The Passion of an Angel

Miss Prentice walked to a corner of the room, picking up her almost always present glass of water and taking a sip before saying, “Lady Wendover has not sufficiently recovered her strength after her ordeal of last year, my lord, and should not be forced to deal with such an ill-mannered child. I beg that you rethink the matter, then go about discovering a suitable school for at least a year. I personally have heard of such an establishment in the north, somewhere near Edinburgh, I believe. Backboards, firmly administered corporal punishments for insubordination, thrice daily prayers—”

“Oh stubble it, Prentice. You’ve interrupted my counting. Besides, I know very well how a lady behaves—probably better than you, as a matter of fact. My grandmother was very particular that I should understand what it takes to be a lady. I just don’t like you, that’s all, and don’t give a fig what you think of me,” Prudence explained, turning her back on the woman.

“I’m not too taken with you, either, my lord Daventry,” she continued, smiling. “But you don’t have to worry about your sister. I know which side of my bread is buttered, and I’ll be good when I have to be. Now, where was I? Oh yes. Eight. Eight…seven…six…”

Banning inclined his head slightly in her direction. “How you soothe my troubled mind, Miss MacAfee,” he drawled, addressing her formally, as he had since entering the bedchamber here at the Cross and Battle, as he had done since their stormy interlude at the ruin—not that he had seen her above twice since then, as he had secreted himself in the private dining room at the inn just outside Milford and rode ahead of the coach during the day. “Just remember as you count down the numbers, and as you are playing the proper young miss around my sister, that I am the one footing the bill for your coming excursion into London society.”

“Don’t blame me for the promises you made, Daventry. Counting time is over, I fear. Don’t say I didn’t give you fair warning,” Prudence shot back, grinning as she began unbuttoning the unsuitable pink gown, starting with the buttons that seemed to climb halfway up the front of her slim throat. “Oh, look at me! The country bumpkin stripping down in front of the London gentleman. Quickly, Miss Prentice! Scream! Faint!”

“Angel, please,” Banning whispered in warning, unwilling to look away. Unable to look away. Good God! What was wrong with him, that he could not look away? How had he come to be so eager for the sight of a few inches of Prudence MacAfee’s sun-kissed skin, when he had just to walk into any ballroom in Mayfair to see yards and yards of bare, supple, creamy white female shoulders and bosoms.

Three more buttons were pushed free of their moorings, exposing several more inches of flawless, golden skin. “Please, my lord Daventry? Please what? Please stop? Please continue? Better run away, my lord, run away quickly—or else take another look, as your first one the other morning seemed to interest you so much.”

“His—your…your first, my lord?” Miss Prentice asked, her watery blue eyes rounded in question, in anticipated horror. “My lord, I fear I must insist you explain.”

“The bloody hell I will!” Banning exploded and bolted for the door, ushered on his way by the lilting trill of Angel MacAfee’s delighted laughter.

IT WAS DARK IN THE private dining room that adjoined his bedchamber at the Cross and Battle, but the Marquess of Daventry made no move to light more than one of the tapers stuck into the small branch of candles sitting at his elbow on the table.

After all, if he lit the remainder of the candles it would then be possible to see his reflection in the nearby windowpane, and he had seen more than enough of the man he was in the past two hours to wish to look himself in the eye just now.

It was depressing, believing himself to have turned, almost overnight, from a sober, upstanding man of the world, into a lech. A lusting, dirty-minded lech.

Yet here he was, a reasonably intelligent man of nearly five and thirty, reduced to drooling over a green goose of an eighteen-year-old woman-child with the come-hither body of a siren, the all-knowing eyes of a vixen, and the brash language and devil-take-the-hindmost attitude of a young buck first out on the town.

She had no shame, no wiles, no carefully cultivated airs, and no compunction about saying what she thought, doing what she wished, flaunting convention—not because she was being deliberately difficult, but just because she was Angel MacAfee, and Angel MacAfee didn’t give a flying pasty what anyone thought.

Flying pasty! Christ on a crutch, now he was being reduced to thieves’ cant, taken back to his own fairly rackety salad days—corrupted by a female barely old enough to be out of her leading strings!

Ah, what imp of mischief had entered Henry MacAfee’s mind that he would christen his sister with such a misnomer as Angel? Banning knew he would say that she had all the makings of a wanton, baiting him the way she had, except that he also knew she had acted more from anger that he would dare to look at her as a woman than she did from any longing to crawl into the nearest bed with him.

She had dared him with her lush, golden young body, successfully pushed him away by the simple tactic of pretending to draw him closer, made him embarrassed to be a man, ashamed to feel what could only be considered normal male desires, wants, needs.

Not that her daring warning had been necessary. He was certainly not about to do anything about his absurd attraction to her, save for possibly attempting to drown it tonight, and forever.

“Damn her for having seen the last thing I wanted her to see, the last thing I wanted to acknowledge, even to myself,” he grumbled aloud, reaching yet again for the wine bottle he had ordered sent up from the common room. It was his second bottle of the evening, and he might just order a third if this one didn’t do the trick.

Lusting, longing…and now a descent into spirits, a headfirst dive into a bottle. And all because of Angel MacAfee. It was lowering, distinctly lowering, and he filled his glass to the brim, just thinking about it, and ignoring the slight squeak of the door to the hallway as someone, probably Rexford, pushed it open.

“The lizard said you gave up drinking more than the occasional glass of wine ever since you got yourself so bosky you couldn’t think clearly enough to conjure up a way of slipping free of my brother’s request that you be my guardian. As far as I can see, the next time that woman’s right will be the first time, eh, Daventry?”

Banning swallowed the wine all at once, tossing it back as he would have done a stronger spirit, then glared at Prudence, who was still in the doorway, grinning at him across the darkness. “That large wooden contraption you are leaning against is called a door, Miss MacAfee. It is employed by civilized people as a method of ensuring privacy. It is also used to knock on, if a person of manners and breeding desires admittance to that place of privacy. Kindly close it behind you as you leave.”

“Certainly, my lord Grumpus,” Prudence said affably, leaving the door open as she crossed to the table plunking her shirt-and breeches-clad self down in the chair facing his, her forearms resting on the thick oaken arms, her legs splayed out in front of her in the way of a young buck settling in for a night of gaming and drinking. “But seeing as how I’m not planning on going anywhere just yet, maybe you’ll remind me again when I do leave. I’ve got the breeding, or so my brother assured me over and over, but my manners might still need a little work.”

“I suppose this unexpected visit to my private dining room means you no longer believe I have any designs on your virtue?” he asked, thankful his voice sounded light, teasing, and just a little condescending.

“Ah, Daventry,” she cooed, pushing the thick curtain of her hair up and away from her neck as she winked at him. “I’d be a damned fool to think an old man like you capable of even planning a seduction, let alone executing one. I was just trying to get your goat, that’s all, and I wanted to let you know you’d been looking. Guess it worked, huh?”

“You do enjoy baiting people, don’t you?” Banning asked, watching as she leaned forward and poured herself a glass of wine, then crossed her booted ankles in front of her on the table top, tipping her chair back slightly on its hind legs. “Or is it just that you take great pleasure in—you believe—shocking people with your uncouth behavior?”

She looked at him over the brim of her wineglass, then sighed in patently false impatience. “I’ve already demonstrated to you that I have a fine vocabulary, Daventry. I’ve already promised you that I will be a patterncard of all the finest and most stultifyingly boring virtues whenever I am with your sister. In truth,” she added, her smile as wide and innocent as a child’s, “I am by and large a most agreeable, friendly sort of person, really I am. But I’m afraid you probably will have to indulge me as I go about exacting a small spot of revenge aimed at punishing you for leaving me with Shadwell months longer than necessary. You cut it a slice too fine, so that I’ll have to rush myself into the season. Remembering that fact, I’m still fairly angry with you, but it’s a feeling that’s slowly wearing off as we draw closer to London. As to the lizard? Well, she just plain begs to be shocked.”

“All right,” Banning said, raising his glass as if in a toast, “I suppose I can withstand the slings and arrows of your childish tantrums for another day. As long as, in turn, you understand why I barely slow the coach as I deposit you at my sister’s doorstep.”

Prudence’s laugh was full-throated, not the simpering giggle of most society misses, and he found himself joining her in her amusement, feeling better than he had in several hours, several days.

“Just be sure to toss the lizard out first, so I can have the pleasure of landing on her. She wouldn’t be a soft cushion, God knows, but I have developed a nearly overwhelming longing to knock some of the bile out of her. I’m not used to having enemies, you know, and she has threatened to tell your sister that I’m incorrigible and past saving. The interfering bitch,” she ended quietly, taking a deep drink of her wine.

Banning sighed, wondering how he could be sitting here, fairly calmly, sharing the night with Prudence as if she were a young chum of his, listening to her swear, watching her drink, laughing with her. He was rather proud of himself and felt slightly foolish for his earlier thoughts, his earlier fears. It was remarkable. He felt no desire for her now, no longing to kiss her, run his hands along the tightly outlined sweep of her hips, press her body close against his own…molding her…shaping her…taking her…breathing in her fire, her vitality, her lust for life….

He sat forward and poured himself another drink, wondering whether the wine would be of any real benefit to him in merely sliding down his throat as he swallowed the lie he was trying to tell his better self, or if he would be better served to dash the contents of the glass in his slowly heating face, shocking his system back under some semblance of control, of sanity.

“This patterncard of all the finest virtues soon to be delivered on my sister’s doorstep,” he said after a moment’s internal battle, having reminded himself that he really didn’t have a single thing in common with Prudence MacAfee. “Will she likewise treat me with the respect and consideration owed one’s legal guardian? Or should I be watching my shins, on the lookout for childish kicks, whenever my sister isn’t in the room? Not that I’m worried, mind you. I just would appreciate having the rules laid out, so that we both know where we stand.”

Prudence unfolded her long legs and dropped her booted feet hard against the floor, tipping the chair to an upright position once more as she plunked the empty wineglass on the table, all in a single masculine, yet deceptively feminine, graceful moment.

Leaning forward so that she ended with her elbows propped on her knees, close enough now that, just for a moment, Banning thought he could see the devil peeking out from behind her golden eyes, she said, “I really bother you, don’t I, Daventry? You can’t figure out who I am, what I am—or what I want.”

She sat back against the wooden slats of the chair and began counting off on her fingers as she spoke. “Well, let me set your mind at rest. One: who am I? That should be obvious enough. I’m an innocent, hapless, helpless, penniless orphan, a sweet young bud doing her best to bloom in a cold, cruel, uncaring world.”

“I could argue with you on the helpless part of that statement,” Banning said, beginning to relax once more. She was a child. A precocious, faintly amusing child. “As for being sweet, well, I won’t even bother to refute such an obvious crammer. Please, go on.”

She nodded solemnly, her only acknowledgment that he had spoken, then went on, as if doing him a personal favor by speaking, “Two: what am I? Ah, the answer now becomes more involved, more difficult, as you perhaps have already figured out on your own, much to your chagrin. Care to count along with me this time?”

She needs a good spanking, that’s what she needs, Banning decided, finding himself caught up in her brashness, while feeling himself fascinated with her brutal honesty, her bald admonition that she was not in the least ordinary or even acceptable.

When he didn’t answer her facetious questions she shrugged, then held up four fingers, touching them one at a time as she spoke. “I am, my Lord Daventry, the sum total of all my parts. Part child of long-forgotten doting parents, part product of a stern and socially conscious grandmother, part victim of a half-crazed grandfather who values money and his pathetic rituals more than he does his own flesh and blood, and part sister of a devoted but frequently absent, much older brother who loved me enough to see that I’d be taken care of, but not enough to make the effort of taking care of me himself.”

Her regal demeanor evaporated even as he watched, and all at once she looked very young, and very insecure. “And, now, lastly—what do I want? I don’t know, Daventry!” she exclaimed after a moment, grinning brightly again. “Not yet. But when I do, I’ll let you know. All right?” That said, she slapped her palms against the arms of the chair, then stood, obviously ready to leave the room.

Stung by her honesty, and once more feeling sorry for her and the bizarre, almost unnatural life she had led, he called out toward her retreating back: “I convinced your grandfather to make me a solemn promise before we left him to wallow in his purgatives. I agreed to continue paying him the quarterly allowance I’d been sending to you, and he gave his solemn word that he would will you his fortune. You’ll be a rich orphan one day—one day soon, if Shadwell also ambles about in that toga of his in mid-winter.”

His words stopped her just as she got to the door, and she turned to look at him intently, her hand frozen on the tarnished brass door latch.

Compassion hastily shoved to one side and delight at his good deed forgotten, he suddenly realized the full import of what he had accomplished in his gentleman’s agreement with Shadwell MacAfee. No wonder Prudence couldn’t think of a thing to say. He had her now. She was in his debt now, just as he was bound to the promise he had made to be guardian.

They were, finally, on an even footing. His guilt over leaving her in the country, locked away at that hellhole of a farm, and his second, worse guilt—that of coveting her, seeing her as a woman to be desired rather than a responsibility to be discharged—was no more.

It had been just this moment replaced by the sure knowledge that he had rescued her from that hellhole, and was about to launch her into society—into, he hoped, a quick, advantageous marriage with the promise of a fortune as an added fillip to the dowry he would bestow on her.

He had no reason to drink, to chastise himself. The scales he had been seeing in his mind, scales so recently tipped in favor of this comely ragamuffin, had just evened out, balanced by his maturity, his sense of duty, his intelligent, measured approach to what could, if he had let it, have disintegrated into a never-ending battle of wills.

He was, at last, established as her guardian. She was, at last, firmly in the position of grateful ward.

Though perhaps, as Prudence’s next words, dipped in vitriol and delivered in sharp, staccato jabs, those scales were still sadly out of kilter.

“You know, Daventry,” she said, shaking her head, “just when I thought you and I had come to some sort of agreement, just when I thought I could begin to be open with you, explain myself to you, prepare you, you went and proved to me that you have no understanding at all. None. But then, that’s why my brother picked you, isn’t it? You’re just the sort of honest, responsible, upstanding, gullible gentleman who believes in the value of promises, aren’t you? And I hate you for making me feel sorry for you!”

And with that, the enigma, the chameleon that was Angel MacAfee was gone, the door left open behind her, not because she had forgotten to close it, Banning was sure, but because he had asked her to shut it, and she wasn’t about to do anything he asked of her, required of her. Not, at least, without a fight.

Mostly, she wasn’t going to leave his mind. Not when he could close his eyes and still see her as she roused, warm, tousled, and eminently touchable, from her bed.

Not when the memory of the way she had walked toward him, taunting him with her eyes as she slid open the buttons of her gown, still caused his throat to grow dry, proving to him that he was not above lusting after her, even while knowing that she was too young, too innocent, too unsuitable, too alien to the image of the woman he would choose as his wife.

Not when, even with his eyes open and his head reasonably clear, he could still see her sitting in this room, drinking and lounging with the assured nonchalance of an equal, yet never letting him forget that she was an exciting, vibrant, desirable, unconquerable creature of unending contradictions.

Lastly, he would never forget, waking or sleeping, that she was his ward, his sworn responsibility, and therefore totally beyond his reach.

She pitied him. Even as she teased him, deliberately tormented him, she still pitied him, as if she were the adult and he the child. Perhaps she even despised him, believing him to be simple beyond belief in having put credence into Shadwell’s assurances as to the disposition of his wealth.

With the clear eyes of youth, she seemed to see all the vices, lies, and cynicism of the ages, making him the young one, the naive one. Still he wondered to himself why he seemed to lamentably unknowing to her when he was accustomed to believing himself a mature man of the world.

Perhaps she’s right, Banning thought, pushing the cork back into the wine bottle. All right. It didn’t seem that farfetched. Perhaps Shadwell wasn’t going to live up to his side of their agreement. Prudence must know her grandfather better than he did, having lived with him, witnessed his crushing economies in the name of fortune firsthand.

The man was an abomination, a miserable excuse for a human being, consumed by his eccentric rituals and a mad desire to amass wealth at the expense of his estate, his grandchildren, his own creature comforts.

But Shadwell had promised, and Banning knew that he had given his promise in return. And that, in Prudence’s mind, had branded him as an irredeemable fool.

What had she said to him earlier, flinging the words at him? Oh yes. He remembered now. Don’t blame me for the promises you made.

And he had been making a plethora of promises in recent years.

He had promised her brother that he would care for his “angel.”

He had promised his sister he would fetch that same unwanted ward to Mayfair where she could mold her into a simpering, giggling, die-away debutante.

He had promised Shadwell MacAfee a quarterly allowance against the fortune Prudence deserved.

He had promised his father that he would put away the silliness of youth when it came time to take on the family title, and would behave with the circumspection and sobriety befitting that title.

He had promised a multitude of things to people he could neither contact nor refuse.

But the real trick of the thing, the promise he would find most difficult to keep, was the one he made now to himself late on this quiet night in Epsom—his personal vow to stay as removed from the life of Prudence MacAfee as possible. To banish the image of this obstinate, headstrong, willful, profane, smudged-face “angel” from his mind, and—if he was very, very lucky—from even the fringes of his heart….

CHAPTER SIX

I stood

Among them, but not of them; in a shroud

Of thoughts which were not their thoughts.

George Noel Gordon,

Lord Byron

IT WAS JUST COMING ON TO dusk when Daventry’s coach entered the city, Miss Prentice snoring rather loudly in the shadows after being pushed into a corner by Rexford, who had squealed in disgust when the slumbering woman’s angular body had listed in his direction, her wide-brimmed purple bonnet slamming into the bridge of his nose.

Prudence, who had been sitting squarely in the center of the facing seat ever since reentering the coach at the last posting inn—stubbornly refusing to move to one side to allow Miss Prentice to sit beside her as she had done since leaving Epsom that morning—scooted to one of the windows and dropped the leather curtain, eager for her first sight of the metropolis.

“Do not look, Miss MacAfee,” Rexford warned unexpectedly, raising a snow white handkerchief to his nose. “And, whatever you do, do not drop the window. We will be past this unfortunate area shortly, and into more civilized territory.”

Rexford’s warning was all Prudence needed. Where she had been interested in seeing London, she was now avid to take in all its sights and sounds and even its smells. “I have lived with a man who bathes in dirt,” she said, reaching for the latches that would lower the glass. “I doubt that I—oh my God!” She slammed the glass back to its closed position, turning to Rexford to exclaim in disgust, “Do they use the streets for latrines?’

“Among other things,” the valet told her, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing a small bottle of scent. He then pulled out the stopper and handed the perfume to a grateful Prudence, who quickly waved it beneath her nostrils. “As Prentice is a dead loss,” he went on, his rather high-pitched voice holding the tone of an indulgent, wiser adult speaking to a child, “and as Lady Wendover, although a lovely creature, is not known for her mental profundity, I suggest you listen carefully to what I have to say as we near the end of our journey.”

Prudence grinned, for the man had barely opened his mouth all the way from MacAfee Farm, unless it was to bemoan his fate at having been sent into the country in the first place.

“Feeling more the thing now that you’re closer to home, are you, Rexford?” she asked, passing the scent bottle back to him and watching as he dripped some of its contents on his handkerchief then breathed in deeply. “I didn’t think Daventry would keep you if whining and retching were your only fortes. And I must say, I do admire the way you dress his lordship. He is a credit to your art. Please, anything you might say that could be helpful in easing my way into Lady Wendover’s world would be most appreciated by this country bumpkin.”

Rexford inclined his head to her, the ghost of a smile visible behind the handkerchief, and Prudence knew she had made her first conquest. Finally. She had begun to believe she had lost her touch! Not that her brother had said she was all that lovable. It was, according to him, just her wide, golden eyes and “innocent angel” expression that had everyone from dairy maid to Squire tripping all over themselves to help her, to confide in her, to—simply—like her.

“We don’t have much time,” Rexford pointed out, “and I won’t be seeing you on a regular basis, I imagine, but I believe you would be best served by keeping your mouth firmly shut when you are unsure of yourself, restrain the impulse to scratch at any covered areas of your body, imitate Lady Wendover’s manners at table and in the drawing room, and lastly, find some way to get yourself shed of—as I have noticed you have so aptly dubbed her—the lizard.”