Kiss Me, Annabel

Page 10

Ewan translated that into a typical English understatement of a loyal love for his sister. Lord, but Englishmen were strange. Here was a man who looked like a rakehell if he ever saw one, and yet…it seemed he was truly being offered a wife.
“I would be honored to meet Lady Griselda,” he said.
“Good, that’s settled,” Rafe said, with another yawn. “I’m off. Ardmore, would you like me to drop you at Grillon’s, or will you find your own way home?”
Ewan rose and bowed to the two men.
“Perhaps we could talk about your stables at some point,” Felton said.
Ewan recognized the spark in his eye as being that of a man with an abiding passion for horses. “I would be delighted,” he said, bowing again.
Mayne rose in turn. “Have you been invited to Countess Mitford’s garden party tomorrow afternoon?”
“Yes.” Ewan hesitated. “I thought not to go. I found the last garden party painfully tedious.”
“This won’t be. Countess Mitford models herself on the ancient Renaissance families of Italy. She holds only one party a year, and it’s not to be missed. I shall escort my sister.”
“Come along,” Rafe said grumpily. “Aged whiskey gives one the same headache as its younger brethren, damn it.”
Ewan bowed again.
Four
Everything had changed since Tess married. For years, the four of them would curl up in bed, huddling under threadworn blankets in the winter, wearing chemises because they had no nightgowns…talking. Josie was the baby, who sometimes sounded the eldest of all of them because of her biting wit. Imogen next youngest, with her passion for Draven Maitland that had thrived for years before he even noticed her existence. Annabel was two years older than Imogen and had spent her adolescence managing the finances of the household, exhausted by the burden of it and tired, bone-tired, by the poverty of their father’s house. She had talked incessantly of London, of silks and satins, and of a man who would never make her count a penny. And Tess was the eldest…Tess, who had worried about all of them and kept her fears to herself.
But Josie was in the country under the care of her governess, Miss Flecknoe, and Tess was in her husband’s bed. Which left only two sisters to squabble, Annabel thought gloomily.Imogen was in a sullen mood tonight, sitting with her lips pressed together, scowling at the bedpost at the end of the bed.
“He’s got no right to act in such a fashion,” she said. “He has no right!”
Annabel jumped. Her sister’s voice was as sharp as the north wind. “Rafe is our guardian,” she pointed out.
“I can do whatever I wish, with whomever I wish,” Imogen said. “He may be your guardian, but he is not mine, since I am a woman of independent means. I never liked him, drunken sot that he is, and I never shall. And I shall never forgive Tess for not bringing us onto the season herself.”
Tess’s husband traveled a great deal, checking on his holdings all over England. Tess had taken to traveling with him, and was away from London as often as she was present, so Rafe, with Lady Griselda’s help, was bringing Annabel out this season.
“You came out when you married Draven,” Annabel pointed out. “You have no particular need for Tess’s help.”
“Draven…” Imogen said, and her whole face and voice changed, softened and looked like the old Imogen, before she became so harsh, so hard and shrill.
Annabel held her breath, but Imogen didn’t dissolve into tears. Instead she said, after a moment, “He was beautiful, wasn’t he?”
“Very,” Annabel confirmed. Just don’t ask me whether he was a reasonable person or a rational man, she added silently.
“I loved his dimple,” Imogen said. “When we married, I…” she stopped.
Annabel saw a glimmer of tears in her sister’s eyes and surreptitiously pulled a handkerchief from her bedside table. She kept a supply there. But Imogen shook her head.
“Do you know the problem with being married only a matter of two weeks?” she asked.
Annabel figured that was a rhetorical question.
“The problem is that I don’t have many memories,” Imogen said, her voice tight. “How many times can I remember kissing Draven for the first time? How many times can I remember his asking me to marry him? If we’d just had more time, even a month or two, I would have feasts of memories, enough to last me for years.”
Annabel handed her the handkerchief. Imogen wiped away a tear snaking down her cheek.
“There will be other memories to treasure, someday,” Annabel ventured.
Imogen turned on her with a flash of rage. “Don’t try to suggest that anyone could replace Draven in my heart! I loved him from the moment I reached girlhood, and I shall never, ever love another man as I loved him. Never.”
Annabel bit her lip. She always seemed to say the wrong thing. Perhaps she should inform Lord Rosseter that she wished to marry him immediately; at least it would get her out of the house. “I didn’t mean to imply that you would forget Draven,” she said, controlling her voice so that no shade of irritation entered. “But you’re very young to talk of never, Imogen.”
“I’ve never been young in that respect,” Imogen said flatly.
Annabel decided to try for a new subject. “I have decided to marry Lord Rosseter,” she said brightly.
Imogen didn’t appear to have heard her. “Rafe said something similar to me, this very evening in the carriage. He actually implied…” she turned to Annabel and hesitated. “I probably shouldn’t say this to you, since you’re unmarried.”
Annabel snorted.
“He accused me of missing the pleasure of the marital bed!”
“Oh. And are you?” Annabel inquired. It seemed a reasonable, if impertinent, inquiry, given Imogen’s behavior on the dance floor.
“Of course not! I miss Draven. But not…or rather—if Draven were…”
Annabel rescued her. “Well, I can see Rafe’s point. I should think that anyone could reasonably have assumed that you were missing those particular pleasures, given the way you looked at Ardmore on the dance floor.”
“Nonsense!” Imogen snapped. “I was merely being seductive. The same as you always are.”
“I never act in that way,” Annabel stated.
“Well, of course, you don’t have the knowledge that I do,” Imogen said pettishly. “You’re just a maiden, after all. I was able to be much more direct because I understand what happens between a man and a woman in the bedchamber.”
Annabel did not trust herself to speak.
“At any rate,” Imogen continued, “I have definitely made up my mind to take Ardmore.”
“Take him?” Annabel inquired, giving her a direct look.
“Make him part of my retinue,” Imogen said, waving a hand in the air. “That’s all I’ll say on the subject to a maid, even if you are my sister.”
Annabel ignored her provocation. “Be careful, Imogen. I would be very, very careful. That earl does not look like a tame pussycat to me.”
“Nonsense,” Imogen said crossly. “Men are all the same.”
“All right,” Annabel said. “Make him your cicisbeo, if you wish. But why put on such an exhibition while dancing? Why embarrass yourself in such a fashion?”