Читать книгу The Passion of an Angel - Kasey Michaels, Кейси Майклс, Kasey Michaels - Страница 8

Might shake the saintship of an anchorite.

George Noel Gordon,

Lord Byron

“PRUDENCE MACAFEE, Prudence MacAfee,” the Marquess of Daventry grumbled beneath his breath as he reined his mount to a halt on the crest of a small hill that overlooked the MacAfee farm. “Was there ever a more prudish, miss-ish name, or a more reluctant guardian?”

He lifted his curly brimmed beaver to swipe at the sweat caused by the noon heat of this early April day, exposing his silvered black hair to the sun, then turned in the saddle to squint back down the roadway. His traveling coach, containing both his valet, Rexford, and his sister’s borrowed companion, the redoubtable Miss Honoria Prentice, was still not in sight, and he debated whether he should await their arrival or proceed on his own.

Not that either person would be of much use to him. Rexford was an old woman at thirty, too concerned with the condition of his lily-white rump as it was bounced over the spring-rain rutted roads to be a supporting prop to his reluctant-guardian employer. And Miss Prentice, whose pinched-lips countenance could send a delicate child like Prudence MacAfee into a spasm, was probably best not seen until arrangements to transport the young female to London had been settled.

Damn Henry MacAfee for being right! And damn him for so blatantly maneuvering his only-cursory friend into this ridiculous guardianship! He’d heard of the colonel’s bravery in battle, up until nearly the end, when his second horse had been shot out from under him and he had disappeared. If Daventry could have found Henry MacAfee’s body among the heaps of nameless, faceless dead, he would have slapped the man back to life if that were possible. Anything to be shed of this unwanted responsibility.

What was he, Banning Talbot, four and thirty years of age and struggling with this bachelorhood, going to do with an innocent young female? He had asked precisely that question of his sister, Frederica, who had nearly choked on her sherry before imploring her brother to never, ever repeat any such volatile, provocative question in public.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t already lived up to his commitment. Having been wounded himself at Waterloo, which delayed his return to London only in time to discover that Frederica, his only relative, was gravely ill, the marquess had still met with his solicitor to arrange for a generous allowance to be paid quarterly to one Miss Prudence MacAfee of MacAfee Farm. Contrary to what Henry MacAfee had said, he knew he should at least visit the child, but he buried that thought as he concentrated on taking care of his sister.

He had directed his solicitor to explain the impossibility of Daventry’s presence at the Sussex holding for some time, and had then dragged out that time, beyond his own recovery, beyond any hint of danger remaining in his sister’s condition. Past the Christmas holidays, and beyond.

He would still be in London, enjoying his first full season in two years, if it weren’t that Frederica, who had always been able to draw her older brother firmly round her thumb, had put forth the notion that she would “above all things” adore having a young female in the house whom she could “educate in the ways of society and pamper and dress in pretty clothes.”

Why, Frederica would even pop the girl off, when the time came to put up the child’s hair and push her out into the marriage mart. Her brother, Frederica had promised, would have to do nothing more than host a single ball, present his ward at court, and, of course, foot the bills which “will probably be prodigious, dearest Banning, for I do so adore fripperies.”

It all seemed most logical and personally untaxing, but Daventry still was the one left to beg Grandfather MacAfee to release his granddaughter, and he was the one who would have to face this young girl and explain why he had left this “rescue” of her so late if the grandfather was really the dead loss Henry MacAfee had described to him. But the colonel had said an allowance would be enough to get on with, so the marquess had chosen to ignore his real responsibility—until now.

Daventry jammed his hat back down onto his head, cursed a single time, and urged his mount forward and down the winding path to the run-down looking holding, wondering why he could not quite fight the feeling that he was riding into the jaws of, if not death, great personal danger.

No one came out into the stable yard after he had passed through the broken gate, or even after he had dismounted, leading his horse to a nearby water trough, giving himself time to look more closely at his surroundings, which were depressing as the tepid lemonade at Almack’s.

Daventry already knew that Henry, born of good lineage, had not been all that deep in the pocket, but he had envisioned a small country holding: neat, clean, and genteelly shabby. This place, however, was a shambles, a mess, a totally inappropriate place for any gentle young soul who could earn the affectionate name of “Angel.”

Beginning to feel better about his enforced good deed—rather like a heavenly benefactor about to do a favor for a grateful cherubim—the marquess raised a hand to his mouth and called out, “Hello! Anybody about?”

Several moments later he saw a head pop out from behind the stable door—a door that hung by only two of its three great hinges. The head, that of a remarkable dirty-looking urchin, was rapidly followed by the remainder of a fairly shapeless body clad in what looked to be bloody rags. As a matter of fact, the urchin’s arms were bloodred to the elbows, as if he had been interrupted in the midst of slaughtering a hog.

“I suppose I should be grateful to learn this place is not deserted. I am Daventry,” Banning Talbot said, wondering why he was bothering to introduce himself.

“Daventry, huh?” the youth repeated flatly, and obviously not impressed. “And you’re jolly pleased to be him, no doubt. Now get shed of that fancy jacket, roll up your sleeves, and follow me. Unless you’d rather stand put there, posing in the dirt, while Molly dies?”

The first shock to hit Banning was the bitingly superior tone of the urchin’s voice. The next was its pitch—which was obviously female. Lastly, he was startled to hear the anguished cry of an animal in pain.

He knew in an instant exactly what was afoot.

Leaving sorting out the identity of the rude, inappropriately clad female to later—and while lifting a silent prayer that she couldn’t possibly be who he was beginning to believe she might be, or as old as she looked to be—the marquess stripped off his riding jacket, throwing it over his saddle. “What is it—a breech?” he asked as he tossed his hat away, rolled up his sleeves, and began trotting toward the stable door.

Banning bred horses at Daventry Court, his seat near Leamington, and had long been a hands-on owner, raising the animals as much for his love of them as for any profit involved. The sound of the mare in pain was enough to turn a figurative knife in his gut.

“I’ve been trying to turn the foal,” the female he hoped was not Prudence MacAfee told him as they entered the dark stable and headed for the last stall on the right. “Molly’s already down, and has been for hours—too many hours—but if I hold her head, and talk to her, you should be able to do the trick. I’m Angel, by the way,” she added, sticking out one blood-slick hand as if to give him a formal greeting, then quickly seeming to think better of it. “You took a damned long time in remembering that I’m alive, Daventry, but at least now you might be of some use to me. Let’s move!”

Silently cursing one Colonel Henry MacAfee, who had already gone to his heavenly reward and was probably perched on some silver-lined cloud right now, sipping nectar and laughing at him, Banning forcibly pushed his murderous thoughts to one side as he entered the stall and took in the sight of the obviously frightened, tortured mare. Molly’s great brown eyes were rolling in her head, her belly distorted almost beyond belief, her razor-sharp hooves a danger to both Prudence and himself.

“She’s beginning to give up. We don’t have much time,” he said tersely as he tore off his signet ring and threw it into a mound of straw. “Hold her head tight or we’ll both be kicked to death.”

“I know what to do,” Prudence snapped back at him as she dropped to her knees beside the mare’s head. “I’m just not strong enough to do it all myself, damn it all to blazes!”

And then her tone changed, and her small features softened. She leaned close against Molly’s head, crooning to the mare in a low, singsong voice that had an instantly calming effect on the animal. She had the touch of a natural horsewoman, and Banning took a moment to be impressed before he, too, went to his knees, taking up his position directly behind those dangerous rear hooves.

There was no time to wash off his road dirt, and no need to worry about greasing his arms to make for an easier entry, for there was more than enough blood to make his skin slick as he took a steadying breath and plunged both hands deep inside the mare, almost immediately coming in contact with precisely the wrong end of the foal.

“Sweet Christ!” he exclaimed, pressing one side of his head up against the mare’s rump, every muscle in his body straining as he struggled to turn the foal. His heart pounded, and his breathing grew short and ragged as the heat of the day and the heat and sickening sweet smell of Molly’s blood combined to make him nearly giddy. He could hear Prudence MacAfee crooning to the mare, promising that everything was going to be all right, her voice seemingly coming to him from somewhere far away.

But it wasn’t going to be all right.

Too much blood.

Too little time.

It wasn’t going to work. It simply wasn’t going to work. Not for the mare, who was already too weak to help herself. And if he didn’t get the foal turned quickly, he would have been too late all round.

The thought of failure galvanized Banning, who had never been the sort to show grace in defeat. Redoubling his efforts, and nearly coming to grief when Molly gave out with a halfhearted kick of her left rear leg, he whispered a quick prayer and plunged his arms deeper inside the mare’s twitching body.

“I’ve got him!” he shouted a moment later, relief singing through his body as he gave a mighty pull and watched as his arms reappeared, followed closely by the thin, wet face of the foal he held clasped by its front legs. Molly’s body gave a long, shuddering heave, and the foal slipped completely free of her, landing heavily on Banning’s chest as he fell back on the dirt floor of the stall.

He pushed the foal gently to one side and rose to his knees once more, stripping off his waistcoat and shirt so that he could wipe at the animal’s wet face, urging it to breathe. Swiftly, expertly, he did for the foal what Molly could not do, concentrating his efforts on the animal that still could be saved.

Long, heart-clutching moments later, as the newborn pushed itself erect on its spindly legs, he found himself nose to nose with the foal and looking into two big, unblinking brown eyes that were seeing the world for the first time.

Banning heard a sound, realized it was himself he heard, laughing, and he reached forward to give the animal a smacking great kiss squarely on the white blaze that tore a streak of lightning down the red foal’s narrow face.

“Oh, Molly, you did it! You did it!” he heard Prudence exclaim, and he looked up to see Prudence, still kneeling beside the mare’s head, tears streaming down her dirty cheeks as she smiled widely enough that he believed he could see her perfect molars. “Daventry, you aren’t such a pig after all! My brother wrote that you were the best of his chums, and now I believe him again.”

As praise, it was fairly backhanded, but Banning decided to accept it in the manner it was given, for he was feeling rather good about himself at the moment. He even spared a moment to feel good about Henry MacAfee, who had been thorough enough in his roguery to smooth the way for Prudence’s new guardian.

This pleasant, charitable, all’s well with the world sensation lasted only until the marquess took a good look at Molly, who seemed to be mutely asking his assistance even as Prudence continued to croon in her ear.

I know. I know. But, damn it, Molly, his brain begged silently, don’t look at me that way. Don’t make me believe that you know, too.

“Step away from her, Miss MacAfee,” Banning intoned quietly as the foal, standing more firmly on his feet with every passing moment, nudged at his mother’s flank with his velvety nose. “She has to get up. She has to get up now, or it will be too late.”

Prudence pressed the back of one bloody hand to her mouth, her golden eyes wide in her grimy face. “No,” she said softly, shaking her head with such vehemence that the cloth she had wrapped around her head came free, exposing a long tumble of thick, honey-dark gold hair. “Don’t you say that! She’ll get up. You’ll see. She’ll get up. Oh, please, Molly, please get up!”

Banning understood Prudence’s pain, but he also knew that the mare was already past saving, what was left of her life oozing from her, turning the sweet golden hay she lay in a sticky red. He couldn’t let Prudence, his new charge, fall into pieces now, not when she had been so brave until this point.

“Please leave the stall, Miss MacAfee,” he ordered her quietly, but sternly, already retracing his steps to fetch the pistol from his saddle.

She chased after him, pounding on his back with her small fists, screaming invectives at him that would have done a foot soldier proud, her blows and her words having no impact on him other than to make him feel more weary, more heartsick than he had done when Molly had looked up at him with a single, pleading eye.

He took the long pistol from its specially made holster strapped to his saddle and turned to face his young ward. He didn’t like losing the mare any more than she did, but he had to make her see reason. To do that, he went on the attack. “How old are you?” he asked sharply.

She paused in the act of delivering yet another punch to his person. “Eighteen. I’m eighteen!” she exclaimed after only a slight hesitation, her expression challenging him to treat her as an hysterical child. “Old enough to run this farm, old enough to live on my own, and old enough to decide what to do with my own mare!”

He held out the pistol, which she stared at as if he might shoot her with it. Yet she still stood her ground. He admired her for her courage, but he had to do something that would make her leave.

When he spoke again, it was with the conviction that what he said would serve to make her run away. “All right, Miss MacAfee. Prove it. The mare must be put down. She’s hurting, and she’s slowly bleeding to death, and she shouldn’t be made to suffer any more than she already has. Show me the adult you claim to be. Put Molly out of her pain.”

He didn’t know anyone could cry such great, glistening tears as the ones now running down the girl’s filthy cheeks. He hadn’t known that the sight of a small, quivering chin could make his knees turn to mush even as his heart died inside him.

He found himself caught between wanting to push her to one side and go to the mare and pulling Prudence MacAfee hard against his chest and holding her while she sobbed.

“Oh Christ, I’ll do it,” he said at last, just as she surprised him by raising a shaky hand and trying to grasp the pistol. The sight of their two hands, stained with the blood of the dying mare, each of them clasping one end of the pistol, brought him back to his senses. “I never meant for you to do it. And I’m sorry it has to be done at all. I’m truly, truly sorry.”

“Go to blazes, Daventry,” she shot back, sniffling as she yanked the pistol from his hand and began slowly walking toward the stable, her step slow, her shoulders squared, her chin high. Dressed in her stained breeches, and without the evidence of her long hair to prove the image wrong, she could have been a young man going off to his first battle, terrified that he might show his terror.

“Prudence,” he called after her. “Angel,” he said when she failed to heed him. “You don’t have to do this.”

She kept walking, and he wondered why he didn’t chase after her, wrest the pistol from her hand, and have done with it. But he couldn’t move. He had put down his own horse when he was twelve, a mare he had raised from a foal, and he knew the pain, was familiar with the anguish of doing what was for the best and then living with the result of that fatal mercy. Molly was Prudence’s horse. She was Prudence’s pain.

The stable yard was silent for several minutes, so that when the report of the pistol blasted that silence, Banning flinched in the act of sluicing cold water from the pump over his face and head. His hands stilled as his head remained bowed, and then he went on with his rudimentary ablutions, keeping his head averted as Prudence MacAfee exited the stable, the pistol still in her hand. She returned the spent weapon to him, then placed his signet ring in his hand.

He felt uncomfortable in her presence—stripped to the waist and dripping wet—hardly the competent London gentleman who had come to rescue an innocent child from an uncaring grandparent. He felt useless, no more than an unwelcome intruder, a reluctant witness to a pain so real, so personal, that his intrusion on the scene could almost be considered criminal.

And, with her next words, Prudence MacAfee confirmed that she shared that opinion.

“If you’ll assist me with settling the foal in a clean stall, I would appreciate it, as I can’t seem to get it to move away from…from the body,” she said stonily, and he noticed that her cheeks, although smudged, were now dry, and sadly pale. “And then, my lord Daventry, I would appreciate it even more if you would remount your horse and take yourself the bloody hell out of my life.”