Hidden Affections (17 page)

“It won’t be easy for you, either,” she offered, diverting her troubled thoughts before she slid into a pit of despair she might never escape.

He smiled. “You shouldn’t worry about me. I’ve been labeled a scoundrel, a cad, and a rake. Adding the stigma of being a divorced man is one more I’ll have to live with, although I daresay it will be easier to convince a fair number of women that I’m not one to pursue in hopes of marriage. Besides, it’s only a matter of time, I suppose, before someone discovers yet another far more serious flaw in my character.”

“I can’t imagine anything worse,” she argued.

“There’s only one thing worse than being divorced, which by itself will probably dissuade a fair number of people from associating with me. At least my family fortune will assure that I won’t be a complete outcast.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. “What could possibly be worse for any man’s reputation beyond being divorced?”

“Marrying a divorced woman,” he said immediately. “Society would find that the greater sin, although I’m not certain why a divorced woman is always thought to be one step beyond redemption. Any man who considered marrying her would be twice the fool.”

When the blood drained from her face, and she struggled to draw a breath, he leaned forward and took hold of her hand. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have expressed myself so callously.”

She held his hand as if it were a lifeline about to be yanked away, which would surely happen once he knew she had been a divorced woman when he had married her. In fact, given his own words, she now wondered if he would just send her away immediately once he knew the truth, with little regard for her well-being. “There’s no reason to be sorry. You only spoke the truth.” But Annabelle found she was unable to trust him yet with the secret she had been keeping from him.

He might scoff at the stigma of being divorced and one day overcome it, perhaps, but he would be branded with the stigma of marrying a divorced woman for the rest of his life.

With Eric in the city and Vienna Biddle spreading gossip about the new Mrs. Graymoor, the need to keep her secret had become even greater. And Annabelle found herself facing the same dilemma tonight that had driven her to her room earlier in the day.

Should she stay here or should she go away?

Her first instinct was to leave tonight, sell the wedding ring Eric had given to her, and disappear. But even if she changed her name and moved far away, she would spend every day of the rest of her life doing exactly what she was doing now—living a lie and waiting for someone to uncover the truth.

God couldn’t possibly intend for her to carry that burden forever, could He?

Several days later, Annabelle was relieved to find that Irene was still sitting on the bench overlooking the river feeding Jonah when she got there and sat down beside her. “I’m sorry I’m late. I overslept a bit.”

Irene shook her head and tossed a last nut to the mangy squirrel. “Now I know the world’s turned topsy-turvy. You overslept, and Harrison left at first light.”

“He did?” Annabelle blurted, then realized her mistake. “He was gone when I woke up . . . and I . . . I thought perhaps he’d gotten up early and came out to the cottage to swipe a few of those molasses cookies before you were up.”

“He did, but I caught him and fixed him a proper breakfast before he left for the city to buy one of those warming stoves and hire somebody to set it up. If you weren’t such a good influence on him, I’d think he was up to something, which is neither here nor there. I’m just happy you two are getting along well enough to want to spend time together in the library.”

Pleased that he had acted on her idea, Annabelle tugged her cape a bit tighter and was glad she had worn a woolen petticoat to keep her legs from freezing.

“Anyway, before I forget, he said to tell you to be ready to leave midmorning. He’s coming back to fetch you.”

“But I was going to start my volunteer work today, and Philip is coming to pick me up.”

“Don’t bother yourself worrying about that. He said he’s going to stop and tell his cousin not to come,” the housekeeper said. She shook the bits of nuts and shells from the man’s overcoat she was wearing today and got to her feet.

Annabelle rose to walk back to the cottage with Irene and tried to keep her voice from revealing her disappointment. “Did he say where we were going?” she asked as their footsteps crunched through the icy crust on the snow that still covered the landscape.

“He said it’s a surprise, and you should dress warm. Wear one of those woolen petticoats I helped unpack for you,” she suggested before she lost her footing and slipped on a slick patch of ice.

Annabelle grabbed the older woman’s arm, but the momentum was too great, and they both ended up landing bottoms-up on the ice. Utterly stunned by the jolt of pain that raced up her spine, she had to get enough air back into her lungs before she could speak. “Are you hurt?”

With her face mottled red, Irene took several deep gulps of air before answering. “Other than my pride, nothing’s injured,” she quipped, and they helped each other back to their feet. “What about you? I hope you didn’t hurt yourself. You’ve got that event tonight at the museum to attend.”

Annabelle twisted at her waist, and her back only responded with a twinge. She shook the ice and snow from her cape and smiled. “I’m fine, too. Are you certain you’re all right?”

Irene hooked their arms together. “I’ve had worse spills than that one and didn’t get hurt,” she insisted as they started walking back to the cottage. “I wish I could say the same for Peggy.”

“But Harrison said she wasn’t hurt when she fell the other day.”

“At the time she said she wasn’t, but by the end of the day, she was limping about, claiming her knee was bruised. This morning she was still complaining. I doubt it’s much more than a slight hurt, but she’ll take to her bed for a few days, like she usually does when she has any sort of excuse, and then she’ll be back to her usual complaining self.”

Annabelle kept a sharp eye for any other icy patches in the pathway as they neared the cottage. “If she constantly complains, which I’ve witnessed for myself, it’s a wonder you don’t . . . I mean, someone with less patience than you have would be inclined to let her go.”

“Along with her husband, who complains twice as much as she does. He just has the good sense to wait until you or Harrison aren’t around,” Irene added. “Whenever I’m tempted to let them both go, I try to remember they do a fair day’s work every day and I say a prayer for extra patience instead. Otherwise, my conscience wouldn’t let me sleep at night knowing they’d find it almost impossible to keep whatever positions they’d be able to find and hold on to them. Fortunately, having Lotte here is like finding a cloud of fresh air in a smoky kitchen.” She opened the kitchen door and followed Annabelle inside.

Grateful for the blast of heat she walked into, Annabelle slipped off her gloves and cape. “Lotte’s doing well so far?”

Irene shrugged out of her own coat. “She’s young and needs careful training, but she’s doing just fine. Now set yourself down while I start breakfast for you. Working with my letters may have to wait a spell. I’ve got to pack up some of what’s left from yesterday’s dinner and put it into a basket for Harrison,” she said with a grin.

Annabelle groaned. “H-he’s taking me on a picnic?”

“He did say for you to dress warm.”

“I could add two more woolen petticoats to the one I’m already wearing and that wouldn’t keep me warm enough to enjoy a picnic in the snow,” she grumbled and wondered if Harrison belonged in an asylum after all.

If Annabelle insisted on going into the city several mornings every week to volunteer at one of the institutions his family had founded, Harrison was not going to stop her. He had decided, however, that he would be the one to escort her and return to take her home every day and not his cousin, regardless of how inconvenient that would prove to be.

Although he had only completed half of his early-morning mission and had finally purchased a warming stove for the library from Harold McGinley, he still needed to make arrangements to have it installed, since McGinley had taken to his bed yesterday from gout again and could barely walk. He returned to Graymoor Gardens at ten o’clock, told Graham to wait for them in the circular driveway, and hurried into the house expecting to find Annabelle waiting for him in the parlor.

When he found the room empty, he walked back into the foyer. He noted that her green cape was not hanging there as usual and hoped she had gone upstairs to get something she had forgotten. He took the staircase two steps at a time and would have bumped right into Irene on the top landing in the upstairs hallway if he had not dropped back two steps.

Eye to eye with him, she peered over the pile of bedclothes she had gathered up to launder and glared at him. “My first instinct was right. You are up to something. Why aren’t you sleeping with your wife instead of that bed in the library alcove? And don’t bother to deny it. I just stripped that bed bare down to the mattress because the sheets needed changing.”

Caught by surprise, he shot back the first thought that popped into his head. “No one’s supposed to go into the library unless I say so.”

“That’s only when you’re at home, which I knew you weren’t because I talked to you right before you left this morning.”

“You’re supposed to be in the kitchen,” he argued. “Why isn’t Peggy—”

“She’s nursing her sore knee, and Lotte’s busy storing away the deliveries that came a while ago, which left me to gather up the laundry.”

Hoping to escape without answering her question—which was so impertinent that any other member of his staff, either here or in the city, would never have dared to ask it—he looked past her. “Where’s Annabelle? Didn’t you tell her to be ready for me to take her to the city?”

“Find her yourself,” Irene replied and started down the staircase, forcing him to back up against the balustrade.

“The servants’ stairs are at the end of the upstairs hall,” he quipped.

She stopped right next to him and did not seem to notice that the soiled bedclothes were poking him in the chest. “I must have caught whatever’s ailing you, because I can’t seem to remember where I belong any more than you do,” she snapped and proceeded down the staircase without giving him the opportunity to argue with her any longer.

Thoroughly frustrated and more than annoyed at this point, he charged through every room on the second floor, including the library, which was not as sacrosanct as he had thought, but found no sign of his missing wife. “She must be back in the cottage,” he grumbled and took the servants’ stairs to the first floor. Since he was still wearing his winter overcoat, he quickly overheated and paused to catch his breath when he reached the basement before he started the long walk through the tunnel that connected the two buildings.

When he heard the faint echo of footsteps coming from the opposite direction, he increased his pace. He slowed down when he finally saw that it was Alan approaching him carrying a load of firewood, instead of Annabelle, and fumed.

“Where’s my wife?” he demanded when Alan was within earshot.

Alan hooked his thumb and motioned over his shoulder. “Last I saw Miss Annabelle was about fifteen minutes ago in the kitchen, but that was before I left to get this wood for the parlor.”

Harrison walked past the man with long, determined strides and wondered if sealing up this tunnel might be the only way to keep that woman in the main house where she belonged, although he had no idea how to keep Irene in her place, too. When he finally stepped out of the tunnel into the cottage basement, he was muttering under his breath, trying to decide which woman was more troublesome.

“Did you say something, sir?”

Startled, he turned and saw Lotte standing a few feet away, holding an empty crate. “What are you doing down here?” he grumbled, apparently more gruffly than he intended.

Her face instantly flushed bright red. “Irene told me to put the vegetables away over there,” she said and used the crate to point to the section of the basement reserved as a root cellar. “Now that I’m finished, I was going to take this crate back down the delivery tunnel.”

He cleared his throat and softened his voice to ease her distress as well as his own guilt. “That’s fine. I’m looking for Miss Annabelle. Alan said she was in the kitchen when he last saw her.”

She shook her head. “She might have been then, but I saw her leave a while ago before he came back. She stopped and talked to me for a bit, but she said she was heading back to the main house. I was real busy, though, so I didn’t actually see her leave the basement.”

He narrowed his gaze. “You’re certain she’s not in the cottage?”

“Y-yes sir, but I can check again for you.”

When he nodded, she set down her crate and scampered up the stairs. She returned a few minutes later. “She’s not there, sir.”

He sighed, thanked her, and charged back the same way he had come. Since he had already checked the main house, he knew she was not there. Had she decided to leave him? The only question he had was how she had managed to do that. He had spoken to Philip himself and knew his cousin had not come for her. She might have tried to convince the staff to help her to leave, but he dismissed that idea, too. Even Irene knew that helping Annabelle to leave him was a line she could not cross.

“The delivery. She must have talked one of the Andersons’ deliverymen into taking her back to the city.” Determined to find her, if only to congratulate her for her fine performance again last night when they had talked together, he chided himself for falling into her trap. “Men simply don’t become friends with women,” he muttered and stormed from the tunnel, up the basement steps, and through the foyer.

“I should have known it was a ploy. The very moment I told her about the divorce, expecting her to rant and rave, she acted as if she were more concerned about me.” He slapped at his thigh in frustration as he left the house. “I should have known. I should have known,” he repeated over and over until it became a mantra, which he only stopped muttering long enough to bark at Graham that he wanted to leave for the city and proceed directly to the Andersons’.

Still grumbling his mantra, he yanked the coach door open, peered inside, and stopped dead. “Annabelle?”

She moved her knitting bag and set it down at her feet next to a large wicker basket. “I’m sorry. We must have just missed one another. I was up in my room getting my knitting stick so I could knit on the way into the city when I saw the coach through the window. I hurried down, but you weren’t there, so I decided the best thing to do was wait right here. I didn’t mean to worry you,” she added, apparently noting the frown he wore. “You should have known I wouldn’t leave. Not without you.”