Angel in Scarlet (14 page)

“I told you. I—I was lonely.”

“I know the feeling well,” he said.

“Why did
you
come?” I asked.

“Same reason Will Peterson did.”

“To get drunk?”

“To find myself a woman.”

“I—I see,” I said.

“Looks like I succeeded,” he told me.

He tightened his arm around my shoulders and the glow inside spread until I could feel it in my fingertips, in my toes, coursing through my veins like a glorious elixir. He no longer thought of me as a child, a noisome brat always getting into mischief. He saw me as a woman, and I was truly a woman at last. The Angie I had been all these years had been miraculously transformed, seemed but a distant memory, and I was filled with new emotions, new instincts, a new wisdom as well.

We strolled past the gypsy caravans, the gilt and garish colors bathed in flickering orange torchlight, shadows dancing on the ground. Cooking utensils rattled. A dog barked. Hugh scowled as a dark gypsy man approached us with a cap in his hand. The gypsy muttered a curse, retreating. Hugh seemed lost in thought, silent and content to stroll aimlessly with his arm curled so casually, so naturally around my shoulders. He had been so very unhappy for so many years, but that was going to change now. I was going to make him forget those bitter years. He belonged now, and neither of us need ever feel lost or lonely again.

I smiled as we passed the booth where one tossed hoops at the stake, hoping to win one of the gaudy dolls propped on the shelves in back. Hugh asked me why I was smiling and I told him how in years gone by I used to toss the hoops and never once got them all around the stake, never won a doll. He sighed and slowly uncurled his arm from around my shoulder and asked me which doll I wanted. I told him I was much too big for dolls now and he scowled and ordered me to pick one. I smiled again and pointed to the prettiest doll of all, a porcelain lady with blonde hair and a blue hat with tiny blue plume and a blue gown spangled with tiny gold stars.

“That one? It's yours,” he said.

“She's very special,” I told him. “You have to get
all
the hoops around the stake three times in a row, you can't miss even once. No one's ever been able to win her. She looks a bit dusty, poor thing.”

Hugh stepped over to the counter and spoke to the man behind it and gave him some money and the man handed him a big pile of narrow wooden hoops. He moved back a few steps, squinted, tilted his head to one side and then tossed the first hoop. It sailed smoothly through the air, whirling around the tall stake ten feet away, as did the second, the third, the fourth. He was utterly relaxed, didn't seem to concentrate at all, seemed bored, in fact, yet all the hoops went spinning around the stake.

Several people had gathered to watch, and the number of spectators grew as the man behind the counter retrieved the hoops and gave them back to Hugh. Hugh nodded and began to toss again. The man stepped back, forcing a hearty smile onto his plump lips. “'Ey, look! It's Th' Bastard!” someone shouted. “'E's tryin' to win th' special doll!” Hugh's spine stiffened and he hesitated a moment, but he didn't turn around. He tossed the next hoop. It hit the top of the stake, shimmered, almost went over the other side. I sighed as it toppled and rattled noisily down over the stake. The spectators cheered, and Hugh continued to toss and ten minutes later the plump man behind the counter reluctantly handed him the doll. Several people applauded. Hugh scowled and thrust the doll into my hands and then walked briskly away, shoving a man out of his path.

I hurried after him, afraid, upset. He didn't slow down, didn't say a word when I finally caught up with him, didn't even acknowledge my presence there at his side. Panic welled up within me as people streamed past us in noisy swarms, as music blared and raucous laughter rose. I tripped and almost fell and he stopped and grabbed my arm and looked down at me with dark brown eyes full of anger and bitterness and pain. His fingers squeezed my arm with bruising force, but he wasn't even aware of it. He looked into my eyes with frightening intensity, and a long moment passed before he frowned and relaxed and released my arm.

“Go away, Angie,” he said, and his voice was stern. “I'm no good for you. I don't want you to be hurt.”

“You—you heard what that man—”

“I heard. Take your doll. Go home. Find a good, respectable man and marry him and have a good, respectable life.”

“I—I don't want that. I don't want the doll, either.”

My voice trembled. A merry young girl in a sprigged yellow dress moved past on the arm of a husky lad with flaxen hair and roguish blue eyes, and I turned and gave the doll to her. Her eyes widened in surprise, then filled with delight when I told her I didn't want the doll, it was hers. She stammered effusive thanks and then she and the lad moved on and I looked at Hugh Bradford. He stood there, silent, frowning again, the frown digging a deep groove above the bridge of his nose. The air between us was charged with an entirely new kind of tension.

“I—I told you earlier,” I said. “I'm much too big for dolls.”

His mouth curled at one corner. He looked at me for a long time before answering. Those brown eyes studied me, darkening almost black, and I knew what he was seeing, knew what he was thinking. It frightened me just a little, but I didn't lower my own eyes.

“Yes,” he said at last, “it seems you're all grown up now. Go home, Angie.”

“I love you. I think I've loved you for years.”

“You shouldn't,” he warned.

I didn't reply. My silence, my level gaze said more than words, and he finally shook his head and the frown disappeared and his face was expressionless again. In his tall black knee boots, his snug black breeches and loose white shirt with full, flowing sleeves gathered at the wrist, he looked like a pirate, I thought, that raven wave spilling over his brow like a slanted V, that lean, sharp face so deep a tan. The decision was mine, I knew that, and I knew that I should leave, now, while there was time, while there was still a choice. I knew that I should let him get on with his life and get on with my own, without him, but I couldn't do that. There really wasn't any choice. I looked at him. He knew.

“Shall we go?” he said.

I nodded, and he curled his arm around my shoulders again and we continued on past the tents and stalls, past the vendors, past the dance floor. I was nervous now, trembling inside, the old Angie longing to be safe at home, longing not to know the meaning of these new emotions that held me in thrall, but my step didn't falter as I moved toward my destiny, for that was what it was … my destiny. I was destined to love this man, and I knew it would be futile to try to resist. I shouldn't love him. He had told me so himself, but that didn't matter. Common sense told me this was dangerous folly, but what I felt for him was too strong, too compelling, and I refused to listen.

We left the fairgrounds and started across a field, walking slowly, and I didn't ask where we were going. I really didn't care. I was with him, and the trembling ceased and the magic began anew, light and lovely inside me, a wonderful effervescent feeling as though I had imbibed the finest, the lightest champagne. I felt joyous and jubilant and might have been walking on air instead of over a vacant field brushed a soft silver by starlight. There was a light summer breeze, and my skirts billowed, as did the sleeves of his thin white cambric shirt. It was very warm. I could smell the faint perspiration on his skin, a musky male scent, could smell his thick hair and the scent of woodsmoke and leather.

The lights of the fair were far behind us now, a mere blur of colors on the horizon, the music so faint it was barely audible. The summer sky above us was a misty purple-gray shimmering with pale-silver stars, the earth silver-gray streaked with velvety-black shadows. A bell tinkled somewhere nearby. A cow lowed. There was a scent of hay and damp soil. Hugh still hadn't said a word, and that was fine with me. I was content to walk beside him and feel his warmth and strength, his body lean and long, moving slowly in long, lazy strides. I rested my head against the arm curling across the back of my neck, reveling in the beauty of the night and the beauty inside. We came to a low gray stone wall and he stopped and caught me around the waist and lifted me up and over, and a moment later we started across another empty field. I could see haystacks in the distance and, on the horizon, the silhouette of a farmhouse.

“No one's home,” he said.

“This is one of your tenant farms?”

“The Rawlins'. They've gone to spend a week with his brother in Surrey. I feed their livestock every day.”

“Father says you've done a wonderful job with the tenant farms. Do you like your work?”

“Someone has to do it.”

“I—that was tactless of me.”

“I'm sorry. I was terse. I shouldn't take my bitterness out on you. I can be a real sod sometimes.”

“I know. I remember.”

“I remember, too. I remember a lively and saucy child with huge violet-gray eyes and dirt on her face and the vocabulary of a stevedore. I remember a moody, awkward adolescent ill at ease with herself and bewildered by the emotions inside her.”

“I—I must have been awful.”

“I thought of you often,” he said.

“Did you?” I asked quietly.

“I couldn't get you out of my mind,” he told me. His voice was flat and matter-of-fact. “One day I saw you in the village with your father. You were coming out of the bookstore. It was market day, I remember, and I was supervising the sale of some of our produce. I saw you and I stared and I said to myself you had grown into a very fetching young woman.”

“But not as fetching as Solonge,” I said.

“Solonge?”

“Surely you remember Solonge.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“And how often did you think of her?” I asked. I couldn't resist it.

“Not once,” he said. “That's why you slapped me that time, isn't it? You knew.”

“Not until you mentioned the turquoise dress.”

“She—”

“You needn't explain,” I told him.

He didn't. We sauntered on until we reached the haystacks, and then he stopped and uncurled his arm from around my shoulders and stepped back, resting his hands on his thighs. He looked thoughtful there in the starlight, a small frown furrowing his brow, his mouth spread wide, indecisive. His face was bathed in soft silver, lightly shadowed, and I could see the doubt, the hesitation in his eyes. I reached up and touched his cheek, resting my fingertips against it, and then I ran my forefinger along the curve of his lower lip, smiling a quiet smile, loving him so, longing to love him even more. He scowled. I loved his scowl.

“You're not Solonge,” he said gruffly.

“I know.”

“I should take you home immediately.”

“But you won't,” I said.

He folded his arms across his chest, scowling still, and he was silent for a long while. In the distance a cow lowed. The light summer breeze caressed my bare arms and cheeks like warm, invisible fingers, and a tendril of hair blew across my temple. He was brooding. He might have been alone. His face was harsh. The beauty of the night and the beauty inside me was so poignant I was near tears, but I didn't cry. I smiled instead. The future had been a vast void before, an emptiness yawning before me, but now it beckoned, full of marvelous promise.

“There's something I want you to know,” he told me. His voice was grim. “I'm not a bastard, Angie. My father married my mother in Italy. I know it. One day I'm going to prove it. There was a nurse—her name was Maggie Clemson, I remember her well, although Lady Meredith discharged her when she came to Greystoné Hall. ‘It isn't true, lamb,' Maggie told me. ‘Your mother was a lovely lady and she married your father in the church, and this—this is a scandalous outrage. That woman has bewitched your father. A grave injustice is being done. A grave injustice.' I was little more than an infant at the time, but those words were burned into my memory. ‘A grave injustice.' Maggie left and I never saw her again, but—”

He cut himself short, staring angrily across the silvered field. Several moments passed before he spoke again.

“Greystone Hall should be mine, not Clinton's. My own father has cheated me out of my inheritance. Better he should—better he should have given me to the gypsies than keep me on the estate so I could nourish my bitterness and hatred. How many times have I longed to kill him, kill her? There's murder in my heart still.”

“Hugh—”

“One day, when I have the means, I intend to prove the truth, and then I will be worthy of you.”

“Worthy? You
are
worthy, Hugh. I don't care about your birth, that isn't import—”

“It's important to me!”

“Of—of course it is,” I said quietly. “I—I didn't mean—” I hesitated, groping for the right words. “It's
what
you are that matters, not who you are or where you came from.”

“I'm taking you home, Angie.”

I shook my head. He was suffering. He was in pain. He had grown up as a pariah, an outcast, and he had never known love. I had love to give, sweet balm for those wounds, and I would not turn away from him now, even though he might try to drive me away. I took his hand. I held it tightly. He made no response. He might have been carved from stone. I wished I were experienced like Solonge, wished I knew what to do, what to say. I felt helpless, filled with longing, filled with love, not knowing how to express it. I stood there on the threshold, and I was frightened, trembling inside, but I knew I would take that final step, knew I must if I was not to lose him.

He took a deep breath and looked down at me and saw the love in my eyes. His face was like granite in the starlight, the V-shaped wave slanting across his brow. I let go of his hand and touched his cheek again. His chest rose as he took another deep breath, and his mouth tightened. His eyes were dark, full of indecision. I reached up and brushed the wave from his brow. It was heavy, silky to the touch, the hair spilling through my fingers and tumbling back into place immediately. He hesitated a moment longer, and then his eyes filled with tenderness and I knew he loved me, too, fight it though he might. He put an arm around my waist and pulled me to him and tilted his head. His lips parted, but he didn't kiss me, not at first. He peered into my eyes, and in the soft starlight his own told me all those things he couldn't bring himself to say aloud.