Fallen Angel (49 page)

Maddie became more involved in her work. Though she was a little nervous about standing up in a room full of strangers and delivering her address, she was not new to the experience of public speaking. At Miss Maitland's Academy, she had been a member of the Literary and Debating Society. All the senior girls were obliged to participate. She knew first hand about the thrust and parry of public debate. Still, she felt herself to be more than a trifle rusty, and wondered a little at her own temerity in putting herself forward in this way. It was, however, too late to draw back.

Her powers of concentration, as Miss Maitland had once remarked, were extraordinary. Samuel Spencer had already entered the room and barked his greeting before Maddie became aware of his presence. He said a few sentences which at first made no sense to her, then spun on his heel and was gone.

Maddie's eyes flew to her aunt's. Miss Sinclair had gone as white as a sheet. Only then did the significance of her grandfather's few words penetrate. His voice could be heard outside the door issuing orders to sundry servants. Maddie threw aside her notes and went sprinting after him.

She caught him as he was about to descend the main staircase. "Whose engagement is to be published on Friday?" she asked breathlessly, laying a detaining hand on his sleeve.

"Your engagement to Raeburn," he replied, and would have continued on if Maddie's hand had not clamped convulsively on his arm.

"No," she said, then again, more forcefully, "No. It's out of the question."

She felt the colour recede from her cheeks, and knew that her lips had developed a betraying quiver. She pressed them together to stop their trembling, waiting with fragile control for the explosion that would blow her away.

It seemed as if they had become rooted to the spot, so long did they stand there staring unblinkingly into each other's eyes. It was Maddie who broke the silence.

"Grandfather, I must speak to you," and without waiting to see if he followed, she picked up a candelabra and led the way to the downstairs library.

She moved like a sleepwalker to one of the straight-backed chairs and could not say whether she was more relieved or frightened when her grandfather stepped into the room. Without glancing her way, he lit a taper from the candelabra she had set on the mantel and proceeded to light several branches of candles around the room. Only then did he turn to face her, his feet splayed out on the hearth, his hands clasped behind his back.

Refusing to be intimidated, she took the initiative, beginning with the least contentious issue. "You said that you were going to Paris. When?"

His stare unnerved her, but he answered her question without hesitation.

"Tomorrow morning, at first light. There's a sale or two in Paris that Yarmouth and I happened to hear of while we were in Canterbury. I should be back within the week."

Nervously, she licked her lips, and pressed on. "Why is it necessary to publish the announcement of my engagement to Raeburn when you're away?"

"Why not?" he asked.

She let his question revolve in her mind and tried for a calm she was far from feeling. Finally, she said, "The duke has not asked me to marry him."

"Nor shall he. My dear, what did you expect? This is an alliance negotiated by lawyers." His tone gentled. "I would not have accepted Raeburn's suit, however, if I had not thought that he would make you an admirable husband. You must rely on my judgement."

"You are not my guardian," she said doggedly. "You have not the right to dispose of my future."

For the first time, she felt the flash of his anger, though not a muscle betrayed him.

"A minor matter," he argued. "As I've said before, what guardian would cavil at the offer for his ward from a duke? Besides, the marriage itself will not take place until we hear from Canada. Does that satisfy you?"

There was only one more argument she had yet to use. "I don't wish to marry Raeburn."

She could not be other than grateful for his restraint. In fact, she was almost persuaded that her avowal had been long expected. Quietly, reasonably, he began to use every argument at his disposal to convince her of her good fortune.

Tell him now that you are married to Deveryn,
one part of her brain told her. But instinct overrode logic, for there was something about his eyes, something about his stance, which warned her to be cautious. If Deveryn had been with her, she thought, she might have had the courage to confront her grandfather with the ruin of his ambition. Without Deveryn, she felt like a sparrow in the shadow of a soaring, predatory hawk. She could not do it.

He said something which dispelled the fog of her meandering thoughts.

"My father?" she questioned. "What has he got to do with my marriage to Raeburn?"

"It's what he wanted—agreed to, in fact."

"Are you saying that my father wanted me to marry the duke?"

"Indubitably. It was part of our bargain."

"Bargain?" She thought her voice sounded like the echo in the game she had once played in the granite quarry she'd been taken to see when she was a child.

"The bargain we made about your future before he left for Scotland and the accident which claimed his life. I had thought to spare you the details. Not that there's anything to hide, you understand. It just seemed more expedient—better," he quickly corrected, "that you remain in ignorance of the terms of our agreement."

She felt suddenly overly warm and was surprised when she shivered. Her eyes met her grandfather's hard scrutiny with unwavering intensity. "What agreement?" she asked in sudden trepidation, and knew by the way his eyes narrowed that he had determined to be brutally honest.

"For a price, your father gave his consent to your removal to my house and your future marriage to Raeburn."

She could only stare.

"Oh, don't look so stricken," he said irritably. "It's not so cold-blooded as it sounds. He was desperate for money. I proposed a brilliant match for you and an end to our estrangement. It was all done for your own good."

There was logic in what he was saying. She could sense it all through her body.

"Do you say that my father came into some money?"

"A fortune," he answered dryly.

She laced her hands together and stared at them blindly. Some part of her refused to accept the harsh reality of her grandfather's words. With a flash of bravado, she burst out, "Why should I believe you? There was never any love lost between you and my father, and I shall never be persuaded that he would put me up for sale as if I were a piece of prime horseflesh at Tattersall’s."

Her bitter words apparently left him unmoved. "You're letting your imagination run away with you, Maddie," he replied evenly. "You have no reason to doubt my words. I tell you, your father and I settled our differences. You should be grateful. For once in his life, he was putting your interests above his own."

"You said he sold me for a price."

He grew impatient. "All right, all right! If that's the way you want it! He sold you for a price. Does that satisfy you?"

"I won't believe it. My father was a gentleman. He loved me. He would never have been a party to such a proposal."

It was when she saw the dark flash of colour on her grandfather's cheeks that she realised she had inadvertently insulted him in the worst possible way. She had implied that he was not a gentleman. In actual fact, he was not, for Samuel Spencer was not of gentle birth. In the circles in which he moved, such a circumstance put him at a disadvantage. It was something he concealed as much as possible.

The words of apology trembled on her lips, but before they could be uttered, his voice slashed the silence.

"Your father may have been a gentleman, but he was not above compromising his honour for a price. We can settle this argument very easily. Before he left for Scotland, he went on a spending spree, everything of course charged to my account as we'd agreed. The unpaid bills are still accumulating. I've instructed my solicitor to pay off every last one of them. You may see them if you wish."

She was beyond words and simply stared at him through the gathering mist which clouded her vision.

"As you wish," he said, his voice devoid of expression. "I shall leave word for Gregson to come by some time tomorrow so that you may peruse the cancelled debts at your leisure. But prepare yourself for a shock."

He had moved to the door and held it open. It was obvious that he regarded the interview at an end. Maddie slowly got to her feet and obeyed his silent command.

"You'll find out, Maddie, that your father was a profligate as well as an inveterate gambler. Money slipped through his fingers. One can tell a lot from a man's bills and bank statements. You'll discover that you were very low on the list of Donald Sinclair's priorities. I shall be back within the week. For the moment, I defer to your wishes on the announcement of your engagement. But it's only a postponement. Remember that. It's too late to withdraw now. We shall talk of this later when I return."

There could be no discrediting her grandfather's disclosures when on the afternoon following their conversation, Mr. Gregson himself delivered the bills into Maddie's hands. Most of the accounts were for garments from expensive modistes, a few were from prestigious jewellers for costly trinkets, and one, a ninety-nine year lease was for a house in Baker Street made out in the name of Cynthia Sinclair. Donald Sinclair had been a devoted husband evidently, thought Maddie. At the very bottom of the pile was a gaming debt in the amount of ten thousand pounds. Maddie knew that what she held in her hand was her father's vowels—an I.O.U. made out in his bold script to one Jason Verney, the Viscount Deveryn. She looked at the name and the sum of money involved for several long minutes, and a deathly stillness seemed to creep into the room.

In a sudden, heedless passion, she slammed her fists into the inoffensive, Louis XV escritoire where she sat, oblivious of the raw pain to her knuckles where they'd scraped the smooth mahogany of the desk. She palmed her eyes and tried to calm herself.

Memories, hedged in by a newer loyalty, suddenly burst the dam and sucked her into a raging whirlpool of disillusion and anguish. Deveryn and Cynthia. Behind her closed eyelids, she could picture them perfectly. And where memory failed, imagination ran riot. Scene after scene flashed before her eyes, torturing her with the spectacle of Deveryn and Cynthia in moments of intimacy. A little sob shook her suddenly.

Deveryn and Cynthia—together, like two sides of the same coin—a nemesis for the House of Sinclair.

"Ah, Papa," she murmured out loud, overwhelmed by a sudden surge of pity for the father who had failed her. Deveryn and Cynthia, driving him to ruin with a carelessness which seemed more callous than premeditation. Besotted by his young wife, indulging her with every extravagance to buy her love, Donald Sinclair cut a pathetic figure.
As I do,
she thought, and felt the pain for both of them in every cell in her body.

Like a marble sculpture, she sat without moving, her hands cupping her eyes. She lost track of time. When she came to herself, she was completely disoriented, and for a moment could not think where she was. Then her eyes fell on the bills which lay scattered around on the carpet.

She picked them up and went through them methodically. By her reckoning, her father had run up debts, including his debt to Deveryn, to the staggering total of twenty thousand pounds. Drumoak was the least of Donald Sinclair's losses, for she did not think that it would fetch as much as a tenth of that sum. She stared dry-eyed at the bills in her hand, smoothing them again and again with trembling fingers.

When she left her chamber to go to dinner, she was very calm, very composed and frighteningly empty of all emotion.

For two days, it rained solidly—a not unusual circumstance given the geography and the time of year. Foreigners to the capital, and there were many since the publication of Princess Charlotte's engagement to Prince Leopold, might have been excused for thinking that the natives were strangers to the phenomenon, so loudly and pithily did they voice their displeasure.

Maddie was not one of them. The vagaries of the English climate gave her a reprieve from Deveryn's demands, since a drive in the country, or even in the park, was no longer an adequate subterfuge to permit him to pursue their clandestine marriage.

The viscount, on the other hand, complained as much as any man, and with more reason, in his opinion. The unrelenting rain had very effectively kept him from his wife.