by Jo Beverley
She knew color was flooding her face.
She wanted to die.
The mere sound of Lord Carne’s voice—the first time she had heard it since that night—was interfering with her breathing, causing a perilous light-headedness.
Lord Threpton peered at her. “Hey, missie, I didn’t mean to upset you with these matters!” He patted her knee. “You’re a good girl to listen to an old man rambling on.”
Anna kept her eyes fixed on his rheumy ones. “I don’t mind, my lord. You are very interesting.”
He pinched her cheek. “Some man’s going to be very lucky in you, my dear. Now, why not go and find that plate of jam tarts and offer me another one. Very good, they are.”
Thus Anna was forced out of hiding and set to walk across the room on unsteady legs. Which meant that her mother had to introduce her to the earl. “My youngest daughter, Anna, my lord. She is not yet out.”
He bowed with his typical grace. “Miss Anna. Charmed to make your acquaintance.” He acted as if she was a total stranger, but Anna shivered as if he had stroked her back.
She wanted not to look to him, but couldn’t help herself. He was even more perfect up close than he was at a distance. And what an actor he was. There was no hint of anything untoward about him except perhaps for a hint of intimate humor in his blue eyes, humor fighting to escape, just as it had in the portrait.
Anna wished desperately that he wouldn’t look at her like that. It touched her heart and made her think of kisses.
Then she realized she was standing there red-faced and speechless, a picture of a schoolgirl gaucherie. She hastily dropped a curtsy and he moved on to be introduced elsewhere.
Maria came over to hiss, “For goodness sake, Anna, there’s no need for you to look at him as if you thought he’d eat you! You were the one defending him before!”
“I didn’t!”
“Yes, you did. Oh well,” she said with a superior smile. “I suppose you are unaccustomed to meeting earls. Don’t worry, dearest, he won’t expect much from a schoolroom miss.”
Maria switched on a warmer smile and went off to greet new guests. Anna marched on in search of jam tarts, wishing fiercely that she were at least out and able to compete on equal terms.
Compete? she thought, as she picked up the plate. It was hard not to laugh like the madwoman in Mrs. Jamison’s Lord of the Dark Tower.
Maria was a diamond of the first water, and Anna was a … mildly pretty pebble! Crossing the room with the plate, she flickered a glance at the earl. He caught her at it. Almost imperceptibly, he winked, and his mouth moved in a secret smile.
Anna jerked her gaze away, and hurried back to Lord Threpton. If she didn’t know better, she’d think the Earl of Carne was flirting with her!
Nonsense, she told herself firmly. What he was doing was playing a rather cruel teasing game just to make her uncomfortable. Perhaps it was his way to pay her back for her assault.
Anna found herself busy handing out tea and passing plates of cake, and was glad of it, but inevitably this led to her offering a plate to Lord Carne. She had to stand quite close and was sharply reminded of the time she had brought him that glass of brandy.
And of all that had followed.
She watched him warily and prayed her hand wouldn’t shake.
Again he met her eyes, but with no special expression. “Thank you, Miss Anna. I am spoiled for choice. Which cake would you recommend?”
Anna’s throat went dry as if he had asked something private and significant. She swallowed. “The lady-cakes are very good, my lord.”
He studied the plate, and Anna saw it start to tremble slightly with her nerves. “I wonder if a lady-cake would meet with me …” He appeared to trail off as if in thought.
Anna’s heart skipped a beat. Had he really said, “me” rather than “my”? And had he swallowed the word “cake” so that he seemed to say, “I wonder if a lady would meet with me?”
Surely not!
“I doubt it, my lord,” she mumbled. It had to be her imagination. Even the Earl of Carne could not be so bold. She remembered telling Mr. Liddell that she did not fear seizure and rapine in her mother’s drawing room. Now she was not so sure.
He looked up at her rather seriously. “What a shame there are no maids-of-honor here today.”
Anna flushed at the rebuke and the injustice of it. But inside here there was also a spark of delight at the sheer wit and effrontery of the man. He was using the name of the almond cakes and giving it another meaning.
“Perhaps there are maids-of-honor,” she retorted. “Gentlemen-of-honor might be a little harder to find.”
The lady sitting beside the earl tittered. “Miss Anna, you are too young to attempt barbed witticisms!”
Lady Featherstone came over quickly. “My lord, is there a problem?”
“Not at all, Lady Featherstone. I was merely inquiring as to maids-of-honor. I am particularly partial to them.”
“Oh. No, I’m afraid we do not have them today, my lord.”
“Alas. But as I like my maids-of-honor for a late supper, perhaps I can still order some for tonight. At about midnight, I think.” He took a jam tart. “And, Miss Anna, I think you are quite correct. If we have maids-of-honor, we should have gentlemen-of-honor as well. I wonder what sort of cake they would be?”
Taking up his meaning of “cake” as “fool,” Anna replied, “I don’t see how any gentleman of honor could be a cake, my lord.”
“Then it seems unfair that maids-of-honor be cakes, when it clearly is not so.”
“Unless it means that they take the cake, my lord,” said Anna, switching the meaning to that of victory. She was enjoying this clever wordplay immensely, but Lady Feather-stone interrupted.
“You must excuse Anna, my lord. She is bookish.”
As her mother steered her away, Anna heard him say, “I suspected it from the first.”
Anna hated letting him have the last word.
Lady Featherstone drew Anna to the far side of the room. “It is most inappropriate of you to be bandying words with the earl, Anna, and it is fatal for a girl to become known as clever. Moreover, I still fear there is something strange about that man. Going on about his supper, indeed. Keep away from him.”
“Yes, Mama.”
Anna dutifully passed the cakes around the other side of the room, but her mind was running back over that conversation. She had just been invited to a midnight tryst with the wicked earl, and promised that he would behave as a gentleman of honor, and that he held her in the highest regard.
And he’d done it in front of a room full of people!
She couldn’t help but admire a man like that.
She slid a glance over to him, and he smiled in a way that reminded her that she was a foolish, infatuated girl.
But how could a foolish, infatuated girl be expected to refuse such an invitation?
By the time she prepared for bed that night, Anna was still not sure what she would do, and she spent the next two hours pondering it.
Despite that talk of honor, logic said that it was more than likely that the earl was inviting her to a wicked encounter where he would kiss her again and try to do even more.
The alarming thing was that the idea was very attractive.
On the other hand, her instinct told her that the man she had met today had had no such intent, but some other reason for requesting a meeting. It was certainly true that there was little chance of them having a private tête-à-tête in a normal manner.
Of course, a silly little part of Anna’s mind was dreaming that he had fallen desperately in love with her during that one encounter. If that was true, then perhaps he would go on his knees and protest his undying love for her even as he declaimed his extreme unworthiness to so much as touch the hem of her gown, just like a hero in a novel by Mrs. Jamison.
“Fustian!” Anna said out loud as she struggled back into her gown, muttering about buttons that were never designed for a lady to do up by herself. I
n the end she put on a short spencer jacket to cover the undone buttons at the back.
The mirror assured her that she was covered neck to toe, and decidedly not the sort of apparition likely to drive a man mad with love or lust.
As the clocks in the house struck midnight, she told herself that was how she wanted it and, heart thudding, moved the bench so she could return to number 10.
The lever worked without a sound, and the door opened smoothly. She almost screamed, however, to find the earl awaiting her in the bedroom.
“Ah,” he said, investigating the doorway, “I thought it must be in here, but I couldn’t find the secret to it.”
Anna sidled away from him, shockingly aware of the intimacy of being alone with an unrelated man for only the second time in her life, and certainly for the first time in a bedroom! At least the place was still shrouded in Holland covers, which in some irrational way made it less dangerous.
“Does the room make you nervous?” he asked calmly. “Don’t be. I have no wicked intentions. But there are servants now, and to be wandering around the house would be very dangerous.”
Anna put down her unsteady candlestick, placing it beside his on a bureau. “What if the door had not been in here, my lord? Then I would have had to search the house for you.”
He smiled. “You are charmingly forthright. I gambled, but I also hedged my bets. There is a note in the library asking you to come here. Will you take a seat?” He indicated one of the two chairs bracketing the screened fireplace.
Both relieved and disappointed that there was no sofa, Anna perched on the chair. He relaxed into the other one and stretched his long legs so that his boots came perilously close to her skirts. “Damned uncomfortable, these chairs. I like ones with lots of padding. I see you feel the same.”
“Me?” It came out as a squeak. Anna tried to relax, but it was impossible when this man was sitting so close, making her feel rather breathless. “I am just somewhat apprehensive, my lord. Do you intend to tell my parents?”
His brows rose in surprise. “What! That you sneaked into my house, where I mistook you for a serving maid and did my best to have my wicked way with you? Hardly.”
“Oh. Then I don’t suppose you are going to try and blackmail me, either.”
“Is that what you thought? What was I going to blackmail you into doing? Oh, dear. Not into succumbing to my wicked way. You’ve been reading too much Mrs. Jamison, Pippin.”
Smarting from his tone, Anna snapped, “Don’t call me that! It’s my father’s pet name for me.”
“Ah. I’m sorry then. It does suit you, though. And I have the greatest appreciation for juicy apples.”
Anna could feel herself turning as hot as if there was a roaring fire in the grate. “Are you flirting with me, sir?”
His smile turned wry. “That would be most dishonorable, wouldn’t it, after I ’d given you my parole. Very well, to business. The reason I requested this meeting, Miss Featherstone, is because you clearly know things that I do not. Such as the location of that secret door. I’ve been trying to find a way to speak with you for weeks, and have had to resort to this. Would you explain it, please?”
Anna felt very loath to tell him, loath to share her secret with anyone, but made herself say, “It’s in one of the novels. Forbidden Affections.”
He sat up. “In a novel?” he said blankly. “Read by thousands?”
“Yes. You see, Dulcinea is kept in a room exactly like the one I have—it’s very horrid—and Roland …”
He winced as if in pain. “Did that dreadful woman actually name a hero after me?”
Anna tried to assimilate the word “dreadful.” It seemed to her that no one could refer to a lover as dreadful in quite that tone. “I’m afraid so. Roland of Toulaine.”
“No wonder you reacted to my name the last time we met. And what did the noble Roland look like? Or can I guess?”
She nodded. “Just like you, I’m afraid. Or rather, more like you in that portrait.”
His blue eyes opened wider. “You have been prying, haven’t you, my dishonorable maid.”
Anna was blushing again, this time with mortification. “I do beg your pardon. It was inexcusable.”
“Hardly,” he said, recovering his equanimity. “I doubt I could have resisted the temptation, especially at … How old are you?”
“Sixteen, as I said.”
“I was hoping you’d lied. Hélas. So, are there other aspects of this novel that relate to reality?”
“How should I know, my lord? You might read it for yourself. You do own a copy.”
“The woman gave copies of all her works to my mother, who was too polite to refuse them but has never read a novel in her life.”
“How sad for her,” said Anna militantly.
Humor flickered in his eyes. “She has often declared that they turn young ladies into weaklings, inclined to faint at the slightest thing. I will delight in telling her how wrong she is.”
“She’s still alive?” Anna immediately regretted the question, but she was startled to find that the earl was not alone in the world.
“Yes, though she has not been hearty for years. She resides in Bath. So, come, tell me more about this novel so that we can see what parallels there might be.”
“Why?”
“You are not a particularly biddable girl, are you? Because, Miss Featherstone, I am still suspected of having murdered Lady Delabury, largely because no one ever believed that she could have gained entry to this house in her very revealing nightgown—for, unlike you, she favored diaphanous silk—without me knowing. Since my friends vouched for me, this casts a shadow on their honor, too. I want the matter cleared up.”
“After all these years? And …”
“Yes?”
Anna looked down. “I feel horribly selfish, but how can you tell the world about the door without involving me?”
She looked up to see him smile quite gently. “I’ll find a way. You must trust me.”
And she did. Yet again, relief was tinged with a little disappointment. She trusted him with her reputation, but she feared she could also trust him with her virtue. He wasn’t going to seduce her, after all.
Oh, dear, she was a perilously wicked creature!
“Anna?”
She started at his use of her name.
“Anna, tell me about the book.”
And so she did, not making a great deal of it because it was quite a silly story. She told how Count Nacre had trapped poor Dulcinea on the very eve of her wedding to Roland, and hidden her in the deserted tower of his castle, where he intended to ruin her, thus forcing her to marry him instead.
“And each night he would come to her, intending”—she was blushing again—“intending the worst. But something would always happen to disturb them.” She found the courage to look at him. “It is a little like Scherazade, my lord, except that stupid Dulcinea does nothing to change her fate. She just faints and weeps.”
His lips twitched. “Unlike you.”
Anna’s face was heating again. “I did. Weep.”
“True, and most disconcerting it was, child. But you also smashed me on the head with a heavy glass. I’m sure Dul-cinea could have done the same.”
“Yes, she could. If I ’d been her I would have waited by the door and hit him with a poker as he came in. In fact, I saw nothing in the book to suggest that Dulcinea couldn’t have opened the door from her own side any time she wanted. But you see, she was afraid of the rats.”
He laughed out loud. “Oh, the scorn! Are you not afraid of rats, Anna?”
Something in his manner was causing a new kind of heat, a warmth that came from his relaxed manner and smiling eyes, from his admiration. “I don’t like them, my lord, but if it were rats or Count Nacre, I ’d chance the rats.”
“I’m sure you would. And so the fainting maiden waits patiently for Roland to arrive on his white charger and throw her over his saddlebow.”
“Hardly at the
top of a tower, my lord.”
“True. So what did happen?”
Anna settled to telling the story. “Roland confronts Count Nacre in his hall, where they engage mightily with their swords. The contest is equal …”
“How old is Count Nacre?”
“Oh, quite old. At least forty.”
“Ancient,” he remarked dryly. “But then the contest is unlikely to be equal. He probably has the gout.”
“The count is a mighty warrior, my lord, champion of the king. May I continue?”
“I do beg your pardon,” he said unrepentantly. “So they engage mightily with their swords. Do they batter themselves to simultaneous exhaustion?”
“Of course not.”
“Why not? Ah, she frowns at me …”
Anna was indeed frowning, though she was hard-pressed not to giggle. “Because, my lord, the count suddenly comes to a realization of his own wickedness and throws himself upon Roland’s sword.”
He blinked. “How very disconcerting.”
“Hush, my lord!” She bit her lip and pushed gamely on. “Roland races up the tower to Dulcinea …”
“Despite his wounds?”
“Heroes are never wounded. Or not seriously.”
“Then they are hardly very heroic, are they?”
“Have you ever been wounded?” The words popped out before she could control them, fracturing the lighthearted atmosphere. Her eyes fixed on his scar.
“I’m no hero, Anna.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Villains get wounded, too. Proceed with your story or I’ll show you my other wounds, which would move this meeting out of the field of honor, Miss Featherstone.”
Anna was crushingly aware of having been relegated to formality, and swallowed a hint of tears. “Where was I, my lord?”
“Your hero was racing up the tower steps despite his many wounds, and muscles that burned and ached from the mighty battle.”
“So he enters Dulcinea’s chamber, causing her to swoon.”
“Twit. You would have tended his wounds, wouldn’t you?”
“My lord, he wasn’t wounded!”
“How could she tell? He was doubtless covered by the evil count’s blood.”
