Impulse

Angela stared at him for a moment, dumbfounded. Finally she said, “You think—you actually think that I will agree to marry Lord Dunstan?”

“You will.”

“I won’t.” She looked back at him, her face as implacably set as his. “I love Cam. I’ll have no one else, least of all that cold fish Dunstan.”

The Earl made a disgusted noise and waved his hand, as if to push aside her sentiments. “Don’t give me any of that mawkish drivel about love. Love has nothing to do with marriage, not among our class. Perhaps it’s all right for farmers or merchants or mill workers. But a Stanhope marries for family considerations.”

“Sells themself for money, you mean,” Angela shot back. “Well, I refuse to do that. I am going to marry Cameron.”

“You don’t marry servants. I don’t know what maggot’s gotten into your head, but you’d best be rid of it quickly. You will marry Lord Dunstan.”

“You cannot force me to marry him—any more than you can stop me from marrying Cam,” Angela pointed out. “You may lock me up, but I can promise that someday, somehow, I will get out of here. Cam will find a way to get me out. We are going to be married, and we will go to America to live, where nobody cares about things like rank. There’s nothing you can do to stop our love.”

“I think spending a lifetime in prison might slow the young man down a little,” her grandfather said sardonically.

Angela’s heart skittered in her chest. She stared at her grandfather. “What are you talking about? Cam won’t be in prison.”

“He won’t if you agree to do your duty.”

She wet her lips nervously. “You mean … you mean marry Dunstan?”

“Yes.”

Angela set her chin defiantly. “I don’t believe you. Why would Cam go to prison if I don’t marry Dunstan?”

The old man reached into his jacket and withdrew a glittering object, which he held out to her. “You see this dagger? The one from the case in the gallery?”

Angela nodded numbly. She was quite familiar with it. It had lain in its case in the long gallery as long as she could remember. It was a family heirloom, so old that no one was even sure how the Stanhopes had acquired it. Both scabbard and dagger were of intricately chased gold. Jewels marched down the middle of the scabbard, and a large emerald was embedded in the hilt.

“‘Tis an expensive thing,” her grandfather went on. Angela eyed the dagger as if it were a snake. “Not just the jewels, but the antiquity of it makes it almost beyond price. If a disgruntled servant were to steal it, taking his revenge for being dismissed, it would go hard on him, I think.”

“That’s absurd! Cam would never steal anything.”

“I’ll tell you this, missy—if you don’t marry Lord Dunstan, that dagger will come up missing. And I’ll be happy to tell the sheriff where to look for it, since I had to throw an insolent servant off my land tonight. When he goes to the Monroes’ house, he will find that dagger amongst Cameron Monroe’s possessions. Now, you tell me how well your precious Cam will stay out of prison with that sort of evidence against him. If there’s anything more that’s needed, I imagine an eyewitness who saw him take the thing right out of the case will turn up.”

Angela stared at him in horror. She had no doubt that her grandfather could do exactly as he threatened. The Stanhopes were a well-known and powerful family. Perhaps the family fortunes might now be on the decline, but they still ranked high, and people around here regarded them with awe and respect. They were wealthy in land, if not always in ready cash, and they provided the livelihood for many a family around about, either in the tin mines or on the estate. No one would doubt her grandfather’s word, and there would be men loyal enough to the Earl to lie for him.

“If you do,” she said, trying to still the trembling in her voice, “I will go to the sheriff myself and tell him what you’ve done and why.”

“If you wish to bring disgrace to yourself and the family by flaunting your love affairs with grooms, then do so. But no official will take the word of a lovesick girl over mine. They will say you are all about in the head, that you have been seduced by the man’s charm. He will still go to jail.”

“How can you do this? How can you be so wicked? So cruel?”

“I will do anything to save the Stanhopes,” he returned flatly. “You know how our fortunes have been going. Bridbury Castle is in sad need of repair. The lands need money spent on them, as well. And the tin mines simply are not producing what they used to. Both you and Jeremy will have to marry well. Dunstan is perfect. He has wealth and power, and his family is excellent. And your reputation will be saved. He is the only outsider who knows what happened tonight, and if you are his wife, he will have as little reason to reveal it as any of us.”

“I can’t,” Angela moaned. “You cannot ask this of me. I cannot give up Cam. I love him.”

“If you love him,” the Earl told her harshly, “then you damn well will give him up. Because that is the only way you can save him. If you don’t marry Dunstan, your Cam will die in prison.”

“No.” Tears streamed down her face. “Please, please, don’t send him to prison.”

“Marry Dunstan.”

“All right!” she cried out. Sobs shook her frame. “All right. I will marry Lord Dunstan!”

CHAPTER ONE

1885

A CARRIAGE RATTLED around the turn below at a spanking pace. Angela, watching from her perch on the rock, shaded her eyes to see it better. It was a large, comfortable black coach, very much like her brother’s. However, Jeremy and Rosemary were still in London, surely. It was the height of the Season, and Jeremy rarely ruralized at Bridbury at any time, but especially not during the Season.

Still, Angela thought she could make out a gold smudge on the side, which at this distance might very well be the family crest. Anyway, it had to be traveling to the castle. What else was there out this way except Bridbury? And who else would be coming here in a carriage except her brother? Unless, of course, she thought with a groan, it was someone like Great-aunt Hepzibah, coming to spend a few weeks with Grandmama. Having endured such a visit from her grandmother’s other sister only two months earlier, Angela was not sure she could bear that.

She gathered up her drawing pencils and pad and scrambled off the rock, whistling to the dogs. Socrates, who had been roaming in search of some mischief to get into, came bounding back, ears flopping comically. Pearl, sound asleep stretched out on a flat rock in the sun, merely rolled an eye, unwilling to make the effort to move until she saw that her mistress was actually going somewhere.

“Come on, you lazy dog,” Angela told the toy spaniel. “It’s time to go home. Why aren’t you like Trey? See? He’s already up and ready to go.”

Trey wagged a tail in acknowledgment of her praise, and she bent to scratch first him and then Pearl behind the ears. At that moment, Socrates plowed into her, pitching her sideways, and thrust his head under her arm to be included in the petting.

“Socrates, you foolish dog,” she scolded affectionately. “If ever a dog was less deserving of a name …”

He answered by giving her cheek a swipe of his tongue before she could dodge away.

“Come on,” she said, standing up and picking up the pad and pencil box. “Let us see who our guest is.”

They started off down the side of the slope. It was shorter walking down to the castle this way than along the more winding route the road took, so she knew she would arrive not long after the carriage did. Socrates led the way, his plumed tail waving, ranging ahead of them, then dashing back every few seconds to make contact with them again. Angela kept her pace slow to accommodate Trey, who, though he got around well on only three legs, could not keep up a consistently fast pace. Pearl, in her usual companionable way, stayed at Angela’s other side, distracted only now and then by an errant scent.

When they reached Bridbury, Angela saw that it was indeed Jeremy’s coach pulled up in front of the door. The servants were still unloading trunks from atop it. She ran lightly up the steps and through the front door.

“Jeremy?”

She started toward the main staircase, then stopped as an old yellow dog, his coat liberally shot through with gray, came hobbling up to greet her. “Hello, old fellow,” she cooed, bending down to pet him. “I’m sorry we ran off without you today. It was just too long and difficult for you.”

The look in his old eyes was wise and dignified. Angela curled an arm around his neck and gave him a hug. Wellington was her oldest pet, almost fifteen years old now, and, if the truth be known, still her favorite deep in her heart. It always hurt her to leave him behind. However, it was just as painful, if not more so, to see him struggling to keep up and always falling behind, and if they went far, he simply could not make it.

At that moment, an orange cat came daintily down the banister of the stairs and made the short leap onto Angela’s shoulder. It draped itself with familiarity around her neck. Angela went up the stairs, her collection of animals following her, and along the hall to the drawing room her grandmother preferred. Along the way, another cat joined the group, this one a fat gray Persian with a face so flat that Jeremy said it looked as if it had walked into a door.

The two dowager Lady Bridburys, both her mother and grandmother, were in the drawing room, her mother half reclining on a fainting couch and her grandmother sitting ramrod-straight near the fire. The elder Lady Bridbury let out an inelegant snort at the sight of Angela surrounded by her animals.

“Honestly, Angela, people are going to start saying you’re odd if you persist in walking about with that entire menagerie.” She lifted her lorgnette and focused on Trey. “Especially when some of them are so … different.”

“No, they will simply say that they fit me perfectly. Everyone already thinks I’m odd, you know.” She crossed the room and gave the old lady a peck on the cheek in greeting, then turned toward her mother. “Hello, Mama. How are you this afternoon?”

“Not well,” her mother replied in a die-away voice. “But, then, I am rather accustomed to it. One learns to adjust.”

“I should think you would be accustomed to it,” Angela’s grandmother, Margaret, commented. “You are never well.”

Laura, the younger Lady Bridbury, assumed a faintly martyred look, her usual expression around her mother-in-law, and said proudly, “Yes, I do not enjoy good health. But, then, it was always so with the Babbages.”