by Jane Keeler
“It’s what they tell me.” She truly was hungry, and she was growing weary of arguing the point too. Lucy sensed her temper rising and said, “Very well. I shall fetch you up something but you must hurry and let me take it away quickly too.”
“Don’t bother with a fancy tray. In fact if you can get me a few of those pasties that are eaten in hand by the servants…”
Lucy said, “And a heathen, to boot. Why your mother allowed your father to raise you instead of taking you in hand is beyond me.”
Lucy left and Annalise lay back with a sigh. Her father had been in his fifties when she’d come along, and her mother had been nearly forty. She’d been horrified at having her body betray her after she had already done her duty, and with a daughter-in-law of childbearing age in the house too.
Annalise had been handed over to nurses and governesses and mostly ignored by her mother but her father delighted in her presence and took her everywhere with him. He taught her to ride and about politics and finance, all the things that made her mother and most of the ladies they knew cringe.
She wriggled her toes and felt blood coming back into them. Her shoes were far too tight, and she was worried that soon she’d not even be able to get her feet into them at all and might have to sneak out of the confining house in her bare feet.
Lucy returned a few moments later with a brimming plate of food, which she utterly demolished. Full and elated she finally lay back and closed her eyes, a smile still on her face as she delved into a deep sleep.
**
The days passed. The Duchess of Rivington came to call with Ellen and his mother was almost giddy when she managed to press Henry into sitting down with them for afternoon tea.
He sat in the too-delicate chair, his long knees practically drawn up to his chest, sipping tea and saying no to the delicate little pastries and sandwiches on offer. He pined for whiskey and a good thick cut of meat while the ladies chatted about fashion, asked him his opinions on gowns and hats and shoes, and then chatted about what a good match he and Ellen would make.
He was ready to scream long before his mother suggested he take Ellen for a walk in the gardens. He agreed, but only because the chair was squeezing his buttocks and legs like a vise and he was desperate to escape its grip.
Ellen popped open her parasol and looked down at the flagstones suspiciously, making sure no creeping greenery touched her skirts as they walked. The unwillingness to mar the hem of her gown was not lost on Henry, who found himself comparing that to Annalise’s always dragging, sodden, and stained hems. Did she still climb trees and ride far too fast?
“The weather’s fine,” Ellen said in her thin voice.
“Yes, very.” He already felt stifled, and it was nothing more than a walk. How could he ever spend a lifetime with this woman? Why would he want to?
“Are you attending the theatre next week?”
“Yes, I’d considered it. I have a particular fondness for Shakespeare’s works. I have his books, have you read them?’
Her slender shoulder raised and dropped. “Why would I read them when I can go to the theatre and watch the performers? Far more interesting, in my opinion. Besides, burying one’s self in a book is hardly sociable whereas everyone goes to the theatre.”
No. There was no way in the utter hell he was going to let anyone saddle him with her. He gave her a tight smile. “I prefer to read in the evenings.”
“A gentleman must have his entertainments and it’s a wife’s duty to allow her husband to have whatever pleases him and keeps his mind occupied.”
He took her back to the parlor without another word. Her mother glowed and gave the two of them a rather arch glance as they left. Lady Wallace said, “Well?”
“Well I’m starving. And bored almost to death.”
She blanched. “Henry! You really must learn to curb your tongue! Marriage isn’t meant to be an exercise in excitement, it’s meant to be a partnership between people who are of like class and understandings.”
His teeth clenched. “I’ll remember that. In the meantime I am off to the park to ride. Please have someone bring my horse around while I change Mother.”
He was furious, and he knew that his mother didn’t understand why. Perhaps she couldn’t.
He’d felt trapped and suffocated during the long hour of the Rivington’s visit and he needed fresh air to blow away the ennui and anger and he was determined to get it.
He rode toward the park, skirting around the crush of carriages and horses all headed to the same destination. Riding or driving in the park was the thing to do in the early afternoons before the rush to naps and preparation for the evening’s frivolities.
He managed to get past a few carriages holding eager young women who waved their handkerchiefs at him and smiled coyly and as he was jockeying toward the entrance of the park he saw Annalise’s carriage.
He got closer. Her footman opened his mouth but Henry said, “I already know she’s ill. She’s also an old friend, so please leave it.”
Annalise, seated far back in the carriage turned her head to regard him. The curtains were mostly closed but he could see her lovely face and the questioning look on her face.
He leaned low on his horse and said, “I have to know. Are you pretending illness just to avoid the Season?”
“What if I am?”
“Then pray do not pretend with me.”
She shook her head, “Go away Henry.”
He said, “I have thought of you very often Annalise. You were always a handful, but you brightened my life as none other before or since, and I would be so overjoyed if you would do me the simple honor of allowing me to escort you once, anywhere you choose. Name your wish and I will make it so.”
Laughter bubbled from her lips. “I have longed to see Greece. Oh Henry, I really wish…” she stopped and then she sighed. She reached for the curtain to close it even further but he managed to get his fingers inside the window and on the curtain before she could.
He pulled it open slightly and Annalise gasped. Sunlight filtered into the carriage and his eyes went round.
She was covered by rugs and her long skirts but none of that could hide the truth.
Annalise was with child!
Far along too, judging by the huge mound of her belly and the strain on her face.
She whispered, “Henry, it isn’t what you think. Please, you must swear…”
Shocked and taken aback he said, “Your health concerns are private, of course.”
Then he drew away and galloped headlong into the park.
**
Annalise sank back into the seat of the carriage, tears streaming down her face. She closed the windows and the curtains and rapped at the top so that the footman would know to take her home.
He knew!
Her heart broke.
Of all the people she would have never know what her secret truly was henry was the one she wanted least to know. She’d known he was beyond her now, given the circumstances, but she had hoped to be able to at least be able to speak with him and see his face on occasion.
Now he would avoid her as if she had developed leprosy.
The look of deep shock on his face was not new. She had seen it on many faces since she’d discovered that she was with child. But seeing it on Henry’s brought home to her just how awful her circumstances were, and how alone she was too.
She’d engineered the entire plan. To come to London and to have the child all in plain sight. Nobody would ever guess if she did, and that was what she had told her aunt and uncle, and she knew deep down that Henry would never say a word.
But he knew.
He would never look at her again the way he did that summer or the other night in the gardens. He knew, and she was undone by sorrow and grief.
Henry was the one she’d fallen in love with so long ago and she’d always had hope that she would come to London and win him over during her Season.
That hope had been shattered, and now all
of her joy at seeing him again was shattered too. He’d never talk to her again!
Despair broke over her and when she alighted form the carriage, the cloak held tightly at her neck Lucy met her at the door and hustled her into her room before asking, “Are you in pain?”
“The worst kind,” Annalise said and the burst into tears again.
**
The ride didn’t help Henry soothe his feelings at all. Annalise was with child, and unwed! The thing was so shocking he had no words. He rode his stallion so hard the horse was exhausted as they headed home but Henry’s spirits hadn’t lifted at all nor had his mind cleared.
How could that be?
That evening he pled a migraine and waited for his parents to leave the house. He also waited for the Staunton’s coach to leave and then he had his manservant deliver a note to her door, saying he’d be in the garden at dark and he wished to speak with her.
He waited anxiously near the privet hedge, hoping she would come and that maybe what he had seen that day was just a figment of his imagination.
“Henry?”
Her voice came through the hedge and he climbed up on the bench to look down at her. She wore the cloak again and he said, “This is ridiculous. I’m coming over there.”
“Have you gone mad? You’ll fall and break your skull. That ivy’s slippery.”
“I insist.” As soon as he threw a leg over the wall and tried to descend he realized she was right. He made a hurried and undignified scramble down the wall that ended with landing on his bottom in a slight puddle.
Annalise clamped a hand to her mouth. Her laughter filtered through it. She held out her other hand and then helped him up. Her eyes glowed as she looked up at him and said, “It’s nice to see you again in your entirety Henry.”
“And you.” His eyes went back to the mound of her belly, hidden beneath the cloak, and she sighed. “Come, sit down. I will tell you the whole truth if you promise not to be shocked or ask silly questions.”
“I think I am over the shock.” He was, and what he wanted to know now was if she had wed or if she had simply found herself in an unfortunate circumstance, and if so how it had happened.
As he sat he asked that question and she said, “I imagine it happened the same way it happens every day. It seems the human body is fairly regulatory about what it takes to cause these things.” Her hand went to her belly.
He didn’t want to laugh but he did. He also said, ruefully, “I must have sounded like a perfect idiot just then.”
She said, “No. I have been asked that question so often I am prickly about my response.”
He could only imagine what her life must be like. He asked, “Did you wed?”
She shook her head. “No, though they did their best to persuade me to. I will tell you what happened if you’ll listen.”
He took her hand. “I’ll not only listen I will keep silent about anything you say to me.”
She said, “Did you know I had the largest infatuation with you that summer? I followed you around and did everything I could to impress you.”
Henry said, dryly, “You were not of marriageable age as I recall but even so I had rather fancied that I was the one following you around and trying my best to impress you.”
“You did impress me.” She squeezed his hand and then said, “Have you ever met Wilson Smith?”
He winced. “Yes. He’s odious. Also dead as I recall. Oh, forgive me. If that’s your …” her what? He had no way of knowing.
“No, I agree. I was at a dance held at my aunt and uncles one evening when he trapped me in a room and kissed me quite forcefully.” She twisted her hands. “He was used to doing that, I suspect.”
“He was. I know many a young woman who would not be caught alone with him.”
She sighed. “I was unsophisticated. I know people think me a bluestocking and destined for spinsterhood. I know people find me outspoken and slight odd. I never thought those things would work against me after…after he forced me.”
Henry stiffened. If Smith weren’t already dead he would have hunted him down and killed him. He asked, in a strangled voice, “So that is why his father suddenly bought him a commission and sent him off to the army then?”
The dark was lit by a few stars and a small sliver of moon but he could see her face. She was looking him directly in the eye, another thing he had always admired about her.
“Yes. First they insisted we wed but I said no, and with good reason. If he treated me so roughly as a stranger how would he treat me as his wife?”
Lost in the depths of her incredibly expressive eyes he said, “That’s reasonable.”
She said, “Yes, I thought so. I knew I would be considered ruined if anyone knew so I also agreed to keep it very quiet. It never ceases to amaze me that man can do that and be left alone but a woman who it is done to must somehow be ruined. But then…” her hand swept along her cloak. “This occurred. Now I suppose I am ruined, unless my aunt and uncle’s plan goes as they’ve ordered it.”
“And how is that?”
She leaned slightly closer. He could smell lavender drifting up from her hair and skin and he breathed in the intoxicating scent. “Oh, the babe’s due at any minute. I’ll bear it here and then my brother and his wife, who are also here in town, will claim it as their own.
“They’ve been pretending she’s with child for months now, and so she’s here but not partaking in the Season. She’s receiving visitors in bed and they’ll smuggle the babe to her and Lucy is the midwife so she’ll pretend that she was in there birthing the child. She’ll stay on a few days there as well and the very next morning I shall be seen, probably in the carriage, riding to their home. I can’t go in, of course, because I am so ill, but…oh I shouldn’t be telling you this but it’s such a relief!”
Henry said, “I’m sure it is. It must have been very lonely for you as of late.”
“Terribly lonely.”
He shifted on the bench. “Do…do you mind giving them the babe?”
She shook her head. “My brother’s twenty years older than me and they’ve been wed nearly as long. She’s barren and they’ll make wonderful parents. It’s for the best really. It’s really in our favor that my mother had me so late. They can say the men in my family have slow-blooming seeds.”
He said, “And after?”
She said, “You didn’t tell me to be careful with what I say.”
Perplexed he asked, “Why would I?”
“Because I happened to mention something entirely indelicate when I said seed.”
Her grin was contagious. He spoke honestly. “That’s what I like most about you I think. But you didn’t answer me. What happens after you give birth?”
She looked down at her hands. “Oh they’ll put me in a strong corset and prop me up in a chair the next day, tell everyone I am better but not yet myself. I’ll receive visitors for a few hours. I have to, because otherwise someone might connect my illness with the child. I’ll droop and list and they’ll sweep me away to my room.
“I’ll show up at the theatre in a long cloak and hide in the box under rugs so they can’t tell, if they could anyway, and after I finish pretending to care about the Season they’ll take me home until next year when I’m finally better and able to be sold on the marriage market.”
“Do most young women feel that way?”
She gave him an amused glance. “I’m sure they do. I’m equally sure they’d never say so. So you see, I am not avoiding you Henry. In fact I wish very much to see you but until…well, obviously I cannot. And if you no longer wish to see me I understand.”
He opened his mouth and closed it. He wasn’t sure what to say to her. He mourned for her misfortune and he was glad that weasel Smith had met his untimely end at his post in India such a short time after his arrival there.
But she was with child, and he was expected to marry a virginal woman, one who’d bring honor to his life. He sighed and started to speak but the sound of car
riage wheels on the drive stopped him.
Her face wore a crestfallen expression. She said, “Go, please go.”
Then she fled toward the townhouse, her cloak fluttering behind her.
**
Annalise was heartbroken. Henry was so good and kind! He’d not only held her secret he’d let her talk to him and she had seen immediately that he had not judged her the way so many had after it had all happened.
They had blamed her. They’d told her she should have known better. They’d questioned just how much wine she’d had—a bare half-glass!—and they’d been suspicious of her story until he’d broken and confessed.
It didn’t matter really.
No matter how good and kind Henry was no man wanted a ruined woman and she was ruined. If she had to marry, and she would if only to leave the manor where the child would be raised, she’d much rather marry a man who’d ask little of her and not care much about whether or not she was a virgin.
Like Christopher Sneeds.
He was mad about men, and she knew it. She could actually make him a workable proposition and they could marry. They’d be a good match. She wanted nobody but Henry and he wanted someone who’d leave him in peace so he could enjoy his life with his ‘manservant’, a handsome and insolent lad from the outskirts of London.
She’d hoped Henry would kiss her, at least, and tell her he would always be fond of her. She’d hoped for so much, and the arrival of the carriage had interrupted them but she felt certain that even if it hadn’t he would have answered her last words with an apology and a hasty exit.
Lucy came into the room an hour later, her face wearing a disapproving look. She held a thick envelope in her hand and she said, “Lord Wallace brought this himself. He insisted I alone take it and give it to you.”
“Thank you Lucy.” Her back ached and she sat up, wincing slightly as the pain got wider and stronger.
She tore open the envelope then paused. She’d never answered his letters. She’d wanted to but she’d known if she did she would pour her heart out and now she held a missive in her hand that was likely his dismissal in her hands.
