Broken Angel Read online

  “Bobby?”

  Robert briefly smiled. “No. One of the older girls now since adopted. The letter had been forwarded by the administration. I don’t remember now why. I suppose they were requesting a donation of some kind. It seems to me that the letter arrived around Christmas.” Robert rubbed at a smudge on the pipe chamber. “I’ve felt a responsibility toward them ever since. I believe it has been… seven years. Yes. Since my eighteenth birthday.”

  Eighteen…. Rachel lowered her eyes to a scrutiny of her fan. Her mother had died the year of her eighteenth birthday.

  Robert examined her down-turned face. “May I ask my question?”

  She nodded and cautiously raised her eyes. “By all means.”

  “What is your favorite color?”

  Arching an eyebrow, Rachel found it hard to believe he would ask a question with such a safe answer. “Cornflower blue.”

  “Ah. Lovely color, that.” Then, regarding her with his usual boyish smile, he reached out to tease a curl at her temple. “I imagine you to look radiant in cornflower blue with your curls of blonde.”

  If possible, Rachel’s eyebrow arched higher still. If not at the commentary, certainly at the tumble it caused behind the wall of numbness.

  Robert chuckled and then gestured toward her. “I believe it’s your turn.”

  Tenaciously shoving the rippling emotions beneath the calm, she reached out to take the pipe from his fingers. He voiced a slight protest but Rachel ignored him as she examined it closely, touching the nicks on the chamber with her fingertips. Rachel met his gaze that so closely watched her reaction to the object. “You never light it,” she observed simply, “you but chew and worry the end. Why do you keep this with you if you don’t intend to use it?”

  Robert smirked. “It was a gift from my father.”

  “But certainly he knew you didn’t smoke at the time of the giving?” she asked incredulously.

  “He knew. The pipe served as more a symbol than anything. Of manhood. Responsibility. In my father’s eyes, at any rate. I needed to be reminded of a duty yet to be fulfilled.”

  Rachel focused briefly on the pipe before again meeting Robert’s gaze. “A duty such as what, pray?”

  Robert looked down to the pipe in her hold before reaching forward to take it, caressing her fingers as he did so. “Marriage.”

  “What?”

  Glancing in her direction, Robert began tapping the chamber of the pipe against his hand. “I’ve been trained for the family business since before I can remember. Everything involved would somehow benefit it. The schools I attended. The friends I made. The church I was baptized at and later became a member of….” Robert cleared his throat as he twisted the pipe within his hands. “Even the woman I was to marry.”

  “Who is she?” Rachel heard herself asking, never before considering that he would have had a previous obligation before vocalizing his commitment to her. Neither could she decide if breaking a trust to another woman so as to uphold a trust with her was a positive or negative facet of his character.

  Robert cleared his throat and looked away from his pipe to a lilac bush across the way. “A lovely lady with a large purse and an important family. Important enough to be deemed worthy of deepening the Trent’s pockets and expanding our family line.”

  Rachel regarded his profile while noticing his red ears, face and neck. “Does your father know you don’t intend to marry her?” And why would he risk his father’s wrath to stand as a more pleasant option for me: a stranger met on a train? Yet a remembered confession of being “highly attracted” caused a deeper scrutiny of his expression.

  Again Robert cleared his throat, but this time he sent her a sidelong glance. “I haven’t informed him of my intentions yet, no.”

  “And the woman?”

  “She wishes the match as little as I, as the arrangement signifies a lack of trust in our training. She agrees with my point of view that this decision should have been confessed freely, thereby giving us the opportunity to accept it as our duty.” He cleared his throat. “I remember I reacted much as you did when I came to understand exactly what he asked, or rather expected, of me. I believe I was the same sturdy twelve as the lad who had come to visit my grandparents. I ranted and raved, making an awful ruckus for months. Rebelled against anything my father asked of me.”

  Rachel lowered her gaze briefly to the fan. “It doesn’t seem fair, does it? To have our lives controlled even though they have supposedly trained us to handle our lives as well as those of others.”

  “No. It doesn’t.” Then Robert met her gaze. “Yet who am I to question God’s plan for my life?”

  Rachel arched an eyebrow. “God’s plan?”

  Smiling, he nodded. “It sounds rather lofty, doesn’t it? Here. Let me have a go at explaining….”

  Then he absently tapped the chamber of the pipe against his hand as he pursed his lips, apparently scrutinizing the grass around them. Giving another nod, he finally once more met her gaze. She slightly smirked at the intensity within it.

  “Even though I knew of my betrothal, I still roamed from romantic fantasy to romantic fantasy like a sick and lovelorn poet. I hungered for love. I hungered for acceptance I didn’t completely feel. Where else could I find it but in the arms of the overly eager ladies seeking the wealth and station my name held?”

  Robert looked away to his hands and the pipe, embarrassment coloring his expression. “Thank the Lord my fantasy never became a reality. They tried, I grant them that, but I was too restless. Too easily disappointed. The Lord used that. He used it to draw me closer to Him because I couldn’t find the satisfaction anywhere else.” He glanced up at her. “Everything was too superficial. Too transparent and easily prone to disappearance. Jesus was stability and acceptance. I needed that.”

  Rachel regarded him, meeting his occasional glances with thoughtfulness and inner quiet. Then she turned her focus to the pipe. A desire for acceptance. A hunger for love. It sounded so hauntingly familiar. Yet for one difference: He had found it in a relationship with a God that seemed so distant. A relationship with a God that had allowed her father to send her away. One that had taken her mother. One that had–

  “Might I ask my question now?” Robert’s quiet voice drew her gaze and attention back from a bristling beneath the numbness.

  “Certainly.”

  Clearing his throat, Robert began another absent tapping of his pipe into his palm. “This one is more than likely inappropriate, but… well….” Again he cleared his throat, this time even giving a tug at his collar.

  Rachel’s entire self hesitated before she slowly prompted, “Ask.”

  “How many children do you want as part of your family?”

  Rachel paled. “P-Pardon?”

  His gaze lowered to his fingers, which seemed to shake as he fiddled with his pipe. Only occasionally did he dare a glance toward her. “Mother was unable to have children after I was born; such must have been the reason I spent so much time with the staff’s children.”

  Rachel felt a muted bit of surprise at the confession. She’d suffered the same longing for companionship. The same deep desire for family.

  “Being lonely in such circumstances should have been impossible,” he admitted, looking up, “but it’s true nonetheless. Perhaps that is why I’ve always wished to have a large family?”

  “I’ve never given thought to children,” she admitted as she lowered her eyes. “My focus has been only of how soon I might head my father’s business.” She moved her focus to watch the birds play in a nearby lilac tree. “I haven’t the motherly instinct of other women.”

  The thought caused a painful shift within. A reminder of the difference between past dreams and present goals. A… failing in something that she had long since considered irrelevant. Yet now, when destined to become wife, mother, and lover it could no longer be considered that. Her performance would reflect on her person. Her ability would reflect on her ability in other areas of life and le
adership.

  Rachel’s throat tightened, but she swallowed it away as she brought a hand up to rub at a throbbing at her temple with suddenly cold fingers. A heavy silence had descended; one so familiar that it gave rise to the numbness, filling it with more power than before. Then she heard and noticed Robert’s motion of sitting up.

  “Rachel?”

  Rachel said nothing, nor did she meet his gaze. A part of her dreaded seeing the softness in his eyes that she heard in his voice. Each time she saw it she felt drawn even further from the safety of distance; drawn to a thirst and hunger for something that had never been a subject of study–

  Robert enfolded her hand. “I’m listening if you need to talk.”

  Talk? Again voice a weakness and– Rachel focused on him with a hard gaze, her lips pressed together as a flare of something surpassed the calm and numbness. “Let go of me.”

  Robert slightly smiled while doing as ordered. “Anger sparkles within emerald, Rachel. Why?”

  “I do not know.” She focused her glare onto the lilac tree across the path from them as she rubbed the warmth of his touch from her hand. It remained.

  Watching her face, Robert’s smile slowly disappeared before he quietly asked, “Rachel, are you certain you don’t wish for me to go? You’ve but to say the word.”

  Rachel pressed her lips together again. Do I? What is there but more of the same? More memories. More tenderness. Yet what waited in the silence but more reminders of her training and how it so differed from the future intent that her father had hidden from her? More reminders of her independence in something that needed more than one?

  Her head throbbed and she twitched. “Six.”

  Robert raised an eyebrow. “Six? Six what?”

  “Children. I want six. Three girls and three boys.” The statement served as the admittance to a dream that she had long thought dead and forgotten so many years before….

  Robert stared at her in amazement before a smile spread slowly across his features. That smile had Rachel refusing to meet his gaze. “All right. We’ll have six. Although you’ll need to take up the specific point of ‘three girls and three boys’ with God.”

  Rachel only inclined her head.

  “I’m quite sure I’ll get slapped,” Robert confessed suddenly, “but I must say that you’re the loveliest when flustered. Your cheeks flush an entrancing shade of rose.”

  Rachel briefly pressed her lips together to limit the response she felt within at his observance. Instead, she clenched her hands as she continued to examine the lilac bush. The silence continued, prickles rising upon her skin as Robert continued to regard her with his highly attractive expression of boyish mischief, the occasional breeze serving only to heighten the presence of his aroma around her. Then he reached with his right hand to lightly touch the skin beneath her chin with a finger, oh so gently turning her head toward him. His lips danced with the whisper of a smile as his finger continued to softly caress her skin. “Have you always been this lovely?”

  Something escaped the numbness to enhance the touch and cause a tingle. “Come, come,” Rachel scolded, surprised at the softness of her tone. “Certainly you aren’t attempting to take my question, Mr. Trent?”

  One side of Robert’s lips twitched as he moved to caress her left cheek with the back of the same finger. “Yes,” he countered in a gentle tone. He teased a loose curl near her ear as he leaned closer. “And now that you’ve voiced your question, to which I have answered, am I allowed to ask another?”

  Fear blossomed, but Rachel fought it away in her determination to not cower, hands gripping the fan as her eyes remained focused on his. “Yes,” she said quietly, not truly certain that she gave permission for the question or the fear that became so addicting. So many questions and emotions raged just within the wall of numbness that she lost the identity of them all in the confusion as well as in the murky determination to not be confused.

  Robert’s hand enfolded hers and its grip of the fan, causing Rachel a twitch. Then his brown eyes lowered, releasing her breath and her gaze as he looked down to the hand and the fan within it. His touch retreated from her cheek to retrieve and gently open the fan, the thumb of his other hand caressing her inner wrist.

  He smiled slightly down at the watercolor picture upon it before lifting his gaze to again meet hers. “I find your use of this fan intriguing,” he began in a low voice, “for it shows so many of your moods. Yet I find myself doubting you learned the art within your studies in Paris. Who encouraged your learning of it? It’s so genuinely feminine.”

  ‘…genuinely feminine…’ The statement burned its way through the numbness to the struggling warmth beyond. “Lucy,” she confessed, her voice sounding oddly distant and breathless. “A friend with whom I studied in Paris. We learned together.”

  Robert looked again to the fan. “It seems to have its very own language, and oftentimes I have found myself looking to it for hints as to your mood. I truly believe it will save me the lash of your tongue if I pay it great importance.”

  Rachel watched his soft expression, feeling his caress on her wrist much further down than just her skin. The cold and hardness seemed to melt, much as her business-mind fought against it. Then he lifted those brown eyes and she again felt the shift within.

  Robert presented her the fan. “Could you show me?”

  She accepted it, retreating from his gaze and his touch to focus on the greenery of the fan’s painted landscape. “Show you?”

  “Speak with it.”

  Intrigue fluttered as she adjusted her hold on the fan, lifting it to shield a great portion of her face. She gently caressed the air with very slight movements as she peeked at him from behind it.

  “And where has this coy young woman been?” Robert’s smile widened. “Perhaps I’ve lured her out with my personal questions?”

  Then Rachel looked away as she lowered and closed the fan, unable to retrieve the specter from a past that was best laid to rest forever and a day. Nothing but pain had ever come from it.

  “Ah. There she hides yet again,” Robert observed softly. He enfolded her hand to give it a brief squeeze, drawing Rachel’s gaze. “Next time I won’t tease.”

  Rachel briefly and slightly smiled, hiding the action with yet another smooth opening of the fan as she moved her gaze away. “Tease how you will. One day you will get your own back.” And her fan dipped slightly to reveal the sidelong glance as well as the hint of a smirk.

  Robert chuckled. “I will welcome that. My father has long said that my flippancy will cause no end of frustration in the business world. I disagree. If a man, or woman, has no sense of humor how can they possibly make light of a bad situation? Keeping one’s sense of humor ready and the mood light is always preferable to mumbling and grumbling on how fickle the populace has been.”

  Rachel regarded him as she absently and rhythmically pumped the fan, her lips still tickled with a smile as slight as that of the twinkle in her green eyes. Robert held her gaze, his fingers occasionally teasing the material at the hem of her skirt.

  “I believe the time has come for your next question, Miss Samson,” he reminded.

  Yet another question wouldn’t be had. Rachel could only regard him. Still studying him, and herself, and the responses to his reactions and the reactions she herself made to his responses. She had become her own research project.

  Brown eyes still held her regard as fingers continued to tease the hem of her dress. “Unless you would allow me another?” he inquired, his voice as soft as she had ever heard it.

  Rachel inclined her head, intrigue and curiosity overpowering the horror and the rigid determination to be suspicious of any and all questions.

  “Would you recite one of your poems?”

  That caused a blink and a retreat, from the research as well as the intrigue. Instead, she looked away as she deftly closed her fan. “I don’t recite any longer.”

  Robert’s fingers ceased their teasing of the material of her sk
irt to withdraw a moment later. After another moment of silent regard, he softly said, “I see.”

  Rachel made a move to stand. “I should return to the house. Dinner will likely be served soon and Father will be expecting me.”

  Robert stood to his feet and helped her to hers before she could even gather her skirts. She accepted his hand for the briefest necessary moment before pulling away with a tight smile his direction. Again, he regarded her as she shook the bits of grass from her skirt.

  Then he motioned toward the house, the action drawing her gaze. “I had best go now, otherwise I am liable to be late. Please excuse me?”

  Rachel inclined her head and looked away. “Of course.”

  He watched her profile a moment longer before offering a slight bow and a softly stated, “Have a good evening,” and then stepping toward the house.

  Rachel watched him go, her fingers deftly repeating the action of opening and closing her fan as she tenaciously revisited the conversations before and after a surprising shift and consideration. Gauging moods and temperament. Processing reactions and what was said as it compared to what was displayed and seen in the expression of his eyes. Then doing her best to determine which had the greatest bit of power within herself; which had caused the greatest change. Reaction. Response. She didn’t know how to face these new and unexpected emotions.

  Pressing her lips together, Rachel absently tapped her fan against her hand. She had never felt this way about a gentleman. Not even, if she took the moment to admit it to herself, for Todd. Yet after so many years of strict control and being unable to trust anyone, what she felt could only be the needs and wants finally breaking free. The desire to trust overpowering everything, especially in combination with his kind brown eyes and handsome face.

  His smirk. His laughter. His intelligence and wit. His uncanny ability to know when to stand… and when to retreat.