Kiss Me, Annabel

Page 64

“But you said—you said Draven—”
“I’m sure he was crap in the sack,” Mayne snarled. “But you loved him, didn’t you? So even if he wasn’t making you faint, he had something I’ve never had.”
She whispered it. “What?”
“You loved him. Lucky bastard that he was.” He said it deliberately, slowly. “Maitland didn’t die unloved.”
Then he swung about, on the point of leaving the room. “And he loved you too. So leave it be!” His voice echoed off the old walls. “The stupid sod loved you. He eloped with you. He said he loved you when he was dying, for God’s sake. What right have you to discount his feelings?”
There were tears in her eyes, and he was in no mood for tears. But he waited.
“None,” she said, and her voice broke. “I’ve no right at all.”
He made to leave, but when she sank to her knees, he went over and picked her up.
But only because there was no one else around to do it.
Twenty-seven
Annabel sat on the bed and stared at the rough-hewn wall, but her view was blurred by hot, humiliated tears. She should be riotously happy. Ewan had said he loved her. A sob tore its way up her chest.
The truth of it was shockingly, brutally clear. She had spent her girlhood figuring out how to make a man desire her. She hadn’t neglected a single item that might be helpful: she knew about kisses that fired a man’s loins with their suggestiveness, about glances that promised private delight, about sleek movements of one’s hips that could make a man’s hands shake.She was an expert at arousing desire.
No, the uglier word was more appropriate: lust.
The irony was that she had achieved precisely the marriage she hoped to gain from her practice: marriage to a rich man blinded by his lust for her. A man who was kindly and generous in his dealings with others, would never reproach her for having no dowry and would buy her all the gowns she wanted. Sobs were burning her throat.
Her life felt like one of those fairy tales that pretend to be enjoyable but finish up with an unpleasant moral. The richest man in Scotland was so riveted by lust that in the heat of the moment, he swore fidelity and even love.
It was unfortunate that she wasn’t stupid enough to ignore the difference between lust and love.
If only she were ugly, or scarred, or even—she wiped away more tears—if she had a particularly nice personality, she might believe Ewan. But she’d never hidden truths from herself. Her only skill was figuring numbers, and yet she was lazy enough to never wish to do it. She was charming when it suited her, and a fishwife when it didn’t, something her father would have attested to.
More tears slid down her face. If your own father doesn’t love you, then it should be no surprise to find that other men aren’t inclined to do so. Ewan had merely glimpsed what she was really like, and he had immediately blurted out his reluctance to marry—at least until lust got the better of him. But how long would lust last?
The pain of it was like a raw ache in her chest. She sat on the bed and shuddered with sobs, rubbing away the tears with her damp nightgown. It wasn’t like her to succumb to tears in this fashion. She had rarely cried when her father was sharp with her, even in the worst moments of her childhood. Yet somehow the tears just started up again, for all her attempts to stop.
The door opened quietly. Ewan’s hair was dripping wet again.
“How you can bear to enter that stream I don’t know,” she said, hastily blotting her face and pretending that her eyes weren’t red.
“I’m used to cold water,” he said. “My nurse used to say that I was fairly addicted to cleanliness. I often bathe in the river that runs behind the castle, and it’s freezing in the depths of summer. Why are you crying, Annabel?”
She managed a weak smile. “Foolishness. I’m hungry, I think.”
“I’ll give you a glass of milk. And I’ll put on potatoes,” he said. “After that, I’m going to walk to the next village. I’ll be back for you as soon as I can.” His voice was grim. “I’ve been an idiotic bastard, Annabel. I can’t even say how sorry I am.”
“It’s not so bad,” she said, but her voice rasped, and he scowled. Then she realized what he was saying. “You can’t walk to the next village! It’s growing dark. How on earth will you find your way?”
Ewan put six potatoes into the pot. They should at least fill Annabel’s stomach until he could return with a horse, a carriage and warm clothes of all kinds. “I’ll find the way,” he said curtly.
Then he came over to her and dropped a kiss on her head. “I’ve milked the cow. Expect me back before the morning.”
“Ewan—”
But she spoke to empty space.
Four hours later, Ewan realized that he may have paid lip service to the idea of hell, but now he had a realistic idea of it. He had stumbled along for an hour or so, keeping to the path by luck rather than skill, until rain started to fall. By a half hour after that, he was wet to the skin. His boots—made of the finest leather and designed for a gentleman planning on an afternoon’s drive—were taking in water like twin sieves. By his count, he’d fallen off the road three times, and once he had landed up to the knees in mud.
Moreover, there was no sign of a village. Finally Ewan turned about. He couldn’t leave Annabel alone with nothing but potatoes and a malevolent cow in need of milking.For some reason, going back to her was easier than walking away. He managed to stay on the road, and walked into the house just as the rain began to slack off. Annabel was asleep, huddled under the Kettles’ thin coverlet. Two gowns were draped on top of her for warmth, and the fire had burnt low again.
Ewan felt a searing stab of guilt. He’d taken an exquisite, laughing young woman away from the London ballrooms that were her natural milieu and reduced her to a tearful, freezing damsel in distress. What’s more, he’d taken her virginity, and given her only potatoes to eat. And for what? Due to a quixotic idea that he would alleviate her fear of poverty?
No. Annabel had accused him of not being honest with himself. The truth of it was that he’d sent his carriages away out of pure, unadulterated lust, no matter how much he would like to dress it up in fancy ideas. He’d seen this cottage, and the idea of being alone with her sprang into his mind with the strength of any temptation.
The temptation of the devil, obviously.
He put a log on the fire as quietly as he could, grappling with a bout of self-dislike such as he’d never experienced before.
Annabel woke up with a little scream.
“Don’t worry,” he said, stripping off his shirt. One of the damnable things—in a long string of the same—was that he had no more clean shirts. He’d have to put on a shirt that was not entirely clean. Grimly he chose the least soiled and pulled it on.
“Did you bring a horse?” she asked groggily.
Somehow he managed to get the word out. “No.”
“No?”
“I couldn’t find my way to the village. I failed you, Annabel.”
There was silence from the bed.
“I’ll start out again the minute I’ve milked the cow.”
“But Ewan, we can’t just leave Peggy’s house and the cow and the chicken. What would the animals eat?”