Seducing Mr. Knightly (20 page)

“Annabelle, he cares about nothing but his paper. Remember when he cast me out—when everyone had turned their back on me?” Julianna persisted, hacking away at Annabelle’s illusions, and removing obstacles for the army of doubt to come in, and conquer.

“Because of Knightly’s ruthless devotion to
The Weekly
, I almost lost Wycliff,” Eliza added. Annabelle glanced sharply at her. Whose side was Eliza on? Julianna’s or hers? The shattering of dreams or the preservation of hope?

The throbbing in her head worsened. Her eyes became hot. She would not cry. She would
not
show weakness.

“It just means that he cares. There is nothing wrong with caring,” Annabelle said firmly. Yet her hand trembled, and the teacup she held clattered tellingly against the saucer. She had a feeling her friends were right and that she was wrong.

She had feared this moment, in which her friends grew tired of her optimistic infatuation. Of her. Where they no longer thought her sweet, but stupid. She could see it in their pitying gazes and in the worried glances they exchanged amongst themselves.

“Yes, he cares for his newspaper, Annabelle. Not for anyone or anything else,” Julianna persisted, driving the point home. Beautiful and bold Julianna. Annabelle felt herself pale and shrink beside her friend, a tower of strength and assurance.

“How did it make you feel when he asked this of you?” Sophie asked gently, again.

“I didn’t like it, of course,” she said, caving in to pressure because that is what she did. And a little bit of her hadn’t liked it. “But he doesn’t know how I feel about him, and if he did, I have every confidence he never would have made this request.”

She had been confident. Now, thanks to Julianna’s persistent, artful interrogation, she was no longer certain of anything other than her foolishness to persist in loving a man who obviously cared so little for her.

Annabelle leveled a glare in Julianna’s direction.

“How can you love a man that would ask that of a woman? No decent man would ask this of a woman, love aside,” Julianna said, because she never knew when to stop. If there were a line, Julianna would stomp right across it, turn around and implore you to hurry up and come along.

What about me?

Well, maybe it was time she crossed the line. Maybe it was time she defend herself instead of Knightly.

“What is the purpose of this conversation?” Annabelle asked, and her voice had a bold quality to it that sounded strange to her ears. Eliza straightened, Sophie’s lips parted, and Julianna fixed her green eyes upon her. “I love Knightly and I have since I first saw him. It’s just a part of me and you have known that and now suddenly it’s wrong?”

“It was all fine until he asked you to practically prostitute yourself for his bloody newspaper,” Julianna replied.

“Julianna!” Sophie and Eliza gasped.

Annabelle took a deep breath. She could do this. She could defend herself.

“What if I want to?” Annabelle challenged. But her hand wavered and tea sloshed over the cup, spilling into the saucer.

“What if you don’t, but you have so defined yourself as She Who Loves Knightly that you cannot say no?” Julianna retorted. In the midst of battle, Annabelle recognized that it was a fair question. One she would explore later, on her own.

“Is that what you think of me? That I am nothing more than a foolish girl in love with a heartless man? Perhaps you’re right.” Annabelle laughed bitterly for the very first time in her six and twenty years. “Look at me—trying to get his attention with ideas from strangers because I have no idea what to do. And now he is starting to notice me and it’s suddenly all wrong and—”

“I only want you to be happy, Annabelle, and I’m afraid that—” Julianna said, trying to reach for her hand. Annabelle set the teacup on the tray and stood to go.

“No, you are a know-it-all, Julianna. You may know all the gossip of the ton, but you do not know the contents of my heart nor do you know what is best for me.”

And then Annabelle did the unthinkable. She stormed out without even a backward glance.

Chapter 24

A Gentleman’s Apology

T
OWN
T
ALK

Lord Marsden has succeeded in rallying his peers to support his Inquiry. If you enjoy reading a newspaper, enjoy it now, for it seems our days are numbered.

The Morning Post

A
FTER
Knightly knocked on the door to the Swift residence, a meek servant opened it and mutely led him to the drawing room where he might await Annabelle.

The room was sparsely furnished. Everything was useful and plain. No thought seemed to have been spared to comfort, just practicality. He thought of his own home, also simple but designed for ease and comfort, with plush carpets and richly upholstered furniture. Everything was expensive, yet nothing was ostentatious.

This room, however, was thrifty to an extreme.

And then there was Annabelle, standing in the doorway. She wore a shapeless brown dress with a white apron pinned to the front. White flour covered her hands, spotted the brown dress, and there was even a smudge on her cheek.

Her eyes, though . . . instead of sparkling, they were dull. In fact, he suspected she had been crying when he noted her eyes were reddish and puffy, too. He felt like he had been punched in the gut.

“What are you doing here?” she asked flatly. When she did not sound pleased to see him, he realized he had expected her to be, which made him feel like an ass. Like a nodcock.

“Why are you wearing an apron?” he asked. She should not be dressed like a servant.

“Cook and I were baking bread,” she answered.

“Don’t you have help for that?” She was the sister to a prosperous cloth merchant. They should have a fleet of household help. A woman of Annabelle’s position should be occupied with friends and finding a husband, not domestic drudgery.

“I am the help,” she answered flatly. This was not the Annabelle he knew; she seemed to be missing her sense of magic and wonder. Something was wrong. Was it the awful request he’d made of her? Probably. He was glad he’d come to apologize.

“Why are you here, Mr. Knightly?” she asked.

“Would you like to sit?” As a gentleman, he could not take a seat until she did.

Mutely, she sat upon the settee. He took a place next to her on the most uncomfortable piece of furniture he’d ever encountered. He reached for her hand and held it in his. Her hand was cold.

“I owe you an apology, Annabelle. It was wrong of me to ask you to encourage Marsden on behalf of the newspaper. Or as a favor to me.”

Knightly had expected to find his conscience soothed upon uttering those words. He had traveled across London, all the way from the Fleet Street office to Bloomsbury to deliver them. He thought she would thank him and say not to worry, for she had understood his request was one of a desperate idiot. A nodcock.

Annabelle narrowed her blue eyes and titled her head questioningly. His breath hitched in his throat.

“Julianna put you up to this, didn’t she?” she asked. He could not miss the note of accusation in her tone.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You have come to apologize because Julianna thinks it’s wrong of you to ask and
pathetic
of me to agree to it,” she said, spitting out the words. At least as much as Annabelle could do. Then she took a deep breath that foretold doom and proceeded to say more to him than she ever had in the years he’d known her. “We all know that the only thing you care about is the newspaper. No one is under any illusions here, Mr. Knightly. Not even me, who has a foolish propensity toward flights of fancy and always seeks the bloody goodness in everyone.”

Knightly’s jaw dropped.
Annabelle had uttered a swear word.
What next—unicorns pulling hackneys and the King in dresses?

“I knew what you were asking of me. And why. I’m not stupid,” she added. Her chin jutted forward. She lifted her head high. Angry Annabelle was impish and magnificent all at the same time. Thinking had suddenly become impossible when all the truths he’d ever known seemed null. This was Annabelle as he had never seen her—and, he suspected, as she’d never even been seen.

“It was wrong of me to ask,” he said, because that was all he knew in a world that had just turned upside down.

“It was wrong. You really ought to think beyond yourself and your newspaper for once,” she lectured. “I ought to have said so at the moment you asked. I’m very sorry you have come all this way to hear me say that. And listen to me! You are in the wrong and I have just apologized. I am such a . . . a . . . nodcock!”

“Annabelle, what is this all about?” he asked in a calm, measured tone.

She took a deep breath to calm herself. She fixed her pretty blue eyes on him.

“You really do not know,” she said, awed. He had no idea what she was talking about. It must have shown in his expression. “Oh . . . oh . . . oh . . . bloody hell!”

She flung herself back on the wretchedly uncomfortable settee and just laughed her pretty blond head off while he marveled that Annabelle, who barely spoke, had just uttered the words “bloody hell.”

He did not know what was so funny.

He was about to ask when the laughter ceased and the tears began.

Knightly glanced in the direction of the heavens, seeking guidance. Like many a man, nothing flummoxed him like a woman’s tears. With some mixture of horror and terror, he watched as Annabelle wept beside him.

Although she looked tragic and adorable, something had to be done to stop this madness. First, he pressed a clean handkerchief into her palm and she pressed it to her eyes. Her pretty shoulders shook as she cried.

Horrors. Curses.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered; then, with a sigh, he pulled her into his arms.

Annabelle burrowed her face into his shoulder. No doubt soaking his jacket and cravat with tears. It didn’t matter. He could feel her become calm and still in his embrace.

He also felt her soft curls brushing against his fingertips. He felt her breasts pressing against his chest. He felt powerful for having soothed her. It felt right to hold her so close. Above all he craved more. All he wanted was more Annabelle.

He whispered her name.

They were interrupted before anything untoward could occur. A dowdy, hatchet-faced woman stood in the drawing room entry and cleared her throat. Loudly.

“Would someone like to explain this scene to me?” she asked in a sharp voice. Annabelle recoiled from his embrace and took up the smallest possible amount of space on the far end of the settee.

Knightly replied in kind. He did not take orders anywhere, from anyone. “Perhaps introductions might be in order,” he stated after rising to his feet.

The woman lifted one brow at his command, in her house.

Annabelle, on the other hand, interrupted in the softest voice.

“This is my sister-in-law, Mrs. Blanche Swift,” she said dully. And then with a pleading glance at him, she added, “This is Mr. Knightly, with whom I work on the Society for the Advancement of Female Literacy.”

Society for the Advancement of Female Literacy?
Oh, Annabelle.

Knightly ached to turn to her and ask a thousand questions. But he recognized a scene when he was in the midst of it. He did his best to play his part.

He schooled his features into what he hoped was a charitable expression; he had not inherited his mother’s gift for acting.

“Ah, yes. Your charity work,” Mrs. Mean Swift said in a glacial tone to Annabelle. “When I suggested that charity begins at home, this was not at all what I had in mind. Who is supervising the children? Have they been fed? What of the bread?”

Annabelle stood a step or two behind Knightly, as if he might protect her from her hatchet-faced sister-in-law. Frankly, he wanted to.

“Nancy is with them,” Annabelle answered, even though Knightly thought she ought to reply that governesses and servants existed for those sorts of tasks, not sisters.

“I see.” To emphasize her point, Mrs. Swift glared at Annabelle, who took a step back. She then glared at Knightly, who only squared his shoulders, stood taller, and looked down his nose at her. Intimidating with one’s size was a juvenile maneuver, but really, sometimes the situation just called for it.

“Mrs. Swift, I would like to conclude my conversation with Miss Swift,” he stated. He paused for emphasis and added, “Privately.”

Never mind that he was a guest. In her house.

She stared at him with narrowed eyes.

Knightly confidently met her gaze and held it. Unblinkingly. Really, one did not attain his level of success without the ability to win a staring contest.