Dark Angel / Lord Carew's Bride (40 page)

But she did not look back.

He sat beside the fire in his study, gazing at the empty chair at the other side. The very empty chair. And he could hear her asking what had happened—had it been an accident, or had he been born this way? But he could not bring her back to tell her the truth, instead of the lie he had always told. Not that he would tell the truth even if she were sitting there now….

He found he could no longer work in his study. He had to take his books upstairs with him. He found that it had not been such a good idea to bring her into the house after all. She haunted it.

He rarely drank, except for a social drink with guests or a host. He could not remember a time when he had been drunk. But he got thoroughly foxed one night, sitting in his study with a decanter of brandy, staring at the empty chair, becoming more bedeviled with self-pity with each mouthful.

Beauty and the beast. The only way he might stand even a remote chance with her was to reveal his identity and hope that it would lure her into an interest for him that went beyond friendship. But then he would despise her—and himself for setting out such lures and taking advantage of them.

Beauty and the beast. She was more lovely than any woman he had seen or dreamed of. It was a beauty that went beyond the merely physical. There was sunshine in her and warmth and intelligence and laughter.

He did not realize he was drunk until he got to his feet to go up to bed and found himself on his hands and knees, the room spinning wildly about him. He did not know the effects of drunkenness until he was lying on his bed—somehow he had called his valet and that astonished individual had helped him upstairs and undressed him—and found himself in imminent danger of spinning off into space. He clung to the outer edges of the mattress with both hands—even his right. Then he disgraced himself utterly by not making it to the close stool in time before retching up all his insides.

It was late the following day—very late—when he made his decision.

He usually stayed away from London during the height of the Season. This year would be an exception. He was going to London. He was going to see her again even if she did not see him. He did not know why he had not thought of it before. Why not torture himself further? The pain surely could not be any worse anyway.
And the Season was about to begin. She had been gone for a whole month.

Yes, he thought, happy now that his life had turned in a definite direction—even if it turned out, as it very likely would, that it was a disastrous direction.

Yes, he was going to London.

S
HE WAS ENJOYING SPRING IN TOWN. SHE ALWAYS did. Life took on its familiar routine and became busier every week, as more and more of her friends and acquaintances arrived from the country for the new session of Parliament and for the Season.

There were visits to modistes and extended sessions for fittings and viewings of fashion plates and the choosing of fabrics. There were shopping trips for slippers and fans and gloves and bonnets and a dozen and one other things. There were visits to the library and the galleries and walks in the parks and drives. There were calls to be paid and received.

There was her court to receive—she often enjoyed a private smile over Gabriel’s description of her admirers. Lord Francis Kneller, the first to call, informed her that after her seventh Season—she had been rash enough to give him the number—a young lady became officially known as a spinster and had to retire to a country cottage with a trunkful of large white mobcaps.

“You had better avoid the ignominy, Samantha,” he said languidly, fingering a jeweled snuffbox but deciding against opening it, “and marry me.”

“The choice is between a trunkful of mobcaps and
you with your lavender and pink evening clothes, Francis?” she said, tapping her cheek thoughtfully with one finger. “What a shockingly difficult choice. I shall think seriously upon the matter during the Season and give you my answer later. Shall I?”

“The choice will be easier,” he said, “once you have seen my new turquoise coat. Satin, you know, with a silver waistcoat and turquoise embroidery. Together, they will bowl you right off your feet.”

She laughed and tapped him affectionately on the arm. She wondered how he would react if she accepted his proposal. He would be deeply shocked. Probably horrified. He played the game with her because he knew it was safe. She doubted that Francis would ever marry, unless it was for dynastic reasons. He was too indolent and too frivolous.

“This I can hardly wait to see,” she said.

The others all came, too, one by one, as they returned to town. Mr. Wishart came for tea, bringing a large bouquet of spring flowers with him. Mr. Carruthers escorted her to the library and appeared surprised when she took home with her the texts of two plays instead of novels. In Mr. Carruthers’s experience ladies read only novels. Sir Robin Talbot took her to the National Gallery and they had a very pleasant afternoon conversing about art. Mr. Nicholson took her driving in the park and made her a marriage offer—again. She refused him—again. He was perhaps the only one of her suitors who seriously wished to marry her, she believed, and yet he always cheerfully accepted defeat. Perhaps he did not really
want very badly to marry her. Surely if he did he would have to retire with something of a broken heart after she had refused him so many times.

It was all very pleasant. She was glad to be in London, glad to be busy again, glad to be back in her familiar world. And of course soon the Season would be in full swing, and there would be scarcely a moment in which to wonder if one was happy or sad, enthusiastic or bored, exuberant or exhausted. There would be more invitations to choose among than there were hours in the day.

It was only very occasionally that she literally stopped in her tracks and frowned at a fleeting feeling. She could never quite get her mind around it. It was not a pleasant feeling. It was rather as if the bottom fell out of her stomach—or out of her world—and she was about to fall in after it. And yet she always jolted back to reality before it could happen and before she could even understand what had caused the feeling.

Sometimes if she was walking early in the park, or if she was down by the Serpentine, she would see children tripping along in front of their parents or nurses and the feeling would be there. Was it that she missed Michael and Mary and even Rosalie Boyle’s girls? Perhaps. She was fond of them. She did not want children of her own, of course. She did not want that emotional tie. Or sometimes the park was more deserted than usual, and she felt almost as if she were in the country. With a hill and a lake and rapids close by. She was missing Chalcote? Yes, of course she was. It was a beautiful estate, and it was
owned by Gabriel and Jenny, two of the dearest people in her life.

Sometimes there were not even clues that strong. Sometimes she was laughing with her friends over some nonsense—she rarely talked seriously with her friends, especially the gentlemen. Or sometimes she was shopping, involved in the purchase of some quite unnecessary frivolity. Or sometimes she just remembered Francis’s joke about the seven years and what awaited her afterward.

She never knew what brought on the feeling. It always came quite without warning and disappeared so soon afterward that any person who happened to be with her at the time did not even notice that anything had happened.

She thought sometimes of Highmoor and Mr. Wade. Not often. For some reason she did not stop to analyze, she did not like to remember those afternoons. Doing so depressed her. They had been very pleasant and he had been very pleasant and there was an end to the matter. Those afternoons would never be repeated, and she would never see him again. It did not matter. It was a brief, unimportant episode from her past that should be pleasant to remember but was not. Perhaps later. Perhaps at some other time.

She wished—absurdly, she still wished—that she could go back and change just one moment out of those meetings. She wished she had turned back to wave at the end. If her final memory of him was of seeing him standing at the other side of the stream, his hand raised, his
face lit by his lovely smile, perhaps she could put the whole memory away. Perhaps she would not feel slightly distressed every time she remembered.

It seemed that warm friendship was not for her any more than love was. That made her a very—shallow person, did it not?

L
ADY
R
OCHESTER’S BALL WAS
recognized, by all agreement, as the main opening event of the Season. It was bound to be an impossible squeeze and therefore an unqualified success. Samantha looked forward to it. There was always an excitement about beginning the social whirl yet again. And perhaps there would be someone new…. Not that she needed new beaux. It was just that sometimes interest flagged. She felt instantly contrite. Some young ladies of
ton
would give half their fortunes for even one or two of the gentlemen who paid court to Samantha Newman.

Hyde Park was becoming crowded during the afternoons for what was known as the fashionable hour. And the unusually fine weather that they were being graced with was bringing everyone out in force. Perhaps the biggest crowd of all turned out on the afternoon of the day before the Rochester ball. Samantha rode up beside Mr. Nicholson in his new curricle, twirling a confection of a new parasol above her head, smiling gaily and with genuine enjoyment at the people about her. It was a good thing they had not come with serious intentions for a drive, she thought. The press of vehicles and horses
about them on the paths was thick, and the intention of most riders was to observe and converse rather than to exercise their horses.

She spoke with friends and acquaintances to whom they could draw close and waved to others who were too far distant.

“How very pleasant this is,” she commented to Mr. Nicholson during a brief respite, while one group of acquaintances drew away and another was still approaching. “I am so happy that the Season is starting again.”

“My only complaint,” he said, “is that I have to share you with the whole world, Miss Newman.”

“But I could think of no more congenial companion with whom to make the drive to and from the park, sir,” she said. She laughed gaily from sheer exuberance and gave her parasol an exceptionally enthusiastic twirl.

It was at that precise moment that her eyes met those of a gentleman some distance farther on in the crowd and she froze. Utterly. To ice. She forgot to breathe.

The most handsome man in the world, Jenny had once called him. And she had agreed, though she had called him cold. His hair was more blond than her own—almost silver-blond. His eyes were as blue as her own, but a paler shade. His features and his physique were perfect. A Greek god. The angel Gabriel, she and Jenny had called him before they had known that the
other
man—the one they had called his counterpart, Lucifer—had been christened Gabriel. A strange, coincidental irony.

Her eyes met his now across the milling crowd of humanity. He was as beautiful and as dazzling as ever, though she had not set eyes on him in six years. He had been out of the country, banished by his father.

Her eyes met his and held. He looked back appreciatively and touched the brim of his hat with his riding whip.

“… trying to rival the sun and succeeding quite admirably. Beautiful ladies ought not to be allowed to wear yellow.” It was the languid voice of Lord Francis Kneller, who was leaning from his horse’s back and draping an arm along the side of the curricle. “I am going to challenge Nicholson to pistols at dawn for luring you into his curricle while the rest of us male mortals must ride alone.”

He had disappeared in the crowd. Breath shuddered back into her. “Nonsense, Francis,” she said without her usual spirit, unable to think of anything witty to say in return.

He sat upright again and grinned at her. “Crawled out at the wrong side of the bed this morning, did you, pet?” he asked.
“Nonsense, Francis.”
He imitated her sharp tone.

“I say,” Lord Hawthorne, his young cousin, exclaimed. He was a young gentleman who had hovered in the outer circle of Samantha’s court all last Season, though he must be two or three years her junior. “Frank just pointed out Rushford to me—the notorious Rushford. Did anyone know that he was back?”

Samantha swallowed convulsively. Of course. She had heard that his father had died. But she always
thought of Lionel—when she could not stop herself from thinking about him—as Viscount Kersey. He was the Earl of Rushford now, and had been for a couple of years.

“He appeared last week,” Mr. Nicholson said. “One would not have thought he would have the nerve. I suppose he is to be admired for having the courage to appear here again after such a shocking scandal. But it must have been years ago.”

Six
. It had been six years ago.

“I hear he is being received,” Lord Hawthorne said. “And I hear he has appeared at White’s.” There was faint envy in his voice. Lord Hawthorne was still waiting for his entrée to the hallowed halls of the most prestigious gentlemen’s club in London.

“The ladies will be intrigued,” Mr. Nicholson said. “They always are intrigued by the very gentlemen they should spurn. And, of course, he always was a handsome devil. Oh, do beg pardon, Miss Newman. Did you ever meet the Earl of Rushford? He was Viscount Kersey until a year or so ago.”

Samantha was feeling somewhat dizzy. She had always wondered—with a fascinated sort of dread—how it would feel to see him again. She had hoped that the shame surrounding his departure from England would keep him away for the rest of his life. But he was back. And she had seen him again. She felt—dizzy.

“It was Miss Newman’s cousin—the present Lady Thornhill—who was at the heart of the scandal,” Lord
Francis said quietly, without any of the usual bored cynicism in his voice. “I am sure Miss Newman will not wish to be reminded of the gentleman, Ted. Do you suppose that the flowers in Miss Tweedsmuir’s bonnet have denuded someone’s whole garden? Or do they come from a very large garden, perhaps, and have merely emptied out a corner of it. They must weigh half a ton.”