Читать книгу The Passion of an Angel - Kasey Michaels, Кейси Майклс, Kasey Michaels - Страница 6

COVENANT

There was a sound of revelry by night,

And Belgium’s capital had gather’d then

Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright

The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men.

A thousand hearts beat happily; and when

Music arose with its voluptuous swell,

Soft eyes look’d love to eyes which spake again,

And all went merry as a marriage bell.

But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes

like a rising knell!

George Noel Gordon,

Lord Byron

Never promise more than you can perform.

Publilius Syrus

“LOOK AT THAT ONE, WOULD YOU, Daventry? Think she’s ripe for the plucking? Ready to lie down in the soft grass outside and give comfort and solace to a soldier about to face the French horde? Or am I totally bosky, and seeing willing beauty in anything in skirts?”

Banning Talbot, Marquess of Daventry, who was more than two parts drunk himself, leaned forward to look in the direction of Colonel Henry MacAfee’s rudely pointing finger. “Harriet Mercer? God’s teeth, man, make your move. Steal a kiss, or more, with my blessings.” Even as he spoke, Miss Mercer could be seen deserting the dance with her red-coated escort, the two of them making for the doorway, and the darkened garden beyond. “Whoops! Yoicks, and away! Pick another one, old man. Lord knows this great barn of a place is packed to the rafters with willing females.”

MacAfee settled his shoulder against the pillar the two men were sharing, having strategically propped themselves alongside the dance floor more than an hour earlier, within good ogling distance of the young ladies going down the dance, and directly in the path the servants had to traverse between the pouring of drinks and the serving of those same libations to Lady Richmond’s thirsty guests. The choice had been a sterling one, as there had been no dearth of either shapely ankles or chilled wine glasses orbiting their small outpost in the midst of what appeared to be a grand celebration of idiots.

Daventry drained his glass, deftly depositing it on a passing tray and scooping up a full one all in one fluid motion. “You know something, MacAfee,” he commented to his friend—if their casual acquaintance of the past three days, combined with their bond of doing their best to drink themselves under the table together, could be considered a basis for friendship, “I’ve been thinking.”

“Never a good thing, thinking,” MacAfee said, sighing in a sorrowful way. “Try not to do it myself. Not with Boney running riot just outside our doors.”

The Marquess smiled, running a hand through the thick, startling silver-on-black mane of hair that looked so out of place above his sparkling green eyes and youthful, unlined face. “But that’s who I’ve been thinking of, MacAfee. Boney. I believe I’ve just now stumbled upon a way to defeat him. We’ll just gather up this lot of sots here, our beloved Iron Duke included, and collectively breathe on the man. Brandy. Port. Wine. Canary. Why, the fumes will be enough to evaporate the man and his entire Old Guard!”

Colonel MacAfee giggled into his wineglass, an action that caused him to inhale a bit of its contents, then snort them out his nose, a trick Daventry considered top-drawer, which only proved he was perhaps a bit too well-to-go for his own good.

Not that he didn’t have good reason to be seeking solace in the bottom of a glass. There was a battle coming, and coming soon. A possible apocalypse, if the rumors running rampant through the ranks were to be believed, with the evil Bonaparte being sent down to ignominious defeat at the hands of the Duke of Wellington, Blücher, and the rest of the allies.

And it would be Wellington, Blücher, and the allies who would take all the credit, garner all the glory, while the foot soldiers, the cavalry, and the junior officers did all the fighting, all the dying. Daventry was heartily sick of war, weary of the bloodshed, the screams, the sacrifice of individual lives in the name of the common good.

If only Bonaparte had been kept on his island. Had it been so bloody difficult to act the jailer to one defeated emperor? Apparently so, or else the man would still be penning wildly abridged histories in his journal rather than mounting an army and marching, even now, on a hastily assembled resistance and its hangers-on of society misses and brainless fops who believed the proper preparation for battle was a whacking good full-dress ball.

“Petticoat alert!” MacAfee exclaimed, nudging Daventry in the ribs as he inclined his head toward a blonde vision just coming down the dance with the Duke of Brunswick. “Hold me back, good milor’. I feel an imminent seduction coming over me.”

The Marquess felt the skin over his cheekbones tightening as he resisted the urge to dash the contents of his glass in the colonel’s leering face, for MacAfee had inadvertently reminded Daventry of the other reason he was finding the wine so irresistible tonight. “The young lady is Miss Althea Broughton, and you will kindly remove your lascivious gaze from her person,” he warned in crushing accents, painfully aware that the word “lascivious” had damn near knotted his tongue. “She is spoken for.”

“But not by you, I’ll wager,” MacAfee said, affably transferring his good-natured leer to a rather lackluster little pudding of a debutante who giggled, then attempted a reproving frown, and lastly blushed to the roots of her tightly curled hair. “Do I sense a story? And more to the point, is it a depressing story? Don’t think I want to hear it if it’s going to bring me down. Low enough, thank you, what with worrying about m’sister.”

“There’s no story, MacAfee,” the marquess said, bowing with exaggerated stiffness as Miss Broughton looked in his direction, then moved on. The beauteous Miss Broughton. The one great love of his life, Miss Broughton. The woman who had two years previously turned his proposal of marriage down flat, Miss Broughton. The woman betrothed these last nine months to a peer so wealthy it took two straining valets to heft his purse into his pocket, Miss Althea Broughton. “And why are you worrying about your sister?” he asked, eager to change the subject, when if the truth were told he couldn’t have cared a fig if MacAfee’s unknown sister was locked in a tower and besieged by fire-breathing dragons.

“Prudence?”

Daventry, who had been watching Miss Broughton’s progress out of the corner of his eye, swiveled his head to the left and repeated, aghast, “Prudence? Would that be a name or an affliction?”

Henry MacAfee grinned—he had a really pleasant grin, actually—and shook his head. “Ghastly name, ain’t it? But she’s the light of my life, Daventry. My Pru. My Angel.” His smile faded abruptly and he took another long drink of his wine. “Poor, innocent baby. It’s criminal how she is forced to live, Daventry. Criminal!”

“I’m sure,” the marquess agreed absently, for his attention was now on the Duke of Wellington, who seemed to be deep in conversation with a subaltern who had just entered the ballroom at a near run, holding his sword as it threatened to swing wide from his waist, which would most certainly have caused the nearby dancers to invent a few new steps to the country dance in progress.

“It’s true, my friend. You have no idea, none at all,” MacAfee continued as a wave of whispers washed across the ballroom. “We’re orphans, you know, and forced to live on the charity of our grandfather, Shadwell MacAfee—and the damndest pinch-penny ever hatched. Not that he’s my guardian, or Pru’s either, now that I’ve reached my majority. Are you listening to me, Daventry? Devil a bit, what’s going on?”

Daventry held up a hand, silencing the colonel. “Listen! Do you hear it? By God, I think the drums are beating to arms! Blücher must have failed!”

MacAfee threw down his glass, which shattered into a thousand pieces at his feet. “No! Not yet! I haven’t come this far just to—Daventry. Daventry!” he repeated, grabbing hold of the marquess’s arm. “Listen to me! If you’re right, if we’re to fight tomorrow, you have to promise me something tonight.”

Daventry watched as the circle of uniforms around Wellington deepened and a few of the ladies, those closest to the Duke, cried out in alarm, two of them swooning into nearby arms. “Not now, MacAfee,” he warned, shaking off the man’s hand as he willed himself back to sobriety. “We have to get to the Place Royale, remember? That’s where all the men have been warned to assemble at the first word of Bonaparte’s march.”

“I said, not yet!” MacAfee nearly shouted, so that Daventry turned to look at the man more closely, seeing the nearly feverish sparkle in the man’s eyes, the ashen gray of his cheeks.

“What is it?” the marquess asked, wondering if the younger man was going to be sick, or break out in tears. After all, he barely knew the fellow. He had laughed with him these past few days, drunk with him, but he didn’t know him. Not really. “Come on, man, you’ve seen battle before this. Think of your men.”

MacAfee shook his head. “I can’t help it, Daventry,” he said, lifting a shaking hand to his forehead. “And I’m not a coward, I swear it. But I have had a dream, a premonition if you will. I’m going to die in this battle, my lord. I have already seen my death.”

“You’ve seen the bottom of too many wineglasses, you mean,” Daventry chided, trying to raise the man’s mood while the musicians attempted to strike up another tune even as the ballroom turned from a small island of enjoyment to a morass of confusion and high emotions. “We’re all afraid.”

“No, no. This is more than fear,” MacAfee said fiercely, reaching into his uniform jacket and extracting a folded paper. “I’m going to die. I’ve even accepted it, save that I didn’t get to bed any of these willing creatures tonight. My only regret is my sister, my little Angel. Leaving a sweet child like her alone with our grandfather? How can I do that and die in peace? And so I have come up with a solution.”

Daventry eyed the unfolded paper with a wary eye. “I’m beginning not to like this, Colonel,” he said quietly, knowing he was honor-bound to listen to the man. That would teach him to drink with near strangers!

“I’ve been watching you these past weeks, Daventry,” MacAfee continued in a rush. “You’re a responsible sort, if a bit stiff—at least until tonight. Make a tolerably pleasant drunk you do, too, not that I haven’t had to help you along a bit, tipping the servants to be sure your glass stayed full as I dangled Miss Broughton under your lovelorn nose. You’ll be a perfect guardian for my Angel. Take the sweet little love under your wing, so to speak. See that she’s financially freed of Shadwell, given a season years from now, when the time is right—all that drivel that’s so important to a female. And she won’t give you a moment’s trouble, I swear it.”

If Daventry hadn’t been sobered by the prospect of the coming battle, MacAfee’s words served to push away the last of the wine-induced fog that blurred his senses. “Allow me a moment to reflect, if you will, MacAfee? You have investigated me these past weeks? You have deliberately sought me out in the last few days, ingratiated yourself to me—and all so that I might take your young sister as my ward if something were to happen to you? And that paper you’re holding? That would be some sort of legal transference of guardianship?”

“Already signed by the Iron Duke himself,” the colonel said, his grin now appearing much more calculating than friendly. “Old Arthur seemed very affected by my concern for my dear little Angel. He also said that you’re the best of men, and plump enough in the pocket since that rich-as-Croesus aunt of yours stuck her spoon in the wall, so that you could take on a half-dozen wards without putting even a small dent in your fortune.”

“I could kill you for this, MacAfee,” Daventry drawled as he took the paper and read it, “except that any such personally satisfying action would definitely saddle me with your unfortunate sibling. And if I don’t agree to sign, I’d be sending a distraught man into battle, wouldn’t I—or at least that’s what Wellington will believe. You’re a singularly vile, clever bastard, Colonel, and I believe I detest you almost as much as I do myself for having fallen prey to your scheme. What’s your sister’s name again? Patience?”

“Prudence,” MacAfee corrected him as he nearly succeeded in pushing Daventry into hysterical laughter by extracting both a pen and a small ink pot from his pocket. “My little Angel. You’ll adore the little mite, truly. And as I said, she won’t give you a moment’s worry. Sweet, biddable, amenable—trust me in this, a true Angel. Just make sure she has an allowance to keep her fed until she’s grown, that’s all I ask. You don’t even have to see her until she’s ready for her season. Just leave her in Sussex for now. Honestly! Then,” he added, pushing the quill at the marquess, “I can die in peace, having served king and country with the last drop of my soldier blood.”

“Oh, cut line, you shameless bastard. And don’t worry your head about dying, MacAfee,” the marquess said, using the colonel’s back as a makeshift desk as he scribbled his name and title at the bottom of the paper. “I don’t intend to let you out of my sight until the battle is over—at which point I shall personally blacken both your eyes and rid you of several of those lying, conniving teeth!”