed in the fullness of her red lips and that bruised eye; whose laughter would mar the smoothness of that flesh with lines. Here was the lady, in her prim nightrail with tiny ribbons at the collar, and the hoyden, in the bandage around
her arm. A thousand faces, Phoebe had said of her sister. But all were one woman, and the changing light only brought out unseen facets.

  He thought of his wish that she should bear him children, and it pained him most of all that he was leaving that vision here on these shores. For he would have liked the way she bore them, in her belly and in her arms, and with that bossy voice. He would have liked planting them, and watching them grow. He would have liked holding his wife's hand at weddings.

  But now she had regained her courage, and by morning she would be as celebrated as she'd once been scorned. She would be free to choose a more suitable husband from dozens of proposals, and host her sisters' presentations to Court, and take up the life of a proper English lady.

  He half smiled. Not proper, perhaps. But English certainly.

  As if she sensed his presence, she stirred, making a soft sound of pain. Very gently, the Black Angel, whose heart had remain untouched until now, bent and pressed a kiss to the head of the woman who'd stolen it entire.

  And then he left her.

  Chapter 20

  Adriana rose out of sleep by degrees, a sense of disturbance on her. Before she opened her eyes, she tried to remember what it was, what worrisome thing she had to face, and a host of confused possibilities presented themselves. The trial? The ball? For a long moment she could not even think what day it was, or what she was to do, or what bed she'd awaken in.

  Tynan.

  She bolted awake, her whole body protesting with varying levels of screams as she forced herself to sit up. The light was low and cool in the room—perhaps early evening, she thought, or a cloudy noonday. Who could tell? With effort, she flung back the coverlet and moved to the window, her hair spilling free, wavy from the braid she'd worn.

  Absently, she put her hand over the sore, bandaged place on her arm and folded back the shutters to discover a cold, thick rain, and traffic that told her it was at least not morning.

  Lightheaded, she turned to call for Fiona and spied the letter on the dresser. Her name was scrawled across the face of it in that bold, hurried hand she had not seen since he arrived at Hartwood Hall. She halted, knowing it meant he'd already left, that he'd broken his word to her. A crushing sense of loss burned in her.