The Black Angel (The St Ives)
"A dazzling, sensual tapestry .... Barbara Samuel proves once again that she is one of the most gifted romance writers."
~ Mary Jo Putney
"Not only does she write of the love between men and women, but of the powerful friendships between … women and a man's need to be free and respected."
~ Romantic Times
"Rarely has any author so captured the incredible power of physical attraction between a man and a woman. Barbara Samuel creates, with narcotic, evocative language and haunting imagery, a world which engages all your sense and emotions. She carries you to the dark side of passion and then spirals you toward a happy and satisfying ending you were convinced was impossible."
~ Romance and Women's Fiction
Table of Contents
Cover Image
Beginning
Bonus Excerpts
About the Author
More Books by Barbara
Copyright © 2010 Barbara Samuel
Cover Design/eBook Conversion Sharon Schlicht LittleBytesDesign.com
Young Man Resting Chin on Hands ©Peterpolak
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This is a republication in ebook format of an earlier work. Every effort has been made to reproduce the original as accurately as possible. If you find an error, please let us know at eBookErrata@BarbaraSamuel.com
Prologue
Hyde Park, London
1781
Lady Adriana St. Ives rode well, the result of a childhood spent more savage than civilized. On this dark, wet morning, she rode astride, and rode hard, her hair uncombed and streaming down her back as she raced to beat the dawn threatening at the edge of the horizon. Wet leaves slapped at her face and arms, and her skirts were soaked. Later, she would pay with a fever.
But all that mattered now was that she halt the folly about to take place here, a duel between her brothers and Everett Malvern, Baron of Wye, the King's nephew, and until last week, Adriana's lover.
"Please," she whispered to whatever celestial beings might still be listening to her.
She broke from the trees into a wide, grassy clearing. Relief washed cold down her spine, for they had not yet begun. Her brother Julian, tall as a cedar, his wheat-colored hair shining even in the gloom, stood sober and straight beside a phaeton. Their half brother, Gabriel, as handsome and swarthy as the pirates of their childhood games, stood next to him, the box of pistols in his hands.
Thank God.
She slowed, her breath coming in ragged gasps from her chest. Not even enough air left for a cry.
And then movement from the trees on the opposite side of the clearing caught the edge of her vision and Adriana jerked her head around to see Everett Malvern. The rake was visibly in his cups, weaving as he tossed off his woolen cloak and gestured for his pistol to be put in his hand. The fine satin waistcoat and breeches that had begun the night before in such splendor were now stained with the night's revels, and the elegant, almost pretty face framed with golden curls was decidedly less attractive by the morning light. His sleeves, trimmed with tumbles of Belgian lace, fell over his hands, and he laughed uproariously to his entourage, who only summoned the most polite of chuckles in response. They knew, even if Malvern did not, that he faced a most deadly—and furious—opponent.
Adriana narrowed her eyes. The fool. Only he was arrogant enough to think he'd go unwounded at Julian's hand. His second, a foppish dandy named Stead whom Adriana disliked heartily, plainly understood the danger. He tugged at Malvern's sleeve, his mouth moving with words Adriana could not hear. Malvern shook the hand away and swaggered out to face Julian, who stood cold and still in the midst of the clearing, his dark gold hair glittering with moisture.
Humiliation and anger and regret welled up in Adriana, but there was no time to indulge it. "Wait!" she cried, dismounting, and ran forward.
The men glanced at her, but quickly turned back again, all intent upon this foolish duel. She tried to rush, tripped on her skirts and tumbled in the wet grass. The jolt slammed her teeth together and jarred her entire head.
She scrambled to her feet, putting her hand in a muddy puddle, and stumbled forward.
Too late.
In horror, Adriana halted, tasting blood on her tongue where she'd bitten it. Sweat and cold mist dampened her clothes, and her breath still came raggedly. Hands limp at her sides, she watched them take their paces.
Turn.
And fire.
Involuntarily, she slammed her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes closed. A man cried out in surprise. Her eyes flew open.
Blood bloomed in the shape of a peony over Malvern's chest. Adriana saw the stain leak into the embroidered satin of his waistcoat, spreading like doom, saw the surprise steal away his drunkenness. Abruptly unfrozen, she raced forward and grabbed Julian's arm. "God, Julian, you've killed him! You killed the Duke's bastard."
Julian dropped the pistol, and the icy calm over his face shattered. He raised gray eyes to Adriana's face, and in them she glimpsed misery and resolve. "He'll trouble you no more."
She flung her arms around him, weeping. "I am so ashamed," she whispered against Julian's neck.
Gabriel touched her back, her hair, and she embraced him fiercely. "Take care of him," she whispered, then pulled away. "Now, go. Go!"
Without a word, they turned together, and disappeared into the mist of the dark morning.
Chapter 1
Hartwood Hall, England
1786
Just before the bells awakened her on her wedding day, Lady Adriana St. Ives dreamed of her brothers. They rode white horses over a muddy road, and even in the damp, they looked splendidly heroic, one so fair, the other so dark. There was urgency in the air all about them; their hair and cloaks flew, and the horses' hooves kicked up a spray of mud over the men's legs. Firm intent marked their faces.
They were coming. Coming to save her.
Bolting awake, she found herself alone in her cold chamber, blinking at the pale light coming through mullioned windows. Only her own bed. And no sound of horses beyond. She fell back to the pillows, heart pounding, and blinked at the dark-beamed ceiling.
A dream. Only a dream. But after a moment she rose, taking a wrapper from the chair, and padded over to the window to peer out. The grounds of Hartwood Hall spread in wet emerald beauty below a drizzly sky, the leaves of the boxwood glistening along the edge of the road. A road that was empty, as she'd known it would be.
She leaned her forehead against a pane of glass, the improbable hope withering in her breast. It had been almost five years since Julian and Gabriel had fled England after defending her honor, or rather, avenging her shredded pride. She was quite certain they were dead, drowned at sea or captured by Indians or fallen to some exotic fever.
No, there would be no rescue from her brothers, as there had been when they were children, playing pirate in the lush landscape of their father's Martinique estates. But that did not keep her from wishing to be saved.
Shivering a little in the damp, she walked over to her desk and took out her pen, and ink, and a small bound book. She and her sister Cassandra had both acquired the habit of journals, a way to amuse themselves on the long passages between the islands and home. Long, long, long days for children. She began to write:
At noon, I am to be married to a man I have never seen, a distant Irish cousin my father thought would make me a suitable husband.
Cassandra has been most insistent I should resist this match, as have all those glittering renegades who grace her salon. They are too scandalous and mixed a lot to approve this move I must make in behalf of my family. They thought me too much like them, I think, seeing in me a freedom of character and heart that does not truly live in my soul, thinking those months of passion with Malvern meant I have some wild freedom of attitude, which is not true. In fact, I am only a ruined spinster who so disgraced herself that she is lucky to find even an Irishman for husband.
But it is to Papa that I owe my allegiance. He worried so much about us toward the last! If he chose this Black Angel for me, I suppose he imagined some good would come of it.
But foolishly, I've harbored a fantasy that somehow my brothers would hear of this marriage, and come home in time to set things right. Foolishness, but I know Papa never gave up watching for them to return, either, so at least I am not alone. They were likely slain in the uprising that cost Papa his fortune, but I feel I would know if they were dead, if their spirits no longer walked the earth.
Ah, I promised myself I would not be maudlin, but here it is, a gray cold morning, and I find I cannot help myself. I miss them most terribly.
Now I've splotched the page and my ink will smear. For it is Julian who is most emphatically in my thoughts this morn, golden Julian who tossed all away to avenge his sister in a duel. And disappeared to save his neck. Now, to do my part to save our estates, I must take this rake they call Black Angel as my husband and somehow make the best of it. For all of us.
With a sense of finality, she scattered sand over the page, then bent to add coal to the fire. In the passageway beyond her door, she heard the first stirrings of her sisters, probably the youngest two, by the excitement and hushed giggling. Fondly, she smiled, and the tight knot of worry eased a little.
Without her knowledge, her father had arranged the marriage before his death a year ago. As his consumption stole the breath from him, he worried obsessively over the fate of his daughters and wrote at length to the Earl of Glencove, Tynan Spenser, whom he'd met in London a few years before, to offer his eldest daughter's hand in marriage.
Spenser had written to Adriana two months ago, almost a year to the day after her father's death. Although she had at first been appalled at both her father's belief that Julian was dead—else there would be no need to arrange the marriage at all—and at his high-handedness in arranging the match, Adriana knew how desperately the family estates needed the influx of capital Spenser would bring.
And he, by trading on her father's good name, hoped to buy a seat in the English House of Commons. It amused her, and she'd written him an acerbic letter, making sure that he knew of his future wife's scarlet past before he committed himself.
The return mail had carried a very short missive. "It does not matter," he wrote. "Will be arriving in London, 10 September. Will correspond further then."
And in many ways, the solution had been the answer to a prayer, so Adriana tried to make the best of it. Knowing nothing of him, save the blatant facts of his tide and holdings in the west of Ireland, she had conjured a picture of him from clues she could gather from his letters. The handwriting was bold and sprawling, marred with blotches of ink and hastily crossed-out words. It suggested to her a man of energy, a plain-speaking country Irishman with political ambitions. Someone near her father's age, perhaps, portly or balding. Yes, she could make such a trade.
Such bliss in ignorance!
Wrapping a warm woolen shawl around her shoulders, Adriana heard a squeal, quickly hushed. Her sisters again. They were so young, she thought with a pang. A wedding, no matter how it was arranged, was to them the height of excitement.
She peered once more toward the road, and saw with despair that it remained empty.
It was Adriana's sister Cassandra who'd brought the truth of the Black Angel, gleaned in gossip. Tynan Spenser was no portly, balding squire. Instead, he was the very stuff of Adriana's nightmares, a rake with a silver tongue obscuring a heart as black as a winter night. He was rumored to have slept with every great beauty in London, and a good many wives of the Irish Parliament, and was said to make a fine game of it, passionate one moment, cold the next, so the women sighed in longing for him.
The Black Angel.
Adriana tried not to think what he might look like. She tried to remind herself of the way Malvern had looked that misty morning in Hyde Park, dissipated and sodden and distasteful.
Instead, her rogue imagination insisted upon dishing up other memories: the feel of her lover's mouth upon her throat, the brush of his hands over her breasts and gliding up her thighs—
She put her face in her hands, hating the betrayal of her flesh. Five years, and she still remembered. Not him, not her foolish, vain lover, but the pleasure he gave.
This was her most dangerous, and most private, failing—that she still ached for that pleasure. That she had not yet found a way to keep it from her thoughts, the wish for it. And now she would be forced to lie with a rake who'd made such pleasure his trademark, and she feared desperately that it would be her undoing. As it had been in the past. Somehow, some way, she had to armor herself.
* * *
Adriana clapped her hands sharply, and the noise of a half-dozen girls and women abruptly ceased. "Enough chatter! If we do not settle my attire, the bride will be late."
The chastening lasted barely an instant before the voices rose again. All four of her sisters, aged fourteen to twenty-one, plus two of the younger house maids, even Adriana's new girl, Fiona—oddly enough the first Irish maid she'd had—chimed in with opinions.
"Riana, please not the bombazine!" Ophelia begged. Fifteen and prettiest of them all, she clasped her hands under her chin in a prayer. "At least the blue silk."
"Oh, you only think of blue because it suits you," Cleo said with a toss of her head. Dusky as her half sister was fair, she rivaled her in beauty. "But, Riana, perhaps at least the gray brocade? It is more festive."
Cassandra, a widowed twenty and languid, sprawled over a divan, one hand on her cheek, a tendril of red hair falling down her forehead. "Since she's inclined to throw herself to sacrifice for our benefit," she drawled, "at least let her choose the gown of her doom."
Adriana, exasperated, looked to Phoebe—twenty-one and prim. "Help!"
"If you want to stay, halt your chatter," Phoebe said, her voice stiff as whalebone. Briskly, she pushed the maids out of the way and plucked a brush from one of their hands. "Can't you find some work elsewhere? We'll tend to our sister."
Summarily dismissed, they left. And as Phoebe's reign took hold, the others lit on the bed and the trunk. "There," Phoebe said with a smile. "You have some peace."
Adriana closed her eyes and took in a breath of air to steady the race of her heart. "I'm terrified," she whispered, and put her hands to her bloodless cheeks. "And it shows."
"You've let yourself be swayed by the gossip," Phoebe said, yanking the brush through Adriana's long, thick hair. "No man could live up to that reputation."
"I've heard otherwise," Cassandra drawled. A happy widow with no intention of marrying again, she kept a house in London. Her drawing room was famed for the wit and gossip batted about. "But in that you should find some comfort, sister. If he's the rake they say, he'll not want to molder about at Hartwood. He'll come in, and bed you, and be off again in a day. You'll be free."
"Cassandra!" Adriana hissed, tossing a warning glance in the direction of the two youngest girls.
"Perhaps he'll be so handsome you'll fall in love on sight," Ophelia offered. Her eyes went misty. '"The Black Angel' is such a dangerous nickname. I think h
e sounds exciting."
Adriana stared resolutely at her reflection, watching Phoebe purse her lips as she twisted her hair away from her face and pinned it severely in place. "His reputation matters very little to me," Adriana said. "He has the fortune and we have the political connections. Marriages have been made on worse."
"Indeed." Phoebe met Adriana's eyes in the mirror for a sober moment. Of all of them, Phoebe, who had kept a hawk's eye on the accounts the past year, knew how critical that infusion of wealth had become. A good deal of the family fortune had been sunk into their father's island estates—all but lost to them in the current wave of revolutions in the colonies. "It's his fortune that matters—as it will be when you marry, Ophelia."
"I intend to marry for love."
"Intend all you wish, my sweet," Cassandra said dryly. Her foot swung monotonously, up and down, showing the tip of a boot every second. Every third or fourth time, she wiggled it a bit.
"Cassandra," Adriana said, "please be still."
"Ophelia is beauty enough to find love and fortune," Cleo declared.
Adriana only nodded mildly. "Perhaps." Suddenly weary of the pretense she had to maintain for the sake of the younger girls, she added, "Why don't you two check to be certain all is ready for our guest's arrival?" With a smile, she added, "Perhaps he'll bring an entourage."
Interest sparked between them, arcing from Ophelia's Dresden blue eyes to Cleo's dark brown as they smiled at each other in secret mischief. The pair were only ten months apart in age, and were close as twins. For a moment, looking at the contrast between fair and dark, Adriana thought again, this time with a pang, of her brothers.
"Let's!" they said together, and giggled.
When they'd departed, the room grew quiet. "They don't really remember the scandal," Cassandra said.
"Which is just as well." Adriana pinched her cheeks in a vain attempt to bring some color to them. "I have a more than vivid enough recollection for all of us."
"Riana, you wrong yourself in this." Phoebe put her hands on her sister's shoulders. "You were foolish, and young—he was powerful and beautiful and turned your head. It has happened thousands of times."