by Elisa Braden
Throughout the night, she’d explored his body, marveling at this muscle or that trail of hair. She’d wept again after seeing his leg, and he’d held her and murmured assurances that he was grateful to have it, that the accident had been a fluke, and it was not her fault.
She’d gone silent after that, kissing his scars and plastering atop him like a protective blanket.
Their night together had healed a part of him that had been raw and starving. Now, he must marry her.
After dressing in his torn shirt, breeches, and waistcoat, he sat on the bed to don his boots. Behind him, he heard rustling bedclothes and a sweet little sigh. The sounds made him smile.
“Is it morning already?” his sleepy siren inquired.
“It’s early yet.”
“Must you go?”
“I must. It’s better if no one finds me here.”
A pause. “I become your wife today.”
He finished pulling on his second boot and turned to look at her. She was beautiful. Lips swollen, cheeks blushing, hair a tangled mass. Beautiful. He leaned down to steal a kiss. “You became my wife last night. Today is a formality.”
“Hmm. An important one, though.”
“Yes.”
She nibbled her lower lip. “Do you suppose—”
A knock sounded at the door. Robert frowned, wondering who in blazes would be visiting Annabelle’s chamber before dawn—apart from him, of course.
“Sir? Mr. Conrad?” It was Benjamin’s voice, hushed but insistent. What the devil?
Robert immediately searched for his cane, snatched it up, and winced as he limped to the door. “What?” he snapped upon cracking it open.
Benjamin looked red about the cheeks. “I beg your pardon, sir. You have a visitor. An urgent visitor.”
“Who?”
“Lord Huxley.”
His frown deepened. “You mean Lord Berne?”
“No, sir. His son, Lord Huxley.”
Robert could only stare at his head footman in silence.
“Er—Lady Annabelle’s brother,” Benjamin clarified. “Viscount Huxley.”
“I bloody well know who Huxley is. What I cannot understand is why he is in England when he is supposedly traipsing about the Continent.”
“I am given to understand he arrived at his family’s home some days ago and was alerted to your presence here by the note delivered to Clumberwood Manor last evening.”
Robert rubbed his forehead and nodded. “Where have you stashed him?”
“The library, sir.”
“Serve tea. Strong tea. I shall be down shortly.”
As soon as he closed the door, Annabelle demanded to know what was happening. He debated whether to explain this new wrinkle, but he wished to deal with John first, to get a sense of whether he must fight yet another battle before being allowed to marry Annabelle. Given the earliness of John’s visit, he suspected so.
He kissed her and told her to go back to sleep for an hour or two. “Some of your gowns should be delivered shortly after dawn, love. Until then, you should rest.”
Her frown spoke of stubbornness. Suspicion. “Robert,” she said in a warning tone. “You are hiding something.”
“Yes. But I shan’t worry you until there is something to worry about.”
“But—”
He laid a final kiss upon her lips before slipping out the door.
Upon entering the library, he braced himself for what was clearly ahead. From the back, John Huxley appeared much the same—though his shoulders had widened and his hair was sun-streaked. But he still stood with the same hand propped on his hip, the same insouciant posture.
Except that today, tension tightened the other man’s neck and filled the room with an air of foreboding.
“Hux,” he greeted his friend. “This is … unexpected.”
Huxley turned. Hazel eyes burned with nothing short of wrath.
Bracing for imminent attack, Robert shoved the door closed behind him and advanced into the room. “We are to be married this morning.”
“No, damn you.” Hux stalked toward him, looking older, harder, and more bronzed than the last time Robert had seen him. “You’ll do no such thing. You will deliver my sister to me, and I will take her home.”
It was rare to see John Huxley this enraged. Ordinarily, he was a charmer, impossibly difficult to rile, even when sotted. But this was about Annabelle. He was protective of all his sisters, but especially her. Especially after the accident.
“Your father and I already negotiated the settlements. Annabelle has consented. We’ve been betrothed for months—”
“I don’t bloody care.”
“Your family approves, Hux.”
“Of this?” Huxley bristled as he gestured in the direction of the front drive. “Absconding with an innocent girl so she’ll have no choice but you?”
Robert ran a hand through his hair. “You’ve been away a long time. Things … changed between me and Annabelle.”
“I’m certain they did. She’s a woman now. Bit of lust added to the mix, no doubt.” With long strides, Huxley approached, his every step snapping with ire. “I’ll not allow it, Con. I’ll not stand by and watch her be damaged again.”
Preparing for battle, Robert automatically adjusted his stance so his good leg took the bulk of his weight. They hadn’t had a physical confrontation in years, but he knew Hux’s capabilities well enough to imagine neither of them would come out unscathed. “And I will not let her go,” he said. “Not ever.”
“That’s a bloody big change from seven years ago.”
“A lot has happened. When I sent her away—”
“You mean when you allowed a thirteen-year-old girl to carry a burden she had no business carrying!” Hux bellowed the final few words.
Robert felt them like blows. “I regret what I did. I believed it was necessary.”
“Necessary.” Disbelief colored Huxley’s features. “You blamed her for your fall. You cut all ties with her. Had I been less of a pigheaded bastard, you’d have done the same to me.”
“It appeared that way, yes.”
Hux stared at him in silent incredulity.
“I never blamed her. Nor you. Persuading her to leave me behind was the only way to protect her.”
Robert could see Hux was frustrated. The other man raked stiffened fingers through his hair, pacing back and forth with his hands stacked atop his head. He looked ready to throttle someone. Probably Robert.
Hux halted with his back turned. His hands came down to prop on his hips. Then he returned to where Robert stood, hazel eyes flashing with a grim light. “So, you lied. To her, to me, to our family.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any idea how badly you wounded her?”
Robert gritted his teeth. Last night, when she’d wept in his arms, he’d been given a glimpse. Even that had torn him apart. “Yes.”
“Wrong,” Hux barked. “You know nothing because you didn’t have to stand by and watch her break apart. How bloody convenient.”
Robert waited for Hux to pace out his fury, waited for signs that his old friend had regained hold of his temper. Then, he attempted to explain his reasoning. “Remember the time she climbed the tree?”
Huxley, half-turned in the middle of the library carpet, cast him a dark glance. “The one by the old mill.”
“Yes. She went chasing us after we’d warned her to stop.”
A few seconds passed before Hux’s expression eased. “Must have told her twenty times we’d take her fishing the next day if only she’d stay where she belonged. How long did she wait before following us?”
“A quarter hour, perhaps.”
She’d watched them from the nursery window at Clumberwood. Then, like the determined little Bumblebee she was, she’d donned a pair of boots too large for her tiny feet and trailed after them.
Robert hated the rest of that memory. He’d hated
her fear. Her pain.
“What is your point?” Huxley demanded.
“She nearly died. It was not the first time. It was not even rare.”
The tree was near the river, its roots snaking down into the bank. Hux had shouted at her, calling her Anna-smell and trying to goad her into running home. Ever determined, ever undaunted, she’d continued climbing, sweet brown eyes turned upward toward Robert. Then, she’d slipped. Her brother had reached her first, scrambling down from his perch halfway up the giant beech. He’d risked his own neck to slide down the bank and retrieve his tiny sister from tangled roots before she was carried into the mill’s giant wheel by the river’s current.
“I was furious with you that day,” Robert continued. “Do you remember why?”
“Because of the way I spoke to her.”
“I hated to see her hurt. But you knew she needed to be afraid, Hux. She should have been, by God, but I was always …” Robert ran a frustrated hand through his hair. Annabelle would admonish him for letting it grow too long again. “Protecting her. Far too much. I never let her feel a fraction of her own foolishness.”
“Yet, in the end, you were the cause of her greatest pain.”
For a moment, his head swam. It felt light and detached from his neck. “Not without a damned good reason.”
“Which was?”
“Sparing her a life tending an invalid.” For that, he’d wounded her. He’d wounded himself in the process, of course, but that didn’t matter. He’d assumed she would change once he was no longer in her life.
She hadn’t. Same Bumblebee. Same indomitable will.
“You saw me after the fall,” Robert continued. “Mad, starving badgers are better company. More useful, too.”
Hux drew close. They were nearly of a height, so his gaze met Robert’s directly. “Do you love her?”
Robert felt his temper prickling his scalp. “Of course I love her.”
“Do you? Because I recall you stopping me every time I tried to mention her in the last seven years. Perhaps you had your reasons. I’ll grant you, I thought it defensible at the time. But not now. Not if you never blamed her for the accident.”
“She was a young girl. It would have been senseless to blame her.”
“Yet you let her believe you did. You let me believe it.”
“Because she would never have stopped.” Robert’s fist clenched and twisted upon his cane. “Damn and blast, Hux, I thought you, of all people, might understand. She would have ruined herself trying to help me. I was a prisoner of my bedchamber for a year. She was thirteen. What do you suppose would have happened if I hadn’t forced her away?”
Huxley’s jaw flexed. “She would have plastered herself to your bedside.”
“Yes.” Robert glared at his friend. “A girl that age would not have realized how her mere presence in a young man’s bedchamber would compromise her prospects in a few short years. And Annabelle? She would not have cared a whit. She would have dashed her reputation—indeed, her very life—to pieces on the rocks of my misfortune. You think saving her from the odd scraped knee or broken toe was worth wounding her feelings, yes?”
Huxley nodded.
“What was preserving her entire future worth?”
“That explains why you did it in the first place. Not why you refused to hear so much as her name spoken in your presence for seven years.”
That he couldn’t explain. Not without sounding mad. “It took everything I had to survive. I could not afford the distraction.”
“Damn and blast, man. Do you understand nothing?” Huxley shook his head. “No. No, I don’t think you do. She turned herself into a gossip for you. Do you realize that?” He didn’t bother to wait for a response before answering his own question. “Of course not! Because you never wondered what she got up to after you tossed her out on her backside. You never thought to ask whether Annabelle Huxley would simply give up and forget about you the way you did her.”
Robert felt his chest tightening, his breathing grow faster and shorter. “No. That’s not what—”
“She sought every piece of information she could glean about you. From me, from the vicar’s wife, from old Mr. Parnell. Anybody who would share the slightest morsel, she’d turn them into one of her ‘sources.’ She did this for years, Con. Years.”
“She gossips because she enjoys—”
“It is a habit. Being cut from your life became intolerable, so she settled for scraps from the table.”
Dark, cold fingers lengthened and seized his insides. They curled and dug with an icy grip. “What are you saying?”
For a moment, grief flashed across his old friend’s brow. “I’m saying she loves you more than you love her. Always has.”
Everything inside him rose up with a fierce battle cry. No. By God, no, that was not true. “She cannot love me more than I love her.” He said it quietly, though he wanted to roar. “It’s not bloody possible.”
“No? She’s spent her life cultivating her obsession. While you were here, tending your grandfather’s estate and ignoring her existence, she was still following you. She never stopped.”
His muscles froze. He felt both hot and cold at once. Like he’d been poisoned.
“My father may have consented to your betrothal, but I’d wager it is only because she hid all this from him and from my mother. Perhaps Jane knows, but the others?” Huxley shook his head. “I knew. Because I saw what you’d done to her. I’ll not sit there in a chapel pew while she marries a man who loved her so little he was willing to crush her heart beneath his boot—”
Suddenly, his oldest friend’s loosely tied cravat was wrapped inside Robert’s fist. Their noses were inches apart. “Try to take her from me. Try it. See what happens.”
“Stop.” The reedy, feminine voice came from behind him. It sounded choked.
He released Huxley and turned. His heart fell into an abyss.
Paper-white cheeks were streaked with tears. She’d wadded pink silk into clenched fists. Her hair was haphazardly knotted atop her head. Her toes were bare beneath her hem.
“Bumblebee,” he murmured.
“Don’t call me that. Please.” She didn’t seem angry. Only sad.
“God, none of it is true, love.”
She held up a hand then cupped it over her eyes. Her chest shuddered for several seconds before she lowered her hand to her mouth. “John,” she mumbled behind her fingers. Her eyes glossed with fresh tears.
Huxley sidestepped Robert and rushed to her, wrapping his arms around his sister as she hugged his neck. The siblings held one another for a moment before Hux drew back. She sniffed and patted his shoulders with affection.
“Why did you not say you were coming home?” She smiled through her tears. “Mama will be over the moon.” She patted his cheek. “So long as you haven’t married a Spaniard.”
For the first time since Robert had entered the library, Hux grinned. “They are a handsome people. Alas, no bride. Only me.”
Her smile trembled. “You are more than enough.” She embraced him again before asking, “Now, would you be a darling brother and give Robert and me a moment alone?”
“Annabelle, he is—”
“Please.”
After a long hesitation and a longer glare at Robert, Huxley nodded and kissed her cheek before leaving the library.
In the silence that followed, dread filled Robert’s veins until he wanted to howl.
Annabelle stood there in her pink gown, lips downturned as though she teetered on the edge of weeping. She stared down at her hands, which could not seem to decide where they wished to settle.
“What he said,” Robert began when he could breathe. “You must know it was wrong.”
“No. Unpleasant. But not wrong.”
“I love you. I have always loved you.”
She raised her eyes to his. Her quiet anguish knocked him flat. “But not as much as I love you. Never that
much.”
“You don’t know … you cannot comprehend—”
“I’ve always known.” The tremulous smile returned as tears spilled over. “I’ve taken whatever you gave as the gift that it was.” She pressed a hand flat over her heart. “But here? I’ve always known we stood on uneven ground.”
“Annabelle.”
“I want you more. I love you more.” She chuckled. “To an unwholesome degree, some might say. Like a daft sickness. Be grateful you haven’t been infected, too. I chased you so blindly it drove you off a bridge. Heaven knows what might have happened if you felt as I do in equal measure. We’d probably both be dead.”
Anger flooded in on a boiling tide. Seethed and churned. Opened a door he’d kept locked. The vicious instinct to seize and claim surged forth unbound. It propelled him closer. “A few months in my bed, and you’ll realize how very wrong you are. Until then, mark me well, Bumblebee. If you think to escape this marriage, think again.” He moved within an inch of her and lowered his head. “The moment you agreed to be mine, it was far too late for both of us.”
*~*~*
Empty and aching, Annabelle gazed up at a man who utterly confused her. She’d known him forever, seen him stubborn and disagreeable, laughing and content, brooding and vexed. Yet this particular expression—possessive rage, focused and primitive—was as foreign as watching him don Roman robes and dance around a bonfire. It simply did not happen. Yet, here he was. Not a valiant knight content to win her favor, but a warlord set to sack her village and claim her as his battle prize.
When she’d followed him here to the library, she’d been curious. Then, she’d heard her brother’s voice through the door. Elated, she’d nearly opened it, but John’s angry shouting had stopped her. And, as she’d listened to her brother speak the truth she’d always known, pain had pummeled her belly in a series of blows.
The previous night in Robert’s arms had allowed her to fool herself again. Even now, she still felt him inside her. Smelled his fresh-air scent on her skin. Remembered the look in his eyes when he’d taken her. Brooding blue had been a wild tempest, demanding nothing less than her total surrender.