Lady in Green (23 page)

“Please.”

Gard pawed through the baskets, searching for the jar wrapped in towels, and two mugs. “Here, ma’am.”

Annalise looked at the inviting steam rising from the cup, then at the mesh covering her face down to the chin. No one was near, and Lord Gardiner already knew her identity, this one at least, so where was the harm? If she only had this one last day to enjoy, let it be as herself. Annalise held her mug out to him; Gard held his breath. She started to remove the hatpins. Gard started to sweat. Then she removed the hat, veil, and all.

“By all the blessed saints.” The earl took a hasty swallow of his cider, burning his mouth, tongue, and esophagus. “Heaven help me” was all he said when he could speak again. She was an angel with a silvery halo of tiny ringlets, the sweet, gentle smile of a madonna. She was a temptress, though, a siren with the sea-green eyes of a mermaid. Green eyes he expected, but not the dancing gold flecks that spoke of joy and laughter. She had fine bones and a perfect nose, not too sharp, not too tilted. There was a beauty mark—a real one, not a patch—beside her mouth that just invited kisses. “I’ll be damned.”

Gard’s eyes were dry from not blinking. His mouth was dry from gasping. Everything else about him was damp from the two cups of cider he’d spilled as his brain caught a glimpse of paradise and forgot its job on earth. Her lips were twitching at his moonstruck attitude, so he gathered what wits he had left, poured two more mugs, offered one to Annalise, and promptly burned himself again.

“Why don’t we take a stroll while the cider cools?” she suggested, amused and at the same time incredibly elated that she could have such an effect on this worldly man. No wonder he was a womanizer, if a comely face could so impress him.

They walked where there were few people, saying little, admiring the early spring blooms. Gard was thinking that the idea of marrying the girl for righteous reasons alone had gone begging, along with his mental faculties.

“Miss Avery, I know something of your difficulties,” he began. “The prattleboxes have been busy, and I…I would deem it the greatest honor if you would permit me to safeguard your future.” Annalise hid her face in a cluster of daffodils, inhaling their scent, convincing her heart not to shatter. “I am sorry, my lord, I cannot accept. Thank you, but your solution will not wash. Sir Vernon is still my legal guardian and has the right to dispose of me and my money as he sees fit. I do not think he will see his way clear to letting me become any man’s mistress.”

“Do you think so little of yourself,” he asked angrily, “and of me? I am asking for your hand in marriage, Miss Avery.”

Marriage? Lord Gardiner was asking to marry her? Annalise may have dreamed such an event; never did she hope to hear it. Never would she have, either, if he knew how she had made such a fool of him by playing at his housekeeper. With deepest sorrow she had to refuse this offer, too. “But I am underage, my lord. Sir Vernon will never permit it; he will never release my dowry. I would be coming to you penniless and worse, with a background in trade, a scandalous family history, and a tattered reputation. I would only bring shame to your family.”

“Somehow I do not think that matters these days,” he said dryly. “I fear my own reputation, unsteady at best, has gone aground on gossip island.”

“But you are an earl, time will erase the memories. I am a country nobody and I am ruined.”

Now Annalise meant her reputation. Lord Gardiner thought she meant that clunch Barnaby Coombes. He swore to murder the dastard. Nor was he going to bother doing the thing up properly by issuing Coombes a challenge, no more than he had called out Maudine’s pimp. Still, Miss Avery’s giving her innocence to that boorish Barnaby was a definite facer. Coombes was a slowtop for letting this gossamer creature slip through his hands like fairy dust, but how could she not be enough for a man? Any man.

And was Gard going to let her fly away, too? He never minded a previously owned horse, but a wife? Good grief, he even brought his own sheets to strange inns. He never considered that when he eventually married he might have to worry about his heirs being of his flesh and blood, but a woman who was tempted before the vows was just as likely to be tempted after. He never thought Ross Montclaire would wear horns. Those fashionable arrangements where spouses went their own ways had never appealed to him, and less so now, thinking of sharing this divine body, that heavenly smile. Hell! He never used to be jealous. He never used to care.

Annalise understood his silence. He had offered for her out of kindness, but her difficulties were too much for even his broad shoulders to bear. His was an ancient title; he owed his ancestors a better bargain than a tarnished bride. But how could she simply walk away from him, the honorable thing or not? Honor be damned if it meant a lifetime of misery!

“My lord,” she said into the quiet, “I have reconsidered. I should like to become your mistress if we can go away somewhere Sir Vernon cannot find us.”

Another facer! “My dear, you cannot have considered. There has to be a better solution than that.”

“Why? Marrying Barny would be selling myself anyway. I’d simply become a prostitute with a license. I am sorry. I can see I have shocked you, but that is how I would feel.” She may have shocked Lord Gardiner, but she half surprised herself, too. On reflection, she realized she did not think so poorly of the women who traded their favors, not after knowing Mignon and Maudine. There were so few ways for a woman to be honorably independent.

Mostly, Annalise admitted, Mignon had been correct days ago. She did want Gard; she did hate seeing him with those other women. She was willing, even eager, to taste the forbidden fruit of his passion for herself. She wanted to be able to touch his firm strength, to feel the wiry curls on his chest, to caress his lowered brows, to know his kisses. The thought of kissing Barny made her gag. If love were the greatest deterrent to promiscuity, and if Gard grew to love her a little, maybe he could be faithful. He must care some already, to offer her his name.

While Annalise searched her heart and came up a wanton, Lord Gardiner also plumbed his soul. Incredibly, he found honor.

“No, I could not. You are gently born, a lady. It would be wrong.”

“I never thought to hear Lord en Garde discourage a woman,” Annalise said with a laugh. “What difference can my being a lady make to a rake like you?”

“I may have the name, but I swear I have not had a woman since I met you.”

“I know. That is, I know how you must feel. I could not let another man touch me.”

Ah, those were sweet words to Lord Gardiner’s ears. “I hold the lease on a place in Bloomsbury, by the bye,” he offered tentatively. Of course she knew.

But Annalise answered noncommittally: “It is common knowledge that you rent my aunt’s house. Sir Vernon will hear of my being there before the cat can lick her ear. I have to leave London, with you or without.”

She’d leave London without him when cows sang the national anthem. “Very well, I’ll make arrangements.” He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss at the wrist, above her riding glove. Annalise was sure she’d made the right decision, if such a simple touch could make her toes tingle in her boots. It needn’t be permanent anyway. When she reached her majority she’d be wealthy enough to live on the interest and her memories. Four years, unless he tired of her first.

“I think the cider should be cool enough to drink,” he was saying, although he was thinking that he needed something cold instead, to chill the fever in his blood from her closeness. She smelled of roses and lavender and horse, all his favorite things. “And I am devilish sharp-set”—though not with hunger—“so perhaps we might open those hampers.”

They ate cold chicken and Scotch eggs and sliced ham and fresh bread and cheese and tarts. Their hands touched and their eyes met and Annalise’s cheeks grew flushed. They spoke of her parents, his childhood, books they had read, places he had traveled. They did not speak of tomorrow or the days to come.

When Annalise yawned after the meal, Lord Gardiner suggested she take a nap, for yesterday had been trying and they still had the maze ahead of them, then the long ride home. She demurred, not wanting to waste a moment of his company, but she did lean back on the pillows. Soon her eyes drifted closed and her breathing became even, albeit Gard tried not to notice the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest. He withdrew a small drawing pad and a pencil from one of the baskets. Although he thought he could stare at her forever, memorizing every detail, he wanted a record for that night, and any night they were apart, in case his brain ever doubted the existence of such perfection.

No, she was not perfect, he noted as he drew. Her chin was a trifle too pointed, reminding him of Annie and that harpy’s stubborn streak. He quickly put all thoughts of his wretched employee from his mind. Not Annie on a day like today, he swore, getting back to his sketch.

Some might consider Miss Avery’s beauty mark an imperfection, too, he considered, studying to get the placement of the mark exactly right, near her mouth. His hand stilled as he deliberated on her soft lips, slightly open as she slept. No man alive could find fault with those lips. Of course he’d have to feel them under his to make sure.

Her skin was too milky, even for one with such silver-blond hair. Of course every blush colored her pale cheeks delightfully, telling Gard that his touch affected her, too. She’d been sick and indoors or veiled, he reminded himself. Country sunshine should have her looking not so ethereal, not so fragile that he’d have to worry about holding her as close as he ached to. Disposing of her stepfather and that jackass Coombes should also eliminate the dark shadows of worried sleeplessness from under her eyes.

Too bad her eyes were shut. He wanted another look into those green depths, and he didn’t even have his colored pencils. Too bad she had clothes on. Lud, he wanted her so badly, it hurt. How was he going to manage until he made her his?

And how soon could he manage the thing?

“Tomorrow,” he told her when she woke up, her cheeks tinged with pink when she met his intent gaze. “I’ll meet you tomorrow for our ride and discuss what I’ll have planned. I have already asked Clarence and Mick to keep watch over you tonight, just in case. They can reach me at Grosvenor Square or my club, or at Laurel Street. I am sure you’ll wish me to consult the staff there about our plans.”

Sure, was he? Annalise did not want to consider the outcome if he mentioned making Miss Avery his mistress. Henny’d be like to poison him and Rob would have his guts for garters. And Annie? Annie was aghast at the moral depravity—and delighted. It should be an interesting conversation all around.

Chapter Twenty-Five

When the world turns its back, a fellow can always count on his mother to stand by him. There she was, the dowager countess Gardiner, Lady Stephania, standing by her only son in the entry hall of Gardiner House amid mounds of luggage, waiting for her coach.

“I would not stay in this sinkhole of venery if your father’s ghost danced naked on my bedpost. Especially if he danced naked on my bedpost. I am going home to Bath, and I pray God I get there before the gossip, so I can still hold my head up in church.”

“Mother, I can explain. Please wait.”

“Wait?” she screeched, punctuating her outrage with jabs of her cane’s gold-studded tip to his midsection. “Why should I wait, you codshead, to see the last hope of the Gardiner family locked away in Newgate prison?”

“Come, Mother,” he said, pushing aside the cane before his waistcoat had a permanent indentation, to say nothing of his stomach. “Things cannot be as bad as all that.”

“Oh, no? Then why are two Bow Street Runners waiting for you in the library?”

“I have no idea, as hard as you may find that to believe. I suppose I shall have to speak to them to find out, my lady, so feel free to go about your business of washing your hands of the head of the household. Of course you’ll miss meeting your new daughter-in-law, but we’ll get to Bath sooner or later, I am sure.”

The dowager didn’t bother asking anything about the girl, for all the good it would do, with her son’s back disappearing down the hall. Lady Stephania didn’t care if the chit was respectable or not, as long as she was willing to marry Ross. At this point the countess was glad enough he was bringing home a female, any female. She gave the orders to have her bags unpacked.

*

Two men with red waistcoats were indeed waiting in the library, watched over by Foggarty the butler and a footman, just in case the minions of justice saw fit to take the law—and whatever else they found loose—into their own hands.

“Gentlemen?” Gard nodded dismissal to the servants, who left reluctantly.

“Yer worship,” one of the Runners greeted him in return. “Would you mind comin’ along wi’ us to Bow Street? Seems ’is ’onor the magistrate ’as some questions to put to you.”

Gard offered his humidor around, then lit a cheroot. “Do I have a choice?”

The Runner who was doing most of the talking scratched his balding pate. “Well, you does an’ you doesn’t. We could get a writ of arrest on suspicion, ’owsomever we don’t ’appen to ’ave it right now. On t’other side of the coin, most nobs don’t like ’avin’ their names broadcast about as’d like to occur, iffen we process a warrant. Don’t suppose it’d bother you much, what with the talk already goin’ the rounds.”

“And too late if it did.” The earl tapped the ash off his cigarillo. “What’s this all about anyway? What am I supposed to have done now? Let me guess. I had an illicit relationship with Princess Caroline? No? Then with Napoleon, or his horse, or his grandmother.”