Julia London by Wicked Angel The Devil's Love Page A

therefore, she was obliged to wear it. Even though she knew it was perfectly hideous.
    By the middle of the week, the weather turned warmer and drier, and she took to exploring Blessing Park. It was more beautiful than any land she had ever seen; lush carpets of grass and tall, stately trees abounded. Beyond the walls of the expansive garden were a small lake and a gazebo, and behind the lake, soft, rolling hills fell away to small dales. One day Abbey happened across the old ruins of a castle in her exploration and spent the next two days exploring every nook and cranny while Harry slept in the sun.
    Sometimes she even allowed herself to imagine the Michael of her memory roaming the ruins. Try as she might, she couldnot get past the tendril of longing she had held for years, a tendril for the memory of him that was so inextricably wound up in the real man. The real man looked like the Michael of her memory, moved like him, and even sounded like him. But the words that came out of the real Michael’s mouth were so wrong, so unlike the memory. Fortunately, at the ruins, she could substitute her own words in place of the heartless ones.
    At night, after an early supper, Abbey retired to her new sitting room. She always had Sarah in tow, sometimes even Cook, and they would wile away the hours much as she had in Virginia. When two younger maids had come with fresh linens and the weekly papers from London one evening, Abbey eagerly invited them to stay. By the end of the week, Abbey played hostess to a sitting room full of female servants from Blessing Park.
    They tried to teach her needlework, but to no avail. Undaunted, Abbey began to embroider a picture of Blessing Park for a draught screen. None of the servants had the heart to tell her how poor her skills were. When her patience with the needlework wore thin, she would read outrageous
on dits
from the London papers that had the women laughing hilariously. Or she would read from the history books that graced her room and private library. Apparently the Almighty Darfield enjoyed purchasing expensive volumes of history and in a matter of days, the women were quite well acquainted with Persian history.
    She also played her violin for them. The first time Abbey had produced the instrument, she claimed she was rather a mediocre talent compared with the great virtuosos and could not sing or play the pianoforte as might be expected. But the beautiful strains of music that lifted from her strings kept the women in awe and brought a tear to Sarah’s eye. Every night after that, the same luscious strains of music would drift through the house, and before long, Sebastian, Jones, and the master’s valet, Damon, would hover about the hallway, along with an occasional footman, enraptured. Sebastian remarked one morning that there was nothing the marquis enjoyed morethan music. Abbey had wrinkled her nose at that; she would have sworn they had absolutely nothing in common.
    Several more days passed and the Devil of Darfield still did not return. Abbey was proud of herself for almost forgetting the King of Rude and settled comfortably into the world she had created for herself. It was a bucolic and simple existence, one she found more and more to her liking as the days passed. She began to relax for the first time since coming to England, and decided that she could very easily make a life at Blessing Park if she were forced to do so. She convinced herself that the absence of a loving husband—and naturally, children—would not be so hard to bear as she feared, as long as she had Blessing Park and the many diversions it offered her.
    One morning she received two letters. The first, much to her delight and surprise, was from her second cousin, Galen Carrey. Even though she had not heard from him in some years, she recognized the handwriting immediately. Quite excited about receiving a note from her
dearest
—and only—male cousin, Abbey danced a little jig about her sitting room before