Fallen Angel

‘Ahh, that news!’ Nick laughed. ‘The gossips, I fear. Well, they’re half right. She did turn me down, but she doesn’t look like a nun.’

‘Who is she?’

‘Brenna Stanhope, the same girl who rescued me in the woods on the London Road.’

‘But you said she wouldn’t see you?’ Charles queried.

‘She wouldn’t. I had to trick her into coming here. I’ve become the patron of an orphanage she runs in the East End, and she only accepted an invitation—and with great wariness, I might add—from that patron, Lord Deuxberry.’

Charles laughed in disbelief. ‘She doesn’t like you?’ He beamed. ‘You must be losing your touch, Nick.’

Nicholas frowned and lowered his voice to almost a whisper so that Charles had to strain to hear. ‘When Father met Johanna he knew in one moment that he loved her. “Once and forever”, those were his words…’ Raising his glass, he finished his drink, all layers of urbanity overshadowed by a savage anger. ‘And he said it would be the same for us.’

‘My God,’ Charles retorted, all humour fleeing, ‘you can’t be telling me…’

‘I’m not telling you anything.’ His eyes darkened perceptibly. ‘And don’t worry, it’s a passing fancy that’s all. In a month she’ll mean as little to me as every other women I’ve known.’ He stalked over to the window and threw open the sash, enjoying the air that rolled into the room. Brenna Stanhope made him restless and uncertain, for she made him imagine possibilities he thought he’d long since dismissed.

‘The men at the club called her clever.’

Hearing the question in Charlie’s voice, Nicholas refilled his glass and tried to explain with a stoic patience.

‘Brenna Stanhope has a mind that would cut most men’s logic to ribbons; if I had to describe her personality in one word, it would be “formidable”. Last night she told me that she was not a part of any bargain and that I could never pay enough for her. That was just before she ordered me to leave her alone.’

Charles began to laugh in earnest. ‘What does she look like?’

‘She has dimples.’

‘Alan Wrightson claims she is beautiful.’

‘Then the man, for all his faults, cannot be accused of having bad taste in women.’

‘He claims she has violet-coloured eyes.’

‘Those too.’ His brother’s whoop of delight made Nicholas’s heart sink.

‘When do I get to meet her?’

‘You don’t and I’ll see you at dinner.’ Draining his glass, Nicholas put it down on the table and walked out of the room.

In his own study he shut the door and leaned back against the cushioned header of his favourite chair. For twelve years he had been the quarry of countless feminine wiles and pushy doyennes all eager to marry him off and tie him down. For twelve years the gossips had run his name with this woman or that one until finally they had framed him callous and hardened. The ‘Heartless Duke of Westbourne’ was how he had heard his name bandied as the cream of each year’s débutantes were paraded before him and failed to rouse even the slightest interest. He ran his fingers across his temple and closed his eyes. Letitia Carruthers. Deborah Hutton. Alison Smythe-Finch. His consorts of the moment were all well bred, all well experienced. And all easily left. His father’s legacy personified. What stamp, then, did Brenna Stanhope make on him and why? He shifted in his chair and finished his drink.

Beautiful, clever, mysterious and with eyes the colour of Scottish heather after the rain. He shook his head at his sudden predilection for the way of poetry and smiled wryly before bending his head to the figures in a thick ledger on his desk.

Chapter Four

Nicholas spent the next morning at the London Ballet Company’s headquarters arranging a private session of La Sylphide to be performed as a matinée the following Wednesday. He then hailed his cabriolet and drove straight to Beaumont Street, running into Brenna as he stepped into the place. She was dressed today in a white smock splattered with colour, carrying a tray of spiky paintbrushes. Her hair was bunched up untidily upon her head, curling tendrils escaping down dark against the lightness of the uniform.

‘Hello,’ she said softly, and he was surprised by the deep blush on her cheeks as he came to stand beside her. Clenching his fists, he jammed them in his pockets just to make certain that he would not touch her.

‘You’re painting?’

‘I’m m…making a mural for one of the dormitories. The children are helping me, which explains the mess.’

She stammered slightly, both from the question and his demeanour. Today he seemed as far from the grand lord as she’d ever seen him.

‘May I have a word with you alone, Brenna?’

She frowned, both at his continued familiarity in using her Christian name and at the implications of a private conversation. She didn’t want to be alone with him, but under the circumstances there was little else she could do to prevent it. With feigned nonchalance she opened the door to her study, making sure that he sat before she went around to her desk, having no wish to leave him with the opportunity of shutting them in together.

Nicholas noticed a well-used copy of Alexander Kingslake’s revolutionary tract ‘Eothem’ beside her elbow. Why was he not surprised? ‘I have organised the ballet for Wednesday,’ he began. ‘The performance starts at three, but we’d need to be seated by at least a quarter before the hour.’

Brenna nodded, unsure as to her reaction to the whole thing. A ballet performed privately just for them pointed out to her his privilege, but also she understood, for the first time, the power that lay close to his hand should he choose to use it. It worried her, this sovereignty above others, accorded not merely because of his title but inherently there because of who he was. If he could organise an outing of this magnitude on just a whim, then think of what he could find out should he really set his mind to it. He would make a powerful foe and adversary, and a dangerous investigator should she cross the threshold of his curiosity and cause him to venture into the realms of mystery he might easily wish to dissipate—because of this she would need to be careful. Her uncle’s words came back to her from the morning of Nicholas’s first visit: I think he could be persistent… The whole of London treads carefully in his wake and it seems he owns almost half of it.

She forced her mind back to the present and her eyes narrowed doubtfully. All the problems of dress and shoes for the children presented themselves as her mind ran fretfully over the number of nights left for the sewing.

Nicholas, for his part, understood none of the reasons for her reticence, placing it, instead, to her fear of public places and he said, less gently than he meant, ‘I think, Miss Stanhope, that the children would definitely enjoy it even if you are determined not to.’

She caught his glance and replied coldly. ‘My feelings for such an outing hardly need figure here, your Grace—’

‘Then why do you hesitate?’ he broke in.

Brenna sighed and stood, turning to the window, arms wrapped tightly through each other as she replied, ‘It’s all so privileged and dreamlike, this world you offer us, and far from the reality that will ever be Beaumont Street.’

‘And you think that it’s wrong to want to share it?’ he countered, watching her with a growing interest.

‘I think it is wrong to want it.’ She turned to him now, eyes ablaze with intensity. ‘It’s like the children’s bedtime stories, endings that belie all sorts of beginnings, fairytales that only live in books or in a rich man’s world, for none of them will ever have what it is you so easily offer, though many here may want it afterwards. You can’t covet what you don’t know, you see. Ignorance counteracts want, just as knowledge fosters it.’

‘And where in your philosophy lies choice, Miss Stanhope?’ His words cut deep across her arguments and she was still as she answered him.

‘The freedom of choice has never belonged to any of these children, your Grace. It was gone before they ever had the means to exert it.’

‘So now you choose for them. They never had it nor are they likely to with your reasonings.’ His voice came louder with his own growing exasperation. ‘You think people, once choiceless, can never be empowered; you think opportunity must be dismissed in the face of a chequered past and all in the name of a changeless future. You think people can’t drag themselves out of a mire and triumph over adversity and disaster to spite circumstances over which they never had control in the first place?’ His fist came down hard upon her table. ‘Damn, Brenna, I don’t believe you or you wouldn’t be here trying to make the difference.’

Brenna jumped at the noise, her eyes large and dark in a paling face as she struggled against his anger, knowing that to lose his patronage would be a disaster and knowing too that his money did buy him the right to order things just as he willed it. Accordingly she withdrew into silence.

He watched her with a frown in his eyes. He wanted to cross the room right there and then and drag her away from all of this: his anger and her fears and a world of parentless children, the poverty of east London, a table of food set only with scraps, and a house that had seen better times. And Brenna herself, this dark-haired lady of mystery, whose world offered no path for friendship or understanding but, rather, buried the gifts he offered under the age-old resentment of privilege. He spread his hands wide in a gesture of defeat and said wearily, ‘Think it over and send me word of your decision tomorrow.’ With that he bowed his head slightly and left the room, this time shutting the door firmly behind him.

Brenna groped her way to the chair and leant her head against her arms, her mind running numbly over their dispute. ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered to herself. She was too old to feel like this, like a child who’d been castigated by a righteous and reasonable parent, though one fully ignorant of the very arguments themselves.

She lifted her eyes to the door, knowing the reaction Kate and Betsy would give to even the mention of a privately performed ballet; all the joy and disbelief she herself might have felt had it not been Nicholas Pencarrow who was offering it. In a flash she knew what it was that she would do. The others and the children would go on Wednesday and she herself would depart for Worsley with three of Michael’s burliest servants accompanying her, given the recent problems of the road. Her absence would then determine the Duke of Westbourne’s true intent. If he continued with these more-than-generous offers, it would be on the basis of his wanting to for the sake of the children and not for some misbegotten sense of indebtedness that their meeting in the woods of Worsley had seemed to inspire in him.

She wanted their personal relationship severed. He was dangerous and she was vulnerable. She wanted Nicholas Pencarrow, Duke of Westbourne, Earl of Deuxberry, completely gone from her life.

Returning to London from Airelies the following Friday, Brenna found her uncle ill and propped up in bed, surrounded by lemon barley drinks and a strong smelling camphor-based inhalant. One look at him, however, told her the problem was one far worse than the common cold he seemed to be attributing his breathing problems to, for he appeared blue about the lips and his chest rose and fell in a motion she found instantly disconcerting.

Gesturing to Dumas, she crossed to Michael’s desk, took paper and a pen from the top drawer and addressed the letter to the doctor, asking for his immediate assistance. Folding it and sealing it, she handed it to Dumas.

‘Take this to Dr McInnes’s house immediately and wait till they give a reply before you come home. Tell him I said it was urgent and that I’d be very indebted if he could come straight away. And, Dumas,’ she whispered as she followed him to the door, ‘please be as quick as you possibly can. I’m sure Michael is a great deal worse than he realises.’