When Angels Fall (9 page)

The late-afternoon light was already beginning to fade and an icy wind swept through the countryside. A leaden sky had threatened snow all day, but even now all it produced was a few flurries. She pulled her dove-colored mantle closer to her neck, then quickened her step. Her eyes were trained on George but he never looked back. He seemed quite intent on going to the castle. She found this odd and would ask him what he was doing when she caught up with him. She would ask him a lot of things when she caught up with him.

But how would she discipline the boy? Somehow, no matter how painful, she and Evvie would have to think of a way to do it. George had been indulged his entire life. His sisters had desperately tried to make up for the loss of their parents and for The Scandal that had occurred in the wake of their deaths. But now they would have to be firm, they would have to be—

A cry escaped her lips. From out of the elms, two huge, terrifying mastiffs came galloping down the lane toward George. In the whipping wind, George didn’t even hear her cry of warning before the animals were upon him, knocking him down and mauling him.

Numb from fright, she began running toward her brother, determined to save him from death, even if she had to pull the savage canines off of him with her own hands. Upon hearing George’s squeals, she found she had to suppress the desire to faint dead away. Terrified, she ran without paying due attention to her cumbersome crinoline. Immediately it caught in her toe and tripped her up. She almost took a brutal fall before two strong arms went about her waist and lifted her up.

In the back of her mind, she registered that it was Ivan who held her, but she was too intent on rescuing George to do anything but cry out, “Help him! Help him!”

She tried to pull from Ivan’s grasp and continue running toward her baby brother, but much to her horror, Ivan not only did not help George, he refused to let her go. She reached toward her little brother and clawed at the steely arms around her, but they held her like manacles. Finally, in agony, she cried out, “Release me! They’re going to kill him!” She didn’t expect the soothing baritone response she received from her captor.

“Only if affection is lethal.”

“My God, what—what are you saying?” she cried, still terrified for her brother. But before her question was answered, George answered it himself. She watched as he scrambled from the road, his blue tweed jacket ripped at the shoulder, his checked trousers covered with dust. Yet he was laughing joyously nonetheless, and the two mastiffs bounced alongside as he ran farther up the castle road.

“George! George Alexander!” She practically screamed at him. Hearing her voice, George spun around, but his brow turned stormy as he looked at his sister with Ivan Tramore’s arm wrapped intimately around her waist.

“Come here at once!” she demanded before twisting to face her captor. When she met Ivan face to face, she gritted her teeth and said stiffly, “Unhand me, my lord, if you would be so kind.” He was holding her much too closely. She had gone to see Miss Musgrave without having donned a corset, and she was mortified to feel Ivan’s large, strong hands sweep down her unbound waist. His breath warmed her cheek and she could see every blue fleck in his irises and every taut movement of his lips. For one wild moment, she even thought that he might try to kiss her, but instead she was released and he allowed her to stumble backward on the road. She shot him a furious
look for being so unchivalrous, then she hurried over to her brother.

“Lord in heaven, look at you,” she whispered as she knelt at George’s feet. Her gloved hand touched a bruise near his eye, then she fingered the tear in his tweed jacket. Shaking with rage, she stood and faced Ivan. “Are these your mongrels that did this to him?”

“Mongrels? My dogs are no mongrels,” Tramore countered, a ghost of a smile on his lips. He seemed about to dispute this further, but she was in no mood to let him. She had everything to fear from the Marquis of Powerscourt, but when her family’s safety had been jeopardized, her own concerns were cast aside. She lit into the marquis as if he were once again her stableboy.

“How could you let these animals roam free? They’re a menace to society, and I shall see them properly restrained or I shall report them to the authorities—why,
especially
when they take to knocking over children—and—and—”

“No, Lissa!” George pulled at her skirts. Behind him, the mastiffs were seated, their tails wagging only harder the more angry Lissa became.

“—and mauling them!” She grabbed George to her and looked accusingly at the mastiffs’ owner. Her fury increased when Ivan seemed to be laughing at her.

“The pups have nothing to do with Alcester’s condition,” he answered leisurely, his dark eyes glittering with amusement.

“The
pups
?” she sputtered incredulously. She waved a hand at the huge canines who appeared to be listening to her with rapt facination. “You call these carnivorous . . .
beasts
pups? Why, look what they’ve done to him!” She pushed George out in front of her.

Ivan only nodded to George’s burgeoning black eye. “You believe that just happened? I think not,” he stated. Ignoring her then, he turned to fetch his steed, which he’d left abandoned behind him.

Begrudgingly she watched him walk away, his collected stance infuriating her more. She noted he was again dressed like a gentleman, attired discreetly in Nankeen trousers and a heavy morning coat of black flannel. He seemed so superior, even the blustery wind didn’t seem to dare whip at his hair as it did her own, which in her flight to aid George had come loose of her bonnet and hairpins.

She pulled a silvery-blond lock from her face and watched Tramore. Unruffled, he walked his spirited mount back toward them. Only the slight puckering of the scar on his cheek proclaimed he flinched against the cold at all. Lissa was sure that, in contrast, the Alcesters looked like a pair of miserable wretches indeed: She shivered like a matchgirl beneath her threadbare mantle and George scowled belligerently as she tried to touch his bruised brow.

“Did the dogs attack you then?” she finally asked her brother.

“Finn and Fenian wouldn’t, Lissa. We’re chums,” George answered emphatically.

“Finn and Fenian?” she repeated, then shot Ivan a distrustful glance. It was now obvious George and Ivan’s “pups,” as their master was wont to call them, were well acquainted. “Well, if not the dogs, then who ripped your jacket and blackened your eye?”

George’s mouth took on a stubborn set. He hid his hands behind his back and when she grabbed one, she saw his knuckles were as swollen and bruised as his face.

“You’ve been fighting, George, and you must tell me with whom. They will have to be disciplined. Was it a few of the lads at school today?” In concern, she ran her palm over her brother’s dark locks.

“I hate them,” the boy burst out passionately.

“Such harsh words.” She knelt again to face him. “But why do you speak them?”

He again resumed his silence.

Disheartened, she held George’s cold little hand in
her warm gloved one. “Don’t fight them any more. Promise me? There’s nothing they can say about you that can hurt you. You know what I told you about sticks and stones.”

“But it wasn’t me they were calling names today,” he uttered, his lower lip beginning to tremble.

“Then there’s even less to quarrel about—”

“They made fun of you, Lissa! And I won’t let them do it! They say you’re just like Mother. They call you ‘Lusty Lissa,’ and I hate it!” Seeing the look of horror pass over his sister’s beautiful face, George quickly dispensed with his manly demeanor and wrapped his arms around her neck. “I won’t let them call you that any more,” he vowed.

Her hand touched his back. Shocked beyond belief at the schoolchildren’s cruelty, she could hardly give George the hug of reassurance he so desperately needed. She knew, in the back of her mind, that somehow she had to laugh the entire episode off and inform George that she didn’t need his protection, especially at the cost of a blackened eye. But that required a monumental effort indeed when her cheeks were as red as a fire iron and their one spectator was Ivan Tramore.

She refused to meet Ivan’s eyes as she got to her feet. From the perimeter of her gaze, she could tell he had yet to remount. He merely stood by, reins in hand, listening to the discourse. When she recovered some of her composure, she took off her mantle and put it around George’s shivering body. She certainly didn’t need it when her entire body burned with shame and humiliation. Still unable to meet Ivan’s stare, she said to George, “I think we should get back. Evvie has promised to make us a chicken pot pie, and we shouldn’t be late.”

George acquiesced, then unnervingly asked, “What does ‘lusty’ mean, Lissa? Why do they call you that?”

She stiffened and her cheeks burned anew. Unable to avoid it this time, her eyes met Ivan’s. But there was cer
tainly no solace to be found there. The expression in his eyes seemed to ask the same question: Why do they call you that?

Beneath that stare, she wanted to clutch her little brother to her and thank him for trying to shield her. And if she could have, she would have sobbed on his shoulder, telling him that she did want his protection. Desperately.

But she knew she couldn’t. She was a woman now, not a child. She was the protector now, not the protected. And when she did her crying, she knew all too well she would do it alone in her bed at night.

“We’ll speak of this later, love,” she told him in a voice husky with unshed tears. “Right now we should get back to Evvie.”

“Do allow me to escort you both home, Miss Alcester,” the marquis offered.

If she had looked up then, she might have seen the barest glimmer of empathy in his eyes. She might have seen the marquis’s face hardened with anger that the townfolk of picturesque little Nodding Knoll were still so abominably cruel. Looking up, she might have seen these things, but she did not look up. Ivan’s presence alone mortified her. Meeting what she thought would surely be that dark, mocking gaze would completely undo her. So instead she backed away, saying “No—no, thank you.”

“I insist.”

Still without meeting his eyes, she gave him the only excuse she could think of. “I cannot be seen with you alone, Lord Powerscourt. It isn’t proper, surely you understand that.”

“Of course,” he answered sarcastically. “You wouldn’t want your reputation further besmirched by being seen with
me
in public, now would you?”

Angry, she finally looked up at him. “If I might remind you, Lord Powerscourt, I am an unmarried woman and am presently out here with you unchaperoned. Society deems it improper for you to see me home, not I.”

His smirk told her what he thought of her answer. “Pray, do tell me, Lissa. When
did
the Alcesters become so concerned with their reputations?”

“I do believe, my lord, that it all began five years ago. In fact,” she said furiously, “if I recall correctly, it was the night
you
left town.”

“Ah, yes, it comes back to me now,” he snapped.

“Very well then. We understand each other.” She nodded smartly, unable to bid him even a polite farewell. Then she took George in tow and walked quickly down the castle road, eager to seek refuge anywhere that was out of sight of Ivan Tramore.

Lusty Lissa.

Groaning into her hands, Lissa tried to forget the name as she had tried to do a hundred times since George had told her about it the day before. But it would not go away. The children’s cruel nickname kept echoing in her mind until it had become her scarlet letter. Now she felt it might as well have been written on her forehead for all her efforts to erase it from her thoughts.

She had certainly tried to make light of it in front of George. Later the previous evening, when they’d returned from the castle road, she’d explained to her brother what lusty meant—in the most gentle of terms, of course. She’d told him that the children were only saying that his sister found men attractive, and that it was nothing so terrible that he must fight them over it. She told him blithely to ignore their taunts, and she felt he almost believed her. Yet there was still that familial bond that proved them siblings. Even young George could see past his sister’s brittle
smile and find the pain that made it so. Lissa knew this, and it only made the situation worse.

To further her torture, Wilmott had insisted on escorting her to the soirée at the castle. He’d sent a note earlier that day stating that the Billingsworth coach would pick her up at eight o’clock that evening. It was now five minutes of that hour, and though she had dressed, she still wasn’t sure she could go through with it.

How would she bear the humiliation? she asked herself blackly. The thought of having to look upon Ivan Tramore’s smug countenance was more than she could endure. She would look into those dark eyes of his and all she would find there would be disdain. He probably thought her a trollop. But she was as spinsterish as a woman of eighty! Her entire experience with men could be reduced to one single kiss. The terrible irony was that Ivan himself had given her that kiss, five years ago in the Alcester stables. Though Ivan’s kiss had hardly been chaste, it had most definitely been her last. Dowerless and scandal-ridden, she was not a prize catch. Men wanted her, she knew, but she was not one to dally outside the protection of marriage. Thus no respectable offers had come her way.