Annabel was miserable. She was ready to scream with the frustration and rage of it all, to burst into tears at the unfairness, to sob at the loss of her every dream for the future…and yet there was something immeasurably comforting in the gentle touch of Ewan’s lips. His arms came around her and she felt for a momentas if…as if…it was hard to think about it. His lips were drugging her mind, caressing her as if they were asking something.
She sighed and leaned against him…just for a moment. A moment’s comfort. And his arms tightened as if she were indeed sheltered from the world, being saved by a knight in shining armor who would sweep her off her feet, and put her on the back of his horse, and take her to his castle. She sighed again, at the foolishness of her old dreams…
And he took advantage of that sigh, slipped into her mouth and suddenly their kiss changed to something altogether different. Not thinking about it, Annabel put a hand on the back of his neck. His hands tightened on her back and suddenly she felt the hard press of his body against hers.
Annabel felt his inquiry through her whole body. Instinctively she closed the last fraction of an inch that lay between their bodies. She felt a shudder go through his hard body. It was an extraordinary feeling to be so intimate with another person. It was as if he could taste her sorrow, and her fear, and her reluctance, and he was telling her silently that he would make it better—he would solve everything, and all that without words.
It made her want to do nothing more than nestle against his chest and simply…let him. But at the same time, the very generosity of it made her conscience awake, and even as his mouth slanted hungrily over hers again, and again, and her body started to tremble in his arms, her conscience kept beating at her, a small voice that wouldn’t be silenced until she finally tore her mouth away and said, “I’m not jesting, Lord Ardmore. I truly have no dowry.”
He had his large hands spread on her narrow back, and now he slid those hands slowly, slowly up to her shoulders. His eyes had an indolent smile in them that made Annabel shiver just as much as the fact that his thumbs were tracing lazy circles on her shoulders, where the little sleeves of her morning gown ended.
“You have a horse,” he reminded her.
“Only a horse.” She swallowed. “Surely you’ve heard of my father’s will. Our dowries have become somewhat infamous.”
“The rumor had not reached me, but then, I’m not much for gossip. I shall welcome your dowry to my stables. I can’t say I share your father’s skill, but I do have an ample training program. ’Twill be like coming home for you.”
Annabel swayed on her feet, and all the rosy glow she felt from his kiss disappeared from her body like a mist in the night.
She was marrying a horse trainer, a man with her father’s enthusiasm for a horse.
She was going home, in every sense of the word.
Twelve
They were all together again. Tess was leaning against one of the bottom bedposts; she and her husband were spending the night so as to be able to see Annabel off in the morning. Josie, just arrived from Rafe’s country estate, was curled up against the other bedpost, and Imogen was next to Annabel.
Annabel leaned against her bedpost and tried not to even think about tears. She’d been poor before, and she could be poor again. Only a weak-spined ninny would cry over such a paltry thing.
Instead she tried to feel happy that her sisters were with her. But in reality she felt a numbing, selfish sense of the unfairness of it all. Imogen and Josie would stay in England in Rafe’s comfortable house, and Tess would stay in the luxury of her husband’s house, while she had to return to Scotland. She, who hated Scotland more than any of them.
Josie would have taken her place in a moment. Josie had just turned sixteen and was beginning to blossom into a beauty who would be irresistible in a year or so. Now she was prey to spots, bouts of nostalgia for Scotland and fits of temper. The temper might well be a lifelong characteristic, Annabel had to admit. Certainly Josie’s sense of humor would be.
“If you’d like to have a wedding-night conversation with Annabel,” Josie said to Tess, “I would be glad to lend my advice.”
Tess snorted. “Your advice, shrimp? And just what marital advice would you offer?”
“Plutarch has a great deal to say about marital relations,” Josie said with a grin.
“Plutarch!” Tess said. “I thought Miss Flecknoe kept you on a strict diet of ladylike pursuits.”
“You’ve forgotten. I obediently practice dancing and curtsying and paying morning calls in the mornings, and then I am allowed to read as I wish in the afternoon. Rafe’s library is stocked with classics. Miss Flecknoe considers those books to be far too old to be dangerous and unladylike…she is most worried that I will somehow obtain a copy of one of the novels printed by the Minerva Press. Miss Flecknoe seems to consider that Minerva is staffed by devils bent on ruining ladies’ virtue.”
“I’ll give you mine,” Annabel said, smiling faintly. “I think I have acquired every volume put out by the Minerva Press, thanks to Rafe’s generosity.”
“You’ll want to take those with you,” Tess objected. “Keep your books, Annabel. I’ll send Josie some novels.”
“I won’t need them,” Annabel said, realizing that her tone was bleak. She never had any time for reading novels when they were growing up, although they probably didn’t remember that. She used to watch Tess going off to the river to try to catch a fish for dinner, Josie hanging on to her hand and Imogen trailing after…but she could never go with them. She had too much to do.
A wave of bitterness caught her and Annabel had to bite her lip, hard, so as not to cry.
“I have something important to say,” Tess was saying. Tess had mothered them all, after their mother died, and Annabel was a little afraid of her perceptiveness. So she summoned up a smile.
“Good!” Josie said happily. “Now, Plutarch says that a bride should nibble a quince before getting into bed.” She turned expectantly to Tess. “Do you have any idea why? I don’t like quinces because they’re so sour, but I’m willing to—”
“Stop this foolishness,” Imogen said, and now she wasn’t curled under the covers anymore, but sitting upright. “I have to say something first, and it’s the more important.” She took Annabel’s hand, and Annabel saw with a pulse of exhaustion that tears were making their way down her cheeks. “I’ve ruined your life…my own sister’s life, and I just—I just have to say that—”
But tears were choking what she wanted to say, and so Annabel scooted over in the bed and gathered her into a hug. “My life is not ruined, Imogen,” she said, stroking her hair. “Hush, now.”
“You don’t get—get to choose who you wish to marry,” Imogen choked. “And I only had Draven for two weeks, but I chose him, and even if he’s gone, I’ll always know that I—that I gave myself to someone I loved—”
“Darling, think about it,” Annabel said gently. “Falling in love has never been very high on my list of priorities. You know that. I think I’m simply missing that romantic side that you have in such abundance.”
“That’s—that’s just because you don’t know how wonderful love can be,” Imogen stammered, gasping for breath, she was crying so hard.
“What one doesn’t know, one doesn’t miss,” Annabel pointed out.
But it was no use. Imogen launched into a tangled explanation of love, and how she knew she was in love with Draven the moment she saw him (as if she hadn’t told them at least one hundred times), and how important she thought—
Until Josie leaned forward and said, “Imogen, this conversation did not begin by focusing on you. May I suggest that you actually try to think of someone else’s feelings for a change?”
Imogen choked to a halt, and Annabel frowned at Josie.
“Oh, stuff it,” Josie said impatiently. “Imogen needn’t be coddled forever. By her own account, she was lucky enough to have two weeks of heavenly bliss. This evening is supposed to be about you, Annabel, n
ot an endless tearful reiteration of Draven Maitland’s less-than-obvious virtues!”
Imogen and Josie always sniped at each other, but this time Imogen didn’t respond in kind. She just rolled out of the bed and stood up, her face smeared with tears. “I was trying to say something important!” she said fiercely to Josie. Then she turned to Annabel. “I just want to say that I am so sorry that my stupidity led to you being forced to marry Ardmore. I want you to know that. And now please have your conversation. I know I’m not fit company.” She turned and fled.
Annabel sighed and started to get off the bed. She was Imogen’s chief comforter, although she had to admit that there was a certain weariness about her efforts, after nearly six months practicing consolation.
But Tess reached forward and pinched her toe. “Don’t go,” she said. “I think Imogen could use some time alone. Perhaps she’s been coddled a bit too much.”
“I expect you’re concerned that she’ll snap at you next,” Josie said. “Didn’t you two make up your differences?”
“Of course,” Tess said. “Imogen is quick-tempered, but she can be magnificently apologetic.”
“She’s had plenty of practice with the latter,” Josie said. She caught Annabel’s eye and raised her hand. “I know she’s a widow and she lost the love of her life, but to be honest, Draven was a lummox stupid enough to ride an unbroken horse just to make an extra penny at the races. I simply can’t see the grand tragedy of it all. He was no Agamemnon!”
“That’s true enough,” Tess agreed.
“You’d think she was in a Greek tragedy, from the way she carries on,” Josie said. “Now, shall we have that discussion you began? Because everyone sent me away when you discussed all this before Tess married. But I am sixteen, as I said before.”
“Barely,” Tess said.
“Old enough. I’ll be coming out next year. I need to know what lies ahead of me.” She looked fascinated and horrified at once.
“As a matter of fact, I have no need for any sort of premarital conversation,” Annabel said. She didn’t want to think about bedding the Scot. For many reasons, only one of which was the way he kissed her.
“That wasn’t what I wanted to say,” Tess said, catching Annabel’s eye and leaning forward. “You know that Lucius has a great deal of money, Annabel.”
“An underestimation, surely,” Annabel said. Everyone in England knew that Tess’s husband was as rich as William Beckford, even though Beckford prided himself on being the richest man in the country.
“We’ve more houses than we know what to do with. Would you accept one of those houses, and funds to support it, Annabel? You could live there in perfect ease, and when all this dies down, you could come back to London.”
Now Annabel really felt as if she were going to cry.
But Josie was shaking her head. “Are you demented, Tess? If Annabel went off and lived in some house in the country without marrying the earl, the reasonable assumption would be that the earl had paid her to do so. Her only future would be as a concubine.”
Annabel swallowed. Of course Josie was right.
“One has to presume that you would be extremely well paid,” Josie said thoughtfully. “Plutarch says that—”
“That’s enough!” Tess snapped. “I think that is a very ugly construction of what people would think.”
“People always think the worst,” Josie pointed out.
“I’m afraid she’s right,” Annabel said, hearing the bleakness in her own voice.
“Do you mind, very much?” Tess asked.
Then, seeing the answer on her face: “Oh, darling, don’t go!” Tess reached out and gathered Annabel into her arms.
“I—I—” Annabel said, but the tears wouldn’t be stifled anymore.
“This settles it,” Tess said firmly. “You shan’t go to Scotland. We all know how much you hate the country. We’ll think of something.”
“I have to go,” Annabel choked. “He’s been kind—”
Josie snorted. “Ardmore is a lucky man and likely he knows it.”
“It’s just that he has stables,” Annabel said, her voice breaking with tears. “And he told me that his stables were as magnificent as Papa’s. I just can’t bear it, I can’t bear it. He’ll put all the money into—into hot mash in the winter—” Her voice disappeared in a huge sob.
“I know,” Tess said, her hand rubbing circles on Annabel’s back. “You always took the worst of Papa’s foolishnesses. I never had to worry because of you.”
Annabel took a deep breath and wiped away her tears with Tess’s handkerchief. “We all worried. I remember Josie crying when all the beans caught a blight, and she was just a little child.”
Josie was leaning forward and rubbing Annabel’s foot. “But I never had to worry very much,” she offered. “You took care of everything, Annabel. You always found enough money to buy something to eat.”
“I don’t want—” The tears were coming again, so Annabel took a deep breath. “I don’t want to do that again. I just don’t want to spend my whole life trying to pry pennies from a stable maintained by someone who can truly afford only a brace of rabbits.” The tears were coming again. “I just—I just can’t bear it!” She took a shuddering breath and managed to regain her composure. “I’m sorry. I’m acting like a heroine in a melodrama.”
“You shan’t have to bear it!” Tess said passionately. “My husband and I shall—”
But Josie interrupted. “I’ve thought of a compromise.”
“You go and I stay?” Annabel managed a watery smile. “I’d quite like to be sixteen again. I’ve enjoyed my debut.”
Josie ignored this foolishness. She leaned forward. “Marry the earl in Scotland, as he wishes. Bear it until the scandal dies down, after the season is over. Then come back to London as a countess!”
“You are forgetting—”
“Don’t tell me I’m forgetting about your husband,” Josie said. “Do you know that my governess’s secret vice is the gossip columns? London seems to be perfectly littered with ladies living apart from their husbands. And if your husband won’t provide you with an allowance, Tess will simply do it instead.”
Annabel bit her lip. “I couldn’t do that to him,” she said uncertainly. “If it weren’t for Ardmore, I’d be looking at utter disgrace.”
“Yet if it weren’t for Ardmore, there’d be no disgrace to talk about,” Josie said. “And anyway, he’ll probably be glad to see the back of you. There aren’t many happy couples in literature, I can tell you that.”
“It’s a good idea,” Tess put in. “There’s something almost respectable about separated couples these days. We’ll provide you with an allowance, of course, Annabel.”
“That will work perfectly,” Josie said with satisfaction.
“But Ardmore—”
“Shouldn’t have propositioned Imogen in the first place,” Josie said flatly. “He’s made his bed and he must needs lie in it.”
“Harsh but practical,” Tess put in. “There’s our Josie. How do you feel about the earl?” she asked Annabel.
“As I understand it,” Josie said, “it was more a question of what Imogen felt for the earl.”
“Your understanding of it isn’t important, Josie,” Tess said. “Annabel?”
“I like him,” Annabel said. “There’s nothing objectionable about him.” In fact, his kisses kept teasing at the corners of her mind. Less the kisses than the shocking pleasure she felt…It was rather unnerving. And Annabel was never unnerved, any more than she wept.
Tess’s eyes narrowed. “You do like him, don’t you?”
“Who wouldn’t? He’s given up his hopes for a wealthy bride, and accepted me without a word of reproach,” Annabel said, tossing her handkerchief onto the bedside table.
“Sounds like a milksop to me,” Josie said dispassionately.
“That’s because you haven’t met him yet, you little termagant,” Tess told her. “Ardmore is—well, Annabel, how would you
describe him?”
“He’s a Scot. He’s not as complex as an Englishman, and yet more honorable. He says what he thinks. I would guess that he is kind in his dealings with servants and that he cares for his tenants.”
“But do you like the way he looks?” Tess insisted.
Annabel shrugged, trying to push away an image of the earl’s gleaming muscles when he stood shirtless in the hotel room. “He’s not objectionable.”
Suddenly her elder sister was grinning like a cat with a saucer of cream. “I take back my offer of a house,” she said. “I think a dose of Scottish air is just what you need. Whenever you wish, you shall come back to London and we’ll all be comfortable. All right?”
“All right,” Annabel said slowly.
“Now, darling, here’s what I wish that Mother had been alive to say to me before my wedding night.”
“Splendid!” Josie exclaimed.
“It’s nothing you’ll find terribly interesting,” Tess said to her.
“How can you say that? I find everything interesting!”
“As regards the marital bed…”
Josie leaned forward. “Yes?” she asked breathlessly.
“It is my firm opinion that gentlemen have some trouble expressing what they would like,” Tess said. “Perhaps because it is difficult to speak to ladies. And it’s not just my Lucius who—”
“Who is rather on the expressionless side,” Josie interrupted.
“Not always,” Tess said, with an impudent grin that made Annabel laugh for the first time in three days. “At any rate,” she continued, “the solution is to observe that a man will do to you exactly as he would wish you to do to him.”
Annabel blinked at her sister. She had a fairly good understanding of the mechanics of marital consummation, and there was no way that she could—could—she didn’t have the equipment, for one thing.
“Not that,” Tess said, understanding her expression. “And I’m not going to be more explicit because you are barely sixteen,” she said to Josie. “Just watch what Ardmore does…He will likely treat you to exactly the kind of behavior he would most like to see, except his good manners won’t allow him to ask for it directly.”