Edith Layton (8 page)

Annabelle danced away to look into her wardrobe so her mother couldn’t see her face. To be spurned once was devastating. Twice would be almost a comedy—if it didn’t hurt so much.

The earl of Drummond arrived at his friend’s town house shortly after dawn the next day. He was admitted, then left to cool his heels in the study. His friend was still in his dressing gown when he came downstairs to greet him. “I thought you’d want to leave early, so as to get the journey done before evening falls,” Drum said, eyeing his friend’s sleep-tousled hair.

“So I did,” Rafe said, “but I can’t. I decided to stop on the way and pay a brief morning call on Annabelle before I do.”

“To say farewell? You do have some sensibilities after all.” Drum joked.

“Very few,” Rafe assured him, “But this isn’t even that. She sent me a note in answer to mine. She doesn’t understand. She’s furious about my canceling plans for Vauxhall, I suppose. Says she doesn’t want to see me again. Can’t blame her, but I can have a word with her before I go, to smooth matters. A note’s no way to change plans. I should have realized it before I sent it. I’m no hand with the ladies, Drum,” he said with a wan smile. “I don’t want to make a misstep now.”

Drum looked sober. “If you don’t mind some advice?”

“Feel free.”

“Well, I wonder if you should even try to explain. How do you propose to do it? It might muddy the waters further if you say you’re going to see Brenna Ford. Annabelle may jump to worse conclusions.”

“I won’t lie,” Rafe said seriously. “Not just because I’m bad at it. I don’t like to lie. Lies have a way of catching up with a man. But there’s nothing wrong with sidestepping the thing. I’m just going to tell her I have to leave town, I’ll be back soon as I can be. And that I’m sincerely sorry if I inconvenienced her, because that would be the last thing on earth I’d want to do. Should that do it?”

“It should. But if she asks for the specifics?”

Rafe shrugged. “I’ll tell her. I’ll ask her to trust me. After all, I’m not going behind her back. A liar would. Surely that should reassure her?”

Drum nodded. “So it should. All right. Now, since
I only had time to swallow a few eggs and a loaf of bread before I left my house—what do you have to offer to keep me nourished while you get dressed?”

Rafe laughed. “Still got that locust appetite? Well, one good thing this mess has got me is a fine chef. My breakfast is yours. But eat quickly, I dress fast, even with one wing. And leave a crumb for me, will you?”

A few hours later, they set out on two horses, riding side by side.

“You sure you can ride with one arm in a sling?” Drum asked before they mounted up.

“It’s almost healed. Besides,” Rafe said, patting his roan gelding, “Blaze knows me better than most men do. I’ll be fine. I need speed, and he can give that to me.”

But they made slow work of traveling a few streets. It might be one of the finer districts in London, but the streets were crowded with carts and wagons making deliveries, carriages of ladies and gentlemen, and scores of well-dressed horsemen on their way to pay morning calls too.

After too long a time for Rafe’s nerves, he stopped in front of Annabelle’s town house. He slipped down from the saddle, brushed off his immaculate coat and breeches, and at the last moment remembered to smooth back his hair. Then, refusing to look back to where Drum sat his horse, grinning like a gargoyle, he rapidly took the steps up to the front door.

The butler recognized him and looked, for a moment, disconcerted.

“I’ve come to see Lady Annabelle,” Rafe said, stepping forward to go in the door.

The butler blocked him. “I must see if she’s in, my lord,” he said, avoiding Rafe’s amazed eyes.

It was the correct time for a morning call. More than that, it was ridiculous that a butler had to see if his own mistress was in. Much more. It was an insult. But Rafe nodded, stepped back, and waited as the butler closed the door. He didn’t look back to see what Drum’s expression was now.

A few minutes later, the door opened again. The butler looked even more dour. “She is not in, my lord,” he said.

The rims of Rafe’s ears felt hot. His head went up. “I see. And tomorrow?”

“I will see, if you’ll be so kind as to wait?”

This time the butler left the door ajar. Rafe heard voices raised in conversation and the boom of masculine laughter from inside the house. Annabelle was entertaining callers this morning. He felt his face grow hot. If it were any other female on the planet, he’d leave and never come back. But it was Annabelle. And he had perhaps insulted her. He waited.

The butler made his stately way into the salon, through the ranks of his young mistress’s usual clot of gentlemen callers. He approached Annabelle. She looked away from the gentleman who’d been telling her an amusing story. He always knew all the latest gossip, but what her butler had to say now might be more important.

She’d been presented a card a moment before. She’d crushed it in her hand, dropped it back on the butler’s silver salver, and told him she wasn’t receiving Lord Dalton. If he was back so soon, it meant Rafe wasn’t accepting that. She felt a faint thrill of delight. She turned inquiring eyes to her butler.

“The gentleman asks if you’ll receive him tomorrow,” the butler said softly.

“Oho!” the gentleman who’d been chatting with her laughed. “I wonder who’s in your bad graces. Tell me what he did so I can be sure never to do it.”

“It’s no one,” she said airily, not wanting to give him a hint of who it might be, in case she decided to see Rafe again.

“Poor wretch!” he said avidly, looking past the butler’s shoulder trying to see if the rejected fellow was standing in the hall.

“And if he inquires as to the next day?” the butler persisted.

“Oh, tell him I’m not available then, or the day after that, or the next either,” Annabelle said pettishly.

“‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’?” her gentleman caller quoted happily. “Lud! poor fellow!”

“Just so, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.” Annabelle laughed nervously, wanting the moment over, before he could see who was waiting. “Tell him that.”

The butler walked heavily back to the door to relay the message. Rafe didn’t blink when he heard it. He nodded, turned, and went down the stair like
any gentleman after a morning call, not like one who’d just been deeply insulted.

He was upset, not destroyed, Rafe told himself. After all, this outcome had a certain sad symmetry, not to mention certainty. He’d aspired to something beyond his reach. He’d failed. He’d go on. He always had. He tried to ignore the way his face was burning, and how useless, pointless, and shamed he felt.

Drum looked at his face and picked up the reins without a word.

It wasn’t until they were well out of London, at lunch at an inn on the main road, that the subject was brought up again.

“You didn’t ask,” Rafe said suddenly, putting his glass of ale down on the table and fixing Drum with a bright blue stare. “And I know you’re usually curious as a cat. All right. Here it is. She refused to see me. In fact, she said she didn’t want to see me ‘tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.’ Poetic. And definitive. So be it. She won’t. I suppose I do have some sensibilities, after all. I was raised a gentleman, but I’m just a man who aimed too high. I was bound to fall. Better sooner than later.”

“Bedamned to that!” Drum said, his own eyes kindling, “You can look high as you like, Rafe. Never doubt it.”

“Look, yes, achieve, no. Have done,” he said. “It makes what I might have to do that much easier.”

“You really mean to marry the Ford woman?” Drum asked in astonishment. “No need to be so rash! This thing with Annabelle may pass, you know.”

“No. It was inevitable. Any rate, whatever I
decide, I can go on with a clear mind. There’s no impediment now.”

But not with a clear heart,
Rafe thought, and changed the subject before the pity in Drum’s eyes made him feel even more unhappy. Though he wondered if that was possible.

I
t was a small village, set in a valley off a winding road that meandered off a main road travelers only found by leaving the highway. There was a green in the center of town, with a pond and a string of ducks to ornament it. There was an ancient church in need of repair to match the ruins of the castle on the hillside. Five merchants had stores on its two streets, and there also was a smith, and a tavern in an inn with rooms to let that seldom were.

But Brenna was dressed for a stroll through Regent’s Park, not just a stroll through the heart of Tidbury. She wore a pink walking dress and a fashionable bonnet, as though she expected to meet the best of London Society, not just the few neighbors she might chance to see. She carried a straw basket and held herself as though it were filled with spun-glass eggs, not the card of pins she’d just bought.

“Lord! I could crack nuts on the back of your neck, child,” her brother said in a low, laughing voice as they strolled along the main and only street. “These are our friends—relax.”

The pretty bonnet turned toward him. It was a coal scuttle style, so he could only get a glimpse of her profile. It was enough to show him she wasn’t smiling. Her usually upturned lips were held in a tight, straight line.

“Daisy looked upset this morning when she got back from the village,” Brenna said.

Her brother frowned. She was too breathless after such a short walk. It had to be nervousness changing her voice.

“I asked her what it was,” Brenna went on. “She said ‘nothing.’ So I knew it had to do with me, or us. I can’t help wondering if she’d heard anything about—” Brenna ducked that proud head and watched her feet “—Rafe, and that incident. I know that’s foolish and highly unlikely. Still, I told her to tell me whatever it was. All she said was, ‘There’s folk whose mouths run on wheels, and there’s an end to it, miss.’ So what am I to think?”

“That I’d wring the necks of those whose mouths said anything cruel about you, that’s what,” Eric answered. “I’m getting better every day, so I could. And it’s more than highly unlikely that a word about what happened in London has been said—it’s impossible. There’s no way a soul could know about Rafe or the ‘incident.’ If people are staring at you, it’s because nothing as exciting as you has happened here since the Conquest. Think about it. You’ve been
gone a long time. You’ve been all the way to India. Most of them haven’t even been to London. And you’re dressed for a visit to the Palace instead of the seamstress. You look very fine today, you know. So relax. Your secret’s safe.”

She nodded. Still, her silence showed him she didn’t believe him. They strolled on. The smith dipped his head in a greeting as they passed. But he didn’t take his eyes off Brenna as they did. Brenna felt a vague disquiet. It grew when Mrs. Hubble and her friend Mrs. Kent nodded to Eric, stared at Brenna, and looked away. When Brenna saw John Taylor, she let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. John was an old friend.

“Eric!” John said with every evidence of pleasure as he rushed up to take Eric’s hand. “Good to see you. We’d heard such frightening things about your health. But here you are big as life, and filled with vigor, I see. Jane will be so happy to hear it. I didn’t come to visit—well, but I just heard you were home. It’s only been a few days, hasn’t it? Please call on us. I’d stay longer, but I promised Jane I’d bring the post double quick. Don’t want her to box my ears. Take care, and visit soon. Hello, Miss Ford,” he said with difficulty, as an afterthought, glancing away from her. He tipped his hat and paced off down the street before she could answer.

Brenna turned a frightened face to her brother. “
John?
Saying hello that way? ‘Miss Ford’? And not looking at me? Oh, Eric!”

Eric stared after their old friend. “Talk about
someone whose tongue runs on wheels,” he said thoughtfully. “But he’s newly wed, and you know what a bossy creature Jane is. It means nothing.”

It meant something when the vicar saw them. He started to smile, stopped, fumbled with his watch, and did a poor acting job of pretending to consult it. After making an exaggerated face at his watch, he turned in the other direction and hurried away.

Now Eric frowned. “He’s always been a fool and a coward, with the moral fiber of a lily, even when we were at school. But just because of that, I think I’ll have a word with him. Go on to the dress shop as you’d planned. I’ll meet you there.”

The bell over the door to the shop jingled as Brenna stepped in. It was a tiny shop; there was no way Brenna could step out again when she saw who was already in there. The two women started when they saw her. Miss Timmons, the dressmaker, had a mouth full of pins, so she couldn’t speak. But her eyes grew round.

Jenny Slack made a more rapid recovery. She was a thin woman Brenna’s own age, well on her way to inheriting her mother’s cottage as well as her reputation as town gossip. “Brenna Ford!” she said with delight. “Back from London.”

“Back from India, actually, by way of London,” Brenna said, “Hello Jenny, how have you been?”

“As ever,” Jenny said, her eyes running up and down Brenna, evaluating her with lightning speed. “But
you!
Oh my dear. How
brave
you are,” she cried, her thin hands fluttering to take Brenna’s in their icy
clasp. “How
good
to see you safely home after all your travails. No matter what anyone says, you
are
a brave creature, when all’s said.”

“India wasn’t that dangerous,” Brenna said, glad of something normal to talk about. Normal, and good. Though she’d never admit it to Eric, she thought what she’d done was amazing and valiant too. “There’s infection and disease, and the weather
is
horrible,” she went on, “and the people sadly oppressed. But the army takes care of its own, and at least we have Eric back now. So it was all worth it.”

“But who was talking about
India
?” Jenny said, amazed. She dropped her voice, and patted Brenna’s hand. “I mean, after that loss you suffered.”

Brenna took her hand from Jenny’s cold clasp and backed a step away. “Thomas fell in Spain, Jenny,” she said softly. “That was many years ago.”

“Yes, who could forget such a tragedy? You two were
so
well suited,
so
in love,” she sighed. “Everyone could see it. Then you lost him. We wondered how you’d
ever
recover. Then to lose your
other
fiancé in India just months ago! And under such
dreadful
circumstances. Poor girl. Oh, we all heard about that, be sure,” Jenny said avidly, noting the stunned look on Brenna’s face. “You wrote to say it was a mutual understanding that ended it, and so your parents said. But
we
knew how hard it must have been for you, poor dear. Terrance Smith had a cousin there, you see, and he wrote and told us
all
.”

Brenna took another step back, but finding the door already open behind her, halted.

“Oh, Eric!” Jenny said gaily, looking over Brenna’s
shoulder. “I was just telling Brenna how brave a girl she is. To come back after
all
that has happened since she left us. That incident in India with the faithless officer was simply
appalling
. Poor girl! As for after that—
I,
for one, do not care a fig for what others say,” she said, snapping her bony fingers. “There must have been a good reason for the
horribly
embarrassing thing that happened. No disrespect to your sex, Eric, or to my dear husband’s, but it’s usually the gentleman who is to blame, when all’s said.”

“To blame for what?” Eric said in a dangerously soft voice.

“For the scandalous incident at Lord Raphael Dalton’s home in London, to be sure,” Jenny said, amazed. “Why, was there
another
?”

“No, you couldn’t wring her scrawny neck,” Brenna said on a broken laugh as she and Eric rode home again. “There’s laws against it. She’s always been a horror. And she never forgave you for not noticing her when she was eligible, so there’s the reason she faced me with the gossip. At that,” Brenna said, lifting her chin, because there was no one around to see her face now but her brother, “I’m glad she did. Now, at least, I know.”

“Know now that you have to accept him? Good, at least for that,” Eric said. His hands were tight on the reins, though their old horse didn’t need any on them, since he’d know the way home blindfolded and would only bolt if he saw dinner in front of him.

“
That?
No. Never,” Brenna said wearily. “I meant
at least I know it’s out, and so now I can deal with it. First off, though, how can we keep it from Mama and Papa?”

“We can’t,” Eric said through tight lips.

“We must,” Brenna argued. “We can’t have Papa charging into London looking to horsewhip Rafe. Papa forgets his age, and all sense, when it comes to insults. There’s no insult involved here.”

“You have to marry him, child,” Eric said gently, looking down at her, seeing her hands clenched in her lap in spite of the calmness of her voice. “Rafe’s a good man and will do the right thing.”

“Which is to marry the woman he loves,” Brenna said stubbornly “All right.
I’ll
have to explain it to Mama and Papa then. They’ll see reason. They love me.”

“And I don’t?”

“Too much to see that I could never be happy knowing I wrecked a good man’s hopes for happiness,” Brenna said. “Now, let’s not argue. You’ll see.”

He soon did, and it gave him small satisfaction to have been so right. After they got home and sat down to tea, Brenna broached the subject to her parents.

“Have done. You didn’t do anything wrong,” her father told Brenna in his booming voice when she was done explaining. Colonel Alexander Ford was tall, blond, and handsome as his first wife had been, and their son, Eric, was. His hair had more silver than gold now, and age had gentled his power. But his voice still held it.

“But the talk in the village—” Brenna began.

“Bedamned to the talk!” her father said, pounding
the table for emphasis. The tea service hopped in place. Brenna’s mama shot her husband a reproachful look. He looked as sheepish as such a big man could, and mopped up some spilled tea with his napkin. “You say you don’t want him? That’s enough for me,” he told Brenna gruffly. “It was an honest mistake. It would be a worse one to go on with it. I won’t have you sacrificing yourself to some fool just for the sake of our reputation.”

She looked stricken.

“Just so,” Brenna’s mama said. She was a small, dark woman, still lovely, though well into her middle years. Even so, Maura Ford was many years younger than her husband. Alexander Ford’s first wife had followed the drum, moving with her soldier husband whenever duty called. She’d been a golden lioness of a woman who’d died of a fever, tragically young. Everyone said Colonel Ford was a lucky man to have got such an adorable pixie to heal his heart after she passed away. Eric and Brenna knew he was.

They also said Brenna Ford got her dark good looks from her Welsh mama, her stature from her Viking of a papa, and the devil’s own stubbornness from the pair of them. Long retired, Alexander Ford claimed the sparks set off by his two dark ladies kept him young. They maintained it was his stubbornness, refusing to grow old. He said he didn’t dare with them around.

“He really offered you marriage?” Brenna’s mama asked her now.

“He’d better have,” her father said in a menacing rumble.

“He offered it constantly,” Eric said.

Brenna nodded.

“And you turned him down every time?” her mama said. “Well then, good. Gossip is temporary. It only lasts a few years, or decades. Marriage is forever—if you’re lucky,” she said with a fond look at her husband. “But how terrible to have to live all your life with a man who’s ill bred, or boorish, or vulgar. Men can be difficult even if you love them.” She smiled at her husband. “But if you didn’t? How dreadful to have to suffer such a husband’s attentions. Even worse, to carry the spawn of such a beast under your heart for months, and then raise it!”

She gave a theatrical shudder. “That’s too much to sentence you to for such a little crime. Why, you only cast doubt on your reputation, and ours. And your brother’s, of course. But Eric’s such a handsome rogue, he could still have his pick of excellent matches…” She paused, and went on a little more sadly, “Well, he still has a choice of suitable ones, at least. So don’t worry. Eric will make his way somehow. He would even if you’d killed the fellow instead of just setting all England to talking about how you tried to snare him.”

It was a terrible thing to say.

Eric’s gaze shot to his father’s—and saw the hidden light in his eyes. He recognized the expression in his stepmama’s eyes as well. He relaxed.
So,
he thought. They’d already heard the gossip. The two were at it again. As always, every decision they made in front of their children had been previously agreed upon. Eric’s own eyes kindled with laughter.

But Brenna was watching her mama with horror.

“You did the right thing, Bren,” her mama said resolutely, “whatever the cost to the family.”

“I just don’t understand why Eric would bring her into the orbit of such a villain,” her husband said, frowning at his son.

Eric hid his amusement under the cover of flustered guilt. “I didn’t think—I didn’t mean to leave her to his sole protection. But I was ill and I—”

“It’s not his fault,” Brenna said quickly. “None of it. And Rafe—Lord Dalton, that is—is
not
boorish or ill bred or whatever else you said. Just the opposite. I’ve seldom met a nicer man. He’s generous and kind, and good company too. You’d like him, Papa,” she said earnestly. “He was a fine officer and is a true gentleman. You’d like his manner, Mama. He’s charming without trying to be. In fact, there’s nothing hypocritical about him. He doesn’t pose or posture. He’s no slave to fashion, though he always looks just as he should. He’s noble, a thoroughly good man.”

Her voice grew sad, and softer. “That’s just it. He’s too good a man to do such a thing to. I can’t accept his offer of marriage. He loves another,” she said, and stopped talking. She found something interesting to stare at on the floor.