ROMANCE: His Reluctant Heart (Historical Western Victorian Romance) (Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Fantasy Short Stories)

by Jane Prescott

  “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 that 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.

  As the wind whipped her unruly red locks around her neck and face, Anabelle leaned into her horse and pressed on, hoping to overtake Lord Haversham's carriage. She did not, would not, ever understand her sister's fascination with the races, although she could well understand that it was hardly the animals that held her so in thrall, but rather the mopsy-headed man who had come to collect her. Beautiful, impetuous Isadora, with her soft, almost-white blond hair and eyes that looked like the world opened up as soon as you looked in them. How could she not follow in the family's footsteps when Devon Haversham was so like Papa?

  Anabelle clutched back a sob as she remembered that fateful day when she and Isadora had lost their last remaining parent. It had been a while since Lord Givens had been a responsible guardian of any kind, but he was better than nothing. He had allowed the house to fall into a state of such disrepair that their friends had stopped coming. Wasting all of his money on drink and the races, he had quickly become a stranger in the household. Still, he worshiped his daughters, particularly dreamy-eyed Isadora. Anabelle could not remember how young her little sister had been when their father had first begun taking her out to the stables and teaching her the names of all of the horses and giving her lectures on exactly the type of feed and sequence of grooming each one preferred. And Isadora had clearly felt the same back for their father, because she had followed him around, committing every last detail to memory.

  The household had been left up to Anabelle after their mother had succumbed to the coughing sickness when she was just fourteen. A year of physicians, bills, and watching the love of his life succumb to an illness he could not cure as easily as he could care for his horses had left Lord Givens completely emotionally drained. After she passed, he became like a ghost, wandering around the halls of their home as if he had quite forgotten why he was there in the first place. The only thing that could bring him back to life was the mention of his favorite horse, Marjorie, a tactic that the girls had had to use fairly often.

  The household had fallen almost naturally into Anabelle's capable hands. Still, despite the training she had received at her mother's hands, it had been an uphill battle to keep the household afloat. Balancing the books had proved to be particularly difficult since whatever money they had was dedicated to her father's love of the four-legged creatures of the Earth. Isadora, in her stead, had developed a fondness for fashionable clothing, and it was not long after Anabelle had become skillful at turning their old gowns into new with a few simple tricks that Isadora had decided, with all the impetuousness of a child, that this simply was not good enough. Knowing how starved her sister had been of the attention her mother had paid her, Anabelle had gone without so that her sister could have what she wanted. Still, it was too much for her young shoulders, and there were more nights than she could count where she found herself locked in her bedchamber, sobbing, her cries magnified tenfold in the emptiness of the house around her.

  Things had taken an almost magical twist when she had her coming out four years later at eighteen. One of her father's kindlier aunts had sponsored her for a proper Season in London, and Anabelle had shone brightly, with her unusual hair and quick wit. After all, a house where all the human companions seemed far more interested in creatures that could only neigh in response lent itself to solitary pastimes such as reading, and when Anabelle had entered the social scene, she was adopted immediately by the literary set. She had written to Isadora about it, shining letters describing all of her new friends, but Isadora had only wanted to hear about the latest fashions. Still, it was a marvelous time, and Anabelle could scarcely believe her luck.

  Everything seemed to come together most marvellously when Anabelle had met Lord DeVere. Tall, gentle, and scholarly, he had seemed like just the right match for her. So what if she had not felt any kind of attraction to the man? He had no interest in horses as far as she could tell, and he did not frequent any brothels or racing tracks that she knew of. Besides, he could talk endlessly about the foolishness of Romeo and Juliet, all the while praising Shakespeare's remarkable turn of phrase; quite personally, she had agreed with him, but had to wonder if a man who did not believe in the impulsiveness of youthful love could truly be understanding of her home situation.

  It seemed that he did not care; he told her how much he admired her intelligence and her red hair, which she had detested her entire life, and this sold her almost entirely on the arrangement. So when he proposed to her, Anabelle saw a whole new world of opportunities open up before her. It was a chance, she knew. A chance to leave behind the whole miserable mess of her house, and, quite honestly, leave her father and Isadora to revel in each other's company as much as they liked. She could leave, and not have to worry any more about threadbare clothing or pockmarked ceilings. Pushing aside all the pangs of guilt she was experiencing, Anabelle accepted Lord DeVere's proposal.

  And then it happened. That terrible incident, the one she and Anabelle had not spoken of for the longest time. Their aunt sent them a small allowance on a monthly basis that allowed them to keep their heads just above the water, but this kindness paled in comparison to Anabelle's memory of the day their father died. When she had arrived at the scene, it had already been too late. But even in his final moments, their father had managed to break her heart into a million p
ieces. After that, everything went to pot, and Anabelle watched as her entire life crumbled about her ears as surely as her home soon would. Lord DeVere caught whiff of the scandal that rocked the Givens household and mysteriously disappeared into the woodwork, unwilling to get his perfectly clean literary coattails caught up in the mire of Anabelle's family mess; she had written him to assure him that despite the less than wholesome image her family had created, she was a woman of upstanding reputation, but the truth of the matter was that she felt a slight sense of relief when the infamous lord did not re-materialize. At that point, her little sister had started blossoming and catching the eye of most men who had those organs to see with—and other ones to act with—and Anabelle realized that while she missed her mother, Isadora had grown up without one almost entirely and now that their father was gone, would be almost entirely reliant on Anabelle for direction.

  And now, the unspeakably foolish little idiot had gone and fallen for that horse-racing idiot of equal proportion. Anabelle gnashed her teeth as a light rain began to fall about her and her horse, soaking her gently, but surely, right to her skin. It would not do much for the reputation as the daughters of a horse-mad lord if Isadora was seen out and about with Devon Haversham without a chaperone. Thankfully, the racing tracks were well within sight, and it was not too long before Anabelle had located both her sister and the curly-haired Haversham.

  She approached them quietly as she could, knowing full well the sight she made with her disheveled hair and soaked clothes. But lo and behold, her sister had refused to go! Sitting there, clutching Haversham's arm as if he were her one and only, Isadora had been as defiant as Lord Givens had been when they had tried to collect him from the racetrack so many times.