Free When Angels Fall by Meagan McKinney Page B

Ivan face to face, she gritted her teeth and said stiffly, “Unhand me, my lord, if you would be so kind.” He was holding her much too closely. She had gone to see Miss Musgrave without having donned a corset, and she was mortified to feel Ivan’s large, strong hands sweep down her unbound waist. His breath warmed her cheek and she could see every blue fleck in his irises and every taut movement of his lips. For one wild moment, she even thought that he might try to kiss her, but instead she was released and he allowed her to stumble backward on the road. She shot him a furiouslook for being so unchivalrous, then she hurried over to her brother.
    “Lord in heaven, look at you,” she whispered as she knelt at George’s feet. Her gloved hand touched a bruise near his eye, then she fingered the tear in his tweed jacket. Shaking with rage, she stood and faced Ivan. “Are these your mongrels that did this to him?”
    “Mongrels? My dogs are no mongrels,” Tramore countered, a ghost of a smile on his lips. He seemed about to dispute this further, but she was in no mood to let him. She had everything to fear from the Marquis of Powerscourt, but when her family’s safety had been jeopardized, her own concerns were cast aside. She lit into the marquis as if he were once again her stableboy.
    “How could you let these animals roam free? They’re a menace to society, and I shall see them properly restrained or I shall report them to the authorities—why,
especially
when they take to knocking over children—and—and—”
    “No, Lissa!” George pulled at her skirts. Behind him, the mastiffs were seated, their tails wagging only harder the more angry Lissa became.
    “—and mauling them!” She grabbed George to her and looked accusingly at the mastiffs’ owner. Her fury increased when Ivan seemed to be laughing at her.
    “The pups have nothing to do with Alcester’s condition,” he answered leisurely, his dark eyes glittering with amusement.
    “The
pups
?” she sputtered incredulously. She waved a hand at the huge canines who appeared to be listening to her with rapt facination. “You call these carnivorous . . .
beasts
pups? Why, look what they’ve done to him!” She pushed George out in front of her.
    Ivan only nodded to George’s burgeoning black eye. “You believe that just happened? I think not,” he stated. Ignoring her then, he turned to fetch his steed, which he’d left abandoned behind him.
    Begrudgingly she watched him walk away, his collected stance infuriating her more. She noted he was again dressed like a gentleman, attired discreetly in Nankeen trousers and a heavy morning coat of black flannel. He seemed so superior, even the blustery wind didn’t seem to dare whip at his hair as it did her own, which in her flight to aid George had come loose of her bonnet and hairpins.
    She pulled a silvery-blond lock from her face and watched Tramore. Unruffled, he walked his spirited mount back toward them. Only the slight puckering of the scar on his cheek proclaimed he flinched against the cold at all. Lissa was sure that, in contrast, the Alcesters looked like a pair of miserable wretches indeed: She shivered like a matchgirl beneath her threadbare mantle and George scowled belligerently as she tried to touch his bruised brow.
    “Did the dogs attack you then?” she finally asked her brother.
    “Finn and Fenian wouldn’t, Lissa. We’re chums,” George answered emphatically.
    “Finn and Fenian?” she repeated, then shot Ivan a distrustful glance. It was now obvious George and Ivan’s “pups,” as their master was wont to call them, were well acquainted. “Well, if not the dogs, then who ripped your jacket and blackened your eye?”
    George’s mouth took on a stubborn set. He hid his hands behind his back and when she grabbed one, she saw his knuckles were as swollen and bruised as his face.
    “You’ve been fighting, George, and you must tell me with whom. They will have to be