Seducing an Angel

/7/

STEPHEN had always been blessed with an even temper and a naturally cheerful outlook on life. Even as a boy he had very rarely lost his temper with any of his playmates or fought them with any degree of ferocity or lingering animosity. It was true that he had popped Clarence Forester such a good one a few years ago that the coward had fled with a bulbous nose and two black eyes rather than fight back like a man. It was true too that his fists had itched to do even worse to Randolph Turner a year or so after that, though he had been forced by circumstances, alas, to quell the urge.

But there had been perfectly good reasons for both those forays into violence – or potential violence. In both cases his sisters had been threatened, and he would probably kill if he had to in order to protect any of the three of them.

There /were/ suitable occasions for anger and even violence.

He was angry today. /Furiously/ angry. But this time it was on his own account.

The first person he took it out on was his valet, who had always served him well but who, in the nature of valets, liked to rule him with an iron thumb too whenever he could get away with doing so. He took one look at Stephen when the latter rang for him at a little past six in the morning, and began scolding and threatening as if he were dealing with a naughty boy.

Stephen let it go for a minute or two and then turned on him with cold eyes and colder voice.

"Pardon me if I have misunderstood the situation, Philbin," he said.

"But are you not employed to serve my needs? Are you not employed to care for my clothes, among other duties? To have them clean and ironed and ready when I need them? I will expect these clothes to be all three when I next call for them. In the meantime you may have bathwater brought up for me and then set out my riding clothes while I bathe. You may then shave me and help me dress. If in your deepest fantasies you imagine that one of your duties is to talk to me while you work and offer your opinion on my behavior and the condition of my clothes when I return them to your care, then you must be forced to face reality – and forced to seek employment with someone who is foolish enough to allow such daydreams to flourish. Do I make myself clear?"

He listened in some surprise to his own tirade. Philbin had been with him since he was seventeen, and they had always had a perfectly amicable master/servant relationship. Philbin grumbled and scolded when he felt he had cause, and Stephen cheerfully mollified him or ignored him, whichever seemed appropriate to the circumstances. But he would not apologize now. He was too angry, and Philbin was too convenient a target. Perhaps some other time he would make his peace with his man.

His valet stared at him with half-open mouth, and then he shut it with a clacking of teeth and turned to busy himself with hanging up Stephen's horribly creased evening coat. Stephen had a ghastly suspicion that Philbin was blinking back tears, and he felt horribly guilty – and even more irritated than he had before.

It was impossible for Philbin to button up his lips, though.

"Yes, m'lord," he said, his voice wooden with injured righteousness.

"And I do not want to work for someone else, as you very well know. That was unkind, m'lord. Do you want the black riding coat or the brown? And the buff riding breeches or the gray? And the new boots or – "

"Philbin," Stephen said testily, "set out riding clothes for me, will you?"

"Yes, m'lord," his valet said, having had some measure of revenge. He did not usually ask such petty questions.

And then Stephen carried his anger with him to Hyde Park, where he rode at a reckless gallop along Rotten Row until other riders started to arrive and it would have been dangerous to continue.

Soon he had been joined by a few male acquaintances, and the conversation and the fresh morning air soothed him until Morley Etheridge happened to mention last evening's ball and Clive Arnsworthy congratulated himself on having been able to secure a set with the delectable Lady Christobel Foley.

"Though everyone knows she has eyes for no one but you, Merton," he said. "You are going to find yourself with a leg shackle before the summer is out unless you are very careful. I could think of worse females to be shackled to, mind you. A dozen of them, in fact. A /hundred/."

"Why stop at a hundred?" Etheridge asked dryly. "Why not go for a thousand, Arnsworthy?"

"It is not a shackle on his leg Merton is risking, though," Colin Cathcart said, blithely unaware of Stephen's black mood. "It is an axe in his skull. It might be a glorious way to go, however, provided he is between the lady's thighs when it happens. Very shapely thighs they are too, as far as one could see through that green gown she was wearing, which did not leave a great deal to the imagination, by Jove. Did you take a good look, Arnsworthy? Did you, Etheridge?"

There was a general guffaw of bawdy laughter.

"I might have noticed her thighs," Arnsworthy said, "but my eyes started at her head and worked their way down. They almost did not get past all that red hair, but I did valiantly force my gaze downward to her bosom.

There was no persuading it to go any lower after that, though. I have never been more thankful for the services of a quizzing glass."

There was another burst of laughter.

"If the woman hoped – " Etheridge began.

"The /lady/," Stephen said in the unfamiliar cold, clipped tone he recognized from his earlier confrontation with his valet, "was a /guest/ at my sister's ball, and as such was as deserving of respect and courtesy and gentlemanly restraint as any other lady present. She was not – and /is/ not – a strumpet to be ogled and stripped of all dignity You will not speak of her with disrespect in my hearing. Not unless you wish to answer to me on some quiet stretch of heath one morning."

They all turned in the saddle as one, the three of them, and gawked at him with half-open mouths – just as Philbin had done earlier.

Stephen clamped his teeth together hard and stared straight ahead along the Row. He felt foolish – and furious. For two pins he really would slap a glove in each of their faces. And take them all on together too. For two pins – "Worried for Lady Sheringford's reputation, are you, Merton?" Etheridge asked after an uncomfortable silence. "There is no need to be. No one in his right mind believes the woman… the /lady/ was invited. And your sister and Sherry handled the situation with admirable aplomb. Your sister talked with her and Sherry danced with her, and then they sent Moreland to dance with her and then you – or was it the other way around?

Sherry's mother took her for a stroll all about the ballroom after supper. The verdict today is bound to be that the ball was a resounding success – and all the more so for the titillation of Lady Paget's appearance there. You need not fear, old chap. Most men of my acquaintance have always thought Sherry one devil of a fine fellow for being bold enough to do what he did all those years ago. He did what other men only dream of doing. And even the ladies are beginning to forgive him. It is all on account of your sister, who is the most respectable lady anyone could wish to meet."

There were murmurings of assent from the other two before they all stopped to exchange pleasantries with another group of riders, and the embarrassing moment passed off.

But Stephen carried his anger with him for the rest of the morning. He sparred at Jackson's Boxing Saloon for half an hour before the old pugilist took him on himself for a bout when Stephen's first partner complained of the unnecessary ferocity of his punches.

He went to White's afterward and sat in the reading room with one of the morning papers held up before his face in such a way that it discouraged anyone from coming along to disturb him and carry him off elsewhere.

He was by nature gregarious and a favored companion of a large and varied number of gentlemen. But he sat morosely behind his paper and glared at the only one who dared smile and nod at him as he passed.

He did not read a single word.

He had been caught in a trap, and there was no decent way out.

He had woken up feeling embarrassed. He had made love to Cassandra rather swiftly and fully clothed, and then he had fallen asleep – and remained asleep for what must have been hours. It must have been a deep sleep too – good Lord, he had not even stirred when she buttoned him up and left the bed to get dressed. She had been sitting on the chair before the dressing table when he awoke, swinging her foot as if she had been there a long time waiting for him to return to the land of the conscious.

The only way he could have redeemed himself was to lure her back to bed, divest himself of his clothes and her of hers, and make love to her very slowly and very thoroughly.

But then she had sprung her trap and caught him in it – and there was nothing he could do about it. A leg shackle could not be more confining.

She had been abused during her marriage. It must have been very bad abuse – she had finally ended it by taking a pistol and shooting Paget through the heart.

Was it murder?

Or self-defense?

Was it unpardonable?

Or justifiable?

He did not know the answers and did not care. She had aroused his pity and sense of chivalry – as she had no doubt intended.

She had been cut off from all the benefits to which the widow of a man of property and fortune was entitled. Her stepson had tossed her out with the threat of prosecution if she should return or try to press her claim on the estate through some legal means.

She was poor. Stephen was not sure /how/ poor. She had somehow got to London and rented that gloomy, rather shabby house. But he guessed she was very close to being destitute and that she already was desperate.

She had gone to Meg's ball last evening, risking the degradation of being thrown out while half the /ton/ looked on. She had done it in order to find a wealthy protector. She had done it so that she could live and avoid becoming a beggar with no home but the streets.

He did not believe he was exaggerating her poverty.

And he was the savior she had chosen.

The /victim/.

He had looked to her like an /angel/ and she had discovered his identity and realized that he was a very wealthy man. She had thought he would be an easy touch.

And how right she had been!

Stephen turned a page of the paper so viciously that one corner of it tore off in his hand and the rest of that side fell down into his lap with a loud rustling sound. Several gentlemen looked pointedly and disapprovingly his way.

"Shhh!" Lord Partheter said, frowning over the top of his spectacles.

Stephen shook the half-mutilated paper into some sort of order, regardless of noise, and hid his face behind it again.

She was /right/ because he felt both pity for her story – or the little of it he had heard, anyway – and concern for her poverty. He could no sooner have stalked out of that house a free man than he could have punched her until she was down and then kicked her in the ribs until they were all shattered.

He could have offered her a pension with no strings attached, and the thought had occurred to him even at the time. No one ought to be allowed to be as wealthy as he was. He would not even miss the amount that would enable her to live in modest luxury.

But it could not be done. He suspected that somewhere behind that facade of smilingly scornful, unfeeling siren there were probably the shreds of pride that her husband had tried to beat out of her. She would surely refuse the gift.

Besides, he could not go about offering a generous pension to everyone with a sorry story to tell.

And so her destitution would be on his mind and on his conscience.

He had felt forced to offer her a ridiculously high salary to grant him sexual favors that he was not at all sure he wanted. In fact, he was almost certain he did not.

He had paid for sexual favors in the past – and always more than the woman asked for. It had never seemed sordid before now. Per haps it ought to have. Perhaps his moral conscience needed some honest self-examination.

Because perhaps all women who offered such services did so in order to ward off starvation. It was hardly something they would do for the mere pleasure of it, was it?

He frowned at the unwelcome thoughts, moved his hand to turn another page, and thought better of it.

Just this time yesterday he had had no more intention of employing a mistress than he had of flying off to the moon. Now he had employed one.

Philbin, unusually subdued, had been dispatched to Portman Street with a fat package of money after helping Stephen on with his riding boots.

He had paid handsomely for last night's sexual encounter and for the exclusive rights to more of the same, at least for the next week.

He did not care about the money. He cared about the deception – he had thought she /wanted/ him, that she had been /attracted/ to him. He had thought it was mutual sexual pleasure they had sought. It was both embarrassing and humiliating to know the truth. And he cared about the trap and the leg shackle he wore just as surely as if she had lured him into marriage.

Why the devil should he also feel responsible for making her respectable? She was /not/ respectable. She had killed her husband. She had sold her body to a stranger and trapped him into being her protector. She – She had lived through a nomadic, insecure childhood and a nightmare of a marriage. Now she was doing what she needed to do to survive – to put food in her stomach and a roof over her head. There was no way on this earth she would be able to find any other employment but prostitution.

She was prostituting herself to him.

And he was allowing it.

He was /forced/ to allow it on the assumption that she would not take his money unless it came for /services rendered/.

Hatred did not come naturally to Stephen. Even dislike did not. He liked people of all types. He enjoyed humanity.

But this morning he was consumed by hatred as well as by anger. The trouble was that he did not know whom he hated more or with whom he was more angry – Lady Paget or himself.

It did not matter. The simple fact was that he was going to make her respectable. And he was going to sleep with her enough times that she could preserve her pride and feel she was earning her salary.

His eyes focused upon a heading in the paper, and he read it and the accompanying article with great attention and without taking in a single word. It might have announced the end of the world and he would not have known it.

For of course he /did/ care if she had killed her husband. It was at the crux of everything. Had she or had she not? She had said she had. Why say so if it was not true? He suspected, though, that much of what she had told him was not strictly true. And something about the way she had simply said /yes/ to his question had not rung true.

Or was that wishful thinking on his part?

It was not a comfortable thing to know that the mistress he had just employed was a self-confessed murderer.

It was all very well to take into consideration the fact that she had probably been much abused. But actually to take up a pistol, which had probably not been simply lying around ready to be picked up and fired, and to point it at her husband's heart and pull the trigger, was…

Well, the very thought of it turned Stephen hot and cold.

It must have been unimaginable abuse if she had been driven to such desperate measures.

Unless she was evil.

Or unless she had not done it after all.

But why lie about such a thing?

And what sort of man was he to have been drawn into her net, even if he had imposed his own terms, when she had actually killed? Or said she had.

His brain felt very much as if it were whirling inside his skull just like a child's spinning top. At last he folded the paper neatly, set it aside, and rose to leave the club without speaking to anyone.

Alice, in a rare mood of open rebellion, refused to accompany Cassandra to Lady Carling's at-home. It was not that she did not approve of Cassie's attending such an event, especially when she had been invited by Lady Carling herself. Indeed, she thought it the very best thing that could possibly have come out of that risky business of last evening's ball. But she did /not/ wish to meet Cassie's lover in any such public setting, where she would feel obliged to be civil to him.

"But it is to avoid going driving in the park with him that I want you with me, Alice," Cassandra explained, watching her friend mending the seam of a pillowcase, a task that she ought to have been sharing. "He mentioned a curricle. I would be very high off the ground and very much on public display. But there is room for only two on the seat of a curricle. I could refuse to abandon you if you were with me."

But Alice would not go. She pressed her lips together and chose to be mulish. Her needle stabbed vengefully into the seam and back out again.

"You would be laughed to scorn, Cassie," she said after a while. "A widow of your age does not cling to a mere companion when a gentleman comes to take her on an outing."

"You are not my /companion/," Cassandra said. "Not any longer. I have not been able to pay you for almost a year, and when I finally offered you some money this morning, you refused to take it."

Alice wrapped the cotton thread about one finger and snapped it off rather than use the scissors, which were on a table at her elbow.

"I will not take one farthing of /his/ money," she said, "or any other money you earn in such a way. It was not this I had in mind for you, Cassie, when you were a girl in my charge. Never this."

For a moment her chin wobbled, but she brought it under control and pressed her lips together again.

"I think," Cassandra said, "he is perhaps a kind man, Alice. I think he is overpaying me, and I am sure he must know it. And he said that he would never – Well, he said that what is between us must always be mutual. That he would never – Well, /force/ me."

Alice turned the pillowcase the right way out, shook it furiously to rid it of some of the wrinkles, and rolled it ready to be ironed.

"Every piece of linen in this house is as close to being threadbare as makes no difference," she grumbled irritably.

"After a week or two," Cassandra said, "we will be able to afford to buy new things to replace them."

Alice glared.

"I am /not ever/ going to set my head on any pillowcase bought with /his/ money," she said.

Cassandra sighed and lifted the hand that Roger was nudging with his cold nose. She set it down on his furry head, and he placed his chin on her lap, looked up at her with doleful eyes, and let out a sigh to match her own.

"His family seems genuinely genteel," she said. "They went out of their way to behave with kindness toward me last evening. They were at the same time, of course, saving themselves from embarrassment and perhaps even social disaster, but even so they all seemed like good people."

"They will have an apoplexy apiece if they think he is courting you,"

Alice said, "or has taken you as his mistress."

"Yes," Cassandra agreed, pulling her fingers gently along Roger's silky ear. "He is extremely handsome, Alice. He looks like an angel."

"Some angel," Alice said, setting her needle none too gently in the pincushion on the table. "Coming home with you last night and then /paying/ you this morning and offering more in future for more of the same. Some angel."

Cassandra ran the fingers of her other hand along the stubby remains of Roger's other ear and held both ears up so that he looked sleepy and lopsided. She smiled at him and let go of his ears.

"Come with me this afternoon," she said to Alice.

But Alice had her mind made up and was quite adamant.

"I am /not/ going with you, Cassie," she said, getting firmly to her feet. "I have not been paid in almost a year, as you just pointed out, and that is as it should be. It also means I am free. It means I am not your servant. And I can earn my own living and support the both of us as well as Mary and Belinda – and that dog – without your having to… Well. I know you think I am too old for anyone to employ, but I am only forty-two. I am not quite in my dotage. I am able-bodied enough to scrub floors if I have to or sew for twelve hours at a time in some seamstress's back room or do any number of other things. I am going to be busy on my own account this afternoon. I am going to call at some employment agencies. /Someone/ must want me."

"I do, Allie," Cassandra said.

But Alice was not to be mollified. She went from the room, her back ramrod straight, her chin in the air, and left the door open behind her.

Soon a little face appeared about one side of it, and it broke into a delighted smile as the body followed the face into the doorway and then into the room.

"Doggie," Belinda said, hurrying forward to catch him before he could flee.

But Roger, though an old, rather lethargic dog, was occasionally in the mood to play and was always willing to be petted. He met the child halfway across the room, his tail waving, his rear end wiggling, his tongue panting. She threw her arms about his neck, her gleeful laughter turning to high giggles and delighted screeches as he licked her face.

She had grown out of her dress about six months ago, but she was still wearing it. It was faded from many washings but spotlessly clean. All its worn places were carefully darned. Her cheeks were rosy from a recent washing – which would be repeated if Mary discovered that Roger had been kissing her. Her soft brown curls were held back from her face with a faded, half-frayed ribbon. She was barefoot, since she had outgrown her shoes and wore them only when she left the house.

She was three years old. Mary's love child.

And very, very precious.

"Hello, sweetheart," Cassandra said.

Belinda turned a sunny smile on her and then giggled again as Roger rolled onto his back and waved his three paws in the air. She lay down on the floor beside him and patted his stomach and then wrapped one skinny little arm right about him.

"The doggie likes me," she said.

"That is because you like him," Cassandra said, smiling.

She would be able to pay Mary at last. She would even be able gradually to pay everything she owed her. Mary would be unwilling to take the back pay, but Cassandra would insist and Mary would not resist for long. She needed to buy new clothes for her daughter.

Cassandra would buy the child some little trinkets too. And Mary. Not Alice, though. Alice would not accept any gift in her present mood.

She had a protector, Cassandra thought, verbalizing the word very clearly in her mind. She was a mistress – paid for the sexual favors she would provide. There would, of course, be nothing mutual in the things that would happen between her and the Earl of Merton, despite his insistence that there would. For she would /never/ want him despite his beauty and his undeniably appealing masculinity and virility. And despite what she suspected was a genuine kindness in his nature.

Nine years of marriage had killed any interest she could possibly have in what the Earl of Merton wanted her to enjoy with him. If he waited until she wanted what he wanted, he would wait forever and she would be taking money she had in no way earned.

She would earn her money. Every penny of it. She had /some/ pride. He would never know that there was nothing mutual at all in their sexual relations.

She would give very good value for money.

It all seemed worthwhile as she watched the child play with the dog, both of them equally and blissfully happy – and trusting.

Two precious innocents. /Anything/ was worthwhile if it could push back by even one day the loss of such innocence.