The Black Angel (The St Ives) Read online

  But on two mouths she saw the lurking amusement at the torture their silence gave, and in two sets of eyes a glitter of laughter. And it was in this that they were so much alike.

  Here were men who chose to thumb their noses at fortune. Who laughed at threats, and made a dance of sorrow. As long as she could remember, she'd loved best this quality about Gabriel—it balanced her too serious turn of mind, balanced the drama she found in every moment.

  And of all things, it was the one quality she most heartily despaired of seeing in a man she was bound to resist. She glimpsed, suddenly, a flicker of that brooding darkness in Tynan's face, and worry leaped in her.

  "Tell us!" she said sharply.

  It was a room for women, not men, and they dwarfed the small, carved chairs they took. Tynan swept by Adriana, and she smelled the city night on him, smoke and river air and rain, and again remembered that he'd not taken his kiss today.

  "There's little enough to tell," Gabriel said. His mouth was grave now. "They did not detain me, as his second. Julian will be taken to the Tower, and will be tried by the House of Lords."

  "When?"

  "I don't know. Soon, I should think." Gabriel helped himself to a pear and bit into it. "Tonight I'll go about and see what I might hear. Unless you have some use for your husband," he said with a wicked grin at Adriana, "I thought he might come with me."

  A ripple of relief washed through her—if he were out, he would not claim his kiss—and she spoke quickly. "He's a man. Since when do men ask permission of their wives?"

  "It wasn't permission," Tynan said quietly, all too close. His breath whispered over her ear, and Adriana repressed a shudder. "Only a polite understanding of the pleasure newlyweds often take in each other."

  Adriana winced, blushing. "Do you mind?" she said, glancing at her siblings.

  "I do." He took her hand and stood abruptly, tugging Adriana up with him. "Excuse us. I require a word in private with my wife."

  She yanked discreetly at his hand, trying to pull away. She suspected his motive here, and feared that hallway and his strength and the strange tension she felt about him tonight. But he held fast to her hand and she could do nothing to free herself without causing a scene. Lifting her chin, she allowed herself to be drawn into the passageway, all too conscious of her sister and brother exchanging a speculative glance.

  The hallway was dim, with only a single candle spluttering in a sconce, and against her will, Adriana felt anticipation. His hand, dry and strong, nearly engulfed hers, and she liked the heat of it, the smell of night in his coat, the look of his long, glossy hair falling down his back.

  "What is so private?" she asked.

  He turned and faced her. The small light from the candle caught on one high, arched cheekbone and on the tiny bristles of beard on his jaw. A sudden, hard wish made her want to put her hand there, feel that prickle and his firm jaw against the heart of her palm.

  One side of his mouth quirked. "Do you have some other use for me tonight, wife?"

  Adriana made her face blank. "Of course not."

  "I thought you might be a little… lonely, your first night in town, perhaps a little melancholy over your brother." It was half-teasing, half-serious, unexpected tone, which unsettled her.

  He had not let go of her hand, and Adriana realized she'd not made a move to take it back, either. She did so now, hastily. "I will be fine."

  "There is much for me to learn in these places. And I suspected you had no use for me, since you have your novel's Lovelace to keep you company."

  Drat him! Adriana couldn't help but smile. "True."

  "I suppose I must claim my kiss now," he said, and eased ever so slightly closer to her. "I've been thinking all day on where best to land it."

  She swallowed, a hard pulse beating in her throat, and raised her eyes. "And what did you decide?"

  He lifted a hand and touched a single finger to the center of her brow. "Here."

  And somehow, she did not move as he took one step closer, lifted his hands, those big, graceful hands, and put them around her head. They covered her ears, creating a sense of envelopment. Slowly, he bent his head and very deliberately pressed his mouth against the place on her forehead, that spot he'd primed so simply with his finger.

  He did not hurry. It seemed a thousand years between the moment he first began to bend and the instant his warm lips touched her flesh, and another thousand—filled with a rushing sort of dizziness—that his mouth stayed there, moist and hot, burning into her head—that he lingered. Her nose brushed his chin, and the prickles of beard sent a ripple of something straight through her middle. His hands did not move, but she felt his thumbs against her cheek and thought of them on her mouth last night.

  By the time he let her go, Adriana knew her skin was flushed the color of wine, and again the imprint of his hands and lips lingered on her flesh, echoing with tingles that it seemed should be visible.

  As if it were nothing, he stepped away again and asked calmly, "Do you ride?"

  "What?" her voice seemed to come from very far away.

  "I would like to ride tomorrow. Perhaps you would accompany me?"

  She found her wits and pushed away from the wall, where she seemed to have slumped. "Yes. That would be fine."

  "Good."

  They rejoined the others, Adriana wondering faintly where her mind had gone. How would she resist if he did this every day? She threw an alarmed and pleading glance at Cassandra, who took one look at her sister's face and leaped into action. "Will you deliver me to an acquaintance on your way?" she asked.

  "Of course."

  "I'll fetch my wrap then. We'll let Riana off first, shall we?"

  Gabriel glanced at Adriana quickly, but remained silent. She did not miss the way he stroked that tiny strip of beard between lip and chin, but there were some things a woman could only share with a sister. Gabriel would simply have to wonder.

  * * *

  Tynan found Gabriel an agreeable companion. No, more than agreeable, for the man possessed a zest for living and a rueful mockery that belied a piercing intelligence. Tynan supposed most people liked Gabriel for the same reasons—certainly Adriana was devoted.

  And yet it was still a surprise to discover the level of greeting that awaited Gabriel at a coffee shop called The Stag and Pointer, where they got out in a mist that was hourly leaning more toward rain than drizzle. A bow-fronted window showed a glow of red and yellow lamplight within, and the shadows of men in conversation—none of which differed from the coffee shops Tynan had frequented on his early visits to London. Some catered to a literary crowd, others to the theater, others to the idle sons of the nobility.

  The Stag and Pointer attracted another set entirely. Tynan ducked under the door, blinking in the heavy smoke of pipe and cigar that hung like a gray blanket in the room. As he glanced about him, he was startled to discover a middle class lot, clerks and shopkeepers by their dress, and among the ruddy English faces one would expect in such a place, there were many others—foreign faces. Black faces. One man, small and round in the waist, with a fringe of grizzled gray hair springing from his balding pate, was so black that his skin shone in the light, and Tynan stared in surprise at him for a moment. He'd never seen skin of so dark a hue. The face would be lost in the darkness but for the graying goatee surrounding his mouth and the brightness of his eyes.

  It was this man who caught sight of Gabriel first, and he came to his feet, an expression of utter disbelief on his mouth. His hands braced themselves against the table, as if the old man thought he would faint away without it. The others at the table, many of them black, though none so dark as this one, turned to see what had caught his attention, and it was one of these who said, "St. Ives?"

  Another cried out, "Gabriel!" and nearly overturned a chair in his haste to make his way across the room. As he approached, Tynan saw that he was quite young—not much more than fifteen or sixteen, his face still bare of beard. And without any self-consciousness at all t
hat Tynan could perceive, he hurled himself into Gabriel's arms. "We thought you dead!"

  And then there were a dozen men, all colors, who surged forward, speaking all at once, asking a hundred questions, a thousand. Gabriel took a hand here, gave out a smile there, a clap on the back, never seeming to mind the close press of the youth who gazed at him with something akin to worship.

  With the finesse of a diplomat, Gabriel guided them all to places, signaled to the barkeep, settled the youth at his left, and at last came to the old man. "Jacob," he said with gravity, then winked. "I have missed our debates, old man."

  "Have you brought me tales of the New World?"

  "Tales enough for a month of drinking," Gabriel promised, then turning, somehow drew Tynan forward. "You must meet my brother-in-law, Tynan Spenser."

  The faces were not particularly welcoming, but Tynan gave a nod, thinking of the men in his village pub, put off by the clothes of a gentlemen. He did not blame them, and would not push where he was not welcome. Instead he took his place, and a pint of ale and became a shadow, observing only.

  Gabriel was obviously popular with them, this crew of seamen and merchants and foreigners, and the mantle sat easily upon his shoulders. With the skill of a great statesman, he absorbed their interest and turned it back to them, seeking answers to their feeling over Julian's arrest.

  By the time they returned home, past midnight, Tynan felt both disturbed and excited. Here was a world he had not even dreamed existed, one that threatened the fabric of life as he'd known it, but offered promise of a new one. While their opinions boded ill for Julian, Gabriel seemed unconcerned about it, and Tynan took his cue from him.

  But as he entered his own chambers and removed his neckcloth, loath to disturb the snoring Seamus, Tynan half smiled as realization dawned upon him. Beneath Gabriel's pretty manners, beneath his elegant tongue and the glitter in his eye, lay the very serious and pointed heart of a reformer.

  Tynan could not say why it pleased him so, but the warmth of it lingered with him as he slept, and clung to him the next morning, when he awakened long before the rest of the house stirred.

  Restless, driven by the evening's revelations, he went abroad. His journey took him to the East End, through neighborhoods of mansions abandoned to immigrants from all over Europe and the east. Here there was already much activity as dockworkers and fishmongers set out to work, and as he walked, Tynan heard the mingled accents and languages of a dozen cultures. In the genteel areas there was, so early, a kind of rarified silence, broken only by the odd horse or milkmaid crying out her wares. Here, no such silence reigned, and the air smelled sharply of the river and dung, and cabbage and fish.

  And here he found a church. Grime stained the old stone, but within there was a thick smell of beeswax and mildew, and incense. Tynan paused for a moment, feeling vague tensions bleed away under the familiar and comforting mingling of scents. Mass had only just begun, and he took a place near the rear, where he would not be noted.

  Not that any would note him particularly, another Irish laborer come to a weekday mass. He kept a set of clothing for the purpose, ordinary workman's clothes: a pair of rough brown trousers he carefully did not wash too often, a clean but wrinkled linen shirt that once had belonged to his father, a rope belt, and scuffed boots with a hole near the toe. His hair gave him away as a gentleman—it was too neatly kept and too clean—but he left it unbrushed and stuck an ancient hat atop it, pulling it off only when he came inside. For a day, he'd left his beard unshaved.

  It was a dangerous ruse he played, especially here, with so much at stake. His seat in the Irish Parliament hinged entirely on his rejection of this faith, and all he hoped to gain could be negated in a single instant if he were caught practicing what all thought his family had given up forty years before. He had told himself he would not come here, not with the chance of being seen in his workman clothes by someone in the town house.

  But his conscience had not allowed him to forgo the ritual if it was at all possible to pursue it, particularly when he was certain to be attending services with his wife at some point. He came for Aiden. For his mother.

  Tynan knelt alone, his hat clasped between his hands, his head bowed as the priest sang out the ancient Latin, and let relief and a certain joy fill him. While his brother and mother had lived, religion mattered little to him. That had been Aiden's province—the passion Tynan spent on women and wine and song, his brother had spent on the church. Aiden had gone away to France to study for the priesthood—secretly, of course—and Tynan had gone to work with vigor in business. Over and over Aiden told him that they both served God and their nation, each in his own way, and Tynan had cheerfully believed him.

  The sweet sorrow of the liturgy rose seemed to fill the entire church, up to the wooden beams. Filled him. The great irony for Tynan was that he'd learned to find joy in the church only after those who would have loved seeing him sit here were taken from him. But here, he could be close to them. Here, he felt he could sense the spirit of his brother. Here, he could almost imagine he was his twin—called to a noble struggle, willing to sacrifice all for the good of God and his nation.

  But only by defying it. It was the small, secret thing he could do. His brother had been murdered for his faith. Tynan would practice it in his absence.

  * * *

  Adriana stirred slowly, caught in the pleasurable world between sleep and wakefulness. A sense of anticipation crept into the blurriness, nudging her like a small child:

  Wake up, wake up! We have much to do! It was such an odd, unfamiliar nudging that she was reluctant to surface entirely and find it was only the lingering edge of a dream. Instead she burrowed more deeply into the warmth of her down coverlets and let the outside world remain mysterious a moment longer.

  But it was the very feel of those coverlets that made her sit upright, tossing the thick warm weight from her in a rush of genuine excitement. Cold, rain-washed light fell thinly through the unshuttered top half of the long windows that completely lined one wall of the room, but the very sight of the windows themselves, their casings painted a pale aqua to match the walls, gave her a leap of happiness.

  London!

  Tossing the coverlet aside, she shivered into her woolen robe and put her feet into waiting slippers. Too eager to pause even the moment it would take to put a light to the waiting coals, she rushed across the carpeted floor and flung open the middle set of shutters.

  It was wicked of her to be so filled with excitement over their arrival in the city when it was such a dreadful errand that brought them here. She thought of Julian awakening in the Tower, and a little of her exuberance bled away.

  But not entirely. After a deep sleep in her good bed, Adriana could not help the sense of eager anticipation she felt as she peered out the window. There, two stories below, were the streets of London, already alight with movement, peddlers calling out their wares, horses clopping, a bright green carriage with a gold crest. Across the street a maid scuttled back from some errand, a brown-wrapped package under her arm, a black umbrella protecting her from the drizzle. A man and a boy set up a stall. A man in worn trousers and a shapeless hat hurried toward the south.

  London!

  She could not wait, not another breath, to be out there, in those glorious streets. She flung open the door that connected to the small maid's quarters where Fiona slept. The girl, newly hired only a few months before, slept on, curled deep in her pillow, only the top of her red head showing against the snowy linens. A calico cat with a gold nose curled on top of her hip, and Adriana petted his silky head before flinging open the shutters. "Up, you lazy girl!"

  "What?" Fiona blinked, then remembered herself and scrambled out of bed, blinking widely. She curtsied and mumbled an apology, pushing the weight of her hair out of her face. "Sorry, milady… I don't—"

  "Never mind all that. Get dressed quickly and come help me. We're here! I am most impatient to be out." She swirled back to her own chamber.

 
To her credit, Fiona appeared almost immediately, and inside a half hour Adriana was rushing through a cup of tea while she waited for a footman to finish some small errand for the cook so he could accompany her. She heard him returning and put her cup down in a clatter, reaching for her gloves.

  But it was Tynan who stood in the door, looking flushed and windblown. He did not wear his usual black, but breeches and coat of a rich blue with an embroidered waistcoat beneath. A color that—and she was certain he knew it—pointed out the dazzling shade of his eyes. "Good morning!" he said heartily. "Are you off on errands so early?"

  She nodded. "I'm awaiting a footman to accompany me." She lifted her brows. "I expected you to be abed well beyond this," she said, picking up her cup again. "Gabriel never rises before noon when he's been out to the coffeehouses."

  "He is yet abed," he said with a shrug. "At heart, I'm afraid I'm a provincial sort—up with the dawn, to bed with the cows."

  Provincial was not the word she would have chosen to describe him in this high good humor. "I see." Afraid of giving herself away, she frowned in the general direction of the door. "I wonder where Peter is."

  "Were you particularly needing his assistance, or would I do in his stead?"

  Adriana looked at him in alarm, trying to think quickly of a lie to account for her need for a footman. Not only did she fail to imagine a good excuse, she failed to come up with anything at all. "No," she said finally. "I thought I'd walk awhile, perhaps look in on Julian. I'm afraid it won't be terribly exciting."

  He grinned at her, that rake's grin filled with good white teeth. "'Tis always exciting to escort a beautiful woman. It seems a shame to be abed when the whole of a great city awaits."

  "Yes!" Adriana exclaimed before she remembered she was to keep her distance. But she couldn't think how to withdraw it. "I do love London," she admitted.

  He offered his arm. "Then I say we shall explore it together this gloomy morn. We'll have it all to ourselves."