Kiss Me, Annabel

  “Excitable? Debauched miscreants, that’s what those Crogans are,” Nana stated. “You tell them the wedding isn’t until Sunday. They can take themselves straight back home. I shall go to my chambers. And Gregory, you come upstairs as well. Drunken Crogans are not fit for gentlemen’s company.” In the end, Uncle Pearce took himself to bed as well. His shining eyes darted from face to face, but he apparently couldn’t bring himself to demand an explanation of precisely how he had managed to lose.

  Yet when Warsop opened the door of the sitting room a short time later, it wasn’t to introduce inebriated Scotsmen.

  “My lord,” Warsop said, standing back. “Lady Willoughby. Lady Maitland. Miss Josephine Essex. The Earl of Mayne.”

  For a moment Annabel froze with surprise, and then she jumped up with a happy cry. “Imogen! Josie!” Then Josie was hugging Annabel as if they’d been separated for months rather than weeks.

  “But what are you doing here? This is such a lovely surprise,” Annabel said.

  “We’ve come to save you, of course!” Imogen said gaily.

  “What?” Annabel asked, looking into her sister’s face. Imogen’s eyes, it seemed to her, were less grief-stricken. She pulled her into her arms. “How are you, truly?”

  “I’m better,” Imogen said simply. “Mayne has been a great comfort.”

  “Mayne!” Annabel exclaimed.

  Sure enough, the Earl of Mayne turned from his conversation with Ewan. He bowed with all his usual finesse but somehow he seemed different. Rather than the exquisite, wind-swept kind of elegance he usually displayed, he looked…merely windswept. Rather than skin-tight trousers in the newest mode, he was wearing worn buckskin breeches. His shirt was clean but showed age. Even his jacket appeared to have been cut for a larger man.

  “Please forgive me for appearing before you in my dirt,” he was saying, bringing her hand to his mouth.

  “I am grateful to you for accompanying my sisters and your own to Scotland,” she said. “May I introduce Father Armailhac?”

  Mayne surprised Annabel by switching into flawless French.

  “Our mother is French,” Griselda said, kissing her cheek. “Please tell me that you haven’t married Ardmore. Because if so, I’m liable to swoon to the floor.”

  “No, no, we’re to marry on Sunday,” Annabel said, blinking at her.

  Griselda smiled, and Imogen grinned as if Christmas had come. “We have a wonderful surprise for you!” she burst out.

  And then Griselda said, “You needn’t marry at all! We’ve come to bring you back to England, and you can choose your own husband, and needn’t marry Ardmore.”

  “What?” Annabel said, shocked. “What?”

  Suddenly the room seemed very quiet, and she was aware of Ewan turning his head and looking at them.

  “You needn’t marry Ardmore,” Imogen continued happily. “The scandal is over. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  Wonderful, Annabel thought in bewilderment. Wonderful?

  Ewan wasn’t at all bewildered. The moment Annabel’s family entered the room he had a sickening sense about what was coming. The worst of it was that he deserved it. Merely on the grounds of egregious stupidity, he deserved to lose her. Not that he would allow it, whether he was the village idiot or no.

  As Annabel stared at her sister without speaking, Imogen’s face fell a little. “You are happy, aren’t you? We drove at night, even, to make sure we’d get here in time.”

  “Of course,” Annabel said quickly. “What a terrible journey you must have had. I can’t think how you managed to get here; why, we only arrived yesterday ourselves.”

  “I hope I never hear the word carriage again!” Griselda said. “Just look at me: I’m a shadow of my former self!” She looked down with horror at her figure. Sure enough, her luxuriant curves seemed slightly less generous.

  “We just couldn’t bear to think of how you cried, the night before you left for Scotland,” Imogen said. “I know you planned to return to us after six months,” she said, taking Annabel’s hands in hers. “And we all know how common broken marriages are in London. But it’s a terrible thing to endure a marriage of that sort. We all felt so. And then Lucius Felton announced that he’d discovered a way to quell the scandal.”

  Ewan was trying to rein in the temper that he would have sworn he didn’t own—not until Annabel entered his life. “You did say six months?” he asked, as if he were merely trying to clarify a point of light conversation. Unfortunately, even he could hear the savage edge in his voice.

  Imogen had the grace to look a little ashamed. “The plan was made in the heat of the moment,” she told him. “But it’s inconsequential now, because Felton found a Miss Alice Ellerby—a Miss A.E.!—who was desperate to escape her parents’ grasp.”

  “A happy coincidence,” Ewan said flatly. Annabel wasn’t looking at him. Surely she couldn’t believe he would ever allow her to return to London.

  “Felton paid Miss Ellerby a large sum of money, and she published a truly scintillating account of her relationship with you, Lord Ardmore, in Bell’s Weekly Messenger.”

  “Her relationship with me?” Ewan repeated.

  Imogen nodded. “Then she ran away to America with a groomsman, as I understand it. Thanks to Felton, she has a dowry.”

  “There will be a bit of palaver about the wedding that didn’t happen,” Griselda said, sounding utterly exhausted. “But since I had taken ill and didn’t leave the house after you and Annabel left, we’ve put it about that Josie and I traveled with the two of you.”

  “Your reputation as a rake is blossoming,” Imogen said, obviously trying to make up for spilling the news that Ewan’s fiancée had intended to desert him promptly after the marriage ceremony. “What with my behavior on the dance floor and now the ardent Miss A.E., you’re quite the man of the hour.”

  Ewan said nothing. Cursing before one’s future wife’s family was not considered good ton.

  Imogen started talking faster. “There’s nothing more heartbreaking than a loveless marriage,” she said. “A marriage forced by circumstances is bound to be a tragedy.”

  “There are forced marriages and forced marriages,” Ewan said. He swung around, knowing that Annabel would be able to read his face. “Don’t you agree?”

  She looked back at him, head high, her eyes inscrutable.

  “I’d be grateful for a chamber in which to lay my head,” Griselda said. “These Scottish roads are deplorable.”

  Ewan offered his arm. It was for the best that he leave the room before his temper got the best of him. That temper he didn’t own…until a month ago.

  “Josie, come with me!” Griselda called.

  “This is a delightful surprise,” Annabel said to Mayne, watching under her lashes as Ewan left the room. Clearly, he was ferociously angry. Annabel swallowed.

  “It was a surprise for myself as well,” Mayne said, looking annoyed. “I’m in grave need of a tailor. I was kidnapped by your sister.”

  Imogen laughed. “Poor Mayne has been complaining about the state of his dress all the way from London. He’s had to wear Rafe’s clothing, and a sad comedown it’s been.”

  “You kidnapped Lord Mayne?” Annabel asked Imogen.

  She waved her hands airily. “He is so dreadfully set in his ways, and truly, such an old-fashioned man. I knew he’d refuse to accompany us.”

  “Indeed,” Annabel said, “why should he wish to make a fortnight’s journey into Scotland?”

  “In the middle of the racing season,” Mayne put in.

  “Because I asked him to,” Imogen said stoutly.

  “Except apparently you didn’t ask him—”

  “She did not,” Mayne said. “She called at my house and naturally I entered her coach immediately, since I had not yet beat it into your sister’s head that it is thoroughly indecorous to halt her carriage where all and sundry might see us. Next thing I knew, I was on my way to Scotland.”

  “Well, I’m very grateful to both of y
ou,” Annabel said, feeling queerly ungrateful. “It was very kind of you to come rescue me.” It was so kind that she might break into tears at any moment.

  “It was really Felton who took care of it, finding that Miss Ellerby and so on,” Mayne said. “But I find myself wondering whether you are truly happy to greet us, Miss Essex.”

  “Of course she is!” Imogen said quickly. “How can you ask such a thing, Mayne?”

  “I am always happy to see my sisters,” Annabel said, meaning it. The very thought that they’d come all the way to Scotland to rescue her—even if she was ungrateful enough to be unsure about her deliverance—was likely to make those unruly tears appear. Imogen was frowning, so Annabel added, “You must be exhausted. Let me bring you to Ewan’s housekeeper.”

  It was midnight by the time everyone was in a comfortable room, with a steaming bath and fresh night clothes. Imogen had demanded a room next to Mayne, and he had insisted on a different floor. Josie hadn’t wanted to be in the schoolroom, as Griselda thought proper, and then Griselda had discovered that her room faced east, and she disliked an east-facing room due to the possibility of morning sunlight.

  Yet finally…finally, everyone seemed to be suitably accommodated. She’d seen Ewan once, in passing. Their eyes met, and then Annabel hurried past. What must he think of her? She had planned adultery, but also desertion. What man would want a wife with no scruples? Pangs of regret and humiliation made her feel faintly nauseated.

  She just sat down on the edge of her bed when she heard an awful shrilling noise. For a moment she didn’t even recognize it as a scream, it was so high and so piercing.

  Then she started running blindly in its direction, chilled to the heart by the pure terror of it. The awful screaming went on and on as Annabel flew down the corridor, down to the stairs. Doors were opening up and down the hallway, people’s voices were calling out and still she ran. It was the library, she thought.

  And it was. She threw open the door, Ewan appearing at her shoulder.

  Rosy was screaming. She was standing in the middle of the floor, shrilling. She looked up at them and Annabel was shocked. The quiet, rather childlike Rosy whom she’d met was replaced by a woman with a white, enraged face, eyes snapping with fury. She wasn’t screaming in terror; she was screaming with rage. Ugly, vicious rage.

  And leaning against the wall, looking utterly limp, was Mayne.

  Ewan rushed across the room and shook Rosy. She kept screaming. He shook her again, not roughly, but firmly. “Stop it, Rosy. Stop.”

  Mac appeared at the door and said, “I’ll fetch Father Armailhac,” and rushed away.

  Finally Rosy’s voice faltered and stopped.

  “Goddamn,” Mayne said into the silence that followed.

  The hallway was full of people now, spilling in the door. Ewan turned about. “No men in here!” he shouted.

  He turned to Mayne, still leaning damply against the wall. “If you wouldn’t mind…” He nodded toward the door.

  “My pleasure,” Mayne said. Then he stopped. “Just so you know, I didn’t touch her. I didn’t—”

  “We know that,” Annabel said, taking his arm and leading him back into the hallway. “Rosy is quite disturbed, that’s all.”

  “Disturbed?” Mayne said, his voice rising now they were in the hallway, surrounded by sympathetic faces. “Disturbed? She’s bloody mad, that’s what she is. I wandered down there to see whether Ardmore took Racing News, and there she was. So I said hello, and she started looking at me from my toes up. Maybe she didn’t like my cravat. God knows I don’t. The moment she caught sight of it she started screaming, and she threw something at me as well. I felt as if I’d assaulted her.”

  Annabel caught the butler’s eye. “Warsop, I think Lord Mayne would be the better for a drink.”

  “Who is she?” Griselda asked from her position on the stairs.

  Annabel hesitated and Father Armailhac, who had just arrived, said, “She is Lord Ardmore’s adopted sister, and quite harmless, I assure you.”

  Griselda looked unconvinced. “Well,” she said acidly, “if the crisis is over for the night, I suggest we all return to bed.”

  “That settles it,” Imogen said in a half whisper. She looked very shaken. “Oh, Annabel, I’m so glad we came. This castle literally has a madwoman—it’s like a novel!”

  “Not entirely,” Josie added, peeping from behind Griselda’s shoulder. “If this were all happening in a novel, that woman would be Ardmore’s first wife, not his sister.”

  “I’m very sorry that you were disturbed,” Annabel said firmly, heading off any discussion of Rosy’s relationship with Ewan. “Rosy is easily unsettled and she finds strange men truly terrifying.”

  “I’m sure I can guess why without being told,” Griselda said with a shudder. “Upstairs with you,” she said to Josie.

  Imogen gave Annabel a hug. “This is an awful house,” she said. “Damp and cold, and it’s miles from civilization. I’m so happy we got here in time. We shall leave as soon as possible. Those screams!” she shuddered. “You couldn’t have survived six months. I’d have given you a month at the most before you would have returned to London.”

  Annabel raised her head and met Ewan’s eyes. He was standing in the door of the library, just standing there, silent.

  Slowly their guests filtered back upstairs, and then Annabel opened the door to the library again. Rosy and Ewan were seated on a couch before the fire, Rosy at one corner and Ewan at the other. But Ewan’s arm was strung across the back of the sofa, and he was stroking Rosy’s hair. She had her customary, rather vacant expression again. She looked like someone who would never scream. In fact…she looked happy. Serene.

  Ewan looked up at her. “I expect that took a year off Mayne’s life.”

  “Ten, he would say. Is she all right?” She whispered it, for Rosy was humming a little tune and looking into the fire as if it depicted the most interesting of plays.

  “She seems to be. Her nurse is supposed to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Whenever I have guests, she’s to stay in her chambers.”

  “Oh, dear.” They both looked at Rosy, who seemed oblivious to them.

  “The problem is that she is used to freedom. You’re the first visitor we’ve had in ages, and she accepted you. I forgot to be cautious.”

  “I gather it’s men who pose a problem,” Annabel said.

  “She’s getting worse,” Ewan said flatly. “She attacked him, you know. Look.” He nodded to the wall where Mayne had been leaning. The floor was littered with broken crockery. “She threw a vase at him that was half her size. If she’d hit him in the face, it could have done considerable damage.”

  Annabel couldn’t think what to say.

  “Gregory’s getting older. She sometimes forgets who I am and attacks me. If she did that to Gregory…”

  “He doesn’t seem to think of her as his mother.”

  “But he knows the truth of it. And it would be damaging to have one’s mother turn into a lunatic and attack. He didn’t come downstairs, did you notice?”

  Annabel shook her head.

  “He can’t stand seeing her like this.”

  Rosy got up and ambled away. Father Armailhac was waiting by the door. He gently took her arm and began to lead her upstairs.

  Then Ewan stood up and Annabel saw something in his eyes change as he looked at her. “It appears our scandal has been papered over,” he said.

  “Yes,” she managed, around the lump in her throat.

  “I suppose that is better than a six-month marriage. Were you merely planning to leave me, or would you have started proceedings for divorce?” He was watching her so closely that Annabel felt as if she couldn’t breath, couldn’t say the things she might have said.

  “I meant to just leave,” she whispered.

  “I should have known. A woman who plans her future adultery would never malinger in a castle in Scotland.”

  The truth of it burned in Annabel’s
chest.

  “The only problem with Felton’s solution”—and his voice didn’t sound amused now—“is that I can’t let you return to England when you might be carrying my child. I’m afraid that you’ll have to marry me, whether you wish it or no.”

  Annabel opened her mouth, but he kept speaking. “But I would hope that you will choose to stay with me for better reasons. If there is no child and no scandal, you could certainly marry a rich Englishman. Yet in Peggy’s terms, while my house is isolated, I do have a great number of cows.” He hesitated. “I would ask you to stay, Annabel, because of the feeling between us.”

  He stood by the settee looking tall, proud and Scottish, so beautiful that her knees melted at the very sight of him, and yet she couldn’t find the right words to say. She could never leave Ewan under her own volition: she loved him too much. And yet the knowledge that he didn’t truly love her was breaking her heart.

  “I would like you to marry me, cows or no,” he said.

  “I will marry you,” Annabel whispered. And then she turned and walked from the room and up the stairs, quickly. Her hand was clenched so hard on the railing that she couldn’t fall down, even though her knees were liquid. But she had to ask. So halfway up the stairs she turned and looked down at Ewan. He stood below her, and for a second she thought she caught a look of desolation in his eyes, but she must have been wrong.

  “Don’t you want me to—” She broke off. And started again. There had been so much honesty between them, and at the end it came down to one last question.

  “Do you love me?”

  Her question hung in the damp night air as if it were shouted. And yet she’d only whispered it, from the despair in her heart.

  He stared up at her. “I told you the same, in the Kettles’ cottage. I think we would make a strong marriage. You desire me, and I feel the same for you.”

  “You’re confusing desire and love,” she said, watching him. “They are not the same.”

  “I do love you. I feel near to murder at the idea of you marrying another man, and that’s the truth of the matter.”