He tried again. “Anne,” he said gently. “We are happy together.” In the days he’d spent with Anne, he’d found more happiness than he’d ever known in all his thirty years. His mouth went dry, fear holding back the words that would splay him open before her. He’d offered all of himself once before. He could not humble himself again.
Seeing the determined tilt to her chin, Harry realized that nothing he could or would say in that moment would convince her of the rightness of his suit. He, the Earl of Stanhope who’d no intention of settling upon the future countess any time in the near or even distant future, had spoken to her of marriage—and she’d very clearly rejected him. Then, his offer had been more an afterthought, one made out of obligation. Anne surely craved more than that…
A dark, niggling thought worked its way about his brain. Mayhap it’s not that she’d rather be ruined. Mayhap she still longs for the title of duchess. He stomped over and took her by the arms. “Look at me,” he commanded, his tone harsh and angry. “You’d rather be ruined?” Than accept a union we can ultimately find happiness in?
She boldly met his gaze and in the clear depths of her blue eyes he saw the truth—she wouldn’t wed him. In that moment, his past converged with his future as he recalled a different woman, a different rejection. Her shoulders moved up and down on her slow inhalation. “I’d rather—”
“Good God, Anne!”
Their gazes swiveled to the entrance.
Horror churned inside his shocked being at the untimely arrival of Lady Katherine, the Duke of Bainbridge and Anne’s mother, the Countess of Wakefield.
Harry stared numbly back at the trio glowering at him. The horrified betrayal in Katherine’s eyes registered. Once upon a lifetime ago, he’d attempted to seduce her. And yet, he believed he’d proven himself a true friend to her. Only, the sneer on her lips indicated that she viewed him no different than the rest of the ton; as a self-serving rogue who’d placed his own desires before that of even her sister’s reputation. Unable to bear the sight of her abject disappointment, he glanced to her husband. Fiery rage filled the duke’s eyes, and Harry suspected the presence of the ladies was the only thing keeping him from storming the conservatory and pummeling Harry within an inch of his life.
Anne nudged him and he realized too late, he still held her. He released her with such alacrity she stumbled. Harry cursed and quickly steadied her.
The countess gasped, burying the sound in her hands.
Bainbridge’s eyes narrowed into black slits.
Harry yanked his hands back and took a step away from her.
The duke advanced. Hell, with Napoleon and his plans for France, the British hadn’t needed Wellington or Nelson; they nearly had needed this single, hulking figure advancing on the French and Boney’s efforts would have been halted before the French emperor could have uttered world domination.
“Bainbridge,” he said calmly, directing his attention to the gentleman who’d detested him since their first meeting. “This is not how it appears,” he said.
“Oh, and how does it appear?” Bainbridge snarled.
He opted for honesty. “As though I’m seducing her.”
The countess cried out.
Bainbridge lunged for him and he danced out of the other man’s reach. Perhaps honesty had not been the wisest course.
Anne’s mother held a hand out. “Anne, come here now,” she said, in the tone a nursemaid might use with a recalcitrant child.
The duke gnashed his teeth. “Get her out of here,” he said to his wife.
Anne shook her head and remained fixed to the spot. “Jasper, don’t,” she said quietly. “It is as Harry says. This is not at all as it appears.”
“Harry?” the countess snapped that one word question, a name teeming with fury.
Color blazed to life in Anne’s cheeks. “It can be explained.”
“I’m certain it can,” Katherine finally spoke, her seething tone indicating no answer he gave would ever be sufficient.
You’re going to ruin her. He swiped a hand over his face.
“I anticipate your visit first thing in the morning,” the duke said between clenched teeth.
It was on the tip of his tongue to keep from telling the other man to go to hell. He opened his mouth, but then something in Anne’s eyes killed the words. No gentleman cared to have his hand forced, not even if it was for the delicate, beautiful hand of Lady Anne. He gave a curt nod.
The duke spun on his heel and marched from the gardens, clearly expecting Anne to follow. She hesitated a moment, alongside her mother.
What a blasted fool he’d been in agreeing to help Anne. Her reputation now in tatters; and Harry forced to do the right thing, even as she longed for her duke. He dragged a hand through his hair. What an ignominious beginning to a marriage.
She stretched a hand out. “Harry,” she said softly. Anne’s fingers fell back to her side and she fisted her skirts; her white-knuckled grip upon the fabric, the only indication of her upset. Her brother-in-law spoke quietly, the words lost to the distance between Harry and Anne. She gave a tight nod. Katherine took her by the hand and tugged her from the conservatory with the duke and Countess of Wakefield following suit.
Harry stood there long after Anne had taken her leave. It was only a matter of time before Rutland divulged the secrets that would ruin Anne.
His brave, spirited Anne had been adamant that she would not marry him and yet surely with the immediacy of the moment behind them, she’d inevitably realize they had no recourse but to wed. His palms went moist at the thought and he brushed them against his breeches. As much as he’d considered himself a bastard these years, it would appear he was a good deal less than he’d ever imagined, for he’d sacrifice his freedom to protect Anne from scandal.
His mind suddenly moved with lightning like speed, as it all began to make sense.
Rutland’s plan.
Margaret’s return.
Anne’s ruin.
The careful timing of her family’s arrival.
Rutland would have her ruined to free Margaret for his attention. Anne had been nothing more than a pawn to advance Rutland’s selfish desires.
In the end, Anne would pay the ultimate price, her good name, her reputation, so the ruthless Rutland could at last claim Margaret.
If only the bastard had bothered to ask, Harry would have told Rutland he was welcome to her. The moment Anne had slipped into Lord Essex’s conservatory, all other women had ceased to matter.
And on the heel of that staggering realization was the dawning truth…he did not feel compelled to offer for Anne out of obligation. He wanted her because he could not imagine his life without her.
For the first time that evening, Harry smiled.
I love her.
Chapter 21
Since Anne had entered the Duke of Bainbridge’s carriage behind her mother and sister, shock had robbed her of words. Her sister’s regret, her mother’s shame, tangible and painful, ravaged her conscience. And yet, for the life’s worth of bad decisions she’d made where Harry, was concerned, she’d do nothing differently. She loved him. Loved him with a hopeless, helpless passion that defied logic and reason and baubles that promised one the heart of a duke. She braced for the impending barrage, and when it came it was fast and volatile like a summer lightning storm.
“Whatever were you thinking?” Mother cried. “I’ve warned you time and time again about the earl.” She leaned across her seat. “You insisted you’d no interest in him.”
“I lied,” Anne whispered. Pity fairly seeped from her sister’s eyes and Anne glanced away, detesting the sentiment.
“That is what you’d say to me? You lied?” Mother jabbed a finger in Anne’s direction. “You’ve been ruined. A young lady is never permitted to be alone with a man. And a man such as Stanhope, no less.”
“No one knows, Mother,” Katherine said softly.
Sweet, supportive Katherine who’d always sought to protect Anne from her
self. “No one knows. Isn’t that correct, Anne?” A twin look passed between them. The unspoken language that only they two understood. Just as Anne would sacrifice everything and anything for her sister, so too would Katherine do anything within her means to spare Anne pain. And now, she sought to protect Anne from their mother’s wrath.
However, sometime between Lord Essex’s conservatory and this moment Anne had changed; grown from the carefree, whimsical miss to a sensible woman who finally knew there were consequences to her actions.
“Anne?” her sister said, a plaintive note in that one word utterance.
She was no longer a child to be protected by her sisters.
Anne’s silence served as her answer.
Mother buried her face into her hands. “I’d had such grand hopes for you. I’d indulged you in your first Season and didn’t truly begin to worry until your second Season. Now this?” She wept noisy tears that transported Anne back to the long ago day she’d come upon Mother sobbing about the rumors that had circulated during Anne’s Come Out regarding her late husband’s infidelity.
“Perhaps we can still right this.” Katherine looked hopefully to her husband. “Isn’t that right, Jasper?”
Envy tugged at Anne’s breast. She’d trade anything and everything to have another person with whom she could unburden all the woes and fears she carried. What a vastly less lonely world it would be for her.
“Lord Rutland knows,” she whispered, knowing the temporary reprieve Katherine sought on her behalf was just that—temporary. Rutland knew all….and soon the entire ton would know.
A muscle ticked at the corner of her brother-in-law’s eye.
Rutland, notoriously ruthless in all matters, wouldn’t hesitate to shred Anne’s reputation.
Then her mother murmured perhaps the truest words she’d ever spoken. “This cannot be undone.”
Anne folded her arms about herself and hugged tight remembering Harry’s pledge to do right by her.
“He will wed her, Mother,” Katherine said in a gentling tone one might reserve for a fractious mare. “I’m certain of it.”
Anne didn’t doubt he’d sacrifice his own happiness to protect her from Rutland’s scheming. Everything she’d known of Harry before these past ten days had changed so very greatly. The man she’d once taken as an ignoble libertine was honorable, valiant, and all things goods.
“Wed her?” Anne cringed at her mother’s high-pitched squeal. “Wed her? I’d have her sooner wed—” She slashed the small space with a furious hand. “Any number of gentleman than that shameless rogue.”
Anne retreated within herself. She sat, more a voyeur than an actual participant in the discussion between her mother and sister proceeded to have about her life. She dimly registered the remote pity in her brother-in-law’s usually hard stare.
Marriage…
Harry…
No choice…
She wanted Harry with everything and anything she was. Anything and everything she would ever be. Anne drew in a shuddery breath. She could not have him this way. “I won’t wed him.” Her whisper soft admission cut into the frenzied discussion.
“I don’t see that you have a choice.” The gentleness in Katherine’s tone was nearly Anne’s undoing.
“The duke will certainly not have her now,” Mother spat, bitterness dripping from her words.
Anne glanced out the window. She’d not allow Harry to be forced and bound to marry her out of some misbegotten sense of honor. Not when she’d been the one to force him into the role of tutor. If he’d spoken of love, or in the least, a desire to wed her, she’d have embraced marriage to him. But he hadn’t. She’d asked why he’d wed her, and he’d answered truthfully.
Tears filled her eyes and she blinked them away. Foolish, foolish drops.
The carriage rocked to a slow halt before her townhouse. Jasper didn’t wait for the servant, but instead leaned over, and flung the door open. He leapt to the ground and handed first Katherine down, and then Anne.
She hurried inside, wanting the solace of her own chambers.
Her mother’s sharp voice called after her. “Anne, you are to await for me in the parlor.”
Alas, solace would have to come later. Much later.
She all but sprinted past Ollie, who stood with the door opened. Her slippers silent on the Italian marble and she gathered this was much how Joan of Arc had felt when being marched up the gallows. Her lips twisted. Then, Joan of Arc wouldn’t have been fool to make the collection of mistakes Anne herself had. She entered the Ivory Parlor and clasped her hands, wringing them together, her mind curiously blank.
Footsteps sounded at the door. She drew a steadying breath. “Mother, I know what you intend to say.”
Katherine entered the room. Her husband hovered just outside, allowing the sisters a brief moment of privacy. “I certainly hope you’ve something vastly more original and slightly more reassuring than that to begin your discussion with Mother.” Her sister’s droll words, a clear attempt at easing the tension did little to cut through Anne’s inner turmoil.
She rocked back on her heels. “Katherine,” she said tiredly. “You should go.” Had word begun to circulate even now, throughout ballrooms and parlors all over London? After all, when one knew…all knew. Her heart quickened as the implications of her actions, and all Rutland knew of her and Harry, truly sank into her mind.
“Oh, Anne, what have you done?”
If Katherine’s tone had been the bothered, I’ve-come-to-expect-this-of-you one she’d adopted through the years, it would have been so much easier than the agonized disappointment in here younger sister’s words. She firmed her jaw. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Harry, well I expect such outrageous behavior of him.” Katherine shook her head, sadly. “But you?”
“It wasn’t, Harry,” she said firmly.
Katherine’s brow wrinkled. “What do you mean? I saw him, Anne. I saw his hands on your person. I—”
“I propositioned the earl, Kat. I made him a scandalous proposal and asked him to help me win the Duke of Crawford’s heart,” she uttered that last part on a shamed whisper.
The air left Katherine on a slow, elongated breath. “My God.”
Her lips twisted wryly. No, not even the Lord himself could help with this.
She pressed ahead, determined for Katherine to know the truth. “I threatened to seek out Lord Rutland’s help if he didn’t agree, and so he did.” Because he was good and honorable, far more honorable than Society gave him credit for.
Her sister rocked back on her heels, silent.
And now, for his efforts, he’d be forced into marriage, and she had little doubt he’d do right by her. Just as her father’s heart had belonged to another, so too would Harry’s. Tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them back. Oh, God. For all her fears of becoming Mother and all her efforts to avoid that same, sorry, broken fate, with her actions she’d gone and carved out a future that would turn her into just that person she’d striven her whole adult life not to be. She could not. Would not…
Katherine broke the silence. “Why would you…?” She steepled her fingers and pressed the tips to her mouth. “This is about that blasted pendant, isn’t it? The—”
“The heart of a duke, yes.” Her lips twisted. Only now, she realized how very grasping, how very shameful her efforts had been. She’d once imagined a match with a distinguished, powerful duke posed as the ultimate triumph over her parents’ miserable existence. In the end, she’d found she wanted nothing more than that honorable, respectable match—except she wanted it with Harry, and no other.
Katherine said nothing for a long while. She sank back in her seat. “Oh, dear.”
Anne thought ‘oh, hell’, would better suit the current situation, but she supposed ‘oh, dear’ would also suffice.
“And Lord Rutland discovered your intentions,” she said to herself.
Anne toyed with her skirt. “Discovered my intentions.” A
nd would ruin her for it.
Katherine’s eyes slid closed. “Oh, dear.”
Their mother chose that opportune moment to make her entrance, sweeping past Jasper, and advancing deep into the room. She glared Anne into silence. “I’ve tolerated your headstrong spiritedness through the years. I’ve forgiven your lack of marriage for three Seasons. This, however, I cannot forgive.”
Katherine sprang to her feet. Ever the protector, she placed herself between Anne and their mother’s vitriolic attack. “Lord Stanhope aside, Mother, we shall find Anne a perfectly suitable husband.” She turned an optimistic smile on her sister. “Why, you’ll have the heart of a handsome, young, affable duke,” she said using Anne’s innocently hopeful words from more than a year ago when they’d traipsed over the ice at the Frost Fair.
“No gentleman will have her.” Mother held Anne’s stare, and she knew before the words left Mother’s lips, what would be required of her. “You know what you must do, Anne. I’d expected it would be Katherine, but it must be you.”
The resignation in Mother’s tone raised the stirring of panic within her belly. Revulsion snaked through her being at the prospect of marriage to Mr. Ekstrom. Anne sank into the edge of a nearby seat. “I know.” Did that garbled whisper belong to her?
Katherine’s head whipped back and forth between them. “I don’t understand.”
Anne considered the stocky, Bertie Ekstrom with his sausage-sized fingers and leering gaze. She managed words past the lump in her throat. The heart-wrenchingly beautiful lessons Harry had given her on seduction, their stolen interludes, all of it would be the complete ruin of her. Always considered the passionate, flighty sister, she prided herself on maintaining her composure in the face of the horrible life in front of her. “I have to wed someone, Katherine. I cannot simply trust Lord Rutland will not someday divulge the scandalous information he discovered.”
“That is the first sensible decision you’ve made since you began carrying on with that outrageous rogue.” Icy scorn coated Mother’s words.
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