by Eloisa James
Annabel said the first words that came to mind. “Desire is bloody, perjured, full of blame.”
Ewan walked up the steps to her. “Is that poetry?” he asked, when he was next to her.
“Yes.”
“I don’t like the sound of it. There’s something nasty about that poet.”
“It’s Shakespeare,” Annabel said.
Ewan obviously dismissed Shakespeare as a lost cause. “We would be happy together,” he said. “I will never be poor,” he said. “That is important to you.”
True, all true.
“We will have an excellent marriage.”
Annabel forced a smile to her lips. She walked to the top of the stairs and turned left, going to the master bedchamber. She fell onto the bed without washing, in her chemise, without even summoning her maid.
The room was whirling around her. She’d known inside that she, Annabel Essex, was not the sort of woman with whom men fell in love. She was the sort with whom men fell into desire, and that’s what Ewan felt for her: desire.
She should be happy. Freedom lay before her: freedom to return to London and find a rich Englishman, a sleek, practical man who would understand the limitations of their obligations to each other. Who wouldn’t confuse her with talk of his soul or—worse—her soul.
Except she couldn’t leave Ewan. She wanted his kisses, the way he kissed her as if he were starving, as if they hadn’t already kissed so much that her lips were bruised. All those times when he had rocked against her gently, just a reminder. And she had melted against him and relished the rasp of his breathing, and the way he was about to pull his mouth away—because she knew before he did it.
Perhaps it would be enough…he thought it was enough.
But even though her heart beat quickly at the memories of his kisses, Annabel didn’t agree with Ewan. All those years when she thought it would be enough to trade a man’s desire for marriage, for security and for money…
Now she found it wasn’t. Not at all.
She wanted something quite different.
She fell asleep in the middle of a sob.
Thirty-one
Annabel woke to the sound of her door handle turning. Her eyes felt as if they were glued to her eyelids, but she opened them to find that Josie was scrambling onto the bottom of the bed and chattering to Imogen, who had just slipped under the covers.
“When I get married,” Josie was saying, “I want to marry a man just like Ardmore. I want a castle and a hundred servants.” She turned to Annabel. “I know you don’t like Scotland, Annabel, but I love it. I can’t imagine wanting to stay in England. Do you think that perhaps Ardmore could wait to find a wife until next season, when I come out?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Annabel said, pushing up in the bed. Her head was pounding.
“You look awful,” Josie said. “Didn’t you sleep well? I was listening for footsteps outside my room all night long.” She gave a delicious shiver.
“I told you that you’ve been reading too many novels,” Imogen observed, propping herself up on the pillows next to Annabel.
“And I told you that there’s a great deal of helpful guidance in them,” Josie told her. “If this were a novel, Ardmore would turn out to be evil to the core. I know all the signs.”
“And those are?” Imogen asked.
Annabel couldn’t bring herself to even wish her sisters good morning. She just wished they’d leave. She had to talk to Ewan. She had to convince him of—
Of something important.
“Well, for one thing,” Josie said, “villains all have black hair. And they stalk about, tossing their hair in the wind.”
“Ardmore has reddish hair,” Imogen put in. “But it’s long enough to toss.”
“If he were French, we would know for certain,” Josie said.
“He’s not perfidious!” Annabel couldn’t help it; she snapped at Josie.
“That’s what you’re bound to think,” Josie replied, “because you haven’t married him. If Ardmore has a guilty secret, he’d talk about it only in his sleep. That’s why heroines never find out what their husbands are like until it’s too late. They wake up in the middle of the night and hear their husband talking like this.” Josie put her hands up to her hair and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Oooooo…Marguerite…I cannot forget her cries as she fell over the cliff…Oooooooo!”
She put down her hands and turned to Annabel. “I don’t suppose you know whether Ardmore talks in his sleep?”
“I have no idea,” Annabel lied.
“You must admit that this castle has all the elements of a novel, complete with a mad wife in the attic.”
“Making a joke of poor Rosy is a graceless thing to do, Josie.”
“All right,” Josie sighed. “I don’t mean to be cruel. I would love to live here, and I wouldn’t even mind Rosy, although her manners would certainly cut down on visitors.”
“We should all take this as a lesson,” Imogen said with a slightly pompous tone. “Just because a man has a title and a castle doesn’t mean he’s a tenable choice for matrimony.”
Josie nudged Annabel’s foot. “This is your cue to lecture us on appropriate reasons for marriage.”
But Annabel was imagining Ewan marrying someone else and her heart was pounding miserably.
“You can’t have forgotten all those lectures you gave us last year about marrying for practical reasons and not for love.” Josie raised her voice to a hectoring level and said: “The best marriages are those between levelheaded persons, entered into for levelheaded reasons and with a reasonable degree of confidence in compatibility.”
“Yes, of course,” Annabel said, twisting the sheet around her finger.
“You know,” Imogen said, “we haven’t even asked what your journey here was like, Annabel. How was it?”
“Fine. Quite—quite pleasant, really.”
Annabel could feel Imogen staring at her.
“Annabel?”
“Yes?”
“Is something the matter? Look at me!”
Annabel turned her head and met Imogen’s eyes.
“Oh, my God,” Imogen said, flopping back on the pillows.
“What?” Josie asked. “What?”
“She’s compromised,” Imogen said hollowly.
“Compromised? We already knew that,” Josie said.
“I’m not compromised!” Annabel said miserably. “That is, perhaps I am, but it doesn’t matter.”
“How can you say it doesn’t matter?” Imogen half shrieked. “It—”
“It doesn’t matter because I love him,” Annabel said, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I love him, and he doesn’t love me. And I want to marry him, and not for just six months either.”
There was a moment of dead silence.
Then: “Oh, sweetheart,” Imogen said, wrapping an arm around Annabel.
“You?” Josie asked incredulously. “Our logical, levelheaded sister who was determined to marry for money?”
“I don’t care…Even if Ewan were poor, I’d marry him.”
“Goodness,” Josie said, clearly shocked. “If you could contemplate poverty, then you are in love. Of course, Griselda is going to have strong convulsions when you tell her.”
“But I can’t marry him.” Annabel stopped. “That is, I am going to marry him, but I don’t want to.” Tears were blocking her throat again.
“You’re not making sense,” Josie observed. “Imogen never made sense either, when she was in throes.”
“He doesn’t love me,” Annabel said. “He—he likes me a great deal. He desires me. He thinks that’s love, but it’s not. I know that. Desire is very different.”
“The important thing is…” Imogen hesitated, obviously picking her words carefully. “The important thing is not to marry a man who doesn’t love you. You’re right: it doesn’t matter unless you love him. But it’s terrible to be the only one in a marriage with that feeling.” She stopped. Then she took a deep
breath. “I thought my love for Draven would be enough for the two of us.”
“But Draven did love you,” Annabel protested. “He told you so as he died. Don’t diminish his love, now that he’s not here to repeat it to you.”
“I do not diminish his love for me,” Imogen said. “I would never do that. I know precisely how much he loved me: as much as he was capable of loving any woman, probably. He loved me somewhat…after his stables, perhaps more than his mother.”
“Oh, Imogen,” Annabel said. “Why dwell on such a—”
“Grief is like that!” Imogen snapped. “You can only fool yourself so far. And now I’ve seen one of my sisters be truly loved. I saw it in Lucius Felton’s face when we first met at the races, a few days after Tess married him.”
“I do not agree that Draven did not love you,” Annabel said firmly.
“He did love me! He just didn’t love me very much. Tiny things each day tell you precisely how much you are valued by your husband. I have had nothing to do but think over the two weeks during which Draven and I were married. I know precisely how he valued me.”
“Well, if you’re right, you might as well stop weeping over him,” Josie said with her customary brutal frankness. “Why grieve at all if he didn’t treat you properly? And what did he do, anyway? How do you know he didn’t love you? Did he say so?”
“That’s none of your business!” Imogen snapped. “I’m not crying, am I?”
“Is that why you’ve taken up with Mayne?” Josie insisted.
“Mayne doesn’t love me either.”
“I feel as if violins should be wailing in the background,” Josie said. “If you’re looking for love, I think you’re going about it the wrong way. Kidnapping Mayne is not going to make him love you.”
“I don’t give a damn if Mayne ever loves me!”
“You make it sound as if love is a quantifiable object,” Josie pointed out. “As if you could positively identify men who love their wives, versus those who don’t. If you ask me, it’s a great deal more confusing than that.”
“There’s something to what you say,” Imogen said slowly.
“There always is,” Josie said with satisfaction.
“All I’m saying is that if you are truly in love with Ardmore,” Imogen said, turning to Annabel, “you shouldn’t marry him, not until he’s in love with you too. It’s too heartbreaking.”
“But I expect Ardmore does love Annabel,” Josie put in. “All men seem to. Remember when Papa had to have the curate sent to another parish because he was writing love letters to Annabel?”
“You’re confusing desire and love,” Annabel said, her voice breaking a little. “I asked Ewan, last night, if he loved me, and he said that he desired me.” Her voice caught on a sob. “He doesn’t even realize there’s a difference! I’m tired of being a desirable woman.”
“From what I’ve read of ancient poets,” Josie said, “to most men, desire and love are the same thing. Perhaps you’re being too meticulous in your reasoning.”
“Truly, Annabel, I can’t see any reason to despair,” Imogen said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “If Ewan desires you, then he’s well on the way to loving you. Josie, you should probably leave the room.”
Josie’s glare would have burnt a green tree, so Imogen shrugged. “All right. Tess and Felton weren’t in love when they married. And yet he clearly fell in love with her directly after the wedding. I’ve thought and thought about why Draven didn’t fall in love with me in the same way—” She swallowed.
“You don’t have to tell us,” Annabel said softly.
“I don’t want your marriage to be like mine,” Imogen said fiercely. “So I do have to tell you. And the truth is that I don’t think that Draven and I—well, that Draven was particularly happy in our bedchamber.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then Josie said, “I hope you haven’t talked yourself into believing that he jumped on a horse and killed himself out of marital disappointment.”
It was so blunt, and so Josie-like, that both Imogen and Annabel gave a little choke of laughter. And after that, things were easier.
“Tess let Felton kiss her right on the racetrack,” Imogen said earnestly, “in the midst of a hundred people. And he kissed her in the open box where anyone might have seen them. And then they went off to his carriage, and when she came back, her hair was all mussed. I would never have allowed Draven such liberties. I just—just wouldn’t have. But now, in retrospect, I wish I had.”
“Well, Ewan has kissed me in public places,” Annabel said, hoping her face wasn’t turning pink at the very thought of some of those places.
“If all men needed to fall in love was desire,” Josie objected, “there would be no unmarried night-walkers.”
Imogen gasped. “Josie! You shouldn’t know such a word, nor ever speak of those women either!”
“Meretrix in Latin,” Josie said, without a semblance of repentance. “I know you won’t like this, Annabel, but it seems to me that you simply want Ardmore to express himself more eloquently. Why don’t you tell him you are going to leave with us? His heart will be riven, and he’ll fall to his knees and plead with you to stay.”
“I would never lie to him,” Annabel said.
“I know!” Josie cried. “If you were in danger, Ardmore would suddenly realize that he might lose you forever. For example, if you fell off a bridge and were carried away in the white water, he would shriek your name.” She grinned at the thought.
“But I would be dead,” Annabel pointed out. “I don’t want to fall from a bridge or a horse. I am taking Sweetpea out this morning, and I have no plans to plummet to the ground.”
There was a gentle knock on the door. “That’s Elsie,” Annabel hissed, swinging her legs from the bed. “I don’t want her to see I’ve been crying. Tell her that I’m taking a bath.” And she dashed into the bathroom and closed the door.
Josie leaned forward and pinched Imogen’s foot. “We have to do something!” she whispered as Elsie began fussing with Annabel’s wardrobe. “I’ve never seen her so dreary. She really believes he doesn’t love her.”
“He’s probably fairly tongue-tied on the subject,” Imogen said. “Men tend to be.”
“But you know how hardheaded Annabel is. She seems to have convinced herself that desire precludes love. At this rate, the poor man would have to play the role of an altered tomcat merely in order to convince her of love.”
“What have you been doing in the schoolroom?” Imogen scolded. “Your conversion is entirely unsuitable for a young lady. In fact, for a lady of any age! It must be those books.”
“I learned that phrase from you, not from a book! And I hate to tell you this, Imogen, but classical literature is a great deal more lurid than are the works of the Minerva Press. But don’t distract me: I know Annabel. She’s as stubborn as a mule, once she gets her mind to something. The only way to change this situation is to put her in danger…somehow.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” Imogen said, getting up and going to the door.
“It worked for you,” Josie reminded her. “You fell off that horse and Draven promptly stole you away to Gretna Green.”
“Annabel would never resort to such tactics,” Imogen said, tacitly accepting responsibility for the fall. “She’s ruthlessly honest, you know, and that would amount to lying to Ardmore. At any rate, I hope you’re wrong. Ardmore looks like a man who could convince a woman of anything, if he put his mind to it.”
But Josie found that she was very rarely wrong. Still, the solution didn’t seem overly difficult: mild danger would certainly inspire indisputable signs of love in Ardmore, and convince Annabel of his feelings.
Josie smiled. She had an excellent idea of how to effect a spot of mild danger.
Thirty-two
Imogen opened the door into her bedchamber and stopped in surprise. There, seated on an upright chair beside the dressing table, was a woman who appeared to be a reincarnation of an anc
estral portrait. But she was clearly no ghost. “In the absence of others, I shall introduce myself,” she announced, as if she were Her Majesty herself: “I am Lady Ardmore.”
Imogen entered the room and dropped a low, formal curtsy. “What a great pleasure to meet you, Lady Ardmore. I am Lady Maitland, Miss Essex’s sister.” Ardmore’s grandmother wore her hair curled and powdered, piled high on her head, and she was decked with two ropes of emeralds, which (according to Imogen’s devout reading of La Belle Assemblée) was a blunder during the morning hours. Yet she was formidable. One could see the resemblance to her grandson. Ardmore’s eyes were green, and hers were silvery and tired, but they had the same decided jaw and beautiful cheekbones.
Lady Ardmore waved a hand. “You may seat yourself.”
Imogen promptly sat down.
“So you’re the widow, are you?” Lady Ardmore said. “I knew about Maitland’s death, of course. Heard about your elopement too. He was a bonny lad, your husband.”
“Did you know him?” Imogen asked.
“I knew his mother, for all she was English. Lord Ardmore and I—that would be my husband, not my son—went to London now and then. She wrote me a nice note when Ardmore died, and then again when I lost my son and his wife.”
She was silent for a moment. Imogen bit her lip. She couldn’t imagine what it had been like, losing one’s husband and then their only son. Not to mention her daughter-in-law and the babies.
But before she could think what to say, Lady Ardmore continued. “I was sorry to hear that Lady Clarice had died—November, wasn’t it?”
Imogen nodded. “She was never the same after Draven died. She caught a chill and she simply didn’t care to go on.”
“ ’Twould have been easier, perhaps, if I could have faded away in some sort of illness. There was many a day when I would have wished it. But”—she looked at Imogen, and her silvery eyes were sharp as ever, and tearless—“there are those of us who cry, and those of us who rage. ’Tis my guess that you’re of the latter kind.”
Imogen managed a small smile. “Might I count myself a member of both groups?”