by Sara Bennett
“And your wife? Are you an artist, too, ma’am?”
Eugenie shook her head. Her hair was tied back loosely with a ribbon and her curls danced about her. Sinclair had made her a daisy chain on their stroll through the meadow and set it on her head like a yellow crown.
She could feel Sinclair’s eyes still on her, caressing her, and the warmth flooded her body as she thought about what they would do, later, when they returned to the boat. Although now her anticipated pleasure was streaked through with the unhappy knowledge that this may be their last time together. Maybe another day, or another hour, but soon it would end.
“Well,” Mrs. Burdock was looking from one to the other of them with an indulgent smile, “you’re young and together. I don’t think it matters as long as you’re together, eh? Especially when anyone can see you’re so much in love. I can remember when me and my Jack first married, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.” She gave an earthy chuckle. “My father was against our wedding from the first, made all sorts of excuses why we’d never be happy. But we went ahead anyway and here we are, forty-two years later, still in love. Just shows it doesn’t go to pay too much attention to other people when your own heart is telling you what’s best.”
“Yes,” Eugenie whispered. She reached over and touched the woman’s reddened, work-worn hand. “Thank you.”
Mrs. Burdock’s merry face creased in a frown. “My dear, what is it?”
Eugenie shook her head, her throat closing, suddenly very near to tears.
“Now you take heart,” the woman insisted. “No matter what others do and say, you still have your love for each other, and if you hold firm that will pull you through the bad times. Believe me, ’cause I know.”
Abruptly a call came from outside, and then voices arguing.
Mrs. Burdock lifted her head. “Now who could that be?” she murmured, puzzled. “We’re not used to this many customers in a day.”
But Eugenie had recognized the voices and she knew who it was.
Sinclair recognized them, too. He rose to his feet. He’d hardly worn shoes since they boarded the narrow boat and now when he put them on they felt tight and pinching, as if his freedom were somehow being curtailed by their restriction. If he’d had time, he might have drawn parallels between his shoes and society, and his need to be free of them both, but there was no time for philosophizing.
“Why did you let me persuade you into doing this?” Annabelle’s voice was a wail, on the verge of tears. He knew that tone well.
“I must have been out of my mind,” another voice groaned, and he recognized Terry Belmont.
Eugenie jumped up out of her chair and was hurrying to the door of the cottage. He reached it just behind her.
Outside by the lock gates a strange scene confronted them.
Annabelle was standing on the towpath while Terry was walking away, to where the upper lock gate had opened up to let Lord Ridley’s narrow boat through. A slight fair-haired woman stood between the two of them, as if caught in the middle of their argument—Miss Gamboni. There was a barge tied to the bank by the narrow boat, facing away from Wexham. Terry and Annabelle’s? The lockkeeper, Mr. Burdock, and Captain Johnno stood close together, attention fixed on the arguing couple, enjoying this unexpected entertainment.
“You must hire a fast coach, one that doesn’t rock about.”
“And how will I do that? All my money is gone.”
“When I return to London and marry Lucius, I will repay you every penny.”
“Do you expect this Lucius to want to marry you? Now? What about your reputation?”
“Terry . . .” Miss Gamboni warned, but it did no good.
Annabelle choked. “You are hateful to remind me! What will I do? Oh what will I do?”
Terry sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said, as if it was now a common refrain. He turned back to her and tried to take her in his arms, as if to comfort her, but Annabelle pulled away. She was close to the towpath and when her foot slipped she teetered on the edge of the canal. Terry made a grab for her but it was too late, she was already falling. The next moment she hit the water with a splash.
Eugenie cried out and Mrs. Burdock clasped her arm tightly, as if afraid she might jump into the canal, too. Sinclair ran toward the towpath where Terry stood, his face chalk white, almost colliding with Miss Gamboni, who was also running. He pushed them both out of the way in his impatience to save his sister.
He could see Annabelle’s dark hair beneath the brown water, her clothing rising up in clouds as the air bubbled out of it. He had only a few brief moments before she was dragged down into the depths, vanishing forever in the muddy canal.
He jumped in as close to her as he dared.
The water was very cold. His body was shocked into inaction. He could not even catch his breath. And then he gasped and flailed out, hunting for his sister in the murky water. He dived, feeling with his arms for any sign of her, but there was nothing. When his head rose above the surface again, he heaved in a deep breath and then another.
Terry was above him.
“There!” he shouted, pointing a little to Sinclair’s right.
Sinclair caught sight of a fold of cloth, drifting down. He struck out, grasping at it with his outstretched hand, and felt the material brush his fingers. His grip tightened, and then he was reeling the folds of cloth in toward him. She was heavy, weighed down with skirts and petticoats. Then he felt her body, limp, and pulled her close.
Her head tumbled forward, dark hair trailing in ribbons, and he lifted it out of the water, onto his shoulder. Her face was white, eyes closed. Was she breathing? But he couldn’t worry about that now. He had to get them both out of this freezing water. Sinclair struggled toward the steep bank of the canal.
“Here you go, sir.” The lockkeeper was there with a pole, and Sinclair caught hold of the end of it, using it to help him onto the wooden ladder that hung down from the path. Then there were hands, pulling him upward, lifting Annabelle’s limb body from him. It seemed only a moment later he was sprawled on the towpath, shivering with cold and shock.
A group had gathered, hiding the prone body of Annabelle from his view. He couldn’t see what was happening and he was too exhausted to get up. Seconds passed, then minutes. He began to believe the worst. Then there was a shout, and Eugenie came hurrying over to him, her face alight with good news.
“She is breathing. Sinclair. She is alive.”
Chapter 33
Relief washed over Sinclair. His sister was alive. All was well. He pulled himself awkwardly to his feet, leaning on Eugenie as she slipped an arm about his waist, her clothing soon soaking in the water from him. The group shifted to allow him in, just as Annabelle vomited up some of the brown water, and began to indulge in a fit of sobbing hiccups.
Mrs. Burdock slipped an arm about her shoulders and helped her to sit up, murmuring sympathy. Miss Gamboni had come forward but, seeing Sinclair, backed away again. Annabelle’s dark eyes scanned the faces looming over her and widened when she realized that her brother really was there.
“You saved my life,” she croaked. “Sinclair, you were right all along. I should have listened to you. Anything is better than this. How could I have thought I wanted to live the life of a simple girl?”
He knelt and took her hands in his. “Hush, Annabelle. Now is not the time. We will talk about these matters later.”
“My life is ruined,” she wailed.
When it was obvious she wasn’t going to calm herself, they carried her into the cottage and up the stairs to the Burdocks’ bedroom. There she was left to the tender care of Mrs. Burdock and Eugenie. Sinclair, who’d followed them in, sat at the same table he shared with Eugenie only moments ago.
Captain Johnno placed a blanket about his shivering shoulders and he thanked him, holding it close, feeling the warmth of the stove gradually seepin
g into his bones. Or was it his heart? Why did he feel so worried? He should be happy and relieved. Annabelle was safe, all was well, they could go home now. It was over.
But perhaps that was the trouble. It wasn’t over.
He didn’t want it to be over.
He noticed Terry hovering in the doorway, peering up the stairs, clearly worried about what was happening up there. Sinclair eyed him a moment, wondering if he had the strength to punch him in the nose. After a brief struggle with his wobbly legs he decided he didn’t.
“Sit down for God’s sake,” he growled instead.
Terry eyed him nervously. “Only if you promise not to call me out.”
Sinclair snorted. “I don’t have my second here at the moment. Sit down, Terry. I have no intention of calling you out.”
The boy—and suddenly he seemed little more—edged toward the table and sat down. There was a strained look about his eyes. Sinclair realized he felt, if not sorry for him, then at least a little less inclined to blame him for the whole situation. Annabelle could be very strong-willed when she wanted something and Terry had little experience of strong-willed dukes’ sisters.
“Do you think she will recover?” Terry said, glancing toward the door to the stairs again. “I would have jumped in, sir, but I never learned to swim.”
Sinclair rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the grate of his unshaven cheeks. When had he last shaved? He couldn’t remember. It hadn’t seemed to matter . . . until now. “She’s in good hands. Your sister will take care of her and Mrs. Burdock seems to me a capable woman.”
Terry nodded, and when he looked at Sinclair again it was with speculative eyes. “May I ask, sir, what my sister is doing here?”
Sinclair wondered how much to tell him, or how much Eugenie would want to tell him. In the end he said, “She wanted to find you. She was worried I might do you an injury if she wasn’t here to stop me.” His mouth curved into an involuntary smile, and he saw Terry’s gaze sharpen. Quickly he made his expression stony again.
“Is my sister’s virtue intact?” Sinclair asked bluntly, thinking he may as well know the worst so that he could deal with it.
Terry’s eyes opened wide. They were green, like Eugenie’s. “Yes, sir! It was never . . . we were never . . . We are friends only! And Lizzie was with us all the while. Miss Gamboni, that is. She was chaperoning your sister. None of it was her fault. We sort of—sort of kidnapped her, you see.”
He looked so indignant, so eager to impress upon Sinclair his innocence, that this time Sinclair had difficulty subduing his smile. Then he thought of something else.
“Then what on earth did you think you were doing eloping for the border?”
“We weren’t eloping,” Terry groaned. “I was escorting her to Scotland, where her friend lives. She could not marry a man she didn’t love and live a life she despised, and she begged me to help her escape. She wanted . . . she said she wanted to be an ordinary woman living an ordinary life.” His voice trailed off at the end, as if he’d realized that Annabelle’s declarations were no longer to be trusted, and perhaps they never had. He knew now he should have listened to Lizzie when she warned him, but he’d been too caught up in the romance of rescuing Annabelle, of being her hero.
“I see.”
And reading the misery in Terry’s face Sinclair did indeed “see” the truth.
“Will there be a terrible scandal, sir? I don’t care what happens to me but please don’t blame Lizzie for any of this. It wasn’t her fault.”
Sinclair rubbed a hand across his eyes, feeling the weight of his responsibilities, of being the Duke of Somerton.
“We had turned back,” Terry went on to explain. “We didn’t even reach the border. Annabelle wanted to go home. She decided she didn’t want to be an ordinary girl after all. She wanted to marry this Lucius fellow and live in London and go to parties and balls and . . .” He sighed, as if all his beliefs had been shattered. Sinclair had a fair inkling that the boy had imagined himself in love with Annabelle, and planned to be her heroic savior. Now he probably felt like a complete idiot.
“You understand I will have to send you away from Somerton,” Sinclair said, watching Terry’s face to see how he’d take the news.
He took it bravely, straightening his shoulders, although there was an expression of misery in his eyes. “I know that, sir.”
“So where is it to be, then?”
Terry shrugged a shoulder. “I thought about enlisting as a common foot soldier, just to get away from . . .” He swallowed. “I always hoped for a commission but my father . . . It was not possible.”
Sinclair could read between the lines. He considered the matter. “Very well, I will buy you a decent commission. But you will repay me by being a model soldier. If I hear of any schemes to make money and defraud anyone, any gambling, any drunkenness . . . you know the sort of thing I’m talking about. If I hear of anything like that then I will pay a call to your commanding officer and see you thrown out. Do you understand me, Terry?”
The boy blinked in amazement. “I . . . I don’t know what to say, sir.”
“Thank you and good-bye, in that order,” Sinclair said. He looked at the door that led to the stairs. “I wonder what’s taking her so long,” he murmured, and realized he was thinking of Eugenie.
“You will look after Lizzie, won’t you, sir? You will take her home with you and write her a good reference?”
“Yes, all right.” He eyed Terry with sour interest. “Are you planning to marry her now?”
“She wouldn’t have me,” he said glumly.
“Give it a year or two and she might forget what a fool you’ve been over my sister,” he felt impelled to say. The boy looked so forlorn, and the fact that he could feel so when he’d just been given the commission he’d always wanted said something for his genuine feelings for Miss Gamboni.
“Might as well be a lifetime,” Terry sighed.
Upstairs, Eugenie had helped Annabelle to undress and rubbed her warm and dry with towels provided by Mrs. Burdock. They tucked the girl into a bed with a hot water bottle, and eventually her shudders began to give way to yawns and sighs.
“What is my brother doing here?” she asked, eyes beginning to close. “I did not expect to see him here.”
“He was trying to catch you before you reached the border,” Eugenie explained. “We have been following you since the night you left Somerton.”
“We?” She gave Eugenie a scornful look. “What, were you traveling with him?”
“Terry is my brother,” she said with quiet dignity.
“Oh yes, so he is.” Annabelle yawned again. “It wasn’t his fault,” she said. “He only did what I wanted him to do. I thought I knew what I wanted but I didn’t understand what it would be like. Being a commoner.”
A commoner, thought Eugenie, as if she were royalty! She supposed with the Somerton wealth and power and family background, she was the next thing to it. Eugenie felt her spirits sink as once more Annabelle’s attitude brought back to her just how large was the gap between a duke and a Belmont. As wide as an ocean.
Or it might as well be.
“Do you think Lord Salturn will take me back?” Annabelle was nearly asleep, struggling to keep her eyes from closing.
“I’m sure your brother will persuade him to do so.”
She managed a smile. “Sinclair can be very persuasive.”
“He can.”
“Why is it I never realized how much I—I wanted to be Lucius’s wife until it was too late?”
“Perhaps it isn’t too late.”
Annabelle’s breathing finally deepened and slowed.
Mrs. Burdock glanced at Eugenie. “She’s asleep,” she said, with obvious relief. “When I saw her fall into the canal I thought she was a goner for sure. I can’t tell you how many dead ’uns my Jack hauls
out of that canal, some fallen in by accident, others by purpose. Breaks your heart, it does.”
Eugenie managed a wry smile at the mention of broken hearts. She knew it wasn’t Annabelle’s fault the magic spell that had held Eugenie and Sinclair in its thrall had unraveled. If Sinclair hadn’t been here when his sister fell, then she would have drowned and then where would they all be? No, it was just the way things turned out. She’d known all along that the end must come to their idyll at some point, and now it was here.
Mrs. Burdock was kind enough to agree to sit with Annabelle, and Eugenie made her way downstairs.
Terry was seated alone at the table, but he jumped up as soon as he saw his sister.
“Annabelle . . . ?”
“Lady Annabelle is asleep,” Eugenie said briskly. Then, taking pity on him, she said, “She’s perfectly well, Terry. Just a little shaken.”
He looked exhausted and relieved, and for a moment he seemed so much like the little boy she remembered from their childhood that she put her arms around him and held him close.
“You are a fool,” she said huskily. “How could you have done such a thing? She would never have married you, Terry.”
Terry squeezed her tight before letting her go. “I know. She isn’t so bad as you think, Genie. Besides, I met Lizzie, and that made it all worthwhile.”
“Hmm. Lizzie, is it? You realize Father and Mother were quite mad with grief when they read your letter. Mother thought you’d go to gaol for certain.”
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, and then gave Eugenie a sly look. “I’ll bet Father wasn’t mad with grief. He probably thought he’d have a wealthy daughter-in-law to borrow money from.”
“Terry,” she said sharply.
“Somerton has offered to buy me a commission in the army,” he told her proudly. “He just wants to get me away from home, of course, but I think it’s decent of him to offer, don’t you? I always wanted to go into the army, Genie.”
It was generous, but then Sinclair was a generous man. She told her brother she was glad for him, scolded him again for worrying them all so, and then gave him another hug.
