The Passion of an Angel

And with that single statement, Prudence felt all her enjoyment of the morning disappear.

“No, you’re not in the least bit sorry, so don’t lie to me! Leave it to a man to ruin everything—as men always do! Just when you start feeling comfortable, they take themselves off!” Prudence shot back at him, scrambling to her feet and giving the picnic basket a quick kick. She tossed off the remainder of her wine, just daring him to say something cutting about her manners, and ordered him to repack the basket, as she was anxious to get back to see if Lightning was faring well under the coachman’s care.

She had taken no more than three steps when she felt Daventry’s hands come down on her shoulders, halting her where she stood. “Let me go, my lord, before I do you an injury,” she warned, unshed tears stinging her eyes because she had begun to like him, just a little bit, and now he had gone and turned their picnic into yet another disappointment. Couldn’t wait to be shed of her, could he? Well, she was just as eager to see him walk out of her life!

He released her, saying, “In any other young woman, I would consider that to be an idle threat. In your case, however—”

“Oh, cut line!” she shouted, rounding on him, just to have him plop her wide-brimmed straw hat down hard on her head, nearly to her eyes, keeping his hand on top of her skull and her body at arm’s length.

“Can’t take the chance of freckles popping up on that pert nose, now can we?” he said by way of explanation, although she knew he was only saying that because he needed an excuse to keep her at a distance, which was probably a good thing because she would otherwise have sharply lifted her knee into his groin, as her brother had taught her to do after that leering traveling tinker had dared to corner her behind the stables four years ago.

“Why’d you have to ruin things by treating me like your unwanted ward again, instead of continuing on as the friends we were this morning, tramping here from the inn with the picnic basket swinging between us?” she asked him, her emotions a sudden jumble she did not wish to examine. “You gave a little, allowing me some wine, not saying a word when I deliberately ripped the chicken with my fingers, and I gave a little, promising to be a help to your sister. And then you took it all back, reminding me that you are dealing with me only because you have to, because my brother asked you to and you could find no way to wriggle out of your promise.”

Banning turned back to begin repacking the picnic basket. “That’s it, no more wine for the infant,” he said as if to himself. “And to think I’d worried that I’d find some simpering milk-and-water puss when I traveled to MacAfee Farm. Ha! What I would give now for a simple-headed die-away miss, rather than this bundle of contradictions I am saddled with. One moment the hoyden, a born temptress the next—but beneath it all the ragamuffin with the temper of a prodded ox!”

“I did not tempt you to anything!” Prudence corrected him heatedly. “I did not invite you into my bedchamber, you lascivious ogler, nor did I ask you to take me on this picnic, sans chaperone. But I came along with you, believing we could cry friends, putting myself on my excruciatingly best behavior, hoping that you might begin to believe that Henry’s request had not made you the most put-upon, persecuted person on earth. Hah! Fat lot of hope in any of that, is there, Daventry? You’re nothing more than a rutting old dog—as if I’d have you!”

He stopped in the midst of repacking the basket, one hand on the lid as he looked her up and down dismissively. “You wouldn’t know what to do with me,” he said coldly, “just as I haven’t the foggiest notion of what to do with you. Which, my dear Miss MacAfee, is precisely where I do believe we should both leave the matter.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Every man, as the saying is,

can tame a shrew but he that hath her.

Robert Burton

“STAND STILL, MISS MACAFEE. And you are to remember that you are now a young lady and stop swearing at once, if you please.”

“The bloody hell I will, you prune-faced old biddy. You stick me with one more pin and I’ll have your liver on a skewer!”

Banning took a moment to smile as he stood peeking around the slightly ajar door, then entered the room without knocking, feeling it best to intervene before Prudence, looking hot and flustered in a morning gown definitely designed with a much different female in mind, made good on her threat.

“Learning to rub along together fairly well, are you Miss Prentice, Miss MacAfee?” he inquired brightly, unable to hold back a satisfied grin at the sight of his ward in a temper. “How above everything wonderful, truly. I’m convinced of it—you’ll be bosom chums by tomorrow night, when we arrive in Park Lane to meet with my sister. I think this little stop in Epsom was just the ticket, although I can’t say, Miss Prentice, that I’m overfond of our ‘angel’ in that particular shade of pink.”

“It’s downright ugly, isn’t it,” Prudence declared, almost seeming in charity with him for the first time in days as she spread her hands and glared down at the gown Miss Prentice was still trying without notable success to pin more snugly around her left wrist. “All my life, I’ve been dreaming of beautiful gowns, of cutting a dash in society with my stylish wardrobe—and this is what that paperskulled ninny brings me. Pink!”

Banning hid a rather nasty smile as he bent his head and pretended an interest in adjusting his shirt cuffs. He had found, much to his amazement—considering the fact that he believed himself a gentleman—that he truly enjoyed baiting the child.

“I was speaking of your complexion, Miss MacAfee,” he then explained, hoping his expression was sober and very guardian-like, “which has a tendency to go nearly puce with temper, an unfortunately too common occurrence, considering the fact that you fly into the boughs almost hourly. As for the gown Miss Prentice purchased for you on my orders, it is passable enough, I believe.”

“How amusing you are, Daventry,” Prudence retorted, pulling her wrist free of Miss Prentice’s grasping fingers. “I’ll wager you launch yourself into hysterics three or more times a day, just reflecting on your own comic brilliance. Now, if you’re not going to be of any help to me—go away. Find yourself a monkey and a tambourine, and go perform downstairs in the common room, where there are doubtless enough drunken farmers eager to giggle at your cutting wit. I want to get back into my breeches, and I intend to do so in the next ten seconds. That’s ten… nine…eight…”

Miss Prentice walked to a corner of the room, picking up her almost always present glass of water and taking a sip before saying, “Lady Wendover has not sufficiently recovered her strength after her ordeal of last year, my lord, and should not be forced to deal with such an ill-mannered child. I beg that you rethink the matter, then go about discovering a suitable school for at least a year. I personally have heard of such an establishment in the north, somewhere near Edinburgh, I believe. Backboards, firmly administered corporal punishments for insubordination, thrice daily prayers—”

“Oh stubble it, Prentice. You’ve interrupted my counting. Besides, I know very well how a lady behaves—probably better than you, as a matter of fact. My grandmother was very particular that I should understand what it takes to be a lady. I just don’t like you, that’s all, and don’t give a fig what you think of me,” Prudence explained, turning her back on the woman.

“I’m not too taken with you, either, my lord Daventry,” she continued, smiling. “But you don’t have to worry about your sister. I know which side of my bread is buttered, and I’ll be good when I have to be. Now, where was I? Oh yes. Eight. Eight…seven…six…”

Banning inclined his head slightly in her direction. “How you soothe my troubled mind, Miss MacAfee,” he drawled, addressing her formally, as he had since entering the bedchamber here at the Cross and Battle, as he had done since their stormy interlude at the ruin—not that he had seen her above twice since then, as he had secreted himself in the private dining room at the inn just outside Milford and rode ahead of the coach during the day. “Just remember as you count down the numbers, and as you are playing the proper young miss around my sister, that I am the one footing the bill for your coming excursion into London society.”

“Don’t blame me for the promises you made, Daventry. Counting time is over, I fear. Don’t say I didn’t give you fair warning,” Prudence shot back, grinning as she began unbuttoning the unsuitable pink gown, starting with the buttons that seemed to climb halfway up the front of her slim throat. “Oh, look at me! The country bumpkin stripping down in front of the London gentleman. Quickly, Miss Prentice! Scream! Faint!”

“Angel, please,” Banning whispered in warning, unwilling to look away. Unable to look away. Good God! What was wrong with him, that he could not look away? How had he come to be so eager for the sight of a few inches of Prudence MacAfee’s sun-kissed skin, when he had just to walk into any ballroom in Mayfair to see yards and yards of bare, supple, creamy white female shoulders and bosoms.

Three more buttons were pushed free of their moorings, exposing several more inches of flawless, golden skin. “Please, my lord Daventry? Please what? Please stop? Please continue? Better run away, my lord, run away quickly—or else take another look, as your first one the other morning seemed to interest you so much.”

“His—your…your first, my lord?” Miss Prentice asked, her watery blue eyes rounded in question, in anticipated horror. “My lord, I fear I must insist you explain.”

“The bloody hell I will!” Banning exploded and bolted for the door, ushered on his way by the lilting trill of Angel MacAfee’s delighted laughter.

IT WAS DARK IN THE private dining room that adjoined his bedchamber at the Cross and Battle, but the Marquess of Daventry made no move to light more than one of the tapers stuck into the small branch of candles sitting at his elbow on the table.

After all, if he lit the remainder of the candles it would then be possible to see his reflection in the nearby windowpane, and he had seen more than enough of the man he was in the past two hours to wish to look himself in the eye just now.

It was depressing, believing himself to have turned, almost overnight, from a sober, upstanding man of the world, into a lech. A lusting, dirty-minded lech.

Yet here he was, a reasonably intelligent man of nearly five and thirty, reduced to drooling over a green goose of an eighteen-year-old woman-child with the come-hither body of a siren, the all-knowing eyes of a vixen, and the brash language and devil-take-the-hindmost attitude of a young buck first out on the town.

She had no shame, no wiles, no carefully cultivated airs, and no compunction about saying what she thought, doing what she wished, flaunting convention—not because she was being deliberately difficult, but just because she was Angel MacAfee, and Angel MacAfee didn’t give a flying pasty what anyone thought.

Flying pasty! Christ on a crutch, now he was being reduced to thieves’ cant, taken back to his own fairly rackety salad days—corrupted by a female barely old enough to be out of her leading strings!

Ah, what imp of mischief had entered Henry MacAfee’s mind that he would christen his sister with such a misnomer as Angel? Banning knew he would say that she had all the makings of a wanton, baiting him the way she had, except that he also knew she had acted more from anger that he would dare to look at her as a woman than she did from any longing to crawl into the nearest bed with him.

She had dared him with her lush, golden young body, successfully pushed him away by the simple tactic of pretending to draw him closer, made him embarrassed to be a man, ashamed to feel what could only be considered normal male desires, wants, needs.

Not that her daring warning had been necessary. He was certainly not about to do anything about his absurd attraction to her, save for possibly attempting to drown it tonight, and forever.

“Damn her for having seen the last thing I wanted her to see, the last thing I wanted to acknowledge, even to myself,” he grumbled aloud, reaching yet again for the wine bottle he had ordered sent up from the common room. It was his second bottle of the evening, and he might just order a third if this one didn’t do the trick.

Lusting, longing…and now a descent into spirits, a headfirst dive into a bottle. And all because of Angel MacAfee. It was lowering, distinctly lowering, and he filled his glass to the brim, just thinking about it, and ignoring the slight squeak of the door to the hallway as someone, probably Rexford, pushed it open.

“The lizard said you gave up drinking more than the occasional glass of wine ever since you got yourself so bosky you couldn’t think clearly enough to conjure up a way of slipping free of my brother’s request that you be my guardian. As far as I can see, the next time that woman’s right will be the first time, eh, Daventry?”

Banning swallowed the wine all at once, tossing it back as he would have done a stronger spirit, then glared at Prudence, who was still in the doorway, grinning at him across the darkness. “That large wooden contraption you are leaning against is called a door, Miss MacAfee. It is employed by civilized people as a method of ensuring privacy. It is also used to knock on, if a person of manners and breeding desires admittance to that place of privacy. Kindly close it behind you as you leave.”

“Certainly, my lord Grumpus,” Prudence said affably, leaving the door open as she crossed to the table plunking her shirt-and breeches-clad self down in the chair facing his, her forearms resting on the thick oaken arms, her legs splayed out in front of her in the way of a young buck settling in for a night of gaming and drinking. “But seeing as how I’m not planning on going anywhere just yet, maybe you’ll remind me again when I do leave. I’ve got the breeding, or so my brother assured me over and over, but my manners might still need a little work.”

“I suppose this unexpected visit to my private dining room means you no longer believe I have any designs on your virtue?” he asked, thankful his voice sounded light, teasing, and just a little condescending.

“Ah, Daventry,” she cooed, pushing the thick curtain of her hair up and away from her neck as she winked at him. “I’d be a damned fool to think an old man like you capable of even planning a seduction, let alone executing one. I was just trying to get your goat, that’s all, and I wanted to let you know you’d been looking. Guess it worked, huh?”

“You do enjoy baiting people, don’t you?” Banning asked, watching as she leaned forward and poured herself a glass of wine, then crossed her booted ankles in front of her on the table top, tipping her chair back slightly on its hind legs. “Or is it just that you take great pleasure in—you believe—shocking people with your uncouth behavior?”

She looked at him over the brim of her wineglass, then sighed in patently false impatience. “I’ve already demonstrated to you that I have a fine vocabulary, Daventry. I’ve already promised you that I will be a patterncard of all the finest and most stultifyingly boring virtues whenever I am with your sister. In truth,” she added, her smile as wide and innocent as a child’s, “I am by and large a most agreeable, friendly sort of person, really I am. But I’m afraid you probably will have to indulge me as I go about exacting a small spot of revenge aimed at punishing you for leaving me with Shadwell months longer than necessary. You cut it a slice too fine, so that I’ll have to rush myself into the season. Remembering that fact, I’m still fairly angry with you, but it’s a feeling that’s slowly wearing off as we draw closer to London. As to the lizard? Well, she just plain begs to be shocked.”

“All right,” Banning said, raising his glass as if in a toast, “I suppose I can withstand the slings and arrows of your childish tantrums for another day. As long as, in turn, you understand why I barely slow the coach as I deposit you at my sister’s doorstep.”