Kiss Me, Annabel

Page 72

And it was. She threw open the door, Ewan appearing at her shoulder.
Rosy was screaming. She was standing in the middle of the floor, shrilling. She looked up at them and Annabel was shocked. The quiet, rather childlike Rosy whom she’d met was replaced by a woman with a white, enraged face, eyes snapping with fury. She wasn’t screaming in terror; she was screaming with rage. Ugly, vicious rage.
And leaning against the wall, looking utterly limp, was Mayne.
Ewan rushed across the room and shook Rosy. She kept screaming. He shook her again, not roughly, but firmly. “Stop it, Rosy. Stop.”
Mac appeared at the door and said, “I’ll fetch Father Armailhac,” and rushed away.
Finally Rosy’s voice faltered and stopped.
“Goddamn,” Mayne said into the silence that followed.
The hallway was full of people now, spilling in the door. Ewan turned about. “No men in here!” he shouted.
He turned to Mayne, still leaning damply against the wall. “If you wouldn’t mind…” He nodded toward the door.
“My pleasure,” Mayne said. Then he stopped. “Just so you know, I didn’t touch her. I didn’t—”
“We know that,” Annabel said, taking his arm and leading him back into the hallway. “Rosy is quite disturbed, that’s all.”
“Disturbed?” Mayne said, his voice rising now they were in the hallway, surrounded by sympathetic faces. “Disturbed? She’s bloody mad, that’s what she is. I wandered down there to see whether Ardmore took Racing News, and there she was. So I said hello, and she started looking at me from my toes up. Maybe she didn’t like my cravat. God knows I don’t. The moment she caught sight of it she started screaming, and she threw something at me as well. I felt as if I’d assaulted her.”
Annabel caught the butler’s eye. “Warsop, I think Lord Mayne would be the better for a drink.”
“Who is she?” Griselda asked from her position on the stairs.
Annabel hesitated and Father Armailhac, who had just arrived, said, “She is Lord Ardmore’s adopted sister, and quite harmless, I assure you.”
Griselda looked unconvinced. “Well,” she said acidly, “if the crisis is over for the night, I suggest we all return to bed.”
“That settles it,” Imogen said in a half whisper. She looked very shaken. “Oh, Annabel, I’m so glad we came. This castle literally has a madwoman—it’s like a novel!”
“Not entirely,” Josie added, peeping from behind Griselda’s shoulder. “If this were all happening in a novel, that woman would be Ardmore’s first wife, not his sister.”
“I’m very sorry that you were disturbed,” Annabel said firmly, heading off any discussion of Rosy’s relationship with Ewan. “Rosy is easily unsettled and she finds strange men truly terrifying.”
“I’m sure I can guess why without being told,” Griselda said with a shudder. “Upstairs with you,” she said to Josie.
Imogen gave Annabel a hug. “This is an awful house,” she said. “Damp and cold, and it’s miles from civilization. I’m so happy we got here in time. We shall leave as soon as possible. Those screams!” she shuddered. “You couldn’t have survived six months. I’d have given you a month at the most before you would have returned to London.”
Annabel raised her head and met Ewan’s eyes. He was standing in the door of the library, just standing there, silent.
Slowly their guests filtered back upstairs, and then Annabel opened the door to the library again. Rosy and Ewan were seated on a couch before the fire, Rosy at one corner and Ewan at the other. But Ewan’s arm was strung across the back of the sofa, and he was stroking Rosy’s hair. She had her customary, rather vacant expression again. She looked like someone who would never scream. In fact…she looked happy. Serene.
Ewan looked up at her. “I expect that took a year off Mayne’s life.”
“Ten, he would say. Is she all right?” She whispered it, for Rosy was humming a little tune and looking into the fire as if it depicted the most interesting of plays.
“She seems to be. Her nurse is supposed to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Whenever I have guests, she’s to stay in her chambers.”
“Oh, dear.” They both looked at Rosy, who seemed oblivious to them.
“The problem is that she is used to freedom. You’re the first visitor we’ve had in ages, and she accepted you. I forgot to be cautious.”
“I gather it’s men who pose a problem,” Annabel said.
“She’s getting worse,” Ewan said flatly. “She attacked him, you know. Look.” He nodded to the wall where Mayne had been leaning. The floor was littered with broken crockery. “She threw a vase at him that was half her size. If she’d hit him in the face, it could have done considerable damage.”
Annabel couldn’t think what to say.
“Gregory’s getting older. She sometimes forgets who I am and attacks me. If she did that to Gregory…”
“He doesn’t seem to think of her as his mother.”
“But he knows the truth of it. And it would be damaging to have one’s mother turn into a lunatic and attack. He didn’t come downstairs, did you notice?”
Annabel shook her head.
“He can’t stand seeing her like this.”
Rosy got up and ambled away. Father Armailhac was waiting by the door. He gently took her arm and began to lead her upstairs.
Then Ewan stood up and Annabel saw something in his eyes change as he looked at her. “It appears our scandal has been papered over,” he said.
“Yes,” she managed, around the lump in her throat.
“I suppose that is better than a six-month marriage. Were you merely planning to leave me, or would you have started proceedings for divorce?” He was watching her so closely that Annabel felt as if she couldn’t breath, couldn’t say the things she might have said.
“I meant to just leave,” she whispered.
“I should have known. A woman who plans her future adultery would never malinger in a castle in Scotland.”
The truth of it burned in Annabel’s chest.
“The only problem with Felton’s solution”—and his voice didn’t sound amused now—“is that I can’t let you return to England when you might be carrying my child. I’m afraid that you’ll have to marry me, whether you wish it or no.”
Annabel opened her mouth, but he kept speaking. “But I would hope that you will choose to stay with me for better reasons. If there is no child and no scandal, you could certainly marry a rich Englishman. Yet in Peggy’s terms, while my house is isolated, I do have a great number of cows.” He hesitated. “I would ask you to stay, Annabel, because of the feeling between us.”
He stood by the settee looking tall, proud and Scottish, so beautiful that her knees melted at the very sight of him, and yet she couldn’t find the right words to say. She could never leave Ewan under her own volition: she loved him too much. And yet the knowledge that he didn’t truly love her was breaking her heart.
“I would like you to marry me, cows or no,” he said.