Fallen Angel (54 page)

Mr. Spencer's eyes dropped to his clasped hands. At length he said, "I did lose my temper, though I'm perfectly sure not one angry word passed my lips.
But. . ."
He hesitated.

"Yes?"

"I behaved unforgivably. We got into an argument about her father. I had not meant to say anything against him, but she provoked me. I'm afraid I tried to discredit him in her eyes.

And with a great deal of circumlocution and a little patient questioning by the countess, the whole story came out.

"Are you saying," asked Lord Rossmere, carefully neutral, "that for the sum of twenty thousand pounds the girl's father gave up all rights to her?"

A dark tide of colour rose in the other man's cheeks. "No," he answered curtly, then with more belligerence, "the sum agreed upon was fifty thousand pounds. Donald Sinclair had thirty thousand waiting for him. He never came back to claim it."

Deveryn felt, at that moment, as if a dead weight had been lifted
from
his shoulders. "Thirty thousand pounds still to his credit!" he exclaimed softly, and he shut his eyes as the implications filled his mind with stunning force. By degrees, the tension eased from his body. He opened his eyes and looked directly at Spencer.

"But Maddie thought. . ." he said.

"What did she think?"

"Maddie thought that her father had used up every last groat of the money you'd given him—oh, not that she told me the whole story. She said that he'd come into a legacy and lost it all. It half convinced her
that. . .
well, that he hadn't had much to look forward to."

"Oh, Donald Sinclair had plenty to look forward to. That was only the down payment. In addition, I undertook to settle an income of five thousand a year upon him."

"Good God," exclaimed Raeburn. "What a mercenary fellow he must have been."

Spencer shook his head. "No, no. You don't understand. To be fair, he only wanted me to settle his debts. The rest was my own doing. And no, I am not generous as a rule. Oh, call it conscience money! Call it whatever you like! But he was the man my daughter once loved and married. He was the father of my only grandchild. For the first time, I had him where I wanted him. But, do you know, the taste of revenge turned to ashes in my mouth."

A thoughtful silence ensued. At length, some desultory conversation followed on the journey that Deveryn would be embarking on at first light.

"I should arrive in Edinburgh in five days," said Deveryn in answer to his father's query.

"That's going some!" remarked the Duke of Raeburn.

"I'll be travelling light," responded the viscount, "and I've already sent out my grooms with a string of fast mounts to await me at the posting houses."

Miss Spencer intoned quietly, "Why don't you delay and come with the rest of us aboard your yacht? Maddie will be safe enough at Drumoak for the extra week that's involved."

The viscount shook his head. "No, I've already wasted too much time as it is. I'd go mad sitting in town, twiddling my thumbs, till the repairs to my yacht are done."

"Besides," interposed the countess, "I expect my other daughters will be anxious to make the acquaintance of their new sister-in-law. They'll want to come with us. It will be several days before we're all ready to make the journey to Scotland. Think of it as a holiday."

With rapidly diminishing patience, Samuel Spencer expostulated, "What I don't understand is why we have to go to Scotland at all. Why not simply let Deveryn bring Maddie back to us?"

The countess riveted him with a piercing look. "Nothing," she said with frost in her voice, "nothing could be more certain to make the girl dig in her heels. Furthermore," she went on, her accents becoming decidedly more arctic, "to drag her from everything familiar would be the worst form of cruelty. You need not come with us if you don't wish to. But there's no saying how long it might be before you see Maddie again."

She glanced up as her husband came to stand over her. He bent his head and kissed her very swiftly on the brow. For her ears only he murmured, "History has a way of repeating itself. Don't take on so, my love. Everything will be just as you wish it."

She flashed him a grateful look.

After that, conversation ceased altogether. The countess looked at her watch and exclaimed at the late hour. As her guests rose to take their leave, she begged her son in a quiet aside to wait on her in her dressing room.

As Samuel Spencer reached the head of the stairs, he turned to the countess and said pleadingly, "I swear I meant everything for the best. It's these modern manners I'm not accustomed to. In my day, marriages were arranged, and very happy they were, too. I don't doubt, Lady Rossmere, that you were never given the choice of whom you would wed."

"Certainly not," she exclaimed, and shot a very telling look at the earl, who merely returned an enigmatic smile.

Deveryn caught that silent exchange between his parents. It was a look he'd often surprised on their faces, but never until that moment had he understood to what it referred. Damn if he did not feel himself blushing.

"In our day," said the countess without blinking an eyelash, "marriage came first, and love came afterwards. But you see how it is with our young people. They're in love, or at least Deveryn loves Maddie. We have only his word for it that she loves him, too. And really, Mr. Spencer, there's no reason why we should withhold our blessing from this union, is there?"

"No, no. I'm too old now to hold grudges. Only a fool don't learn from past mistakes."

He thrust out his hand. Deveryn took it in a firm clasp.

His voice visibly shaking, Spencer said, "I only want what's best for her. And if she's set on you, I won't stand in your way. Oh, if only I had said words like those to Maddie's father, so many years ago, how much pain and misery we might all have been spared! I'll do better with my granddaughter in future. I give you my word."

"As I shall," said Deveryn, visibly touched by the old man's tortured expression.

Miss Spencer slipped a comforting hand into the crook of her father's arm. "Come along, father," she said. "You mustn't take all the blame on yourself, you know. In our several ways, we've all been guilty of pushingMaddie into what we thought was best for her. She's a redoubtable girl. And Duncan is with her. I have perfect confidence in her ability to take care of herself. Good God! Think how she managed Drumoak!"

"It's not that," disclaimed Mr. Spencer, the slump of his shoulders more betraying than any words. "It's just that she could be anywhere."

"Nonsense," intoned Miss Spencer, marshalling her confidence. "Maddie is like a homing pigeon. She won't be far from Drumoak. Deveryn will find her. You can count on it."

The countess and the earl paid their guests the singular compliment of walking them to the front door. Deveryn made his way to his mother's dressing room to await her pleasure. He'd seen that look in her eyes. He expected a very uncomfortable interview, and unconsciously squared his shoulders. Mothers, he had discovered to his regret, had no qualms about meddling in the lives of their grown children.

The journey by sea from Wapping to Leith took all of five days. In under half that time, Maddie was wishing that she had elected to go by coach. A coach might very easily be pursued and overtaken. A runaway wife might just as easily, if she had a change of heart, instruct her coachman to turn the coach around and return to their point of departure. Such was not possible in the situation in which she had placed herself. She had crossed the Rubicon; burned her bridges behind her; cast the die; and she was miserable. She did not think Deveryn would ever forgive her.
 

These unhappy reflections were mitigated by only one consolation. Duncan had apparently suffered no irreversible injury from the prize fight. His recovery had been swift and complete, so much so that Mr. Lloyd had voiced the suggestion that a removal to Scotland was no longer necessary. Maddie's opinion, however, had prevailed. Ostensibly, she wished to remove Duncan from temptation. Privately, she was furious with Deveryn for taunting her so mercilessly and wished to teach him a lesson. When she had boarded the schooner with Duncan and sent a protesting young Willie back to Curzon Street with her several notes of farewell, she had felt an overwhelming sense of relief to be shot of the lot of them—Deveryn, her grandfather, and Raeburn to boot. She was done with being the pawn of the male animal! Even her father . . . but that did not bear thinking about. Only the thought that her actions were bound to occasion pain and anxiety to Miss Spencer had made her falter in her resolution.

But by the time her anger had abated, leaving her in a more rational frame of mind, it was too late to turn back. She felt herself to be the most wretched of creatures and did not see how a graduate of so venerable an establishment as Miss Maitland's Academy could conduct herself with so little reference to the logic she had been taught to revere.

"I have a ferocious temper," she blurted to Duncan as they stood on deck waiting for their first sight of the Scottish coastline.

Guilelessly, he nodded his agreement.

She was moved to lay a hand on his arm. "Have you been a victim of my temper too?"

He turned twinkling eyes upon her mournful expression. "Black Douglas's famous fives canna match the wallop frae that wee tongue o' yours," he said.

"That bad, mmm?"

"Aye. But then Black Douglas never apologizes."

"I hope I always do," she said softly.

"Och, Miss Maddie, there's nothing sweeter than yerself when yer doin' penance."

She wondered what form of penance an irate husband might deem appropriate for a runaway wife. Her reveries left her more dejected than ever. Worst of all was the terrible suspicion that Deveryn would leave her to her own devices. She was sure that by a husband's reckoning it was no less than she deserved.

The growing conviction that she had not conducted herself wisely or justly did not act on her conscience as might have been expected. By degrees, a more rebellious spirit revived. If her conduct was questionable, Deveryn's was infamous. If her actions could be said to be rash when her temper was roused, his were abominable. Moreover, there were no skeletons in her closet; in his, he kept a veritable cemetery.

By the time the ship docked in Leith, Edinburgh's port, she was resolved to continue with her original plan. A coach was soon engaged to drive them the short distance to Miss Maitland's Academy in Charlotte Square in what was commonly referred to as 'The New Town.' The Academy, which never had an enrollment of more than 40 girls at one time, most of them day students, comprised two houses in a Georgian Square designed by a native son, Robert Adam. The
coachman was instructed to wait. It took Maddie less than five minutes to pen a note which she left with the doorman advising Miss Maitland that Miss Sinclair had returned to Lothian and deemed it an honour to accept the invitation to help put the finishing touches to
Medea
in preparation for Founders' Day. This done, she returned to the coach and gave the driver instructions to take the coast road to Inverforth and Drumoak.

The day was fine and, as usual, blustery. Maddie remarked that it was good to fill one's lungs with the invigorating air of Caledonia.

Duncan said nothing, but held the flapping plaid on his shoulders a trifle more securely to his chest.

Truth to tell, Maddie was not as unequivocally happy with the sights and sounds of home as she had expected to be. For one thing, she had forgotten, if she had ever been aware of it, that a perpetual gale blew off the North Sea. The effect was like a douse of cold water. "Invigorating," she had called it. "Penetrating," would have been more apt. For another thing, she had grown accustomed, in the few months she had been in England, to the softer, prettier, more cultivated landscape. The trees and flowers which braved the untamed coastal climes of home were few and far between. She tried to shake herself of her vague feelings of disappointment and began to point out landmarks to Duncan, exclaiming enthusiastically on the splendid view across the Forth estuary to the distant shores and hills of Fifeshire.

It was the familiar sight of Janet's diminutive form as she turned from the black iron stove with spurtle in hand which evoked in Maddie's breast her first real sense of homecoming. The aroma of ginger and stewed rhubarb was distilled on the air, a delectable reminder that the first jams and jellies of the season had been newly preserved.