Fallen Angels by Cornwell Bernard & Kells Susannah

Author:Cornwell, Bernard & Kells, Susannah [Cornwell, Bernard & Kells, Susannah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Historical, Historical Fiction, Romance
ISBN: 9780007176427
Amazon: 0007176422
Goodreads: 436745
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 1983-10-31T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

The polonaise finished. She curtseyed. She smiled weakly at Lord Culloden. 'I'm feeling distinctly faint, my Lord.'

'Faint?' He frowned.

'The champagne, perhaps?' She touched her forehead. Faintness was so common an excuse, so expected of a woman, that he would think nothing of it. Yet, for all its ordinariness, it was an excuse she had never, ever used in her life. Now, as he put a hand on her shoulder, she felt a horrid premonition that the excuse would run like a threnody of unhappiness through her marriage. 'I'm going to lie down for a few moments. I'll come back.'

He bowed. 'You will be missed, my dear.'

She climbed the stairs, crossed the windowed bridge, and went to her rooms like a guilty person. She could feel her heart beating. It seemed like a crime, like a delicious, secret crime.

Her maid was not in the rooms. Campion locked all the doors. She lit new candles from the guttering stubs of the old, took the ostrich plumes from her hair, sat at the mirror and put new powder on her face. She put shadow-cream on her eyelids. She took the dance card from her wrist, looked wryly at the names of the men whom she was disappointing, then dropped it on her dressing table. She smiled a conspiratorial smile at her own reflection.

From the wardrobe she took a long, hooded cloak of midnight blue. She listened to make certain no one was in the corridor, then, her every sense heightened by excitement, she turned the key and slipped into the tangle of Tudor rooms at the back of the Old House.

She went down servants' stairs, past the silver vaults, through the old laundry, and out into the kitchen garden. She pulled the cloak's hood over her hair of pale, pale gold.

The night air was fresh and warm. She could smell the herbs. The music came to her across the dark lawns that lay to the north of LazenCastle. The gate of the garden creaked as she opened it.

She walked on the grass, her satin slippers thin enough to impress every small bump on the soles of her feet. The orchard blossoms made a haze of whiteness to her right.

She skirted the mound that had once held the keep when Lazen was a real castle. At its foot, where she hugged the dark hillock, were the Castle's beehives.

She stopped at the edge of the mound and saw the lights brilliant in the castle's northern windows. Couples walked in the gardens, couples whose laughter came soft over the grass.

She walked on. There was an exhilarating, nervous pleasure in this secrecy, this assignation on such a night as this. She wanted to laugh aloud, she wanted to kick off her slippers and run barefoot on the grass. How many brides left their betrothal ball to meet another man? The thought made her laugh.

To her right was Sconce Hill, a tangle of bushes and darkness, and ahead were the ruins of the old gatehouse. Once LazenCastle had faced north.

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