by Maya Rodale
He placed his hand upon her waist, just above the curve of her hip. It was a possessive caress. She wanted to be possessed. She clasped the fabric of his jacket. Her whole world was spinning wildly—in a magical way—and she was dizzy with the delight of it. But still, she needed to hold on. Needed to ground this moment in physical, earthly sensations so she’d know it wasn’t some flight of her own fancy.
There was the wool of his coat in her palms.
His cheek against hers. A little bit rough. So very male.
The scent of him, so indescribable but intoxicating all the same. She wanted to breathe him in forever.
The sound of his breathing, the rushed whisper of her own sighs. Little sounds, to be sure, ones that spoke of intimacy and passion.
The pounding of her heart.
The taste of him . . .
His mouth, firm, determined, generous, hot, and possessive against her own. She melted against him. Whatever he wanted, she would indulge. And she wanted, needed, him to know, how much this kiss meant to her. How she had waited her whole life for this kiss. She kissed him with years’ worth of pent-up desire. And the amazing, wonderful, exhilarating thing was . . . he kissed her with a passion to match.
Chapter 26
The Nodcock Begins to Wonder if He Is the Nodcock
DEAR ANNABELLE
While many readers have written with encouragement and advice for my quest to attract the love of the Nodcock, many have challenged me to explain why I bother. I confess, this author does wonder if he is deserving of my efforts, or if I should give up. But just when I am ready to admit defeat, some magic occurs to convince me to carry on. Dear readers, please advise! How far does one go for love?
The London Weekly
Galloway’s Coffeehouse
KNIGHTLY sat with a newspaper and a hot coffee at Galloway’s coffeehouse, as he did every Saturday morning. His love of newspapers extended beyond his own. He loved, too, the atmosphere in the coffeehouse—the rich smell of coffee mingling with the smoke of cigars and cheroots. The rustle of newsprint. The hum of conversations.
He badly needed the coffee, for he had not slept.
He badly needed a distraction, but this was not to be.
He had kissed Annabelle.
Shy, quiet, Writing Girl number four. Annabelle. Just weeks ago he’d barely spared a thought for her, and now . . .
He had kissed Annabelle.
What madness had impelled him, he knew not. But some force beyond his control had him strolling across her horrible drawing room and tilting her chin to his, lowering his mouth to hers.
It had been a good kiss.
So good he had the damnedest time thinking of anything else since it happened. She tasted sweet, dear Annabelle. She kissed with an artlessness and enthusiasm that undid him.
It was not calculated to please, like that of a mistress, and it was all the more seductive because of it. It was a kiss for the sake of it. Purely for the love of it.
Knightly had discovered all these truths in the moments when her tongue tangled with his, just as he had known then that it was her first kiss. The implications of that kind of kiss made his chest feel tight and deprived of air.
But to hell with the implications, if a certain part of him had its way. The memory of the taste, the touch, kept him awake at night, inspiring wicked dreams. He sought relief. He attained it. And yet still, he craved Annabelle.
In an attempt to restore his world to rights, he would coolly consider the facts:
Fact: Annabelle was in his employ. No law prohibited him from ravishing his workforce should he so choose, but it just felt . . . wrong. Like taking advantage. That was not the pleasure he sought—and he had given extensive thought to the pleasures he might have with Annabelle.
Fact: Annabelle lived with strong contenders for the dubious distinction of London’s Worst Relatives. Her family treated her like a servant. Right before his eyes Annabelle shriveled under the menacing glare of the Mean Mrs. Swift, who put him in mind of a particularly nasty school warden.
Annabelle was no servant. She was a beautiful woman and a talented writer—which all of London seemed to know except her family.
Society for the Advancement of Female Literacy, indeed. Of course they never questioned her—likely never paid her that much mind. As she said, they probably wouldn’t even believe her if he commissioned her illustration, placed it on the front page along with a statement confirming her as Dear Annabelle, and had a cartload delivered to their front door.
Knightly was of half a mind to do just that, except . . .
Fact: Annabelle was delicate. In the course one afternoon, he watched her act boldly, then retreat. Blossom and then wilt. All right before his eyes. Something was happening with Annabelle. He liked Bold Annabelle, and was glad he told her so, even though Bold Annabelle stalked his thoughts and seduced him with a kiss that was a heady mixture of enthusiasm and innocence. Old Annabelle made his life easy. Bold Annabelle set his life on fire.
Something was happening, something glorious, and he didn’t want to wreck it. A picture began to emerge of a woman who possessed hope and optimism and gumption in spades in spite of wretched relatives and a world that never took much notice of her—in real life anyway. On the pages of The London Weekly, Dear Annabelle was something else: a delightful minx, a sweetheart of a hellion.
It was bloody impossible to concentrate on facts when Drummond and Gage were having the most infuriating conversation about Dear Annabelle, as they were now. Knightly pretended to read The Morning Post while eavesdropping on their idiotic chatter.
“You know, I don’t think this nodcock deserves Annabelle,” Drummond declared as he set down this week’s issue. He paused and sipped his coffee, brow furrowed as if he pondered Annabelle’s love life in the same way Newton must have puzzled over calculus.
“Though it pains me to agree with you, Drummond, I reckon you’re right. And ‘Nodcock’ is not a strong enough name for the bloody ungrateful, cork-brained jackanape she’s set her cap for,” Gage added thoughtfully.
“Obviously, he has bruised her soul and is testing her faith in love,” Drummond said, jamming his finger at that particular page of The London Weekly. “Positively criminal, that is.”
Knightly snorted. Faith in love? Bruised her soul? What sentimental rubbish. But what else would one expect from a playwright? All the same, he shrunk back in his chair and lifted his own newspaper higher.
He had read her column, holding his breath the whole damn time. He had his suspicions. But the cost of confirming those suspicions was too high. He would either give up his lifelong quest to prove he belonged with his peers or break Annabelle’s heart.
He was not prepared to do either.
“It sounds like she has attracted his attention but he just took advantage of her, if you know what I mean,” Gage said. Knightly’s gut knotted.
“It does, doesn’t it? You’re right. ‘Nodcock’ is not a strong enough word. You know, I wish I knew who he was only so I could plant a right facer on him,” Drummond practically growled.
For years Knightly read the papers and drank coffee with these old friends, and in all that time he’d never heard Drummond react so bloody passionately to a single item in any newspaper. It was worse than when The London Chronicle described one of his plays as “entertaining as a severe bout of smallpox” after he’d shelled out six pounds in puff money.
“While you’re doing that, I’m going to whisk Dear Annabelle off to Gretna Green and along the way show her the love of a good man,” Gage said with a rakish grin that made Knightly want to plant a right facer on him.
Knightly concluded it was up to him to bring logic and rationality to this conversation—before his temper flared and he revealed far too much.
“You cannot be serious,” he said flatly, lowering the newspaper he’d been p
retending to read.
“Oh, I am,” Drummond said solemnly, hands clasped upon the rough-hewn table.
“I as well,” Gage added with equal gravity. He pounded the table for emphasis.
“You don’t even know her,” Knightly pointed out.
“Aye, but you do. Fancy introducing us?” Gage asked with suggestive lift of his brow.
“No,” Knightly replied firmly. In the name of all that was holy, no.
“Why not? She’s obviously a lovely chit who is lonely and looking for love,” Gage said.
“And young, pretty, and quiet,” Drummond added in a way that could only be described as dreamily, even though it pained Knightly to do so.
“Do you not think she deserves love?” Gage demanded.
“It’s her own business,” Knightly said, snapping the newspaper shut and setting it on the table.
“Maybe it was. But once she started writing about it in the newspaper it became everyone’s business,” Drummond said. Unfortunately, he had a point.
“Given that it’s your newspaper,” Gage said, “I’d think you’d be more interested it. Being your business and all.”
“Annabelle is . . .” And here Knightly’s description faltered. She was shy, except for when she was bold. She was beautiful. Adorable, even when her eyes were red with tears. She was a mystery, ever unfolding before his eyes, which both fascinated and terrified him.
And he had kissed her.
He’d choke before he said any of those things aloud, and he’d choke to death before uttering such sentiments to the likes of Drummond and Gage.
“Annabelle is a very nice person,” he finally said. His companions stared at him, slack-jawed. And then they both burst into raucous laughter, slapping each other hard on the back and pounding the table with their fists. Old Man Galloway himself hollered at them to shut their traps.
“It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the Nodcock!” Drummond shouted, and pointed, in the midst of roaring laughter. The rest of the coffeehouse quieted, heads lifted up from newsprint pages to stare at him.
“I’m not the Nodcock,” Knightly said hotly, feeling like quite the . . . Nodcock. He cursed that damn faint. Until that moment he could exist in a blissful ignorance, caring only about the Nodcock’s affect on sales and not his identity. He could assume it was Lord Marsden or Owens (it could still be Owens) and carry on with his plans.
He cursed Drummond and Gage for their laughter and accusations because they brought to the fore an issue he wanted to ignore. He wasn’t ready to make that fateful decision. Belong. Be beholden to no one. Break Annabelle’s heart.
The entire situation was impossible. Their laughter was irritating. Yet Knightly retained a cool demeanor nonetheless, because that’s what he did. That’s who he was: cool verging on cold. Always in control. The laughter of some louts rolled right off his back, like water off a duck.
But he suddenly thought of Annabelle, and the day Owens declared her too well behaved to be wicked and thus unworthy of investigation. They had all laughed.
Shame and remorse kicked him in the gut as Knightly realized, belatedly, how devastating that must have been for her. Was that the day she started to blossom? Had that been the moment she resolved to capture Owens’s attentions?
Was their kiss something meaningful, or sweet Annabelle’s determination to be wicked? Was he the Nodcock or just another man she practiced her tricks upon?
So many questions and none of them mattered. He had decided his fate years ago, on an October day in 1808. When he made decisions, he acted and abided by them.
Chapter 27
Missing: One Loving Sigh from the Lips of Dear Annabelle
TOWN TALK
Mr. Knightly’s proposal to Lady Marsden must be imminent. We have it on good authority that he visited a jeweler in Burlington Arcade. However, he left without making a purchase.
The Morning Post
Offices of The London Weekly
THE first thing Knightly noticed upon entering the writers’ room: Annabelle did not sigh. The second thing he finally noticed: she had always sighed when he strolled into the weekly gathering of writers. It was this routine, like clockwork, that he never realized until the watch broke.
For a moment he faltered. She had sighed; he had kissed her; now she did not sigh. The facts explained nothing. Logic and reason failed him. He wracked his brain thinking back over her columns—had there been clues he missed? He tried to tell himself it mattered not.
But his mind wandered to Annabelle.
His gaze strayed to Annabelle.
He craved Annabelle.
Yet his decision had been made and obligations remained. Both Lord and Lady Marsden were becoming impatient with him. He drank tea with the lady, drank brandy with the gentleman. He visited the jeweler but found himself unable to find something suitable. Something that declared, I belong. You can’t ignore me. None of the diamonds, rubies, or sapphires were large enough.
This morning he’d learned that the editor of The London Chronicle had been arrested for printing an editorial that questioned the Inquiry . . . and that relied on facts gleaned from penny-a-liners employed as footmen.
It was clear to Knightly what he must do—would do, because he was a man of action.
Given all that, he should not care in the slightest about a sigh, or lack of one. And yet here he was, standing mutely in front of his staff, pondering the absence of a sigh.
He scowled, mightily.
He would not be undone by the absence of a pretty girl’s sigh.
He glared at the room.
That’s when he noticed that Annabelle wasn’t where she was supposed to be, or where she always was.
They had a routine, he and his staff, and today she had disrupted it, tremendously. He would walk in. Annabelle would sigh. He said, “Ladies first,” and then meeting would commence with the Writing Girls rattling off their reports one after another, seated side by side in a neat row.
Today Annabelle sat between Owens and Grenville. Knightly narrowed his eyes—was Owens the Nodcock? How else to explain why Annabelle sat beside him, and touched his hand when he leaned over to whisper something in her ear? Something that made her blush and smile.
“What the devil is going on?” He asked, irritated, and itching to put his fist through the wall. Or into Owens’s jaw. No one answered. “Miss Swift, why are you over there?”
Then he remembered how she preferred the sidelines to the center of attention and resolved to not make her uncomfortable before the other writers.
“Never mind,” he said gruffly. And then the meeting proceeded mostly as usual. His staff chattered. They debated the Scandal at The Times. He stole glances at Annabelle, her lowered bodice. Her lowered gaze.
At the conclusion of the meeting, he clasped Annabelle by the arm as she attempted to slink past him, arm in arm with Owens. He had questions—he didn’t know quite what they were—and he suspected she had answers.
It had been his plan to act even more imperiously to remind them both of the Right Order in the world. But when he said her name, “Annabelle,” he heard the questions, the sleeplessness, and something like feelings in his voice.
“If you’re going to apologize again, I’d rather you wouldn’t,” she said, stunning him.
“Why would I apologize, Annabelle?” He leaned against the doorway.
“For the kiss,” she whispered, and she leaned toward him to keep the words private. He breathed deep, breathing in Annabelle.
He ought to apologize, probably. For taking advantage of a woman in a state of despair, and who was in his employ and thus could not risk rebuffing his advances. But he had tasted her wanting, her desire—along with that intoxicating sweetness. There was no way in hell he’d apologize because he wasn’t the slightest bit sorry.
And as anyone could at
test, he hadn’t become so damned successful by issuing apologies. So he leaned in closer to her and murmured:
“Oh, I’m not sorry for that kiss, Annabelle.”
It was the truth. He was bewildered by it, wanted it again, couldn’t make sense of it, craved it . . . he had a million thoughts and feelings about that kiss, but regret was not one of them.
“You’re not?” she asked. Her expectation didn’t surprise him, but it bothered him. She had no idea how beautiful and alluring she was, did she? But then again, why should she if she loved a man from afar, for years, and he never paid attention to her?
“Are you sorry?” he asked.
“You didn’t mean to do it, did you?” she questioned. She must have spent hours fretting over what it meant and what his intentions were. When was a kiss not just a kiss? When it was with Annabelle. He meant that in the very best and worst ways. The best answer he could give her was plain honesty.
“I did not drive from Fleet Street to Bloomsbury with the intention, no. But it’s not as if I tripped and fell and our mouths collided.”
She couldn’t help it; she giggled. Progress. He grinned.
The words “Am I the Nodcock” were just there in the back of his throat, waiting to be spoken aloud. But it sounded too ridiculous to actually say aloud. Frankly, he did not want to know.
Because if he knew . . .
If it was he . . .
If she had been pining after him all these years and he was only just noticing her now, when he intended to marry another woman, then fate was a cruel mistress indeed. Knightly could not think of this here, now. Instead he snuck another glance at her bodice to clear his mind. And then his gaze fell on a thick packet of letters in her hands.
“What scheme are you up to this week?” he inquired. What did he have to watch out for? he wondered. Or was it none of his concern? He couldn’t rule out Owens—not with those damned winks and whispers they shared throughout the meeting.