by Evie Dunmore
Sebastian looked up sharply. “Is there another Edward Bryson who could be relevant to this situation?”
Ramsey turned crimson. “No, Your Grace.”
“After you have wired him, inform the town house. Fergusson, be ready to leave in twenty minutes. We are going to London.”
Ramsey and Fergusson bowed and hastily headed for the door.
Annabelle made to follow them, and Sebastian put down the pen. “You stay, miss,” he said. “If you please,” he added in a softer tone when he saw her stiffen.
She turned. Her eyes were wary. Did he look as crazed as he felt?
“Stay,” he repeated.
She nodded, her expression still reserved. He didn’t want her reserved. He rounded the desk, his impulse to go to her, but then he veered toward the row of windows. He could not put into words what he wanted or needed from her right now; he could hardly set her down on his desk and pull up her skirts . . . abruptly, he turned to the view over the fields. With a certain indifference, he noted the tightness in his chest, the difficulty in drawing a deep breath. That was a low point in a man’s life, when his own brother betrayed him.
“I trust you won’t say a word about this to anyone,” he said without turning.
“Of course not,” he heard her say. Her voice was so soothing, a balm on his raw temper. Damnation, had his mooning over her allowed his brother to scheme his escape under his very nose? He glared at the barren planes of his land, disgusted with himself.
* * *
Annabelle couldn’t blame the two grown men for scrambling from the study like chastised schoolboys. Montgomery’s anger was terrifying, the kind that sucked the very air from a room. Luckily, she was inured, having had some experiences of her own with forceful emotions. But it hurt to see him like this, every line of his body so rigid he might crack. At some point, he had put his glove back on, and the hand that had caressed her face so tenderly in the garden was now a fist by his side, and the sight of that angry fist made her heart, withered and dusty as it had been for years, unfurl and overflow for him.
She approached slowly.
“Have you known my brother much?” he said to the window. “Have you any inkling as to where he would hide awhile?”
“Hide?” Another step. “No. And we were never close enough for him to confide in me.”
She was near enough to touch him now. She hesitated. This was audacious, but very necessary.
She slid her arms around his waist.
He felt hard and unyielding, like a block of granite in her arms that radiated furious heat. When he made no move to rebuff her, she leaned her cheek into the space between his shoulder blades.
He turned and stared down at her, a bit like a lion would stare at a lamb that had foolishly wandered into his cave, deciding whether to devour her flat-out or to roar and chase her off. She burrowed closer, pressed her face against his chest right where his heart was beating, and wondered if he’d take a bite out of her.
Finally, finally, he wrapped her in his arms, taking what meager comfort she offered.
She gave a relieved sigh.
He tucked her head under his chin. “He has run away,” he said gruffly.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
His hands began smoothing circles up and down her back. “He drugged his valet.”
“It sounds like it, yes.”
She had done right to not offer him platitudes. His chest expanded and fell, and she felt the slow ease of some of the tension in his muscles.
“He has a discipline problem,” he said. “I enlisted him in the Royal Navy, and this is his answer.”
Oh. That was remarkably bad. As remarkable as the fact that he was sharing it with her.
The clock began to bong; surely the twenty minutes were up soon, but Montgomery made no sign of releasing her. When she looked up, he was focused on something on the wall behind her, and she turned in his arms. Rows of paintings depicting stately homes and castles covered the wall to the right of the door. A lone painting hung to the left. It showed a sheer cliff with a castle, the ancient, drafty kind with walls six feet deep.
“Is that your castle?”
“Yes. Castle Montgomery.” His voice was thick, and the tension returned to his body.
She leaned into him, and he locked his forearms beneath her breasts and pulled her snug against him.
“Managing nearly a dozen estates presents little challenge compared to the proper management of one brother,” he said. He gave her a light squeeze. “What do you make of that with your fine mind, Miss Archer?”
She smiled wryly. “I suppose human relationships require a different approach. A brother is not so easily put into a ledger.”
“Ah, but he is,” he said. “I know exactly how much he costs me.”
“In coin, yes. But when do emotions ever add up neatly?”
He paused. “Emotions,” he said. He released her and stepped away, the sudden absence of his warm body leaving her disoriented.
“I must go.” He started for the desk. “I must find him as soon as possible.”
“Is there a chance that he will come back on his own?”
He shot her a sardonic glance. “Of course not.” He began sliding the train schedules the protection officer had left into a satchel. “He knows he is in for it if he were to show his face here now.”
The threat thrumming in his calm voice was unmistakable, and she knew instinctively that speaking up for Peregrin now would push him too far. He believed that competent men had their orders followed, and here his own brother had gone into hiding rather than obey. What a terrible blow to his pride. Most other men would have struck the protection officer, or at least shifted the blame.
“You will find him,” she said quietly.
Many messages could be transported with this.
I trust in you.
I’m on your side.
I hate that you are upset.
And all the implications that came with that.
He seemed to hear them all, for he stopped packing and looked up. Their gazes locked across the Persian rug, and his expression softened, perhaps because her face showed everything, that she felt him hurting, that her chest was aching in a strange way because she wasn’t sure when she would see him next.
With two long strides, he closed the distance between them. His hand curled around her nape, its grip both gentle and possessive, and for one brief moment, his attention was on her as if she were the one and only thing on his mind.
“I will come back to you,” he said. He kissed her hard on the mouth, then more softly on the forehead, and all but bundled her out the door.
* * *
The logs in the fireplace popped and released a burst of sparks before collapsing on the grate with a hiss. Indeed. She had retreated to the blue parlor with Hattie and Catriona for an evening of reading and sketching, but the book in her hands was hardly more than camouflage. In the lazy silence, her mind strayed back to Montgomery’s kisses again and again, as if the coaxing pressure of his mouth against her own had become her new center of gravity that compelled all her thoughts to revolve around him.
She shuddered. It was precariously close to her feelings of that fateful summer years ago, that breathless, reckless, dizzying yearning for the whirl of passion itself, the desire to pit herself with all she had against a masculine force and to surrender in a glorious blaze . . . Of course, she knew better now than the girl she once was. Yes, she could take a few sips of pleasure instead of headlong drowning in it.
He hadn’t returned today. Tomorrow was her last day at Claremont. Would he find his brother?
“Who is in line for the dukedom after Peregrin Devereux?” she asked.
Hattie slowly looked up from her sketch pad. “What makes you ask such a thing?”
“Well, we have been
here for weeks,” she said, “and the duke’s profile is still incomplete. We’re behind with the entire campaign.”
“I’m not sure about the line of inheritance, nor how we could exploit it for our cause,” Hattie said. “Catriona?”
For once, Catriona had to give a clueless shrug. “He will get his direct heir soon enough,” she said. “Everyone says he will remarry next year.”
An ugly emotion twisted in Annabelle’s belly. Jealousy.
How juvenile. Of course he would marry. One of the pretty debutantes who had drifted through his wintery ballroom, white and silent like snowflakes.
She came to her feet and paced toward the dying fire.
“I confess I’m glad that he would never contemplate a bride from a merchant family,” Hattie said, “else Mama would try to arrange a match with one of my pretty sisters.” She shuddered visibly. “I pity the future duchess. Do you think she will be a tragic figure, a Georgiana of Devonshire? What if she only produces girls? Imagine, to be the first Montgomery duchess in eight hundred years to not produce a son. Will he divorce her, too, I wonder?”
“Luckily, we have progressed since Georgian times,” Annabelle said irritably, “and if a woman must serve as a man’s broodmare, I imagine there are men much worse than the duke.”
“Broodmare?” Hattie clicked her tongue. “Methinks you have been spending too much time with dear Lucie. Speaking of which, what do you think of her idea to join forces with Millicent Fawcett for a demonstration on Parliament Square?”
“Hush,” Catriona said, “someone might hear.”
“But what do you think?” Hattie whispered loudly.
“It will be trouble,” Catriona replied.
“Indeed,” Hattie agreed gleefully, “so much trouble.”
Chapter 18
The next morning, the noise of trumpets and kettledrums blasted the breakfast room, infusing everyone with patriotic enthusiasm except, it seemed, the small group of suffragists and Aunty Greenfield.
“What is this dreadful noise, dear?” the elderly lady bellowed at Catriona.
“The music for tonight,” Catriona replied at the same penetrating volume. “They are setting up the orchestra below the terrace.”
“I see,” Aunty said, unimpressed. “I daresay they don’t play like they used to play.” She cast a disapproving glance around the table and it promptly snagged on Annabelle. “You are pale, child. Goodness, are you feeling unwell again?”
Annabelle gave her an unconvincing smile. “No, ma’am, I’m fine.”
“Good,” Aunty Greenfield said, “you should be. At your age, your health should still be quite robust.”
At her age, she should be wiser than to moon over a duke who hadn’t returned.
Catriona folded up her napkin. “I’m going to watch the experts prepare the fireworks.”
Annabelle was on her feet. “I’ll come with you.” Fresh air was exactly what she needed.
The fireworks were being set up on the other end of the French garden. The thin layer of snow had receded overnight, revealing the smooth white gravel covering the paths and the intricate stone carvings on the dry fountains and weathering Greek marbles. It would be so lovely to see the gardens in summer, with the trees in all their lush green glory and a warm breeze rustling through.
“This is such a beautiful place,” she murmured.
“It is,” Catriona said, her eyes on the wooden structure ahead that was growing steadily under the workmen’s hands. “But have you seen those snow globes with tiny castles inside?”
“Eh. Yes?”
“That’s Claremont.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“It is in a bubble. It isn’t real. Not for us.”
“And Oxford is? The town is unchanged since the crusades.” She found herself strangely aggravated by the discussion.
Catriona looped an arm through hers. “Never mind. I just mean to say that Oxford is a good place for us.”
“Of course it is,” she murmured.
* * *
An hour before midnight, a rumor circulated that the lord of the manor had returned, and yet he still shone with his absence. The house party guests gathered in the reception room for drinks and snacks and gossip.
“. . . rockets were imported directly from China . . .” someone said.
“. . . the last duke had hired a contortionist, not sure whether it was male or female . . .”
“. . . and then Lady Swindon’s hat went up in flames.”
When the large pendulum clock struck eleven thirty, Lady Lingham, who seemed to stand in as hostess, ordered everyone to move to the terrace. Annabelle drifted along, the stream of people carrying her to the ballroom where the doors to the terrace were flung open wide. There should have been a dark, forbidding figure on the upper balconies.
But there wasn’t.
How could he not attend his own New Year’s Eve party?
“Annabelle!” Hattie was weaving her way toward her. “Come! I have reserved you a seat with us.”
She was tugged along onto the terrace.
The chatter and laughter of a few hundred inebriated aristocrats engulfed her, leaving her briefly disoriented. The terrace and the French garden had turned into a fairground. Rows of floating red paper lanterns threw flickering shadows; fragments of music drifted up from the depths of the garden.
He was not here, she felt it in her bones.
It was for the best. It was madness, this urge to be near him.
A group of children flitted between her and Hattie, and her hand slipped from her friend’s grasp.
Before she could catch up, she was stopped in her tracks by an apple hovering before her, ruby red and glossy in its sugary coat.
“A candied apple, milady?”
The vendor towered over her on stilts, his long, striped trouser legs billowing. His wide smile was painted on.
“Annabelle.” Hattie’s voice reached from a few paces ahead.
She didn’t move.
Madness or not, she had to say good-bye, and not when they were leaving tomorrow, terribly formal in the courtyard. In truth, she did not want to say good-bye to him at all.
She turned on her heels.
Not sensible of her at all.
She moved faster, dodging animated guests streaming toward her.
In the ballroom, the throng of people moving through had thinned. She paused under the grand chandelier, pondering, then took a course back to the great entrance hall.
The long hand of the clock stood at twenty minutes to midnight.
And then she knew where she had to go. She turned toward the west wing.
She hurried along dimly lit corridors on soundless tiptoes like a thief. She arrived at the door to his study panting; a breathless moment of hesitation, and then she rapped against the dark wood.
Silence.
Her hand hovered over the door handle.
She quickly, quickly, pressed down and—found that the door was locked.
Her heart sank.
She moved on, using paintings and potted plants as markers to find her way back to the music room. She opened the ornate double door and stuck her head through the gap. Yawning emptiness. The piano looked alien and abandoned in a shaft of moonlight.
A wave of panic welled from her stomach. Had he returned at all?
She dashed through another corridor, and another, until all sense of direction was lost and her corset was biting into her flesh. She had to pause and hold on to a banister, her chest heaving.
Reason, see reason.
Claremont had three floors and two hundred rooms; she could never search them all.
Damnation. She had been so good, so sensible.
How could she have allowed Montgomery to turn her into a panting madwoman haunting h
is castle?
How could she not?
She had evidently sleepwalked through her days in Kent. Oxford had revived her mind. Montgomery had shocked the whole of her back to life; he hadn’t even tried, he had been cool reserve and bluntness and before she knew it he had snuck under her skin. Now she didn’t know how to dislodge him again. Did not quite want to, either. It felt too good to be alive. It felt too good to be seen. His kisses had lifted a loneliness off her she hadn’t even known she carried.
She forced another breath into her lungs. The skin on her back was sticky and beginning to cool.
One last attempt, and then she’d return to the terrace.
Up, up, up a flight of stairs, down another corridor, past a startled maid . . .
He stood near the door to the winter-sky library with Bonville the butler.
She came to an abrupt halt, her head swimming.
Montgomery turned toward her, and the moment their eyes locked, tension crackled up and down the length of the corridor.
He must have said something to Bonville, for the butler melted into the shadows.
A rushing noise was in her ears as she approached. She should have laid out the words, the purpose, for this beforehand. She hadn’t; her body had been driven to find him like an animal was driven to find water after a spell of sweltering heat. Now that he was here in the flesh, watching her, the urge faded into a dizzying sensation, a shyness. She hadn’t expected to feel shy.
By the time she reached him, meeting his eyes was a little difficult.
He looked taller than she remembered. He felt different, too; there was a raw, glinting edge just beneath his quiet surface.
His fingertips glanced over her cheek, and the contact shimmied through her whole body. His caress traveled along the soft curve of her jaw to the side of her neck, where her pulse fluttered and her skin was damp.
“You ran.” There was a rasp to his voice.
She swallowed, and he stroked lightly over her jugular, as if to settle her right where she couldn’t hide her agitation. It worked. Gradually, her limbs loosened, and a heavy warmth sank into her limbs under the steady up-and-down glide of his fingers.