Hidden Affections (26 page)

Surprised that Harrison would be entertaining company here, since they had moved out to the country estate to avoid it, she latched on to a happy thought. “Is Philip bringing someone special with him?” she asked, hopeful he had met someone he liked well enough to have Harrison invite her to supper, too.

Irene sighed. “He is, but it’s apparently not the ‘someone special’ you or I might like him to bring. He’s much too busy to think about courting, although he does act a bit moonstruck whenever he’s around you.”

Annabelle’s heart skipped a beat. She found Irene’s comment about Philip as odd as Harrison’s jealousy of his cousin, but she was more interested in knowing who their guest would be tonight. “I don’t suppose you know who might be coming, do you?”

“I most certainly do. Not that Harrison bothered to tell me. The young man who delivered Harrison’s note told me. I don’t actually know the man who’s coming, but he must be important or Harrison wouldn’t have invited him to come to supper all the way out here. Maybe you know him. His name is Bradley. Eric Bradley.”

Annabelle grew up picturing Hades as a fire-filled pit in the netherworld filled with a cacophony of horrible screams, groans, and voices pleading for mercy. But tonight she got a glimpse of a Hades that was right here in her own house.

With Harrison sitting at one end of the dining room table and Philip at the other, she sat in the middle, directly across from Eric. She kept a smile on her lips as she listened to polite conversation between two decent and honorable men on either side of her and Eric, but she had to plant her feet on the floor so she would not jump up and scream.

Harrison and Philip had had no idea that the third man who was at the table was the devil incarnate. Or that she knew it and could not warn them without causing a terrible scene that would spell disaster all around. She had burned the note he had slipped to her and so had no proof of Eric’s evil intentions—intentions he would no doubt deny.

Irene finally arrived with the last of several desserts that she set on the sideboard while Peggy and Lotte cleared the last of the supper dishes from the table. Annabelle could barely stand the thought of trying to eat anything, even dessert. She had nervous cramps in her stomach, and her throat was raw from swallowing bile. She also had little feeling in her lips, since she wore a frozen smile throughout most of supper.

Irene glimpsed at Annabelle’s supper plate before Peggy took it away and instantly frowned. “You barely touched your supper. If you’re not feeling well, I can stay and serve the desserts for you, or these gentlemen can serve themselves,” she whispered.

Unfortunately, Harrison heard her and interrupted his conversation, which drew the other men’s attention to Annabelle, as well. He looked at her with genuine concern, which only added to her guilt. “You’ve been uncommonly quiet all through supper, and you look a bit peaked. Aren’t you feeling well?”

She forced her lips into a broader smile and got to her feet. “I feel perfectly fine. I’m just a bit overwhelmed. Tonight is really the first time we’ve entertained guests outside of family,” she explained. She joined Irene at the sideboard, but deliberately avoided making eye contact with her for fear the woman would take one look into her eyes and know that Annabelle was not being honest.

“Why don’t you tell everyone what I fixed for dessert, and I’ll dish out whatever they want,” Irene suggested in a tone that defied any argument.

Grateful for the opportunity to put her back to Eric, Annabelle gave her full attention to the top of the sideboard. “There’s Irene’s specialty, apple pie. She also made two kinds of cookies, molasses and almond crescent, that are quite delicious.” She took several steps toward the final dessert and smiled. “She’s also used one of my mother’s other recipes to make a sweet custard, which is a particular favorite of mine,” she announced, unable to resist the urge to say something to needle Eric, since he had favored the sweet custard she had once made for him, without Harrison or Philip realizing what she was doing.

When she turned around to face the men again, she met Eric’s gaze and saw a brief flash of surprise in his eyes that disappeared when she stared long and hard back at him. “What would you like for dessert, Mr. Bradley?”

He grinned at her. “I’ve never been able to pass up apple pie, but I wouldn’t mind a dish of custard, as well. I had some exceptional sweet custard a while back when I was traveling, which, sad to say, was the only highlight of a rather miserable experience,” he said, chuckling as he looked from one end of the table to the other. “I’m certain you gentlemen have each endured journeys that were less pleasurable than you had hoped,” he added. “It’s been my experience, however, that those are the trips that often end up yielding rewards you never anticipated at the time. I can only hope this will be true of this trip to Philadelphia with my wife. She’s been quite upset that we’ve gotten stranded here.”

Stung, Annabelle silently fumed at his audacity as Philip replied, “I would have to agree with you. In all truth, I’ve learned over the years not to judge my efforts during a journey too quickly. Inevitably, some good always comes of honest effort.”

Harrison nodded, but caught Annabelle’s gaze and held it when he smiled at her. “I once thought my last trip might end up a total failure, but as you both know, my life was changed altogether once I met and married Annabelle.”

Although she might have believed he meant his words as a double entendre only the two of them would understand, his gaze was too steady and his smile too dazzling to be anything but sincere. Although she accepted his compliment as yet another example of his ability to charm most everyone he met, it eased the sting of Eric’s veiled reference to her failure as a wife and his pending plans to extort even more from Harrison than the meager inheritance he had taken from her.

Dropping her gaze, Annabelle waited until Irene had put Eric’s dessert on the table in front of him before facing Philip. Dear, sweet Philip. He was so earnest and kind, she doubted he had any notion that men like Eric Bradley even existed in the selfless world he had made for himself.

Still, she did notice that he looked at her rather intently several times tonight when he thought she was not looking, but dismissed Harrison and Irene’s idea that he had become smitten with her. “What would you like tonight?”

“Those almond crescent cookies, and don’t be stingy, Irene,” he teased and winked at the housekeeper.

In return, Irene piled cookies onto his plate so high that Annabelle had to tread lightly to make sure none of the cookies slipped off the plate before she set it down in front of him. “If you’d like more, there’s plenty.”

“I think I’d like a small sampling of everything, especially since you didn’t make anything with plums in it for a change,” Harrison teased as Irene walked past the back of his chair.

After Irene cut a slice of pie and stacked three of each kind of cookie onto his plate, she set it in front of him before she took her leave. In the meantime, Annabelle filled a small cup with custard, placed it next to his dessert plate, and took a step back. “With your permission, I’d like to leave the three of you now, too. I know you have important business to discuss, but since I have little to offer in this regard—”

“On the contrary,” Eric argued. “Philip and your husband have an opportunity at the Refuge that my wife and I are most interested in pursuing. They’ve both mentioned the work you’re doing at the Refuge for those pitiful women and their children. When I told my wife about it, she was curious to know more. I’m afraid I promised her that I’d ask if you’d be kind enough to show me your efforts firsthand before we make any commitment to the new addition at the Refuge.” He looked at Harrison and Philip. “Perhaps you two gentlemen would be able to join us.”

Philip shook his head. “If you want to know anything about the Refuge as it stands now, Annabelle is the best one to show you. I’d be glad to join you afterward, though, to show you where we would like to add the workshop.”

Harrison cleared his throat. “Since I usually escort my wife to the Refuge, I may as well stay and join you when she shows you around the facility. Is there a day next week that suits you best?” he asked Eric.

Before he could answer, Philip held up his hand. “The only day next week I have any time free is on Thursday. If that doesn’t suit everyone else, I could try to change one of my other appointments.”

“Any day next week suits me,” Harrison offered and looked to Eric.

When Eric’s gaze hardened briefly, Annabelle caught her breath and held it for several long heartbeats before exhaling. She and Eric were scheduled to meet again next Thursday, but she would be ecstatic if he had to postpone their rendezvous, particularly since she had not thought of a different location where they could meet. Besides, if he had to push their meeting back, he might also extend his final deadline, too.

“Although I have another meeting planned for next Thursday morning that’s rather important, I’m fairly certain I can reschedule it for the afternoon. Let’s plan on Thursday morning at ten o’clock for now. I’ll let you both know if I have a problem and need to reschedule our meeting until the following week.”

Disappointed to get only a few hours’ reprieve, Annabelle also decided she would find some excuse to make it impossible for her to see him next Thursday afternoon. “If that’s settled, I should like to bid you all a good night.” She got Harrison’s nod of approval and left the dining room before Eric found another excuse to keep her there.

She mounted the staircase and went straight to her room, only to find Irene waiting there for her. “You might be able to fool every one of those three men downstairs, but you can’t fool me any longer. Something’s been wrong for nearly a week now, and I’m going to stay right here until you tell me what it is.”

Harrison went straight to Annabelle’s room before the coach carrying his guests back to the city had reached the end of the circular driveway in front of the house.

Even though she had left the table a good four hours ago and there was not a sliver of light coming from beneath her door, he was troubled enough by events tonight to knock at her door anyway. When the door eased open, Irene nudged him back when she stepped out of the room into the hall and closed the door behind her. She held one finger to her lips and motioned for him to follow, and she led him into the library.

Once she closed the door behind them, she gave him the most disappointing look he had ever seen her wear when she was about to give him a lecture.

“What’s wrong? Is Annabelle truly ill?” he asked.

She sighed and shook her head. “If you consider a broken heart to be a sign of illness, then I’d have to say yes. She’s ill, which is why I sat with her until she finally fell asleep about fifteen minutes ago.”

He furrowed his brow. “A broken heart?”

“That’s my diagnosis, although she didn’t admit to it,” Irene replied. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on between the two of you, and Annabelle is too loyal to you to tell me much of anything. My guess is that the gossip that’s apparently churning in the city about the two of you is simply too hard for her to bear on top of knowing that you aren’t happy with her.”

“I never said I wasn’t happy—”

“For a man supposed to be a charmer, I thought you’d know that it doesn’t matter what you say. It’s what you actually do that matters,” she argued. “I’m not the one to judge what you’ve done to make her so upset tonight, but anyone with a pair of eyes in his head should have been able to see that she hasn’t been herself for a good while. I can’t tell you what you need to do to let her know how much you love her, but you need to do it now. You might try spending the night with her instead of skulking in here to sleep every night on the pretext that you’re so restless when you sleep you’re afraid to hurt her again. That’s nonsense. You know it, and I know it. And if you have any plan to keep her out here permanently while you go back to the city mansion to enjoy the life you led when you were single, don’t count on me to help you win her back when you finally come to your senses—because it’ll be too late. Once you’ve set a woman outside of your life, she won’t ever trust you not to do it again.” And with that she turned and walked out of the room.

Totally confused, he stared at the door she had closed behind her for a very long time. He was more than annoyed that Annabelle had spoken so frankly to Irene about their marriage, although she had not broken the illusion that she had married him because she loved him. After the long talks they had shared together at night, he found it hard to believe he had missed how unhappy she was and simply assumed she found entertaining to be overwhelming.

Rather than spend the entire night here in the library, which would only incur Irene’s wrath in the morning, he went back to Annabelle’s room, pulled a chair next to her bed, and sat down. The few embers still glowing in the fireplace did not provide enough light to see more than the silhouette of her face, but he could see every one of her features with his mind’s eye.

From her pale green eyes to her oval face to her long blond hair, she was a flawless beauty. But it was her giving heart and her strong faith in God—as well as her ability to bring out the best in him—that led him to nearly the same conclusion that Irene had flung at him.