[Samuel Barbara] The Black Angel(Book4You) (14 page)

"What is that you're wearing?" Cassandra asked, a wince in her voice.

"I've owned this gown for years. You've surely seen it before."

"Oh, indeed. At least a hundred times, and I've grown to loathe it more each time. That color is hideous on you."

Adriana only raised her brows.

"Not this again, Riana! The bombazine and now this dun? What are you about?"

"Nothing at all. I choose to remain invisible. Is that so difficult to fathom?"

"Invisible. Is that what that is? No, I'm sorry, it's far too remarkably ugly to render you invisible."

Adriana laughed.

Cassandra tore a small bit of bread into an even smaller piece, her eyes narrowed. "Why?" she asked finally. "I'm willing to be your ally in almost anything, but I fail to grasp your motive in this."

Adriana thought of Tynan's eyes, burning into hers in the garden last night, over supper earlier, in the hallway when she was half-dressed—

She crossed her arms. "You would not understand."

"Oh, I see." The words were acerbic. "Because I am not the beauty you are, Lady Lovely?"

Adriana made an impatient noise. "How ridiculous. It was you who nearly slew the man on the steps the day he arrived, not I."

"You
were
jealous!" Cassandra said with wonder in her tone. "As I live and breathe, that has to be a first!" She laughed. "I've waited all my life for a man to see me before he saw the glorious Adriana or even more glorious Ophelia—it's a good thing the child is so much younger or neither of us would have had a chance—and the only reason it worked that one time is because you hid yourself in that horrible dress!" She reached for another crust of bread, plucked a teeny piece from it, and popped it in her mouth. "You were jealous, weren't you?" She grinned impishly and tucked her knee under her elbow. "Please say yes."

Through this long, long speech, Riana had simply folded her arms and waited for the end. Now she dropped her arms. "Yes. Terribly."

Cassandra sighed, as if reveling, then grinned. "I think you like him, your black angel."

"I don't know." She moved to the table, sat abruptly. A vision of him riding that great, black horse came to her, and more: the first, stabbing sight of him dismounting, all lithe perfection and gleaming black hair and dazzling charm. Oh, he'd made her heart stop for a moment.

Then that wounding, painful instant when he'd been unable to hide his disappointment that she, not Cassandra, would be his bride. She covered her face with her hands. "He frightens me."

Cassandra spoke softly. "Because he's beautiful?"

A dozen flickering images burned over her imagination, his supple, naked belly in the candlelight; the way he paused, touching everything, listening to everything when they walked; the sound of his voice, rolling around Shakespeare as if it were a spell of enchantment. She lowered her hands and met her sister's curious gaze. "Because I desire him," she said bleakly.

"If you wish to keep him at arm's length, sister," Cassandra said, "do not gaze at him with those thoughts in your eyes."

Adriana moaned and covered her face again. "You see what a quandary it is?"

"Yes." Cassandra's voice was grim. She lifted a broad-bottomed silver butter knife, turned it over, set it down. "God, you love so easily! When will you learn how inconstant the male race is, Adriana?"

"I said nothing of love!"

"But I know you." Cassandra sighed with impatience. "I remember Antoine. Do you?"

"We were twelve!" she protested. "He was beautiful and charming, and I was a romantic child."

"And that would be normal, but you—you had to steal away and let him kiss you. A stable boy!"

"It wasn't much of a kiss."

"But when Papa found out and sent him away, you pined for months, vowing you'd never love again!"

Adriana tried to hold back a chuckle, but she could not. It burst from her, rich as that lost childhood time. "Juliet never pined better than I! I was certain I would die." At her sister's glare, she straightened her face. "Sorry. You never did understand."

"Not him. Ugh." She gathered a breath, widened her eyes, and continued, "The point is, there was Antoine, then Henry—"

"Shipboard romance, nothing more," Adriana said dismissively. "Thousands of young girls must be smitten by boys aboard ship."

"But you wrote to him for a year, Adriana!"

"There was nothing untoward about it. He was a gentlemanly child—he only held my hand when I was seasick. If our affections had survived, he'd have been a perfectly suitable husband."

Cassandra set her mouth. "And how do you explain away Malvern, Adriana?"

She'd known where the conversation was leading, perhaps even wanted this brutal reminder, but it still felt like a fist to her belly. "Lust," she whispered. "Lust and sin and youth."

"But not
love
."

"No," Adriana said fiercely. "No, I only fell prey to an evil part of my nature. He charmed me, nothing more."

"Oh, Riana!" Cassandra reached over the table and took her sister's hand. "Look at me."

Reluctantly, she raised her eyes.

"I was there," Cassandra said softly. "You were smitten from the first day he spoke to you."

"No! I—"

Cassandra's fingers tightened. "He was beautiful and charming and kind. He brought you presents and pursued you as if you were Helen of Troy. You resisted him, for months—months! And he did not relent until you fell in love." She paused. "In love, not lust."

Adriana looked at the fire, clinging to her sister's hand as remembered emotion came back to her. That deep, almost spiritual feeling she'd had, the purest, most singular thing a young girl ever knows: first love. She nodded. "Yes," she said with difficulty and bitterness. "I loved him."

Standing, she moved away from the gentleness and strength of her sister's gaze and hand. "And I do not wish to make that mistake again," she said firmly. "But I have learned my weaknesses, Cassandra. And one of them is my own hunger. I will not have the will to resist him if he chooses to capture me. So I must make myself invisible."

"Ah! I see." Cassandra nodded. "I'm not certain he is that foolish, but I suppose it is not a bad plan."

"Will you help me?"

"Yes. We'll go shopping tomorrow." She smiled. "Phoebe would tell you to read sermons."

"She's virtuous. Perhaps I should." Adriana paused. "And perhaps you should be as alluringly beautiful as you know. Draw his attention away."

Cassandra pursed her lips. "Is that wise? If you truly desire him, that will cause you pain. I'd rather not be part of that."

"Who better, Cassandra?"

"Because we are sisters?" she asked, but both of them knew the truth.

"Because you will never be tempted."

Memory made a tight line of Cassandra's mouth. "There's truth enough in that."

The noise of a carriage and the low murmur of men's voices reached them. Adriana peered out the window to the street below. "Here they are." She pressed a hand to the spot below her ribs that felt suddenly hollow. "Cassandra, there is no possibility Julian will hang, is there?"

A half-beat of hesitation was all Adriana needed. She closed her eyes as Cassandra said, "No. But he may be transported. If it were anyone else he'd killed, but the son of a former mistress of half of Parliament, including the King's brother… if Malvern had not been the best friend of the Prince of Wales… if there—"

The voices came into the hallway below, and the sisters looked toward the sound. Adriana tried to hear some measure of the gravity of the situation, but only heard Gabriel make a jest, likely some form of gallows humor. Whatever it was, it brought forth a chuckle from Tynan. And then they were on the stairs and at the doors, and Adriana found she was holding her breath.

And as if they knew it, the men stood silent, side by side, no expression on their faces whatsoever. But in a flash Adriana saw how alike they were—graceful, as befitted the swordsman and horseman they each were. Gabriel had always been the tallest man Adriana ever met, but as they stood side by side, she saw that Tynan was taller by a tail. Tynan's hair fell in that thick, glorious swath down his back, and Gabriel's tumbled in a glory of curls women went mad for. Tynan's eyes were bluer than morning, while Gabriel's were that pale green that was so startling in his face.

But on two mouths she saw the lurking amusement at the torture their silence gave, and in two sets of eyes a glitter of laughter. And it was in this that they were so much alike.

Here were men who chose to thumb their noses at fortune. Who laughed at threats, and made a dance of sorrow. As long as she could remember, she'd loved best this quality about Gabriel—it balanced her too serious turn of mind, balanced the drama she found in every moment.

And of all things, it was the one quality she most heartily despaired of seeing in a man she was bound to resist. She glimpsed, suddenly, a flicker of that brooding darkness in Tynan's face, and worry leaped in her.

"Tell us!" she said sharply.

It was a room for women, not men, and they dwarfed the small, carved chairs they took. Tynan swept by Adriana, and she smelled the city night on him, smoke and river air and rain, and again remembered that he'd not taken his kiss today.

"There's little enough to tell," Gabriel said. His mouth was grave now. "They did not detain me, as his second. Julian will be taken to the Tower, and will be tried by the House of Lords."

"When?"

"I don't know. Soon, I should think." Gabriel helped himself to a pear and bit into it. "Tonight I'll go about and see what I might hear. Unless you have some use for your husband," he said with a wicked grin at Adriana, "I thought he might come with me."

A ripple of relief washed through her—if he were out, he would not claim his kiss—and she spoke quickly. "He's a man. Since when do men ask permission of their wives?"

"It wasn't permission," Tynan said quietly, all too close. His breath whispered over her ear, and Adriana repressed a shudder. "Only a polite understanding of the pleasure newlyweds often take in each other."

Adriana winced, blushing. "Do you mind?" she said, glancing at her siblings.

"I do." He took her hand and stood abruptly, tugging Adriana up with him. "Excuse us. I require a word in private with my wife."

She yanked discreetly at his hand, trying to pull away. She suspected his motive here, and feared that hallway and his strength and the strange tension she felt about him tonight. But he held fast to her hand and she could do nothing to free herself without causing a scene. Lifting her chin, she allowed herself to be drawn into the passageway, all too conscious of her sister and brother exchanging a speculative glance.

The hallway was dim, with only a single candle spluttering in a sconce, and against her will, Adriana felt anticipation. His hand, dry and strong, nearly engulfed hers, and she liked the heat of it, the smell of night in his coat, the look of his long, glossy hair falling down his back.

"What is so private?" she asked.

He turned and faced her. The small light from the candle caught on one high, arched cheekbone and on the tiny bristles of beard on his jaw. A sudden, hard wish made her want to put her hand there, feel that prickle and his firm jaw against the heart of her palm.

One side of his mouth quirked. "Do you have some other use for me tonight, wife?"

Adriana made her face blank. "Of course not."

"I thought you might be a little… lonely, your first night in town, perhaps a little melancholy over your brother." It was half-teasing, half-serious, unexpected tone, which unsettled her.

He had not let go of her hand, and Adriana realized she'd not made a move to take it back, either. She did so now, hastily. "I will be fine."

"There is much for me to learn in these places. And I suspected you had no use for me, since you have your novel's Lovelace to keep you company."

Drat him! Adriana couldn't help but smile. "True."

"I suppose I must claim my kiss now," he said, and eased ever so slightly closer to her. "I've been thinking all day on where best to land it."

She swallowed, a hard pulse beating in her throat, and raised her eyes. "And what did you decide?"

He lifted a hand and touched a single finger to the center of her brow. "Here."

And somehow, she did not move as he took one step closer, lifted his hands, those big, graceful hands, and put them around her head. They covered her ears, creating a sense of envelopment. Slowly, he bent his head and very deliberately pressed his mouth against the place on her forehead, that spot he'd primed so simply with his finger.

He did not hurry. It seemed a thousand years between the moment he first began to bend and the instant his warm lips touched her flesh, and another thousand—filled with a rushing sort of dizziness—that his mouth stayed there, moist and hot, burning into her head—that he lingered. Her nose brushed his chin, and the prickles of beard sent a ripple of something straight through her middle. His hands did not move, but she felt his thumbs against her cheek and thought of them on her mouth last night.

By the time he let her go, Adriana knew her skin was flushed the color of wine, and again the imprint of his hands and lips lingered on her flesh, echoing with tingles that it seemed should be visible.

As if it were nothing, he stepped away again and asked calmly, "Do you ride?"

"What?" her voice seemed to come from very far away.

"I would like to ride tomorrow. Perhaps you would accompany me?"

She found her wits and pushed away from the wall, where she seemed to have slumped. "Yes. That would be fine."

"Good."

They rejoined the others, Adriana wondering faintly where her mind had gone. How would she resist if he did this every day? She threw an alarmed and pleading glance at Cassandra, who took one look at her sister's face and leaped into action. "Will you deliver me to an acquaintance on your way?" she asked.

"Of course."

"I'll fetch my wrap then. We'll let Riana off first, shall we?"

Gabriel glanced at Adriana quickly, but remained silent. She did not miss the way he stroked that tiny strip of beard between lip and chin, but there were some things a woman could only share with a sister. Gabriel would simply have to wonder.