Fallen Angel

‘Tip it my way,’ Louisa commanded, ‘and hold it still. I’ll see if I can lever it up on to the banister.’ Brenna strained and brought the length across her chest, lowering her arms to try to heave it upwards and feeling the breath leave her body with its heaviness.

‘Are you sure we can manage this, Louisa?’ she queried doubtfully.

‘I’ve done it before with the maid.’ She frowned. ‘Or perhaps it was with Francis…’ And at that second the front door, not five steps away from them, was flung open, spilling forth an astonished-looking blond man and Nicholas Pencarrow, two pairs of eyes staring at them in disbelief.

‘Brenna?’ Her name came incredulous and huskily from Nicholas and she almost expected him to reach out and touch her just to ascertain she was not a mirage. Her arms quivered beneath the weight of the mirror, caught in its heaviness so that she could not even adjust the neck of her gaping dress and, as Nicholas came forward to relieve her of its burden, she felt his eyes running across her.

Shock surged through Nicholas’s body. Brenna here and in the company of Louisa Greling and shoeless, her hair falling loose across a gown fashioned from lace and silk? Brenna with one of London’s most celebrated courtesans and looking just as provocative? Where were the high-necked blue velvets, the books, Beaumont Street? How could he reconcile one with the other?

The question was forming on his lips as she whirled, racing up the stairs without pause, her face aflame with embarrassment, the dress seen through Nicholas’s eyes acquiring only a cheap showiness, which in Louisa’s company had not been obvious.

Slamming the door behind her, she hauled off the gown, tears of frustration rising as she tried to unfasten all the tiny buttons. Reaching with shaky hands for the blue velvet, she pulled it on with as much quickness as she could muster, one foot against the door to bar entry given the complete absence of any lock. Once the dress lay in place across her body, she felt stronger, wrenching her stockings into place with fingers more like her own and tying her hair back in one long and customary plait. Wide eyes observed her reflection in the mirror. Lord, what could she say to him? How could she explain away her friendship with Louisa or her reasons for being here?

Honesty!

The word came quiet and true and with a growing resolve, but the newly found confidence completely shattered when she heard a knock on the door and the Duke of Westbourne’s voice without.

‘Brenna? May I come in for a moment?’

In panic she made for the door, pushing it open and herself out in almost the same movement. She would meet his questions on the landing, not in the bedroom, though with no sign of Louisa or the man she presumed to be Francis, her heart began beating anew.

Nicholas stood, leaning slightly against the railings of an ornate balcony, his gaze softening as he observed the transformation of the woman now before him, laced into the shapeless navy velvet as though covered from head to foot in androgynous armour.

With quiet patience he stood his ground, waiting for her to look at him, willing her to explain what was going on. Finally, an anguished visage tipped up to his.

‘It…it…it is not as you may think, your Grace,’ she stuttered in her haste to explain. ‘The dress was a present from Louisa, from Paris, which she insisted that I try on after making it plain no visitors at all were expected this afternoon.’ She stopped, taking a breath in nervousness. ‘It’s very flimsy and hardly me and far too…too…’

‘Revealing?’ Nicholas supplied. Green eyes glittered with a hard masculinity. ‘You do know what this house is, do you not, Brenna?’

She turned at his question and walked towards the stairs, willing him to keep his distance, willing herself to stand her ground.

Quietly she nodded.

‘Then you also realise how damaging it would be to your reputation if another had arrived instead of me? No matter what the reason?’

Again a small shake, the brittle sharpness of unshed tears welling behind her eyes. He could never know how well she understood the danger or how close to the truth he tarried.

‘Louisa has been a friend of mine for a long time, though today is the first day I have ever come here. The dress…’ she added brokenly, ‘I haven’t many and thought perhaps for your ball…’ She bit back the words as soon as she had said them, cursing her stupidity and waiting for laughter.

None came.

Nicholas stood still, fighting the pain in his heart, fighting the desperate want of her that swept through his body at her confession. In truth the dress looked stunning, but for all the wrong reasons. And she still did not have a dress for his ball.

His mind flicked to the countless clothes most ladies of his acquaintance had the choice of, worn once and discarded, and it was on his tongue to offer again the gift of a more suitable gown, but he kept silent, seeing the intrinsic pride in the lift of her chin and in the anger of her own admission.

‘Come, Brenna,’ he whispered softly. ‘Let me see you home.’

She hesitated, bewildered by his gentleness and her own lack of alternative. ‘And the other man with you,’ she said. ‘You will explain?’

He nodded, watching her carefully, the man in him hard pressed to act the gentleman she expected. God, if he had any sense he’d seduce her here and now and be damned with the consequences. Already he could hear the muffled noises of lovemaking in the salon below. Francis and his mistress seemed to have settled their differences in passion, he surmised, wishing it could be that easy for him. His loins ached with the want of her.

‘I think we should leave,’ he said huskily, stepping back as she preceded him down the stairs, unwilling to speak further until they were outside, so little did he trust himself.

Brenna frowned and did as she was bid. Suddenly he seemed angry and withdrawn. Would he let it be known that he had found her in such a compromising position, or worse, would he withdraw his money from the orphanage altogether?

Concerned violet eyes raised up to his as they came outside into the drizzle of a late afternoon. Taking a deep breath, she began in earnest. ‘I realise my behaviour today was inexcusable, my Lord, and the dress—’

He let her go no further.

‘You looked beautiful.’ The words came harsh and ragged and hardly like the Duke of Westbourne. In consternation she looked up to find darkened eyes boring down into her own. ‘Thompson will deliver you to Greerton, Miss Stanhope,’ he said unevenly, opening the door to his carriage to let her in and stepping firmly back as she seated herself. ‘And I will see you at my ball.’

She could only nod, watching as he signalled to his driver to leave, watching as he turned back to Louisa’s house, a desperate dread beginning to form about her mind as she realised his intentions. Would Louisa be savvy enough to deflect his curiosity? She hoped so. How she hoped so.

Chapter Six

It was the twenty-sixth of November before Brenna knew it and the night of the ball she had dreaded and longed for had finally arrived.

Pacing back and forth across her bedroom floor, she castigated herself anew for not simply refusing Nicholas Pencarrow when first he had given her the choice. This past week, getting a dress made, or rather altered, had been a harrowing and tiring job. Having avoided fashionable society, Brenna had paid little heed to current fashions, but she had finally succumbed to Michael’s insistence that the blue velvets would definitely not do, would, in fact, attract her the attention she did so wish to avoid, and the alternative of his mother’s cream silk gown was therefore mooted. He’d brought the dress down from the attic enveloped in the smell of mothballs and bade Brenna to put it on. It was a dress from another time, high waisted in the Empire style and appliquéd in lace and velvet. Apart from a slight tear on one puffed sleeve, and a hemline that would need to be lengthened, the dress fitted her perfectly and, matched with a pair of topaz earrings belonging to Michael’s aunt, would be every bit suitable for attending a ball of the magnitude of the Duke of Westbourne’s.

The afternoon had consisted almost entirely of getting ready, a pursuit so ludicrous and time-wasting according to Brenna that she could barely sit still when, in the final moments before leaving, Polly had put the finishing touches to her hair, curled and caught high upon her head with dark ringlets trailing unbound to her waist.

Standing the instant the process was finished, she snapped on the earrings and slipped into low-heeled golden shoes, then hurried quickly down the stairs.

‘I am not certain about the wisdom of this,’ she mumbled softly, as she came within her uncle’s company, registering the formal dress Michael was in and the invitations splayed large across the table in front of him. Would Nicholas Pencarrow take some notice of her and thus force the attention of the entire assembly upon her personage, or would she see censure on his face after the débâcle at Louisa’s? She shook her head and concentrated instead on happier thoughts. At least Michael would be with her; if the worst happened and it all went awry, she had fulfilled part of a bargain that she would never ever strike up again. This would be her first and last taste of the lifestyle of the very rich and her final absolution of any debt she felt regarding the orphanage funding given by Nicholas Pencarrow.

She had not, after all, seen him for well over a week—even his secretary had stayed clear of Beaumont Street. Did that bode well or ill? she wondered, remembering back to the day of Michael’s sickness. She had expected the Duke back on her doorstep that selfsame night, carrying the medicines which he had insisted on paying for, and her surprise had been great when the servant he had named did indeed come and very much alone. When the doctor had returned the following afternoon, she had again looked for Nicholas, expecting to see his face in the window of the carriage, ready to bait her into the next agreement she would not wish to make. But still he kept his distance. Perhaps tonight need not be the quandary she was making it into. Perhaps Nicholas, tempted by other riper morsels, had finally taken her help in Worsley in the spirit she had pleaded with him all along to do. A frown marred Brenna’s forehead as she boarded the carriage with Michael. Perhaps she gave herself too much credit in her bizarre imaginings of an attraction between them. Tonight he would see the ordinariness in her and that would indeed be the very end of it.

Half an hour later their carriage swept up a drive festooned with lights and burning torches, and liveried footmen, and Brenna’s confidence washed away, her body coming forward from the seat to view the house more closely. Every door that led out on to the front balconies was decorated with numerous lanterns, and on guard duty at the columned entrance stood a bevy of servants dressed in black and white, escorting each newly arrived guest up the stairs and inside. She recognised the faces of Lord Palmerston and Lord Tennyson, Tory politician and Poet Laureate respectively. How far and quickly had she strayed from her own more humble surroundings.

Swallowing, she felt her mouth dry with fear. It was all as she remembered, though a thousand times more grand and opulent, for never in the year of her season had she come near the houses of the haut ton, and Nicholas Pencarrow seemed to sit at the very pinnacle of that.

Music assailed her senses as the carriage door was opened to the lively strains of Strauss and to the smell of gardenias. Gardenias in November? Brenna’s eyebrows lifted at just that simple cost. Nicholas Pencarrow must have had them especially nurtured in glass houses, a summer flower to bedeck this wintertime land and all in a gesture that fairly screamed out the never-ending prosperity of the very wealthy.

Her eyes came around to Michael and, unfolding themselves from their carriage, they walked up the stairs to a line that had formed in the drawing room. Ahead she could see the Duke welcoming each guest and Brenna’s stomach lurched in nervousness as they waited. She hardly dared lift her eyes to the assembly she could see in front, for she was every bit as exposed as she had dreaded and even the smile that lit up Nicholas Pencarrow’s eyes failed to ease her tenseness.

Nicholas had glanced up to find her right there. Dressed in a gown from another era, she looked as if she had crossed the time barrier and walked straight in from 1820. He’d never seen her look so beautiful. The earrings she wore sparkled with violet lights that matched her eyes and her hair hung in a dark thick curtain, curling across her shoulders. Even the apprehension he perceived, as he took her hand, did nothing to diminish her loveliness, her stillness reflecting her dress and setting her apart from every other woman present; compared with her, they looked either overdone or overexposed. Warmth crept into his eyes and a warning came, as if in answer, into hers.

‘Good evening,’ she spoke primly, almost snatching her hand from his where it had lain too long, and frowning as he drew her towards a woman a few feet away who was also greeting newcomers.

‘Grandmama, this is Brenna Stanhope and her uncle, Sir Michael De Lancey. Brenna, this is my grandmother, The Dowager Duchess of Westbourne.’

Grey eyes came directly up at the mention of the Stanhope name, though as a smile broke out across her face and touched her eyes with a dancing mirth, Brenna relaxed.

‘Nick, you are as remiss as your brother, for neither Charles nor you has ever mentioned to me how beautiful your mysterious Miss Stanhope really is.’

Nicholas grimaced, softening his countenance immediately as he felt Brenna’s gaze turned to him. He swallowed the reply he would have liked to have given, as green eyes raked across his grandmother in a silent warning of intent.

And Elizabeth was as intrigued as Nicholas was. Why, the child seemed to hark from an age long past, dressed in a fashion she could remember from years back and with a countenance that belied description. Yes, she could well understand her boys’ lack of outline, for Brenna Stanhope was not at all beautiful in the vogue of this day. No, she harked back to a more mythical and enigmatic time, a time when a woman’s beauty lay not in the purely physical but in the character, and strength of purpose, and difference.