Reese's Bride (29 page)

Van Meer closed his eyes and Reese urged Elizabeth out into the hall, giving the couple a moment of privacy. The police would arrive any moment. Once Mason’s attempt to kill Van Meer was revealed and all of their statements taken, Frances Holloway would be arrested. Jared and the Van Meers would be safe. Jus
tice would be served and Reese could take his beloved family home.

He looked down at his wife. He wished he could speak his heart as she had done.

But if he did, he would no longer be able to protect himself as he had for so many years.

Reese wasn’t sure he could ever find that kind of courage.

A
nnabelle Townsend was holding a ball. She was famous in society for the elaborate parties she threw at her elegant town mansion, and people had begun to speculate as to why she no longer seemed interested in her friends.

It was Travis, of course. Loving him. Missing him. She no longer cared for the fickle social whirl. She would rather be spending her evenings with Travis, playing cards in his drawing room, or simply talking before passion overcame them and they made love.

Anna missed him and she would never stop loving him, but she had come to accept that she had a life to live and Travis would never be a part of it. He wasn’t interested in marriage and she had discovered she couldn’t be happy with anything less.

Travis was her weakness, but she had lived without him since she was a girl. She could certainly do it again.

“Fetch my jewelry box, will you, Sadie?”

Her ladies’ maid hurried over to the dresser and plucked the inlaid rosewood box off the top. The girl returned and held open the lid. “Here you are, my lady.”

“Thank you.” Choosing a simple strand of pearls with a lovely pearl-and-diamond pendant suspended in the middle, Annabellee waited while Sadie draped the jewelry round her throat, then placed the matching earbobs in her ears.

Rising from the tapestry stool, she stood for a moment in front of the mirror.

“You look very fetching, my lady.”

“I must say, the gown is lovely.” Smoothing the deep blue velvet fabric, she adjusted her light brown curls against her shoulder then started for the door. It was time she got over Travis.

Or at least got on with her life.

Whatever it took, tonight she would be bright and gay, the belle of the ball, just as she always had been.

She wouldn’t think of Travis Greer and how handsome he was and how he could make her heartbeat quicken with a single glance. She wouldn’t think of his incredible lovemaking.

Not tonight.

Not even once.

Mustering a smile, Annabelle followed the sound of the orchestra tuning up in the ballroom and sailed out of her bedroom.

Travis stood just inside the ballroom door. Reese stood next to him, Elizabeth a few feet away in conversation with the duke and duchess of Bransford and Reese’s aunt, Lady Tavistock.

“So what are you still doing in London?” Travis asked Reese. “I thought you’d be on your way home by now.”

“The magistrates have a few more questions. We thought we’d enjoy a last evening with friends. We’re
leaving for Holiday House day after the morrow, then on to Briarwood.”

“From what I read in the
Times
, Frances Holloway will be locked away for a very long while.”

“So it would seem.” Reese cocked an eyebrow. “What about you? What are you doing here? I thought you and Anna weren’t seeing each other anymore.”

“We aren’t. I’m crashing the party.”

“Tell me you are jesting.”

“I didn’t get invited. I wanted to see her so I came.”

Reese’s mouth edged up in amusement. “Interesting.”

Travis grunted. “Yes, well, I’m glad you think so.” He stalked off toward the punch bowl, his mood grim. For the past half hour, he had been watching Anna float round the ballroom in the arms of one man after another. He knew she had seen him. Every once in a while, her gaze would drift in his direction but immediately slice away.

Instead, she danced and laughed and fluttered her damnable fan, obviously enjoying herself. And the men were lapping it up.

Anna was a beautiful woman, and incredibly desirable.

Travis knew
exactly
how desirable. Inside his trousers, his shaft hardened as a memory arose of them together in his big bed, of her soft little cries as he moved inside her.

He clamped his jaw. Walking over to the liquor table, he asked a servant to pour him a brandy and tossed it back in a single swallow. Another half hour passed while Anna continued to avoid him. For a woman who was supposed to love him, she had an odd way of showing it.

She was waltzing with that blackguard, Jonathan Savage, when Travis had finally had enough.

Pushing away from the wall, he strode toward the
dance floor. He waited until the music came to an end and walked up to her before she had time to escape.

“I believe the next dance is mine,” he said, casting Savage the darkest look he could muster.

The rogue just smiled. “Is that so?” He pressed Anna’s hand into his and stepped away, playing the gentleman as Travis had rarely seen him.

“This isn’t your dance,” she said, lifting her little nose in the air. “You don’t dance anymore.”

Many of them were nearly impossible to do with only one arm. “No, I don’t, so unless you wish to make a scene, you had better come with me.”

Her feet didn’t move. “Why are you here?”

“I wanted to see you.”

“You could have come to the house.”

“I could have, but I didn’t.” The music began, a lively schottische, which he ignored. He wanted to get her alone and he finally had the chance.

It was too cold to go outside. Instead, he ushered her out of the ballroom and down the hall to the long gallery, a narrow, multiwindowed chamber at the back of the house where the crowd had thinned to just a few couples.

With a hand at her waist, he guided her toward a quiet corner next to a leafy potted plant.

“You seem to be enjoying yourself,” he said, still a little piqued that she could so easily forget him, forget all they had shared.

Her chin came up and her soft mouth turned pouty. It made him want to kiss her. “Why shouldn’t I enjoy myself?”

“I rather hoped you would be pining away for your lost love, namely me. That is what you said, isn’t it? That you loved me?”

Some of her bravado faded. “Sometimes love isn’t enough.”

“I need to know if you meant it, Anna. I need to know if you love me, the way you said.”

Amazement widened her pretty blue eyes. “You think I would lie about something like that?”

“Just tell me the truth.”

For the first time she seemed to realize how important the question was to him. “I love you, Travis. I’ve loved you for years. I suppose I always will.”

His chest ached. “Enough to marry me?”

She stared up at him. “Are you…are you asking me to marry you?”

“Will you, Anna? Do you love me enough to marry me?”

“But you don’t want to get married. You told me that yourself.”

“You said the same thing.”

“I didn’t…didn’t realize how I would feel after…after…”

“After we made love?”

“Yes.”

“I was wrong, sweetheart. After you left, I realized the sort of life I was living. How empty it was until you came along. How lonely it was without you. Say you will marry me.”

Tears brimmed in her eyes. “Do you love me, Travis?”

“Desperately.”

Anna laughed, the sound filling his heart. “Then there is nothing in this world that I would like more than to marry you.”

Relief hit him so hard he felt weak. Sliding his arm around her tiny waist, he hauled her against him, bent his
head and very thoroughly kissed her. Both of them were breathing too fast when he finally let her go.

“Come on.” He tugged on her hand.

“Where are we going?”

Uncertainty trickled through him. “You don’t mean to keep it a secret, do you?”

“Heavens, no.”

Travis grinned and tugged her forward, back into the ballroom and up onto the stage where the orchestra was playing. The music stopped. The guests in the ballroom began to fall silent.

“If I could have your attention,” Travis said, “I have an announcement to make.”

The last of the murmurs died away and attention focused on the stage.

“Lady Annabelle has consented to marry me. Since I am madly in love with her, I am the happiest man on earth.”

Cheers went up.

“And you are all invited to the wedding,” Anna added with a grin.

There were whoops of joy and shouts of congratulations. Travis was smiling—until he looked over at his best friend. Reese looked like a man who had been kicked in the stomach. And even from a distance, he could see the glitter of tears in Elizabeth’s eyes.

He wasn’t sure what was wrong. For his friend’s sake, he hoped Reese would recognize the love he felt for his wife and not make the same mistake Travis had made.

Reese just stood there. He still couldn’t believe it. His best friend had just offered marriage to Annabelle Townsend and declared his love for her in front of half
of London. If he hadn’t seen it for himself, he never would have believed it.

Why had Travis found it so easy to speak his feelings when Reese found it so unbearably hard?

He pondered the notion as he sat next to Elizabeth on the carriage ride back to the town house, and later that night after they had made love and he had curled her against his side as she had fallen asleep.

For Reese, sleep did not come.

He loved Elizabeth and he loved his son. Why didn’t he tell them? He knew how much it would mean to both of them and yet he kept silent, afraid to open his heart.

Dawn came and still he lay awake, his mind in turmoil. Easing quietly from the bed, he dressed and went out to the stable, saddled the sorrel gelding he had ridden to Van Meer’s and headed for the park.

His leg was still a little sore from his fight with Holloway but as he eased the horse into an easy canter around the gravel track, the muscles loosened and the leg gave him no problem. The brisk November air beat against his face as he increased the horse’s pace, but it was more exhilarating than cold and it seemed to clear his head.

Just three small words, he thought.

I love you.

How could they be so hard to say?

The others were easy.
I need you. I want you
. He’d had no trouble with those.

But those were not nearly so important. They didn’t put your heart at risk. The very essence of your being.

Reese looked up through the trees at the sunlight filtering down on the glistening morning dew. As he gazed up at the sky, sunlight seemed to penetrate his skin and
warm his insides. Courage filled him, seemed to expand until it pushed all his old fears away. With it came determination.

Whirling the sorrel, he rode back to the town house, where fires had been lit and chimney smoke drifted over the gray slate roof. He handed the reins to a groom and made his way inside to find Elizabeth just entering the breakfast room.

“Good morning,” she said, but there was something missing in her voice, an emptiness that had been there since she had told him she loved him and he had said nothing in return.

“Before you sit down, I’d like a word with you in my study, if you don’t mind.”

She managed a nod. “Of course.”

Reese strode on down the hall, sent a maid up to fetch Jared, then headed for his study.

He was waiting when his wife and son arrived a few minutes later, Elizabeth looking nervous, Jared downright wary. The child hurried over and grabbed onto his mother’s skirt.

“Is…is something wrong?” Elizabeth asked anxiously.

Reese forced himself to smile. “Actually, there is. But the error is mine, not either of yours.” He continued to smile though his insides were trembling and his heart was squeezing so hard he could barely breathe. “You see, in the past few days, I’ve realized the wrong I’ve done you both.”

“What…what do you mean? You have been nothing but generous and caring since we first came to your home.”

“Generous and caring? I hope I have been those things. But there is something more. Something I feel for
both of you that I have not said.” He knelt a few feet away from Jared. “Come here, son.”

The boy came shyly, still a little uncertain.

“I asked you to come in here so I could tell you how much I love you. I haven’t said that before, but it’s true. I’m so proud of you, Jared. You are my joy and my hopes for the future and I love you more than my own life.”

The little boy looked up at him, his dark eyes shining with some deep emotion. He reached out and touched Reese’s cheek. “I love you, too, Papa.”

His heart twisted. He leaned over and kissed the child’s forehead, then rose to his feet. “And I love your mother.” His gaze shifted toward her, standing there in front of the fire, her eyes glistening with tears. “She is my heart and my soul. I have loved her since she was a girl and I love her still.”

Elizabeth made a strangled sound in her throat. “Reese…” She started toward him across the study and he met her halfway, swept her into his arms.

He pressed his cheek against hers. “I love you, Beth. Your strength and your determination, the wonderful mother you are to our son. I loved the girl you were, but even more, I love the woman you have become.”

She smiled up at him through her tears. “My darling, Reese, I love you so much.”

And then he was kissing her and he had never felt so free, so entirely happy.

Laughter rang out behind him and when he turned, he saw that Jared was grinning. Reese motioned for his son to join them, lifted him up against his shoulder, and the three of them stood together, arms locked around each other.

A lightness filled him, the way the sun had that morning, shining down into his heart. Joy expanded inside him. For the first time, the pieces of his life all fit together.

“I love you, Beth,” he said, the words coming easy this time. “I love you both so very much.” He smiled. “And I can’t wait to take my beautiful family home.”