She examined him dispassionately then pointedly pulled her arm from his grasp. “If you think to entertain me with your glib tongue, you’re misguided. Such an analogy is specious and immoral, and for the first time, I question your principles. A flaw sincerely confessed and honestly abjured I would excuse—a love affair is no more than a weakness. But to compare the poor girl to an inanimate object, to be used and tossed aside… that I cannot countenance.”
“Self-righteousness ill suits you, madam,” he said through gritted teeth.
“And idiocy ill suits you, my lord. Be a man, not a boy.” She started to walk away, but he grabbed her, turned her toward him, and pressed his lips to hers, pulling her so close she could not breathe.
So she bit his lip.
He reared away from her with a loud yell of pain and touched his bleeding lip with two fingers. “Why did you do that?”
“For the same reason Irusan scratches when he’s being held against his will. I did it to get loose.”
“Don’t try to tell me, my lady, that you dislike my kisses,” he said with a throaty growl, “for I know very well that’s a lie.” He took a step toward her.
She took a step back. “I like strawberries, my lord, but they make me break out in red patches. They’re bad for me, so I have concluded that I can live without them.” She whirled and strode away.
He didn’t follow.
Blindly, she wandered out of the garden along a gravel path, climbing above the Ivy Lodge gardens. Her abject misery surprised her. Hot tears bubbled in her eyes, coursing down her face in thick streams. Some women were blessed with the ability to cry prettily, with trembling lips and delicate sobs, but Anne’s throat closed, and great choking sobs sounding like the cries of a wounded animal emitted from her, while mucous clogged her nose and dribbled out, hanging in ugly strings. She had no choice but to wipe her nose with her lace tucker.
But after a few moments, anger overtook her wretchedness. What was she crying about? Yes, he had disappointed her, but she had lost nothing. And she hadn’t done anything of which to be ashamed. Unblemished reflection on her own behavior must be her solace. She straightened her back, stopped weeping, and strode a ways, for she could not go back to Ivy Lodge until she had cleansed herself of her unhappiness.
So as the gravel path changed to pounded dirt under her feet, then became narrower as it wound through a copse and grassy beyond that, she walked, blessing the brilliant moonlight and taking full advantage of her anger to speed her. Clouds now shrouded the moon, but the effect was to spread the white moonlight into a glowing ceiling above her, giving the effect of a brighter light. What hold did that man have on her? Nothing more than physical attraction, she decided. Yes, he made her weak when he kissed her, and she loved to look at him; he was gorgeous, as much as any sculpture of David or depiction of Zeus, but that was the full extent of it.
And yet… she slowed as she reconsidered. There was more to him, to be completely fair and honest. He was witty, intelligent, thoughtful. She could make him laugh, and that gave her pleasure. He was deeply sensitive to the plight of others, as exemplified by his care for Osei, but could be maddeningly obtuse at other times.
Why had he kissed her yet again? She had concluded that he used his intoxicating power of attraction to confuse her; but was he a born philanderer who would use that power just because he could? She had seen Irusan kill a snake once, not for food and not because the creature was a threat, but just because it amused him to do so and because he could. Did Darkefell kiss her for the same reason? Did it amuse him to feel her tremble in his arms?
Infuriating man. Maddening man!
She strode on but looked up finally to find that she had come quite a distance, and she was lost. The area looked vaguely familiar, but somehow different. Had she even been down this path before? She stopped and tried to take her bearings; the roar of rushing water warned her that she was near Staungill Force. She had approached it from a different direction last time in the pony cart with Darkefell. How far she had come! It would never do to trip around up near the falls in the middle of the night.
She turned, orienting herself so she would head back to Ivy Lodge and not get lost again, grateful that the trees were not yet in full leaf and so didn’t block the moonlight or throw much beyond spidery, dark gray shadows. She took a step, but a sudden noise in the bushes near the woods startled her. She lost her footing on damp leaves that littered the path, tripping over a branch and landing on her bottom, her skirts tangled about her legs. A disheveled man lurched out from among the trees and, as she tried to rise, she skidded, her feet slipping as she tried to get a purchase on the muddy ground. He was dirty and wigless, his clothes askew and missing his jacket, but she knew in an instant it was Hiram Grover.
She screeched and gasped the first thing that came to mind, shouting, “How did you escape?”
He stared at her, mumbling something that at first she didn’t understand; it became clearer as he repeated it: “… and thank You for delivering mine enemies into mine hands, oh, Lord, amen.”
His face gleamed with perspiration, and his eyes protruded even more than usual. With the absence of his wig and his cheeks beet red, his face looked like a horrible mask. “I’m not your enemy, Mr. Grover.” She untangled her skirts with one hand and propped herself up with the other; her skirt caught on the branch, and she tugged unsuccessfully, trying to free herself.
“The friend of my enemy is my enemy,” he said. He lurched forward and enveloped her in a hug, yanking her to her feet and marching her up the path. The sound of the falls became louder, a dull roar in her ears.
“Let me go,” she shouted, kicking as best she could with the damnable weight of skirts around her ankles. He was throwing her off balance.
Her horror grew as the sound of the falls became louder in her ears. She was not going to let him toss her from the top of Staungill Force, and that was what she feared he intended to do. She elbowed him in his paunch, and he expelled a loud gust of air, but his hold didn’t loosen. As portly as he was, she never expected him to be so strong. In another few moments, they’d both go over the falls!
“Let me go. Let me go!” she screamed, thrashing about.
The keening howl she had heard twice before rent the night air; it had always before signaled a woman attacked! Grover stilled momentarily but then launched into action with greater vigor, dragging her and lugging her as she struggled to get free and made herself a dead weight in turn, desperately trying to break his manic hold on her.
Nothing helped. Reason, her brain implored her, reason with him. “Grover,” she said, her voice strangled by his choke hold. “Listen to me. You’re free—you should run! Get away. I’ll help,” she said, desperation lacing her choked voice. “My driver will take you anywhere.”
He seemed beyond the sound of her voice, driven so far within himself by rage that he was single-minded in his actions. The keening howl again cut through the night, and the sound of his wheezing breaths and her own gurgling choking joined with the roar of the raging waterfall. Her blood pounded in her ears. Despite the brief pause the howl invoked in her captor, he was determined still, and now they were above the falls.
“God have mercy on your soul!” Grover shouted, his voice hoarse with exhaustion.
“I am not going to die!” Anne stepped on his foot, hard. When his grasp loosened momentarily, she twisted away from him and began to run, but he threw himself at her and caught her skirt. She fell on the lip of the slippery, mossy precipice and cried out in terror.
The next few moments were a welter of confused sensations.
Some kind of animal leaped out of the bushes and tackled Grover, who yelped in fear. A man or men—it was hard to tell in the dark among the shadows of the overhanging bushes—moved forward. Amidst the barking, shouting, howling, tangled confusion, Anne crawled away from the lip of the waterfall, the torrential sound filling her head until she couldn’t even hear her own labored breathing.
&nbs
p; She rolled over on her back and could finally see that Darkefell had hold of Grover. They rolled over and over, Grover grunting and Darkefell shouting at him to give up, until they were close to the falls. Anne struggled to her feet, but just as she was bolting toward the pair, her foot slipped sideways on some moss dampened by the spray of the waterfall; she began to slide down the slope toward irrevocable doom.
Darkefell saw her slip, and the horror on his face, shadowed by moonlight, twisted it out of recognition. He wrenched himself free from Grover, who stood, staggered sideways, and, with a terrible yell, trembled on the cusp of the precipice for one agonizing moment; then he disappeared, falling into the torrent.
But the marquess didn’t hesitate for one moment, pelting over to Anne and pulling her to safety. She landed on top of him, and he clutched her close, smothering her with a breathless kiss. She hammered on his shoulder and turned her face away. “Let me breathe, you idiot!”
He stood then and pulled her to her feet. “I thought you were gone,” he said. He pulled her into his arms and held her against his pounding heart. “I thought you were gone,” he said, a guttural note in his husky voice.
For a long few moments they stood thus, one of his arms holding her close to him and the free hand threaded through her tumbled hair. She didn’t want to move; his grasp was warm, powerful, reassuring, and she did not want to face the awful fact of Hiram Grover’s fall from Staungill Force.
He held her head against his shoulder and said gruffly, “You’ll marry me now, I’ve made up my mind about that. You need marital shackles just to keep you out of trouble.”
She pulled away from him. “What are you talking about, Darkefell?”
His expression grim, he said, “You’ll marry me. Soon. We’ll go see Sydney in the morning and have him arrange it. Or I’ll ride over to Richmond and get the bishop. I don’t care which.”
She swallowed. It seemed indelicate, after what they had just been through and how he had pulled her back from the brink of disaster, to tell him he was being a fool. But marriage? “We must go and find out what has happened to Grover,” she said, pulling out of his arms.
But he held her arm firmly as they descended through the encroaching darkness. The moon was traveling across the sky, and the light filtered through the still-bare tree limbs, shaded to darker gray, as they picked their way along the treacherous path. It took all of their attention, and so neither spoke until Anne remembered the moments before Grover’s dive off the waterfall.
“Darkefell, what was the creature that launched itself at Grover? It was too big for a dog. And… was there someone else with you?”
He paused for a moment as they negotiated a tricky hump in the path then said, “That was Eddie Carter’s son—Daft Neddy, he’s called—and the fellow’s dog, that’s all, a mastiff named Bull. Enormous beast, even for a mastiff. Pure luck he’s been around lately. Neddy has had his troubles, but he’s a good fellow at heart. Shy though. He disappeared once he knew I had taken care of everything.”
How convenient, Anne thought, and how glib the marquess’s explanation. Did she believe it? Her tired mind was too weary to con it over. They reached the bottom of the waterfall, but it was too dark to find anything or anyone. She glanced around fearfully. “Could Grover have survived?”
“No,” Darkefell said, putting his arm around her shoulders. “Let’s not speak of that. You’re shivering—I must get you back to Ivy Lodge.”
“How did Grover get away from Pomfroy’s custody?” Anne asked as she let him lead her away. He was right; no one could search for Grover’s body as the moon set and the dark closed in around them.
“I don’t know, but I’ll find out tomorrow,” he answered grimly. “I gave strictest orders to have him confined and watched. Too late now.”
Returning to a silent house after the drama of the evening was an anticlimax for Anne. She knew she wouldn’t sleep a wink, but Darkefell would have much to do, and she must let him go. In the shadowed alcove that sheltered the garden door of Ivy Lodge, he took her in his arms and gazed down into her face. “Do you wish me to speak to your father,” he said quietly, “or do you wish to just get married and take in your parents as a part of our wedding journey?”
She pulled herself out of his grasp and pushed him away. Either he was toying with her, in which case she despised him, or he was serious, and in that case she thought him the greatest fool who had ever walked the earth. By his own admission, the only reason he wanted to marry her was to keep her safe; as ridiculous as that seemed to her, she supposed it must be true, for he certainly hadn’t given any other reasons. They barely knew each other. “Go home, Darkefell.” She turned away.
“What do you mean? Don’t turn away from me!” he said, roughly turning her back around.
“I mean, go home!” She pulled out of his grasp and entered, closing the door firmly behind her.
Twenty-Five
“Good-bye, my dear,” Anne said, hugging a tearful Lydia at the door of Ivy Lodge the next morning. “Since you and John are coming to Bath in two months to consult Dr. Haggerty, I will go to my grandmother’s then, and we’ll have a lovely visit. Mother will be there, delighted to see you as always, and will fuss over you and make you take the waters.” She set her friend firmly away from her and stared into her lovely eyes, keeping her hands on her shoulders. “Until then, listen to your husband and go visit Mrs. Patterson, the Darkefell nanny,” she said with a little shake. “It was she who nursed Lord John and his brothers through all of their childhood injuries, and she was also midwife to Lady Darkefell. You’ll find no wiser, nor any more suited informant, to give you all the reassurance you need about having a baby.”
“Do you have to go,” Lydia said, her voice clogged with unshed tears, “so hurriedly after that dreadful scene last night?”
Anne had visited Lydia first thing after a sleepless night and told her all about the evening before, leaving out, of course, all that related to dealings between herself and Lord Darkefell. Luckily, Lydia was either the most incurious of creatures, or it just never occurred to her to wonder why Anne went walking so late at night or what Lord Darkefell was doing out at the same time. “I do have to go. I came here for a purpose that is now satisfied. I’d like to go away for a while and forget last night’s violence.”
“Are you sure you were not terribly hurt?” Lydia said, searching her eyes. “I should be in hysterics if that was me, up on the waterfall with that dreadful Mr. Grover.”
“I’m perfectly fine. A little sore on the bottom, and a few bruises, but otherwise fit as a fiddle.”
The marquess had not yet found the man’s body, those at Ivy Lodge had heard at a late breakfast, and so he and others were searching farther along the rain-swollen river, thinking Grover could have been swept quite a ways downstream. It gave enough time for Mary to pack Anne’s trunks, and for her to get away. Cowardly she may be, but she didn’t think she could bear another scene between her and Darkefell after his shattering announcement the previous night. She had left a brief note for him with Mrs. Hailey.
“If you stay, we could enjoy time together.” Lydia sniffed as tears rolled down her smooth cheeks. “You could recover here. Why go now just when I need you most?”
Anne just shook her head. What could she say? A shouted proposal of marriage from an enraged marquess was not something she could easily explain. It wasn’t even a proposal really, more like a command. Nor could she explain her curious reaction to it. For one dreadful moment, held firmly in his arms, thoroughly kissed, drugged with the warmth of his arms, she had contemplated saying “yes.” That both alarmed and infuriated her. After all that Darkefell said, to still be attracted to him?
No, she had to leave, if just to save herself from herself. When she was young and foolish, she had been swept into an engagement when she wasn’t sure, but never again. She had been saved from that disaster by her fiancé’s death; she could not count on such luck a second time. Darkefell seemed the kind of
fellow who would live until eighty or beyond.
“I’m going now,” she said firmly. “Go back to your room and rest.”
Lydia said a final, tearful farewell and was guided upstairs by her doting husband. Anne watched the footman take her trunks out to her carriage, grateful that Lord Darkefell would not know she was gone until afternoon.
At least there was no witness to his “proposal,” or whatever one called it. In the eyes of the world, he was a perfect matrimonial prospect: wealthy, titled, healthy, attractive. But despite her obvious attraction to him, he was not the kind of man she had pictured marrying. He was no scholar, nor a crusader, and as much good as he had done in saving Osei Boatin’s life, they just wouldn’t suit. She was not going to marry for an establishment of her own and to satisfy the requirements of a society that ridiculed unmarried women. There would be benefits to marrying Lord Darkefell, and they didn’t stop at his wealth and position, for the man had an undeniable physical attraction. Being initiated into the delights of physical intimacy by him was a temptation beyond almost any other.
But… she was beyond irritated by his assumption that he could just cavalierly demand her hand and expect to be accepted. Why on earth did he think she would go along with such lunacy? No, though she was grateful that he had changed his mind about going back to the castle and had gone looking for her after their quarrel, arriving just in time to save her life, gratitude was not the basis of a good marriage, especially for two such irascible people as she and the marquess.
Lady Darkefell drifted into the entrance as the last bags were loaded, along with Mary, Robbie, and of course, Irusan; the King of Cats sat awaiting her in the carriage door.
“I wish you a pleasant journey, Lady Anne,” she said stiffly.
Anne, standing by the open door, examined her curiously. The marchioness appeared drawn and weary, her face lined. But there was something more fatiguing her than the awful events of the last twenty-four hours, though Anne couldn’t figure out what it was. With Anne’s departure, it would remain a mystery to her. “Good-bye, my lady,” Anne said with a curtsey. “Give Lord Darkefell my best wishes. Thank you for your hospitality during my stay.”
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