“Marry me,” he demanded.
“You will ask forever, and my answer will still be no!” she shouted, exhilaration filling her senses, triumphant even in the face of being dominated.
Suddenly, her face was thrown into the streaks of sunlight that were shining directly into the hayloft, and Lord Henry Princely’s tiny face was peering directly into hers.
It was a moment when time stood literally still. Too young to know what was happening to them, too simple to understand the rush of emotions coursing through their bodies, Anabelle Givens and Henry Princely stared hard at each other, both of them breathing hard. And then, before he had any idea he was doing anything in particular, Henry Princely mashed his mouth against hers.
It wasn’t the sensation of it but rather the act itself that amazed Anabelle wholly. His mouth was a little grimy and wet, and neither one of them had any idea what this could or should mean; Henry had acted purely on impulse upon seeing how pretty Anabelle’s eyes looked shining in the light of the sun. He had seen his father do this to his mother countless times, and had always imagined that since his mother was so pretty, this was the exact course of action he should take. Anabelle, on her part, was changed forever in a way which she might never be able to put words to. In that moment, she had crossed over from a plane where she and Henry were equals, two snotty-nosed playmates, into territory where an imbalance of power would plague them forever. It was an adult world, and it was heady.
With a loud smacking noise, Henry broke away from Anabelle’s mouth, and she did the only thing she could think of to do—she whacked him upside the head.
He was still clutching it when she ambled down the hayloft ladder, nimble as a cat. How was he to know how badly her stick-thin legs were shaking and how hard her too-young heart was pounding? She ran until her legs burned, ran until she collapsed in her bed, startling all the servants on the way, and ran until she could outrun the idea of what had just occurred. It settled on her finally in bed, and she turned over, staring at the crown moldings on the ceiling, reveling in the rush of emotions until the housemaid called her down to dinner.
10 YEARS LATER
“Your Grace.”
“Your Grace.”
“Your Grace.”
“Your Grace.”
And then the trio of men collapsed into laughter.
So they were all in the cups, though Henry Princely. Was that so bad? He himself chose not to imbibe these days, but perhaps that was from his time abroad more than anything else. It had proved difficult to maintain the ever-popular lifestyle of drinking until cards, cards until dinner, dinner until women, and women until marriage when he had been doing his Grand Tour. His father had managed to procure some connections with the royal houses of Rome and Madrid, and Henry had enjoyed the lavishness he had been presented with when he was there. But when he stepped out of the palace to his own quarters, he had happened upon the starving children in the slums there in one city and then the next, and the disparity between the wealth of the privileged few and the underserved had struck him most acutely, had sobered him into seriousness earlier than he had expected. When he had hasten back to London due to his father’s illness, the remains of that particular lifestyle had disappeared entirely, and Henry’s days had become a familiar routine of bills, nurses, and keeping all the decanters around his home empty for his mother had become well-acquainted with that particular devil in her struggle to cope with the happenings-on.
Truth be told, there was little amusing about the fact that he had now inherited his father’s title almost a year hence and had been mired in an ocean of paperwork when he could have been grieving for what had gone on. But when his London friends decided upon that little formal greeting, they had been unable to resist addressing each other in turn until the hilarity of the appointments had washed over them all as they shook hands. Maintaining that they all now had new responsibilities was perhaps not amusing in the conventional sense, but Henry preferred it this way—it was easier to laugh than to cry, and he felt the old camaraderie settle over him like a balm.
“Fitzy St. Hubert is having her coming out ball tonight,” Jack Whetstone informed Henry companionably as they all piled into the carriage together.
“Where is she coming out of, the stables?” joked Rafe, and the three of them chortled companionably. The lady in question did indeed have something vaguely horse-like about her face, but her mother was not about to let a little toothiness stand in the way of pushing her daughter’s not insubstantial dowry under the nose of every eligible bachelor in town. Henry had no doubt that despite their teasing, one of his friends would surely take the lady under consideration tonight, considering the extent of their own gambling debts. It was not long before the carriage rumbled into view of the great mansion and trio of men tumbled out.
The dance room was abuzz. It had been many years since Henry had seen most of the crowd before him, and many came by to offer him their condolences on the death of his father, the late Lord Princely. “A king amongst men!” one particularly hysterical neighbor had wept. “An absolute KING!” Which was all well and good, but Henry did wish the woman would control herself; he had no desire to be reminded of what had consumed the last year of his life at such a gay event.
His eyes swept over the crowd and settled on a familiar face. “Is that Haversham?” he asked Rafe.
His friend looked in the general direction. “Yes. I hear he’s been wasting his fortune away at the races, and now he’s dangerously close to the poorhouse. He better hope those dreamy blue eyes of his snag some wealthy heiress soon, or the only way he’ll be able to bet on a horse is if its meat is in his soup or not.”
From the looks of it, Lord Devon Haversham would have no trouble at all snaring himself a wealthy wife, but for his sake, Henry hoped that she would hold tight to the purse strings, or Devon would find himself ruining not one, but two fortunes. The handsome young man with his full head of wavy black hair and charmingly tied cravat was deep in an intimate conversation with a dreamy-eyed blonde who clung to his well-muscled arm and hung on his every word. Henry could tell immediately that she was a dangerous type. Her naiveté and loveliness would blind most men to an incessant neediness and wild flights of imagination; just look at the gaze she had trained on Devon now! Still, there was something about her that stirred his memory delicately. He nudged Jack, who was busy acquainting himself with Fitzy St. Hubert, horse like teeth notwithstanding.
“Who is that lady?”
Jack peeked over and his face softened. “Ah,” he said lazily, his voice stretching out as if he was eating a particularly tasty candy, “That is Isadora Givens, the youngest daughter of the late Lord Givens. Your childhood neighbors, I believe.”
Henry’s memory poked at him. “Isadora! What happened to her father?”
Jack shook his head ruefully. “Darndest thing. He was never quite right after Lady Givens passed, and he became as obsessed with the horse races as Haversham. The story goes that he had a small fortune riding on Flibbertigibbet, this yearling from Marlborough, and at the last minute, the jockey wouldn’t ride because. So Givens decides to ride instead of him.”
“No.”
Jack nodded. “So obviously, the horse gets all nervous and throws Givens, breaking his back and leaving both of his daughters completely parentless.”
Henry’s memory kicked at him again, this time at a place much closer to the surface. He had quite a few memories of the other Givens girl, and unconsciously, his eyes began to seek out a red mop of hair amongst the dancing crowd, although he knew that the lady in question would have undoubtedly look much different now. Jack caught his eye and, deducting that he had already spotted the younger Givens sister, grinned impishly. “Anabelle is the toast of the town these days, even though she had her coming out ages ago. A bit of a bluestocking, but very popular with the literature crowd at the south end of the room.” Watching his friend’s eyes swing in that particular direction, Jack again turned his attentions to th
e eager Lady St. Hubert.
It was hard to make her out at first amongst the crowd of older gentleman, but soon enough, Henry spotted a crown of glossy red hair separating out. One of the gentlemen, sandy-haired and formidable-looking, proffered a hand, and the fingers that reached out of the coven to grab his were endlessly long and slender. Henry’s eyes traveled up that hand to an equally toned arm, to a rose-colored gown—he had no doubt Jack or Rafe could say whether or not it was in season, but did not care—to a deep décolletage, and then a face that was utterly familiar and alien all at the same time.
When he saw her face, Henry did not care what kind of stocking she was at all, blue or any other color. It was not that Anabelle Givens had a sensationally beautiful face; it was that it was so alive with expression and sensitivity, so like and unlike the face he remembered so well from his childhood romps and, most memorably, that day in the hay, that in that moment, Henry Princely felt squarely and securely that he had most certainly arrived home.
Tumbles of red locks fell about her face, curled artfully. Her brown eyes slanted at the corners, giving her the unusual look of laughing all the time. As her gentleman partner twirled her in a lively fashion, Henry got flashes of curved hips and shoulders, a full bosom, and a mouth that was open with merriment and conversation. He was not prepared at all for the rush of emotions that hit him when he saw Anabelle, but in that moment, he tumbled straight into her image, into the solid woman she had become, into the adult body that he, for many reasons, wanted to crush into his own and lay there forever. Just seeing Anabelle, seeing how she was able to laugh even after what had happened to her father made him want to take her by the hand and lead her right back to that stable, lay down and tell her every darned, damnable thing that had happened to him over the past year, if only so that she could order him to snap out of it as she used to when they were small.
“Why, he’s a man possessed,” he heard Rafe say next to him and realized with a start that his friend was indeed, referring to him. He had apparently lost himself in contemplation of Anabelle Givens for the past few minutes, long enough for both of his friends, and Lady St. Hubert to take notice. He heard them tittering behind him like schoolchildren, but the fact of the matter was that it was true. He wanted to get to know the woman with the red hair because somewhere underneath the years that had passed between them, she was the girl with the red hair who he felt he could share everything with. And so he inched his way closer, shy, suddenly, but bold somewhere deep on the inside because his feet did not stop moving until he was smoothly taking Anabelle's hand from her sandy-haired partner and clasping it in his own.
She saw him coming and recognized him immediately. Lion-maned Henry Princely was the farthest from the prig his name suggested he should be. She had noticed him from the corner of her eye, had known that this was the first event he was coming to since Lord Princely's passing. She did not attend many balls like this anymore because there was simply no more money for a new gown, although she had developed quite the skill as a seamstress to make over old gowns into new ones, as was accepted and right. She bowed low, accepted Henry's hand, and managed to do both while not being able to breathe quite at all.
Ten years it had been since she had last seen the little boy who had given her first kiss. Ten long, difficult years. They all rushed quickly in front of her eyes as the spirited dance picked up its tempo. She took his hand and they danced, sinking into a private world with no words, but with much understanding, although she did not know he understood her and he did not know she understood him. Too much time had passed.
Once the dance had concluded, to Anabelle's surprise, Henry did not release her back into the literary set that was so long waiting for her re-appearance. Instead, with a gentle tug on her gloved hand, he led her aside to a secluded balcony where they saw no one and no one saw them; instead, around them were the curved moldings of the mansion and below them, the spacious grounds.
“What brings you back home, Lord Princely?” asked Anabelle, for decorum dictated that she do so.
He turned his pale eyes on her and she nearly swallowed her tongue from the intensity in them. “Don't let's do that, Anabelle,” he replied calmly, reaching out so that their hands were side by side on the railing against which they leaned. “If you have even one ear, you know I came back because my father was ill and because my mother fell apart after that.”
Anabelle hung her head, dogged, but also felt a massive burden, the one that told her to be polite, slide off her shoulders. “It is terrible to lose a parent,” she said to him softly, watching their pinky fingers side by side.
“Come now, Lady Givens, it is not all so bad. After all, I got to see you and the lovely woman you grew into. I would call that reward enough for a day.”
“Wh—” but before Anabelle could breathe or ask or talk, Henry had taken her hand in his and Anabelle felt something hot and heavy slide into the pit of her stomach. It gave her confidence, a new kind of joy. His palm was warm against hers, and she stepped out of her tired, poor body for a moment.
Apparently, when Anabelle was not herself, she did insane things. Like reaching up and wrapping her arms around Lord Henry Princely.
He was warm. His arms closed around her in a welcoming embrace, and Anabelle Givens felt quite as if she had returned to a very familiar, very safe place. There was no shock, no surprise even, simply a welcoming of an old friend charged with an undertone Anabelle did not want to examine.
They stayed like that for the longest time.
* * *
It was a shame Isadora did not know she was a dead woman, though Anabelle as she gathered up her skirts from the muck.
It was just like her little sister to go running off to the horse races. Exactly as their father used to be. Anabelle had woken that morning, still fresh off of her encounter with the handsome Henry Princely despite the week that had passed, only to discover from their last remaining house servant that Isadora had been collected in the early morning by none other than the horse-mad Lord Haversham. Some nonsense about her being his lucky charm or something like that.
Given the impropriety of Devon's daily activities, the least of which included betting on horses that never had any chance of winning, and the worst of which included the type of activities Anabelle hoped her sister would never learn about, lest her rosy picture of the handsome Haversham be destroyed utterly, it was not the best of situations that had occurred that morning. Particularly since her sister must have known this, considering how early she must have risen to go off with the blue-eyed rake. As she ordered the servant as mildly as she could to saddle up the horse for her, Anabelle felt a surge of rage go through her. It was just like her sister to ignore their family history and go gallivanting about as she pleased.
As the wind whipped her unruly red locks around her neck and face, Anabelle leaned into her horse and pressed on, hoping to overtake Lord Haversham's carriage. She did not, would not, ever understand her sister's fascination with the races, although she could well understand that it was hardly the animals that held her so in thrall, but rather the mopsy-headed man who had come to collect her. Beautiful, impetuous Isadora, with her soft, almost-white blond hair and eyes that looked like the world opened up as soon as you looked in them. How could she not follow in the family's footsteps when Devon Haversham was so like Papa?
Anabelle clutched back a sob as she remembered that fateful day when she and Isadora had lost their last remaining parent. It had been a while since Lord Givens had been a responsible guardian of any kind, but he was better than nothing. He had allowed the house to fall into a state of such disrepair that their friends had stopped coming. Wasting all of his money on drink and the races, he had quickly become a stranger in the household. Still, he worshiped his daughters, particularly dreamy-eyed Isadora. Anabelle could not remember how young her little sister had been when their father had first begun taking her out to the stables and teaching her the names of all of the horses and giving her lectures o
n exactly the type of feed and sequence of grooming each one preferred. And Isadora had clearly felt the same back for their father, because she had followed him around, committing every last detail to memory.
The household had been left up to Anabelle after their mother had succumbed to the coughing sickness when she was just fourteen. A year of physicians, bills, and watching the love of his life succumb to an illness he could not cure as easily as he could care for his horses had left Lord Givens completely emotionally drained. After she passed, he became like a ghost, wandering around the halls of their home as if he had quite forgotten why he was there in the first place. The only thing that could bring him back to life was the mention of his favorite horse, Marjorie, a tactic that the girls had had to use fairly often.
The household had fallen almost naturally into Anabelle's capable hands. Still, despite the training she had received at her mother's hands, it had been an uphill battle to keep the household afloat. Balancing the books had proved to be particularly difficult since whatever money they had was dedicated to her father's love of the four-legged creatures of the Earth. Isadora, in her stead, had developed a fondness for fashionable clothing, and it was not long after Anabelle had become skillful at turning their old gowns into new with a few simple tricks that Isadora had decided, with all the impetuousness of a child, that this simply was not good enough. Knowing how starved her sister had been of the attention her mother had paid her, Anabelle had gone without so that her sister could have what she wanted. Still, it was too much for her young shoulders, and there were more nights than she could count where she found herself locked in her bedchamber, sobbing, her cries magnified tenfold in the emptiness of the house around her.
ROMANCE: CLEAN ROMANCE: Summer Splash! (Sweet Inspirational Contemporary Romance) (New Adult Clean Fantasy Short Stories) Page 72