Chapter Three
IT WAS A truth widely known that Rossingley estate’s smooth running rested on the vagaries of its housekeeper’s humour. Acknowledged even by the earl himself. Thus, next morning, Lando allowed his valet, Pritchard, to dress him in muted tones before approaching Mrs Sugden’s below-stairs domain. Whilst confident the woman would approve of his attire, he could do nothing about the dark circles shrouding his tired eyes. Lando had slept fitfully after Angel’s unspoken threat and his subsequent ejection. The sister, Pritchard informed him sniffily, had been housed in a distant wing of the draughty manor Lando never found reason to visit. As far as the earl was concerned, her brother could have spent the damp night in a thick hawthorn hedge.
Lando’s beloved Charles had been a reliable judge of character, and a cursory glance at the nervous young woman perched on one of Mrs Sugden’s uncomfortable upright chairs lent credence to both his own fears and to Mr Angel’s tale. Timid as a snowdrop and twice as plain, poor Miss Angel was as puritanical-looking as the hard chair in which she was seated.
“Miss Angel.” Lando approached her in as unthreatening a manner as possible. No easy task when his own noble blood was all too evident in his strong lean proportions, in every turn of his white-blond head, in every expression settling on his fine features—even sympathy.
Nonetheless, he endeavoured to try. “Until you are quite well, my dear, you will be safe here at Rossingley as my guest. I trust Mrs Sugden to ensure that. And if there is anything you require, such as the assistance of a physician, then she will see that it is done.”
The girl shrank away from him, trembling in the chair. A less likely temptress he’d yet to meet. A hearty bowl of soup would topple her, never mind a male taking liberties not his to take. “I thank you, my lord,” she managed, her eyes filling with tears.
Lando arched a shapely eyebrow in the direction of his housekeeper, a fearsome woman, and knowing her, no doubt of the opinion that Miss Angel should have sought solace elsewhere rather than disrupt the well-oiled machine of her establishment. On more than one occasion she’d scolded Lando for being softer than underbelly of her late husband’s favourite terrier.
“If I might have a word, my lord,” Mrs Sugden murmured, jerking her chin towards the door.
“Please don’t tell me what I think you’re about to,” said Lando grimly when they were alone. Unless Miss Anne had travelled by foot for days, he only had one near neighbour. “The girl has come from the Gartside estate, hasn’t she?”
“Yes, my lord.” Mrs Sugden folded her arms across her ample bosom. “And I’m afraid her tale is that which you would expect.”
The knowledge his suspicion proved correct gave Lando no pleasure whatsoever.
“The girl has been serving as companion to the dowager Lady Gartside,” reported Mrs Sugden. “The dowager usually keeps to a quiet life in Sussex, but for the last month or more, she has resided at the Gartside estate, visiting her son. I shall spare you the intimate details, my lord, but on several occasions, Sir Ambrose…pressed his affections on Miss Angel—affections neither sought nor desired.”
Lando could have written the damned script himself. “And did he…” he enquired delicately.
“No, thank heavens. Not quite. Regardless, her reputation is ruined. A housemaid came upon them and reported straight to the dowager, who favoured her favourite, eldest son’s version of events and dismissed Miss Angel on the spot. She’ll recover, but the damage is done.” Mrs Sugden shook her head. “And to think her a niece of our lovely Captain Prosser; he’ll be rolling in his grave.”
“Quite,” said Lando crisply. “Any sign of the brother?”
“Not yet. Though I daresay he’ll show up again. Very affected by it, he is. Baying for blood.”
“How did they arrive?”
“On horseback, according to the head groom. One horse.”
The last part was accompanied by a grimace. Mrs Sugden had a healthy fear of horses, stemming from her firm belief they were as likely to step on your foot as look at you.
Lando turned to leave before she could begin enlisting the perils. “If and when he does, send him to me.”
*
MR ANGEL REAPPEARED as Lando was sitting down to a light lunch, improving neither his mood nor the taste. From the moment Lando had heard the name of the poor girl’s attacker, his small appetite had deserted him, though he kept Angel cooling his heels in the library. Sadly, Charles’s poor niece’s tale was not the first of its kind to spring from Gartside Manor in recent years. Ambrose Gartside, Eighth Baronet of Airdrie, was nothing more than a leery drunken oaf, hellbent on destroying his estate and his family’s reputation. Those facts, though unsavoury, were as clear as daylight. What wasn’t clear was why Angel felt the need to embroil Lando further. And make an enemy of him, too, by hinting as to the nature of his friendship with Charles. Lando had done his duty by providing a safe haven for the girl; as soon as she was mended, he would wash his hands of the whole nasty business.
“His lordship,” announced Inglis as Lando eventually swept into the library. Ever suspicious, his butler had not left Mr Angel alone. With a gracious nod, Lando dismissed him along with Jasper, the same footman who’d tossed the man out not twenty-four hours earlier. And from the glimmer in his single eye, Jasper looked eager for an opportunity to do so again.
No sooner had the door closed than Lando fixed Mr Angel with an arctic stare, determined to get the wretched business over and done with. “You will regret tussling with me, sir,” he said coolly. “Consider this a warning. My patience with your prettily dressed-up words is wearing thin.”
“I have no desire to tussle with you, my lord. I’ve come asking for your assistance, not to rake up trouble. My uncle’s memory is too dear to my sister and me. Though I live in London, I visited him in Kent as often as time would allow.”
“What is your business in London?”
“I…I strive to earn enough to send money to Anne and to keep a roof over my head. I cannot see the relevance, my lord.”
Seldom had Lando encountered a more evasive response. He gave the glowing embers an unnecessarily vicious poke before adopting a commanding position in front of his mantel. His visitor was dressed in the same plain coat as the night before. At best, it was clean.
“Very well. Tell your tale, Mr Angel. My staff have relayed your sister’s version; I want to hear yours. Explain why you chose my doorstep. If it’s with the intent to extort money from me, under the misapprehension I’m harbouring shameful secrets, then you are wasting your time. If not, you have three minutes.”
The man seized his chance. “My sister sent word to me in London, via a housemaid, that all was not well, and I rode to Gartside Manor with all haste. Given the nature of her distress, I was for breaking the door down, but the place is well attended. After two days, another message reached me, and I found my poor sister, Anne, wandering the Allenmouth road alone with nothing but a handful of coin and the clothes she stood up in. You were the nearest refuge, my lord. My sister has been…well, I have just paid her a visit. And I can assure you she is in no fit condition to travel further at this present time.”
As if the library were his own, Angel took up from where he left off the night before and paced the length of it, his coat swishing like a cat’s tail on each agitated turn. A lock of hair had fallen across his forehead. Roughly, he pushed it back while his other hand tugged at his loosely tied cravat, a gesture reminiscent of his uncle when under duress, and despite himself, the earl’s hibernating heart softened a fraction.
“Give thanks to the lord above that she’ll be safe here, Mr Angel. My housekeeper, Mrs Sugden, is both capable and discreet to a fault. I can assure you.”
Mr Angel’s hands balled into tight fists. “You expect me to thank the lord for that ? Well, I don’t! Because someone who thinks he can lord it over everyone else is the damned reason she’s in this mess in the first place. Sir Ambrose Gartside has defiled my sister irrevocably, and rumour has it, she is not the first.”
“No,” the earl conceded. “Regrettably, the rumours are true.”
“Bastard.” Raw anger glittered in Angel’s exquisite dark eyes. “Forgive me for my uncouth language, Lord Rossingley, but I have a mind to break down his door and murder him with my bare hands.”
“I…ah…don’t advise it.” Lando threw him a cold smile. “You swinging from a gibbet will be of no conceivable benefit to your sister.”
Lando’s pulse took up a steady drum beat at his temples. So far, the man hadn’t seemed inclined to further his insinuations. If he was here to merely vent his spleen, he could jolly well go and do it somewhere else. Preferably a long way from Lando’s library.
“Your sister has my condolences, Mr Angel,” he said calmly. “And, as I’ve stated, she may stay here until she is quite well.”
Angel rounded on him. “Forgive my impertinence, my lord. But what good are your condolences when this fiend is getting away with whatever he chooses? They’re no more use than an offer to…to rearrange my furniture whilst my house is burning down!”
Angel’s wretched pacing came to a halt, his dark eyes flashed, and his flared nostrils breathed fire not six inches from Lando’s face. The man’s balled fists seemed itching to connect with something, and for a second, Lando wondered whether that something might be him.
No one discomfited the eleventh earl in the seclusion of his own library.
“Why don’t you position yourself nearer the door, Mr Angel?” Lando suggested, summoning all his noble astringency. “That way, you’ll have less far to travel when I kick you out again.” Turning his attention back to the fire, he delivered another sharp poke. “It would serve you well to remember that your sister is a guest under my roof. That situation could change very easily.”
“You wouldn’t.” Mr Angel’s furious gaze fixed onto Lando’s.
“Try me.”
Danger lurked in those dark, dark eyes. Gadzooks, this man tested Lando’s patience. If the poor innocent girl hadn’t already been treated so poorly by a member of the upper echelons, Lando would have had a mind to carry out his threat.
The pacing resumed. “Anne was Captain Prosser’s ward, my lord. And that was a responsibility he took very seriously, so much that she took his good name to gain employment.”
“He held her dear,” Lando replied testily. “What of it?”
“I was with him in his final days before he passed. We spoke of you often.”
Wrath’s chilly fingers seeped into Lando’s veins. Angel’s true purpose was about to reveal itself, and it was precisely as he’d surmised.
“You were worth a great deal to him,” continued the man. “Which is why I am confident of your assistance. What was he worth to you if you disregard all that he held dear?”
“Ah.” Lando’s tone was quiet and smooth. Careless even. If Mr Angel had known the earl better, he’d have recognised it signalled white-hot rage. “Finally. And I was just thinking you’d forgotten.”
“Forgotten what?”
“The part of the story where you attempt to frighten me, of course. Do carry on, I’m all ears.”
“I mean to do no such thing,” Angel protested. “You have my word.”
“Forgive me if I take your word with a pinch of salt.”
Angel, his brow furrowed, squinted at Lando. “For reasons that are frankly inexplicable, my uncle cared very, very much for you. He was…not to put too fine a point on it, dammit…he was in love with you.”
A crashing silence followed in which Lando resisted placing his hands around the impudent young man’s neck. His pulse slid from his temples to set up a white-hot hammering in his throat. “How dare you come into my house and say such things!”
“If I may be so bold, I will say a deal more. Because it is so very clear to me, from how your eyes mist over and your hand trembles at my every mention of his name, that you were so very much in love with him too. And therefore, you know even better than I that your condolences are not enough. Whether you join me or not, I have vowed to avenge my sister until that scoundrel Gartside falls to his knees begging my forgiveness. And I know I speak from my fine uncle’s heart when I say that having you beside me is everything Charles, your dear friend and lover , would have wanted.”
Inglis and the second footman were already yanking open the door as Lando shoved the man through it. It had taken every ounce of Lando’s breeding not to send him on his way with a smashed jaw. Slamming the door shut behind him, he staggered back into the chaise’s rich upholstery, Angel’s words pounding in his ears. Love . Charles’s precious love and Lando’s most carefully guarded secret had been turned into a weapon against him.
Enveloped by a sudden and dreadful bone-crushing weariness, he dragged in a breath. Lando’s staff knew his inclinations, of course, how could they not? But now this hot-headed young man did too. He had been there at the end, at Charles’s bedside, where Lando should have been. And instead of kindness, he was twisting his knowledge to… Lando was unsure, but doubtless, it would involve money. All that romantic flummery was nothing but a thinly veiled prelude to extortion. Angel was on the cusp of exposing his and Charles’s love to the world if Lando didn’t cooperate; he didn’t care for his uncle’s deep affection for his sister or for Lando; Angel cared for money.
Lando could pay the fellow off, he supposed, with enough blunt to set him and his sister up so he never bothered the earl again. Or, less charitably, he could fight fire with fire, threaten Angel with something untoward, make a subtle suggestion to a friendly magistrate. An earl’s word against unknown Mr Angel’s. How could Angel retaliate? The chap didn’t have any proof. He and Charles had always been too careful. There were no trinkets, no treasured locks of hair curled behind dull cameo brooches, no damned sonnets secreted between the pages of a dusty, earnest book. All that remained of his short years with Charles were mountains of happy memories now increasingly tarnished by this damned avenging Angel with every passing moment. It was as if he was ripping love letters from the earl’s heart and reading them out loud, one by one.
Nobody had so much as whispered the name Charles Prosser between the walls of Rossingley these last three years. Lando had grieved silently and alone. His every word, every gesture, and every social invitation turned down had been nothing but another frosty layer concealing the cold white stone buried deep in his chest.
And now, this handsome young man with his gold earring, his brash fury, and his impudence scattered those layers like rose petals, dancing through Lando’s armour like it wasn’t even there.