Fallen Angel

Brenna looked at him uncertainly.

‘For the ball,’ he enlightened her. ‘As you promised, minus the dress and the dances.’

She nodded, little in the mood for teasing. ‘Goodbye, your Grace.’ She curtsied stiffly, though her eyes softened. ‘And thank you for helping Michael and for the doctor…and the medicines,’ she added lamely, for it seemed her constant place to ever be the receiver of favours, apart from in the first few moments of their acquaintance.

Nicholas almost began to speak again but, thinking better of it, tipped his hat and walked into the night. How did one offer gifts without also offering an affection he knew she wanted nothing of? How did he, knowing De Lancey’s financial problems, balance pride against charity, balance help against interference?

Chapter Five

Nicholas spent the next two days sifting through the records of Michael De Lancey’s family, finding, to his surprise, the notice of a brother, Fenton, blessed with six daughters by 1837 and then a long-awaited son born in the same month and year that Nicholas’s investigations had turned up as Brenna’s birth date. He glanced again at the latest letter from his lawyer, which had uncovered some more facts. Fenton’s wife Daphne still lived out of York, mad by all accounts but cared for by the youngest daughter, the others having made respectable, if not grand, marriages. A furrow creased his brow as he copied the country address of the house called Farnley, standing in a borough of the northern city of York. Crossing to a drawer, he pulled out a map, unfurling it on the table before him, trying to plot the exact route he would need to take to reach this place.

Brenna Stanhope was taking over his rational thought, he thought wryly, remembering back to last night’s unexpected visit from Deborah Hutton. The opera star at the height of her career and charms had always appealed to him, yet, as he had taken her to his bed, he had imagined not honeyed tresses but ebony ones, not sky blue eyes but fearful violet orbs, not light flirtatious banter but a heavily veiled articulate aloofness that bespoke all of the one he was becoming increasingly obsessed with. Last night had shocked and worried him in a way no other incident ever had. He had to be mad to let Brenna affect him like this and yet he was completely powerless to change it. ‘Keep your distance, Nick,’ he chided himself softly. ‘Remember, Brenna Stanhope is just an interesting diversion, nothing more.’ He rang for his butler. Burton appeared less than thirty seconds later, bowing slightly as he entered the Duke’s company.

‘You called, your Grace?’

Nicholas smiled, easing the other man into a more relaxed stance. ‘I need to go to York for a few days tomorrow on business. Could you let the stables know and have them bring the brougham around at nine o’clock in the morning?’ He stopped, trying to find a way to phrase the next sentence. ‘If my family should enquire of my whereabouts, tell them that I have had to go north and I will be home on the Sabbath. If there is a problem that you feel needs my attention, you may send word to the Excelsior in York, though I can think of nothing that could warrant such a need, short of a disaster.’

Burton nodded, a look of puzzlement crossing the man’s countenance, though if Nicholas saw it, he gave it no heed.

Farnley was an old house, once grand but run down and tatty looking, and the farm cottages were in the same sad condition. Nick was not surprised. He knew the family to be in straitened circumstances since the death of Fenton.

The carriage stopped at the front portico and Nicholas stepped out. Without warning, a door swung open and a young woman appeared. She came out into the light with a familiar reticence, and in that second Nicholas knew the answer to all his intended questions, for there could be no doubt that this was much more than a distant relation to Brenna Stanhope.

‘Good afternoon, I seem to have lost my way to Smail’s Mill.’ He made mention of a small town he knew to be a few miles to the west of Farnley, bringing a map from his pocket to reinforce the statement. ‘I am Nicholas Pencarrow, newly come from London, and you would do me a great service if you could point out the direction I must follow.’

‘Oh.’ The girl blushed, obviously hesitating as to whether or not it was proper to speak with him, when a voice came loudly from inside.

‘Who is it, Charlotte? Who is there? Who has come to see us?’

‘Excuse me.’ Charlotte bowed politely, and disappeared into a side room to return immediately and bid him enter into the company of Daphne De Lancey.

Even in old age she was a beautiful woman, though there was a glint of madness in her eyes and a certain unkemptness about her appearance. Charlotte mirrored her handsomeness, but Brenna outdid them both, and a portrait that hung askew upon the wall behind her showed the six daughters all from the same mould, and a son thatched blond and freckled. His glance flicked back to the woman he now knew to be Brenna’s mother.

‘Welcome, Mr Pencarrow, to Farnley. I am Daphne De Lancey and this is my daughter Charlotte.’

Nicholas turned and favoured the girl with a smile. She was taller than Brenna, heavier of feature, though much more open to strangers.

‘I am very pleased to meet you, sir.’ She curtsied as stiffly as Brenna did. That trait must run across all the De Lancey women, Nick thought, for a sense of independence sprang from these two nearly every bit as strongly as it did from the youngest Miss Stanhope. Or De Lancey, he corrected himself.

Brenna De Lancey, born exactly the same day as her brother George and disappearing thereafter for all of twelve years.

Daphne’s voice brought him back into the present. ‘My daughter tells me that you are lost.’

‘I am, and if you could but give me some instruction as to the path I must follow to reach the Mill, I would be most grateful.’

Daphne stood. ‘We usually eat here within the next half an hour. I know this is an invitation pushed upon you without much warning and indeed by strangers as we are, but we would deem it an honour if you were to join us.’

Put so humbly, how could Nicholas refuse, and his smile touched his eyes for the first time as he surveyed the two women before him. With a little persuasiveness in the right direction there was much here that he could learn and he could also begin back for London that very same night.

‘I would be delighted, Lady De Lancey, though it truly cannot be for very long as I have business matters most pressing to attend to.’

‘Hurry then, Charlotte, and fetch Mr Pencarrow a beverage,’ Daphne barked the order and the girl jumped up towards the drinks’ table, turning back to him only as she reached it and enquiring of Nicholas what it was he wished to have. His glance raked across the ill-laid trolley chancing on a port he enjoyed, and he gave her his preference.

‘Are there just the two of you here?’ His eyes flicked to the family portrait behind Daphne.

‘At the moment…yes,’ Charlotte answered with an open honestness. ‘All of my sisters are married. George, our brother, died soon after that drawing was completed.’ She stopped, watching Daphne before adding, ‘Our father too.’ Sadness showed plainly across both faces.

‘You were lucky, then, that the land was not entailed,’ Nick said quietly. ‘Some families could lose everything were the male heir to die.’ It was said more in innocence than design, though as he looked up an expression of such guilt was written across Daphne’s face it was as if she had screamed, We lost it way before that, and taking her drink she finished it in one long and unbroken swallow.

Charlotte glanced around uneasily at her mother, and Nicholas, seeing her uncertainty, raised his glass in a toast.

‘Here’s to life,’ he said slowly.

One begun, one ended. Two babies, born on exactly the same day to two very different women, and a family lost to Brenna.

A coldness began to settle inside of Nicholas, an answer to a puzzle he didn’t want to find, a premonition of Brenna’s fear, of her secrecy, an understanding of Michael’s protection and an explanation for Daphne’s madness. He squashed it down, not willing to dissect it at all further, and questioned Charlotte instead. ‘Do you ever come down to London?’

‘Oh, hardly ever,’ she laughed. ‘We have a relation there, my father’s brother.’ She glanced around uneasily. ‘He has a house in Camberwell, I believe. A Sir Michael De Lancey—mayhap you know of him?’

Nicholas made light of his answer, unwilling to take the subject any further for he didn’t wish to alarm Daphne or inadvertently frighten Michael or Brenna into flight.

‘It’s a big place,’ he replied flatly, his eyes flitting unbidden back to the visage of an unlawful male heir and a family portrait which should have proudly held the likeness of a woman who was becoming increasingly important to him.

The drive back to London was a long one for Nicholas, all his energies spent trying to unravel the puzzle of Brenna De Lancey Stanhope, and, on arriving in town he directed his driver to deliver him to his club instead of Pencarrow House.

Almost the only other occupant of the place as Nicholas walked through the salons was the Earl of Drummorne, Francis Woodhams, sitting ensconced in an armchair by the fire, brandy in hand and lost in thought.

‘Penny for them?’ Nick chided as he sat to join him, beckoning a passing waiter for a whisky.

Brown eyes rose in greeting, a tepid smile barely lighting them in humour. ‘Sit at your peril, Nick, for I warn you today I am not good company.’

‘Did your brother abscond with more of the family jewels?’ Nicholas quipped without apology, thinking of Bertrand, a known gambler whose excesses seemed paid for only by Francis’s good intelligence in business.

‘Nay, it’s Louisa. She’s leaving me!’

‘But you only just returned from Paris and, from all accounts that I’ve heard, the trip seemed more than a success.’

For the first time Francis smiled. ‘I thought so too! It seems, however, the life of a well-bred courtesan is not enough for her. She wants her independence.’

Nicholas grimaced. ‘Tough to promise,’ he said with feeling.

‘My thoughts exactly. Seems she has a woman friend in business on the east side of town, someone from her far and distant past. The woman is the epitome of “unconventional femininity”, according to Louisa. Together they could rule the world.’ He up-ended his glass. ‘Louisa working in an orphanage. Can you even imagine it?’

‘Hell!’ Nicholas lurched to his feet. ‘Not the Beaumont Street Orphanage run by Brenna Stanhope?’

Astonishment raced across Francis’s brow. ‘Yes. I’m sure that is the name she mentioned…’

‘Interesting, indeed.’ Nick stood, running his hands through his hair before facing Francis urgently. ‘Where’s Louisa now?’

‘She’s at the town house. You want me to go with you right this minute?’ Francis groaned and stood. ‘This had better damn well be important, Nick.’

‘Believe me, it’s very important,’ came the cryptic reply, and Francis hurried to catch him up.

The walk through Hyde Park to Mayfair was a long one and Brenna paused to look around her, the semi-dusk of the early afternoon burying the city under a carpet of smoke.

London. It was glorious and dismal, rich and poor, elegant and tatty. Here, in an area favoured by the fashionable and wealthy, the houses changed their coats; larger, spacious, gardened and well to do, and Brenna, walking now into Mount Street, smiled as she caught sight of Louisa waiting patiently at the corner, parasol opened above her to guard against the dampness in the air.

‘Brenna!’ The girl came forward. ‘It seems an age since I’ve seen you.’

‘It has been,’ Brenna returned, kissing the offered cheek lightly, her eyes widening with astonishment at the beauty before her. ‘And how a year in Paris has changed you, Louisa! You look wonderful.’ Her glance fell across the colourful silk bodice of a day gown cut daringly low.

Louisa smiled, tucking errant blond curls beneath a lace-edged cap. ‘Francis bought me a whole wardrobe in Paris. He bought me this too.’ She pulled forth a necklace, laced in gold and emeralds, and Brenna, holding them, felt the warmth of Louisa’s body on the metal.

‘And you’re happy?’

‘I am trying to be, though sometimes…’ Her blue eyes darkened as she struggled to continue. ‘Sometimes I would like to be more in control of my own destiny, Brenna, and determine my future just as you have yours. But enough of that. The reason I have asked you here today is to give you a gift!’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, and from Paris no less! You’re to come right now and try it on. Francis has just left and won’t be back till tomorrow at least and I have the apartment entirely to myself.’

Brenna stepped back, unsure about continuing. They met usually in some anonymous safe place far from the real world of either, and seldom discussed the past that bound them both together. Now, well dressed and pampered, Louisa wanted no recollection of her early years, and Brenna had little want to delve there either. It was as if in this mutual pact of silence something was salvaged, some sense of dignity and honour, some shape of a past that mitigated their guilt and let them stand free and independent.

‘I’m not sure,’ Brenna hedged, thinking of some reason to leave, but seeing the hurt of disappointment in Louisa’s eyes. ‘Well, perhaps only just quickly. I really can’t be long.’

‘Nay, not long.’ Louisa wound her arm through Brenna’s and excitedly bundled her down the street, stopping at a well cared-for, semi-detached house that lay wreathed in elegant black iron lacework. Finding the key, she pushed the door open and Brenna, stepping inside, was assailed by the unmistakable smell of expensive perfume.

‘Up here!’ Louisa beckoned, running up steps draped in eastern carpets. ‘I want to show you your present.’

Brenna followed, crossing to a bedroom that filled the whole front of the house, French doors spilling out to a balcony and lawn lace curtains shielding it from the view of others. Her mouth fell open with amazement.

‘This is your bedroom? You sleep here?’ Her eyes noted a bed, easily the largest she had ever seen, and shifted back to the woman beside her, her dimples appearing as unexpectedly as the sun after a long and dingy day. ‘Goodness, Louisa, but this is decadent.’

Louisa chuckled and threw open her cupboards. ‘Wait till you see the rest, but be warned against criticism, Brenna, for our childhood of otherwise has taught me to enjoy excess.’

The words were said gently and Brenna sobered, running her fingers now through yards of silk and velvet and tulle in the shape of what seemed like a hundred gowns hanging in proud array. ‘They’re beautiful, Louisa. I think that this Francis must truly love you.’

Blue eyes twinkled. ‘He does and one day he’ll realise it, but for now…’ She went to one end of the cupboard and pulled forth a gown still wrapped in calico to shield it from the light of day.

‘This is yours, Brenna. I found it at Bussy’s. The madam there said it had been ordered by the daughter of a Marquis who had never come back to claim it and I thought of you straight away.’

Brenna pulled off the drab material that enfolded the garment, and her eyes were filled with wonderment at the sight before her: an evening gown of dark red silk, high backed and square bodiced, the V-shaped front trimmed with wide lace revers, and an overskirt gathered at the waist before falling in scalloped edges to the floor.

‘My Lord,’ she breathed to Louisa. ‘It’s lovely…more then lovely…’

‘You truly do like it?’ Louisa squealed in happy anticipation. ‘Try it on!’

‘Now?’

‘Yes.’

Both girls fell into laughter. ‘You’re sure no one will come?’

‘Positive.’

It was all the encouragement Brenna needed and, peeling off the blue velvet, she reached for the red silk, Louisa fastening the row of tiny buttons at her back.

Intrigued, Brenna went across to the armoire, stretching up on her toes to see the hemline and un-pinning her hair, using Louisa’s brush to stroke out the shiny heavy mass of curls until they gleamed. ‘I can’t believe that you bought this for me,’ she whispered, trying at the same time to pull up the bodice a little. ‘You’re sure it suits me?’ A tiny niggle of doubt sat in Brenna’s mind as she turned towards the mirror, her breasts swelling across the tightness.

‘Wonderfully!’ Louisa supplied, laughing as the other woman blushed. ‘And it’s well past time you broke out and wore something apart from navy. The world of men is not at all as you may think it to be, Brenna, and old age can be lonely without a soulmate.’

Brenna was still, caught between the past and the future in a way she often was in the company of Louisa. And the dress of silk and lace felt undeniably luxurious.

‘People truly wear the décolletage this low?’ Brenna’s knowledge of the latest in fashion was, at her own admission, sadly lacking.

‘All of them, though this one would be considered tame, even on an unmarried lady.’

Brenna pulled the bodice up for a final time, sighing as she made not a whit of difference to the amount of exposure. ‘It almost seems indecent,’ she whispered, wishing suddenly that she did have the confidence to be seen in such a gown, given that it was hers to keep.

‘Well, it’s not, though you may feel happier if I showed you the whole thing. Come downstairs with me and help me bring up the mirror from the front salon. It’s usually kept up here, but Francis has just had the hinges mended. We’ll find some shoes and a hat and you’ll be able to see your dress properly then.’

Buoyed up by Louisa’s enthusiasm, Brenna nodded; five minutes later they were in the front hallway, heaving the heavy mahogany piece of furniture towards the stairwell.

‘Tip it my way,’ Louisa commanded, ‘and hold it still. I’ll see if I can lever it up on to the banister.’ Brenna strained and brought the length across her chest, lowering her arms to try to heave it upwards and feeling the breath leave her body with its heaviness.

‘Are you sure we can manage this, Louisa?’ she queried doubtfully.

‘I’ve done it before with the maid.’ She frowned. ‘Or perhaps it was with Francis…’ And at that second the front door, not five steps away from them, was flung open, spilling forth an astonished-looking blond man and Nicholas Pencarrow, two pairs of eyes staring at them in disbelief.

‘Brenna?’ Her name came incredulous and huskily from Nicholas and she almost expected him to reach out and touch her just to ascertain she was not a mirage. Her arms quivered beneath the weight of the mirror, caught in its heaviness so that she could not even adjust the neck of her gaping dress and, as Nicholas came forward to relieve her of its burden, she felt his eyes running across her.

Shock surged through Nicholas’s body. Brenna here and in the company of Louisa Greling and shoeless, her hair falling loose across a gown fashioned from lace and silk? Brenna with one of London’s most celebrated courtesans and looking just as provocative? Where were the high-necked blue velvets, the books, Beaumont Street? How could he reconcile one with the other?

The question was forming on his lips as she whirled, racing up the stairs without pause, her face aflame with embarrassment, the dress seen through Nicholas’s eyes acquiring only a cheap showiness, which in Louisa’s company had not been obvious.

Slamming the door behind her, she hauled off the gown, tears of frustration rising as she tried to unfasten all the tiny buttons. Reaching with shaky hands for the blue velvet, she pulled it on with as much quickness as she could muster, one foot against the door to bar entry given the complete absence of any lock. Once the dress lay in place across her body, she felt stronger, wrenching her stockings into place with fingers more like her own and tying her hair back in one long and customary plait. Wide eyes observed her reflection in the mirror. Lord, what could she say to him? How could she explain away her friendship with Louisa or her reasons for being here?

Honesty!

The word came quiet and true and with a growing resolve, but the newly found confidence completely shattered when she heard a knock on the door and the Duke of Westbourne’s voice without.

‘Brenna? May I come in for a moment?’

In panic she made for the door, pushing it open and herself out in almost the same movement. She would meet his questions on the landing, not in the bedroom, though with no sign of Louisa or the man she presumed to be Francis, her heart began beating anew.

Nicholas stood, leaning slightly against the railings of an ornate balcony, his gaze softening as he observed the transformation of the woman now before him, laced into the shapeless navy velvet as though covered from head to foot in androgynous armour.

With quiet patience he stood his ground, waiting for her to look at him, willing her to explain what was going on. Finally, an anguished visage tipped up to his.

‘It…it…it is not as you may think, your Grace,’ she stuttered in her haste to explain. ‘The dress was a present from Louisa, from Paris, which she insisted that I try on after making it plain no visitors at all were expected this afternoon.’ She stopped, taking a breath in nervousness. ‘It’s very flimsy and hardly me and far too…too…’

‘Revealing?’ Nicholas supplied. Green eyes glittered with a hard masculinity. ‘You do know what this house is, do you not, Brenna?’

She turned at his question and walked towards the stairs, willing him to keep his distance, willing herself to stand her ground.

Quietly she nodded.

‘Then you also realise how damaging it would be to your reputation if another had arrived instead of me? No matter what the reason?’

Again a small shake, the brittle sharpness of unshed tears welling behind her eyes. He could never know how well she understood the danger or how close to the truth he tarried.

‘Louisa has been a friend of mine for a long time, though today is the first day I have ever come here. The dress…’ she added brokenly, ‘I haven’t many and thought perhaps for your ball…’ She bit back the words as soon as she had said them, cursing her stupidity and waiting for laughter.

None came.

Nicholas stood still, fighting the pain in his heart, fighting the desperate want of her that swept through his body at her confession. In truth the dress looked stunning, but for all the wrong reasons. And she still did not have a dress for his ball.

His mind flicked to the countless clothes most ladies of his acquaintance had the choice of, worn once and discarded, and it was on his tongue to offer again the gift of a more suitable gown, but he kept silent, seeing the intrinsic pride in the lift of her chin and in the anger of her own admission.

‘Come, Brenna,’ he whispered softly. ‘Let me see you home.’

She hesitated, bewildered by his gentleness and her own lack of alternative. ‘And the other man with you,’ she said. ‘You will explain?’

He nodded, watching her carefully, the man in him hard pressed to act the gentleman she expected. God, if he had any sense he’d seduce her here and now and be damned with the consequences. Already he could hear the muffled noises of lovemaking in the salon below. Francis and his mistress seemed to have settled their differences in passion, he surmised, wishing it could be that easy for him. His loins ached with the want of her.

‘I think we should leave,’ he said huskily, stepping back as she preceded him down the stairs, unwilling to speak further until they were outside, so little did he trust himself.

Brenna frowned and did as she was bid. Suddenly he seemed angry and withdrawn. Would he let it be known that he had found her in such a compromising position, or worse, would he withdraw his money from the orphanage altogether?

Concerned violet eyes raised up to his as they came outside into the drizzle of a late afternoon. Taking a deep breath, she began in earnest. ‘I realise my behaviour today was inexcusable, my Lord, and the dress—’