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, his 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.”
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.
The servant glared at Harry as though he recognized a scoundrel in his midst. He cleared his throat, and gave his attention to Anne. “My lady, His Grace, the Duke of Crawford.”
The duke swept in as if he was the King of England coming to call. He glanced around the room, and then he fixed a frown on Harry. The message clear. I’ve selected my duchess.
“Crawford,” Harry drawled.
Anne dropped a deep, deferential curtsy. A becoming pink blush stained her cheeks and her eyes darted about the room. Standing as close as they were, he heard her slight sigh as her maid appeared.
“My lady, forgive me.” A young maid swept in. “I retrieved your book.” She held up a copy of Mrs. Deerlander’s Guide to Decorum.
If the Duke of Crawford believed: one, that a passionate spirit like Lady Anne would spend even a moment reading even a word of that drivel, two, the maid’s ruse to explain away the lack of chaperone, and three, that Harry would interfere in the other man’s courtship, well, then he was as mad as a Bedlamite streaking the halls of that infamous hospital.
Anne rushed forward. “Thank you, Mary,” she said quickly. She took the book in her hands, hands that mere moments ago had twisted and twined about his neck like a tenacious vine of ivy. She shifted under the duke’s scrutiny, the leather volume held almost protectively to her chest.
Crawford walked over to her, placing himself between her and Harry. He claimed her hand and raising her fingers to his lips, brushed his mouth over the inside of her wrist.
The pink hue of her cheeks blazed a bold red.
Harry clenched his hands into tight balls at his side, filled with an inexplicable urge to separate the bastard’s fingers from his person. Over the duke’s shoulder, Anne met his gaze.
The
tall, commanding duke with ice in his eyes, followed the direction of her stare. He arched a ducal eyebrow at Harry.
Harry tugged at the lapels of his coat. It was on the tip of his lips to order the other man to hell and claim a spot beside the scattered pile of ribbons. Except, something flashed in Anne’s eyes. An entreaty. A plea. Her meaning could not have been clearer than if she’d clambered onto the sofa and shouted the words. Go.
He gave a quick bow. “Lady Anne, Crawford. I’ll leave you two to your visit.” He spun on his heel and beat a hasty retreat. Ultimately, Anne seemed to remember what he’d allowed himself to forget. Their every interaction, their every meeting was a ploy to garner Crawford’s notice and prompt an offer on the other man’s part.
It would seem the lady’s plan had worked brilliantly. Harry would soon be well-rid of the tart-mouthed Lady Anne Adamson.
Harry cursed under his breath, and took his leave. He should be elated with the rapidity of Crawford’s interest.
So why was he so bloody miserable?
Anne stared at Harry’s swift retreating back and resisted the urge to call out, ask him to stay. Despite of all her earlier, preconceived notions about the roguish Earl of Stanhope, he’d proven himself to be kind and decent. She stared down at her palm, the skin still stinging from the slap she’d dealt him. Regret tugged at her. God help her, she enjoyed being with Harry. Missed him, even now with the illustrious Duke of Crawford in her parlor.
“My lady? I trust you are well?”
She jumped, pressing her hand to her heart. “Er…uh, yes…most well,” she said on a rush. Her maid gave her a pointed look from across the room and from over the duke’s shoulder gestured to the sofa.
Anne motioned to the seat. “Would you care to sit, Your Grace?”
Mary nodded.
The duke inclined his head. “I would,” he murmured, coolly polite.
From across the room, Mary held up an imaginary glass and raised it to her lips.
A Heart of a Duke Collection: Volume 1-A Regency Bundle Page 47