“Annabelle, sit down. Your pacing is going to wear a hole in my carpet.” Aunt Griselda sat near the empty fireplace working on garments for a soon to arrive grandchild.
Annabelle smiled at her aunt’s irritable tone. The dear woman hated fancy work, but forced herself to complete a perfectly gorgeous christening gown for each of her grandchildren.
“I’m sorry, Aunt.” Annabelle sat down at the spinet and trailed her fingers across the keys aimlessly.
The older woman harrumphed. “If you are going to make noise at least make it pleasant.”
Poor Aunt Griselda. She must be tatting lace to be this cranky.
“Very well.” Annabelle began to play a soft Scottish ballad.
“That’s nice, dear.” Her aunt worked in silence, letting Annabelle play first one, then another song from the North. “Have you discovered that Laird MacKay is the best you are likely to do for a husband, yet?”
A discordant note sounded as Annabelle’s fingers slipped on the ivories.
Aunt Griselda lifted her gaze from her tatting and frowned. “He is a good man. If you let him go looking elsewhere, I’ll wash my hands of trying to find you a proper mate once and for all.” The deep concern in her tone belied the severity of her speech.
“He is a good man.” Annabelle spoke the truth quietly and let her fingers still above the keys of the spinet.
Ian was a good man. He was also a stubborn man, an arrogant man and a man who affected her equilibrium by walking into the room. There was nothing simple or straightforward about her feelings toward the maddening Scottish laird.
Aunt Griselda set the fold of snowy white fabric in her lap. “I only knew your uncle a week when I decided he was the one for me. However, it took another month to bring him to the same conclusion. Men can sometimes be dense.”
Annabelle felt a faint stirring of hope. “Yes, it took Robert two seasons to discover he couldn’t live without Diana.”
Returning to her work, Aunt Griselda nodded. “Just so.” Annabelle remained silent. Could Ian live without her? Or, was she just a means to an end? She was certain of only one thing. She was approaching the condition when she could not live without Ian.
He was all that she wanted in a husband. He turned her insides to butter when he kissed her. He listened when she talked. He did not criticize her views or her cause. He might criticize his perception of her putting herself in danger, but even that was a nice change from being ignored. He lacked only one thing, the proper view of love. Oh, she knew he cared, but did he care enough?
How could she marry a man who did not love her, and yet how could she not when she loved him so much she ached with the strength of it?
“You’ll work it out in your mind, my dear. Just do not take too long in doing so. I would hate to see that dear boy go looking elsewhere.” The thought of Ian as a dear boy brought a small smile to Annabelle’s lips, but her aunt’s other words filled her heart with dread. Would he go looking for another wife, a more tractable woman?
She read similar concern in her aunt’s eyes and knew the source was not Annabelle’s status as a spinster. Aunt Griselda loved her and wanted her to be happy.
A rush of warm feeling toward the older woman spread over Annabelle and she got up from the music bench to give Aunt Griselda’s shoulders a squeeze. “You have been a rock since Mama and Papa died. I don’t know what I would have done without you.” Her aunt’s eyes were suspiciously misty, but she said, “Enough of this maudlin talk.
Just see that you don’t ruin your chances at happiness, gel.” That was exactly what Annabelle did not wish to do, but what way would lie happiness? Marriage to a man who did not love her or the desolate years stretched out ahead of her without the man she loved?
She was no nearer a solution to her dilemma when Creswell announced Ian’s arrival an hour later. Ian gave her aunt a perfunctory greeting and then turned to Annabelle.
“Belle, do you still have the list you made for me when we first met?”
Annabelle felt a lead ball forming in the pit of her stomach. He wanted the list?
Now? Surely, not. She took a fortifying breath to steady her voice before speaking.
“Yes.”
“I would like you to fetch it for me.”
Her heart contracted painfully. He had given up. He was ready to move on to more easily wooed ladies. She could not help herself. She asked, “Do you need it now, Ian?”
“Aye, Belle, now.”
She felt her world constrict around her until she was conscious of only the overpowering man before her and the shattered sensation in her own heart. She inwardly cursed her own stubbornness. She had started this by making the now hated list for Ian.
She had even been proud of herself when she had successfully introduced several of the ladies on it to him, but then she had fallen in love.
None of the women whose names were on the list would make Ian a proper wife.
How could they? They did not love him as she did. They would not ache to help him rebuild his lands and improve the lives of his tenants.
She felt like cursing and crying at once. She didn’t want him to give up. She wanted him to love her, to care enough to demand marriage to her and her alone. Tears burned her eyes, but she blinked them away. She could cry later. She would not lose her composure now and become an object of his pity.
He waited silently, his face expressionless, for her to do as he bid. She could think of no alternative, but to get the list.
Turning to her aunt, she excused herself. The look of disappointment in Lady Beauford’s eyes sliced through Annabelle like a blade.
Having retrieved the list and gotten a measure of control over her emotions, she returned to the drawing room.
In a final effort to stave off the inevitable, she babbled, “I made the list before I knew you well, Ian. I’m not sure any of the names would be that helpful to you now. It’s probably not at all what you are looking for.” Ian wordlessly put his hand out for the list. She handed it to him, trying to control the fine tremor in her hand as she did so. Ian took the paper and began to methodically rip it into shreds. She watched stupidly while he reduced the heavy stationary to nothing more than a pile of bits. He then threw it into the dustbin near her aunt’s chair.
“I told her it was no use making it. When a gentleman of character makes his plans, he does not change them.” Her aunt’s words were complacent, but she had not been able to mask the relief in her voice.
“Aye.” He nodded toward Aunt Griselda and then turned to face Annabelle. “Are ye ready to leave now?”
She nodded wordlessly. After the past horrifying moments when she thought she had lost him, she was more than ready to discuss their future.
She met him in the hall. He did not say anything, but led the way to his carriage without a word. Hardly the day for a drive, gray clouds filled the overcast skies and an unseasonable chill filled the air. She shivered in her light muslin clothing and wished she had thought to bring her Kashmir shawl.
Ian pulled a soft carriage blanket from the seat of the carriage and wrapped it around Annabelle so that it not only covered her shoulders like a cloak, but it also draped across her legs. She smiled her thanks.
He nodded, then climbed to the seat beside her and flicked the reins. The horses started forward. The intensity of the silence between them added to her already somewhat overwrought state.
“Are we going back to the park with the pond?” she asked in an attempt to break it.
Ian shook his head.
“Are we going to Hyde Park?” She did not think he would do so willingly, but she couldn’t think of where else he might be taking her.
He again shook his head without uttering a word.
Her nerves stretched taut from the events of the past two days, felt ready to explode in the face of Ian’s silence. “Is it too much to expect you to tell me where we are going, then?” Her voice sounded harsh even to her own ears.
“Aye.”
/> If he expected her to plead for the information, then he would be disappointed. She sat back against the squabs and tried to relax, focusing on the sights and sounds that met her as Ian drove through London. The traffic around them thinned and she realized that Ian was taking her out of the city. He drew the carriage into an inn yard and she expelled her breath. As improper as it might be for an unmarried lady to meet with a gentleman at an inn, she trusted Ian and was not worried.
A boy ran into the yard to help with the horses. Ian swung down and lifted her out of the carriage. The carriage blanket slipped off from around her shoulders and he tucked it more securely against her.
He led the way into the inn and when they entered the private parlor, she realized that Ian had planned their meeting to the smallest detail. Two worn but comfortable-looking chairs sat before a cheerful fire blazing in the grate. She moved nearer the fire and unwound the blanket from her shoulders. She folded it neatly and placed it over the back of one of the chairs before noticing a cold collation on the table between the two chairs.
“How long do you think this discussion is going to take? It looks as if you have prepared for a siege.”