by Hawke, Jessa
“You will be my wife,” Henry insisted, following his ball’s trajectory into the water. It landed with a resounding splash and bobbed up again after a minute.
“Never!” she cried, and seeing Henry’s outrage, she fled.
She ran like the wind. It was oxygen to her, the way her feet carried her further and further away. When she ran, she felt invincible. It was a shock to hear him coming up behind her, gaining on her, the heavy breath and fall of his footsteps coming ever closer. Her lungs burned with the expenditure, and she knew she could push herself no further. Ahead of her, the stable doors were opened, and although she knew there was no escape, she could see no other path for her to take.
She barreled towards the doors as if her life depended on it. She knew that gently raised young ladies did not run like this, but her father was not home and she did not care; there was nobody to watch. Besides, the tall walls of the stables offered many places to hide, as did the ladder leading up to the hayloft, located high up so that it was out of everybody’s business. She scrambled for it and climbed, feeling Henry grab at the folds of her skirt as she climbed high out of reach. Hearing him utter a curse behind her, she let loose a giddy, breathless laugh and used the last of her energy to reach the top of the ladder and collapse into a hayloft. She was taller than Henry, and prayed fervently that he would not be able to reach the ladder. The lack of air getting to her brain made her laugh slightly hysterical and uncontrollable, but she did not care. When she leaned over the edge to look below, Henry wore a slightly confused look on his face that made her laugh even harder.
“Guess you can’t reach me now, can you, Lord Princely?” she taunted, her unruly red locks hanging over her face as she called out to the boy below.
“Why will you not marry me, Anabelle?” he asked, feeling more choked up than he thought was appropriate.
Anabelle considered this. “Because I do not want anybody to tell me what to do,” she finally said.
He looked up at her only once, then backed up several paces, and with a running leap, made for the ladder she had just climbed -and made it. Hanging on with a grip that must have pained him, Henry Princely climbed the ladder just as she had, and Anabelle felt her breath catch. She realized he would gain upon her soon, and all would be lost! Panicking, she looked for a way out, but as she looked out beyond the tiny perimeter of the hayloft, she knew that the only exit that was not being taken over by a determined boy was a perilous fall all the way down all the way next to Pauncy, her beloved horse. There was only one answer. Anabelle began to dig.
She made a well in the hay, a ditch, a space for her body to fit into. It did not make any sense, she knew, but it was the only thing she could think of. Besides, it added to the game and would surely through Princely off track. She buried herself inside of the pungent straw entirely, and held her breath as Henry’s face came up over the edge of the hayloft.
She could not see him, but she could hear his hesitation clearly. A bubble of laughter worked its way to Anabelle’s throat, but she willed it shut and willed her body to stop shaking from all the laughter. He began to claw through the hay, and it was not long before she felt the weight of his body on her, the strangest sensation she had encountered in her entire life. He was on top of her, pinning her down with his body, and he was heavier than she would have thought possible. Henry was in control now, and it was a thought that thrilled her for no particular reason she could possibly name at the time. Hands were raking the hay off her face, and light was dawning above Anabelle.
“Marry me,” he demanded.
“You will ask forever, and my answer will still be no!” she shouted, exhilaration filling her senses, triumphant even in the face of being dominated.
Suddenly, her face was thrown into the streaks of sunlight that were shining directly into the hayloft, and Lord Henry Princely’s tiny face was peering directly into hers.
It was a moment when time stood literally still. Too young to know what was happening to them, too simple to understand the rush of emotions coursing through their bodies, Anabelle Givens and Henry Princely stared hard at each other, both of them breathing hard. And then, before he had any idea he was doing anything in particular, Henry Princely mashed his mouth against hers.
It wasn’t the sensation of it but rather the act itself that amazed Anabelle wholly. His mouth was a little grimy and wet, and neither one of them had any idea what this could or should mean; Henry had acted purely on impulse upon seeing how pretty Anabelle’s eyes looked shining in the light of the sun. He had seen his father do this to his mother countless times, and had always imagined that since his mother was so pretty, this was the exact course of action he should take. Anabelle, on her part, was changed forever in a way which she might never be able to put words to. In that moment, she had crossed over from a plane where she and Henry were equals, two snotty-nosed playmates, into territory where an imbalance of power would plague them forever. It was an adult world, and it was heady.
With a loud smacking noise, Henry broke away from Anabelle’s mouth, and she did the only thing she could think of to do—she whacked him upside the head.
He was still clutching it when she ambled down the hayloft ladder, nimble as a cat. How was he to know how badly her stick-thin legs were shaking and how hard her too-young heart was pounding? She ran until her legs burned, ran until she collapsed in her bed, startling all the servants on the way, and ran until she could outrun the idea of what had just occurred. It settled on her finally in bed, and she turned over, staring at the crown moldings on the ceiling, reveling in the rush of emotions until the housemaid called her down to dinner.
10 YEARS LATER
“Your Grace.”
“Your Grace.”
“Your Grace.”
“Your Grace.”
And then the trio of men collapsed into laughter.
So they were all in the cups, though Henry Princely. Was that so bad? He himself chose not to imbibe these days, but perhaps that was from his time abroad more than anything else. It had proved difficult to maintain the ever-popular lifestyle of drinking until cards, cards until dinner, dinner until women, and women until marriage when he had been doing his Grand Tour. His father had managed to procure some connections with the royal houses of Rome and Madrid, and Henry had enjoyed the lavishness he had been presented with when he was there. But when he stepped out of the palace to his own quarters, he had happened upon the starving children in the slums there in one city and then the next, and the disparity between the wealth of the privileged few and the underserved had struck him most acutely, had sobered him into seriousness earlier than he had expected. When he had hasten back to London due to his father’s illness, the remains of that particular lifestyle had disappeared entirely, and Henry’s days had become a familiar routine of bills, nurses, and keeping all the decanters around his home empty for his mother had become well-acquainted with that particular devil in her struggle to cope with the happenings-on.
Truth be told, there was little amusing about the fact that he had now inherited his father’s title almost a year hence and had been mired in an ocean of paperwork when he could have been grieving for what had gone on. But when his London friends decided upon that little formal greeting, they had been unable to resist addressing each other in turn until the hilarity of the appointments had washed over them all as they shook hands. Maintaining that they all now had new responsibilities was perhaps not amusing in the conventional sense, but Henry preferred it this way—it was easier to laugh than to cry, and he felt the old camaraderie settle over him like a balm.
“Fitzy St. Hubert is having her coming out ball tonight,” Jack Whetstone informed Henry companionably as they all piled into the carriage together.
“Where is she coming out of, the stables?” joked Rafe, and the three of them chortled companionably. The lady in question did indeed have something vaguely horse-like about her face, but her mother was not about to let a little toothiness stand in the way
of pushing her daughter’s not insubstantial dowry under the nose of every eligible bachelor in town. Henry had no doubt that despite their teasing, one of his friends would surely take the lady under consideration tonight, considering the extent of their own gambling debts. It was not long before the carriage rumbled into view of the great mansion and trio of men tumbled out.
The dance room was abuzz. It had been many years since Henry had seen most of the crowd before him, and many came by to offer him their condolences on the death of his father, the late Lord Princely. “A king amongst men!” one particularly hysterical neighbor had wept. “An absolute KING!” Which was all well and good, but Henry did wish the woman would control herself; he had no desire to be reminded of what had consumed the last year of his life at such a gay event.
His eyes swept over the crowd and settled on a familiar face. “Is that Haversham?” he asked Rafe.
His friend looked in the general direction. “Yes. I hear he’s been wasting his fortune away at the races, and now he’s dangerously close to the poorhouse. He better hope those dreamy blue eyes of his snag some wealthy heiress soon, or the only way he’ll be able to bet on a horse is if its meat is in his soup or not.”
From the looks of it, Lord Devon Haversham would have no trouble at all snaring himself a wealthy wife, but for his sake, Henry hoped that she would hold tight to the purse strings, or Devon would find himself ruining not one, but two fortunes. The handsome young man with his full head of wavy black hair and charmingly tied cravat was deep in an intimate conversation with a dreamy-eyed blonde who clung to his well-muscled arm and hung on his every word. Henry could tell immediately that she was a dangerous type. Her naiveté and loveliness would blind most men to an incessant neediness and wild flights of imagination; just look at the gaze she had trained on Devon now! Still, there was something about her that stirred his memory delicately. He nudged Jack, who was busy acquainting himself with Fitzy St. Hubert, horse like teeth notwithstanding.
“Who is that lady?”
Jack peeked over and his face softened. “Ah,” he said lazily, his voice stretching out as if he was eating a particularly tasty candy, “That is Isadora Givens, the youngest daughter of the late Lord Givens. Your childhood neighbors, I believe.”
Henry’s memory poked at him. “Isadora! What happened to her father?”
Jack shook his head ruefully. “Darndest thing. He was never quite right after Lady Givens passed, and he became as obsessed with the horse races as Haversham. The story goes that he had a small fortune riding on Flibbertigibbet, this yearling from Marlborough, and at the last minute, the jockey wouldn’t ride because. So Givens decides to ride instead of him.”
“No.”
Jack nodded. “So obviously, the horse gets all nervous and throws Givens, breaking his back and leaving both of his daughters completely parentless.”
Henry’s memory kicked at him again, this time at a place much closer to the surface. He had quite a few memories of the other Givens girl, and unconsciously, his eyes began to seek out a red mop of hair amongst the dancing crowd, although he knew that the lady in question would have undoubtedly look much different now. Jack caught his eye and, deducting that he had already spotted the younger Givens sister, grinned impishly. “Anabelle is the toast of the town these days, even though she had her coming out ages ago. A bit of a bluestocking, but very popular with the literature crowd at the south end of the room.” Watching his friend’s eyes swing in that particular direction, Jack again turned his attentions to the eager Lady St. Hubert.
It was hard to make her out at first amongst the crowd of older gentleman, but soon enough, Henry spotted a crown of glossy red hair separating out. One of the gentlemen, sandy-haired and formidable-looking, proffered a hand, and the fingers that reached out of the coven to grab his were endlessly long and slender. Henry’s eyes traveled up that hand to an equally toned arm, to a rose-colored gown—he had no doubt Jack or Rafe could say whether or not it was in season, but did not care—to a deep décolletage, and then a face that was utterly familiar and alien all at the same time.
When he saw her face, Henry did not care what kind of stocking she was at all, blue or any other color. It was not that Anabelle Givens had a sensationally beautiful face; it was that it was so alive with expression and sensitivity, so like and unlike the face he remembered so well from his childhood romps and, most memorably, that day in the hay, that in that moment, Henry Princely felt squarely and securely that he had most certainly arrived home.
Tumbles of red locks fell about her face, curled artfully. Her brown eyes slanted at the corners, giving her the unusual look of laughing all the time. As her gentleman partner twirled her in a lively fashion, Henry got flashes of curved hips and shoulders, a full bosom, and a mouth that was open with merriment and conversation. He was not prepared at all for the rush of emotions that hit him when he saw Anabelle, but in that moment, he tumbled straight into her image, into the solid woman she had become, into the adult body that he, for many reasons, wanted to crush into his own and lay there forever. Just seeing Anabelle, seeing how she was able to laugh even after what had happened to her father made him want to take her by the hand and lead her right back to that stable, lay down and tell her every darned, damnable thing that had happened to him over the past year, if only so that she could order him to snap out of it as she used to when they were small.
“Why, he’s a man possessed,” he heard Rafe say next to him and realized with a start that his friend was indeed, referring to him. He had apparently lost himself in contemplation of Anabelle Givens for the past few minutes, long enough for both of his friends, and Lady St. Hubert to take notice. He heard them tittering behind him like schoolchildren, but the fact of the matter was that it was true. He wanted to get to know the woman with the red hair because somewhere underneath the years that had passed between them, she was the girl with the red hair who he felt he could share everything with. And so he inched his way closer, shy, suddenly, but bold somewhere deep on the inside because his feet did not stop moving until he was smoothly taking Anabelle's hand from her sandy-haired partner and clasping it in his own.
She saw him coming and recognized him immediately. Lion-maned Henry Princely was the farthest from the prig his name suggested he should be. She had noticed him from the corner of her eye, had known that this was the first event he was coming to since Lord Princely's passing. She did not attend many balls like this anymore because there was simply no more money for a new gown, although she had developed quite the skill as a seamstress to make over old gowns into new ones, as was accepted and right. She bowed low, accepted Henry's hand, and managed to do both while not being able to breathe quite at all.
Ten years it had been since she had last seen the little boy who had given her first kiss. Ten long, difficult years. They all rushed quickly in front of her eyes as the spirited dance picked up its tempo. She took his hand and they danced, sinking into a private world with no words, but with much understanding, although she did not know he understood her and he did not know she understood him. Too much time had passed.
Once the dance had concluded, to Anabelle's surprise, Henry did not release her back into the literary set that was so long waiting for her re-appearance. Instead, with a gentle tug on her gloved hand, he led her aside to a secluded balcony where they saw no one and no one saw them; instead, around them were the curved moldings of the mansion and below them, the spacious grounds.
“What brings you back home, Lord Princely?” asked Anabelle, for decorum dictated that she do so.
He turned his pale eyes on her and she nearly swallowed her tongue from the intensity in them. “Don't let's do that, Anabelle,” he replied calmly, reaching out so that their hands were side by side on the railing against which they leaned. “If you have even one ear, you know I came back because my father was ill and because my mother fell apart after that.”
Anabelle hung her head, dogged, but also felt a massive burden, the one th
at told her to be polite, slide off her shoulders. “It is terrible to lose a parent,” she said to him softly, watching their pinky fingers side by side.
“Come now, Lady Givens, it is not all so bad. After all, I got to see you and the lovely woman you grew into. I would call that reward enough for a day.”
“Wh—” but before Anabelle could breathe or ask or talk, Henry had taken her hand in his and Anabelle felt something hot and heavy slide into the pit of her stomach. It gave her confidence, a new kind of joy. His palm was warm against hers, and she stepped out of her tired, poor body for a moment.
Apparently, when Anabelle was not herself, she did insane things. Like reaching up and wrapping her arms around Lord Henry Princely.
He was warm. His arms closed around her in a welcoming embrace, and Anabelle Givens felt quite as if she had returned to a very familiar, very safe place. There was no shock, no surprise even, simply a welcoming of an old friend charged with an undertone Anabelle did not want to examine.
They stayed like that for the longest time.
* * *
It was a shame Isadora did not know she was a dead woman, though Anabelle as she gathered up her skirts from the muck.
It was just like her little sister to go running off to the horse races. Exactly as their father used to be. Anabelle had woken that morning, still fresh off of her encounter with the handsome Henry Princely despite the week that had passed, only to discover from their last remaining house servant that Isadora had been collected in the early morning by none other than the horse-mad Lord Haversham. Some nonsense about her being his lucky charm or something like that.
Given the impropriety of Devon's daily activities, the least of which included betting on horses that never had any chance of winning, and the worst of which included the type of activities Anabelle hoped her sister would never learn about, lest her rosy picture of the handsome Haversham be destroyed utterly, it was not the best of situations that had occurred that morning. Particularly since her sister must have known this, considering how early she must have risen to go off with the blue-eyed rake. As she ordered the servant as mildly as she could to saddle up the horse for her, Anabelle felt a surge of rage go through her. It was just like her sister to ignore their family history and go gallivanting about as she pleased.
