Wilson, Gayle

by Anne's Perfect Husband

  "You told my ward that I am in love with her."

  He could read the shock in his brother's eyes as easily as he had read the pain in Anne's.

  "It seems Miss Darlington wastes no time in going after what she wants," Dare said, controlling the upward slant of his lips.

  "She is very young. What she thinks she feels for me is rooted in an unfortunate, and given her age, perhaps natural tendency to romanticize our roles."

  "And what you feel for her?"

  "You had no right to speak to her."

  Dare raised one dark brow, the arch of it inquiring. "I have a brother's right, I think."

  "You bloody, arrogant bastard," Ian said bitterly. "You have no idea what you have done."

  "Are you denying that you love her? It won't do any good, you know. I know you far too well."

  "You don't know me at all. Not if you believe my reason for hiding what I feel is because I limp. Do you take me for a fool? Or so insufferably vain that I would reject Anne's love because I can no longer dance with her?"

  The pupils of his brother's eyes widened minutely, expanding into the rim of sapphire blue.

  "You have no idea what you have done with your meddling," Ian continued, emphasizing every word. "Where I choose to love or not is of no possible concern to you. Nor is what I do about those feelings. I am not Sebastian, who does not know his own emotions well enough to control them. I am the Sinclair who is neither impetuous nor reckless. How dare you question whatever decisions I make about my life? And how dare you confide my feelings, whatever you believe them to be, to a woman?"

  There was an answering fury in Val's eyes. Ian imagined that no one had ever talked to the Earl of Dare like this, certainly not either of his brothers. To Dare's credit he did not respond, and despite his anger, Ian drew in a sharp breath to finish what he had begun.

  "You may be the head of this family, but that position gives you no right to interfere in my life. Since I have returned to England, you have persisted in treating me as a child, as if I were incapable of deciding what I am fit or not fit to do. And because I love you, I have endured and even forgiven your unwanted attempts to coddle me. But I swear, Val, I shall never forgive you for this."

  Still the earl made no response, although the small garnet stickpin that held his cravat shimmered with the force of his breathing. His lips were firmly set, his jaw rigid with the force required to keep them that way. Dare waited, unspeaking, apparently recognizing that there would be more to this tirade.

  Did he believe that whatever anger his brother felt would fade once he had expressed it? Ian wondered. Or believe that he had sent for Dare to require his promise that he would never again interfere in his life?

  Even anticipating, perhaps, that when he had given it, things would go back to the way they had always been, back to the lifelong camaraderie and friendship they had shared? As the silence lengthened without that request, however, the fury slowly seeped out of the earl's eyes to be replaced by something Ian was not sure he had ever seen in them before.

  Seeing it there now, he went on, pressing his advantage, "I would like to ask that you leave this house. I know I have no right to make that request, since it and everything within it belong to you. I assure you that if it were possible—"

  He broke the sentence, unwilling to admit that he himself was physically unable to leave. He had found that realization, reached within the hour since his ward had left, to be the blackest moment of his prolonged convalescence.

  What a satisfaction it would have been to slam out of his brother's home, rejecting both his charity and his concern. Since he was incapable of doing that, the next best thing was, Ian had decided, to attempt to throw Dare out. And, judging by what was in those blue eyes, his brother might be shocked enough by his uncharacteristic anger to let him get away with it.

  "You have my apologies—" Dare began.

  "I don't want your bloody apologies. I want you gone."

  There was another silence as the earl evaluated his tone.

  "I was wrong to interfere," Dare said finally, the last of the lingering anger wiped from the darkly handsome face. "I shall speak to Anne and tell her so."

  "I have spoken to Anne. You have no idea of the harm you have done. If you dare speak to her before you leave, I swear to you, Val, I shall never see you again. And whatever has been between us in the past, whatever love and brotherhood—"

  "No," Dare said softly, refusing to allow that particular threat to be articulated.

  "Then get out," Ian said relentlessly.

  "If I understood—"

  "What you must understand is that this is my decision. Believe me, it is not one I make lightly or without valid reason. And it has nothing to do with vanity or pride or any of the petty causes you have assigned to it."

  "If you love her—" Dare began.

  "If I do, it is none of your concern," Ian said implacably.

  Another silence. "You are my concern. Grant me that."

  "I am not," Ian said. "I know you are accustomed to thinking of me as a boy in need of your guidance. Perhaps at one time that was true. After Iberia, I assure you it is not."

  "I'm afraid—"

  "What you should fear is the break in our relationship which will occur if you persist in this. Believe me, there is nothing you should fear for me more than that."

  "Ian," Dare said softly.

  The fear he had seen in his brother's eyes before was expressed in that single word. And hearing it, Ian relented enough to offer what explanation he could.

  "Believe me, if there were any way I could make her mine, I would find it."

  This time the silence stretched too long, and in it echoed all the memories of what they had meant to one another through the years. And finally, against the force of a stricture neither of them could bear, the Earl of Dare nodded.

  "If you ever need me, you have only to send word," he said.

  He inclined his upper body in a small and formal half bow before he turned on his heel and crossed the room to the bedroom door. And as Anne had done before him, he did not look back before he closed it behind him.

  Chapter Eleven

  There was a certain sameness to everything, Anne thought as she moved unthinkingly through the now-familiar pattern of the cotillion. Not only a sameness to the dances, of course, but to all the crowded and exhausting days of the Season, during which she hurried breathlessly from one event to another.

  There was usually only enough time to accomplish the required change of costume before she was due at the next function. And despite her initial doubts that she would wear half the gowns that had been ordered for her, she had found herself already rewearing some of them.

  The demands of the rigorous schedule Lady Laud had instituted had, however, two much-to-be-desired results. During the round of dinners and routs, where she was introduced to and required to converse with perfect strangers, she did not have time to think about Ian. And at night she was so exhausted that she could almost always fall asleep without weeping. Almost always.

  With his innate kindness, her guardian had made the days since his brother's departure as easy for her as he could. She supposed she should have appreciated his efforts, but since they consisted of his staying out of sight on the rare occasions when she was at home, she was torn between gratitude and an unspeakable pain.

  At first he had used the injuries he had suffered in the street brawl as an excuse to keep to his rooms, freeing her from having to face him during those first few difficult days. And then, as the Season progressed, he was careful not to dine at home on the evenings when she did not have an engagement.

  She never asked, of course, about the particulars of where he was on those occasions when Williams declared her guardian to be "out." She suspected, as often as not, he was eating a solitary dinner in his rooms as she ate an equally solitary one in lonely and elegant state in the dining room below.

  Had it not been for the Earl of Dare's abrupt departure, she
might have suspected her guardian was avoiding her because her declaration had embarrassed him. Instead, she had finally concluded that the break between the brothers had occurred because Ian believed Dare's indiscretion had been painful to her.

  He was not wrong about that, of course, but she had never blamed the earl. Obviously he had been mistaken in what he had told her. However, she had been more than willing to grasp his words as the truth because they had fit so well with her own fantasies.

  "Some refreshment?" her partner suggested.

  The question jerked her out of the familiar cloud of abstraction in which she spent far too much of her time. She realized belatedly that the music had stopped.

  "How very kind," she said, opening her fan.

  In spite of the pleasant temperature of the night outside, the ballroom was overcrowded and overheated. There didn't seem to be a breath of air stirring within it, despite the fact that all the French doors leading into the gardens were open.

  And they looked incredibly inviting, Anne thought, feeling a trickle of perspiration slide downward between her breasts. The darkness beyond the doors seemed to beckon, offering a brief escape from what had become a nightly ordeal of too much heat, too much scent, and too many bodies vying for the same limited space.

  She had resorted to marking off the passing days of the Season, as a prisoner might keep up with the slow passage of his sentence. That was almost what it had become, she acknowledged. Something to be endured until she could return to Fenton School and the life she had planned for herself there, long before she had known any other.

  And now there would be no other. Nor did she wish there to be. Although she seldom lacked for a partner at any event, she was well aware that she had excited no undying passion in the heart of any of the gentlemen she had encountered. That was, of course, with the possible exception of Mr. Travener, who tagged after her with such remarkable devotion that even Lady Laud had commented on it.

  Anne had assured her sponsor that her feelings were not mutually engaged, and indeed they were not. However, Doyle's presence did protect her from the unwanted attentions of those few suitors who were so lacking in town bronze that they didn't realize she had nothing to recommend her—neither beauty nor wealth nor birth. And without some combination of the three, she was, thankfully, unlikely to receive any respectable offer.

  She glanced again toward the opening that led to the garden, wondering if she dared evade Lady Laud's vigilance and slip outside. Only a moment...

  One of Elizabeth's cardinal rules, however, was never to place yourself in a position where your reputation could be compromised. And venturing any distance from the lights and the crowd had the potential for danger.

  She pulled her gaze away from the invitation of the garden to scan the mob again, searching for Lady Laud. Or even for her partner, who should certainly be on his way back by now, refreshments in hand. Seeing neither, and taking that as a sign, she began to make her way through the throng toward the doors across the ballroom.

  Only later would she realize that at almost any step on that fateful journey something might have happened to change its outcome. She might have encountered Lady Laud or been approached by either her next partner or her last. The ever-present Mr. Travener might have come to speak to her. As might any of the host of people to whom she had been introduced tonight.

  Unfortunately, none of those things occurred. Her eyes still searching the crowd as she hurried across the floor, she bumped into someone instead. An elderly gentleman in outdated evening dress had been escorting his equally elderly partner onto the floor just as Anne had almost reached the safety—and the anonymity—of its other side.

  "I do beg your pardon," she said, embarrassed that she had drawn attention to herself.

  After all, she realized, the eyes of most of the people in the vast ballroom were now focused on the dance floor, waiting for the music of the reel to begin. And most of those who intended to participate in that lively dance had already assumed their places.

  She wished now, of course, that she had edged around the perimeter of the room, but when she had started across the polished parquet, she had believed she had time to make it before the music began. And if there had not been so many people leaving it from the last set and an equal number coming onto it for the next, she might have managed.

  She smiled at the old man as she apologized, expecting an equally apologetic response. Instead the gentleman's black eyes fastened on her face.

  "Darlington's chit," he said.

  An acquaintance of my father's, Anne thought, feeling a sense of relief.

  "I am indeed, sir," Anne said, smiling at him again. "Did you know my father?"

  As she waited for his answer, it seemed a sudden stillness had fallen over the room. The orchestra was not yet playing. The dancers were in position for the reel, breathlessly awaiting the signal of its first notes. And far too many of the guests were watching the floor in anticipation.

  Only a few minutes before, she would have welcomed this lull in the eternal hubbub. Now she was uncomfortably aware that hundreds of pairs of eyes seemed focused on the very spot where she and her father's friend were standing. And as she awaited his reply, the silence in the room deepened.

  "I knew your father," the old man said, his voice carrying clearly through that unnatural stillness. "I knew him for what he was—a coward and a murderer. And I have no wish to be in the same room as his daughter."

  Anne could not have been more shocked had he struck her. As his words reverberated, she tried to make sense of them. Before she could, and certainly before she could formulate any answer to that incredible accusation, the gentleman deliberately turned his back on her.

  Instead of walking off the floor as he had threatened, however, he simply stood there. And it took a few seconds for her to realize what that gesture meant. He was offering her a direct cut, the worst possible insult one person could give another in this setting.

  The back of his evening jacket, which hung loosely from thin, narrow shoulders, seemed to be all she could see. And she could hear nothing, enclosed in a soundless vacuum of horror. It seemed that no one in the vast room was saying a word.

  His, however, echoed over and over. I knew him for what he was—a coward and a murderer. I have no wish to be in the same room as his daughter. Perhaps they sounded only in her head, but if so, they were loud enough there to drown out cannon fire.

  Her first instinct was to flee, but Anne Darlington had never run from anything in her life. No matter what else she might be, she told herself, she was not a coward. Her second instinct, coming closely on the heels of the first, was to put her hand on the old man's shoulder and pull him around to demand what he had meant.

  As his words continued to beat in her consciousness, however, she realized that somewhere inside she had always known there was something shameful about George Darlington. And in that terrible isolation, alone and yet surrounded by scores of people, a hundred subtle clues she should have put together before now ran through her brain like summer lightning, shimmering and intense.

  Ian's lack of response to her questions about his relationship to her father. His strange wording concerning the will on the first day she'd met him. The look in Elizabeth's eyes when Anne had remarked on Ian's supposedly close friendship with her father. And, most telling, her guardian's reaction to her comment about taking her courage after her father. Coward and murderer.

  There had even occasionally been something within the eyes of a few of the gentlemen to whom she had been introduced. Some emotion she had noticed and had not understood. They had all been her father's age or older— like this man, who stood with his back to her, thin shoulders squared, his head held erect.

  As a soldier's daughter, she should have recognized the stance, but Anne had never in her life been exposed to anything dealing with the army. Or with her father's reputation within its ranks.

  "Miss Darlington is now the ward of Ian Sinclair, General Mayfield
. Perhaps you didn't know."

  The calm, familiar voice pulled her back to the present. Doyle Travener was standing before the old man who had deliberately turned his back to her.

  Dear Mr. Travener. Who was again prepared to come to her rescue, it seemed, despite the watching eyes of the ton. The riot in the street, during which he had cleverly fired the warning shot that had dispersed the mob, flashed through her head. And now, thankfully, he had had the presence of mind to evoke her guardian's name.

  "Sinclair?" the general repeated, obviously surprised by that revelation. "You must be mistaken, sir. Sinclair's brother was one of Darlington's victims. He should be the last person—"

  "Not his brother, sir," Doyle corrected. His eyes lifted over the old man's shoulder to meet Anne's before they returned to the general's. "The youngest Sinclair is still in Iberia. Miss Darlington is the ward of Major Ian Sinclair, who was..." Travener hesitated, his eyes reflecting a reluctance she didn't understand. "Miss Darlington's guardian was the Sinclair who was with Wellington at the time of your son's death."

  "I was told he had died from his wounds."

  "I believe that for some time—" Travener began.

  Hope suddenly stirring in her heart, Anne broke in, not allowing Doyle to finish. If Mayfield had confused Ian with his younger brother, then perhaps he also had confused her father with someone else.

  "I'm sure, sir, that since you were mistaken about my guardian's identity, you are mistaken about my father as well."

  "There is no mistake about your father's actions," the general said, shooting a glance at her over his shoulder. "I was told, however, that Major Sinclair had died of his injuries. It seems that was not the case, thank God."

  His dark eyes, piercing under those bristling white brows, raked her with such scorn that she was silenced. Without apology, he turned back to Doyle.

  "Why would Sinclair, of all people, agree to be this woman's guardian?" he demanded.