Kiss Me, Annabel

  Trust me, he thought, to find charity work that involves bedding a beautiful woman rather than founding an orphanage. He looked at Imogen again. She was fishing out little pieces of orange rind and cloves and putting them into a straight line.

  She didn’t need bedding. She just needed time.

  Time…now, that he could buy her.

  “Did you say that you had made a previous engagement with someone?” he said. It had to be the Scotsman whom he met last night. Ardmore was a decent fellow.

  She nodded, not looking up.

  “You’ll need to tell him that it’s off.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, ever.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t poach on other men’s territory.”

  For a moment, she smiled. “That’s rich, coming from you. The only virtue you have besides your clothing is your ability to seduce married women. My sister Tess always goes to experts when she needs something.”

  That stung. Apparently he’d taken on a woman who was halfway to being a raving bitch and it looked as if they’d probably be together for a good period of time. A scourging, that’s what it was.

  The key was to be patient and kind. That was how you were supposed to behave with a bereaved person. “As a matter of fact,” he said, schooling his voice carefully, “I have only seduced women whose husbands were all too willing to share.”

  She laughed shortly. “And that’s why you’ve been in so many duels?”

  “Only two.” And how in the hell had she heard about those, living in the wilds of Scotland? “When I was young and stupid. So I’d like you to clear out my rivals, if you please, Imogen.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “I didn’t give you permission to use my first name.”

  “Under the circumstances, I took the liberty. Would you like to call me Garret?”

  She thought about it. “No. I prefer Mayne. I’ll write Ardmore a note.”

  “In person,” he clarified. “These things are done in person. You made something of a fool of him, by all accounts, at that ball last night. You certainly damaged his chance to marry a proper young lady. You might want to offer an apology as well.”

  “I’ll apologize when hell freezes,” she said, stung. “You didn’t hear what he—he said to me—he—”

  “Frightened you, did he?”

  “Never!”

  “Offended you, then,” he guessed. “Ardmore must not have much experience of tenderly raised women who decide to go wrong. I’ve found that married ladies remain just as squeamish and proper as they were in their husbands’ beds. It’s one of the things that makes affaires des coeur stale so quickly.”

  She shot him a murderous look.

  “I can take you home, but I can’t escort you to look at houses. If I did so, Rafe would likely murder me, which is a distinct possibility even so. Where is Rafe?”

  “He stayed home, the better to drown himself in a barrel of brandy,” she said unemotionally.

  Mayne coughed. “Do you always aim for the jugular?”

  “Why bother with flummery? Rafe is a sot, and has been for years. We had someone in the village like that. He won’t live long, at this rate.”

  “He doesn’t drink that much.”

  “Watch him. He does.”

  “He never used to drink to excess until his brother died.”

  “Perhaps I should take up brandy,” she muttered.

  “It’ll make you fat and give you red veins in your nose.”

  She seemed struck by that.

  “If we’re going to do this, we might as well do it with finesse. I suggest we join the dancing. But no hanging on me the way you did with Ardmore last night.”

  She opened her mouth but he kept talking. “No finesse. Nothing interesting for the ton to talk about except the excesses of a shameless trollop. And that’s a tedious story, and oft told.”

  Her eyes looked so murderous that he almost choked, but he plowed ahead. “We’re going to stage something altogether more interesting: a pursuit. I’m going to pursue you, and you are not going to simply fall into my arms.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re a novice at this business,” he said.

  “I’m a fast learner.”

  He leaned over and tipped up her chin. “One of the secrets of the human race, Imogen. Easy women are tedious. I never bed tedious women. Everyone knows that. So you need to be a little less forthcoming than you appeared to be last night. I’m prepared to throw away the last shards of my reputation, but I am not prepared to have it said that I’ve sunk to taking on a woman so desperate that she hung herself out like washing on the line!”

  She turned a little white. “You are very blunt.”

  “We will dance, and I will flirt with you, but you will not flirt back. As the music is ending, I will lean toward you and whisper something in your ear. And you will slap me, as hard as you can, and then proceed to call for your carriage.”

  “Are you recuperating my reputation?”

  “Only in order to take it away,” he said. “I mean to have you: but I have to make you into someone worth having first, if you see what I mean. After last night, no one would believe that I would spend a night with you. I have my own kind of reputation, and if we’re going to make this believable—”

  “I need to be more attractive,” she said flatly.

  “Interesting,” he clarified.

  “Because trollops are tedious.”

  “Precisely.”

  Imogen was about to tell him to go to the devil, when the truth slid into place with a devastating jolt. Easy? She’d been nothing more than easy for Draven. She’d put herself in his way for years, fell out of an apple tree at his feet, fell off her horse so that she could get into his house…

  If she hadn’t been so easy, perhaps he would have—The truth blinded her and made her feel unable to breathe.

  She turned back to Mayne. He held out his hand and she rose.

  Naturally, complicated old-fashioned dances were being played, the kind where you see your partner for two seconds and then twirl away into the hands of another. But Mayne caught the eye of the orchestra leader, and a second later, a gold coin was snugly nestled in the man’s pocket. The master of ceremonies called “A waltz by Franz Schubert!”

  Imogen curtsied. Mayne bowed. He held out his hand and she took it. “Don’t come close to me,” he said to her, sotto voce. “At some point I’ll try to pull you against my body; I’d like you to visibly resist.”

  She nodded. The music lapped around them, Schubert at his sweetest and saddest. He glanced down and found her eyes were dark and teary.

  “Don’t you dare cry!” he hissed. “That would ruin everything.”

  “Draven and I never danced together,” she whispered.

  “Good thing. You’re not keeping the beat very well, are you? That’s the second time you’ve trod on my feet. It might have been enough to put Maitland off.”

  Thankfully her chin rose and she glared. He smiled down at her, the serpentlike smile of a man preparing a seduction. From the corner of his eye he saw Lady Felicia Saville, one of his less lovely conquests of the past, eyes wide.

  Deliberately he spread his hand on Imogen’s back and pulled her toward him. She sprang back as stiff as a spring and glared at him.

  “So why can’t you dance?” he asked, giving her a smile as sizzling as he could make it.

  She frowned at him. “Because my father didn’t have enough money to keep a dancing master, that’s why!”

  He moved his hand caressingly just as he twirled her about, so that Felicia could have an eyeful. Then he smiled again, the cool, calculating leer of a rake.

  “I don’t like your face when you do that,” Imogen said suddenly. “It makes you look quite dissolute.”

  “Getting your own back for the trollop comment?”

  “Telling the truth.” Her eyes fell. “As you were, I suppose.”

  Thankfully the dance was drawing to an end; he
was feeling quite battered by Imogen’s loving comments. Perhaps he’d crawl off and join Rafe in his barrel of brandy. Then he remembered how enraged Rafe would be when he heard of this dance.

  “All right,” he said to her, “I’m going to whisper in your ear, and then you slap me.”

  He leaned in to her just as the music stopped, brushing her hair aside with a tender hand, whispering, “I’ll come for you tomorrow, at three o’clock in the afternoon.”

  She sprang back, eyes flaming. Then she drew back her hand and whacked him in the cheek, jerking his head back.

  When he straightened, she leaned toward him with an assassin’s smile on her face. “I enjoyed that,” she said. “And I just want to make one comment.” Her eyes were so sharp that they could have cut stone. “I don’t mind slapping you, but if you ever think that I’m doing anything by the name of a coney’s kiss, you’re wrong!”

  “A what?” he said, but she was gone.

  He rather of liked the sound of it, although it was probably something he knew of under a far more pedantic title.

  Perhaps something Scottish?

  He grinned. Perhaps his penance would not be entirely cheerless.

  Nine

  Griselda had promised to attend a debut ball being given for the daughter of a friend, and she was justly irritable at the idea that she must delay her departure and accompany Imogen to Grillon’s Hotel.

  “A hotel!” She said it with all the loathing of a woman who would never enter a hotel of her own volition.

  In her voice Imogen heard the echo of Mayne’s label, trollop. “I can’t go alone, Griselda,” she said steadily. “Annabel will come with me, but it’s not proper for the two of us to make that visit alone.”

  “Of course it’s not!” she snapped. “Dragging your sister into a place like that.”

  “So I’m asking you. I made a mistake,” Imogen admitted. “You were right.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “You were right about Ardmore and I was wrong, and I’m sorry. Please help me to get out of this, Griselda.”

  “I suppose you can’t just send him a note,” she muttered.

  “Mayne said not.”

  Griselda’s head swung up. “Mayne? So my brother is involved in this, is he?”

  “He’s the one who—who told me that I had to apologize to Ardmore in person,” Imogen said, a tear spilling down her cheek at the humiliation of it all.

  “Mayne is always right in these matters,” Griselda said resignedly. “Lord knows, he’s had years of experience. And you did put the earl in an awkward position last night. I expect Ardmore will have to explain you away before he can make a proposal to a decent girl’s father.”

  Imogen swallowed. “I didn’t think about him.”

  “No.” And then: “All right. We’ll be unfashionably late to Lady Penfield’s ball and doubtless I’ll have to hear about it for the next month or so. She’s so anxious to have this ball of hers a success. Perhaps Mayne could accompany us…that would at least ensure his presence. Lord knows why matchmaking mamas still want him around, but they seem to.”

  “He might fall in love someday,” Imogen said doubtfully, picturing Mayne’s Lucifer-like exhaustion. After their conversation, she no longer had the faintest belief that he would fall in love with her.

  “One can always hope,” Griselda said. “Now, what are you going to wear tonight, darling?”

  “Black,” Imogen said.

  “Not too low in the bosom. You don’t want to entice a man when you’re begging his pardon.”

  Imogen never wanted to see Ardmore again, let alone beg his pardon, but she stiffened her back. Maybe she’d make him beg her pardon too. For saying such a horrible thing in her presence. That horrible…word. Whatever it meant.

  By a quarter to ten that evening, Imogen, Griselda and Annabel were bundled in their pelisses against the chill of an April night and trundling toward Grillon’s Hotel. Griselda was fretting that they would be seen. “I’ve never entered such a place,” she kept saying.

  “It’s just a hotel,” Imogen said.

  “No one stays in hotels,” Griselda snapped. “The implication is that you have no family in the city. No one in London to stay with! You’re an outcast.”

  “Ardmore doesn’t seem to be an outcast,” Annabel put in, picturing the way the ton had welcomed him with open arms.

  “Oh, he’s a man, titled, and from the north country. It’s all different for men. Besides, he’s clearly staying in a hotel because he’s too short in the pocket to rent a townhouse, or at the very least a suite of rooms, for the season, the way someone with a reasonable estate might. His residence is one of the clearest signs of his impoverishment. No one would stay in a London hotel unless he had to: robbery and theft are commonplace, as I understand it. They’ll take the very linens from your bed while you’re lying in them!”

  “But Griselda,” Annabel objected, “you yourself read us that piece of news about the Russian ambassador, and he was staying at this same hotel, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Ardmore is not a woman,” Griselda said. “For a woman even to be glimpsed in a hotel is to risk her reputation.” The carriage began to slow down and she pulled up the rosy hood of her pelisse, tucking her curls inside. “With luck, we’ll be in and out of that building without meeting a soul. Surely everyone who counts will have already embarked on their evening.”

  “What could anyone possibly think we were doing, if we did encounter someone we knew?” Annabel asked. “Three women, two of whom are widowed, do not enter hotels together for nefarious purposes, Griselda.”

  “Believe me, the implication is all that’s needed!” she snapped. “Widows are particularly vulnerable to this sort of ugliness. Do you know how many jests there are about lusty widows? And the ballads! There’s a horrid one about widows who have sipped bliss before. Something like, If you’d win a widow, you must down with your breeches and at her!” She was getting more and more agitated but the carriage was at a halt now. They had taken a hired hack so that Holbrook’s crest wouldn’t be recognized.

  “Wait for us!” Griselda commanded the driver. “Don’t you dare go anywhere! We’ll only be a moment.”

  Annabel looked at his smirk and realized exactly why three hooded women would enter a hotel. He clearly thought that they were on business, so to speak. “I’m at your service, ladies,” he said cheerfully.

  “Rafe will kill us for this,” Griselda moaned.

  Annabel thought that Rafe would have a point. Still, the antechamber of the hotel was beautiful, with huge arching ceilings and various pieces of statuary that were as fine as any she’d seen in any formal garden.

  Griselda clutched Imogen’s arm. “What are we supposed to do now?”

  Imogen shook her head. “He didn’t say anything. I suppose we have to be announced.”

  Luckily, as they stood like an indecisive group of country bumpkins, an officious-looking man strode over to them. “Now, then, ladies, what can I do for you?”

  There was a shading in his voice that suggested he had jumped to the same conclusion as the driver, at least until Griselda drew herself up to her full height, pulled back her hood slightly and gave him a look.

  A second later he was bowing so low that his nose could have touched his knees, and apologizing for keeping them waiting, and asking if there was any possible way that he could aid them.

  “We must speak to these ladies’ cousin for a moment,” Griselda told him, giving him a measured smile. “And since we have condescended to even enter this establishment, Mr….”

  “M-Mr. Barnet,” he stammered. “We are honored by your entrance, my lady.”

  “Just so,” she said, unimpressed. “As I was saying, since we have condescended to enter this establishment, Mr. Barnet, I am naturally worried about the consequence of our rash action. Therefore, I would request that we be shown to the Earl of Ardmore’s chambers immediately.”

  “I shall do so myself,” Mr. Barnet said.

&nb
sp; Griselda gave him a slightly bigger smile, and he began walking toward an imposing staircase.

  “His lordship has the best suite of chambers in Grillon’s,” he said, ushering them up red-carpeted stairs that were as grand as any found in a duke’s palace. “I assure you, my lady, that hotels have changed a great deal from merely twenty years ago. This is a most respectable establishment, with only the very best clientele.”

  “Humph,” was Griselda’s only response.

  A moment later they were ushered into a sitting room by Ardmore’s manservant, who seemed delighted to welcome ladies to his master’s chambers, even ladies inadvisably visiting late at night. Once he left to bring Griselda a glass of ratafia, Annabel threw back her hood and wandered over to the mantelpiece, which was adrift with invitations.

  “This is a lovely room,” Griselda said, clearly feeling much better now that they were snugly inside without having been seen by anyone of consequence. “Quite nice. I do like Hepplewhite’s early furniture. Annabel, do not take off your pelisse. We will be here for only a moment.”

  Two seconds later the earl himself strolled through one of the five doorways leading from the sitting room. “What a pleasure,” he said, seemingly unmoved by the fact that instead of one widow, bent on an errand of wicked pleasure, he was faced by three women, one of whom was known throughout London for her impeccable reputation.

  But Griselda wasn’t going to waste any time with pleasantries. “Lady Maitland has something to say to you,” she announced, with all the preemptory tone of a governess. “And after she’s said it, we shall leave you to your evening, and you will kindly forget that we were ever here.”

  “To hear is to obey,” Ardmore murmured, but he glanced over at Annabel and there was a twinkle in his eye that made her think he remembered their kiss. Or was remembering their kiss. Or—Annabel turned away and examined one of his invitations as if it were passionately interesting.

  “Lord Ardmore,” Imogen said, moving forward into the center of the room and clasping her hands, “I wish to inform you that I shall not pursue the relationship that you and I discussed.”