by Maya Rodale
The Morning Post
AFTER Knightly knocked on the door to the Swift residence, a meek servant opened it and mutely led him to the drawing room where he might await Annabelle.
The room was sparsely furnished. Everything was useful and plain. No thought seemed to have been spared to comfort, just practicality. He thought of his own home, also simple but designed for ease and comfort, with plush carpets and richly upholstered furniture. Everything was expensive, yet nothing was ostentatious.
This room, however, was thrifty to an extreme.
And then there was Annabelle, standing in the doorway. She wore a shapeless brown dress with a white apron pinned to the front. White flour covered her hands, spotted the brown dress, and there was even a smudge on her cheek.
Her eyes, though . . . instead of sparkling, they were dull. In fact, he suspected she had been crying when he noted her eyes were reddish and puffy, too. He felt like he had been punched in the gut.
“What are you doing here?” she asked flatly. When she did not sound pleased to see him, he realized he had expected her to be, which made him feel like an ass. Like a nodcock.
“Why are you wearing an apron?” he asked. She should not be dressed like a servant.
“Cook and I were baking bread,” she answered.
“Don’t you have help for that?” She was the sister to a prosperous cloth merchant. They should have a fleet of household help. A woman of Annabelle’s position should be occupied with friends and finding a husband, not domestic drudgery.
“I am the help,” she answered flatly. This was not the Annabelle he knew; she seemed to be missing her sense of magic and wonder. Something was wrong. Was it the awful request he’d made of her? Probably. He was glad he’d come to apologize.
“Why are you here, Mr. Knightly?” she asked.
“Would you like to sit?” As a gentleman, he could not take a seat until she did.
Mutely, she sat upon the settee. He took a place next to her on the most uncomfortable piece of furniture he’d ever encountered. He reached for her hand and held it in his. Her hand was cold.
“I owe you an apology, Annabelle. It was wrong of me to ask you to encourage Marsden on behalf of the newspaper. Or as a favor to me.”
Knightly had expected to find his conscience soothed upon uttering those words. He had traveled across London, all the way from the Fleet Street office to Bloomsbury to deliver them. He thought she would thank him and say not to worry, for she had understood his request was one of a desperate idiot. A nodcock.
Annabelle narrowed her blue eyes and titled her head questioningly. His breath hitched in his throat.
“Julianna put you up to this, didn’t she?” she asked. He could not miss the note of accusation in her tone.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You have come to apologize because Julianna thinks it’s wrong of you to ask and pathetic of me to agree to it,” she said, spitting out the words. At least as much as Annabelle could do. Then she took a deep breath that foretold doom and proceeded to say more to him than she ever had in the years he’d known her. “We all know that the only thing you care about is the newspaper. No one is under any illusions here, Mr. Knightly. Not even me, who has a foolish propensity toward flights of fancy and always seeks the bloody goodness in everyone.”
Knightly’s jaw dropped. Annabelle had uttered a swear word. What next—unicorns pulling hackneys and the King in dresses?
“I knew what you were asking of me. And why. I’m not stupid,” she added. Her chin jutted forward. She lifted her head high. Angry Annabelle was impish and magnificent all at the same time. Thinking had suddenly become impossible when all the truths he’d ever known seemed null. This was Annabelle as he had never seen her—and, he suspected, as she’d never even been seen.
“It was wrong of me to ask,” he said, because that was all he knew in a world that had just turned upside down.
“It was wrong. You really ought to think beyond yourself and your newspaper for once,” she lectured. “I ought to have said so at the moment you asked. I’m very sorry you have come all this way to hear me say that. And listen to me! You are in the wrong and I have just apologized. I am such a . . . a . . . nodcock!”
“Annabelle, what is this all about?” he asked in a calm, measured tone.
She took a deep breath to calm herself. She fixed her pretty blue eyes on him.
“You really do not know,” she said, awed. He had no idea what she was talking about. It must have shown in his expression. “Oh . . . oh . . . oh . . . bloody hell!”
She flung herself back on the wretchedly uncomfortable settee and just laughed her pretty blond head off while he marveled that Annabelle, who barely spoke, had just uttered the words “bloody hell.”
He did not know what was so funny.
He was about to ask when the laughter ceased and the tears began.
Knightly glanced in the direction of the heavens, seeking guidance. Like many a man, nothing flummoxed him like a woman’s tears. With some mixture of horror and terror, he watched as Annabelle wept beside him.
Although she looked tragic and adorable, something had to be done to stop this madness. First, he pressed a clean handkerchief into her palm and she pressed it to her eyes. Her pretty shoulders shook as she cried.
Horrors. Curses.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered; then, with a sigh, he pulled her into his arms.
Annabelle burrowed her face into his shoulder. No doubt soaking his jacket and cravat with tears. It didn’t matter. He could feel her become calm and still in his embrace.
He also felt her soft curls brushing against his fingertips. He felt her breasts pressing against his chest. He felt powerful for having soothed her. It felt right to hold her so close. Above all he craved more. All he wanted was more Annabelle.
He whispered her name.
They were interrupted before anything untoward could occur. A dowdy, hatchet-faced woman stood in the drawing room entry and cleared her throat. Loudly.
“Would someone like to explain this scene to me?” she asked in a sharp voice. Annabelle recoiled from his embrace and took up the smallest possible amount of space on the far end of the settee.
Knightly replied in kind. He did not take orders anywhere, from anyone. “Perhaps introductions might be in order,” he stated after rising to his feet.
The woman lifted one brow at his command, in her house.
Annabelle, on the other hand, interrupted in the softest voice.
“This is my sister-in-law, Mrs. Blanche Swift,” she said dully. And then with a pleading glance at him, she added, “This is Mr. Knightly, with whom I work on the Society for the Advancement of Female Literacy.”
Society for the Advancement of Female Literacy? Oh, Annabelle.
Knightly ached to turn to her and ask a thousand questions. But he recognized a scene when he was in the midst of it. He did his best to play his part.
He schooled his features into what he hoped was a charitable expression; he had not inherited his mother’s gift for acting.
“Ah, yes. Your charity work,” Mrs. Mean Swift said in a glacial tone to Annabelle. “When I suggested that charity begins at home, this was not at all what I had in mind. Who is supervising the children? Have they been fed? What of the bread?”
Annabelle stood a step or two behind Knightly, as if he might protect her from her hatchet-faced sister-in-law. Frankly, he wanted to.
“Nancy is with them,” Annabelle answered, even though Knightly thought she ought to reply that governesses and servants existed for those sorts of tasks, not sisters.
“I see.” To emphasize her point, Mrs. Swift glared at Annabelle, who took a step back. She then glared at Knightly, who only squared his shoulders, stood taller, and looked down his nose at her. Intimidating with one’s size was a juvenile maneuve
r, but really, sometimes the situation just called for it.
“Mrs. Swift, I would like to conclude my conversation with Miss Swift,” he stated. He paused for emphasis and added, “Privately.”
Never mind that he was a guest. In her house.
She stared at him with narrowed eyes.
Knightly confidently met her gaze and held it. Unblinkingly. Really, one did not attain his level of success without the ability to win a staring contest.
“I will insist the drawing room door remains open,” she said harshly. “The last thing I need is a moral lapse that results in a poor example for my own children.” She turned quickly and quit the room. No one was sorry to see her go.
Had he not been fully in the mode of Haughty Commander of All He Surveyed, his jaw might have dropped open.
Did this woman not know Annabelle? He’d wager his fortune she was the last person in the world who might corrupt an innocent youth. She was probably the last woman in the world who set a poor example. She was a paragon.
Or did he not know her?
Speaking of the little minx, she’d been hiding behind him during that strange introduction, and he turned to face her now. He smiled. And took a seat on the damned uncomfortable sofa.
“My dear Annabelle, you have some explaining to do.”
Chapter 25
A First Kiss
DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE
The Duke of Kent dismissed his secretary upon discovering the man was bribed to relay information to writers of The Morning Chronicle. The editor and reporter’s arrests are imminent.
The London Weekly
IN the history of bad days, Annabelle was certain this one would rank in the top one hundred. Perhaps even the top ten. It was certainly one of the worst days in her own life, along with the death and funeral of her parents and the day Blanche married her brother.
There was the horrible fight with her fellow Writing Girls earlier that morning. All these years, she’d been afraid they would find her tedious or foolish. Today her fears were confirmed. It was everything she had dreaded, and more.
Even worse, Knightly had asked her to debase herself for him. While she had not agreed, she had not refused. In fact, she had defended him when she ought to have stood up for herself. That he was here in her drawing room, apologizing, only confirmed that Julianna was correct and she had been a fool.
Had she not been so fixated upon Knightly, to the exclusion of all sense, reason, and eligible bachelors, she might have married another by now. She could be a mother of a darling brood with a home of her own. Annabelle thought of Mr. Nathan Smythe and his bakery down the road. She was baking bread anyway; why not in her own kitchen instead of slaving for the ever-unappreciative Blanche?
Worst of all, she had imagined Knightly calling upon her at home a time or two or twenty. But not like this. Not when she wore her worst dress and her eyes were red after sobbing in a hired hack all the way from Mayfair to Bloomsbury.
Not when she ungraciously ignored his apology, bickered, burst into tears, buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed.
He had held her; it was lovely beyond words to have a man’s strong arms holding her close and secure, as if protecting her from the world. She had wanted to savor it more but was all too aware that she was soaking his fine white linen shirt. All too aware that a dream of hers was coming true—Knightly, embracing her—but she was too distraught to enjoy a second of it.
Cruel, cruel world!
Then Blanche interrupted and mortified her. Treating her like a servant was one thing, but to do so in front of Knightly? Words could not describe the humiliation of having him see just how worthless and unloved she was by her own family, in her own home.
He could never love her now. She had a prodigious imagination, but even she could not envision how a man so strong and commanding as he could ever fall for a delusional, foolish, and unappreciated girl like her.
“Miss Swift,” Knightly said sternly as he sat on the settee. She stood before him, emotionally distraught and utterly exhausted.
“My dear Annabelle,” he said, and she wondered if he was mocking her.
She heaved a sigh.
“You have some explaining to do,” Knightly commanded. It was as if the Swift drawing room was his office at The London Weekly. Well, it wasn’t and she didn’t have to explain anything. She told him just that.
“This is not your office. I don’t have to explain anything to you,” she said. For emphasis, she folded her arms over her chest. Was it her imagination, or did his gaze stray to her décolletage?
“Annabelle, you intrigue me more each day,” he said, and her lips parted in shock.
“What do you mean?”
“The Society for the Advancement of Female Literacy?” he questioned with a lift of his brow. She sighed again and sat beside him.
“They do not know the truth,” she confessed quietly.
“You’ve kept that secret for three years?” he asked incredulously.
“Three years, seven months, and five days,” she clarified out of habit. “They do not read The Weekly. I did not care to encourage them. I fear they would not approve of me writing and would forbid me from doing so.”
And it was something that belonged to her, and her alone. Writing for The Weekly had been her secret, happy life. Advising and helping other people was the one thing she was good at, and it satisfied her deeply to be recognized for her talent. Much as she assisted at home, her family never gave her much credit for it.
“How did you keep such a secret for so long?” Knightly asked, his blue eyes searching hers for more answers.
“Mr. Knightly,” she began impatiently. She moved away and began to pace about the sparsely decorated room. “I exist in the shadows, overlooked. I do not bother people. I live to serve. I am a professional solver of other people’s problems, often at the expense of my own. And above all, expectations for me are low. Even if you told Blanche now who you are and what I write, it would take a quarter hour, at least, to convince her you told the truth.”
“I see,” he said after a long silence.
“Do you? Do you really?”
“I’m beginning to,” he said. He glanced over at the open door. “And why do you think Julianna motivated my apology?”
“You know, it’s awfully audacious of you to call upon me for this interrogation,” Annabelle replied, because she didn’t want to answer that question and say that Julianna meddled terribly and that she didn’t have faith that Knightly would recognize what a wretched position his request placed her in.
“I came only to apologize. This interrogation was inspired by the oceans of domestic drama I have witnessed in your drawing room. Besides, I didn’t become so successful by standing aside,” he said, to the girl who was an expert at taking one step to the left—or right, you pick!—and generally getting out of the way.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“Be bold, Annabelle,” Knightly said, his voice all low and urgent and making her want to do just that, in spite of herself. “I like it. And it probably suits you more than you realize.”
“I’ve been trying,” she replied, and there was anguish in her voice. Because this boldness didn’t come naturally to her. It was a conscious thought, a deliberate action. For every success, she encountered some sort of trouble Old Annabelle never would have succumbed to.
Old Annabelle never fought with her friends. But then again, Knightly never called upon Old Annabelle.
“I know you’ve been trying. Trying to the tune of four thousand extra copies each week,” Knightly replied with a grin. A usual printing was around ten or twelve thousand. This was really good. She allowed herself to enjoy the rush of enjoyment upon the news.
They both cringed at a massive clattering in the kitchen and paused to identify the unmistakable sound o
f Blanche, grumbling and storming off to the back of the house.
Knightly stood, walked over to the drawing room door and shut it.
Annabelle did not protest.
“You have not answered my question,” Knightly persisted as he strolled toward her. “About Julianna. My apology.”
“I fought with them,” Annabelle said with a shrug. “They think I am a fool. They are probably right. I certainly feel like one. And I don’t want to talk about it with you. I cannot.”
Knightly took a step closer to her, closing the distance. With his fingertip, he gently tilted her chin so her face was peering up at him.
“So don’t talk, Annabelle,” he murmured. And then he lowered his mouth to hers.
And then he kissed her.
Knightly. Kissing. Her.
On one of the top five worst days of her life.
She felt the heat first, of his lips upon hers. Of him being near her. It was a particular sort of heat—smoldering and building up to a crackling fire—and now that she basked in it, Annabelle realized she’d been so very cold for so very long.
This heat: a man’s warm palm cradling her cheek, the warmth from his body enveloping hers, and the warmth from his mouth upon hers.
At first it was just the gentle touch of his lips against hers. She felt sparks, she felt fireworks. Her first kiss. A once in a lifetime kiss. With the man she loved. This alone was worth waiting for.
Aye, there was a surge of triumph with this kiss, along with the sparks and shivers of pleasure. She had waited for this. She had fought for this. She earned this. She was going to enjoy every exquisite second of it.
And then it became something else entirely. His lips parting hers. Her, yielding. Knightly urged her to open to him, and because she trusted him implicitly, she followed his lead with utter abandon. She had no idea where this would go, but she knew she would not go there alone.
This kiss was not at all like she had imagined—she hadn’t known the possibilities—it was so much more magical. She let him in. She dared the same. She tasted him. Let him taste her.
A sigh escaped her lips, and it did not travel far. This sigh was one of contentment. No, she was not at all content. This was a sigh of utter pleasure, experienced for the first time. This was a sigh that only Knightly’s kiss could elicit.