When Angels Fall (16 page)

“I shall make sure of it, Mother.” Albert rose from his seat, looming over his mother in the wheelchair. He bent his long, thin frame down to kiss her on the head. “I shall return promptly.”

“Use the carriage blanket. You know how susceptible you are to a chill.”

“I shall, Mother.” Albert checked his watch, then absentmindedly left the room.

The knock came at precisely three o’clock. The confident pounding startled Lissa, especially since her stomach was already tied in knots. With all her heart, she dreaded opening the door. But she took one look at George’s expectant features and she knew she had to go through with it.

Straightening her spine, she checked herself in the mirror and was pleased with her reflection. The dark-green silk of her tea gown made her look severe indeed. With her plain white collar and her hair tightly coiled at her nape, she felt as staunch as a Puritan. It would take a lot to ruffle that reflection. Bravely she strode to the front door and opened it. As expected, the marquis stood there, yet he looked chilled and—if she could believe her own judgment —a little bit hesitant, as if he wasn’t quite sure of his welcome. His black hair was sprinkled with snow and the broad shoulders of his coat were also covered with the huge, glistening flakes.

Lissa wanted her welcome to be as chilly as the weather. Slowly she nodded in greeting, then let him
enter. Yet when her blue eyes met with his she couldn’t will away the tingle that spread through her belly. Ivan’s gaze seemed to take in all of her: the way her chignon was held in her snood, the way her lips turned ever so subtly in acknowledgment, the way her skirts swayed as she held them out of his path. His eyes burned with an appreciation that soon melted the ice of her veneer. Before she could will it away, a blush heated her cheeks.

“Why, Lord Ivan, how nice that you’ve come.” Evvie walked toward the entrance and held out her hand. Ivan grasped it and held it as if it somehow gave him strength. In the kitchen, the dogs began to squeal with delight, just having discovered that their master was on the premises. George immediately opened the kitchen door, and both mastiffs bounded out. It struck Lissa as an oddly domestic scene. It was as if they at the cottage were the family, and Ivan, their long-missed patriarch. Everyone seemed positively joyous to see him. But she was not, she told herself as she warily offered to take Ivan’s heavy overcoat.

“Evvie, I’ve just added more peat to the fire. Why don’t you take our guest to the parlor.” She hung the wet overcoat on a peg near the door. When she entered the parlor, a heart-warming picture met her eyes. The pups were sitting obediently at their master’s knee. Evvie was perched on the sofa across from Ivan, her hands folded demurely in her lap, her lips smiling at some pleasantry the marquis had just made. George hunched on the floor near the mastiffs, watching Ivan with blatant hero worship. Suddenly Lissa felt like the interloper.

“I’ll get the tea,” she said hastily before disappearing through the kitchen door.

When she returned with the tray, Evvie, Ivan, and George seemed to be having a grand time trying to predict the snowfall. They finally agreed it would be less than six inches, but by then Lissa had already poured out. She passed Ivan his cup first since he was the guest, but when she did so, George suddenly quieted, then Evvie. Her
nerves already on edge, Lissa practically sloshed the cup in Ivan’s lap before she’d set it before him.

“Shall I get the cake?” Evvie offered in the ponderous silence.

“No, no! I’ll get it!” Lissa insisted, grateful to escape again into the kitchen. She let Evvie finish serving the tea.

He can’t do anything to you, she reassured herself again and again as she fetched plates from the hutch. Albert is out of his reach. With that notion giving her renewed bravery, she entered the parlor once more. To impress George with his treat, she set the cake on the edge of the table near the hearth where the birthday boy was sitting. She was pleased when George’s eyes widened and he unconsciously licked his lips.

He wasn’t the only one licking his lips, however. Finn —or Fenian, she was never to be sure—suddenly stood from his place near George. The dog sniffed for the direction of the cake, then promptly rose on his hind paws to take it. In horror, Lissa watched the mastiff artfully knock it from the edge of the table, only to be joined by his sibling in eating it in several large bites.

“Good God!” Ivan jumped up and tried to pull the beasts off George’s cake. He was successful in disciplining them, for soon the pups were seated in the corner, their heads contritely bowed despite the fact that they still had whipped cream on their whiskers. But when Lissa watched Ivan return to the scene of the crime, all that was left of the cake was several large crumbs and a white glob where the icing clung to the carpet.

“This is inexcusable. Believe me, I shall make this up to you.” When Ivan spoke his dogs looked up. He shot them a deadly glance and immediately the beasts’ heads lowered again.

“Oh, dear. Was it the cake?” Evvie felt the tea table for the damage.

“Yes, I’m afraid it was,” Lissa answered fatalistically. She bent to George, who seemed a little stunned. “I shall
go to the market first thing tomorrow and buy some more sugar for another. I promise. And we’ll be sure to keep the dogs in the kitchen the next time.”

“It’s all right. I’m a man. I don’t need a birthday cake.” George squirmed out from under her attention. Her mothering seemed to embarrass him in front of the marquis. Without seeming to give his cake another thought, he turned to Ivan and pleaded, “Please don’t punish the pups, Lord Powerscourt. They didn’t mean it. I know they didn’t.”

Ivan looked disconcerted. “I told you to call me Ivan, lad. Have you forgotten?”

“No, my lord, only . . .” George looked at Lissa. Ivan’s gaze soon followed.

Lissa stood beneath this perusal as long as she could. Finally she shot Ivan a cool glance before gathering the dirty cake platter onto a tray. She gave George a wistful, apologetic smile and made for the kitchen once more, this time to fetch a dishcloth to take care of the carpet.

She was hardly in the kitchen a minute before she turned around and found Ivan blocking the door back into the parlor.

“Your sister and George are cleaning up the mess,” he stated when she tried to pass him.

“The mess your beasts made, I might add,” she countered testily.

“I shall make it up to George.” He blocked the door further. She gave him a look that said may I pass? When he refused, a furrow appeared on her smooth forehead.

“Well, what is it, Ivan?” One of her dark gold eyebrows raised tauntingly. “I suggest you tell me before my brother comes in to defend my honor.”

The shadow of a smile crossed his features. “He would. That I know only too well.”

“So be out with it.” She sauntered to the hutch to retrieve the wooden washbowl. She was not about to let him see her wash dishes, but for some reason she needed
something to do. In the back of her mind, a worry nagged at her. It told her to beware—not to trust him, or herself.

“George is doing better in school, I understand.” He walked to the kitchen table and grasped the back of a chair. Leaning on it, he faced her.

The contrast between Ivan’s expensive attire and the homely surroundings was almost absurd. Looking at him, she wished the pine table was not so scarred and that the whitewash on the walls not so old. In Violet Croft’s little utilitarian kitchen, Ivan’s presence seemed to take up all the space there was. Suddenly she wished they could have this conversation in the parlor.

“Yes, there don’t seem to be any more problems.” She nonchalantly put the washbowl on the table across from Ivan. It was almost as if she were trying to erect a barrier between them.

“He hates that school.”

“Yes.” She couldn’t meet his eyes now. “But that’s all there is in Nodding Knoll.”

“He could have better. He’s capable of attending any school in England. Any school . . . even Eton.”

Her gaze flew to his. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Why concern yourself with us?”

Evading her question, he continued. “George is bright. He should go to the best school there is. I’ve heard Eton is the best.”

“And George will go to Eton someday.” She fingered the rim of the washbowl.

“How?”

The question jarred her. A splinter caught in her index finger and she looked at the drop of blood. “My husband shall pay for George’s education, of course,” she answered.

“Of course.” He straightened. “That milktoast Albert Rooney should have no problems sending the boy anywhere he wants.”

“How did you know?” She snatched up a dishtowel
and wiped her bloody finger. How had he found out she was setting her cap for Albert? Those town gossips! When would they cease interfering with her life?

“I’m just glad to see you’ve thought of Eton. That is where George should ultimately go.” He began walking around the table. She squelched the urge to back away.

“I have thought of everything. Your concern is quite generous, however,” she told him politely. Too politely.

“But you haven’t thought of
everything,
Lissa. One cannot predict the unexpected.” He stopped beside her. “Take this afternoon, for instance. How did anyone of us know your little cake would be shanghaied by the pups?”

“I wouldn’t doubt it for a moment if I found out you had choreographed the entire display.”

His eyes glistened with wry amusement. “I’ll have you know Finn and Fenian were raised for more dignified pursuits than stealing cakes from babes and wearing sweet cream on their whiskers.”

She could have kicked herself for the small smile that escaped her lips. But the ridiculous picture of the mastiffs eating George’s cake as if it were manna from heaven suddenly overwhelmed her. She could hardly believe those comical canines could belong to a master as stern and disciplined as Ivan was. Could their master be as they were, fierce and aggressive in appearance only? She looked at him, then her eyes helplessly found the scar. The smile died on her lips.

He stared at her. “It’s strange to see you so somber, love. You of all people should appreciate mischief.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” She lowered her gaze.

“You do, don’t deny it.”

“Ivan, all that was a long time ago.”

“Not so long ago. Was it only six years ago that your parents gave that little picnic which you made so notorious?”

“That’s far in the past.”

“Sometimes I think of it as yesterday.” He moved an inch closer to her. “Evvie was not blind then, remember?”

She nodded her head.

“And you both grew so weary of all those pompous acquaintances of your parents who showed up that afternoon.”

“It was difficult. Mother and Father always seemed to forget to invite young people.” Her eyes clouded. She hated remembering her parents. Deep down, she truly believed they were good people, but something, usually parties, trips, or gaming, always prevented them from spending much time with her, Evvie, and George. She knew too, with the crystal vision of maturity, that her parents didn’t quite know what to make of those little persons they had brought into the world. And so they treated them like ornaments to be dressed and placed strategically on display. Since ornaments didn’t get bored or have need of friends to divert them from mischief, her parents had never considered them when making plans.

“It was a beautiful day, do you remember?” Ivan prodded her.

“Oh, yes. Warm and delightful. The crowd of guests spilled right down to the edge of Silverspray Pond.” She remembered the sight of Alcester House, its grand corninthian columns standing sentinel in the background. In many ways that day had been the zenith of her existence. Her eyes sparkled with suppressed laughter. In many ways it had been the nadir also.

“You were so bored, you and Evvie visited all the horses in the stables, do you recall?”

“Yes, and in our party frocks no less!” She smiled.

“Yours was blue,” he added solemnly.

“Yes, it was,” she answered in a hushed voice. “It was to be my coming-out gown. I even wore it for my portrait that Father commissioned. But then Mother decided it wasn’t quite right for my debut so she told me to wear it to the picnic.”

Her lips twisted as she recalled the portrait. She hadn’t thought of it in years. Where was it now? she wondered. It had been auctioned off in London with the rest of Alcester House’s furnishings, and by now it could have changed hands a hundred times. Even if she ever had the money to buy it, she would probably be unable to trace it to its present owner. It might even have been destroyed. Imperceptibly she winced.

“And even in that pretty blue frock, you thought nothing of climbing that tree—the oak that grew by the pond.” He pulled her out of her morbid thoughts.

“Evvie climbed it too.”

“But Evvie was thirteen. You were sixteen.”

“Not quite sixteen.”

“Too old to be climbing trees.”

Her eyes brightened. “Yes, that’s true.”

“Do you recall what happened next?”

She nodded. “The branch gave way. Not Evvie’s, just mine.”

“And you fell into the pond.”

“And you retrieved me.”

“In front of two hundred horrified guests. And I recall George—he must have been four then—clapped the entire time.”

She giggled and her hand touched him on the arm. “Oh, I’d forgotten that,” she said.

“Do you know what I wanted to do to you after I’d brought you to shore?”

Her hand tightened on his arm. Her fingers felt like they were wrapped around granite. Innocently she shook her head.

“. . . as you lay wet and bewildered beneath me?”

Again she shook her head. Before she knew it, he tilted up her chin. Their eyes met, then he tenderly placed a kiss on her lips.

Frightened, she quickly recovered herself and turned away. But his voice at once soothed her and commanded
her. “No, Lissa. Don’t . . .” he said. With a sob, she turned her face back to his and again found his mouth on hers.

How a man as cold as he was could have such warm, enticing lips was beyond her imagination. Her eyes fluttered shut as his scent, his touch, his taste filled up her senses. But all too quickly the kiss ended. He pulled back and looked at her. Her hand grasped his arm until she surely thought she would mark him.