Annalise blushed. Or was her face red from his scrubbing? “Here, my lord?”
“It’s Gard, dash it. And I refuse to call you Miss Avery, not when you’ve led me such a dance. I’ll try for Annalise if you wish, but I’m afraid you’ll always be Annie to me.”
“Annie sounds fine.” Always sounded better. “I’ll, ah, go fix my gown,” she said with a shy smile.
“You’ll get rid of that monstrosity altogether, my sweet, or I’ll throw it in the fire along with your cap. And hurry. We have a great deal to discuss.”
*
In a daze Annalise unbuttoned her gown and unwrapped the binding around her chest. She was alive and he still wanted her. Two miracles in one night! She grinned, standing there in her chemise, thinking that the night was still young. Then she took to wondering what to wear. Not another of her black gowns, for she had no desire to kindle Gard’s rage, and definitely not her heavy riding habit. Her flannel nightrail? Never.
She slipped up the back stairway and surveyed the selection in the lady’s dressing room off the master bed chamber. Not even for Ross Montclaire was Annalise Avery going to put on one of those filmy, transparent bits of harlotry. Not the ostrich-feathered robe, either. Finally she went to the other dressing room and put on his robe, wrapping the maroon velvet nearly twice around her and cuffing up the sleeves.
She started down the front stairs, being careful not to trip, and then she did not have to worry at all, for she was in his arms, being carried down.
“Oh, Lord,” he breathed in her ear, “I have waited so long for this. I want you so badly.”
“I know, Gard,” she said from her place tucked against his chest on his lap on the sofa. “You’ve been so long without a—”
He shook her gently. “Little goosecap. Don’t you know the difference between wanting a woman, any woman, and wanting one woman so badly, no other will ever do?” When she shook her head, tickling his chin with her soft curls, he told her, “I’ll have to show you, then. Uh, just how much do you know about men anyway?”
“Only what I’ve learned from you this past few weeks.”
“Then you and Barny didn’t…?”
“Of course not!” she proclaimed, which statement required another lengthy embrace, one that left her robe partly open and his shirt partially unbuttoned. Annalise had finally gotten to feel those dark curls on his chest.
Breathing heavily, Gard asked, “Will you come upstairs with me?” The sofa pillows were slipping around, and he could only picture that virgin bed upstairs, with his virgin bride lying beside him. She wasn’t his bride yet, his conscience told him, but his baser self answered that she would be soon enough, and with her swollen lips and dreamy eyes, she’d follow him anywhere.
But what if she regretted it later? the inner debate went on. She deserved a little torment for his suffering, was the reply. Annie, his precious Annie? Gard sighed and compromised. Very well, he’d take her upstairs, where he could touch her, look at her, feel her warmth against his skin—and that was all. Perhaps he might sweeten his retaliation by bringing her to the brink of passion, then telling her he was too noble to continue. After all, he was no rutting beast, no adolescent. He could hold her soft, luscious body in his arms and still keep control of his own passion.
And for his next act he’d hold back the sun.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
While Annalise and Lord Gardiner were so pleasurably involved, Sir Vernon, from his carriage parked across the street, was pleasurably watching the candles go out one by one. First his minion came around to report that the lights were out in the kitchen and the rooms below stairs. Stavely returned in an hour to report a candle to the rear of the ground floor, which was extinguished shortly thereafter. Finally the front parlor grew dark except for the fainter glow of a dying fire, and lights bloomed upstairs. Sir Vernon told his dark-clad assistant to wait half an hour, then get busy. The smarmy footman gathered his equipment and silently crept away, eager to exact retribution for being duped so badly, even more eager to earn Sir Vernon’s gold.
The baronet was willing to pay whatever it took to get rid of his little problem—tonight. By tomorrow the interfering earl could present the girl to the ton, as the ordinary, well-behaved female she was, not a raving lunatic. Worse, he could marry the chit.
The haut monde—and the authorities—might conclude that the missing heiress was indeed the veiled horsewoman he finally heard about from Stavely, but they might never realize she was also a lowly servant. So if the housekeeper met an unfortunate end, one, moreover, that left her body unidentifiable, then to all intents and purposes Thompson’s ward was still alive, just waiting to be returned to the bosom of her loving family. And he’d have at least four more years to milk her estate, especially if Lord Gardiner and those Hennipicker people also perished. Sir Vernon filed his nails while he waited.
*
It was a kiss to make every other kiss feel like an uncle’s. It was the Marco Polo of kisses, going where no kiss had gone, opening worlds of wonder. It heated their bodies and clouded their minds, ringing bells in both their ears. And they hadn’t gone past the bedroom door.
Bells? his lordship thought. Bells? It was a fine kiss indeed, but bells? Then he heard a dog barking and someone calling “Fire!”
“Blast it, Annie, if this is another of your tricks, I’ll—”
“No, Gard, I swear!”
They both realized the room really was warm, not just their bodies overheating, and their minds were not fogged at all, they were full of smoke. Annie started to cough. Gard pulled a blanket from the mattress to beat at the flames if necessary, giving the still-chaste bed only one melancholy glance. Annie ran to the washstand and poured a pitcherful of water over them both before they dashed down the stairs. The earl had to steady her frequently, as she lost her footing in the trailing robe.
The front hall was engulfed in fire, so they made for the rear stairs and the back door.
“You go make sure Henny and Rob are out,” Annie called, shoving him down the first few steps while she ran back to her own room to gather her jewels and her reticule and her riding habit.
“You fool,” Gard shouted, wrenching the stuff from her and dragging her out. “As if I’d leave you!”
“But Henny and Robb?”
“Are already out. I heard them shouting. Now, come before they try to get back in to save you!”
But the kitchen door was also in flames; there was no exit that way. Annalise managed to grasp the mouse cage before Gard hauled her along after him upstairs again, where the fire was starting to travel along the hall carpet, licking up at the wood paneling and the wallpaper.
“Damnation!” Gard swore, not releasing his hold on Annie’s wrist. He made for the smaller parlor before the flames could reach the draperies, and shoved Annie facedown onto the love seat. “Stay there!” he ordered while he searched around the room for a fireplace poker, a chair, a heavy stool to throw against the window.
“Why don’t you just unlock it?” Annie demanded from his side, suiting action to word before Gard nudged her aside and threw the window open, then jumped down, holding his hands out for her. First she passed down the mouse cage while he swore. Then she retrieved her jewel box and reticule and riding habit from where he’d tossed them.
“For heaven’s sake, woman, you are taking years off my life with every second’s delay! Get yourself out here now!”
Annalise looked down at him, with soot on his face and his shirt open and untucked, appearing more like a buccaneer than ever. “I do not like it when you shout at me that way, my lord.”
“My God, Annie, do not get on your high horse now. Please don’t torture me this way!”
She read the anguish in his eyes and sighed contentedly as she jumped into his arms. “You really do care.”
*
The fire brigade managed to save some of the house, but not from smoke and water damage, naturally. The Watch declared the fire suspicious. How
could they not, when it arose in two separate locations at the same time? None of the neighbors saw anyone lurking about. In fact, no one saw or heard anything until the dog’s barking awoke the neighborhood again after the pistol shot. Clyde was the hero of the hour and Henny the heroine for making Rob sleep in the stable, where he could hear the little terrier and alert everyone before they were overcome by the smoke. Annalise, Rob, and Henny were still hugging one another and Clyde when the fire engines rolled away. The earl came in for his fair share of exuberant affection, too, although Rob merely shook his hand.
They were alive. They were also damp, dirty, exhausted, and homeless. “Enough,” Lord Gardiner declared. “Tuthill, harness up the carriage. It’s time we got out of here. It’s beyond foolish to survive a fire and perish of pneumonia. Besides, whoever set the deuced fire might still be about, getting up to who knows what other mischief.” He stood closer to Annalise, shielding her with his larger body while his eyes tried to pierce the shadows.
Annalise agreed. “I am certain one of Rob’s disreputable friends must own an inn or someplace with rooms to let. No respectable hotel would accept three such ragamuffins as we appear, nor Clyde, of course.”
“Gammon. You are all coming to Gardiner House in Grosvenor Square.”
“Now who is being a nodcock? You know you cannot take me to Grosvenor Square. I don’t even have any shoes!”
“What the devil have shoes got to do with anything? You’ll be safe there, that’s all that matters,” he insisted.
Annalise took his arm and pulled him away from Henny’s hearing. “Gard, you cannot take me to your house,” she hissed in his ear. “Your mother is there, isn’t she?”
“Of course she is, or else I’d take you to Cholly’s or Aunt Margaret’s.”
“Has all that smoke shriveled your brain, my lord?” Annie stomped her foot, then recalled she was barefoot and got even angrier that Gard was being so obtuse. “You cannot bring your mistress home to your mother, my lord earl.”
“Stop throwing the title in my teeth, little shrew. You are not my lover at all, or did I miss something between ‘Oh, Gard’ and ‘Fire’?” He put his finger to her lips when she would have protested that the intent was there, if not the deed. “I am not bringing my mistress. I am bringing my fiancée. Mother will be delighted.”
“Gard, you cannot tell your mother such a Banbury tale!”
“No such thing, my pet. It’s true, and always was. I have intended to make you my wife for ages now. That’s the best way to protect you permanently from fortune hunters, be they relatives or suitors, and to restore your reputation. My mother is one of the highest sticklers. No one will dare criticize her daughter-in-law.” And, he said to himself, she’ll make damned sure there will be nothing to criticize while we are under her roof. He determined to get a special license as soon as possible.
“No, Gard, I cannot let you do this. We can simply go to an inn. My reputation be hanged!”
“That’s very well for you to say, my dear, in your chameleon disguises, but what about me? A respectable wife is about the only thing that can salvage the micefeet you’ve made of my good name! We’re going to Gardiner House, and that’s all.”
*
Ross was right: His mother was thrilled to welcome the prospective Lady Gardiner and her servants even though the hour was late. An emergency, he explained, a fire having destroyed Miss Avery’s lodgings.
Miss Avery, the heiress? An earl could reach higher on the social ladder, but the gel was Arvenell’s granddaughter, and that counted for nearly as much as the fortune. Lady Stephania was liking the match better and better, as long as the chit wasn’t the moonling gossip was claiming. Gard was able to reassure her on that score, and that Miss Avery was respectably chaperoned by her old nanny.
The dowager floated down the stairs in a drift of chiffon, delighted with the news she could relate to her husband’s spirit. Maybe now the old fool would let her sleep in peace. She smiled as she let Ross lead her to the Adams drawing room, where Miss Avery was waiting.
The smile died a painful death when Lady Gardiner finally confronted her promised replacement. Annalise stood by the fireplace, her boyishly short hair in damp tendrils, her skin as soot-darkened as a blackamoor’s, her feet bare, and her body barely covered by a man’s oversize robe. And she was clutching a cage of rodents.
“Mice!” the countess shrieked, throwing herself into the nearest pair of arms, which happened to belong to Ingraham. The ancient valet had come to see if he could assist his master after the harrowing events, and to get a good look at his lordship’s intended. One look was enough to drain the blood from his head and send it to his feet. Being embraced by the countess was one shock too many. He collapsed onto the floor, taking the countess with him, where she remained screaming that the fifth earl was spinning in his grave, that, with a Bedlamite for a mother, the seventh earl was like to have two heads or think he was Nero, that if the rats were not destroyed immediately, she’d have the sixth earl drawn and quartered.
*
Gard was not sure which was worse, the fire or his mother’s tantrum. He knew the latter left Annalise more shaken. For that reason, and others too base to consider, he did ask Henny to sleep on a pallet in the room assigned to Miss Avery.
“She’ll feel better having someone familiar nearby in a strange house,” he explained, “and there will be less bibble-babble about us arriving in the middle of the night if the servants know you slept with her.”
Henny was a bit intimidated by the grandeur around her, and the earl in his own surroundings was not the handsome lad who ate in her kitchen. He was a peer of the realm, all right, aristocratic down to his bare toes. She curtsied. “Yes, my lord. As long as you think it’s necessary.”
The night had been hell except, of course, for the few moments of euphoria with Annalise in his arms. Gard reflected that sending that Tuthill scoundrel off to find a bunk in the stable was nearly as enjoyable.
“So you ain’t above a few dirty tricks of your own, eh, gov’nor?” Rob muttered on his way to another hard, itchy, lonely bed in another cold, smelly stall. “You better not think it’s necessary for too long if you know what’s good for you.”
Lord Gardiner just grinned.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Annalise couldn’t stay. She couldn’t sleep, either, so she lay in bed, listening to Henny’s soft snores, counting all the reasons she had to leave Gardiner House and its owner, instead of counting sheep. The sheep would have looked back at her with their placid woolly faces as they marched across the landscape of her dreams. Instead, she saw Gard, with one dark, raised brow, an unruly curl hanging on his forehead, and that soft, one-sided smile.
She couldn’t accept his offer of marriage. Except the infuriating man had not actually offered, he had ordered their engagement the same way he ordered dinner or ale or a hot bath, without a by-your-leave for Annie. He was too used to having his own way, was my lord Gardiner, too arrogant and domineering for her taste, Annalise tried to convince herself. He was also kind and noble, with a deep-seated sense of honor that often collided awkwardly with his rakish, raffish ways. Like now, when he was planning to marry a girl who had agreed to become his mistress.
Annalise knew he was intending to marry her to keep her safe and to keep her name from the gutter. Oh, he liked her, too, and desired her, she was well aware, but, heavens, the man was a rake. He liked a different woman every day. He was infatuated with her now, but how long before the bonds of matrimony became a noose? How soon before he resented being forced to do the honorable thing, resented her? How long before he strayed? She did not think she could bear it when his eyes no longer gleamed when she entered a room, or he started to find pressing business elsewhere. If only he loved her…but that was a sheep of a different color.
And she’d never be accepted in his world, no matter what he claimed. Annalise saw the way the dowager responded. If his own mother could not welcome with equanimity a scand
al-ridden hoyden, the rest of society was sure to be even less accepting of coal-king Bradshaw’s granddaughter. She’d be cut; he’d be ostracized from the life he enjoyed. Or else he would still be invited everywhere—without her.
All of that was assuming, of course, that they lived long enough to face the ton. Sir Vernon was not like to give up, not even if they married. He’d fight for the money, dragging the sordid case through public trials, or else he’d resort to more villainous efforts like the fire. Annalise had no doubt as to the blaze’s instigator, nor that he’d try again. If the baronet was never to see a groat of her fortune, he’d want to get even. Annalise was already responsible for the destruction of her aunt’s little house in Bloomsbury; jeopardizing this magnificent mansion was unthinkable. Besides, earls made large targets.
Gard could never be convinced to go into hiding, she saw that now; the earl was just fool enough to challenge Sir Vernon, or do something equally as nonsensical. Sir Vernon was not constrained by the rules of honor, so she’d never have a moment’s peace, worrying for Gard’s very life. Her friends were already in danger, especially Rob, whose past could not afford scrutiny, and every minute they remained with her magnified their peril. She had to leave.
At dawn Annalise rose, washed, and donned her riding habit and a pair of boots that had been placed in the dressing room for her. The boots were too big, but she stuffed some handkerchiefs from a drawer into the toes. When Henny went off with Rob to see if any of their possessions could be salvaged from the fire, Annalise sat down and wrote a note. She was going to Northumberland, she penned, where she should have gone all along. The duke was bound to accept her rather than see her go into service in his own neighborhood. She had enough money for the coach ride, and she’d be long gone before Sir Vernon stirred from his bed, so they were not to worry or try to follow. She sealed the note and marked “Henny” on the front.
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