A Forbidden Love (2 page)

The hair on the back of his neck bristled at the prospect. Anthony was well aware it was the goal of every woman and burden of every man to get oneself’s leg shackled, but he saw no valid reason to hurl his bachelorhood away at his young age. His sister, on the other hand, considered matrimony to be the solution to all vice, and the sooner he found himself riveted the better.

“Ash, marriage is the most appalling suggestion to make to a man in the prime of his youth. You really
are
intent on capping all of my fun.”

“Or at least curtailing it.” Her critical gaze narrowed on him. “I think we both know neither vow nor iron manacle will wholly reign in your passion for the ladies.”

He grinned, unrepentant, at that. “True indeed. God has simply made the fairer sex too beautiful to resist.”

She gave an indelicate snort. “An excuse for debauchery since the time of Adam, I’m sure.”

He chuckled. “Well, if man’s nature is inherently flawed, and one must have a vice in life, a passion for the ladies is the most agreeable to have.”

Ashley’s eyes flashed toward the ceiling. “Yes, well, back to your pesky trouble with leisure. You need more responsibility, Anthony.”

“And a wife should do the trick nicely,” he replied without missing a beat, inured to the argument, having heard it countless times before.

There had once been a time when his twin sister hadn’t a priggish tendency to complain of, when she’d been downright indulgent of his escapades, believing her brother no different from other men, all of whom she’d deemed prone to a philandering instinct. And then she’d met her husband: a faithful, upright, respectable gent, and she’d reasoned
all
men were capable of such husbandly devotion if she just badgered them long enough.

“Certainly a wife will rid you of your spare time,” his sister spoke with the astute wisdom of such a wife. “And I assure you, you won’t have a moment’s peace after the brood of children arrive.”

Anthony didn’t doubt that. Matrimony was a foreseeable damper to his own lustful disposition. The very reason Ashley was positively fixed on converting her brother from renowned bounder to loyal, straitlaced, faithful-to-the-core husband and father.

Now there was an image difficult to conjure. Him a reformed reprobate! Not for another twenty years at least. By then, he should have his fill of rollicking dalliances and be ripe to the point where the responsibility of a wife and children would be a welcome retreat.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Ash, but I’ve no intention of marrying for a good number of years.”

She made a moue of annoyance. “Honestly, I don’t know where you find the stamina to engage in such dissolute ways.”

“Why all the censure? You’re supposed to be
my
sister, remember? Kindly recall where your loyalty should lie.”

“My loyalty is above reproach. Do you know the number of tales that have reached my ears concerning my rake of a brother? Had I mentioned even a fraction of them, I assure you, our parents would have had an apoplexy by now.”

A skeptical look came her way.

“All right,” Ashley amended with a shrug of her slender shoulders. “Only Mama would have had an apoplexy. But loyalty does not mean compliance, and I’ll rebuke your sordid past whenever I get the chance.”

But she didn’t get the chance, much to Anthony’s relief. The door burst open then, and in hopped Edith with her father and baby Myra following closely behind.

“So here you all are,” Daniel Winthrop called out in his usual jovial spirit. He handed his gurgling daughter over to her mother and planted his lips to his wife’s cheek. “How abominable of all of you to be hiding at such a merry time.”

“Who said anything about hiding?” Ashley rested a fussing Myra over her shoulder and lightly tapped the infant’s back. “We were only recuperating.”

Daniel cracked a wide grin at his wife’s response and dropped into a nearby chair. “Recuperating, eh?”

In the meantime, a rambunctious Edith had squirmed her way into her uncle’s lap and shoved a hyacinth right under his nose. “Smell this,” the four-year-old instructed.

Anthony set his tea aside and did as ordered, inhaling deeply. “Smells divine.”

Smiling, Edith tucked the white bloom into his breast pocket, then patted his coat. “There, that looks better.”

“I have one, too.” Daniel pointed to his own blossom, veering out of his jacket pocket. “It adds a certain air of refinement, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Most definitely,” Anthony harmonized. “Brings out the gentleman in us all.”

Ashley only grinned at the two indulgent men before asking her eldest daughter how her walk in the garden fared.

“It was dull,” Edith said baldly. “Look at my shoes.” She shot her small foot out from under her dress so her uncle and mother could inspect its virtually spotless appearances. “Papa wouldn’t let me go near a bit of dirt.” And then she buried her face in the crook of Anthony’s neck and sighed.

“You poor thing,” her uncle consoled, wrapping his burly arms tightly around the little creature and stroking her blond ringlets.

Daniel lifted his hands in defeat. “There is no possible solution to this predicament. If my daughter sets foot in the house with a single smudge on her clothes or person, my wife is upset. And if I don’t allow my daughter to get a single smudge on her clothes or person, then she is upset. What is a man to do?”

“The dilemma you face, my dear,” his wife remarked in mock pathos, still tapping a fidgety Myra.

“It most certainly is,” Daniel affirmed, “since the affections of one of my girls will always be alien to me.”

The solitude Anthony and Ashley had initially come in search of was eradicated by a door hurling open and an anxious Cecilia bounding into the parlor. “What are all of you doing in here?”

“Recuperating,” Daniel supplied, only to receive a scolding look from his wife for his facetious remark.

Averting his eyes from his brother-in-law to suppress his mirth, Anthony slowly rose, allowing a giggling Edith to slide down the length of his arms, and then moved over to greet his youngest sister.

“Good afternoon, Cecilia.”

Anthony bent down and gave her a kiss on her flushed cheek. Since arriving on the estate a few days past, he’d seen Cecilia on no more than two occasions, she being utterly preoccupied with the arrangements to her début ball, which happened to coincide with her seventeenth birthday. But the estrangement benefited both siblings. Seven years apart, Anthony and Cecilia had never been close and had very little to say to one another. Ashley, too, had never developed a strong rapport with her baby sister, who was their mother’s pride and joy.

A rather unexpected pregnancy, Cecilia had entered all their lives when no one believed the countess could have another child, and since that time she had become the shining star of their mother’s world. Both women just loved pomp and ostentatious displays, not to mention being the center of attention, and a grand ball would be the perfect combination of both their lifelong passions.

The stunning young woman returned her brother’s greeting, and then marched right up to her elder sister, her blond curls bouncing with each sprinted step. “The ballroom is in ruins!”

“What!?” a startled Ashley entreated.

Planting her slender arms akimbo, Cecilia compressed her rosy lips and lifted her button nose a notch. Her leaf-green eyes shone with accusation. “I asked you to oversee the arrangements to the ballroom.”

“But Lady Hawthorn assured me she would tend to all the remaining details.”

“Well, Lady Hawthorn has made a mess of everything. The floors aren’t sufficiently polished; I can scarce see my face in them. There aren’t nearly enough candles around the room. And do you know, Lady Hawthorn instructed the dark blue curtains to be hung instead of the pale yellow ones? It looks
horrid
.”

Ashley rolled her eyes heavenward and sighed. “All right, I’ll go and see what I can do.”

“Cecilia!” resounded the bellowed name from the corridor.

“I’m in here, Mama,” Cecilia called back.

At which point baby Myra belted out a loud wail of protest at all the commotion, and a desperate Ashley was left trying to calm the unsettled child.

Belinda, countess of Wenhem, scurried into the room. Her shoulders pulled back, her spine rigid, she poised her small, plump figure as though she were a member of the royal family, and demanded, projecting her voice so as to be heard over the crying child’s: “Cecilia, did you call Lady Hawthorn a featherhead?”

“She ruined the ballroom, Mama,” the young girl defended her choice of insult.

“That is no excuse for your behavior. Lady Hawthorn is your elder and my best friend. She is in a furious state and is threatening to leave the estate.”

“Let her.” Cecilia waved her hand to brush away the nuisance of Lady Hawthorn from her mind. “I have more important matters to worry over.”

“Cecelia, you will march right back into the ballroom and apologize to Lady Hawthorn. You will also explain that your nerves are in a fragile state or the woman will think you daft for your insolence.”

“I’ll apologize only if Ashley can repair the damage done to the ballroom and make it presentable.”

A still-bawling Myra left Ashley at a loss for words—and wits. Her husband leapt to his feet and unburdened his wife from the chore of tending to
two
whining infants by taking the fussing Myra into his arms.

Yet another botched family reunion, Anthony mused. With his arrival from London, and Ashley’s from Northampton, the Kennington clan was together again on their ancestral estate in the
county
of
Sussex
. Such gatherings were growing more and more scarce. Once Ashley had married and he had set up residence in London, the encounters with their parents and Cecilia had been reduced to a yearly call at Christmas and a few dinner engagements during the London season. This break in their normal family routine had proven to be far more disruptive than any of them had initially imagined.

The clamoring voices jostled Anthony from his mind’s retreat. His mother continued to pursue the impropriety of Cecilia’s behavior, Cecilia continued to berate Ashley, Myra’s cries only escalated in volume, and Edith finally clamped her tiny hands to the sides of her head to drown out all the racket.

Sensing the rhythmic thumping at his temples, Anthony furtively backed out of the room and made a dash for his life.

Chapter 2

A
nthony stood alone, meditating on the secluded arched bridge, shadowed by the budding vines of weeping willows. He propped his elbows against the wide stone ledge and gazed below at the pristine waters, prattling in compliment to the lively twitter of nature’s most vocal creatures.

An ash-blond curl slipped over his eye and he brushed the wayward lock aside. With the house in an abhorrent state of uproar, he had taken to the shelter of the trees for repose. But it appeared as though the whole of the property was abuzz with his sister’s upcoming ball, for even the woodland critters seemed uncommonly garrulous.

Anthony was beginning to suspect that there was shrinking space in this world where a man could seek refuge from a throng of marriage-minded ladies. His sister’s spectacular event was going to beckon to the fore every eligible miss in the county. Every aspiring maid in search of a mate was going to come calling—and casting nets. But Anthony was determined no woman would snare him as her husband just yet. Marriage was such a sorry state to be reduced to. One had the added burden of a family to attend to, and then there was the whole problematic arrangement of an affair, which could no longer be pursued under one’s own roof with a wife fussing about. It was all one miserable business, and were he not in need of an heir, he’d never succumb to such a suffocating fate.

Cecelia’s extravaganza was a sour reminder of just how horrid his fate would be. Really, what mayhem! It was all nonsensical, the hoopla and dramatics to snag oneself a husband. But, then again, it was likely the mayhem that first attracted young ladies to the idea of matrimony, rather than the thought of an actual husband. He was apt to think that was the case with Cecelia at least. Anthony already pitied the poor bloke his baby sister was going to set her cap on, and he was thankful to be spared from a similar fate for another decade or two—though when his time to be leg-shackled finally rolled around, he thought with a slow-forming smile, he was greatly going to enjoy giving in to all the flirtatious charms of the female sex.

His musings interrupted, Anthony noticed a kerchief float by, decked in an array of lively colors.

He quirked a brow, and walked over to the other side of the bridge, in time to catch the brightly dyed cloth pass under the arched structure and continue to be washed away downstream.

A little out of the ordinary, to be sure, but nothing abnormal, or so he tried to convince himself. Despite that sound assessment, curiosity took root, and with a brisk walk in mind, he traversed the bridge and meandered along the shoreline, traveling against the current.

Minutes passed. Ducking the occasional straggling branch, clawing at his hair and clothes, he followed the windings of the stream until untamed waters morphed into a tender prattle, no more than a few inches deep. Climbing up a slight embankment, he turned the bend and paused.