“No, that won’t be necessary. It wasn’t there.”
“I doubt it ever was.”
Annabelle’s eyebrows lifted. “Are you insinuating that I’m lying?”
“Yes.”
“I’m quite insulted that you feel that way.” Holding her hands up to her cheeks, Annabelle looked quite hurt and embarrassed. “I’d never do anything to upset you.”
“Yes, you would, but I haven’t figured out what sort of game you’re playing.” Diana placed her tea cup on the sofa table and appraised Annabelle with such open scrutiny that Annabelle squirmed. “I’m not a fool, and I’m not as stupid as you think I am. Whatever you’re about, I’m on to you, Annabelle. And don’t think for a moment that I wish to be your friend. Most certainly you don’t want to be mine. You want my husband, but you won’t have him, no matter this strange game. I’ll make certain of that.”
Annabelle’s pale blue eyes turned icy. “Quite sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“Not all of the time, but where Tanner’s concerned, I am. Don’t expect me to step aside and let you become mistress of my home and my husband’s heart. I won’t. Also, you can’t. Tanner loves me. You missed your chance with him a long time ago.”
“Ah, he told you about us.”
“He did, but your past relationship doesn’t bother me. The past is done.”
Annabelle licked her lips and smiled. “Sometimes the past is very much alive,” she announced cryptically.
“Not in this case,” Diana said. “Now, do we understand one another?”
“We do.”
“Very good. I believe I’ll retire for the night. I need rest, and I advise you to do the same, and please, no wandering into our room by mistake in search of lost earbobs.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Annabelle retorted, pasting a fake smile on her face. When Diana left the room she cursed under her breath and went to the sideboard where she liberally laced her tea with brandy. She liked the way it slid smoothly down her throat. Only the best for Tanner, she decided, in his liquor and his wife. And there was no doubt in Annabelle’s mind that Diana Sheridan was of the highest caliber, a lady in the truest sense — something Annabelle would never be. This was why she hated her.
Why did men want to marry ladies? They made such a big to do about women who were good in bed, something she was quite proficient at, but when they wed, they married ladies. And if the lady happened to be a tigress beneath the sheets, so much the better. Apparently Tanner had married the perfect combination of lady and tigress. And it was plain to Annabelle that Diana would bare her claws in defense of Tanner.
“It’s not going to be as simple or as easy as I thought,” she whispered as she sat on the chair by the window. But Annabelle should have expected that. Nothing was ever easy for her. Years of struggle had hardened her to life’s misfortunes, but she’d assumed that trapping Tanner would be child’s play. It wasn’t, and not only because of his wife. Tanner wasn’t interested, making the game all the more impossible.
If that wasn’t enough, she also had to deal with that despicable Kingsley Sheridan. She heaved a huge sigh and got up to make her way to the dining room, where she took her cloak from the wall peg. Luckily, no one was about. Annabelle went outside, braving the cold wind that streaked past her face. Nearing the outside kitchen, she suddenly halted when Cammie appeared, followed by the large black man named Ezra. Their delighted laughter faded when they spotted her.
“Miss Hastings, you’re going for a walk in this freezing weather?” Cammie asked, her face a puzzled mask.
“Er, yes, Cammie, I am. I adore the cold.” Annabelle hated it but she grinned as if she loved it. “I won’t be long. I need to walk off that delicious meal you prepared.”
“Maybe Ezra should follow after you. There’s no telling what could happen to a lady out walking after dark.”
There was something in the way Cammie said lady that caused Annabelle to grimace. The nosy servant obviously didn’t think she deserved such a fine title. “I’ll be all right; don’t either one of you worry.”
And with that Annabelle whisked away, leaving the property by the back gate. She waited on the sidewalk behind the carriage house until she was convinced that Cammie and Ezra had entered the townhouse. Then she reentered the yard and gingerly sneaked into the door that led to the vacant upstairs room in the carriage house.
It didn’t surprise her that Kingsley was waiting for her. She found him standing near the door, looking as bedraggled as ever. Immediately he grabbed her wrist.
“Well, hand over my jewels. It took you long enough to find them.”
“Unhand me, you simpleton,” Annabelle insisted. “I don’t have your precious jewels.”
Kingsley’s face fell in disappointment. “Why not? You’re not planning to rob me, are you? I won’t stand for any duplicity,” he blustered. “If so, you’ll never have Tanner—”
“Shut up! I never got the chance to search for them. That nosy Cammie appeared and shooed me out of the room. Now Diana’s suspicious and she’s determined to discover why I was in her bedroom.”
“Stupid bitch!” Kingsley began pacing the small, empty, and extremely cold room like a caged tiger. Annabelle wasn’t certain who was the bitch — her, Diana, or Cammie, and she didn’t ask. Something disturbed her about Kingsley. He wasn’t right in the head, but she had to use him as he was using her. Without his help, Tanner would never belong to her. But first she had to find the jewels.
“I did the best I could,” she offered by way of a defense.
“Then your best wasn’t good enough.” Abruptly he ended his pacing and pressed his body quite close to hers. “Maybe you need some inducement to hurry along. It’s been a while since I bedded a woman, and it shouldn’t take much to please a whore like you, Annabelle, either to get her fanny moving beneath me or to retrieve my property. The choice is yours.”
Annabelle sucked in her breath, appalled at the notion of being bedded by Kingsley Sheridan. Granted, she’d pleasured many, many men in her time, but none of them were insane … or as mean as this man. And Kingsley was cruel, she could tell that. How had Diana Sheridan lived with this beast for years as his wife? Annabelle wouldn’t have suffered his kisses or his touch for a day, and certainly never a raised hand, but then again, Diana had been his wife and a lady, and women in Diana’s position weren’t free to choose. Annabelle couldn’t help thinking that maybe being a lady wasn’t all it was thought to be.
Kingsley did frighten her. There was a maniacal quality in his eyes, something menacing in his tone of voice, but she refused to show her fear to him. Kingsley Sheridan wouldn’t get that satisfaction from her!
“You’re a disgusting toad of a man,” she found herself saying, drawing herself to her full height, which was rather tall for a woman. “I can’t imagine anything more disgusting than bedding you.”
“Why, you whore…”
“Oh, do be quiet with your name calling. I can think of some rather choice ones for you.”
“Really Well, I can think of some choice ways to make you suffer.”
Annabelle was truly scared now. Alone with this demented man, anything could happen to her and no one would hear her screams. She realized that Kingsley was desperate to have his jewels, and she was desperate to find them, but not at the expense of her own safety. “Touch me and you’ve lost your opportunity of ever getting the jewels,” she reminded him. “And you should know that Captain Farnsworth will gladly track you down if I’m harmed. I’ve written him a letter, which I placed in safekeeping with a friend to give to him if anything should happen to me. And you’re the prime suspect.”
Her lie plainly worried him. Kingsley backed off and threw himself into a corner, huddling like a small boy. “Just bring them to me soon. I want to be gone from here. I want to go home and take my wife with me.”
“I guarantee that you will, but you promised delivery of Tanner to me if I help you. And you promised he wouldn’t be harmed.
”
“Certainly, dear Annabelle.” Annabelle didn’t like the sound of that, but she hastily retreated from the small room and rushed back inside the house, nearly bumping into Tanner at the door. “Cammie told me you left earlier,” he said. “Did you enjoy your walk?”
He looked so warm and comforting, so very handsome as he stood there, that Annabelle did something totally unexpected, even for her. Genuine tears rolled down her cheeks and she threw herself against Tanner’s chest.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You’re shaking.”
“I’m just cold,” she replied, but she knew her trembling was more than a winter’s chill.
~
Kingsley sat huddled against the cold and cursed Annabelle threefold. The stupid wench had failed. He had hoped that he’d be in possession of the jewels he’d stolen from Diana’s jewelry box, the same jewels he’d taken when he left Briarhaven — or, to be more accurate, when his father had run him off. But like everything that had happened to him during these last agonizing months, he wasn’t surprised by the delay.
Before joining the army, he’d come to the townhouse and hidden the jewels behind the fireplace in the master bedroom. He figured that the war would soon end and that he could retrieve them later and sell them. However, the war dragged interminably on. He had joined David Richmond’s regiment in expectation of proving himself a hero, knowing that word of his valor would trickle back to his father and his wife. They’d realize how horribly they’d treated him, and both of them would get on their knees and beg him to return home. He might, and then again he might not, that’s what he’d have told them. But Kingsley realized almost immediately that he wasn’t cut out to be a hero. Fighting, especially hand-to-hand combat, frightened him. Dreams of being run through by a bayonet filled his nights, and the thought of capture, spending time in an enemy prison camp, caused him to break out in a cold sweat.
But Charlestown fell, and so did Kingsley. He remembered the pain that welled inside him when the fighting began, how he couldn’t breathe. He ran, and during his flight he was shot in the leg by a British soldier. Somehow he returned the fire and shot the man, instantly killing him. The man’s dead eyes still haunted him, as did the memory of stripping the corpse and exchanging uniforms. Now Kingsley Sheridan was a dead hero, for better or worse, rather than a live coward.
Somehow he made it to the ragged settlement of Rawdon Town and Mike Candy’s succor. If not for Candy he’d have died. As it was, he’d been ill for months, sometimes healing, then growing suddenly sick and wishing he’d die. But he wasn’t going to die, he was going to live and make it to the townhouse, to reclaim his bounty. But as fate would have it, the British commandeered the property and he’d been too ill to care about the jewels.
Yet when he felt better he was ready to make his move, only to be thwarted by, of all people, his black-sheep half-brother. Tanner was in residence. God! It was all too much to bear, especially the knowledge that Tanner had married Diana.
Kingsley still didn’t know how that had happened, but their days as a happy couple were numbered — he’d see to that whether Annabelle helped him or not. Diana was his wife, she belonged to him, not his half-breed brother. And soon, very soon, he was going to claim her again and wipe all traces of Tanner from her mind — and her body.
And as for Tanner, well, Diana would most likely grieve for a few days, and Annabelle would most likely believe she’d been duped, and she’d be right. But what could he do, how could he have had any forewarning of Tanner’s sudden and unexpected demise? After all, he wasn’t God, was he?
Kingsley laughed, a heinous sound even to his own ears, at the notion. The more he dwelled upon the image of himself as omnipotent, the more he began to believe it.
19
“Must we attend Captain Farnsworth’s soiree tonight?” Diana asked as she snuggled closer to Tanner. “He and his friends are such obnoxious bores.”
Tanner nuzzled her neck, then kissed her soundly on the lips. “Yes, but this will be the last Tory event we’ll have to attend. Farnsworth confided to me that the British are withdrawing from Charlestown soon.”
“And going where?”
“Back to England. Your side has won, Diana.”
Diana didn’t think of it as “her side,” and it bothered her that Tanner still thought in terms of divided camps. Now that he’d leaked information about the Eutaw Springs battle to Clay Sinclair, he was no longer a loyalist spy. “Our side has won,” she corrected him, and ran a fingernail along his muscular forearm. “For good or ill, you’ve tossed in your lot with me.”
“Definitely for good.” Tanner smiled at her and lifted one of her dark curls, wrapping it around his index finger. “We should have finished dressing an hour ago. Curtis is already waiting with the carriage and must wonder what happened to us. Why is it, do you think, that we can’t ever be ready on time?”
He was teasing her and she knew it. Tanner didn’t give a fig about arriving anywhere late. “That’s a difficult question to answer.” Diana puckered her forehead into a frown. “I really can’t say.”
“Cunning vixen,” came his seductive whisper as he pulled her hard against him. “I thought you knew the answer very well, but apparently you’ve forgotten all I taught you.”
Diana wriggled wantonly beneath him. “Then you must refresh my memory.”
“It will be my pleasure.” And it was.
~
Oh, why were Diana and Tanner dawdling? Annabelle paced her bedroom, her blue negligee flowing around her. She listened for some sound that would assure her that they were leaving. All she heard was a muffled giggle and Tanner’s deep groan. “Dammit! So that’s what’s keeping them. They might never leave at this rate.”
Annabelle flounced onto the bed, her kerchief crumpled in the palm of her hand. This business of retrieving Kingsley’s jewels was taking its toll upon her. She wished the Sheridans were already gone so she could sneak into their bedroom. Her only problem would be the officious Cammie, but somehow, some way, she’d get the jewels tonight and end this torture of being forced to help Kingsley Sheridan and knowing that at this very moment Tanner was making love to his wife. That thought hurt a great deal.
But Diana really wasn’t Tanner’s wife, Annabelle realized. For all intents and purposes, Diana was still married to Kingsley, which meant that once Kingsley claimed her Tanner would be free. And then Tanner would take a new wife — herself.
“I’m going to be happy, finally and completely happy, and have all I’ve ever wanted,” Annabelle spoke aloud to a porcelain figure of a shepherdess on the bedside table. “Things will work out for me, they must.”
However, by the time the clock in her room chimed nine, Annabelle had nearly lost all hope of getting into the Sheridan’s bedroom that night. She started suddenly when she recognized Tanner’s knock on her door. “Annabelle, are you ready to leave for the soiree?” he called.
Bolting beneath the covers, Annabelle arranged herself against the pillows, and in a weak voice she called to Tanner to enter.
“Are you sick?” he asked. He appeared so handsome as he stood beside her bed that Annabelle trembled with desire. “You’re shaking,” he noted. “Perhaps I should send for a physician. You might have a fever.”
“No, no, Tanner, don’t trouble yourself,” came her hurried response. “I’m not feeling too well tonight, but not sick enough that I require medical assistance.”
“I’ll convey your regrets to Samuel.”
Annabelle sighed. “I doubt Samuel shall care. We didn’t part on amiable terms.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Samuel told me he’s in love with you. I hope you didn’t break his heart too badly.”
“Ah, Tanner, you’re to blame for Samuel’s pain, and my own. I told him that I love you and could never marry him.”
Tanner’s face remained a mask of indifference. “You should have accepted Samuel’s proposal. I don’t love you.’’
“But you did; I
know you did,” Annabelle protested strongly.
“At one time I thought what I felt for you was love, but I know that I was wrong. I never loved you, can never love you. Do the wise thing, Annabelle, and get out of your bed and tell Samuel that you’ll marry him.”
“I won’t!”
Annabelle didn’t care for the way Tanner dismissed her heated retort with a shrug. She heard him speak to Diana in the hallway, then he laughed in utter and intimate delight. Clenching her teeth until they hurt, Annabelle threw back the blanket and went to the window. She watched Tanner’s carriage disappear into the darkness and envied Diana Tanner’s company. But soon Tanner would belong to Annabelle Hastings, and this thought calmed her.
“Now to check on that officious maid,” Annabelle mumbled as she threw on her robe, having decided that she’d plead thirst if she ran into Cammie. All she needed was a few minutes to get into the master bedroom and search the fireplace, but she must know where Cammie was first.
Going downstairs, she walked the length of the house and went outside, braving the cold night air, until she came to the structure that housed the kitchen. Cammie wasn’t there and Annabelle was vexed. Where was she, anyway? The woman spent almost as much time preparing food as she did nosing about the townhouse.
It wasn’t until she neared the slaves’ quarters that Annabelle decided to nose around herself. Perhaps Cammie had retired for the night.
By a strange quirk of fate, Annabelle noticed one of the windows was open enough to allow her to see inside the bedroom she knew belonged to Cammie. Shivering from the cold, Annabelle found herself peeping into the room, lighted by a thin candle. She widened her eyes in utter astonishment and envy as she watched Ezra ride upon Cammie’s writhing body. The pleasurable mewls coming out of Cammie’s mouth and Ezra’s passion-starved visage adequately convinced Annabelle that Cammie wouldn’t be wandering around the townhouse that night.
Savage Deception (Liberty's Ladies) Page 25
