ROMANCE: His Reluctant Heart (Historical Western Victorian Romance) (Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Fantasy Short Stories) (11 page)

              And now, the unspeakably foolish little idiot had gone and fallen for that horse-racing idiot of equal proportion. Anabelle gnashed her teeth as a light rain began to fall about her and her horse, soaking her gently, but surely, right to her skin. It would not do much for the reputation as the daughters of a horse-mad lord if Isadora was seen out and about with Devon Haversham without a chaperone. Thankfully, the racing tracks were well within sight, and it was not too long before Anabelle had located both her sister and the curly-haired Haversham.

              She approached them quietly as she could, knowing full well the sight she made with her disheveled hair and soaked clothes. But lo and behold, her sister had refused to go! Sitting there, clutching Haversham's arm as if he were her one and only, Isadora had been as defiant as Lord Givens had been when they had tried to collect him from the racetrack so many times.

              “But Poussey is about to win and Devon put so much money down on him,” Isadora protested.

              “You cannot be here with him,” hissed Anabelle, grabbing her sister's wrist. Isadora yanked it away and clung instead to Devon, looking up at her older sister angrily.

              “Lady Givens!” cried Haversham in an effort to use that well-renowned charm on Anabelle. “I assure you, I will deliver Isadora home straight after the races; you see, it's her first time betting on a yearling—”

              “You let my sister bet on a horse, Lord Haversham?” Anabelle's fury was palpable. The young man paled visibly and drew back, murmuring something unintelligible. She grabbed her sister's hand, brought her up sharply, and led her to the side of the box for as private conversation as she could manage in the given circumstances.

              “What is it you WANT, Anabelle?” hissed her little sister, dreamy eyes snapping with a fire that was familiar now that Anabelle had peeled her away from her misbegotten paramour.

              “I want you to tell me exactly what you are hoping is going to happen with Lord Haversham, Isadora,” she replied in measured tones.

              Defensiveness rose up in Isadora's eyes that made Anabelle want to swallow her words. If only her sister had not chosen somebody destined to go exactly the same route as their father, perhaps she would not be so protective. But the girl was starry-eyed and as horse-mad as the man who had birthed her, and she had never had their mother to tell her what a mistake she was making. She had, in fact, had nobody except for Anabelle, and clearly, Anabelle was not doing a good job if this was Isadora's choice.

              “I love him,” declared Isadora fiercely, and Anabelle's heart sank as her worst fears for her little sister were realized.

              “But Isadora,” she cried, wanting to shake her so badly that she could hardly contain herself, “You realize that even if he returns the affection, his mother controls the purse strings in the family.”

              At the angry flush on her sister's face, Anabelle realized that this was not news to Isadora, and that everything was far worse than she had first imagined. “Devon loves me. And his mother will love me as well, when she gets to know me.”

              “Do you really think she will accept you once she learns that the girl her son has decided to bring home is a penniless orphan?”

              “I am more than just that!” cried Isadora, her anger reaching frightening proportions. Anabelle knew then that she had gone too far, even if she had only spoken the truth.

              She swallowed hard. “Of course you are, dear. I am just trying to protect you—”

              Isadora cut her off; her face had gone from tomato angry to pale and determined in the matter of moments, and her next words cut Anabelle to the quick. “Devon loves me, and all will be well, Anabelle. He is not Lord DeVere, after all, and I am most certainly not you.”

              The blood roared loudly in Anabelle's ears. “Is that what you think of me, Isadora?” she asked her sister, unable to raise her voice above a whisper, so tightly clutched was her throat. “That I am the type of woman that men leave?”

              It was an adult question, one so mired with the pain of their father's death, and so grown up that it hit Isadora full-force and she took a step back. Just then, youthful willfulness took over and a quick retort rose on her lips. “I think that you were jilted and that you are jealous. Jealous that I had Papa, that I was always the favorite. Jealous that I have Devon and you have no one.”

              The words were like a cold, resounding slap to the face. Without a single word, Anabelle turned on her heel and left.

              It was only as the rain intensified on her mad gallop back home that Anabelle managed to reach a point of numbness. Her sister's words no longer stung, partially because they were true and partially because Lord Givens was no longer present to confirm or deny them. Everything had fallen into such disrepair, that it was only when her horse slipped on the wet ground that Anabelle considered the fact that the animals had not been properly reshod since her father's death.

              It was quite the ungainly toss straight into the mud pile for Anabelle after that. As she sat in the mud, sticky, filthy, and with the rain getting heavier around her, she thought about how it was the perfect ending to a perfect day, and the full force of all the events that had just happened to her hit her so squarely in the emotions that she did the only thing she could do. She began to sob into the rain.

              Which was precisely how Henry Princely found her minutes later, when impossibly, his carriage pulled up behind her.

              Caught between humiliation and the practicality that surely, she would catch cold if she continued indulging in self-pity out there in the rain, Anabelle had no time to discern whether or not she was actually happy to see him. All she knew was that she felt a sagging self of relief when his handsome blond head poked out from the carriage door, his inquisitive face the answer to all her silent prayers.

              “Need a ride?” he queried, stepping from the carriage to offer her a hand. As he plucked her from the mud, she noticed how large and square his hand was, how dependable, amazed that she could notice anything after the argument she had just had; perhaps her brain was doing its very best to distract itself. But no matter; the inside of Henry Princely's carriage was dark, warm, and dry, and she settled herself into it with all the appreciation a hungry man has at a sumptuous feast.

              Gallantly, Henry doffed his coat and wrapped it around her wet legs to keep her warm. That was all. Not a word about her appearance—Anabelle figured she must look like she was attacked by wolves—in fact, nothing but a delightfully companionable silence on the short remaining ride to her home. It came into view, large, looming, shabby as a pauper at a wedding, and suddenly Anabelle felt the return of stinging to her pride as she remembered that of all the people she knew, Henry Princely would be precisely the one to remember what the house used to look like. Catching the embarrassed expression on her face and sensing that if someone else did not take charge of the situation right there and then, she would explode, Henry gave the order for the coachman to take her horse to the stable and for the servant to draw a bath.

              After a full, surprisingly indulgent, half hour in the bath, Anabelle emerged a changed woman. Shocked at allowing her sense of decorum to fall so low that she had allowed Henry to see her home in such a state of disrepair, but also grateful that he had taken control, Anabelle entered the drawing room, fully expecting to find a polite note waiting for her there.

              Instead, the room was empty of the man with the blond lion's mane. Her servant was pouring tea, and upon questioning, revealed that Henry was still down at the stables. Oh not another one, thought Anabelle, and headed down to the stables to see if she had another horse-mad lord on her hands.

              The stable was blessedly warm and dry compared to the outside. She was a little bit spattered by the drops by the time she made her way on in there, but nothing compared to her earlier, mud-encrusted self. Hoping to catch him unawares, Anabelle moved as silently as she could; it was not long before she spied Henry's head over by Marjorie's stall. He was patting the horse gently on the neck and murmuring something in her ear; the animal was clearly enjoying herself a great deal, if the way she was cocking her head at him and blinking her ridiculously long eyelashes at him was any indication.

              “You like horses, Lord Princely?” she queried, hoping he would start at her sudden intrusion. She had, after all, no more patience for anything equestrian after such a day.

              “As much as the next person, Lady Givens,” he replied smoothly, not even looking up from the horse.

              Damn the man!

              Henry Princely, in his stead, was doing his best to train his eyes off of Anabelle's slightly mussed form. She looked positively radiant with the faint glow of the outside behind her, and her lavender gown clung to her form most invitingly; with her red hair tumbling over her shoulders, for Anabelle had not had time to do anything with it, she looked ripe for ravishing.

              If Henry had been that kind of man, of course.

              Instead, he pretended that all of his interest lay in the horse before him, who, if he was not mistaken, was damn near flirting with him.

              “It appears that you've had quite the day, Anabelle,” he said softly, without looking up at her.

              “Tried to save my sister from an unchaperoned outing with Lord Haversham,” Anabelle replied, before she could stop herself. And just like that, she was mortified.

              Noticing the color that rose to her cheeks at the unexpectedly frank admission, Henry felt a rush of protectiveness. He too knew what it was like to have to save family from themselves and he was quiet for a long moment, searching for some way to make her know that.

              “Lord Haversham and your father seem to share a love of horses,” he finally said, unable to think of anything witty or clever.

              “Oh, they do. And considering how our father ended up—” Here, Anabelle clipped off the end of her own sentence and stood there, hanging her head. She heard, rather than saw, Henry coming towards her in the soft straw.

              “You would think people learn from past mistakes, but they don't,” he said gently, leading her over to a well-piled bale of hay. Behind them, Marjorie nosed around her stall, her hoofs making soft thuds on the ground. “When my father went, my mother would hole up nightly in his study with a fresh decanter of brandy. I took to emptying all of them around the house, and told her she would end up little better than my father if she kept it up. She promised me she would not, and a fortnight later, I found her on the bed, senseless from drink.”

              Anabelle drew in a breath. Who shared this kind of information? And yet, strangely, it seemed quite all right; her heart, in fact, was swelling with empathy for a most familiar situation. Sitting beside her, he seemed at once magnificent and also small. His title notwithstanding, he had been through quite a bit himself; that nobility he bore so well had come at a very high price.

              “I used to do the same thing with my father, but to no avail. I had so many thoughts about why he got on that horse after the jockey did not, and I still think that if he was sober, he would not have done it,” she said finally, figuring he knew most of the sordid details from the gossipmongers anyway. He did not know, of course, the final detail, the most devastating one of all, about her father's final words, but she could not bring herself to share that with him or anyone. It was her burden alone to bear.

              “It is devastating to see the people you love so much destroy themselves with such alacrity and ignorance,” said Henry, and Anabelle felt her heart pound painfully in her chest. She could not have phrased it better herself.

              “This is the stable where we used to play together. Do you remember it?” she asked him, needing to break the spell, for it was too heavy to handle.

              He turned his fantastically light eyes on hers and she felt rooted to the spot. “This is the stable where I had my first kiss for the very first time,” he replied. Her cheeks burned as she realized he was talking about her, and quite suddenly, the years fell away between them. “Do you recall, Anabelle? I told you that you would be my wife and you swore that you would be independent and have no one but yourself.”

              She laughed aloud, but mixed in with the delight of the memory was a sharp pang of pain. What had she known back then, she, a mere slip of a foolish girl? How could she have known what the long years were going to bring her, the heavy burden of responsibility compounded with complete isolation?

              But Henry was not finished yet. “Do you still feel that way, Anabelle?” he asked her, and the look in his eyes was too much to bear. She shook her head no, feeling her breath catch sharply in her chest as she realized that in that moment, he was as naked as she was, that there was a sincerity to his question that was completely disarming. She had the power to hurt him. She did not want to hurt him. She would never.

              “Then will you marry me, Anabelle Givens? Will you be my wife?”