скачать книгу бесплатно
My Lady Angel
Joanna Maitland
Was Lady Angelina Penrose some grasping harpy?Or the beautiful widow longing for love that others saw? The Earl of Penrose wanted to think the worst. But when he learned otherwise, Frederick doubted he could ever make amends for their unfortunate introduction. Until he spotted Angel at a ball that could ruin her reputation…and he felt honor bound to save her!Abused by her late husband, Angel had come to the risqué ball for a little harmless flirtation. And she found it with a mysterious stranger known only as Max. But even under the spell cast by Max's gentle kisses, she sensed there was something disturbingly familiar about her masked lover….
“Max,” she managed at last,
opening her eyes and raising
her head, “will you not
remove your mask?”
Angel found she longed to see his face.
He shook his head slightly. “Better you remember me as I am now—your unknown cavalier, the man who is bewitched by your beauty. I would not have you think of me as I really am.”
Angel did not have the first idea of what to make of his words. Her brain seemed to be fully occupied in dealing with her heightened senses and the odd reactions of her body. It had never betrayed her like this. Why on earth…?
His mouth descended on hers with the softness of a butterfly alighting on a flower. The last vestiges of rational thought deserted her. She wanted…she wanted so much more. She reached her arms up to him and pulled him closer, returning a man’s kiss for the first time in her life.
Praise for Joanna Maitland’s recent titles:
A Poor Relation
“Regency purists will note that Maitland has a fine
command of the era’s sensibilities.”
—Romantic Times
My Lady Angel
Joanna Maitland
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter One
‘I f I must take another husband, I suppose I could always marry Cousin Frederick.’
Lady Charlotte stared at her niece with narrowed eyes and pursed lips. She looked as if she had suddenly been confronted by a very bad smell. ‘If I thought for one moment that you might do such a wicked thing, Angelina… Why, even you would deserve to be locked in the round tower till you came to your senses.’
Her niece rose swiftly from her spoon-back chair by the fireplace and came to sit on the sofa beside her aunt, taking the old lady’s wrinkled hands in her own smooth white ones and stroking them reassuringly. ‘Dearest Aunt, there is no need to threaten me with the tower. It is enough to hear you call me “Angelina” to know that I have offended you. I was only bamming you, I promise. You know I am in no hurry to marry again.’ She managed to suppress the involuntary shudder that accompanied the word. ‘I would certainly never marry another man called “Frederick”,’ she went on, assuming a teasing tone.
‘Hmph,’ snorted the old lady. ‘You should not jest about Cousin Frederick and his family, Angel. They’re a bad lot, every last one of ’em. And I’m sure they would all be delighted to see you dead and buried.’
‘Aunt! You must not speak so. Truly, you must not. Especially of a man we have never met.’
‘Don’t need to meet him,’ Lady Charlotte said roundly. ‘Knowing your Great-uncle Augustus was quite enough for me, even if he was family. Never known a man so full of greed and envy. Couldn’t ever accept the fact that his son remained plain Mr Rosevale while your father inherited all three titles.’ Lady Charlotte had no qualms about speaking ill of the dead.
Angel tried another tack. ‘Well, Cousin Frederick should be happy at last. After all, he is Lord Penrose now.’ She smiled conspiratorially.
‘Minx! If I didn’t know you so well, I might have believed you meant that. What good is the earldom to Cousin Frederick when all the money and almost all the land goes with the barony? And to a mere slip of a girl at that?’ She returned Angel’s wicked smile with interest.
Angel dropped her gaze, trying to look like a demure young miss. She failed, as usual. ‘He does have a seat in the House of Lords, Aunt Charlotte. Perhaps that will be some consolation to him.’
‘I doubt it. The only law he would wish to enact would be to prohibit inheritance in the female line. Besides, he probably cannot afford to take his seat. It would not do for the Earl of Penrose to be threadbare.’
Angel tried not to smile at the picture her aunt’s words had conjured up. Cousin Frederick, now the Earl of Penrose, had inherited a small impoverished estate in Cornwall, a seat in the Lords—and nothing else. As long as Angel and her aunt were alive, Frederick would have only an empty title.
But if Angel died without an heir, he stood to inherit everything.
‘I think it is time we mended the feud, Aunt. After all, Frederick is head of the family now. We cannot refuse to receive him.’
‘Nothing of the sort,’ said the old lady. ‘There are two families now. You hold the barony. As Lady Rosevale, you are head of the Rosevale family. Frederick may out-rank you, being an Earl, but his is still the cadet branch. Let him head his own family. There is no need for us to receive him. No need at all. I, for one, shall never speak to him. It is impossible.’
Angel shook her head at her aunt’s stubbornness. The Rosevale family was notorious for its short tempers and prolonged feuds, but neither her father nor her aunt had ever been prepared to explain the origins of this one. ‘Aunt,’ she said, ‘I must ask you to tell me why Papa quarrelled with Great-uncle Augustus.’
‘No, dear.’ Aunt Charlotte looked decidedly mulish, but then, seeing Angel’s set expression, she added, ‘It was a very long time ago. It is best forgotten.’
Angel sat up even straighter. ‘As head of the family,’ she said, with emphasis, ‘I need to be fully aware of such things. You must agree with that. You yourself said that—’
‘No, I—’ Aunt Charlotte was shaking her head.
‘I insist, Aunt.’ Angel looked meaningfully at her. The old lady was stubborn, but she also believed implicitly in the role of the head of the family. It was only a matter of waiting.
‘Oh, very well. But it is not an edifying tale.’ Aunt Charlotte took a lace-trimmed handkerchief from her pocket and touched it to her lips. ‘Your papa… Er…your papa was not yet twenty when he inherited. I was already of age, of course, but your grandfather had appointed his younger brother, your Great-uncle Augustus, to be your papa’s guardian and trustee. Uncle Augustus was very proud, very conscious of his rank. And grasping when it came to money.’
Angel’s face must have shown some reaction to her aunt’s outspoken description of the late Augustus Rosevale, for Lady Charlotte nodded bleakly and squeezed her niece’s hand.
‘You insisted on knowing, Angel, and so I must give you the truth with no bark on it. Augustus Rosevale was a miser…and a fortune-hunter to boot. Since he could not have the titles for himself, he did everything in his power to persuade your papa to marry his own daughter, Mary.
‘Your papa would have none of it. And I encouraged him in his resistance, I freely admit. Uncle Augustus was a tyrant…and Mary was a plain little mouse, with neither spirit nor brains to recommend her. A marriage between them would have been a disaster from the first.’
‘But I thought Papa’s first marriage was a love match?’
Aunt Charlotte smiled fondly. ‘Yes, indeed. Your papa had already met and fallen in love with Lady Jane Ellesmore. He paid no heed at all to Uncle Augustus’s attempts to separate them or to advance the claims of his own daughter. The day your papa came of age, he proposed to Lady Jane. They were married within a month.’
‘But she died.’
‘Yes, she died. Although they did have twelve happy years together. In spite of Uncle Augustus.’
Angel looked at her aunt enquiringly.
‘Your father’s first marriage was not blessed with children, Angel. And Uncle Augustus took every possible opportunity of reminding your papa of the fact, never caring how much it might hurt him. It was even worse for poor Jane. It made her feel that she had failed as a wife.’
Angel turned her head away, biting her lip.
Aunt Charlotte was concentrating on her tale. ‘She said to me once, not long before she died, that it might have been better if your father had married his cousin after all.’
Angel managed a nod. ‘How terribly sad,’ she said quietly.
Aunt Charlotte sighed. There was a faraway look in her eyes for a moment, but it was soon replaced by a martial glint. ‘Poor Jane was barely cold in her grave when Augustus was back, trying yet again to persuade your father to wed Mary. Well! You will not be surprised to learn that your father sent him to the right about. Said Mary was too old to bear him an heir, even if he’d been able to stomach the sight of her, which he could not.’
Angel gasped.
‘No, it was not well done of him, I agree. It was not Mary’s fault, after all. But, you must understand, he had just buried his wife. And he had loved her dearly. Indeed, he was so distraught that, at one stage, I thought he…’ She paused, swallowing hard. ‘However, he did recover enough to decide that he must marry again, to ensure the succession, for it was clearly unwise to rely on Julian.’
‘Julian? But…but surely he died when he was just a boy?’
‘Is that what your papa told you?’
Angel nodded. Papa had spoken only once of his younger brother and it had seemed to give him pain. Angel had never felt able to press him for more information. And, apart from a single portrait of Julian as a child, there was no trace of him here at the Abbey.
‘I can understand why he would have told you that but I…I fear it was not true, my love. Julian died, but… Oh, dear, this is very difficult.’
Angel waited.
Aunt Charlotte sighed. ‘Julian was years younger than either of us, and so wild that we despaired of him. He did not see why he should pay any heed to your papa. They quarrelled all the time, I’m afraid. Your papa wanted Julian to marry in order to ensure the succession, but Julian refused to give up his wicked bachelor ways. Drinking and gambling, and—Julian said your papa was perfectly capable of getting an heir for himself. All he had to do was to find himself a better breeder than the one he had buried. You can imagine how your papa reacted to that! Yet another family rift, of course. Julian took himself off to France and never came back. I…I heard that he did marry there, but he and his wife, and all her family, were killed in the Terror. She was the daughter of the Comte d’Eury, you see, and—’
Lady Charlotte rose and walked to the window. Angel could tell, from the set of her shoulders, that she was trying to master a sudden surge of emotion.
‘No matter how wild he was,’ Aunt Charlotte said in a low, passionate voice, ‘he did not deserve to die like that. No one did.’
Angel sat silent, wondering, waiting for her aunt to recover her composure. She had clearly loved Julian, in spite of his faults. Perhaps Papa had loved him too? Had he banished all the reminders of Julian from Rosevale Abbey because the memory was too painful? It certainly seemed to be so for Aunt Charlotte. Angel forced herself to resist the temptation to go to the old lady and put a comforting arm around her. Aunt Charlotte would have upbraided her severely for doing such a thing. A lady should never lose control of her emotions in public. Never. And if, by some mischance, she did, it was the height of bad manners for anyone present to notice.
‘And Great-uncle Augustus?’ prompted Angel, when Aunt Charlotte had turned back to face her once more.
‘He and your father never spoke again. The breach was too deep to mend. Why, your father did not even go to the funeral when Augustus’s son died. He didn’t go to Augustus’s funeral either.’
‘Oh,’ said Angel, considering. ‘But I thought Cousin Frederick was Great-uncle Augustus’s son.’
‘No. Grandson.’
‘Oh,’ said Angel again. ‘So…he is not an old man, then?’
‘No, of course not. You knew that, surely? You said he might do as a husband for you. You were not planning—’
‘Dear Aunt, I was only teasing you, I promise. I know nothing of Cousin Frederick. I supposed that he was…oh…fifty at least, and rather stout. With a large red nose,’ she added, hoping her aunt would forget her momentary megrims.
‘You, Angel, are most definitely in need of a spell in the tower,’ said Aunt Charlotte bluntly, reverting to her normal self once more. ‘I don’t know why I— I’d do better to take myself off and leave you to your own devices.’
‘But then you’d miss all the fun.’
Lady Charlotte raised both eyebrows.
‘Since we are out of mourning at last, dear Aunt,’ continued Angel, assuming a determined expression, ‘it is time that we looked about us a little. I should so like to travel on the Continent, now that Boney is safely disposed of. In a month or two, perhaps, once the weather is better. But I fancy we should open up the London house first, do not you?’
‘I—’
‘And if we should happen to encounter the new Earl of Penrose, we will receive him with politeness, however stout his middle or florid his complexion.’
‘Angel, we cannot—’
‘As head of the family,’ Angel said, with emphasis, ‘I wish the breach to be healed. We must make the attempt. Both of us, Aunt.’
Lady Charlotte shook her head a little, but the look on Angel’s face must have made an impact, for the old lady did not try to argue any further. ‘Very well. If I must, I will receive him. Shouldn’t think he’ll be stout, though. His father and his grandfather were both as thin as rails. It suited their penny-pinching characters, I always thought.’
