by Brenda Joyce
Lizzie remained mute. She glanced fearfully at Adam. "You need not answer," he said, but his own expression was strained.
"Oh, pshaw," Melissa said, waving one slim hand and standing. Her pale, cream-colored chiffon gown fell in rippling folds about her. "Not only does everyone in this room know that Annabel was indeed capable of just that, so do all our friends. Her character, such as it is, is hardly a secret!"
Thompson looked around him, taking in everyone's expression, and he nodded. He folded his thick arms across his chest. "Well."
Boothe rubbed his temples, standing. "If Annabel was seduced by Braxton, it is not her fault. I was seduced by him, by God. The man is charming and clever. I truly believed him to be who and what he said he was." He flushed again. "I want him behind bars!"
"He is a professional, that is obvious, and I am certain that in no time we will have a dozen or two possible makes on him. We have already sent a telegram to Scotland Yard. Have no fear, Mr. Boothe. Even if your daughter was an accomplice to this crime, a crime has been committed, and it is my duty to solve it and apprehend the perpetrators. And I shall do just that." Boothe nodded with satisfaction. "I shall notify you the moment they are found. And in the interim, do not be surprised if I return to ask further questions."
"Wait." Boothe stopped him just before he could walk out of the library door. "I wish to offer a reward for the return of my daughter. Post it immediately. Fifty thousand dollars."
Thompson's eyes widened. "Very well. I will post it— but for her return alive, Mr. Boothe. I am sure you would not want it any other way."
A small cry sounded. Both men turned to watch Lucinda slumping into a faint, her two daughters and sons-in-law rushing to her.
"There's a patrol up ahead."
Annabel sat on the front seat of the carriage beside Braxton, and she had just seen the mounted policeman herself. She froze, her hands gripping the leather seat, her heart sinking like a stone. But Braxton did not stop the carriage. He continued to drive forward at the same steady pace. It was a pace that precisely matched his previous, matter-of-fact tone.
They had been traveling north for about twenty minutes, through the wooded, suburban countryside surrounding Manhattan. Every now and then they had passed a farm or an orchard. Otherwise, homes were interspersed in the wooded countryside. She wasn't quite sure where they were, exactly, but she knew they were all about to be captured. "What are you doing?" she whispered, gripping his arm.
"Relax, Charles," Braxton said with a smile.
She stared at him. When they had left the barn, he bad made her put some dirt on her face and Louie's cap on her head, her long blond hair twisted up beneath it, but she did not think she was going to pass muster as a young man. And what about Braxton? A change of clothes was hardly a disguise! His description, which was hardly average, had to be everywhere and his very upper-crust British accent was a dead giveaway.
He halted the carriage as two policemen came forward on big bay horses. He was smiling at them. Annabel thought her own cheeks were red. She was afraid to breathe.
"I'm going to have to ask you to step out of the carriage, sir," one mounted officer with a big mustache said.
"Afternoon. What's this about, officers?" Braxton asked—in a clipped and nasal Yankee twang.
Annabel realized she was gaping and she shut her mouth.
"Please step down."
"Glad to obey, got all the time in the world," Braxton said, sounding as if he were a native Brahmin of Boston. He stepped lithely out of the carriage.
"Boston, eh?" the officer said, dismounting. His tone had changed, becoming less firm, softer.
"Born and raised, just like my father and his father before him." Braxton was cheerful.
The officer nodded, then glanced at Annabel and Louie. "Who are they?"
"Charlie is a distant cousin. He's an orphan—his grandmother just died. I'm concluding a bit of business in town, stocks, you know, and am bringing him home with me."
"An orphan, eh?" the officer said. He was chewing tobacco now and eyeing Annabel closely.
Annabel was afraid he could see through her absurd disguise, or that he was going to ask her a question directly, and she felt herself turning redder still, but then he looked at Louie. She almost swooned with relief.
Louie, meanwhile, appeared to have fallen asleep in the back seat. Annabel closed her eyes. "My groom," Braxton said.
Annabel jerked, thinking of Harold, certain the thief, damn him, was doing this to her on purpose.
The officer nodded and turned away, mounting. "Sorry to bother you folks. But we're looking for a very clever Englishman and a young woman he has abducted." He tipped his hat. "Seems he also made off with a small fortune in jewels."
Braxton stepped up into the carriage. "Criminals these days," he said with a shake of his head. Annabel felt like killing him. "The nerve! Thank God we have men like you serving citizens like us. Astute and perceptive officers of the law, capable of protecting the innocent and apprehending the guilty."
Annabel looked at him with murder in her eyes.
The policeman smiled. "Have a good day, sir," he said.
Braxton smiled back, lifted the reins, and drove the bay gelding past the barricade. Annabel sat staring stiffly ahead. Her heart continued to beat with frantic insistence. Clop clop clop. The gelding trotted along, taking them farther and farther away from the policemen and the road block. She wanted to look back over her shoulder to see if the two officers had realized their mistake and were now charging after them.
"Do not look back," he said in his usual, aristocratic British accent.
She looked at him. He was smiling. Unruffled, unperturbed—as if this kind of hair-raising narrow escape was an everyday occurrence. "You are not even sweating!" she accused.
" 'E don't sweat," Louie said from the back seat. He glanced at her briefly. "Aren't you supposed to say 'perspiring'?" "You are laughing!"
"You, my dear, are the one perspiring."
Annabel took a deep breath and collapsed against the seat. "I admit to being afraid."
"Why? You had nothing to lose—unlike Louie and myself."
Their gazes had locked. "I told you, I cannot go back. Not yet."
"Yes," he said softly, still holding her regard with his. "You most certainly did."
Annabel felt herself stiffening. She thought about being in his arms, about receiving his kiss. Then she shook herself free of the thought. What was wrong with her? Tonight she would explain everything, and there was not going to be either an embrace or a kiss or, dear God, anything else. But her reputation would be ruined and she could return home, a free woman at last.
She thought about her family and felt a twinge of guilt, for putting them through the ordeal of her disappearance. However, far more than guilt claimed her now. Soon she could return home with her ruined reputation, and she felt nothing but dismay at the thought.
She did not want to go home. Being on the run with Braxton was exciting. Her life had never been this exciting before. And she did her best to make it unusual and entertaining; Annabel knew she lived a far more imprudent existence than any woman of her acquaintance. She was always doing something thrilling. For a while she had actually exercised racehorses at dawn. She had spent a year enrolled in a very Bohemian art class on the Lower East Side. She had even modeled for some of the artists—without her clothing. She had taken employment as a shop girl for two weeks in Wanamaker's department store—which was but a block away from her father's emporium. All of these endeavors, of course, had been found out. Missy was a snoop.
And then there was her tennis game, her books, and travel. She adored all three pastimes, but especially traveling abroad. She had been visiting Europe one or two times a year since she was twenty-one. Her father had actually encouraged such adventure, but Annabel knew he had done so only because he hoped she would meet an appropriate man and fall in love and come home affianced.
But nothing to date had been as
exciting as being with this man.
"You are staring at me," he said softly.
She swallowed. Not only was she staring, she had been envisioning herself once again in his embrace. Except this time he had been unclothed. He had been long and lean and all hard muscle. Such a thought should be shameful. Annabel found it intriguing.
He was intriguing.
Annabel looked away. They were entering the village of Mott Haven. It was nothing more than a collection of wood-shingled homes, four- and five-story brick stores, and farms. She did not really see the town. She was in trouble, fairly deeply; Annabel knew herself too well. If she continued to think this way, she was going to become even more deeply in trouble than she already was—perhaps irreparably so.
She wanted to ignore the little warning bells going off inside her head. Usually, she did. And then she would be off and running with a new pursuit. The end result was always the same. Being found out, set down, grounded for a time. And being talked about. Poor, poor, unfortunate Annabel Boo the! Whatever makes her so wild, so reckless, so headstrong? Annabel smiled. She considered her peers to be the unfortunate ones.
But to start thinking about her life being boring in comparison with his, why, that was very dangerous, indeed. That could lead her farther astray than she had ever intended to go. Maybe, as Melissa kept saying, there was something wrong with her. Drastically so.
"Is something wrong, Miss Boothe?" He interrupted her thoughts.
Annabel started. "No! No. Nothing is amiss." She smiled at him, but it was strained.
His blue gaze was brilliant and searching. "Having regrets?"
She straightened. "I never have regrets," she said._ His only response was a long, inscrutable, and very wide stare.
Annabel smiled sweetly at him. And realized that night was falling.
The cheerful and freshly painted white clapboard house was one of the last on Main Street
. A white picket fence surrounded it and there was a red barn in the backyard. Braxton drove the carriage directly around the house and into the barn. Both wide, whitewashed doors had been left open.
"More remarkable planning, I see," Annabel said with a glance around. Of course another carriage was in the barn, as was another horse. He had left no stone unturned.
"You are as clever as always," he replied. Braxton's spirits seemed high. He stepped out of the carriage, as did Louie, the smaller man immediately going to their tired gelding and unhitching him from the traces. Braxton looked up at her and held out his hand.
Surprised, yet ridiculously pleased, Annabel was about to accept it when she saw the twinkle in his eye. She was dressed like a stable boy, with dirt on her face. She was not a beautiful woman now. She withdrew her hand and leapt down from the carriage exactly as he had done. He laughed and walked away.
Miffed, she watched him removing a satchel from the second carriage, this one large enough to contain quite a few clothes. "Is the house occupied?" she asked.
"Yes, it is," an unfamiliar female voice said from the bam doorway.
Annabel turned to glimpse a tall honey-blond woman in a navy skirt and shirtwaist standing on the threshold, smiling slightly—not at them, but at Braxton. An instant later he had crossed the barn and taken her hands in his. "Hello, Mary Anne," he said, and he kissed her cheek.
Annabel stared, her pulse drumming, thinking the worst and jealous about it, too. But the woman, who was perhaps forty and quite attractive, merely smiled at Braxton briefly then turned to look at Annabel. Anxiety filled her gray eyes. "Pierce, I did not know you were coming with a third person." Her tone was husky.
Braxton gave her a look. "I do hope you have some coffee brewing?" His meaning was clear—he did not wish to discuss this now.
Mary Anne looked from him to Annabel again. Annabel decided to take matters into her own hands. She strode forward, holding out her hand, aware of acting very outrageous and mannish. She was angry. Any fool would know that there was something—or had been something—between these two. "Hello. I am Annabel. And actually, Pierce did not quite know himself until the. very last minute that I would be coming along." She managed a smile. At least she now knew his first name.
Mary Anne stared for a moment longer, then smiled quickly. "Hello. I'm Mrs. Winston. Well, do come in. I know you must all be very tired." Her eyes remained anxious.
They followed their hostess from the barn, both men closing the doors behind them, and headed across the lawn and into the house. Inside it was as cheery as it had been outside. Doilies covered the tables in the parlor, slipcovers the couch. The walls were flocked with red roses and pale stripes. Annabel was left in the parlor with Louie. Braxton followed Mary Anne into the kitchen, just down the hall.
Annabel folded her arms, frowning, wanting very much to know what was going on in the kitchen. Were i hey in a warm and affectionate embrace? Or a passion-are one? She faced Louie, who had flopped down on the worn sofa and was browsing through a catalog from Sears. "Is she an old flame?"
Louie looked up and grinned. "Yer jealous, girlie, an' it shows."
"I am hardly jealous," Annabel said hotly. "Well, it's obvious that they care for one another."
" 'E's got lots of flames." Louie continued to grin.
Annabel turned and stared down the hall, toward the kitchen. She could not hear a sound. "I'm sure he does. Who is he?"
"I think you 'ad better ask the guvnor 'imself." Louie returned to the catalog.
Annabel did not hesitate. She left the parlor, but tried to move as soundlessly as possible, shamelessly hoping to catch the two of them in a torrid embrace. She pressed against the wall when she heard their voices in quiet conversation.
"Pierce, how could you bring her here!" Mary Anne cried, setting a kettle down with a loud clang.
"We will leave at dawn, you have nothing to worry about." His tone was very gentle.
"Nothing to worry about?" Mary Anne was incredulous.
Annabel peeked around the open doorway and saw Mary Anne putting muffins on a plate, her hands moving swiftly and angrily, her back to Braxton. He stood in the center of the kitchen, as relaxed and composed as she was not. He placed both hands on her shoulders Irom behind. "You are not in danger. I appreciate what you are doing for me, Mary Anne."
Annabel crept forward, staring at them.
Mary Anne turned to face him. "You know I had no choice but to help you, but dear Lord, I wish you would give up these mad escapades of yours—before you wind up in prison or dead!" Tears filled her eyes.
He tilted up her chin. "No one is going to die. What happened to Harry was an accident. A terrible mistake."
"That will not bring him back, now will it?" She used the corner of her apron to dab her eyes. "Annabel Boothe. Oh, God. Why didn't you throw her out somewhere in Manhattan? The countryside must be swarming with federal agents by now!"
He shrugged. "Poor judgment on my part, in that I agree." He turned and looked directly at Annabel. "Enjoying yourself yet again?"
Annabel flushed. "I was not eavesdropping. I was thirsty."
He made an expression of disbelief.
"Please, do come in," Mary Anne said, pulling out a kitchen chair. She looked worried. "You must be exhausted and frightened, too. I am so sorry you had to get caught up in this, my dear."
Annabel did not want to like her, but her sympathy and concern were clearly genuine. "Actually," Annabel said, walking into the brightly lit room, "I am neither tired nor frightened. But I am dirty. Could I bathe and change clothes? These are Louie's things and I am afraid they do have an odor."
Braxton stared.
Annabel avoided his gaze. She smiled at their hostess. "If it would not be an inconvenience."
There was only one guest room and it had been given to Annabel. It was on the second floor, across the hall from the master bedroom. Louie and Braxton were sleeping in the parlor, or so they claimed. Annabel wondered if Braxton was downstairs where she had left him and his henchman after supper, or across
the hall with the too kind Mrs. Winston.
She sat on the edge of the narrow bed, clad in a nightgown that belonged to Mary Anne. Her temples throbbed. She should be relieved that she remained alone in the bedroom, more so if Braxton were comforting the pretty widow. This was what she wanted. To be ruined in name only—not in fact.
But she knew she would not sleep all night long thinking about it—about them.
Annabel finally stood and walked over to her closed bedroom door in her bare feet. Her heart pounded. She pressed her ear against the wood and strained to hear. But there was not a sound in the house—as if everyone were truly asleep.
Very carefully, she began to open the door. It creaked loudly.
She froze, then tried again. The door groaned now as she opened it.
She was breathless, her pulse continuing to drum and deafen her. But her door was wide open. The hall was pitch-black; not a single light had been left on. The door across from her was closed. It was a shadowy shape. Annabel glanced toward the stairs, but could not make them out in the darkness.
Annabel took one step into the hall and winced as the wood beneath her feet squeaked. Grimacing, she hurried across the short distance separating her door from Mary Anne's, and finally she pressed her ear against it. Once again, silence greeted her. Of course, the way her heart was beating, it was terribly hard to hear anything else.
Wood groaned.
Annabel stiffened, wondering if she had imagined the sound, which came from the end of the hall. She stared into the shadows, but saw nothing. After a few seconds, she decided it had been her imagination, or old wood settling. She leaned against Mary Anne's door again, pressing her ear to the stained wood. Her efforts were rewarded by absolute silence.
And then an arm clamped around her waist from behind, a hand clapped over her mouth. Annabel would have screamed in fright, but the hand covering her mouth was so firm and uncompromising that she was prevented from making a sound. She was pulled from behind against a man's solid body. His grip upon her was as immovable as steel.
