Angel of Ash Read online

  “Don’t think she hadn’t noticed you ass’s absence. Her and father are about to send the cavalry, namely, father and Gabe in less than a quarter of an hour.” Dave said, snatching the wine bottle from Caleb before passing it to Michael after a long drink.

  “Damn it all,” Michael said. “I thought we could escape for a good hour. It hasn’t even been twenty minutes. And who is this little ms who has caught your eye, baby brother?” He asked, staring at David with dubious intent.

  “The only female in the place who actually reads books on a daily basis, the girl knew more than I did,” David said, waiting for his turn with one of the two bottles.

  “That doesn’t take much,” Asher snidely said before erupting in a fit of laughter.

  “You lack any intelligence at all, Asher. The most your thoughts are concerned about is your next session of wild animal coupling.”

  Asher looked startled before a slow smile caressed his face. “Well, damn my boy, I didn’t think you knew me at all.”

  He couldn’t be taken seriously, so with an aggravated groan David decided to ignore him. “I shall pray for your immortal soul, dear brother, which has now purchased a one way ticket to hell for all eternity.”

  Asher laughed at that too. “And I shall pray that you will know a female before you turn fifty, however, it seems that I perhaps will have a better chance at the heavenly wings then you loving a woman before your jack hammer become too rusty from misuse.”

  The rest of the brothers roared with humor, David turning red before he started smiling sheepishly. “When the right woman comes along,” he finally managed to say.

  “Come, brothers,” Caleb said, rising from his seat and stretching. “Let us go back into purgatory before they send the militia to find us,” He said, taking one last swig of wine before hiding the empty bottle behind the tree in which he had been sitting on.

  The brothers grumbled, all except for Asher who made no move. “I shall follow within the minute,” he promised, watching as the brothers gave him a dubious look, but Asher only grinned innocently. “Truly.”

  Watching the four leave, Asher smiled, taking the last swallow of wine before he too hid it behind the tree in which he and Caleb sat at.

  Rubbing his face wearily, Asher bent over, running his hands through his hair before standing and following the brothers to the ball.

  He heard an ear full from his mother who looked more than a little askance at his long disappearance. Hunter made no notice, her and Gabe sitting in a quiet corner and whispering sweet nonsense to each other.

  Regretfully, or so he claimed to the hostess of the party and his mother, the hour struck twelve midnight and Asher made his escape from the cloying perfume and tepid glances of the London society, escaping with all due haste to his waiting carriage.

  The carriage ride was uneventful, the roads free of muck and giving Asher ample opportunity to take a quick, refreshing nap. Forty five minutes later, the carriage was rolling to a stop in front of his townhouse and opening the door before the driver got down, Asher thanked Gary and Steven.

  The house was quiet and dark, Asher refusing to keep his servants up well past a reasonable hour when he knew he would be out late. Making his way through his darkened home, he reached his bedroom, and in the dark, stripped naked, before collapsing onto his bed and falling into another fitful asleep.

  Asher woke the next morning, early, before dawn arose and heard the large grandfather mantle in the hallway strike five in the morning, he jumped from bed, knowing he’d had enough sleep and it was time to go over the various aspects of his numerous holdings, many of which he shared with his brothers who were his business partners. They had more than their fair share of coal factories and places which Asher was trying adamantly to make not only more productive but also safer places.

  As a lord of the realm, but with a mother who raised all of her children to be as humanitarian as herself, Asher knew the atrocities that occurred in the factories were reprehensible. He’d made sure when he’d undergone by many said factories from corrupt or bankrupt owners, he’d gotten rid of those managers who thought nothing more of putting their workers in harm’s way. Since he’d undertaken buying three factories, two a metal factory and one a coal mining factory, he’d raised wages, installed a six day work week, working twelve hours and also oversaw all safety measures himself.

  The factory was the most productive in the country; another insight was removing the women and children who also worked there and instead sending them to his brother’s cotton factory, where the work was not as strenuous as his. The women and children there had also got the added bonus of learning how to read on the advice of Hunter, and the entire community had benefited from the higher wages, safety conscious managers and learned citizens.

  Asher enjoyed his work immensely, loving the thrill of a challenge and knowing that each and every step he undertook, aided the end result which he knew would be soon within his reach. He’d just brought his fourth factory, a flour mill on the outskirts of London, which was a rat infested piece of hole in the ground where the workers were dissatisfied with their pay and the many accidents which caused many of them to be maimed had undermined morale.

  Washing quickly, Asher got dressed and went for his morning ride, meeting Luke in the park, as they always did, whenever they were both in town.

  “Morning,” Luke greeted cheerily, a large smile on his face in the early morning light. Few people were out at this time, namely other gentlemen of well-meaning who were also out for exercise.

  “Why so happy?” Asher asked, even though he purported to know the answer before Luke said another word.

  Luke smiled wider, the devilish grin deepening the dimple in his right cheek, while Asher had two deep dimples on both cheeks, which the women swooned over whenever he graced the ladies with a smile. The only problem was that Asher rarely smiled and the ladies drove their selves in a royal tizzy to try to get him to laugh at their amusing stories. “I believe I met the woman of my dreams,” Luke started, looking at the moon with a dreamy glance.

  Asher sighed, rolling his eyes. “Please, brother, not this early in the morning, I do not believe I can take such chatter of how her eyes shine, or her hair is alight with the stars God has graced her with, or her teeth are like small, white pearls.”

  “But everything you say, is so true, Ash,” Luke, said using Asher’s childhood nickname, which Asher detested when everyone except Hunter used it but decided to grit his teeth and hear Luke out. “Her eyes are alight, the most wonderful shade of blue you could ever imagine, like the darkest of nights with the lights shining in them from the brilliance of a thousand…no, a million stars. And her teeth, such a beautiful smile, such white teeth, if I could dive into the deepest ocean and search a hundred years for pearls of the magnitude of her teeth, I would never be able to finish my task, for she has taken their brilliance also.”

  Asher sighed, dropped his head back on his shoulders, looked at the sky with utter boredom while Luke rambled on, dropped his neck to stare at his saddle, fixed his gloves upon his hands, and scratched his thigh before interrupting Luke’s fabled tale of the most mysteriously beautiful woman he had ever met. “So, did you make love to this mysterious lady?”

  “No! No! A woman like her, no, marriage is the only thing that would get her in my bed and so since I am not ready to marry, I shall simply admire her from a distance, my love unrequited, unknown, to never be realized upon the bevy of her beautiful brow.”

  “Have you been reading Lord Byron again?” Asher asked.

  Luke looked shamefaced before nodding slightly. “And what of it? Asher, do you not realize that this woman, this lady, this goddess of Eve, is perhaps the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes upon and that she has no idea I even exist. I am trapped, what shall I do?”

  “Bed her and then you shall see she is just a woman, just like thousands of other women, there is no such thing as the special one, Luke, surely you should know this by k
now. Certainly, some women are more beautiful than others, but they are all the same, underneath it all. Cold, calculating bitches. Trust me, this woman has noticed you, she is playing you, teasing you. Don’t give her a second thought, dear brother, she wants only one thing from you and that is the money in your pockets.”

  “How bitter you sound, Asher, this cannot be so, I know the last thing she wishes is to know the depth of my purse. Why the looks we shared, the hot glances, it was a wonder I did not smolder on the very spot.”

  “Why didn’t you dance with her?”

  “She had many a dance partner and I…I felt like a young youth, lovesick fool that I was. I had not the nerve to ask for her hand, her beauty had me blinded, dumbstruck, hit by lightning-”

  Asher interrupted. “The point is well received, Lucas.”

  Luke smiled, knowing when Asher called him by his given Christian name he was close to losing his temper. “Alright, brother, you may, but I tell you this now, my mystery woman has no care for the amount of money I am worth. Trust me on this.”

  “You’re still a babe when it comes to women.”

  Luke gasped. “I’m just two years younger than you are.”

  “Age wise but not concerning matters of the heart, Luke. You have never once been in love; you are still young, unfettered by such thoughts as all the scheming things women will do just to get you in bed. Your eyes are still shuttered. I will make a bet with you, I will bet you that this woman already knows who you are, already knows how much you are worth and already knows exactly when she is going to make love to you.”

  Luke was quiet for long minutes. “And how could you reasonably find out such as that, when I have no idea who this mysterious woman is?”

  “I noticed the looks you gave her, Luke, I am not an imbecile, since I had nary a dance party and kept to myself, I had nothing else to do except observe my brother’s future paramours.” Asher was quiet for a long minute. “Was her dress an aquamarine blue?”

  Luke nodded hesitantly.

  “With dark blue eyes, blond hair with a diamond tiara?”

  Luke, once again, nodded hesitantly.

  “I bedded her, Luke, sorry to be the bearer of such bad news.”

  Luke gasped for breath, before narrowing his eyes in anger. “I don’t believe you, you bastard.”

  Asher shrugged. “Oh, do you not? She has a mole, just above her right hip. Quite long, delicious legs with the left leg marred by a scar where she was leeched as a child. And between her shoulder blades is another small mole, brown and flat. Trust me, Luke, it is for your own good that I tell you these things, women cannot be trusted. I once thought she was innocent, such as you, but her innocence was taken a long time before I even bedded her. She was not a virgin but refused to tell me how many lovers came before me. Even though I only cared for the sake of my own health.”

  “You enjoy this, don’t you?”

  “Enjoy what?”

  “Trampling these women into the ground, Asher. You care nothing of them, think nothing of them other than how they can make you happy.”

  Asher actually looked confused, cocking his head. “And, are they there for any other reason? If they give willingly why should I not take their wares? You missed nothing; she wasn’t even a good lover, quite selfish, after bedding her twice I was through, even though she cried pitifully enough to give her another chance.”

  “Stop it! I will not have you demean her character by your vulgar words!”

  “Vulgar? She knows vulgar, brother. I met her at the theater and two hours later she was in my bed without a second thought. She is a whore, dear brother and you should thank me for opening your eyes. Stop being such an innocent. There are no woman alive who aren’t scheming, who aren’t calculating, aren’t thinking of landing you as a prime catch. Stop playing the innocent, Luke, before your heart gets trampled on, women are all the same, schemers. Be glad I saved you the pain.”

  It was Luke’s turn to cock his head, studying Asher intently a slight frown on his face. “Oh, brother, do you not see, you have jinxed yourself. It is you who will fall the hardest, perhaps harder than the rest of us because you are fighting it so hard. When this woman comes along, who will leave you no peace, who will give you no rest; it will be my intention to rub it in your face at every corner. Now, come on, since you have destroyed my romantic dreams of my mystery lady, you owe me a race and I expect to win.”

  Asher laughed. “Whatever you say, little brother.” He commented snidely before they were both off, racing through the deserted park.

  Chapter 2

  “Angel, what day is your ship to be ready?” Patrick asked.

  Angel looked up, glancing at her father. It seemed strange to call him that, seeing as how she’d only met him a short six months ago, but he was her father, and even stranger still that she was speaking about a white man, with curly black hair and gray eyes, both, which she’d inherited from him.

  Angel smiled, turning towards her father, who was leaning over a draft of plans he was going over once more in preparation for a meeting with his builders. Her father, her family was from a plantation in Virginia something in which he’d hated, he was an active abolitionist and had left his family’s home to move to Boston, the city, Angel was currently in now and was not an architect and well known painter, the president even commissioning him to paint his family for a Christmas eve, gift. She had found her father after long years of knowing no father and the slight thrill that overtook her body found her once more.

  Especially since her father, Patrick, was everything that she had secretly hoped and prayed he would be, kind, giving, loving and openly affectionate. Something rare for any man, no matter what color, to be and he’d bestowed upon her with numerous gifts and trinkets of love, trying, not in vain, to make up for the many years lost to them. And now, Angel felt whole once again, something she’d not felt since her mother’s death so many years ago.

  “In less than two weeks, father, on the last day of June. It is a wonder I have not seen Hunter in well over two years, and I do miss her dreadfully. But there is a small part of me that does not wish to go, seeing as how we’d both found each other, after so long.”

  Her father looked up from his drafts, a wide smile upon his still youthful looking face, even though he was nearly fifty. “I know, I feel the same, my dear, but I have since prayed that we will both see each other, soon. I will be here, waiting for your return, your visit will be just a short three months and if you forget your way back home than I will come and get you.” He laughed upon ending those words, even though Angel suspected a note of sorrow in them.

  “You have told me, you’ve visited London, enough, to visit with the abolitionist there and were in attendance when they revoked slavery in their country. Tell me; is it much different from America?”

  Patrick nodded, straightening up and walking to a side wall where he poured himself a small snifter of brandy. “Quite. The small island receives so much rain it is a wonder that its people aren’t permanently depressed and the cities, glorious, cities that have withstood the test of time for hundreds of years, unlike our new country. However, the countryside receives plentiful sunshine.”

  “And how would I be treated, there?” She asked, hesitantly.

  Michael paused. “Londoners are more forward thinking than our people, Angel, you would do well to fit in, and there are many people of different colors and nationality there because they have found a better living for their selves. Do not worry; they will recognize you for the queen you are.”

  “Oh, Father,” Angel said, feeling like a small girl as her father wrapped her in his large, masculine arms before pulling back, holding on to her slight arms.

  “I will be perfectly honest with you, my daughter. I do not wish you gone, you are right, not after I’d just found you and our search has ended after so many years. To believe that you were in those bastards hands for so long enrages me and I feel very un-Christian like.”

  “But he�
��s dead now, father.”

  “I know, however, why,” he paused searching deeply into Angel’s eyes, gray eyes meeting gray eyes. “Do I feel as if you will meet someone special there, in London and forget your father?”

  Angel shook her head adamantly before easing back into his arms and hugging her to him. “No, no, father, never. I will be back, I promise, in three months time and we shall celebrate. I know as soon as I step foot upon that ship I will already long for home. London, I am sure will be a dreadful bore and I go only to visit Hunter and to be there for the birth of her new child. I do not expect any excitement and much less romance, there.”

  “Do you not realize how beautiful you are, Angel, men will fall in droves at your feet,” Michael said seriously, still holding her in his arms before giving her a soft squeeze before reluctantly releasing her. “How I lament the years we have missed with each other, and your mother. How I know she looks upon you know, and sees what a wonderful daughter we have created together.”

  Tears shown in Angel’s large, luminous gray eyes. “I miss her so much, papa,” Angel whispered. “I wish we were all here, I had not realized how much the both of you loved each other, you refusing to marry any other woman until I told you the news of her death for fear that she was still yet out there.”

  “It is alright, Angel, I have our memories, to last me a lifetime. Damn my father for selling her, but it is something I will have to learn how to understand and then forgive.”

  “Have you told him, yet, about me?” She asked, knowing that her grandfather and father was estranged because Patrick had fallen helplessly and totally in love with her mother, who’d been an African slave, something that was totally unacceptable. It was more than acceptable for the master of the house to sleep with and father many children from their slave women but never to fall in love and never to want to marry said slave woman. It was something that was not to be done and looked upon with outright disgust from most people. Patrick had not cared, the night he’d told his father he was in love with Glory, his father had promised to disown him and had not realized how much Patrick had not cared about being disowned when he knew what he was doing was right with ever fiber of his being.