by Jo Beverley
Anna paused. “That’s true, isn’t it? I didn’t say it was a good story, my lord.”
“Just as well. So, what next? I suppose he has to carry her down the winding stairs. Tricky, that, I should think.”
“Doubtless, especially as an earthquake starts just then …”
“An earthquake? The very earth protesting at the count’s demise? Then he must be the hero, and Roland, vile Roland, a wastrel and a murderer.”
“Nonsense. Roland is the very epitome of a hero. But the stones do begin to tumble around them, and the steps crumble beneath their feet …”
“Whereupon, he slaps her awake and makes her use her feet as they race to safety?”
“Of course not! In fact, she does come out of her swoon …”
“Thank heavens …”
“… But by then they have rats swarming around them, which sends her off again. Please, my lord, don’t make me laugh or I will never finish!”
“There’s more?” he asked, straight-faced, but with eyes full of hilarity. He looked exactly like the portrait.
With difficulty, Anna gathered her wits. “It can hardly end then!”
“I don’t see why not. They can be entombed together as an eternal monument to folly.”
“They manage to survive. Just as they emerge, the tower crumbles, leaving only a heap of stones …”
“And a lot of homeless rats.”
“I don’t think that was mentioned,” she said severely. “The king then arrives …”
“George III?” he queried in astonishment.
“No! King Rudolph of … Oh, I’ve forgotten the country. It’s all made up.”
He raised one brow. “You astonish me, Miss Feather-stone.”
A giggle escaped, but Anna struggled on. “The king has found out that Count Nacre is plotting treason and has come to execute him …”
“How very unlawful. Due process, my dear.”
“… But now he makes Roland Count of Nacre …”
“Whereupon Dulcinea breaks off the match because she refuses to live in a rat-infested castle.”
“The castle wasn’t rat-infested, my lord!”
“It will be now the rats don’t have their cozy tower to live in. Where do you think all those rats went?”
Anna succumbed to laughter. “Oh dear! It is all … all so silly, isn’t it?”
He leaned over and passed her a handkerchief. “Very. Are you truly addicted to these novels, Anna?”
Anna controlled her laughter and wiped her eyes. “Most of them are not as bad as that. Even Mrs. Jamison’s earlier ones were much better, though her heroines did tend to swoon at the drop of a pin.”
“From the little I know of her, Lady Delabury was of much the same temperament.”
Anna made a business of drying her cheeks, considering yet another statement that indicated that the earl and Lady Delabury had not been intimate. Then why on earth had the woman committed suicide in this very room?
He leaned back, sober again and thoughtful, and echoed her thought. “I see nothing in that silly story to explain why the author decided to commit suicide, or why she chose to do so in this room.”
“Perhaps because she’d written such a terrible novel?” Anna clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, how uncharitable!”
He focused his serious features and amused eyes on her. “Quite. And Margaret Delabury thought every word she wrote absolutely perfect. She had just married Delabury, an excellent catch for her, and the poor man was besotted. She had everything.”
He lapsed into thought, and Anna chanced a question. “What was in the note she left, my lord?”
“Some stuff about despair because she could not hold her husband’s affection.”
“He was unfaithful?” Anna asked, knowing she was turning pink at discussing such matters with a gentleman.
“Most unlikely. As I said, he was besotted. One reason I left the country was because fool Delabury was convinced I was his wife’s lover and murderer. Having failed to get me sent to trial, he was intent on calling me out.”
“Oh, my.”
“I did hope that by now he’d found a new bride and no longer felt so keenly on the subject. I have just heard that he is on his way to town with dueling on his mind.”
“Oh, dear!”
“Quite. Which is why I want to solve this mystery.”
“I wish I could help. Truly. But I think I’ve told you all I know.”
He rose to his feet. “I think so, too.” He was suddenly standing quite close to her. “I have enjoyed this, though.”
She looked up at him, delight at their shared amusement still fizzing in her. She had never known an instant bond such as this. “So have I, my lord,” she admitted shyly.
For a moment she thought he had something important to say, but then he turned sharply away. “Would you permit me to glance into your room, Miss Featherstone?”
Anna swallowed her disappointment. “By all means, my lord. I’ve wandered all over your house, so it seems only fair that you should see a little of mine.”
As they went through the door, he said, “It is not at all the same. You should not invite men into your bedroom.”
She glanced back over her shoulder. “For fear that the very sight of my virginal couch will turn them into ravening beasts?”
“Something like that,” he said vaguely, but he was staring around the room. “Good God. The solution is obvious. The woman was mad.”
“A convenient assessment, my lord, but hard to prove.”
“This room is proof.” He poked a finger into the grinning mouth of a gargoyle. “I suppose one could keep small coins and buttons in places like that.”
Anna giggled, but placed her fingers over her lips. “Hush, my lord. I’m not at all sure your voice cannot be heard in other rooms!”
“And that would set the cat among the pigeons, wouldn’t it?” he said softly. He turned to look at her. “Farewell, Anna.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “No more secret meetings?”
“No more secret meetings. It would be very foolish.”
“No one need know …”
“Except us.”
Anna gripped her hands tight together. “I … I like you, my lord.”
There was the merest twitch of his lips, but his eyes looked rather sad. “I like you, too, Anna Featherstone.”
“Well,” said Anna, after swallowing a lump in her throat. “I suppose if you marry Maria, we will meet occasionally.”
“I have no intention of marrying your sister. I’ve only been paying court to her to get access to Maggie.”
“Oh. And that was just because you wanted to know about the secret door.”
“Exactly.”
It was all rather deflating, but that magical time of intimacy and laughter could not be entirely dispelled. Anna gathered her courage and looked up at him. “If you were feeling grateful for my help, you might perhaps … might kiss me once, my lord, with kindness, before you go.”
“Kindness? Was I not kind the other night?”
“It was hard for me to tell. I was very frightened.”
“It may be hard for you to tell now. Why aren’t you frightened?”
Anna considered it. “I trust you.”
“If I were truly kind and trustworthy, Anna, I would leave.” But he held out a hand.
Breath catching in her throat, Anna placed her hand in his, touching him for the first time in weeks. His hand was firm, warm, smooth … All in all, it would be extraordinary if it were anything else, and yet it seemed remarkable to her.
He drew her into his arms and inside she melted into a blend of sadness and wonder.
“It is so unfair,” she said.
He tilted her chin. “What is?”
“That this is wrong.”
She could not read his expression at all. “You do at least know that it is wrong?”
“To be kissing a man in my bedroom? And such a man? I ’d have to be perf
ectly fluff-witted not to.”
“And fluff-witted is the last description I would put to Anna Featherstone. Too clever by half …”
He kissed her simply on the lips. She was about to protest that the kiss was too brief when he returned to deepen it, teasing her mouth open and bringing the pleasure that had heated her dreams.
When he started to draw away from her, she tightened her arms around him. “Oysters,” she said.
“What?”
“Kissing is like oysters. A bit unpleasant at first, but quite delicious when one is accustomed.”
He laughed then, struggling to be quiet. He rested his head against hers, his shaking running through into her.
She moved her head so her lips found his and swallowed his laughter so that it changed into something else, something even better than before. Her body became involved in the kiss, moving against him as her hands explored—
He pulled away.
When she resisted, he used force.
Anna was abruptly mortified by her behavior, but at least he was none too calm either.
Then his expression became kind, and he brushed some hair from her face. “I do wish you weren’t sixteen, Anna Featherstone.” With that, he slipped back through the doors.
“I will get older,” she whispered, but it was to a closed panel.
Anna undressed, aching with needs she had never imagined but understood perfectly well. He was right, though. The world would be shocked by such a match, and an eligible earl couldn’t be expected to wait years until she was older, and “out.” He would marry someone else, and Anna’s heart would break. But at least it wouldn’t be Maria.
That was cold comfort. Anna sniffed a few tears as she changed into her nightgown and climbed into her chilly, virginal couch.
In the next days, Anna could only be glad that her parents and sister were busily engaged in the height of the Season, for it was beyond her to behave entirely in her normal, prosaic manner.
She was foolishly, idiotically in love. Daydreams filled her head, wild sensations flooded her body, and she could hardly think of anything but the Earl of Carne. She attempted drawings of him, and wrote his name endlessly on pieces of paper—which were hard to dispose of in warm weather when there were no fires except in the kitchen.
She spent entirely too much time sitting by windows hoping to catch a glimpse of him entering or leaving his house. Once or twice he looked thoughtfully at number 9, but she wasn’t sure she could read anything significant into that.
To try to bring some order to her mind, she began again to consider the mystery of Lady Delabury’s death. After all, if Carne was to be believed, the lady’s husband could already be in town looking for an excuse to call the earl out, or perhaps planning to kill him in cold blood!
She was sitting in the drawing room one day scribbling random thoughts on a piece of paper when Maria came in, untying the ribbons of a very fetching blue silk bonnet.
“I confess I am beginning to weary of this constant social round,” she said, with feeling. “We meet the same people everywhere, and everyone talks of the same things.”
“It must grow tiring,” Anna commiserated. “But it will be worth it if you find the ideal husband.”
Maria sighed. “What is an ideal husband? This one is handsome, that one is rich, another is clever, another has exquisite taste …”
“Have you not found anyone to love?” Anna asked. It seemed to her that falling in love was alarmingly easy.
“Oh, love.You are such a romantic, Anna! If you talk of that sort of foolishness, I perhaps favor Mr. Liddell, but he is impossible now his cousin is home, hale and hearty.” She drifted over. “What are you writing?”
Anna said the first thing that came to mind. “A … novel.”
When Maria picked up the piece of paper, Anna almost snatched it back, but she realized in time that to do so would alert her sister to a mystery. She hoped the scattered words would be meaningless. She hadn’t used “Carne” or “De-labury.” In fact, the names she had used had been mainly from Forbidden Affections.
“I’m trying to come up with the plot for one,” she said. Maria did not read novels. She hardly read anything. Surely she wouldn’t recognize the names.
Maria scanned the sheet and suddenly frowned. “It’s not a roman à clef, is it, Anna?”
“No. Why would you think that?”
Maria lost interest and returned the sheet of paper. “Just the name of your hero. Count Nacre. It’s an anagram of Carne. Count Nacre—the Earl of Carne. Since you seemed to take the man in aversion, I thought you might be planning a novel in which he came to a dreadful end. Mother would have the vapors.” With that, she wandered away leaving Anna stunned.
Her brain must have been muddled for weeks not to see that the villain of Forbidden Affections had been the Earl of Carne, the present earl’s father. She wondered if they looked the same, for that would clinch it.
She hurried down to visit the cook, and though it took time to turn the conversation to the old earl, she eventually confirmed her suspicions. The Wicked Earl’s father had been a tall, barrel-chested, dark-visaged man who up to the time of his death had enjoyed hard riding and pugilism. He had been Count Nacre.
She retreated to her room to ponder the implications. Had Lady Delabury been in love with Lord Carne’s son, Roland, and thwarted by the father? Had Forbidden Affections been a novel of revenge?
Or had the lady been trying to reveal to the world that the earl was creeping into her horrid chamber to terrorize her?
But that was nonsense! Lady Delabury herself had ordered the chamber made, and if the earl had come through the secret door—that peculiar secret door—she could easily have complained or nailed it shut.
So what if …
Anna’s mind began to wander strange paths which seemed unlikely but were the only ones to fit the facts.
One thing was clear. She had to discuss this with the earl.
Anna could not be sure of the earl being in his house at any particular hour. She could only plan to take up vigil once her family left for the evening, hoping to see Lord Carne come home before she fell asleep.
A snarl in this plan developed during the afternoon as her family sat together in the drawing room.
Her father addressed Maria. “We are well into June, my dear; and must soon be returning home. Is it not about time I started to encourage one of your eager suitors?”
Maria blushed. “I am undecided, Papa.”
“I can quite see that you’re spoiled for choice,” he teased. “But the old saying is ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’ If we return home with you unspoken-for, they might turn their eyes elsewhere.”
“If I am so easily forgotten, perhaps I should be.”
Anna so heartily agreed with that sentiment that it took her a moment to realize how strangely it sat on Maria’s lips, who thought no one should ever forget her. She looked up from her book and realized that Maria was quite agitated.
“Now, now, my love,” said Lady Featherstone. “We do not intend to pressure you. But you must have some notion of where your favor lies.”
Maria looked down and said nothing so that an awkward silence developed.
It was as much to break that silence as to tease that Anna said, “It seems to me that Maria favors Mr. Liddell if she favors anyone.”
Maria’s delicious color blossomed even as Lady Feath-erstone’s face became pinched. Sir Jeffrey merely looked thoughtful.
“Maria!” exclaimed Lady Featherstone. “You have an earl seeking your hand. Surely you cannot be so foolish …”
“Hush, my dear,” said Sir Jeffrey. “We do not look only at rank, surely. Maria, do you favor Mr. Liddell?”
Maria’s fingers were knotted in the trim of her embroidered tunic. “I truly don’t know, Papa. But … but I cannot seem to find interest in any of the other gentlemen, excellent though they are.”
“Well, really!” snapped Lady Featherstone. “I never thought
you to be so … so ungoverned in your affections! I have told you over and over that a girl can fix her affections where she should if she but puts her mind to it. I forbid it! I forbid you to even speak to the man again.”
Maria leapt to her feet. “How can you be so cruel! If his horrid cousin had been dead, you would have been delighted to see me wed to him. How is it different?”
“It is a title and eighty thousand a year different, my girl! Believe me, Maria, you are not cut out to live in a cottage doing your own laundry.”
“It would hardly come to that. David has nearly a thousand pounds a year.”
“David, is it?”
“Hush, my love,” said Sir Jeffrey. “Let us not wrangle over it. This requires thought and calm debate. Maria, I am saddened that you have tried to conceal the state of your feelings.”
Maria was weeping now, very prettily. “Oh, Papa, I have not been deceitful. Truly I haven’t. I thought I could grow fond of Lord Whelksham, or Lord Harlowe. It is only now in talking of it that I realize how I feel about David.”
Her father rose to hug her. “It is well that we know the truth. Now, I’m not saying I will consent, for like your mother I have qualms. But we will all think over it. I am sure it will be wise for us to make our apologies and stay home tonight, and perhaps you and Anna would be better for having a quiet meal in your rooms.”
Anna met her father’s eyes with a quizzical expression, and humor tugged at his lips before being controlled. She dutifully accompanied her sister upstairs.
Maria collapsed into a chair. “Oh, Anna, what will become of me?”
“I suspect you’ll end up married to Mr. Liddell if you truly want it.”
“Mama will oppose it with all her strength!” Maria declared, reminding Anna all too much of Dulcinea in despair.
“Mama will come to see reason once the first shock is past. But have you truly considered the practicalities?”
“I love him!”
Anna felt like Horatio facing overwhelming odds, but she set herself to trying to lead Maria into a logical consideration of her future. “You have always wanted a fine country estate, Maria.”
“I am sure David will have one in time.”
“How?”
Maria’s eyes shifted. “If his cousin should die …”