Lady in Green (2 page)

Miss Avery was as bald as the day she was born.

With the slightest pale down sprouting here and there on her head, Annalise might look like a plucked chicken, but Barnaby Coombes was squawking like one. “G-g-gads, L-l—ma’am, y-your hair!”

Near tears, Annalise cried back, “Yes, my beautiful hair that used to reach below my waist! His fancy specialists”—she jerked her head toward Sir Vernon Thompson—“shaved it off. To save my life force, they said, all the while they bled the strength out of me. It might grow back, they said. But don’t worry, Barny, you won’t have to look at my ugliness over breakfast for the rest of your life. You should thank me.”

Barnaby swallowed and made one last try. He pressed the ring into her hand and said, “Your hair will grow back, Leesie, but no matter. You’ll always be b-beautiful to me.”

“But not beautiful enough to keep you faithful. Not even Sophy is that beautiful. Here, give her this, and may she get more pleasure from it than I did!” She tossed the ring back, hard.

Barny caught the ribbon, but the ring bounced up and nicked his cheek. “Bitch,” he muttered, dabbing at the stream of blood trickling down his neck.

“Good,” Annalise said, although actually horrified at her own behavior. Quite at the end of her tether, she decided to make a clean breast of things. “And I am glad I don’t have to marry you, Barnaby Coombes, because you drink too much. Furthermore, in a few years you’ll need a corset and a hairpiece both. And finally, I’ve seen a sack of potatoes that had a better seat on a horse than you!”

Barnaby’s face turned white, then the blood rushed back to give him a mottled, swollen look. “Oh, yeah,” he raged, “and just who do you think you’ll find to marry a viperish old scarecrow like—”

He was wasting his breath, for Miss Avery’s last outburst took more of an effort than she had in her. She quietly collapsed to the floor in a heap of flowing fabric.

Sir Vernon came around the desk and felt for a pulse.

“She ain’t croaked, is she?” Barnaby asked.

“No thanks to you. My congratulations on your fine touch with a skittish filly.”

Barnaby was pouring himself another shot. “What did you want me to do? Zeus, she must have heard everything we said; there was no use denying any of it.” He tossed back the drink, then sank down in a leather chair, looking away from his erstwhile fiancée’s shiny pate with a shudder. “Lud, what’ll I do now?”

The baronet rose and went to pull the bell for a footman. “I suggest you go visit the fair Sophy for a week or two while my stepdaughter cools down. You might even visit your creditors and tell them not to worry.”

“Not worry? Gads, you heard her. She’ll never marry me.”

“She will if she knows what’s good for her. I’ll talk her ’round.”

Barnaby gave a quick peek at the shaved head and scrawny neck, wondering if Newgate mightn’t be preferable after all. Annalise still hadn’t moved. “Sure she ain’t going to stick her spoon in the wall?”

“All that lovely Bradshaw money goes to charity if she dies without husband or children.” Sir Vernon rang the bell again. “She wouldn’t dare
.”

Chapter Two

Broken hearts mended faster than brain fevers. At least on the outside. On the inside, something in Annalise shriveled and shrank, leaving a cold, hard emptiness where love and dreams and hope used to sing and dance. On the other hand, perhaps she was not so disappointed in her engagement’s dissolution after all, for a scant two days later saw her ready to receive her stepfather in her sitting room.

Annalise knew why Sir Vernon had requested this visit, and she knew what her reply was going to be. She just hoped this discussion could be conducted with dignity, unlike the last. She felt she owed the baronet that much, for her mother’s memory and for the years of his guardianship, although she now suspected his efforts on her behalf to be less sacrifice than self-serving. Of course he had welcomed an awkward thirteen-year-old into his household when he married Annalise’s mother; Annalise was a considerable heiress in her own right even then. And of course he had kept her with him at Thompson Hall after her mother’s death rather than have her passed about among the Bradshaw relatives; he kept control of her fortune and got an unpaid chatelaine for his manor house to boot! He might have ignored his stepdaughter, spending most of his time in London, but that had always suited her. Still, Annalise acknowledged, she had never been treated as anything less than a lady until two days ago, when her position was redefined as that of a commodity, an investment, a meal ticket. Well, she
was
a lady, her own papa having been Viscount Avery, albeit he was a disinherited ne’er-do-well. She vowed to receive Sir Vernon with the grace of a duke’s granddaughter, not the wrath of a ranting fishwife.

Some vows were harder to keep than others. Sir Vernon entered her sitting room, for the first time ever, she realized, and started prowling about. Instead of taking the seat pulled near the chaise longue where Annalise reclined, wrapped around with blankets and shawls, he raised his quizzing glass and inspected her possessions. If she were a dog, her hackles would be up. When he lifted the jade carving of a horse on the mantel, turning it upside down as if to look for a mark of its value, Annalise coughed delicately. “You wished to see me, sir?”

Thompson swung his glass in her direction. “Ah, yes, my dear.” He took slow, careful note of her gaunt and pallid cheeks, the heavy coverings pulled up to her chin, the cap pulled low over her forehead. “Not quite the blushing bride.”

Annalise started to correct him, but Sir Vernon held up one long, tapered finger. “No, no, my dear, do not excite yourself. Let us keep this a comfortable little coze, shall we?”

She nodded, for that was her intention, too, and indicated the chair and decanter and glass placed nearby for his convenience. “Please help yourself, sir.”

His thin lips twitched into a semblance of a smile as he poured, but he remained
standing,
so Annalise had to crick her neck uncomfortably to see his face. Finally he deigned to take the seat, flicking a bit of lint off the velvet cushion first. “You have led quite a sheltered life, haven’t you?”

Annalise wondered if that was a question. He knew very well that she’d had no come-out and no Season, what with periods of mourning and then no proper female to present her, and of course Barnaby always in the wings. How the situation must have pleased Sir Vernon, keeping her from meeting other eligible beaux, gentlemen who might not be as amenable as cabbage-headed Barny to sharing her dowry. Sheltered? Yes, she’d been kept from all but the local society, but if he meant to excuse Barnaby Coombes on the count that she was a green girl, the baronet was sadly mistaken.

“I have not been so sheltered, sir, that I do not know the ways of a man with a maid, if that is your meaning.”

He dismissed her words with a wave of his manicured hand. “No, no, I did not suppose you to be an ignorant schoolroom miss. That’s not my meaning. I refer instead to how you have been protected from fortune-hunters and hangers-on, and shielded from slights due to your mother’s, shall we say, bourgeois background.”

“Mother’s parents were wonderful people!”

“And wonderfully wealthy. Unfortunately, that wealth came from trade, my dear, which even your sweet innocence must recognize as offputting to anyone with pretensions to gentility. That is not quite the point I am desirous of making, either. Your mother and your Bradshaw grandparents, with my assistance, I admit, and Barnaby’s, have kept you from the harsher realities of life faced by every other well-born female. The fact, drummed into the ears of each and every girl infant blessed with either fortune or breeding or merely great beauty, is simply the necessity to marry well.”

Annalise twisted the fringe on her shawl. “I take it you are speaking of arranged marriages, arranged for the convenience of the families instead of for the young people involved. Titles are exchanged for riches, lands are joined, successions are assured without considering the feelings of those who must spend their lives together.”

“Precisely. Great happiness is often found in these marriages, and if not”—another casual wave of his hand—“other arrangements can be made. Less regular, but highly rewarding.”

“If you are suggesting that I contemplate wedding someone only to…to forswear my vows, then I shan’t listen.”

“Why, I would never suggest you compromise your morals, my dear, I am simply trying to make a bitter pill go down easier. You see, you have foolishly been led to believe that you could marry to please yourself.”

“My parents did, and I intend to do the same.”

“Ah, yes. Your parents, the perfect example. Sweet Caroline followed her heart—right into disaster!”

“My father—”

“Is dead, so I shall not disparage his memory. Suffice it to say that Viscount Avery was cast off without a farthing for marrying a tradesman’s daughter. And not just any trade, but coal, the dirtiest, sootiest trade of them all, considering how the
ton
hates getting its fingers dirty. Caroline was never accepted in his world, and he despised hers. The viscount took up gaming, you must know, and only his early death saved even Caroline’s vast fortune from being whistled down the wind.”

“My parents loved each other!”

“That was not enough. At least Caroline had the sense to accept my offer, so that you might be raised away from the smell of the shop.”

“And you did not suffer from the marriage, either. I remember Thompson Hall was in shambles when we moved here from Grandfather’s, and there were almost no servants.”

“Precisely. An advantageous marriage for both parties. Just as your wedding to a well-respected landowner like Barnaby Coombes will benefit all of us.”

“
I
do not respect Barnaby Coombes. I do not trust him, and I do not even like him very well anymore. I shall never marry him, no matter what you say. I shall marry for love, as my mother did, or not at all.”

Sir Vernon studied his polished nails. “I never supposed you to be so buffle-headed, so perhaps I have not made myself clear even yet. You have no choice, Annalise.”

“Of course I do,” she said with a laugh. “Other men will be attracted to my dowry if nothing else. I am not quite on the shelf, you know, even if I am one and twenty.”

“But I prefer Barnaby.” Sir Vernon’s words were softly spoken, but Annalise caught the steel behind them.

“You cannot force me to—”

“Yes, I can. That old fool Bradshaw used to be your guardian; now I alone have the right to bestow your hand, and not a court in the land can gainsay my choice. If we were not in such a backwater, I’d have had you wed while you were delirious with the fever. Our own Vicar Harding is above such irregular proceedings, unfortunately. He would be affronted at the idea of a deathbed marriage unless I suggested you and Barnaby had anticipated the wedding night.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Of course I would, child. Do not doubt it for a minute. A bit of laudanum…a tearful plea for your soul’s salvation. Had I known you to be such a willful chit, the deed would be done and we’d not need this tiresome little chat. That was my error,
thinking
you to be a biddable female like your mother.” He sighed. “I shan’t make the same mistake twice, so I’ll have to journey to Town for a special license. So fatiguing, don’t you know.” Annalise could not believe what she was hearing. They’d never shared much affection, but this…this declaration of cold-blooded treachery sent tremors down her spine.

“You’ll never get away with such villainy,” she declared.

“Oh, no? Who will stop me? The servants whose salaries I pay? Or perhaps you think the Duke of Arvenell will come to the aid of a mongrel granddaughter now, when he wrote his son out of his will ages ago. Your mother showed me the letter he sent when she advised him of the viscount’s death. Arvenell
thanked
her, Annalise, for having just the one daughter, so he never had to worry about the succession falling into tainted hands. No, the mighty duke is not about to leave Northumberland to cry halt to an unexceptionable wedding of an unacknowledged chit. Don’t suppose any of the local gentry will interfere, either, not when I tell them how unbalanced you are by illness and grief. They’d only congratulate me on finding you such an understanding husband.”

Annalise was trembling for real now. Perhaps she was still caught in the fever’s nightmares. But no, Sir Vernon was pressing Barny’s ring into her clenched fingers, fingers that had unraveled half the fringe on her shawl.

“The choice is yours, my dear,” he was saying. “You can accept Barny’s offer and have your charming little wedding in the village chapel next month after the banns are read, or you can expect my…solution to the dilemma. The outcome will be the same, my dear, never doubt it. I’ll have your decision as soon as I return next week with Barnaby and the special license.”

*

Annalise was going to be long gone by then.

Chapter Three

“Here’s some nice gruel, Miss Avery.”

“How about a little nap, Miss Avery? Are you sure you should be downstairs, ma’am?”

The servants must have been told Annalise was suffering a nervous decline from the brain fever, for they watched her and followed her about, speaking to her as if she were in the cradle or in her dotage. They were happy enough to humor her, fetching any number of books from the library, fresh flowers from the gardens, the most tempting delicacies from Cook’s pantry, but not one would call a carriage for her.