To Seduce an Angel (2 page)

“Don't think to hide behind Her Grace, girl,” the duke snapped.

“But she's done it for weeks, Uncle. Look at her. With her pink cheeks, golden curls, and round blue eyes, a man thinks butter won't melt in that sweet mouth, but that's a lie, isn't it?” Aubrey lifted her chin, the cutting edge of his nail against her throat. Her stomach roiled at the touch. “You're a lie, Emma Portland. There's a dead man in Reading whose reeking corpse says you're someone else.”

His broad back was to his uncle. He let go of her chin and reached down and dealt her breast a swift, stinging blow with a flick of his middle finger.

Fear cramped her insides, but Emma knew better than to show it. She had wanted to be a girl again, but she'd made a mistake to brush the walnut dye out of her hair and scrub her skin and accept an old figured gown from the duchess, sweet and clean and scented with lavender and verbena from the clothes press.

“Listen to Aubrey, girl.” The duke's voice brought her gaze back to him. “If you don't want them to break your pretty neck and feed you to the crows, you'll do as he says.”

Crows.
She steadied her treacherous knees.
Don't think about crows, Emma.
Tatty and the babe must reach the coast and the waiting messenger.

The fire crackled. Outside, a March gale howled against the windows. The Englishness of the place, which had seemed so warm and comforting when she first arrived at Wenlocke, now seemed chillingly cold. The baroque grandeur of the room dwarfed her. Its dark oak cases held thousands of morocco-bound tomes with gold-tooled spines, crushing slabs of history and law. The English liked their law to do the killing. They did not send assassins to kill babes in their cradles as her countrymen did, but they would hang the merest child for stealing.

Aubrey called it a favor, but Emma knew better. The prickle of the small hairs of her neck warned her. He and the duke wanted her for some ruthless business because they believed her to be a murderess. She could tell them what a joke that was. Tatty, older than Emma by three years, was the fearless one. Leo had always admired her for it, married her for it. Her brother and her cousin had been well matched in courage.

It had been Emma's duty to kill the flies and spiders in the cell she'd shared with Tatty. Once Emma had even been so bold as to kill a rat. But if these gentlemen knew the truth about her, if they saw that she would be of no use to them, they would simply give her over to the law. And the crows would get her.

Aubrey handed the paper to the duke. His voice turned coaxing. “We want you to teach a different group of brats. That's all. Here, read this notice.” Emma swung her gaze back to him. This time he offered her a newspaper, and she was pleased with the steadiness of her hand as she took it. Inside her everything quaked as if she would shake apart in spite of the name she had taken for herself.
Portland
for the stone and
Emma
for the lover of the great English hero Nelson. She had vowed to be as unshakeable as her new name.

The paper was folded open to a small notice inquiring after a schoolmaster.
Private instruction wanted in letters, mathematics, and geography. References required. Inquire at Daventry Hall for interview.

Emma handed the notice back. Asking a suspected murderess to tutor children in a private gentleman's house was not the favor Aubrey meant. “What makes you think this person will hire me?”

She did not know where her boldness came from. Tatty would say a cat pent up becomes a lion.

Aubrey watched her with a twisted smile. A ridge of vein marred his smooth broad forehead. “We will send impeccable credentials with you.”

Aubrey's smile was the slow, complacent smile of power. Emma waited for the trap to close.

“In return, you must do something for us. It's simple really. I'll keep a man in the village. He'll tell you what to do, and you'll report to him everything you discover about your new employer's habits and plans.”

“I must spy?” She tried not to betray any relief. They had not asked her to kill anyone.
Still she would have to report to a man, Aubrey's man. Aubrey would know where she was. Escape would be very, very hard.

“Or hang if that's your preference.”

“On whom must I spy?” Her mind raced. Let them think her agreeable. Let them think she could be bought with a piece of paper. There would be time while she spied for them for Tatty to reach the coast and Emma to plan another escape. She was the planner, not Tatty.

“On the Marquess of Daventry.”

“A lord?”

“Whore's get.” The duke's cold voice insisted.

She turned to him. The lines cut deep in his harsh face. The hooded eyes were unreadable. “May I know why I am to spy on this lord?”

“He's an enemy of this house, Miss Portland.”

“Is he dangerous, then?”

“He's damned hard to kill.”

She stared at the duke, but his closed expression revealed nothing. Emma's brain could make no sense of it—to send a schoolmistress to spy on a dangerous lord. “For how long must I spy?”

“As long as it takes. And we may ask you to obtain certain items for us, certain papers and objects.”

They wanted her to spy and steal. “You will sign the pardon request if I spy?”

In answer the duke tossed the paper aside. The weary gesture told Emma all she needed to know about her predicament. The duke's unsteady leg buckled, and Aubrey took his arm to help him to a leather chair. Emma understood the gesture. The duke relied on Aubrey now, and Aubrey only waited to take power as it slipped from the duke's grip.

“When do I leave?”

“Today.”

D
AVENTRY Hall stood on a low rise with a wide view of surrounding woods and fields, still bleak and bare in March. An arched bridge over a smooth-flowing blue river led to a curving drive. Four stories of warm golden stone rose with the stern and stately symmetry of an earlier century to a series of flat roofs with nearly a dozen small towers domed with copper cupolas blue-tinted with age. Hundreds of windows caught the afternoon light.

Emma saw at once that the house had no defenses to keep out an army. Apparently the English believed themselves protected from attack by their little ribbon of choppy sea over which a man could easily row. The house's only defense was its unobstructed view. A spy could not escape undetected in such an open setting.

The gig from the inn rocked to stop under a two-story porch that projected from the main house. Its weathered stones, carved and ornamented with columns and tracery, gave the impression of a hundred staring eyes. Emma was glad to step inside.

When she explained that she was expected for an interview, a cheerful manservant in a plain brown suit led her up a stairway dark with heavy old timbers to an ancient stone chapel. Entering its shadowy vaulted nave, she experienced a moment of confusion.

On Sundays when their jailers took them to chapel, she and Tatty had counted the painted cherubs on the ceiling with their tiny fluttering wings, peeping around clouds or dangling their bare feet over the architecture. Here the ceiling had apparently crumbled with age, dumping frescoed cherubs onto the floor. She looked down to see sturdy fallen angels lying tangled on one another, round limbs protruding from snowy linen, rosy cheeks and tumbled curls in a jumble.

At her footfall on the stone, the heap of angels stirred.

A midsized angel opened one blue eye and peered up at her. “'Oo the devil are you?” he asked with a surprisingly earthly accent.

His words prompted other angels to stir and scramble to their feet in a row. Emma counted seven earthbound angels, staring openly at her. They came thin and round, dark and light, rough-hewn like carved figures, or rounded with curls about their rosy cheeks, not angels after all, but barefoot boys in white shirts and gray wool breeches. One last angel lay on the stone floor. He was no cherub.

A thin lawn shirt, open at the throat, clung to a powerful chest and shoulders. One sleeve was sheered off completely, exposing a gleaming muscled arm like living marble, and a lean hand gripping a great sword. The words of a childhood prayer—
archangel defend u
s—rose to her lips.

The warrior angel rolled to his bare feet in a fluid move, tall and lithe and fierce. His shirt billowed about him. Charcoal wool trousers hugged his lean hips and legs. He took Emma's breath. Angels such as he had fought each other for the heavens with fiery swords when Lucifer revolted.

His bold gaze met Emma's and held.

“I came about the position,” she told the angel. She had no idea what his place on the household staff was, but the boys around him must be her intended pupils.

He leaned his folded arms on the hilt of his great sword and regarded her with frank interest, a sardonic lift to one brow. “I don't remember advertising for anyone with your qualifications.”

“I beg your pardon.
You
placed the notice in the paper?”

“
You
are hardly the expected result.”

Emma blinked. “
You
are Daventry?”

“None other.” He bowed slightly. “You are E. Portland?”

Emma tried to pull her wits together. She was talking to a man, not an angel, a dangerous man who was hard to kill. She found herself babbling her qualifications, real and false. “Emma Portland. I speak French, German, and Italian. I know Latin, maths, and geography. Do you wish to see my credentials?”

“Can you teach?”

“Of course.”

“Let's find out.” With an effortless sweep of his bare arm, he brandished the sword in the air. Emma retreated a step before she realized the sword was made of wood. “To the schoolroom, lads.”

The ragged cherubs erupted into motion and noise, surging around her. In a blink they had snatched her reticule and letters of reference and whisked them away. She could see her bag bobbing from hand to hand above their heads as they disappeared up the dark, narrow stair.

“After you, Miss Portland.” The warlike angel lord, whatever he was, grinned at her discomposure. It was not a good start. Her escape plan was not in place. She could not go back to Aubrey's man at the inn. She needed this man to hire her, not to mock her.

 

 

THE girl turned an assessing gaze on the schoolroom. Dav had held no proper lessons there since his old tutor Hodge had left. The books he'd purchased for the boys lay in a heap in one corner. Their slates were scattered about the floor. He had continued to read to them a tale of exploring the great pharaohs' tombs. The result of that tale dominated the room—a dark pyramid built of desks and chairs that nearly reached the ceiling. A tunnel led to the interior of the structure, where the boys had disappeared.

Dav doubted she would last the afternoon, and a stab of disappointment accompanied the thought. He needed someone to take charge of the boys. They could not play games forever as if time would stand still for perpetual youth. But his idea of a tutor was nothing like this girl. From the letter he'd received, he had expected E. Portland to be a shabby scholar with his mind on the ancients. He should have told her at once that she wouldn't do for the job and arranged her escort back to wherever she came from. Even now he should stop her before his band ate her for luncheon, but it would only be polite to offer tea before he sent her away.

He righted a chair in the back of the room, straddled it, and waited to see what she would do. The sword had startled her, but now she ignored him, her brow puckered in a little frown of concentration, as she removed her plain black bonnet and gloves. She was thinking, stalling for time, he suspected.

Her hair, gold as sunbeams and springy as waves, was pulled back from her face with only a few curls escaping. A part of him just wanted to look at her. She undid the strings of her cloak. He hadn't seen the style, but he recognized an old, secondhand garment when he saw it, like the velvet coat he had in his wardrobe, a garment with a past. The cloth was faded rose wool, and the collar had a fringe like the petals of a wilted rose. Her gesture in removing it spoke of pride even when necessity made one bow.

He imagined helping her undo it, a missed opportunity. Gentlemen did such things, didn't they? And he was a gentleman now. The courts had made him one in spite of his grandfather's opposition. Daventry. He'd actually said the name rather easily.

Under her cloak she wore a dove gray muslin gown, too loose for her light figure. An overdress of pale sky blue closed under her bosom and gave some shape to the gown. Her eyes were vivid against that blue. Something about the dignity of her bearing had made him expect elegance, and not a woman in a secondhand gown applying for a humble household post. The upward tilt of her chin with its slight dent seemed regal, a dent made for a man's thumb.