Kiss Me, Annabel

Page 75

“Meretrix in Latin,” Josie said, without a semblance of repentance. “I know you won’t like this, Annabel, but it seems to me that you simply want Ardmore to express himself more eloquently. Why don’t you tell him you are going to leave with us? His heart will be riven, and he’ll fall to his knees and plead with you to stay.”
“I would never lie to him,” Annabel said.
“I know!” Josie cried. “If you were in danger, Ardmore would suddenly realize that he might lose you forever. For example, if you fell off a bridge and were carried away in the white water, he would shriek your name.” She grinned at the thought.
“But I would be dead,” Annabel pointed out. “I don’t want to fall from a bridge or a horse. I am taking Sweetpea out this morning, and I have no plans to plummet to the ground.”
There was a gentle knock on the door. “That’s Elsie,” Annabel hissed, swinging her legs from the bed. “I don’t want her to see I’ve been crying. Tell her that I’m taking a bath.” And she dashed into the bathroom and closed the door.
Josie leaned forward and pinched Imogen’s foot. “We have to do something!” she whispered as Elsie began fussing with Annabel’s wardrobe. “I’ve never seen her so dreary. She really believes he doesn’t love her.”
“He’s probably fairly tongue-tied on the subject,” Imogen said. “Men tend to be.”
“But you know how hardheaded Annabel is. She seems to have convinced herself that desire precludes love. At this rate, the poor man would have to play the role of an altered tomcat merely in order to convince her of love.”
“What have you been doing in the schoolroom?” Imogen scolded. “Your conversion is entirely unsuitable for a young lady. In fact, for a lady of any age! It must be those books.”
“I learned that phrase from you, not from a book! And I hate to tell you this, Imogen, but classical literature is a great deal more lurid than are the works of the Minerva Press. But don’t distract me: I know Annabel. She’s as stubborn as a mule, once she gets her mind to something. The only way to change this situation is to put her in danger…somehow.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” Imogen said, getting up and going to the door.
“It worked for you,” Josie reminded her. “You fell off that horse and Draven promptly stole you away to Gretna Green.”
“Annabel would never resort to such tactics,” Imogen said, tacitly accepting responsibility for the fall. “She’s ruthlessly honest, you know, and that would amount to lying to Ardmore. At any rate, I hope you’re wrong. Ardmore looks like a man who could convince a woman of anything, if he put his mind to it.”
But Josie found that she was very rarely wrong. Still, the solution didn’t seem overly difficult: mild danger would certainly inspire indisputable signs of love in Ardmore, and convince Annabel of his feelings.
Josie smiled. She had an excellent idea of how to effect a spot of mild danger.
Thirty-two
Imogen opened the door into her bedchamber and stopped in surprise. There, seated on an upright chair beside the dressing table, was a woman who appeared to be a reincarnation of an ancestral portrait. But she was clearly no ghost. “In the absence of others, I shall introduce myself,” she announced, as if she were Her Majesty herself: “I am Lady Ardmore.”
Imogen entered the room and dropped a low, formal curtsy. “What a great pleasure to meet you, Lady Ardmore. I am Lady Maitland, Miss Essex’s sister.” Ardmore’s grandmother wore her hair curled and powdered, piled high on her head, and she was decked with two ropes of emeralds, which (according to Imogen’s devout reading of La Belle Assemblée) was a blunder during the morning hours. Yet she was formidable. One could see the resemblance to her grandson. Ardmore’s eyes were green, and hers were silvery and tired, but they had the same decided jaw and beautiful cheekbones.Lady Ardmore waved a hand. “You may seat yourself.”
Imogen promptly sat down.
“So you’re the widow, are you?” Lady Ardmore said. “I knew about Maitland’s death, of course. Heard about your elopement too. He was a bonny lad, your husband.”
“Did you know him?” Imogen asked.
“I knew his mother, for all she was English. Lord Ardmore and I—that would be my husband, not my son—went to London now and then. She wrote me a nice note when Ardmore died, and then again when I lost my son and his wife.”
She was silent for a moment. Imogen bit her lip. She couldn’t imagine what it had been like, losing one’s husband and then their only son. Not to mention her daughter-in-law and the babies.
But before she could think what to say, Lady Ardmore continued. “I was sorry to hear that Lady Clarice had died—November, wasn’t it?”
Imogen nodded. “She was never the same after Draven died. She caught a chill and she simply didn’t care to go on.”
“ ’Twould have been easier, perhaps, if I could have faded away in some sort of illness. There was many a day when I would have wished it. But”—she looked at Imogen, and her silvery eyes were sharp as ever, and tearless—“there are those of us who cry, and those of us who rage. ’Tis my guess that you’re of the latter kind.”
Imogen managed a small smile. “Might I count myself a member of both groups?”
“Oh, I cried,” Lady Ardmore said. “When my James and his wife died, and with them those bonny, bonny children, I cried so hard I thought I’d drown myself, as they had.”
“I’m so sorry,” Imogen said.
Lady Ardmore gave herself a little shake. “I can’t imagine how we wandered into such maudlin territory,” she said. “I’d like to know why you’ve come to Scotland, Lady Maitland. The castle’s ripe with rumors. My maid tells me that Miss Essex will be wanting to return to London now, and not marry the earl.”
“That is not correct,” Imogen said, wondering how much to tell the countess.
“My grandson hasn’t told me a smidgen.” She fixed her bright eyes on Imogen. “Yet I can tell this is the marriage for him. He hadn’t shown a scrap of interest in marriage, and though it galls me to admit it, Armailhac was right when he sent him off to London. Your sister’s got backbone, and she’s a Scot, and I can see as well as any that Ewan cares for her.”
Imogen nodded.
“So what’s the fly in the ointment, then?” Lady Ardmore barked. “Your sister looks a bit watery to me, and that’s not her nature, any more than it’s yours. So I’ll ask you again, girl: What’s the matter?”
“She doesn’t believe that Lord Ardmore loves her,” Imogen said obediently, helpless to resist the force of those silvery eyes.
“Loves her?” Lady Ardmore scoffed. “That’s a piece of romantic foolery. Why, I was terrified of my husband. In the old days, that’s the way it was supposed to be. The head of Clan Poley had agreed to marry me and my parents spent weeks impressing upon me that I was never to answer back, nor raise my voice, nor upset my husband in the slightest fashion.”
“That must have been difficult,” Imogen said.
“Ha!” Lady Ardmore said. She thought about it for a while. “It wasn’t so difficult. I was doing my duty. ’Twas a great thing for my family when I married the head of the clan. And I stood by my side of the bargain.”