Fallen Angel. Sophia James

though her eyes softened. ‘And thank you for helping Michael and for the doctor…and the medicines,’ she added lamely, for it seemed her constant place to ever be the receiver of favours, apart from in the first few moments of their acquaintance.

      Nicholas almost began to speak again but, thinking better of it, tipped his hat and walked into the night. How did one offer gifts without also offering an affection he knew she wanted nothing of? How did he, knowing De Lancey’s financial problems, balance pride against charity, balance help against interference?

      Chapter Five

      Nicholas spent the next two days sifting through the records of Michael De Lancey’s family, finding, to his surprise, the notice of a brother, Fenton, blessed with six daughters by 1837 and then a long-awaited son born in the same month and year that Nicholas’s investigations had turned up as Brenna’s birth date. He glanced again at the latest letter from his lawyer, which had uncovered some more facts. Fenton’s wife Daphne still lived out of York, mad by all accounts but cared for by the youngest daughter, the others having made respectable, if not grand, marriages. A furrow creased his brow as he copied the country address of the house called Farnley, standing in a borough of the northern city of York. Crossing to a drawer, he pulled out a map, unfurling it on the table before him, trying to plot the exact route he would need to take to reach this place.

      Brenna Stanhope was taking over his rational thought, he thought wryly, remembering back to last night’s unexpected visit from Deborah Hutton. The opera star at the height of her career and charms had always appealed to him, yet, as he had taken her to his bed, he had imagined not honeyed tresses but ebony ones, not sky blue eyes but fearful violet orbs, not light flirtatious banter but a heavily veiled articulate aloofness that bespoke all of the one he was becoming increasingly obsessed with. Last night had shocked and worried him in a way no other incident ever had. He had to be mad to let Brenna affect him like this and yet he was completely powerless to change it. ‘Keep your distance, Nick,’ he chided himself softly. ‘Remember, Brenna Stanhope is just an interesting diversion, nothing more.’ He rang for his butler. Burton appeared less than thirty seconds later, bowing slightly as he entered the Duke’s company.

      ‘You called, your Grace?’

      Nicholas smiled, easing the other man into a more relaxed stance. ‘I need to go to York for a few days tomorrow on business. Could you let the stables know and have them bring the brougham around at nine o’clock in the morning?’ He stopped, trying to find a way to phrase the next sentence. ‘If my family should enquire of my whereabouts, tell them that I have had to go north and I will be home on the Sabbath. If there is a problem that you feel needs my attention, you may send word to the Excelsior in York, though I can think of nothing that could warrant such a need, short of a disaster.’

      Burton nodded, a look of puzzlement crossing the man’s countenance, though if Nicholas saw it, he gave it no heed.

      Farnley was an old house, once grand but run down and tatty looking, and the farm cottages were in the same sad condition. Nick was not surprised. He knew the family to be in straitened circumstances since the death of Fenton.

      The carriage stopped at the front portico and Nicholas stepped out. Without warning, a door swung open and a young woman appeared. She came out into the light with a familiar reticence, and in that second Nicholas knew the answer to all his intended questions, for there could be no doubt that this was much more than a distant relation to Brenna Stanhope.

      ‘Good afternoon, I seem to have lost my way to Smail’s Mill.’ He made mention of a small town he knew to be a few miles to the west of Farnley, bringing a map from his pocket to reinforce the statement. ‘I am Nicholas Pencarrow, newly come from London, and you would do me a great service if you could point out the direction I must follow.’

      ‘Oh.’ The girl blushed, obviously hesitating as to whether or not it was proper to speak with him, when a voice came loudly from inside.

      ‘Who is it, Charlotte? Who is there? Who has come to see us?’

      ‘Excuse me.’ Charlotte bowed politely, and disappeared into a side room to return immediately and bid him enter into the company of Daphne De Lancey.

      Even in old age she was a beautiful woman, though there was a glint of madness in her eyes and a certain unkemptness about her appearance. Charlotte mirrored her handsomeness, but Brenna outdid them both, and a portrait that hung askew upon the wall behind her showed the six daughters all from the same mould, and a son thatched blond and freckled. His glance flicked back to the woman he now knew to be Brenna’s mother.

      ‘Welcome, Mr Pencarrow, to Farnley. I am Daphne De Lancey and this is my daughter Charlotte.’

      Nicholas turned and favoured the girl with a smile. She was taller than Brenna, heavier of feature, though much more open to strangers.

      ‘I am very pleased to meet you, sir.’ She curtsied as stiffly as Brenna did. That trait must run across all the De Lancey women, Nick thought, for a sense of independence sprang from these two nearly every bit as strongly as it did from the youngest Miss Stanhope. Or De Lancey, he corrected himself.

      Brenna De Lancey, born exactly the same day as her brother George and disappearing thereafter for all of twelve years.

      Daphne’s voice brought him back into the present. ‘My daughter tells me that you are lost.’

      ‘I am, and if you could but give me some instruction as to the path I must follow to reach the Mill, I would be most grateful.’

      Daphne stood. ‘We usually eat here within the next half an hour. I know this is an invitation pushed upon you without much warning and indeed by strangers as we are, but we would deem it an honour if you were to join us.’

      Put so humbly, how could Nicholas refuse, and his smile touched his eyes for the first time as he surveyed the two women before him. With a little persuasiveness in the right direction there was much here that he could learn and he could also begin back for London that very same night.

      ‘I would be delighted, Lady De Lancey, though it truly cannot be for very long as I have business matters most pressing to attend to.’

      ‘Hurry then, Charlotte, and fetch Mr Pencarrow a beverage,’ Daphne barked the order and the girl jumped up towards the drinks’ table, turning back to him only as she reached it and enquiring of Nicholas what it was he wished to have. His glance raked across the ill-laid trolley chancing on a port he enjoyed, and he gave her his preference.

      ‘Are there just the two of you here?’ His eyes flicked to the family portrait behind Daphne.

      ‘At the moment…yes,’ Charlotte answered with an open honestness. ‘All of my sisters are married. George, our brother, died soon after that drawing was completed.’ She stopped, watching Daphne before adding, ‘Our father too.’ Sadness showed plainly across both faces.

      ‘You were lucky, then, that the land was not entailed,’ Nick said quietly. ‘Some families could lose everything were the male heir to die.’ It was said more in innocence than design, though as he looked up an expression of such guilt was written across Daphne’s face it was as if she had screamed, We lost it way before that, and taking her drink she finished it in one long and unbroken swallow.

      Charlotte glanced around uneasily at her mother, and Nicholas, seeing her uncertainty, raised his glass in a toast.

      ‘Here’s to life,’ he said slowly.

      One begun, one ended. Two babies, born on exactly the same day to two very different women, and a family lost to Brenna.

      A coldness began to settle inside of Nicholas, an answer to a puzzle he didn’t want to find, a premonition of Brenna’s fear, of her secrecy, an understanding of Michael’s protection and an explanation for Daphne’s madness. He squashed it down, not willing to dissect it at all further, and questioned Charlotte instead. ‘Do you ever come down to London?’

      ‘Oh, hardly ever,’ she laughed. ‘We have a relation there, my father’s brother.’