[Samuel Barbara] The Black Angel(Book4You) (34 page)

And yet it was Adriana herself who gave it the greatest dash. Her long neck held her pretty head at a defiant angle, and wisps of hair, loosened in her struggles, brushed her oval face. Against the paleness, her eyes burned like sapphires, dancing and alive and bold. "'Tis perfect," he said.

"It is not," she replied, and he realized he had missed, at first, the fury in her stance. "It makes me into a whore, and I will not wear it." Her eyes shimmered with tears. "And you are a pig, and I cannot believe you would have put me on display like this." She shook her head. "You're just like all of them, aren't you? You cannot see
me
for all of
this
." She gestured angrily at her breasts, at her body.

"Riana! No, that's not—"

"Perhaps I should attend as Lady Godiva," she said coldly. "I've the hair for it."

"Riana—"

She stepped away, shaking her head. "Why would you do this?"

He scowled, exasperated. "Because everyone in that room is expecting you to enter with your head bowed in apology and shame. Because they'll be wanting to look down at you." He stepped closer. "When you appear in this gown, like Venus, they'll be cheated of pitying you or disdaining you."

She made a sound. "No, they'll hate me instead."

"Hate you? No. Envy, perhaps. Lust, almost certainly. Not hate."

Wavering, she raised those dark blue eyes and bit her lip. It was an almost painfully vulnerable expression, and he told himself he must be very alert tonight, to protect her. "I'm frightened," she said quietly.

"It won't be easy, Riana," he said seriously. "But we've the Duchess behind us, and the arrogance of the gods to go with us." He put his hands on her arms and deliberately admired the fall of the gown over her breasts and hips. "And remember, 'twill be your husband who is most anxious for the evening to be at a close."

She nodded. "All right."

He kissed her forehead. "All will be well, Riana. I promise."

To her amazement, Adriana was able to nap—and quite deeply, waking only when Fiona shook her late in the afternoon, to take her bath. Even then the sluggishness of the nap clung. The hot, scented water was no real help, and she nearly drifted off again while she was soaking.

Fiona sent for strong, milkless tea, and as she dried Adriana's hair, patiently squeezing the water out, then combing and brushing it before the fire, Adriana drank her tea and very, very slowly, as if emerging from a chrysalis, grew more alert.

Now that she'd had some time to let the notion sink in, she realized Tynan was right, as ever. Society did wish for her to hang her head in shame. If women were allowed the same freedoms as men, there were a great many men, after all, who'd stand to lose quite a lot. Abruptly she asked Fiona, "Do you ever wish you were born a man?"

The girl made a snorting sound. "What woman has not?"

Adriana laughed, and suddenly the chrysalis broke entirely. She couldn't have said, just then, what it was that had fallen away, but there was a new buoyancy in her as Fiona and she worked together on her costume for the evening.

And a costume it was. She thought of Tynan, teasing her about being the god of love. "Who is the Irish god of love, Fiona? Do you know his name?"

"Aonghus Og?" she asked. "Sure, and I do."

"Who is his consort?"

"His lover, you mean?"

Adriana nodded at her.

"Well, let's see now. That would be Caer."

"What is she like?"

"He dreamed of her and went to find her." Fiona combed through Adriana's waist-length hair. "Ah, milady, 'tis fine hair you have, that much is true." She paused a moment with the hair in her hands, as if trying to imagine what to do with it.

"Who was she?" Adriana prompted.

"Caer, the one he dreamed of, was the daughter of the king of the sidhe. You know the sidhe?"

"No." She had been looking at the girl in the mirror—one brought without question to replace the one Adriana had broken—and now turned. "Who are they?"

"You'd call them the fairy folk, but in our land they're as dangerous as they are beautiful. And Caer was the daughter of their king, who had other things in mind for his daughter, as fathers so often do."

Adriana chuckled. "So what happened?"

"Caer took the body of a swan, but so lovestruck, so smitten was Aonghus Og, that he knew her straight away and carried her off to his castle."

"Was she glad to have him?"

"Well, now," Fiona said, a hand on her hip, a hint of a smile on her wide mouth, "what girl wouldn't want the god of love?"

Adriana laughed, full-throated. "Tonight, Fiona, I must be as beautiful as that swan girl. Caer?"

"But of course you must," the girl said quietly, "since you up and married Aonghus Og himself."

Adriana only smiled. "Come, we must hurry if I am to be ready in time."

An hour later they stood back to admire their handiwork. Taking a nervous breath, Adriana stood tall and inclined her head. "Might I pass as a daughter of the sidhe?"

Fiona's eyes shone, and she clasped her hands to her mouth in pleasure as Adriana turned in a slow, graceful circle. "'Tis just as well we are not in Ireland, or they'd think you one of their own and steal you away."

Adriana smiled. Her hair was piled loosely on her head, with curls and wisps drifting free, as if blown there by a soft wind. Into it Fiona had pinned small jewels of many colors, so the various fires of garnets and emeralds and sapphires flashed as she inclined her head. The dress, which had seemed so daring this afternoon, still seemed to be made of dragonfly wings, barely pink, as if dawn and moon had met and loved. The craftsmanship was so exquisite, the cut so perfect, that it glossed her, covered and revealed and hinted with every tiny breath, every simple shift of a finger.

Around her throat she wore a single, enormous white diamond. It was not a jewel she'd ever worn, but a diamond seemed the only possible pendant for such an airily colored gown. It had also been a gift from her father to her mother, and would serve, if the evening proved difficult, to remind her of who she was, and of those to whom she owed her allegiance.

With a rush of excitement she turned and grasped Fiona's hand in her own. "Thank you, my dear. You've quite transformed me." Earnestly, she bent and kissed the girl's cheek. "This night has loomed like a monster. But you've given me the tools I needed."

"I've spit in an eye once or twice," Fiona said, and flushed. Then she stepped back and flung out a hand. "Aonghus waits, Caer."

"And you—the evening is yours. I suspect I shall not need your assistance removing my gown."

Tynan paced in the drawing room just off the foyer. He'd attempted to eat a little earlier, but the food had sat ill with him, and he contented himself with a measure of medicinal brandy. It steadied his nerves a bit, though it did little for the hollowness in his belly. Later, at the ball, he would have a supper.

He could not think why he felt so agitated this evening. There were matters of importance riding on the events of the rout, to be sure, but nothing that could not be addressed in some other way if this did not proceed as he hoped. He paused before the broad windows, staring sightlessly at the reflection of a candle in the dark glass. Society would not make a pariah of Adriana forever.

Or perhaps they would—what difference would even that make? His lot would be easier, would progress more quickly, perhaps, if he gained the seat he hoped to buy. But if he did not, they would return to Ireland, return to his estates there, and he would continue creating work for his tenants and others in the county, struggling in the Irish parliament to affect change before more bloodshed erupted.

Such reasonable thoughts, but still his spine was tight with tension, with a superstitious and unwarranted sense of dread, a sense of impending disaster. Phoebe and Monique, one hurt, the other sick with a fever, had been two—he waited for the third. And this afternoon he'd intended to go out to purchase a new pair of gloves, but had opened the door to find a magpie on the step. It turned, unafraid, and cawed at him.

His mother would have taken to her bed for days over such a bad omen. Aiden would have blessed the house with holy water. Tynan, who insisted a man's luck was what he made of it, roared at it and stomped out on the porch, glaring after it as it flashed, black and white, into the heavens.

Dread.

And the letter he'd received tugged at him. He worried about violence at the glassworks. Worried about the ill feelings whipping higher and higher, as they had more than once in his lifetime, until the people were belting out their rage upon one another.

"Milord?"

He turned. Adriana's little maid, with her thick, thick hair bound into a heavy crown on her head, poised nervously at the door. "Milady Caer is ready."

Though the girl was outwardly the very picture of humble servitude, he did not miss the sparkle in her eyes. And he could not halt the sudden, fierce pleasure that swelled in him as her meaning donned. "Thank you, Fiona," he said. He stepped into the foyer and halted, dumbstruck.

A thousand faces, Phoebe had told him, and he thought he had seen them all by now—the nondescript wallflower on the steps the first day, the butterfly sailing toward her brothers, the siren at dinner that night, the hoyden sword-fighting, the mischievous wench in men's clothing.

As she came down the stairs to him now, he saw all of them, and more. The butterfly danced in the many-colored jewels winking in the siren looseness of hair piled so that it appeared ready to tumble free at the slightest touch. There was a hoydenish roll to her hips and mischief on the tiny smile curling her lips, and even a hint of the wallflower afraid she would not please in the shyness he caught in her eyes.

But most of all she was devastatingly desirable. It seemed so small a word to capture the essence of the way she looked, he thought, his breath caught high in his chest. Candle flame cast an aura of gold about her shoulders, kissed the swell of breasts beneath fabric that caught the light in wicked and not so wicked ways, revealing now the shape of a thigh, a breast, the dip of her waist, and then just as quickly hiding all. She moved like a queen, graceful and straight, but there was no halting the natural roll of her hips, the elusive but unmistakable sway of heavy breasts barely contained in the airiest of fabric, the elusive but definite strut of a woman who'd known the flesh of a man and counted it a delicacy.

She met his eyes and glided toward him, the depth of dark blue knowing and hinting of laughter. "Will I do?"

And although he had joined with her before, his imagination gave him the most startling vision of her hair tumbling free over her shoulders as he pulled up those gossamer skirts. He imagined himself beginning at her knee and tasting the flesh up her thighs, imagined the heat and pleasure he could give. He imagined how the fabric would dampen with her sweat, how closely it would mold her temptress's body.

He was most arrestingly aroused, simply by looking at her, and he raised his eyes to her face. "Caer." He finally moved, feeling slightly dizzy, and took her gloved hand, lifting it to his face. "I will not even be able to look at you," he murmured, and to illustrate his meaning, pulled her to him with one hand.

And that only made it worse, because her eyes widened as he rocked his hips against hers ever so lightly, and beneath the fine fabric her nipples appeared. A hint only, and only because he knew to look. For a moment they only stood together, breathing each other's breath, before Tynan said, "I suppose we shall both have to beware revealing our desire."

She smiled. "Speak for yourself."

In that moment his fear doubled, tripled, and he found his hands gentling on her arms. Cautionary words made their way into his mouth but were never spilled, for in that instant he raised his head and saw Fiona standing in the shadows, an expression of warning in her eyes.

So he only bent and kissed his wife, one time, to see him through till evening. And it was in his heart, if not on lips:
I love you
.

He fancied he could taste the same on her mouth.

In the carriage, Adriana sat next to Tynan as they traveled the short distance to the Duchess's fashionable address. Both of them were silent, and after a moment Tynan reached over and took her gloved hand in his own.

It was Adriana who spied the house first. Towering four floors, the pillared mansion was built of pale brick, and every window blazed. Oil lamps, hung from posts at three-foot intervals, cast a festive light over the walk where carriages queued up to deposit their glittering contents. Silks and satins and velvets swirled into the flickering light, and jewels danced. Laughter and chatter perfumed the cold night.

Without speaking, Adriana gripped Tynan's hand more tightly. Her stomach roiled so violently she put her other hand to her mouth. She thought of all the people within, all the knowing looks that would be cast over her, all the speculation that would go on behind the men's eyes, and she shrank back in her seat, making a little cry. "I cannot do this, Tynan," she said in a small voice.

"Ah, but you can, lass," he said gently. More gently than she deserved. "Where's that haughty chin now?" Two fingers touched her jaw and pushed up. "Think of Julian."

But she noted the brooding darkness in his face and was not reassured. "What if this only sets more of them against us all?"

"Never," he said. "Remember, Adriana, that you are not only beautiful—you are charming and intelligent and amusing. Dozens of those women have done far more than you did, and simply had the good luck to not be caught. They do know that."

Impulsively, she leaned forward and pressed a fervent kiss to his mouth. "Thank you," she breathed.

"Shall we?"

He helped her from the carriage, and offered his arm, and Adriana smiled up at him. "One for all."

His eyes tilted up at the corners. "Aye."

And then there was nothing to do but go forward. Breathlessly, Adriana clung to his arm and told herself this was a game. A game in which she was the daughter of a king of the sidhe, and the man on her arm the most compelling creature on the earth, the god of love.