by Mary Balogh
His mind reached for something to say in reply and found . . . nothing.
He kissed her instead.
Devil take it and a thousand and ten damnations, but he kissed her. He did not know which of them was the more startled. It was not even just a fatherly or brotherly or cousinly peck on the lips either. It was a full-on, lips-parted, head-slightly-angled, arms-closing-about-the-woman-to-draw-her-even-closer kind of kiss. It was a man-to-woman kiss. And what the devil was he doing trying to analyze it rather than lifting his head and pretending that after all it was just a kindly, cousinly embrace designed to comfort her?
Pretending? What else was it, then? That was exactly it, was it not?
While he pondered the matter, his lips continued to move over hers, feeling their softness, their moistness. It was surely the most chaste kiss he had indulged in since he was fifteen or thereabouts. Yet it somehow felt like the most lascivious.
This, he thought, his mind verbalizing the biggest understatement of its thirty-one-year existence, was a mistake.
“I will return you to the bosom of your family if you are ready to leave,” he suggested as he raised his head and released his hold on her. He was happy to hear his voice sounding thoroughly bored.
“Oh yes, thank you,” she said—the brisk, sensible schoolteacher. “I am ready.”
Ten
Anna prattled her way through dinner, telling Elizabeth everything there was to tell about growing up in Bath. She dared not stop.
“Is Joel your beau?” Elizabeth asked as they ate their dessert.
“Oh, not really,” Anna said, awash in nostalgia and regret. “We grew up together as the closest of friends. We could always talk upon any subject under the sun or about nothing at all. He was too close to become a beau. Does that make sense? He was more like a brother. And why am I using the past tense?” She felt a bit like weeping.
“Did he ever want to be your beau?” Elizabeth asked.
“A few years ago he fancied himself in love with me,” Anna admitted. “He even asked me to marry him. But he was just lonely. It happens when people leave the orphanage and have no family or even friends beyond its walls. I am sure now he is thankful I said no.”
“He is very handsome?” Elizabeth asked.
Anna held her spoon suspended over her dish and considered. “He is good-looking,” she said, “and very attractive, I believe. It is hard, though, when you have known a man all your life, to see him dispassionately. But oh, goodness, Lizzie, I have done all the talking even though the meal is almost at an end, and even I know that that is bad-mannered. What about you? Do you have any beaux? Do you hope or even plan to remarry?”
“No, probably not, and no,” her cousin said, and laughed. “Though the very fact that I am in London this year for the Season may mean that the probably not might be perhaps not. You are looking thoroughly confused. I did not have a happy marriage, Anna. In fact, it was worse than unhappy and it has made me skittish. It could be said, of course, that at the age of thirty-three I would make a far wiser choice than I did at the age of seventeen, when I fell head over ears in love with good looks and charm. But to be fair, I saw more in Desmond than just those things. He was a man of property and fortune. He was amiable and mild-mannered and kind. He loved his family and friends. Perhaps strongest in my defense is the fact that my mother and father liked him and approved his suit. I could not have known what actually being married to him would be like, and it is that fact that frightens me whenever I meet a personable and eligible gentleman and am tempted to encourage a courtship.”
“He drank?” Anna guessed.
“He drank,” Elizabeth said with a sigh. “Everyone drinks, of course, and almost everyone drinks to excess once in a while. It is rarely a greater problem than the embarrassment of the fool one can make of oneself when in one’s cups. He did not even drink very often. He would go weeks without. And often when he did drink, he would just grow merry and funny and be the life of the party, if there was a party. But sometimes there was a moment—it was always when we were alone together—when I would know he had crossed some line into becoming something or someone else altogether more ugly. There was something about his eyes—I cannot even describe it, but I would recognize it in a moment. It was as though he had been sucked into a dark hole, and then he would become viciously abusive. I could not always escape in time before he became violent.”
“I am so sorry,” Anna said.
“He was the loveliest man when he was sober,” her cousin said. “Everyone loved him. Almost no one ever saw the dark side of him. Except me.” She closed her eyes for several moments, drew an audible breath, and pressed clasped hands prayer fashion against her lips. But she did not continue. She shook her head, opened her eyes, and attempted a smile. “But let us not be gloomy. I cannot bear those memories or the thought of inflicting more of them upon you. Shall we go to the drawing room?”
“It is such a vast, uncozy room for just two people,” Anna said. “Come up to my sitting room instead. It is very pretty and the chairs and sofa look comfortable, though I have not had any time to spend there yet.”
They settled there a few minutes later, each in a soft, upholstered chair. A servant came and lit the fire.
“I could grow accustomed to luxury,” Anna said after the servant had withdrawn. “Oh, I suppose that is what I will be expected to do.”
They both laughed.
“Why did you say,” Anna asked, curling her legs to one side of her on her chair and hugging a cushion to her bosom before realizing that this was probably not the way a lady ought to sit, “that the responsibilities of being the Earl of Riverdale would be burdensome to your brother? It must be very grand to be an earl.”
“I love Alex dearly,” Elizabeth said, taking her embroidery out of the bag she had brought up with her. “He deserves every good thing that could happen to him, and I had high hopes for him just a few days ago. But now all this has happened and I am not sure he will be happy after all—and not just because he feels terrible for Harry.”
Anna watched as she threaded a length of silk through her needle and bent her head over her embroidery frame.
“As the Earl of Riverdale, for example,” she continued, “Alex will be expected to take his seat in the House of Lords, and because he can never take responsibility lightly, he will feel obliged to be here each spring when Parliament is in session. He does not enjoy London. He came this year just to please Mama and me, though he did admit too a few days ago that he intended to take the opportunity of being here to look about him for a bride at last, for someone to complete his life.”
“Can he not still do that?” Anna asked. “Is he not even more eligible now than he was? Surely there must be any number of ladies who would be only too happy to marry an earl.”
“But would they also be happy to marry Alex?” Elizabeth said. “I want someone to marry the man, not the title. Someone who will love him. Someone he will love.”
How wonderful it must be, Anna thought, to have grown up with a real brother and such obvious affection. But she had Joel. And really she wanted the same things for him as Elizabeth wanted for Cousin Alexander.
“Alex has always lived more for other people than for himself,” Elizabeth said. “He has always had what Mama sometimes calls an overdeveloped sense of duty. And now, just when he seemed to have his head above water, along has come this deluge.”
Anna settled back in her chair to listen, as Elizabeth clearly wanted to talk.
She talked of her father, a cheerful, hearty, irresponsible man who had been mad for hunting and lavished most of his fortune on horses, dogs, guns, and other hunting gear, followed the hunt about the country, and hosted lavish hunting parties on his own property. By the time he died, his farms and all the buildings on it had been long neglected and there was very little ready money left with which to bring all back from the bri
nk of financial disaster. But Cousin Alexander had done it through sheer hard work, determination, and the sacrifice of his own comforts. At the same time he had looked after their mother, who had sunk into the depths of a devastating grief for a year or so after the death of her husband. And he had taken on the care of his sister too not long after their father’s death when she had fled from one of her husband’s drunken rages. He had even defended her, with questionable legality, when the husband had come to take her back. Her brother had refused to give her up.
“Oh, Anna,” Elizabeth said, “I had never before seen Alex resort to violence, and I have not seen it since. He was perfectly . . . splendid.”
His property in Kent having been restored to prosperity, Cousin Alexander had looked forward to securing some personal contentment by marrying and settling down to raise a family. He really had not wanted the earldom. He was not an ambitious man.
“And the worst of it is,” Elizabeth said, “that Cousin Humphrey—your father—did not like Brambledean Court, his main seat in Wiltshire, and rarely spent time there. I have never been there myself, but we have always been under the impression that he neglected it shamefully. Alex is very much afraid it is in a similarly bad way as Riddings Park was when our father died, but on a far larger scale, of course. He could continue to neglect it, but that is not Alex’s way, I fear. He will be very conscious of all the people who live and work on the estate or are otherwise dependent upon it for a livelihood, and he will consider it his duty to set matters right there. I do not know, though, how he will do it. His income had at last become sufficient for his needs until this happened, but now it will be woefully inadequate. And he will doubtless abandon his plans to marry until he feels he has something of substance and security to offer his bride. He may be forty by that time, or older. It may never happen.”
In the silence that followed it occurred to Anna that if she had not existed everything would have gone to Cousin Alexander and he would have had quite sufficient money to restore Brambledean Court and still look for a bride to complete his happiness. But she did exist, and the money was all hers.
“If I pull on that bell rope,” she said, “will someone come?”
Elizabeth laughed. “Doubtless bearing the tea tray,” she said.
Anna got to her feet and pulled gingerly upon it.
“Mrs. Eddy wants to show you the account books and the house treasures tomorrow morning,” Elizabeth said. “Mr. Brumford wants to call upon you tomorrow at your convenience, preferably in the morning as well. Madame Lavalle will want your opinion and approval of a hundred and one little details in the sewing room. Cousin Matilda’s genteel acquaintance will possibly arrive and wish to begin explaining to you to which persons you should curtsy, to which you should merely incline your head, and upon which you should look with gracious condescension as they bow or curtsy to you. And I daresay Cousin Mildred’s dancing master will make haste to claim you as a pupil. Some or all of your aunts may call here before luncheon with further plans for your education.”
“Oh dear,” Anna said as the tray was carried in and set on a low table before her and Elizabeth put her work away in her bag. “Will there be enough hours in the morning?”
“Absolutely not,” Elizabeth said, taking her cup and saucer from Anna’s hand. “Let us go shopping.”
Anna looked at her, the teapot suspended above her cup.
“I promised not to give you either instruction or unsolicited advice,” Elizabeth said, mischief in her smile. “But I will break my own rule this once. Whenever a lady is overwhelmed by obligation, Anna, she goes shopping.”
“I am not supposed to venture out of the house for at least the next ten years,” Anna said, smiling back. “Let us go shopping.”
An hour later Anna was curled up on one side of the huge, comfortable bed, no longer smiling. What she ought to do, she thought, and what she wanted to do more than anything else in life, was get up very early in the morning, or even now, and flee home to Bath before Miss Ford and the board of governors could appoint another teacher in her place. She would renounce her fortune—was it possible?—and go back to being Anna Snow.
But Bertha would be horribly disappointed. Besides, one could never really go back, could one? If she did return to Bath, she would take with her the knowledge of who she was and what she perhaps ought to have done about it if only she had the courage to face the unknown. For it was only cowardice that urged her to run away.
He had kissed her.
There—she could block the memory no longer.
He had held her against him while she fought back tears after that dreadfully sad meeting with Harry, and instead of accepting the gesture as the simple offer of comfort it had been, she had felt the shock of the contact with every last corner of her body and mind and spirit—especially with her body. And then she had tipped back her head without drawing firmly away from him at the same time, and she had said something—she could not for the life of her remember what. And he had kissed her.
She could feel it all again now. His body, his lips—no, it had been more than his lips. They had been parted. It was his mouth she had felt, soft, hot with moisture. There was an unfamiliar ache and throbbing between her thighs and up inside her at the memory, and she hid her face in the pillow and moaned with distress. It had been horrible, horrible. Or had it? She had nothing with which to compare it.
She would do her best to forget it. It had clearly not been intended to mean anything. He had lifted his head after a while and suggested bringing her home if she was ready. He had both looked and sounded his usual bored self. He had offered comfort but enough was enough, that look and that tone of voice had suggested, and thank heaven for her habitual sense of dignity.
He had not said a word on the way back to Westcott House. He had taken his leave of her with a careless bow in the hall and stepped back out onto the street without a backward glance.
She could not even begin to explain what it was about him that was so devastatingly attractive—or repellent. She truly did not know if she was attracted or repelled. She was both. He did not have the solid manliness of Joel—or the elegant presence of the Earl of Riverdale. He was all affectation and boredom. But there was . . . that aura.
Oh, she would give anything in the world to have seen him deal with that sergeant who had recruited Harry!
But the thought sent her head beneath the pillow, which she held over her ears as though to shut out the sound of her thoughts.
* * *
Avery stayed far away from Westcott House for the next several days. He spent long hours in his own very private space in the attic of Archer House, meditating, working his way through long series of stylized moves, holding some of the more impossible positions for minutes at a time, his eyes closed or unfocused, emptying his mind, emptying himself. He practiced more vigorous moves until the sweat poured down his face and body. He busied himself purchasing an ensign’s commission in the 95th Rifles foot regiment for Harry while the boy took himself off to Hampshire to bid farewell to his mother and sisters. He took Jessica to a few galleries and museums for some culture and to the Tower of London because on a previous visit her governess had refused to let her see the more gruesome exhibits. And of course he then ended up taking her to Gunter’s for an ice because that also had been forbidden on the former excursion. Jess’s governess, Avery concluded, was invaluable in many ways. She had taught his sister a great deal, both academic and social. She was also a joyless mortal.
He spent two nights reacquainting himself with the sort of woman who would make the top five of his top one hundred list of favorite types if there were such a thing—he amused himself with the mental image of Edwin Goddard drawing up such a document. On both occasions he found himself disinclined to return for a repeat performance. Could one have too much of beauty and sensuality and sex? What an alarming possibility. Good God, he was only thirty-one. It
was far too soon for senility and gout and eccentricity.
He stayed away from Westcott House, but he could not escape hearing about everything that was happening there, for his stepmother, who had complained only a week or so ago of so many social obligations that she needed at least forty-eight hours in every day, had happily forgotten about most of them in her crusade to bring her newfound niece up to snuff. It was an impossible task, of course, she proclaimed every evening when she returned home for dinner, but it simply must be accomplished if the whole family was not to be shamed. But whatever was the queen going to think?
Madame Lavalle and her assistants were working night and day in the sewing room at Westcott House, it seemed, but her hands were severely tied, poor woman, by the fact that Anastasia flatly refused to have anything added to her new garments that would make them pretty and feminine and fashionable. When Madame had sneaked a very modest flounce onto the hem of an otherwise starkly plain ball gown, she had been made to remove it. Anastasia’s new maid had arrived—one of the orphans from Bath whom she treated more as a friend than as a lowly servant. The girl showed no inclination to take a firm line with her new mistress. Mrs. Gray, the genteel lady suggested by the duchess’s sister, had arrived as well to teach Anastasia about the ton and the rules of precedence and correct etiquette and how not to freeze with terror when faced with the queen and other related topics. But more often than not one found the woman in a huddle with Anastasia and Cousin Elizabeth, laughing about something or other all of them found amusing.
“But is Anna learning as well as enjoying herself?” Avery asked.
“I do believe she is,” his stepmother said with obvious reluctance after stopping to consider. “But that is hardly the point, is it, Avery? One would think she would take her education seriously. I could weep when I think of how my brother kept her incarcerated in that institution for so many years when she was the daughter of his lawful wife. And one cannot help having one’s doubts about the wisdom of allowing Cousin Elizabeth to be her companion. On the morning after we had all specifically instructed Anastasia to remain at home until she could look presentable and behave like a lady, Elizabeth took her shopping on Bond Street and Oxford Street. They attracted a great deal of notice as they emerged from numerous shops loaded with packages and looking as though they were enjoying themselves immensely.”