Brinkley wouldn’t have been surprised if the article had talked of Lady Maitland. The whole household had heard of the state in which she returned to the house the previous night: her pelisse filthy, according to her maid, fairly covered with smudges, as if she’d been lying on the ground. The implications of that statement were too scandalous to be countenanced, and Brinkley had felt it necessary to give a round scolding to all members of the household who even heard the account.
For a moment he paused, hands fluttering in uncharacteristic dismay. The piece didn’t mention Lady Maitland. Which meant there were two scandals lurking about to disrupt the peace of the household.
It should go to the master, even though the master never rose before noon, and would have a terrible head from the brandy he’d downed the night before. Brinkley took the precaution of having the cook fix a restorative draught to take with him.
So, with a silver tray laden with a gently fizzing drink and a crisply folded newspaper, Brinkley walked into the master’s darkened bedchamber.
He was greeted by a moan. “Who the hell is that?”
“Brinkley, Your Grace,” he said, averting his eyes while the master fought himself out of a tangle of linen sheets. Sleeping in the buff, he was. Leave it to the nobility to act like the poorest in the nation. “I am most sorry to disturb you.”
“What are you doing in my room?” the duke finally said groggily. “Is the house burning down?” He must have thought his head was on fire, from the way he was clutching it.
Brinkley felt a flash of sympathy. He held out the salver. “Bell’s Weekly Messenger has arrived,” he said, in a tone of suitable gloom.
“Damn that to hell,” the duke said, lapsing back and pulling a pillow over his head. “You’ve lost a cog. Bring it to Griselda.”
“Your Grace will wish to see the Messenger personally.”
“No, I won’t.” The butler waited. After a few moments the pillow fell to the side and the duke snatched the paper from his salver. “Open those curtains, Brinkley.”
He drew back the drapes. His Grace was staring, redeyed, at the gossip sheet. “What in the bloody hell am I supposed to be looking at?” he demanded. “Not that I can ever understand the way they phrase things.”
It was true that the duke never paid attention to gossip. Unfortunately, the rest of London would decode precisely who was being referred to. “The second item in the right column, Your Grace,” he said.
Holbrook squinted at it. “Damn this head of mine…A certain golden-haired Miss A. E——…I suppose that’s Annabel…was discovered with a certain redhaired earl, in his bedchamber…Nonsense! Pure lies! Annabel was at a ball with Griselda last night.”
Brinkley’s mouth twisted sympathetically. The master had done his best as guardian of four penniless girls, and it wasn’t his fault that they had turned out to be the sort of young women who create scandals with the ease with which other ladies embroider handkerchiefs.
Rafe continued reading in stark disbelief. “…he being, as they say, buck naked, and she prettily begging that their ‘relationship’ not continue. We are happy to report that the gentleman was perfectly acquiescent in her plea and behaved with all the courtesy appropriate to the unfortunate situation. We who only stand on the fringes of society cannot help wishing that titled gentlemen of the north would not stray from their mountains; this particular person was reportedly engaged in scandalous behavior only last week with a close relative of Miss A. E——!”
“Damn it to hell!” Rafe bellowed, throwing the paper to the side. “A pack of villainous lies, fudged up to sell the paper. I’ll have their skins!”
He looked up at Brinkley, who was holding out a tankard. The very sight of it made sweat break out on his forehead, and drinking it made him shake all over. But after a moment or so, the pain receded and he was able to open his eyes without seeing dancing imps. “Got to cut back on the brandy,” he said to himself. Even though the very thought of the scandal brewing in the pages of this damned gossip rag was enough to make him call for spirits, no matter the hour of the morning.
“Have to talk to Griselda,” he said, staggering a little as he got out of bed. “Where the devil was Griselda? Didn’t they all go off together to some debutante ball last night?”
Brinkley nodded.
“Well?” the master roared. “Did they return together, or not?”
“They were most certainly together,” Brinkley said with dignity. “All three ladies returned to the house at a perfectly respectable hour…I believe around midnight.”
“A mistake,” Rafe said, dragging an unsteady hand through his hair. “Must be another Miss A.E. I’ll make them print a retraction. I’ll burn down their offices. I’ll sue them for slander.”
Brinkley didn’t think that those ideas would solve the dilemma before them, but he kept mum. “Your manservant is waiting to run you a bath, Your Grace,” he said soothingly. “Meanwhile, I shall ask Lady Griselda’s maid to deliver the Messenger. I am certain that her ladyship will wish to speak to you about this unfortunate dilemma.”
His Grace had dropped onto the side of the bed and was sitting with his head in his hands. Brinkley beckoned silently to his valet, and gratefully left the room.
Ewan had raised the knocker twice before the door was opened by a distracted-looking butler who took one look at his red hair and pulled open the door. “The Earl of Ardmore,” Ewan told him, but the butler was already ushering him into a sitting room.
“May I bring you something, my lord?” he asked. “Some refreshment, perhaps? A cup of tea? I’m afraid that His Grace has just risen and he won’t be able to greet you for at least a half an hour.”
“I don’t wish to see His Grace,” Ewan said, pleasantly enough. “I’ve called to see Miss Essex, and I’d be grateful if you’d let her know that.”
“Oh, but—”
“Miss Essex,” he said firmly. The butler looked even more frazzled, but Ewan was a man used to getting his own way. “Immediately,” he added.
“Miss Essex,” the butler said, “has not yet seen the journal in question, my lord.”
Ewan smiled. “All the better,” he said. “Then may I count on you to summon her to this room without revealing the existence of that benighted article?”
The butler seemed to cock an ear toward the upper regions, but Ewan couldn’t hear anything. “Lady Griselda may have informed the young lady,” he said finally. “I shall ascertain if that is the case. Perhaps Miss Essex will join you, with her chaperone, naturally.”
Ewan caught the butler’s arm. “Without the chaperone.”
The butler’s eyes widened.
“Too late for that,” Ewan said cheerfully, which probably confirmed the man’s worst thoughts about Annabel, but it couldn’t be helped.
The butler gone, Ewan sat down and thought about mundane things like jointures and the sprouting wheat, and (incidentally) how very nice it was to have a special license in his pocket and all this wife-catching business on the way to being sewn up tight.
Annabel walked through the door to the sitting room twenty minutes later, well aware that something had gone terribly wrong. For one thing, Griselda’s fit of hysterics could be heard all over the house. For another, she had heard Rafe bellowing as well. On the rare occasions that Rafe rose before noon, he certainly never raised his voice. Thus, whatever had occurred, it was of sufficient gravity to trump Rafe’s morning headache.
Their adventure of the previous night had surfaced, somehow. Perhaps they were all ruined. Or perhaps only she was ruined, having been found in a hotel room with a semi-clothed Scottish nobleman.
When she had the message that the Earl of Ardmore was below, Annabel was sitting at her dressing table, summoning up the courage to find out that she was no longer a candidate for any decent Englishman to marry.
Ardmore was asking for her. Not for her guardian, but for her.
She’d spent years and years dreaming of getting out of Scotland. Drea
ming of leaving all the poverty and the disgrace behind, and coming to London with her beauty and her lush curves and trading them to a man who would keep her in silk forever. A man of ample means who had nothing to do with horses. That was all she ever asked.
It seemed that had been too much.
She felt numb. Surely, she could survive this. Maybe the earl didn’t drown all his money in the stables. After all, he pulled together the money to come to England for a wife. Their father had never been able to give them the season that he talked about.
She opened the door to the sitting room so quietly that the earl didn’t hear her. He was standing on the other side of the room looking at a Constable landscape. He was tall. She knew that, but for some reason it seemed important to note his characteristics. Tall actually wasn’t the first thing that sprang to mind when you saw him: Ardmore was more powerful-looking than tall, with large shoulders and legs that looked like tree trunks. At least he’s getting enough to eat, Annabel thought with no humor. In fact, if things became particularly unfavorable, he could always hire himself out as a day laborer. Even that thought didn’t make her smile.
His hair was a russet color, like autumn leaves just turning brown, and it turned up at his neck. He was wearing black, as he had both times she had seen him. Black had its virtues, she thought drearily. It could be turned, and re-turned, and the seams never showed that they had been re-dyed.
She walked into the room. “Good morning, Lord Ardmore.”
Ewan turned around. For a moment, he thought that the wrong sister had come to meet him, even though they looked nothing alike. Surely it was Imogen whose eyes were so tragically unhappy, who looked as if she were holding herself upright merely so that she didn’t collapse into tears. Annabel was the one whose eyes danced with humor, who had laughed at his proposal of marriage.
“Annabel…” He took her hand. It was ice-cold.
She pulled her hand gently from his and curtsied. Then she folded her hands before her and waited.
And what the hell was she waiting for? Obviously, the butler was wrong and she had read that benighted gossip column. Should he begin with a proposal? She looked so—uninviting. And yet…
“I’m afraid that Mr. Barnet has decamped from the hotel,” he said finally.
She blinked at him.
God, but she was beautiful: all soft, rumpled curls of a gold that had nothing to do with the brassy colors that people often attribute to the metal. This was real gold: soft, sensual, beckoning gold curls, matched with the creamy skin of a Scotswoman. And her eyes…they were beautiful. Almost too lovely to catalogue, as if the good Lord had made that smoky blue just for her and then thrown away the paint box. They tilted a bit at the corners, and her lashes swept her cheeks—
He wrenched his mind away from that nonsense.
“Mr. Barnet, the hotel manager,” he explained.
“What about him?”
“He was the person who provided Bell’s Weekly Messenger with information about the events of last night,” he explained. “He was eavesdropping, and I’m afraid that when he realized that he would lose his position due to Lady Griselda’s wrath, there was no reason for him not to sell the information.”
“The Messenger,” she said dully. “So that was the source.”
He walked over and stood just before her. “We’re going to have to put that nasty rag out of our minds, lass. We’ve a life to start together, and that sort of ugliness has no part in it.”
“Of course,” Annabel said. “That makes a great deal of sense.” She could read the article later. At the moment…she just wanted him to get his proposal over with, so that she could retreat to her room and cry. She hadn’t cried since Father died. Not even when Imogen eloped, nor yet when Draven died. But this felt like the moment to resurrect the habit.
He took her hands in his. Go ahead, Annabel thought. Get on with it!
But he didn’t.
After a moment or so, she raised her eyes and looked at him. He had interesting eyes: deep-set and green. They made him look quite unlike the glossy Englishmen of her recent acquaintance, and more like the old farmers who used to be her father’s tenants, before he sold off all the land except the horse pastures.
“Annabel,” he said, “I don’t expect that you wish to marry me.”
True, she thought. She looked at his boots. They were nicely polished, at least.
He sighed, and when he spoke, his voice had taken on an even deeper, rumbling Scottish brogue. “What’s done is done. And I can’t pretend I’m unhappy about it, because I find you very beautiful.”
Annabel bit the inside of her lip. She’d always thought of her beauty as a gift from her mother. The gift that would get her out of Scotland and a life of poverty. “I’m very glad to hear that, Lord Ardmore,” she said.
Ewan didn’t know what to do. Her voice was utterly lifeless. She wouldn’t meet his eyes for more than a moment. “Am I such a bad bargain, Annabel?”
“Of course not,” she said. But then: “I have not read the article. Please do not take this amiss, but is there any way at all that my reputation could be recuperated without this drastic step?”
He shook his head. “To tell the truth, even our marriage may not quell the scandal. It’s a nice thing, I’m thinking, that Scotland is a good space from London. We can let this whole fervor die down. You see, Mr. Barnet confused Miss Imogen and yourself, and had you asking to end our liaison, and then when that was put together with my disheveled state…”
He didn’t need to continue. He was probably right about the need for them to disappear into Scotland. Annabel had a momentary streak of fear that she would cry every step of the way. She took a deep breath. “In that case, had you something you wished to ask me?”
He took her hands back. “I should like to marry you,” he said slowly. “I should like you to come with me to my land, to be my wife and a mother to my children, to live with me, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.”
Annabel fought a wild urge to flee. Somehow her slippers stayed nailed to the floor. “Yes,” she whispered.
He let go of her hands and pulled a thick piece of parchment from his inside coat pocket. “The moment I read that rag of a paper, I woke up a bishop and obtained a special license.” He gave her a sudden grin. “I had to show him the Messenger, but after that he agreed that the situation was quite urgent.”
She nodded.
“But I’d like to ask you a favor,” he said.
“Since you are saving me from a lifetime of disgrace,” she said, making a vain attempt to sound amusing, “I should think that you may ask many favors and I shall grant them.”
He ignored her pitiful attempt at humor. “With your permission, I would like to leave this special license unused.”
“Unused?” She frowned at him.
“You see, lass, I find the idea of marrying in such a godless, harum-scarum way not to my liking. But if we leave all these London folk with the impression that we have indeed married, and we travel to Scotland…perhaps we could marry there. There’s a church on my land, and a priest who lives there. And ’twould mean a great deal to me if Father Armailhac could wed us.”
“Will he have to call the banns?”
“No. We’ll have a hand-fasting, an ancient thing in Scotland, and none the worse for its antiquity. ’Tis a simple ceremony before friends, though Father Armailhac will make it a true ritual.”
“I don’t have a dowry,” Annabel said suddenly.
“I’ve heard quite the opposite.”
Her heart sunk. He thought she was wealthy. It was Rafe’s gifts, fine feathers given to a peahen who had scarcely a chemise of her own. She couldn’t even bring herself to speak or to look at him. Between them, she and Imogen had ruined him.
In fact, they were both ruined. Her dreams of a fine, rich groom were stolen from her by happenstance, Imogen’s foolishness and the intervention of a pair of robbers. His dreams of a rich bride were stolen away
by the same factors.
“I’m sorry,” she said finally. “You are mistaken. I do not have a dowry.”
“Milady’s Pleasure?” he asked, raising her chin.
“Oh, Milady’s Pleasure…I have a horse. But I have no dowry. No proper dowry.”
“We shall do without it,” he said.
It had to be said. “I am truly sorry that my sister and I brought you to this pass,” she said, putting a hand on his sleeve. “If it weren’t for us, you would have found a young lady with a formidable dowry. An heiress. We have destroyed your hopes.”
“But I asked you to marry me before this even happened,” he said to her.
He really did have remarkable eyes, especially when he smiled. His eyes smiled more than his mouth. “You thought I was an heiress,” she pointed out.
“No, I had no such idea. I just liked your face, and that’s the truth of it.”
Annabel thought about the fact that she had been clothed in a gown that cost more than a yearly laborer’s wage, and that she had been wearing pearls in her ears and around her throat (a gift from Rafe). Ardmore would have had every reason to expect a notable dowry.
But he spoke first. “People have been talking about dowries ever since I got to this benighted town. I assure you that there were factors far more important to me—”
“I know,” she said. “The first being that your wife be Scottish.”
“And the second that she be Scottish,” he said, and there was that smile in his eyes again. It made gold flecks shine against the green. “But that was a mere jest. If I had been set on a Scottish bride, I’d not have come to this country. If you were English…” He tipped up her chin. “I’d be right where I am.” Then his head was coming toward her and warm lips descended to her mouth.