To Seduce an Angel (11 page)

The startling news three years past that Sophie Rhys-Jones claimed to have married Granville and borne him a son had caused Charlotte to weep and collapse as she had not allowed herself to do at any time in the early years of her grief. For a fortnight grief and giddy exhilaration had warred in her, and she had wisely kept to her rooms until she could behave again with the dignity of a duchess.

Her husband insisted that such a marriage could never have taken place and that the young man produced by the Jones family was an imposter with no connection to the ancient line of Granvilles of Wenlocke. Charlotte's knowledge of her husband suggested otherwise. He continued to blame Sophie Rhys-Jones for robbing him of Granville. He could not forgive her for having a living son, and all his bitter anger had no other object but this youth.

Charlotte had not seen the young man. His family kept him closely guarded. An appalling story circulated in the press and in the print shops that her husband had arranged for the boy's abduction and captivity. In November after three years and great expenditure, the boy had won. The court had proclaimed him Marquess of Daventry.

The news of it had stiffened the gait and hardened the visage of the duke still further. Charlotte did not know how she felt about the court's ruling. The possibility that she had a living grandson, that a bit of her own dear boy had survived, caused her moments of intense agitation, hope, and caution in a terrible struggle. She wanted to see this youth, to judge for herself whether he had anything of his father in him. That was not to be for the moment.

Her concern at the moment had to be finding Louisa's granddaughter. Charlotte schooled herself to patience yet again. Louisa's granddaughter was an extraordinary gift, something from the storm of the past washed up on Charlotte's shore that she did not mean to lose.

She smoothed the pardon request in her grip. She would take it to the king herself. He might hide at Windsor from his subjects as much as he liked, but he would see the Duchess of Wenlocke.

Her husband could not stop her. For all his power in the world he could not match her power at Wenlocke where every person from the lowliest scullery maid to the exalted eminence of her butler was deeply loyal to her. Charlotte would discover what Wenlocke and Aubrey had done with Emma Portland.

AT two on another long afternoon of the boys' resistance, as Emma leaned over to help Robin form the letter
A
, all the slates hit the floor with a bang. Emma jumped, and the boys leapt from their seats and charged from the room. The door banged behind them, and their voices and footsteps echoed down the stairwell, a fading din that told her they were past recalling.

She straightened and looked around the deserted schoolroom. Slates lay on the floor. Chairs, three overturned, faced every direction, like wreckage washed up on a shore. For two days her lessons had gone well. The younger boys might not admit to learning, but she had seen them mouthing words and making letters with their fingers on their slates.

She crossed to the window and saw them burst from the north door, running in a wide broken line down the slope toward the nearest wood. They were not much like the students she had been coming to love in the duchess's school. Their rude liveliness made for constant banter and restless movement that erupted in sudden brawls. Lark made the most difficulty. Today he had organized a pattern of slate dropping. The startling smack of slates hitting the floor had punctuated her morning math lesson, breaking the concentration whenever the boys seemed on the verge of understanding.

Tatty would call them blockheads, but Emma could not. She was beginning to understand their resistance. They feared that Daventry would send them away as soon as they could read and compute.

She leaned her forehead against the cold glass. She should not care. She should not feel the abandoned schoolroom like a wound. She was not a true tutor but a spy. Teaching might have been her work, an odd thing to think, if she had stayed with the duchess, but that brief life had ended when Aubrey connected her with the murder in Reading.

The duchess had put a Latin saying over the schoolroom door at Wenlocke.
Incipit Vita Nova
—
Here Begins New Life
. Emma had taken the saying to heart. She had certainly needed a new life that day. Her old one was gone forever. And those students, the duchess's people, seemed to know the secret of how to be happy. Emma had thought she might learn it from them.

A new life was a good thing, becoming someone else, going beyond where you began, but it struck Emma that some students even in the duchess's school found seeking a new life an act of disloyalty.

The thought brought her back to Daventry's wards. Their unwillingness to learn was an unwillingness to let go of the past, of who they once were. Lark reminded them each day of how to speak and think and fight as if they still lived in London's streets. Daventry wanted them to leave that life behind and learn to be new men, but he had to teach them, and now he rarely saw them. He kept to himself by day and left Emma to oversee them at supper.

“You again,” Lark had complained.

Emma knew Daventry was avoiding them because of her dairies. Whatever Wallop hoped would come of Emma's shameless display of her person, in fact, her attempt at seduction had driven him from his own dinner table.

The best thing Emma could do for the boys was to keep making her plans. With each trip to the village, she collected and hid something for her journey. She had a sturdy pair of half boots and an extra woolen gown. Once she escaped, Daventry could find his wards a true teacher who would teach them to lead those new lives. If only she knew that Tatty was on board that ship. She felt in her pocket for the small piece of Leo she had left, the medal lying warm against her hip.

Through the window she saw the boys reach the wood. Standing watching others escape suddenly seemed pointless. What she wanted was to be in motion like her reluctant charges, to be moving her limbs and breathing fresh air. She took one last look at the deserted room and turned for the door. Haste did not make her careless. She practiced turning the knob. It didn't make a sound.

The blue skies of her first days at the hall had vanished. A steady west wind brought in low steely clouds. The sharp breeze mingled the smells of fresh-turned earth and river. Emma pulled her thin cloak around her and counted her steps. It would be good to know exactly how far it was to the trees.

Where the path to the wood passed the stables, she paused, remembering Wallop's order to find any dogs Daventry kept at the hall. She did not like to think what Wallop might do to a dog. As she debated, a noise came from within the stable that made it impossible for her to pass by. It was a sound with an irresistible hold on her memory, a pony squeal. Emma froze, listening as the high glad squeal became a long wavering trill descending to a rusty hiccupping bray. In the stable a pony greeted a friend and wanted a treat.

She forgot her step count. Still, she did not move. Once one cracked the lid on the jar of the past, bad memories inevitably escaped with the good, but a second pony answered the first, and Emma gave in to the pull of her childhood. She was no different from her students, easily swayed by the past.

In the stable the head groom turned to greet her, an old black-and-white spaniel at his heels. “Miss?” He doffed his hat and bowed. “Ned Begley.”

Emma nodded with a glance at the dog. She decided that Wallop did not need to know that Daventry's groom had an old dog.

“You're not afraid of old Hector, are you now, miss?” The groom gave the dog's head a fond stroke.

Emma shook her head. “Hello. I'm Miss Portland, the boys' new tutor. Did I hear a pony?”

“You did, miss.” He beckoned her to a pair of stalls. “Here you go, meet Hiccup and Budge.”

A pair of shaggy-maned dark brown faces peeped over stall gates at her. She held her hands out to be sniffed and waited for a sign that she could rub the brown faces and ears.

“Have they been ridden lately?”

“No, miss. Nobody much rides in the big house. Thought the boys might want to learn.”

“Not Daventry?”

“Doesn't ride, miss, though he do drive sweetly. The lad was made to hold the reins.”

“May I ride Budge?”

Ned gave an embarrassed laugh. “Don't know that we have a proper lady's saddle, miss.”

“A bridle will do.” Emma unlatched the stall gate and stepped inside to stroke Budge and talk to him about going for a ride. “Do you have a treat for him?”

“That I do, miss.” Ned handed Emma a handful of sweet, grassy-smelling hay, still green. She heard Hiccup demand a treat, too.

The pony munched, and Emma closed her eyes and curled her hand in the shaggy mane, whispering in the pony's ear a promise to come with a brush soon. Childhood afternoons rose up around her with Tatty and Leo and their groom Nicolo and ferny woods and little orange mushrooms and icy mountain streams in their last plunge before reaching the sea.

When Ned brought the bridle, Emma stepped up to the pony and went to work. Budge quivered with anticipation. Minutes later Emma opened the stall and led him out and vaulted up onto his back in a move that came to her out of no conscious place. It was just there, like the next note in a familiar song. Her skirts bunched awkwardly, and she paused to tuck them under her while her knees hugged Budge's round flanks, signaling her wishes.

Once beyond the stable, Budge seemed to sense her need for a run, and off they went down the path that split the trees. Her cloak billowed out behind her, and her eyes watered from the cold rush of air. She felt alive.

As they slowed to enter the wood, she could see the boys perched on limbs above her and hear them calling. They were throwing stones at crows but stopped to look down at her, curiosity getting the better of them.

Lark whistled, and the boys began to move. “You can't catch us.”

Hah, Lark, try me
. She laughed and nudged her pony's sides. The boys might excel at climbing, but she guessed they would be no match for the swift little pony.

They clambered from limb to limb, shouting and pelting Emma with leaves and twigs. Budge gave her a burst of speed whenever she called on him, so she had no trouble keeping up with their agile antics. Turning the tables on them, she led them deeper into the wood, and when they ran out of wood, Emma and Budge burst into a wide field and galloped on. It felt like freedom, like escape, like leaving behind lies and fears and guards and prisons. There was only a brown landscape under a low gray sky and a warm pony.

 

 

JAY burst into Dav's library as Matthew Gibbs, his estate manager, rose to leave. Gibbs, a lanky, redheaded ex-army engineer, a friend of Will's, looked at his watch. The man was capable of prodigious efficiency. He was investigating Dav's tenants and neighbors, determining which of them had dangerous loyalty to the duke. One of them at least reported to the duke, and as a result the local bishop was taking Dav to court over an unpaid tithe. Today Gibbs had brought Dav a heavy volume on tithes.

“Grinder's run off, Dav.” The boy was breathless.

“Drove her away on the fifth day, did you?” Maybe he had gone too far in leaving her in charge of them. He knew the challenge of keeping them in line. He had only stayed away because of that dress she'd worn to dinner.

“She stole a pony and rode straight off.”

Dav gave Jay a sharp look. The boys didn't peach on one another. That was the oldest code of the streets, but here was Jay bursting with a tale to discredit her. “Did she strap her trunk on the pony's back?”

“No.”

Gibbs gathered up the papers he'd brought for Dav to sign regarding the tithe problem.

“Likely she's not run off for good. Where did you last see her?”

Jay studied an open book he could not read. “She rode north across the fields.”

“She'll come back.” It was the wise thing to say even as he wanted to rush off in pursuit.

“You should sack 'er. Can't let 'er steal from you.”

Jay's story didn't add up. The one thing Dav's newest employee seemed to want was time. He hadn't forgotten that she was the one to insist on a fortnight and on her freedom to walk to the village every other day.

“How did you happen to see her steal the pony?”

“We were in the wood.” The admission caused Jay to take an immediate interest in the carpet. Gibbs frowned. He didn't like any of Dav's people going into the woods without a pistol.

Dav let Jay squirm, waiting for a true picture of events to emerge. “You walked out on her.”

Jay's head came up. “We stuck to it for three blinkin' hours. She worked us somethin' terrible.”