Devil’s Angel Read online

  Devil’s Angel

  By Marlene Susan

  Chapter 1

  England, June 1690

  He was being followed.

  His instincts honed by years of danger on the battlefield and off, Lucian Sandford, the Earl of Vayle, hastily stepped off the narrow path that meandered through a woods thick with ash, oak, and hazel.

  Grabbing the low branch of an oak, Lucian hauled himself up into the tree. From this vantage, he peered through the screen of green leaves. Some forty yards back along the narrow path, he sighted a woman walking purposefully toward him, the black of her gown standing out against the foliage. He could not make out her face, but she was alone.

  A lady looking for a little amorous diversion perhaps? He was used to such unsolicited feminine interest. Nonetheless, he was startled that one of Viscount Bloomfield’s female guests was so audacious she would seek Lucian out during the celebration of his betrothal to their host’s daughter Kitty.

  At another time and place, he might have welcomed the unknown woman’s boldness,

  But not today. He wanted to be alone to savour his betrothal. His marriage to Bloomfield’s daughter would mark the ultimate triumph in his secret campaign. It had taken him fourteen years, but the vindication he had pursued for so long would, with his marriage, be his at last. He was not about to jeopardize it with the silly female who was following him.

  Lucian knew just how to ensure his escape from her. With a crafty smile, he dropped from the tree and strode rapidly down the slope until he reached a creek, swift and deep, that flowed through the wood.

  No bridge spanned it, but near its edge a rope dangled from a sturdy branch of an oak.

  Lucian seized the rope, ran up the slope, then turned, and took a running leap.

  The rope swung out over the wild, tumbling water. He looked down and caught his breath. The furious torrent beneath him was a daunting sight even to a man who had performed such a manoeuvre many times.

  Then the rope carried him over the opposite bank and he dropped onto terra firma.

  Lucian concealed himself behind a wide hazel bush, where he could observe the lady’s approach without her seeing him.

  When she came into view, he frowned in surprise. God’s oath, he had not even been introduced to the female, although he had overheard someone say that she was the sister of that scoundrel Horace Crowe.

  Lucian knew Horace and his father, Sir Rupert Crowe, mostly by reputation. That was enough to discourage any desire to become better acquainted with them.

  Or with any of their relatives.

  Her black gown was hopelessly plain and unfashionable. Her hair was so well hidden beneath an unbecoming cap that he could not even ascertain its colour. At this distance, she had the look of a timid, dried-up spinster.

  Thank God he had outwitted her pursuit of him. He gleefully anticipated her frustration when she saw the churning creek with no bridge across it and realized that she was stymied.

  But when she reached the water, she gathered up the skirts of her gown, revealing to Lucian’s startled gaze one of the shapeliest pair of legs and trim ankles that he had ever been privileged to see. Who would have thought that such beauty could be hidden beneath that sorry dress.

  He was so bemused by the charming sight that he paid no heed to what she was about until she began to run.

  Only then did he realize that she had knotted her skirts around her thighs and grabbed the rope suspended from the oak.

  Lucian gasped. Surely she did not mean to cross the creek as he had!

  Her feet lifted off the ground.

  He could not believe that a female would dare to cross any creek in such a manner, but especially one that was a raging torrent as this was.

  She was damned eager for his attention, Lucian thought wryly. This one would not be easily discouraged.

  Yet he was forced to applaud her courage even as he cursed her foolhardiness. How wrong he’d been to think her timid.

  She lacked the weight and speed he had had to propel the rope. For one terrifying moment, he thought that its momentum would not carry her to the opposite bank and she would be left dangling over the foaming silver water beneath her.

  He was already stripping off his coat, preparing to leap into the stream to rescue the little fool should she panic and let go of the rope.

  But she did not. Instead, to his astonishment, a trill of exhilarated laughter bubbled from her.

  She was something else again, Lucian thought with grudging admiration.

  The makeshift knot she had tied in her skirts came undone, and they fell about her ankles. The rope swung with heart-stopping slowness until she was finally over the bank, her feet dangling several inches above the ground. She was looking down so he could not see her face.

  Lucian stepped from behind the hazel bush and grabbed her as she dropped from the rope. She squeaked in surprise, and her head bobbed up. She had a very ordinary nose and mouth.

  Her eyes seemed huge in the delicate oval of her face. They were a rich, startling shade of blue as bright and clear as the English sky on a rare summer day when not a cloud marred it. Her dark brows and lashes, long and curling, offered a startling contrast to her complexion that was as fresh and fair as virgin snow.

  “Are you out of your mind trying such a dangerous stunt as that?” he demanded as he set her on the ground.

  She was petite, not even coming to his shoulder, but then he was an exceptionally tall man.

  Clearly unchastened, she scoffed, “Oh, fie, it’s not dangerous.” Her voice had a lovely, musical cadence to it that he found most pleasing. “I’ve used that rope to cross the creek many times. It is great fun,”

  Suddenly she smiled at him. Lucian was amazed by the transformation it wrought in her. The smile embraced not merely her mouth but her entire face. Her eyes sparkled with vitality and laughter.

  It was the most charming smile he had ever seen, and his body responded to it in a way that startled him.

  A few wisps of hair, as dark as her brows, had escaped from her matronly cap and fluttered around her face. Despite the cap, she was much younger than he had thought. Perhaps seventeen or eighteen. Indeed, she looked to be such a young innocent that Lucian was suddenly certain his suspicion must have been wrong. He could not have been her quarry after all.

  Nor did he believe that blackguard Rupert Crowe could possibly have fathered this delightful little elf.

  Lucian was angry, though, that she had taken the risk she had over the treacherous stream.

  “Why did you cross the creek like that?”

  “I was following you,” she confessed, her gaze meeting his without evasion or coyness, “because I wanted to approach you when no one else could observe us.”

  He could think of only one reason for wanting such privacy. That and her candour nonplussed him. Apparently he had been mistaken to judge her too young and innocent to be playing amorous games. Well, he thought with cynical amusement, if the bold chit wanted to play with him, who was he to argue with her.

  “I am only too happy to oblige you,” he told her sardonically, catching her face in his hands.

  Lucian’s mouth descended upon hers. He could not identify her perfume, but he found the fresh, clean scent that clung to her startlingly erotic. Her lips were warm and supple against his, and he was surprised at how much he liked the taste of them. Her mouth acquiesced to his, and he felt the tremor of response in her.

  Aroused despite himself, he tried to deepen the kiss, but her lips instantly stiffened and remained tightly closed against his invasion.

  Damn, but he despised teases who promised, then reneged! He would teach this green girl that she should not be playing a sophisticated woman’s game. His mouth became hard and punishin
g.

  Belatedly she grabbed at his wrists trying to free her face from his grip. When that failed, she delivered such a flurry of painful kicks to his shins that he let her go.

  “You little hellcat,” he growled with a glare that had never failed to reduce the officers arid soldiers who had served under his command to abject terror.

  Not only was she unfazed, but she actually seemed oblivious to it. Her pluck astonished him as much as her conduct did.

  “How dare you kick me like that?” he demanded.

  Blue fire blazed in her eyes. “How dare you kiss me like that?”

  Lucian’s lip curled contemptuously. “I assumed a girl as bold as you would prefer to get down immediately to the purpose of your following me.”

  She stared at him as though he were speaking in a foreign tongue. “I do not comprehend your meaning. Nor do I understand how you could kiss me when you are betrothed to Kitty!” Her voice quavered with indignation and reproach.

  How could he indeed? “Because you wanted me to kiss you,” he snapped. “Don’t deny it.”

  She looked at him as though he were a bedlamite. “I do deny it!” she protested. “Why ever would you think that?”

  Her ire was clearly not feigned. It belatedly occurred to him that she was indeed as innocent as he had first thought her, that her sudden resistance to his kiss sprang from that, not from any coquettish intent. He said softly, “You have never been kissed by a man before, have you?”

  “Oh,” she exclaimed in surprise, “how did you know?”

  “You do not have the faintest idea how to do it.”

  “Is there a proper way?” she inquired naively.

  Amused, he asked, “Shall I teach you?”

  “No. I do not think I like your kiss.”

  “I did not mean for you to like it,” he said brusquely. He had meant to teach her a lesson, so why did her answer disgruntle him?

  She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m glad you don’t.” She looked so innocent and perplexed that Lucian felt like a cad. “Why the devil were you following me?”

  “To warn you.”

  “About what? And why would you want to warn me about anything when you have never even met me?”

  “Because you are Kitty’s betrothed. You see I am—”

  “I know who you are—Horace Crowe’s sister,” Lucian interrupted impatiently. “And I must tell you that he is no friend of mine. Indeed, I despise the little fop.”

  To his astonishment, she beamed at him. Once again his perverse anatomy reacted disconcertingly to her dazzling smile.

  “I thought when I saw you that you would be a man of excellent judgment. Horace is a dreadful little weasel, is he not?”

  It was such an apt description of him that Lucian nearly laughed aloud. He murmured dryly, “Your familial affection overwhelms me.”

  “Indeed, it is Horace that I have come to warn you about. He and Sir Rupert mean to do you and Kitty evil.”

  Lucian scarcely knew the Crowes, and he could conceive of no reason why they would want to do him evil. But from what he had heard of them, he would put nothing past them either.

  Sir Rupert was cunning and corrupt. As a young man, he had squandered his large inheritance, then tried to recoup by abducting an unwilling young heiress and forcing her to marry him. Her money, too, was soon gone.

  It was said that Rupert, who could exert considerable charm when it suited his purpose, had then turned to Seducing rich, aging dowagers and relieving them of sizable portions of their wealth. Now he was rumoured to be the owner of a London gambling hell that preyed upon halflings and rustics from the country.

  Rupert was reputed to be as shrewd as he was unscrupulous, but Horace, his son by the unfortunate heiress, was said to lack even that advantage.

  “Kitty is my dear friend,” the girl said earnestly. “I cannot let the Crowes succeed.”

  “What evil do they intend to do us?”

  “They mean to prevent you from marrying Kitty so that Horace may do so.”

  Chapter 2

  Angel Winter stared up at the glowering giant before £ her. She could not blame the earl of Vayle for being furious at the Crowes’ plot, but she was having difficulty comprehending what he was saying. In his anger, he had reverted to a language, full of odd-sounding words, that she had never heard before.

  She wondered whether it could be Dutch.

  After all, Lord Vayle had lived in Holland. That was one reason why he was reputed to be so close to England’s new king, William of Orange, and Queen Mary.

  Although Angel prided herself on not being a faintheart, Lord Vayle was an intimidating figure, scowling as though she were his enemy instead of trying to help him and Kitty.

  He looked more savage than civilized. His face was strong and sharply etched with an aristocratic nose, a hard jaw, and a mouth that had a cynical curve to it. Light, piercing eyes, the colour of hammered silver, contrasted sharply with his bronzed skin. His hair, which he wore in a queue, was thick and black. So were the flaring brows that gave a roguish cast to his face.

  He looked more like a devil than an earl.

  No wonder they called him Lord Lucifer behind his back.

  No other man had ever raised the strange, fluttering unease in Angel that he did. Particularly when he touched her.

  She had initially felt this odd response when he had grabbed her as she had dropped from the rope and she had seen his hard, silver eyes.

  Then, when he had first kissed her, she had been positively shaken by the sensation curling within her. She ran her tongue over her lips, unconsciously savouring the lingering taste of him.

  Angel had told him she did not think that she liked his kiss, but she had not been entirely truthful. She had liked it very much until, for some unfathomable reason, she seemed to have angered him, and his mouth had turned punishing.

  Was it because she did not know the proper way to kiss?

  Aye, she decided, that must have been it.

  He finished his indecipherable tirade, and she inquired curiously, “Is that Dutch you are speaking?”

  He looked at her as if she were the one who was speaking a foreign language. “What?” he asked blankly.

  “I did not recognize the words you were using. I thought that they must be Dutch.”

  To her surprise, a dull flush spread across his cheeks. He opened his mouth, closed it, then finally said, “Aye, I frequently resort to—er, Dutch when I am angry.”

  He sounded very grave, but his lips were twitching as though he were amused by something.

  “Now, tell me, young Mistress Crowe, how—”

  “My name is Winter, not Crowe!” Angel interrupted vehemently. “That dreadful Sir Rupert is my stepfather, not my father.”

  “Ah-ha, I was right!” He smiled at her in a way that made the fluttering sensation return stronger than ever, even though he was not even touching her.

  Angel was disconcerted to discover how sinfully handsome he looked when the hard, angry lines of his face relaxed in humour. “Right about what?”

  “That Crowe could not have fathered you, Miss Winter.”

  Actually, she was Lady Angela Winter, but before she could correct him, he said with a grin that was so engaging her heart skipped, “I offer you my sincere condolences on your mother’s unfortunate choice of a husband.”

  She laughed aloud at that. Suddenly she found herself liking him very much.

  “You have a lovely laugh.”

  Normally Angel paid no heed to compliments, but for some reason his made her blush with pleasure. She sensed that he was not a man who often paid them.

  “Whatever possessed your mama to marry Crowe?”

  “I do not know.” Angel could not conceive how any woman could desert a man as fine and good as her father and later marry a scoundrel like Sir Rupert. But then Angel had not seen her mother since she had run off with one of her lovers when her daughter was four.

  “
How do the Crowes plan to stop me from wedding Kitty?”

  “Unfortunately, my lord, I do not know that. I only overheard part of their conversation. It is some sort of trap that Horace says will make the marriage impossible. They plan to spring it on you during this celebration of your betrothal. You must be on your guard.”

  “Can you tell me no more than that?” He was scowling at her again. He sounded so disappointed that Angel felt as though she had failed him.

  “No, that is all I know. I am sorry.”

  The high-pitched trill of a goldcrest came from a nearby tree, and Angel turned toward the sound. She quickly located the bird’s distinctive bright yellow crest bordered in black. The shadows were deepening, reminding her that it was growing late.

  She smiled at Lord Vayle. “I pray that you will be able to outwit the Crowes. Now that I have warned you, I must go back before they miss me and begin asking questions I do not want to answer.”

  Angel reached for a rope dangling from an oak. It was a twin to the one across the stream that she had ridden over.

  Her companion’s hand caught hers. The fluttering sensation that had plagued her earlier began anew.

  “Do not go back that way!”

  “Why not?” The goldcrest took wing from its perch on the tree branch and soared upward. Angel, pulling her hand from Lord Vayle’s, gestured toward the bird. “I feel as free as it when I fly over the water on the rope.”

  He frowned at her. “If God had meant man—or woman—to fly, he would have given us wings.”

  “Nonsense, God means us to devise our own way to fly,” she retorted. “I am convinced that we are capable of it. Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci made models of craft that would enable man to do so?”

  “But none of them actually succeeded, did they?”

  “No, but Papa said that was only because the proper means of propulsion has not yet been invented.”

  Lord Vayle was staring at her with a strange expression. Angel pulled her hand from his grasp and reached again for the rope.

  “Please don’t,” he said quietly. “It is too dangerous.”