She furrowed her brow. No, she really didn’t care to hear one bit about this Miss Margaret someone-or-another who’d held his affection.
They studied one another in stony silence. With mention of some faceless young lady, Harry suddenly belonged to another. Anne frowned, regret turning inside her belly. She, for some inexplicable reason, preferred a world in which he was the grinning, teasing gentleman who courted her—if even just to school her on the art of seduction. “What happened?” Did that whispery soft question belong to her?
“She possessed a beauty men waged wars for.”
Anne’s stomach twisted into a thousand pained knots. With her silly gold ringlets, she’d never inspire that level of passion and devotion in him. She blinked. Anyone. She’d meant she would never inspire that level of passion and devotion in anyone.
“She was a baronet’s daughter,” he carried on, and she prayed he remained unaware of the envy sluicing through her. “She had a gentle voice, a clear laugh, and I was captivated the moment I first saw her.” Unlike Anne, who’d nearly driven him to madness since their initial meeting. A hard smile curved his lips. “And men clamored for her. Dueled for her even.”
The scandal. She dug her fingers into her palm so hard she nearly drew blood. “You fought a duel for her,” she whispered. Oh, the fool. She imagined a world with him no longer in it, all for a woman undeserving of his love and loyalty. Agony wrenched her heart.
“I was a callow youth. Just twenty-two years.”
Not so very young. He’d been a man who surely knew his own heart. After all, at twenty, nearly twenty-one years, she very well knew her heart.
“I fought the Marquess of Rutland for the right to the lady’s affection.”
Rutland. Her eyes slid closed. Oh, God. The very same gentleman whose name she’d bandied about to enlist Harry’s aid. What must he think? “I didn’t know,” she whispered.
He waved her off as though her apology was nothing more than a fleck of dust upon his sleeve. “It was long ago. Eight years,” he added. “I was young.” His lips turned up again in that mocking smile. “Young and foolish. We fought to first blood.” He touched one of her golden curls. “You don’t seem surprised by my admission.”
There was the hint of a question in there. She tipped up her chin. “It will take more than mere mention of a duel to scandalize me. My brother-in-law, Aldora’s husband, Michael, he fought a duel as well.” She sighed. She’d never understand the foolish ways men sought to settle disputes. Even with her desire for stability, she ached to know love. But she’d not ask, expect or want any man to risk his life upon a field of honor for her. “You’d have died for her?”
“I would have.” His automatic response gutted her.
Silence fell between them. Pain pulled at her heart as she studied him, considering the story he’d shared. He’d not always been this affable rogue. He’d become this after his heart had been broken. He had risked all for love and in the end… She cocked her head. “What happened?” In the end, neither Harry nor Lord Rutland had earned the lady’s fidelity.
A taunting smile pulled at his lips. “She craved a lofty title and wealth, Anne.”
She frowned. The only word missing from that pronouncement was, too. The manner in which he made that last admission bore an almost accusatory edge, as though he’d judged her and found her as guilty as the woman who’d broken his heart. And Anne loathed being placed in that same, damning category as his past love. She folded her arms and unable to meet his eyes, looked at the expert lines of his immaculately folded white cravat. I am not that woman. I am not that woman.
But aren’t you?
Harry went on, relentless. “She pledged her love, I pledged mine.”
Anne glanced at him once more and wished she hadn’t.
He’d fixed his gaze to the top of her hairline and in that moment she was forgotten to him. His disregard wrenched at her. He continued, driving the daggers of pain all the deeper. “I intended to offer her marriage.” Her heart spasmed. “I arrived with a bouquet of flowers and a silly sonnet in my hand, to speak first with her father.” A cold, humorless chuckle escaped him. “Her father laughed. Why would he accept the hand of an earl for his daughter when she could have a duke?”
Anne drew in a slow, shocked breath under a staggering truth. Even as she craved the stability and security the Duke of Crawford represented, she wanted love. Wanted it more than anything, and knew if she’d secured the heart of a good, kind gentleman who penned her sonnets and loved her with his whole heart, she’d have traded all the titles of duchess in England. She pressed her eyes closed. God help her, she was as imprudent as her mother and terror gripped her at how easily she might allow herself to become an equally shamed creature betrayed by love.
“What? Nothing to say, sweet?” he asked, his tone, harsher than she ever remembered.
In this very moment, Anne despised herself for having involved him in this scheme which had resurrected the pain of his past. “Perhaps she had her reasons,” she said softly, wishing she could spare him the agony of his lost love.
He shoved away from her chair. “Only a mercurial lady with,” he slashed his hand in the direction of her piles of ribbons, “a love of material possessions and a vain sense of her beauty to fear being a bespectacled miss would say as much.”
His words held her frozen. She stared blankly down at the stacks of ribbons upon the floor, seeing them the way he must surely see them; an endless pile of fripperies belonging to a self-indulgent young lady. He could never realize the irrational fear that still kept her awake at night, of a day when the creditors would come calling. The world was an unkind one to women. It was even more unkind to women left in Dun territory. Her collection of ribbons didn’t represent a love of the material. Rather, they represented her fear of living in a state of destitution once more. Yet…she couldn’t tell him this, for it would only serve to make her less desirable in his—or any man’s—eyes. “Is that what you see?” she asked softly. “A selfish creature living for material comforts?”
He scoffed. “How else should I see it?”
His condemnation, this same low-opinion he carried of her, shared by everyone, burned, and that which she’d buried long ago, boiled over. “How dare you?” she asked, feeding the faint stirrings of fury because it dulled the ache of knowing just how little Harry thought of her when he so revered dear Katherine. “My father was a wastrel.” She took a step toward him, suddenly wanting him to understand, needing him to understand. “A drunkard, Harry. A profligate gambler, a man who betrayed his wife.” Though Mama had never dared breathe the words aloud, Anne had heard the hushed rumors when she’d made her Come Out. “He had a mistress whom he loved and kept comfortable.” Her throat worked spasmodically. “Even while he wagered away his own family’s stability and security.”
“Anne, I didn’t—”
She took another step closer, her abrupt movement cut into his gruff words. “What? You didn’t know?” He’d merely assumed like everyone else that her life had been one way when in actuality it had been quite another. His expression grew shuttered. “You didn’t know that my family lost everything because of my father’s wagering?” Anne looked beyond his shoulder, her throat worked painfully. “The staff was the first to be let go.” Individuals who’d been with her family as long as Anne could remember. “Then the creditors took everything. They even took my ribbons.” Her voice broke and she hated the sign of weakness. Surely he mistook it as a love of her, as he’d called it, material possessions. Except, it had been easier to focus on the loss of ribbons, than the loss of servants who’d been more like family to the Adamson siblings over the years. She forced herself to look at him. “With the exception of one orange scrap, they claimed every last silly strip. It will forever remind me of the perils of giving my heart to a roguish scoundrel.” She would never make her mother’s mistake.
The harshness within the angular plains of Harry’s face softened. He held a hand out, h
is silence more powerful than any words he might have spoken.
She felt bare before him. Splayed open for him to see the secrets she carried, many secrets not even known by her family, and yet she wanted to turn over the burden of her past to another.
Nay, not just anyone. Harry. She needed to share this piece of herself with him, so mayhap he could understand she was not the vain creature he’d taken her for. “When I was a young girl I couldn’t fathom what value there was to be had in the silly scraps of fabric.” Anne bent down and retrieved the forgotten satin strips. She rubbed them in her hands. The glaringly bright, cheerful colors mocked her with the reminder of her past. A bitter laugh bubbled past her lips. “As though they could have managed to cover any of Father’s colossal debt.” Through the years, those inexpensive fripperies had come to represent more—the necessity of having a steadfast, unwavering husband who’d never betray his family in the manner her own father had. She folded her arms and hugged herself. “They took Katherine’s books and my brother’s toy soldiers, but for the handful I buried in the gardens.” She came to stand before him, so close the tips of their toes brushed. “The memory of that loss and fear didn’t die with my father as you might expect.”
“You’re wrong,” he said, his voice husky. “I didn’t imagine that wouldn’t shape you.”
“Yes, everything we experience in life shapes, us, doesn’t it? It forges us into the people we are today.” Anne glanced at her useless ribbons and recalled Lady Ava Westmoreland’s fingers dancing upon her cherished pianoforte keys “And I,” she looked back at him. “I live with the constant reminders of that past. I have to see it, witness it, remember it at recitals where other women play my instrument, won for them by their f-father…” She paused to collect herself, hating the manner in which her voice broke, almost as much as she loathed the flash of pity in Harry’s eyes. “I would have traded that pianoforte and every last ribbon for a father devoted to his family.”
“I’m so s—”
Anne held her palms up, not wanting his pity, rather wanting him to understand. “I’ll not be destitute again. Not because I’m avaricious, as you’ve accused me, but because I knew the terror of lying awake and wondering what is to become of my family. So don’t you judge me, Harry. Don’t you—”
He folded her in his arms and kissed the remainder of the words from her lips.
Chapter 8
Harry kissed her. He’d only intended to silence her. Cowardly bastard that he was, he’d needed to bury her words that forced him to imagine Anne as a small girl with great, big blue eyes and golden ringlets lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling hiding a single scrap of orange satin, while her scapegrace of a father wagered away her ribbons. He wanted to cut the flow of words from her sweet lips, because he preferred to think of her as a cold, calculated miss in search of a lofty title, who fit neatly into a category alongside the Miss Margaret Dunns of the world.
With her admission, however, she’d forced him to recognize the fear that drove her marital aspirations. Most young ladies craved flowers and sonnets, but his Anne, she craved security.
And God help him, in that moment she made him wish he were the kind of man she deserved. A man who’d give up his clubs and drink and the strings of mistresses to make her his wife. But he could never be that man. He’d given away his heart and he’d not do so again. Not when there was nothing left of the useless organ.
So, he kissed her. Kissed her so his blasted heart didn’t ache in remembrance of the forlorn frown on her lips at Lady Westmoreland’s recital that now made sense. Kissed her until she twined her long fingers about his neck and moaned into his mouth. Kissed her until his body hardened against her belly. Kissed her until he knew from her gasping pants that desire replaced despair.
He slanted his lips over hers again and again as he longed to learn the taste of her. A hint of berry, a hint of lemon. She was a veritable dessert a man could feast on for the remainder of his days, and just then, he wanted to be that man.
“Harry.” His name, escaped her lips; a desperate entreaty that jerked him back to sanity.
He pulled back and she made a sound of protest. Harry pulled free the neat combs that held her hair in place. Her golden tresses tumbled around her shoulders and back like a waterfall of pure sun. His gut clenched as he imagined the satin strands fanning his pillow while he came over her and laid claim to her. He kissed her eyelids, her cheek. He trailed his lips lower to the elegant line of her neck where her pulse beat wildly. He nipped and sucked at the smooth flesh until her knees collapsed and he caught her against his chest.
Harry planted a hard kiss at the corner of her temple. “This is how you should wear your hair, Anne. Not in tight ringlets,” Though, those ringlets he’d once thought silly now seemed to suit her. “Beautiful and free, just as you are. They should caress your shoulders and breasts.” He brushed his hand over her modest décolletage.
She blinked and shoved him. He stumbled at the unexpectedness of the movement. Anne dragged her fingers through a mass of golden curls with frantic movements, restoring her hair to rights. “Is that what this was, Harry?” she asked, her words bleeding hurt. “Another lesson on the art of seduction?”
He stiffened. Despite her charged accusation, it hadn’t been. His kiss had begun as something far more, when he, Harry, the Earl of Stanhope never gave more. What had been an attempt to drive the sadness from her eyes and the damned ache in his heart had become…this.
And he’d not regret having taken her in his arms but he would never forgive himself if Anne came to believe there could ever be more between them. Not when she’d stated in no uncertain terms the respectable, flawless gentleman she desired.
He forced a grin to his lips. “Isn’t that what you sought me out for, sweet?” She recoiled at his deliberately cruel and mocking tone. “For a lesson on how to seduce Crawford?” he asked, all the while knowing his words would only drive her away from him and into the duke’s arms. His gut clenched at the mere thought of the other man. In thinking his name, in being Crawford and not a mere title, he became somehow more real and Harry detested him for it. The proper, staid Duke of Crawford was what Anne deserved and not a man such as Harry, too much like her shameful father.
She searched his face. “Why are you doing this?” She stuffed her curls back behind her ears in an attempt to put her hair to rights.
He cursed and spun her around.
“What…?”
Harry quickly tucked her golden ringlets into the delicate butterfly combs at the base of her head. He shifted her around and studied his work. She no longer appeared as though she’d been one kiss away from a thorough bout of lovemaking on the parlor sofa. What a travesty.
Anne turned back; a pinched set to her mouth. “You’re very proficient with a lady’s hair.”
Again, her words bore the faintest traces of jealousy, that dangerously dark emotion that had no place between them.
He arched an eyebrow. “You sound disappointed, sweet—”
“Stop calling me sweet,” she bit out.
“Most women appreciate my—”
She slapped him. Hard.
Harry flexed his jaw. Christ, the woman was far stronger than most gents he’d faced in Gentleman Jackson’s ring. He rubbed the wounded flesh.
“You don’t have to be crude,” she said, backing away from him. He took a step toward her. She held a hand up. “D-do not, H-harry.”
“Do you think I’d hurt you?” he snapped. The idea she should fear him burned like acid thrown upon an open wound.
She wrinkled her brow. “Of course not.” She gave a toss of her ringlets. “I’m cross with you.”
“Cross?”
She nodded. “Cross.” The tension eased from her taut frame. “You needn’t worry I’ve come to care for you,” she said with a remarkable insight. She caught a loose tress and gave it a distracted tug. “I would never be so naïve as to believe a kiss from you would mean anything more.”
&n
bsp; Harry jerked erect. Her, words intended to reassure, instead ran through him with a savage intensity. He remained silent.
She leaned over and patted his hand. “I’ve enlisted your support to garner the duke’s affection. I understood your rule, Harry.” He started, having forgotten he’d put any rules to her madcap scheme. “I’m not to fall in love with you.” Had he said that? Anne continued, unaware of his inner strife. “So you needn’t be crude or ungentlemanly or condescending,” she added that last under her breath.
He bit back a smile. “You’d have me teach you the art of seduction in a way that is gentlemanly and polite, then?”
She nodded again. “Precisely.”
He opened his mouth to point out that he was the last person to instruct her on anything proper or polite.
A knock sounded at the door. They looked as one to the doorway to where the butler stood with a familiar, increasingly loathsome, ducal figure. Harry fisted his hands at his side.
More Than a Duke (Heart of a Duke Book 2) Page 9