Hidden Affections (24 page)

“I’ve already told you that it’s not you I’m worried about,” he countered and ignored the blood he tasted again. “Gossipmongers already have enough to say about you, and I don’t think you need to risk adding more.”

She moistened her lips. “I don’t like being the subject of gossip any more than you do, but I refuse to let gossipmongers control what I do or where I go. While I may agree that you have good reason to want to absent yourself from the city, please don’t be so . . . so overprotective where I’m concerned. Or is it your own reputation you’re worried about if it becomes known that I’m traveling back and forth unescorted?”

He sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. “Fine. You can go, but on one condition. No, make that two conditions. First, if this storm continues and I think the roadways are too dangerous, you’ll wait until I think it’s safe for you to go into the city to volunteer. Second, you’ll let Graham take you back and forth using my private coach. No more hacks. And no more rides with Philip, since there are some people in the city who don’t know he’s my cousin.”

She grinned. “I agree. And since you seem to be in a much more reasonable frame of mind, you might want to hurry and settle your argument with Irene before she takes to her bed.” She drew closer, planted a quick kiss on his cheek, and slipped past him.

Stunned, he held still for just a couple of moments to savor the warm sensation of her lips on his cheek before he started off for the cottage.

One kiss. One spontaneous, very innocent, featherlight kiss.

That’s all it took for him to seriously consider that this woman had stolen his heart, and he had only a few weeks left, if that, to get it back. For when he learned they were divorced, he’d have to send her away before he forgot how much heartache that loving this woman would bring.

I can’t believe I kissed him. I actually kissed him!

Annabelle climbed into bed after saying her prayers and making an entry in her diary that took a very long time, and she repeated the same phrase to herself that she had been muttering for the past three days. She still had no idea what possessed her to kiss Harrison, but she had had more important worries that burdened her heart—the deep snow that had fallen and threatened to keep her from meeting with Eric tomorrow morning.

She plumped up her pillow and lay down before she pulled the covers up to her chin. In all truth, she really could not fault him for waiting until now to give her permission to travel into the city again. Deep snow drifts had blocked the roads and the staff would have been virtually stranded in the cottage if it had not been for the underground tunnel.

She was very grateful that she would be able to meet Eric tomorrow, find out what he wanted, and convince him to leave her alone. She closed her eyes, hoping she could convince her imagination to rest so she could find some sleep, but bolted upright when she remembered Eric’s note. She had not even read it yet to see exactly where she had to meet him.

Grumbling, she climbed out of bed and let the dim light of the low fire guide her as she tiptoed across the shadowed room. Once she retrieved the note she kept hidden in the bottom of her knitting bag, she carried it closer to the fire so she could read it. She unfolded the note. She recognized Eric’s handwriting from the many letters he had sent to her the first few months they were married, and read the few words he had written there:

Eagle’s Nest Hotel off Market Street on Franklin Alley

William Tyler, Room 203

Her heart flip-flopped in her chest, and she gasped out loud. “That miserable, conniving scoundrel! He took a room under my father’s name. He used my father’s
name
!” she hissed, and her heart pounded in her chest. Annabelle was so angry she wanted to tear up the note and toss it right into the fire. She thought better of it for only two heartbeats, then threw it into the fire anyway.

She stomped back to her bed and yanked the covers up to her chin. “That cad! That miserable, scheming, conniving . . . monster!” she gritted and held on to the top of the covers as fury surged through her body and left her trembling so hard that the mattress was shaking.

Her fury, however, quickly gave way to bitter disappointment, and she wondered how she had ever thought she loved this horrible excuse for a man at all. Dissolving into tears, she buried her face in her pillow to keep anyone from hearing her. She cried for her kind and sensitive father, who did not deserve to have his name shamed by a man like Eric Bradley, and she cried because her father had left this world so quickly, she never had the chance to say good-bye to him.

She cried for her sweet, trusting mother, who died still thinking that her only child would be safe with a loving husband after she was gone. She cried for herself, too, but for so many reasons, she did not even bother to think beyond the fact that the life she had planned for herself was still unraveling into a never-ending nightmare that got worse with every passing day.

When her tears had been spent, she lay back against her pillow, wiped at her eyes with a corner of the sheet, and pushed the damp tendrils of hair away from her face. Her heart was finally beating normally again, but she was so exhausted, she could not think beyond taking one slow breath at a time. She folded her hands together, closed her eyes, and placed herself in God’s care, because without His help, she did not think she would have the strength to get out of bed in the morning, let alone travel to the city.

She did not recite any prayers aloud. She did not even say them silently. Instead, she just lay there, lifted her soul up to God and envisioned that He was abiding deep within her spirit, gently comforting her with His presence and offering words from Sunday’s sermon that would sustain her. Faith. Hope. And the greatest of all: love.

She whispered those words aloud, over and over, until her faith was renewed, hope replaced her despair, and love, instead of anger, filled her heart when she thought of the two people God had brought into her life who made her feel safe.

She thought of Irene first, but she fell asleep thinking only of Harrison—the man he had been when they first met, the man he was becoming, and the man she had come to regard with such deep, deep affection that she was just beginning to understand for the first time what it was like to love a man who truly deserved to be loved.

Annabelle arrived at the Refuge the next morning at nine o’clock, and she was relieved that Harrison had decided to stay home for another day or two until his lip was completely healed. Once she was certain Graham had left to drive to the city mansion to deliver Harrison’s apologies to his cousin for not being able to meet with Eric today, she made her excuses with Mr. Drummond for not being able to volunteer as long as usual today. Since Graham was not going to return until one o’clock to pick her up, she did not have to worry about him seeing her and left the Refuge shortly before ten.

She had no idea how long it would take her to find the Eagle’s Nest Hotel, but the orderly street plan made it easy to find Market Street. Fortunately, the snowfall in the city was half of what it had been on the outskirts, and the walkways had been mostly cleared. She watched her steps carefully to avoid a few patches of ice as she walked, but she reached Market Street without incident. She even managed to finally post the letter she had written for Irene to her daughter-in-law along the way.

The traffic on the road was heavier than she expected, and she made a special effort to keep her deep hood in place to avoid being spotted. She was reluctant to enter a shop to ask which direction to take to get to Franklin Alley and stopped an elderly man out walking his dog instead. Grateful that she only needed to walk east toward the river another two squares in the bitter cold before turning north, she kept her head low as she headed for a meeting that could very well change her life, as well as Harrison’s.

She reached the hotel, which was on the other side of the narrow alley, well before ten thirty, but her confidence wavered. This particular neighborhood was as seedy as the aged hotel. She was not looking forward to her meeting with Eric. She wasn’t afraid to speak to him alone, but actually walking into a hotel and going up to a room to meet a man who was not her husband was far beyond what she considered to be proper. She backed into the doorway of a closed storefront and pressed her back against the splintered door.

She wrapped her arms around her waist to keep warm and tried to think of an alternative place where they could meet. She doubted that anyone she had met might be at the dilapidated hotel, but she could not take the chance that someone there might recognize her or someone she did know might see her entering or leaving the hotel.

She looked up and down the street and saw a sign for a pawnshop. She also remembered passing a shop that sold used clothing and smiled. She saved the moral issue of entering the hotel as a problem to be resolved only after she solved the problem of being identified first.

By ten thirty, she had sold her first wedding ring, which she always kept pinned to her chemise so no one would ever find it in her room, and purchased a well-worn gray cape and cracked black leather gloves. She had left the used clothing shop with coins in her reticule and a large package that contained her green cape and matching gloves.

She was walking back to the hotel when she passed a small basement eatery and stopped to walk down the steps to look inside. The interior was too dark to see much, except that there seemed to be very few patrons. She hurried inside as an alternative plan started taking shape in her mind.

Besides boasting much-welcomed warmth, the eatery had several high-backed booths on either side of the kitchen door that offered the privacy she needed, although she would not have a view of the front door. After securing one of the booths for herself, she ordered a sugared cruller and a pot of tea and slipped an extra coin to the serving girl to bring her a pencil and a piece of paper.

By the time the serving girl returned with her morning snack, Annabelle had written a note to Eric to tell him to meet her here, instead of the hotel. She looked up at an old clock on the wall and was confident she could get the note to Eric in time, since there were still twenty minutes left before their planned meeting.

Reluctant to deliver it to his room herself, she caught the servant girl’s arm before she left. “Is there any way you can help me? I need to have a note delivered to the Eagle’s Nest Hotel.”

The girl scrunched up her pocked cheeks. “How soon do you need it delivered?”

“I’m afraid I need it done now,” she said and placed several coins on top of her note.

The girl’s eyes opened wide, and she scooped up the coins and the note and slipped them into her pocket. “I’ll tell my ma I need to leave for a few minutes so I can take it. You want me to wait for a reply?”

Annabelle shook her head. “Just be sure to take it to Room 203 and slip it under the door. That’s all you need to do. I have another coin for you when you come back and let me know the note has been delivered,” she replied and sighed with relief when the girl gave her a quick nod and disappeared back in the kitchen.

Time passed very slowly, especially since Annabelle checked the clock every two minutes. She tried to eat the cruller, but the fried donut stuck in her throat and she left most of it on the plate. She did finish the pot of tea and was about to order another when Eric suddenly appeared at her table and slid into the seat across from her.

“I see you’re still the moral prude I knew you to be. I thought by now Graymoor might have changed that,” he quipped.

She ignored his barb and glared at him. “How dare you use my father’s name to take a hotel room. How dare you!” she whispered, but made her voice as harsh as she could without worrying that anyone would overhear her.

He grinned, picked up a piece of the cruller from her plate, and devoured it before he answered. “You should be thankful that I was clever enough to come up with the idea several months ago when I started an account in his name to store funds I didn’t want my wife to know that I had.”

He ate another piece of the cruller, but seemed oblivious to the sugar that stuck to his chin. “Just in case someone you know sees you entering the hotel, you could always claim that you were meeting your father there. No one else here knows that he’s dead,” he suggested as he brushed the sugar from his fingers and waved the serving girl away when she approached the table to take his order.

“Harrison knows my father is no longer alive,” she retorted. “Other than insulting me, there must be a reason you asked to meet with me. What is it?”

He cocked a brow. “You’re a bit more direct than I remember.”

“I’m not interested in your opinion. What do you want?”

He placed both hands on the table and locked his gaze with hers. “You haven’t figured it out by now? Perhaps you’re not as bright as I remembered. Obviously, I want money. In return, you have my word that I won’t tell your husband or anyone else that he married a divorced woman. Given the reputation he had before he married you, I doubt he’ll have much of one left after everyone realizes he was taken for a fool by a simple country girl.”

She blinked away her disbelief. “You want money? Why? You’re married to an heiress!”

He leaned across the table. “If my wife has a miser’s hold on the purse strings, her father has one even tighter on the inheritance she’ll receive one day. You may find that amusing, but I assure you I do not. I want my own money, and you’re going to see that I get it. Lots of it.”

“You’re insane,” she whispered, horrified again to think she had ever thought she loved this man.

He laughed out loud. “Only a man who was insane would miss an opportunity like this when it falls into his lap.” He hardened his voice. “You have a month to think of a way to sweet-talk your husband into giving you a rather substantial lump sum that you will turn over to me. If it takes longer than that, you’ll test my patience and the amount will only go higher.”