Page 4 of To Tempt a Troubled Earl
“Very well. Tell your tale, Mr Angel. My staff have relayed your sister’s version; I want to hear yours. Explain why you chose my doorstep. If it’s with the intent to extort money from me, under the misapprehension I’m harbouring shameful secrets, then you are wasting your time. If not, you have three minutes.”
The man seized his chance. “My sister sent word to me in London, via a housemaid, that all was not well, and I rode to Gartside Manor with all haste. Given the nature of her distress, I was for breaking the door down, but the place is well attended. After two days, another message reached me, and I found my poor sister, Anne, wandering the Allenmouth road alone with nothing but a handful of coin and the clothes she stood up in. You were the nearest refuge, my lord. My sister has been…well, I have just paid her a visit. And I can assure you she is in no fit condition to travel further at this present time.”
As if the library were his own, Angel took up from where he left off the night before and paced the length of it, his coat swishing like a cat’s tail on each agitated turn. A lock of hair had fallen across his forehead. Roughly, he pushed it back while his other hand tugged at his loosely tied cravat, a gesture reminiscent of his uncle when under duress, and despite himself, the earl’s hibernating heart softened a fraction.
“Give thanks to the lord above that she’ll be safe here, Mr Angel. My housekeeper, Mrs Sugden, is both capable and discreet to a fault. I can assure you.”
Mr Angel’s hands balled into tight fists. “You expect me to thank the lord forthat? Well, I don’t! Because someone who thinks he can lord it over everyone else is the damned reason she’s in this mess in the first place. Sir Ambrose Gartside has defiled my sister irrevocably, and rumour has it, she is not the first.”
“No,” the earl conceded. “Regrettably, the rumours are true.”
“Bastard.” Raw anger glittered in Angel’s exquisite dark eyes. “Forgive me for my uncouth language, Lord Rossingley, but I have a mind to break down his door and murder him with my bare hands.”
“I…ah…don’t advise it.” Lando threw him a cold smile. “You swinging from a gibbet will be of no conceivable benefit to your sister.”
Lando’s pulse took up a steady drum beat at his temples. So far, the man hadn’t seemed inclined to further his insinuations. If he was here to merely vent his spleen, he could jolly well go and do it somewhere else. Preferably a long way from Lando’s library.
“Your sister has my condolences, Mr Angel,” he said calmly. “And, as I’ve stated, she may stay here until she is quite well.”
Angel rounded on him. “Forgive my impertinence, my lord. But what good are your condolences when this fiend is getting away with whatever he chooses? They’re no more use than an offer to…to rearrange my furniture whilst my house is burning down!”
Angel’s wretched pacing came to a halt, his dark eyes flashed, and his flared nostrils breathed fire not six inches from Lando’s face. The man’s balled fists seemed itching to connect with something, and for a second, Lando wondered whether that something might be him.
No one discomfited the eleventh earl in the seclusion of his own library.
“Why don’t you position yourself nearer the door, Mr Angel?” Lando suggested, summoning all his noble astringency. “That way, you’ll have less far to travel when I kick you out again.” Turning his attention back to the fire, he delivered another sharp poke. “It would serve you well to remember that your sister is a guest under my roof. That situation could change very easily.”
“You wouldn’t.” Mr Angel’s furious gaze fixed onto Lando’s.
“Try me.”
Danger lurked in those dark, dark eyes. Gadzooks, this man tested Lando’s patience. If the poor innocent girl hadn’t already been treated so poorly by a member of the upper echelons, Lando would have had a mind to carry out his threat.
The pacing resumed. “Anne was Captain Prosser’s ward, my lord. And that was a responsibility he took very seriously, so much that she took his good name to gain employment.”
“He held her dear,” Lando replied testily. “What of it?”
“I was with him in his final days before he passed. We spoke of you often.”
Wrath’s chilly fingers seeped into Lando’s veins. Angel’s true purpose was about to reveal itself, and it was precisely as he’d surmised.
“You were worth a great deal to him,” continued the man. “Which is why I am confident of your assistance. What was he worth to you if you disregard all that he held dear?”
“Ah.” Lando’s tone was quiet and smooth. Careless even. If Mr Angel had known the earl better, he’d have recognised it signalled white-hot rage. “Finally. And I was just thinking you’d forgotten.”
“Forgotten what?”
“The part of the story where you attempt to frighten me, of course. Do carry on, I’m all ears.”
“I mean to do no such thing,” Angel protested. “You have my word.”
“Forgive me if I take your word with a pinch of salt.”
Angel, his brow furrowed, squinted at Lando. “For reasons that are frankly inexplicable, my uncle cared very, very much for you. He was…not to put too fine a point on it, dammit…he was in love with you.”
A crashing silence followed in which Lando resisted placing his hands around the impudent young man’s neck. His pulse slid from his temples to set up a white-hot hammering in his throat. “How dare you come into my house and say such things!”
“If I may be so bold, I will say a deal more. Because it is so very clear to me, from how your eyes mist over and your hand trembles at my every mention of his name, that you were so very much in love with him too. And therefore, you know even better than I that your condolences are not enough. Whether you join me or not, I have vowed to avenge my sister until that scoundrel Gartside falls to his knees begging my forgiveness. And I know I speak from my fine uncle’s heart when I say that having you beside me is everything Charles, your dear friendand lover, would have wanted.”
