Kiss Me, Annabel

Page 65

Ewan ground his teeth. He remembered this feeling. He’d had it before, when Rosy was brought to him after a week in the company of bandits. She had cowered and cried pitifully, when she wasn’t staring into space. He knew then that all the money in the world couldn’t solve some problems, but it seemed he must have needed to learn that lesson again.
“The fire feels so good,” Annabel said sleepily. “Come lie down, Ewan.” She rolled closer to the wall, a fragrant bundle of womanhood with no idea how she affected him.
Ewan had decided long ago that it was one thing to believe in God, and it was another to besiege Him with requests, like a peevish child asking for sweets. But he broke his own rule that night, and before he fell asleep—carefully leaving a space between himself and his not-quite-wife—he sent up a fervent prayer.
It wasn’t very elegantly phrased, and Peggy might have been insulted had she heard it. But Peggy was in no mood to be listening to whispers on the wind. She was holding her tiny Annie (Annabel having been deemed too elegant). Annie’s mop of bright red hair marked her Scots to the bone; her father couldn’t stop grinning, and neither (when he had the news) could Mac.
Before Ewan even dropped off to sleep, the redoubtable Mac was already on his way to the cottage, prudently bringing with him a large basket of food and a change of clothes for his lordship. Mac had long been of the opinion that lords, like other men, are the better for a full belly and a change of clothing. Besides, he was itching with curiosity to see how the master survived without two hot baths and three square meals a day.
In the end, Mac had not time to form an opinion on this point: the carriage no sooner entered the square than the earl had popped his countess (or future countess) into the vehicle and ordered them to make haste.
Annabel’s and Ewan’s relief at being rescued was so acute that they didn’t even speak once they were in the carriage. It wasn’t until they were drawing to a halt in an inn yard that Annabel realized she did have one thing to say. “I’m afraid that I’ve taken a bit of a cold. So I’d like my own room, please.”
A second ticked by, and then: “Of course. You’ll be far more comfortable, and your maid can see to your comfort during the night. Annabel—I’m so sorry.” There was something raw in Ewan’s voice.
Annabel frowned at him. “You are hardly responsible for my cold.”
“I took you to that awful place.” His eyes were almost black and he really did have an anguished look in his eyes.
“You must think I’m wasting away from a romantic disease like consumption,” Annabel said, forgetting that she was grief-stricken and almost giggling. “I only have a cold, Ewan. Probably my nose is bright red, but I assure you that I am not near death.”
He didn’t smile back at her. “Your nose is perfect,” he said.
“Now you’ll have to do penance for lying,” she told him, moving toward the carriage door. But he stopped her, wrapping his arms around her and carrying her into the inn.
He didn’t let her go until she was snug in a bedchamber with a tub of steaming water ready. The fact that Annabel dropped a few more tears into her bath was obviously due to her weakened condition.
Twenty-eight
It was a castle. A huge castle made of dark gray granite, with overhanging windows and little turrets and even what appeared to be a formal pond out front. They had been driving all morning, through woods so tall and dark that they seemed to stretch into infinity. They hadn’t passed a house, or a village in hours. And then, all of a sudden…
They rounded a bend in the road, and it lay below them, shimmering in a pink mist left from a quick rainstorm. The trees on the surrounding hills looked black against the rain-drenched sky.“That’s Clashindarroch Forest,” Ewan said. “The River Bogie runs down that way, behind the castle; we pipe it in through pipes my father installed. He was by all accounts a great innovator. I put in a plunge-bath off the kitchen because Uncle Pearce said he would have liked it.”
“Is Pearce your father’s brother, then?”
“My grandfather’s brother, actually. He’s a great-uncle.”
“You have a plunge-bath?” she said, a little belatedly. “How wonderful!”
“Better than that. I had a proper heated bath put into the master bedchamber a few years ago.”
“A welcome addition,” she said.
But she didn’t want to meet his eyes. For the last nights, after her cold lessened and they took to their journey again, she had kept to her own bedchamber. They hadn’t spoken about the fact that the supposedly married Earl and Countess of Ardmore were occupying two bedchambers. In fact, they hadn’t really spoken about anything since they left the Kettles’ house. Ewan spent a great deal of each day on horseback, and since Annabel stayed up most of the night, staring at the ceiling, she had a continual nagging headache.
Now she kept thinking that she probably looked like a veritable hag in her dusty traveling clothing. Her nose was still faintly red. What would the staff think of her? Not to mention Ewan’s family?
She looked back at the castle below. The outriders played a piping call on a trumpet.
“ ’Tis customary,” Ewan told her, leaning forward to look out the window. “I don’t normally announce myself like a king, I promise you that.”
The carriage seemed to pick up speed, rushing down the hill, and now Annabel could see that the great front doors were standing open and people were pouring out and lining themselves up in rows to the left and right. It was a far cry from her father’s rotting shell of a house and the four servants he’d managed to keep on reduced wages.
Ewan was grinning down at the castle, his eyes sparkling. Then the coach drew up with a great rattle of gravel flying from the wheels. There was a cheer from the assembled servants.
The family stood in front. She knew at once who Gregory was. He was a skinny little shrimp of a boy, dressed all in black, with a serious expression.
Nana was more of a shock. She was a long way from the sweet, white-haired lady whom Annabel had imagined. Instead, she appeared to be wearing a straw-colored wig from the Elizabethan era. She had a beak of a nose and a slash of red lip rouge under it. All in all, she looked like a cross between a Roman emperor and Queen Elizabeth herself.
Ewan, naturally, was shouting hellos to all and sundry, and dragging her toward the group at a speed that didn’t allow her to walk in a dignified manner. Nor smooth her hair. But Annabel straightened her back and told herself that she was a viscount’s daughter.
He brought her to his grandmother first. The old woman looked from the tip of Annabel’s hair to the tip of her toes. Her eyes slowly narrowed, and Annabel had the unnerving sensation that Ewan’s grandmother knew precisely why they had to marry.
“Well!” the countess said after a long moment. “You look older than I expected. But then, Englishwomen do age at a faster rate.” Her black eyes were bright with scorn.
Annabel straightened her back. This old woman would either conquer her or be conquered. “Whereas you don’t look a day over eighty,” she said, curtsying as if she stood before Queen Elizabeth herself.
“Eighty!” Nana roared. “I’ll have you know, girl, that I’m not seventy-one.”