Fallen Angel

Chapter Six

It was the twenty-sixth of November before Brenna knew it and the night of the ball she had dreaded and longed for had finally arrived.

Pacing back and forth across her bedroom floor, she castigated herself anew for not simply refusing Nicholas Pencarrow when first he had given her the choice. This past week, getting a dress made, or rather altered, had been a harrowing and tiring job. Having avoided fashionable society, Brenna had paid little heed to current fashions, but she had finally succumbed to Michael’s insistence that the blue velvets would definitely not do, would, in fact, attract her the attention she did so wish to avoid, and the alternative of his mother’s cream silk gown was therefore mooted. He’d brought the dress down from the attic enveloped in the smell of mothballs and bade Brenna to put it on. It was a dress from another time, high waisted in the Empire style and appliquéd in lace and velvet. Apart from a slight tear on one puffed sleeve, and a hemline that would need to be lengthened, the dress fitted her perfectly and, matched with a pair of topaz earrings belonging to Michael’s aunt, would be every bit suitable for attending a ball of the magnitude of the Duke of Westbourne’s.

The afternoon had consisted almost entirely of getting ready, a pursuit so ludicrous and time-wasting according to Brenna that she could barely sit still when, in the final moments before leaving, Polly had put the finishing touches to her hair, curled and caught high upon her head with dark ringlets trailing unbound to her waist.

Standing the instant the process was finished, she snapped on the earrings and slipped into low-heeled golden shoes, then hurried quickly down the stairs.

‘I am not certain about the wisdom of this,’ she mumbled softly, as she came within her uncle’s company, registering the formal dress Michael was in and the invitations splayed large across the table in front of him. Would Nicholas Pencarrow take some notice of her and thus force the attention of the entire assembly upon her personage, or would she see censure on his face after the débâcle at Louisa’s? She shook her head and concentrated instead on happier thoughts. At least Michael would be with her; if the worst happened and it all went awry, she had fulfilled part of a bargain that she would never ever strike up again. This would be her first and last taste of the lifestyle of the very rich and her final absolution of any debt she felt regarding the orphanage funding given by Nicholas Pencarrow.

She had not, after all, seen him for well over a week—even his secretary had stayed clear of Beaumont Street. Did that bode well or ill? she wondered, remembering back to the day of Michael’s sickness. She had expected the Duke back on her doorstep that selfsame night, carrying the medicines which he had insisted on paying for, and her surprise had been great when the servant he had named did indeed come and very much alone. When the doctor had returned the following afternoon, she had again looked for Nicholas, expecting to see his face in the window of the carriage, ready to bait her into the next agreement she would not wish to make. But still he kept his distance. Perhaps tonight need not be the quandary she was making it into. Perhaps Nicholas, tempted by other riper morsels, had finally taken her help in Worsley in the spirit she had pleaded with him all along to do. A frown marred Brenna’s forehead as she boarded the carriage with Michael. Perhaps she gave herself too much credit in her bizarre imaginings of an attraction between them. Tonight he would see the ordinariness in her and that would indeed be the very end of it.

Half an hour later their carriage swept up a drive festooned with lights and burning torches, and liveried footmen, and Brenna’s confidence washed away, her body coming forward from the seat to view the house more closely. Every door that led out on to the front balconies was decorated with numerous lanterns, and on guard duty at the columned entrance stood a bevy of servants dressed in black and white, escorting each newly arrived guest up the stairs and inside. She recognised the faces of Lord Palmerston and Lord Tennyson, Tory politician and Poet Laureate respectively. How far and quickly had she strayed from her own more humble surroundings.

Swallowing, she felt her mouth dry with fear. It was all as she remembered, though a thousand times more grand and opulent, for never in the year of her season had she come near the houses of the haut ton, and Nicholas Pencarrow seemed to sit at the very pinnacle of that.

Music assailed her senses as the carriage door was opened to the lively strains of Strauss and to the smell of gardenias. Gardenias in November? Brenna’s eyebrows lifted at just that simple cost. Nicholas Pencarrow must have had them especially nurtured in glass houses, a summer flower to bedeck this wintertime land and all in a gesture that fairly screamed out the never-ending prosperity of the very wealthy.

Her eyes came around to Michael and, unfolding themselves from their carriage, they walked up the stairs to a line that had formed in the drawing room. Ahead she could see the Duke welcoming each guest and Brenna’s stomach lurched in nervousness as they waited. She hardly dared lift her eyes to the assembly she could see in front, for she was every bit as exposed as she had dreaded and even the smile that lit up Nicholas Pencarrow’s eyes failed to ease her tenseness.

Nicholas had glanced up to find her right there. Dressed in a gown from another era, she looked as if she had crossed the time barrier and walked straight in from 1820. He’d never seen her look so beautiful. The earrings she wore sparkled with violet lights that matched her eyes and her hair hung in a dark thick curtain, curling across her shoulders. Even the apprehension he perceived, as he took her hand, did nothing to diminish her loveliness, her stillness reflecting her dress and setting her apart from every other woman present; compared with her, they looked either overdone or overexposed. Warmth crept into his eyes and a warning came, as if in answer, into hers.

‘Good evening,’ she spoke primly, almost snatching her hand from his where it had lain too long, and frowning as he drew her towards a woman a few feet away who was also greeting newcomers.

‘Grandmama, this is Brenna Stanhope and her uncle, Sir Michael De Lancey. Brenna, this is my grandmother, The Dowager Duchess of Westbourne.’

Grey eyes came directly up at the mention of the Stanhope name, though as a smile broke out across her face and touched her eyes with a dancing mirth, Brenna relaxed.

‘Nick, you are as remiss as your brother, for neither Charles nor you has ever mentioned to me how beautiful your mysterious Miss Stanhope really is.’

Nicholas grimaced, softening his countenance immediately as he felt Brenna’s gaze turned to him. He swallowed the reply he would have liked to have given, as green eyes raked across his grandmother in a silent warning of intent.

And Elizabeth was as intrigued as Nicholas was. Why, the child seemed to hark from an age long past, dressed in a fashion she could remember from years back and with a countenance that belied description. Yes, she could well understand her boys’ lack of outline, for Brenna Stanhope was not at all beautiful in the vogue of this day. No, she harked back to a more mythical and enigmatic time, a time when a woman’s beauty lay not in the purely physical but in the character, and strength of purpose, and difference.

Everything she had ever heard of Brenna Stanhope was underscored by other people’s ideas of what a proper woman should not do. She was not married, she had had a poor first season, she worked for a living in the East End of London amongst children of the working classes and maintained no connections with the society Elizabeth was used to mingling in. There was nothing in her background that should have endeared her to Nicholas, and yet, on meeting her for the first time, Elizabeth could feel her attraction every bit as clearly as her grandson could. She was the complete opposite to him and the most right, dark against light, stillness against energy.

Letitia Carruthers’s voice broke the spell and rudely brought Elizabeth back into the moment. ‘The Beauchamps are here, Nicholas, and they would like you to meet their new daughter-in-law.’ Nicholas’s eyes raked across the never-ending procession of newly arrived guests as he reluctantly let Brenna go.

‘Damn,’ he muttered to himself. It would be at least an hour before he could be free and time was very precious under a bargain that would deny him further access after this night, should he use it unwisely. In frustration he turned back to his place in the welcoming committee, leaving Michael to take Brenna through.

In the main drawing room Brenna was thankful to see Julia and Thomas Cartwright, a couple already known to them, ensconced in the vicinity. At least in a group they would be relatively safe from the intrusion of others, though the night began to appear more and more untenable.

Her eyes looked at the timepiece gathered on a chain at her uncle’s waist. Half past eight. Lord, but it seemed like hours already that they had been here and it had not yet passed thirty minutes? An aching worry built behind her brow as she searched the front vestibule for Nicholas Pencarrow, wishing that if any one should come to harry her it might at least be him. The thought made her clench the beaded velvet of her small bag and draw away her glance from the very one who had landed her in this predicament in the first place. The Cartwrights’ greetings centred her attentions away from the gathering group of young men who had formed about her as Julia took Brenna’s hand in hers.

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