The Short and Fascinating Tale of Angelina Whitcombe (8 page)

 

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

L
ondon had changed. Somehow in the handful of weeks that she had been away, the city had shrunk, become more crowded, more stifling.

As if there were no place for her any longer.

Not at the theater, where she had borne Lizzie Duncan's caustic wrath with a great show of humility. Even groveling could not add more dates to the theater's season or inspire the manager to replace anyone. He had, however, offered her a small part in a melodrama at a minor theater in which he had an interest. The sort of role she had not taken even in her first days in London five years earlier.

While she'd accepted the employment with gratitude, it was much more difficult to accept the small attic chamber Mr. Baswick was now showing to her.

Her old landlord looked entirely unchanged—same paunch at his waist, sagging jowls, thinning gray hair, same garrulousness and eagerness to gossip—and yet, like London, he seemed different.

“What, did you expect me to leave your previous rooms empty indefinitely? You know that Maggie Shelton has been wanting a space in the house for years. Maggie's expecting again.” He added the last in a twinkling-eyed hush.

“I suppose I hadn't thought I'd be here again,” she admitted.

“But you'll take it.”

She smiled at him wryly. “Yes, Bas, of course I'll take it. You're my one friend in London.”

“That's a shame,” he said. “A pretty girl like you. But come on then, as friends let's have a cup of tea and you can tell me about your sojourn in the wilds of the countryside.”

She followed him down to his own apartment, where she'd spent the occasional afternoon playing a game of piquet over sherry-spiked tea. At least the many flights of stairs no longer winded her quite as much as they would have before Yorkshire. Many more of those daily walks and she would have been as hardy as a country girl. As she'd once been in her youth.

“I spend my days posting advertisements and fielding letters for advertisers,” he continued, huffing as they descended the three flights. “But never do I get to hear the stories that happen after a match is made, if a match is made. So tell me, what was the problem with the young man that he needed his mother to hire his mistress?”

She laughed. Bas might have been the one to tell her of the advertisement and she was grateful to him for his help, but there was very little of the story she was willing to share.

“He didn't know,” she said, settling once again on part of the truth. He whistled through his teeth. “And, as of the moment, he still doesn't know. For his mother's sake and his, I hope it stays that way.” For her own sake too. Better to be remembered at least somewhat fondly, even if he would resent her for her abrupt departure. “But enough of
Yorkshire
. What we really should talk about is all the gossip I've missed while away.”

When she was alone in her room, her sole trunk placed at the foot of the narrow bed, she took a deep, steadying breath. The room was small even by London standards, but at least it was inexpensive. She'd learned her lesson about frivolous spending and debt.

There was a small window, which overlooked the bustling street. She had always thought that activity exciting and vibrant. But through that opening, the stale air of the city wafted in.

She missed fresh air and freeing space. She missed all the colors of the countryside. She missed that collie sticking his wet nose in her face.

She missed John.

T
he house was stifling, the company insipid. The dinner party at the manor house was proving to be even more unbearable than he'd imagined it would be, as his mother apparently intended to play matchmaker. Whether it was sandwiching him between the two young Treythorn sisters, who had both been children the last time he'd seen them, or forcing him into a conversation with their cousin Miss Cooke, his mother made little attempt to hide her goals.

He shouldn't have come, but nights at the castle had grown increasingly unbearable. Everything reminded him of Angelina. He had known her for less than a fortnight and yet she'd changed everything, unsettled the tenuous peace he'd found.

He should never have let her into his life.

Not that he had. She'd sat outside his home as tenaciously as an army at siege. Out of boredom, he assumed. An ennui that had changed to something more.

Working on the castle, he'd done well not thinking about war, about people, about his antipathy for the destructive force of human nature. But he could not stop thinking about Angelina. Tortuous thoughts snaked through his mind as he struggled to answer the burning question, “Why?” But always he circled back to the truth that he would never know the answer, and that neither the question nor the answer mattered.

John weathered the evening, parrying the lightly barbed inquiries into his activities with as much humor and goodwill as he could muster. After all, Angelina had been somewhat right about his isolation, at least in regard to the local society. He hadn't suffered one of these engagements since the second month he'd been home, when his mother had insisted on feting her returned hero son.

His mother's sidelong gaze bored into him the whole night, as if he were an insect to be studied under a microscope.

How did everyone else go on as if nothing had changed? As if the peace had always been so? As if Angelina had never entered his life and left?

The night continued seemingly interminably until one by one his mother's guests, people he ostensibly knew, stepped out of the house and into their carriages, back to their own homes.

To whatever private lives they had.

“You must make more of an effort, John,” his mother said when the last guest had gone.

More of an effort.

“They are my neighbors, not my friends.”

“Those neighbors comprise the entirety of eligible young ladies in the area. You are eight and twenty, John. Eight and twenty. It is time to marry.”

Angelina. Her image blossomed in his mind. He had thought himself far from matrimony, far from ready to consider sharing his life with another, but she, he could have loved as a wife.

If she hadn't left.

Maybe he should have followed her. It had hurt to be abandoned, to have had her disappear with no word, but she must have had good cause. Perhaps an excellent reason that didn't include
wanting
to leave. An insidious thought.

“What if I married Miss Whitcombe?”

His mother's eyes flew open wide and she looked for a moment like she would choke on air. Not a fortuitous sign.

“The woman with whom you were carrying on an affair?”

The last time she had suggested he and Angelina had been conducting a liaison, he had truthfully denied it. Now he could not. He nodded.

“She's not . . . she's not acceptable, Georgie.” He winced at her return to his childhood name, to the tone of tentative condescension in her voice. “Not the sort of woman one marries. In any event, she's gone.”

Gone. Yes, he knew that, but some devilish obstinacy made him press.

“I find her infinitely more acceptable than any of the women you paraded before me tonight.”

“What, you think your Miss Whitcombe is all that is virtuous?” his mother demanded incredulously. “That somehow she's better than any other woman?”

Better for him. Not that it mattered. God, he missed her. How fast she'd upended his life, made him need more. Need her. Did she even think of him now, wherever she was?

“She's an actress. A
prostitute
.” His mother stood there, passing judgment. As if anyone had the right. He knew Angelina and his mother did not.

“Yes. But she's honest.”

His mother laughed derisively.

“Honest?” she repeated. “Do you even know why she sought you out? I can see you don't. I hired her. To
be
your mistress. How honest is that?”

Heat turned him to molten stone, fury rising within him.

“You did what?”

His mother lifted her chin, standing her ground.

“I employed Miss Whitcombe.”

“To be my mistress?”
His mistress
. Angelina had been his mistress. Been paid to love him. Had—

He reached out blindly for the wall, staggering for its support. Dear God, what was truth and what was a lie?

“Why can I not be your mistress?”

“Are you trying to entice me to seduce you?”

“I'm not in the market to be your mistress.”

She'd been mocking him, laughing at him. Using him. Of course, she had left!

Had she even loved him?

Not that she'd said she had but that last morning, it had felt . . .

He was an idiot.

“I only did it because you can't hide yourself away in that pile of stones for the rest of your life. It isn't normal or healthy.” Would his mother not stop talking? Leaning, back against the wall, he stared at her as she spoke. Her lips moving, the words floating over him in a continuous wave. The way air felt after an explosion—hot and fast and so deafening the world was almost devoid of sound. “And do you know what people say? Georgie, it's time to move back home.”

“No,” he said finally, finding his voice, finding clarity of purpose within the roiling emotions within him. “It's time for me to go to London.”

 

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

I
t was only when he was ascending the staircase up to the fourth floor of the narrow boarding house that it struck him how remarkably easy it was to find Angelina in London. The largest piece of luck being that she had taken rooms at the same house in which she had resided before her sojourn in Auldale.

As he climbed the last flights, he slowed, his legs leaden, a strange nervousness overtaking him. What was he doing?

He'd let fury—the sense of betrayal and the need for answers—propel him to London. But now, ten steps from seeing her again, none of his excuses made sense.

He stopped abruptly.

Jasper bounded up past him, panting with the effort. He watched his dog scramble up onto the landing and then look back, as if to say,
Well?

Yes, well.

Why was he here?

Because she'd lied to him. Because he wanted to know who the real Angelina Whitcombe was. Because she didn't get to make him love her and then walk away without consequences.

Knock on that door, Captain.

He stood taller, finding a strange comfort in the experiences he'd struggled to forget.

As if he were going into battle.

He took the steps two at a time. Swallowed the length of the hallway in half a dozen strides.

Knocked on the door.

The wood felt flimsy beneath his gloved knuckles. One strong rap and he could break it down, tear the inadequate lock from the jamb.

Which meant anyone else could.

The neighborhood was respectable enough, but London was London and she was a woman living alone.

He raised his hand to knock again when he heard the sound of footsteps, muted by the door.

The door opened and there she was. The same and yet different. Harder, smaller. As if London had leached color from her skin, the sunlight from her hair.

But those eyes were the same, and as they widened in incredulous recognition, she seemed illuminated from within. The way she'd appeared—

“What are you doing here?”

Then she looked down, and he looked down, too, at where Jasper was pushing his face up against her dress, trying to climb the fabric up to her face.

“And you too,” she said with a breathy laugh, before looking up again. “This . . . is a surprise. Would you . . . like to come in?”

As if Jasper understood the question, he pushed past Angelina into the room beyond.

Still John couldn't find words to answer her. This was not battle. It was surrender.

“Do you love me, Angelina?”

There was no past, no future, nothing but the present. The space between them. The dim light of the hallway. The worn wood of the floor.

Her mouth parted and she lifted one hand to her lips.

“Yes. But—”

“Yes. Stop. That's enough.” He closed his eyes, aware dimly that he was nodding, as if repeating that confirmation. “All right.” He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. “Then why did you leave?”

T
wo weeks she'd dreamed of him, seen his face, his naked body, like a vision in the dark of the night. She'd caught his scent at strange moments, stopped still on the streets beset by memories, immobilized by the ache in her chest. Now he was there, standing on her doorstep, wanting answers. She shouldn't have admitted she loved him. That was a mistake. But he'd startled her, caught her off guard. And for heavens' sake, she
did
love him.

But however he had found her, for whatever reason he had come, she still couldn't tell him why she'd left. A partial truth, then. Again.

“I left
because
I fell in love with you. If I'd stayed any longer, leaving would have become even harder.”

“Or did you leave because you'd done the job you'd been hired to do?”

“Ah. So you know.” She smiled thinly. “And you tracked me down to excoriate me?”

He was silent. Staring at her, his gaze demanding and relentless.

He wanted to know. Fine. No more lies, no more half-truths.

“I left because the job was done and there wasn't any point in staying. I loved you but what was love when based on a lie? It wasn't my place to tell you I'd been hired.”

Her breath released in a shudder.

Still he was silent. He'd never been a man of excess words but this was unfair. He had to speak, not just stand there with that false smirk taunting her.

“You have every right to be upset. I seduced you for money. I accepted that money even after I fell in love with you. I lied to you.” She put her hands on her hips. “But I only lied to you about why I was there. Everything else . . . everything else was the truth. Not that I wouldn't have lied. If you'd been some other man, I'd likely have felt no compunction then. But everything was different between us. So there is your answer. Satisfied?”

“No, I'm not satisfied,” he said finally, the words a low growl.

“What do you want from me, John?”

“I want you to come back with me.”

“To Auldale?” She laughed. “Are you finally, at long last, asking me to be your mistress?”

“No, I'm asking you to be my wife.”

Oh.

Oh
.

She turned around and walked over to the bed, where Jasper had taken up residence as if he lived there. She moved his tail aside and sat down.

John shut the door. She could feel the room getting smaller. This tiny attic apartment with its slanted ceiling was no place for a man of John's height. John. Who had just asked her to
marry
him. The last thing she had ever expected him to say.

She had put away thoughts of marriage when she'd taken up with Alverley. Oh, someday maybe. But only three months ago she'd been in the prime of her career, rising through the ranks. Another year and her name would be as known as Siddons. Well, perhaps not Siddons.

Until everything had unraveled.

Then transformed.

And now—
Marriage?

And why wasn't he furious, incensed, raging about her heartlessness? She would have, had the tables been turned.

“If I say yes,” she said slowly, looking up at him, “I could be wealthy, settled. I'd be your mistress in another way entirely, even if we call it wife. Is that what you want?”

“I want
you
.”

Those words had power, even now when she was confused, upset. He was so very much
him
. This was her stoic lover, away from his castle, away from where he'd shut himself away.

And in this attic room, which was so opposite of everything that had been between them, she wasn't the woman he had called Angel in the middle of the night.

“You are willing to defy society and your principles, compromise your mother's happiness to achieve such a goal? Don't you care at all?” she demanded. “That I've been a mistress. I've loved men for money. That I've been
your
mistress, John?”

He shook his head slowly.

“Why are you saying these things? Tell me no, if that is your answer. Why try to ruin everything that was between us?”

A desperate anger swelled up inside her. She knew he didn't care. He had never cared. She knew as well that many men of property had married actresses, married their mistresses even. But what would their life be like in Yorkshire? It was not London, where, if perhaps not commonplace, such a union was not entirely strange. In the small village of Auldale, would their love be accepted?

She couldn't think clearly. There were too many thoughts, too many reasons why this was wrong.

“Because it's not fair!” She stood up and faced him, her hands fisted, her body trembling.

“It's not fair that I love you?”

“It's not fair that you are decent, and kind, and that I met you the way I met you. And that I have to live with that. If I marry you, I'll have to live with your mother knowing that. The world isn't that idyll we had. It's bigger.”

S
he was angry but hope sprung in him at her words. Everything she said was true. Their past existed. He'd come to London furious but that emotion had seemed irrelevant the moment he'd seen her again. The moment he'd known he still loved her.

She was standing in front of him, shaking, and he wanted to take her into his arms. Hold her, breathe in her scent and feel the comfort of her body against his. But that wasn't what would convince her to trust him.

“You are right,” he agreed. “Life would not be easy.” She cocked her head to the side and he noted that her hands had unclenched. He pushed on, finding his way to her. “But it would be an idyll. With you. If you prefer London, then we'll live here. Wherever you want to be.”

“London?” She looked incredulous again, but at least here by the light of the window, he could see the pale blue of her eyes. “What about your castle?”

He laughed. “Well, I would hope it does not have to be one or the other.”

She laughed as well,
with
him, and the tension inside him lightened.

“No. It doesn't. Although I can't imagine I'll be on the stage anymore.”

She had asked once what would have happened if they'd met in London. He would have seen her act then, most likely. Had a chance to see her in her element. He'd been wrong before when he'd said they would never have been lovers. He would have loved her at once.

“Will that upset you?”

She pursed her lips, thinking. “Not really, I suppose. Live in an attic and work at bit parts for years until someone takes a chance on me again or be with the man I love?”

The man she loved
. He wanted to hear that again.

“I wonder what is the soonest we can be married.”

“I haven't said yes yet,” she protested with a laugh.

“Don't you realize you've been saying yes for the last five minutes?” he refuted, taking her hands in his own. “I've heard yes.”

“You're ridiculous,” she said. But she stepped forward into his embrace.

“Yes,” he agreed. Just as he'd agree to anything she said. Finally, he could hold her.

He closed the circle of his arms around her, burying his face against the silken skin of her cheek, her neck. What he had done before she had been there?

How had he ever breathed?