C
HAPTER
6
T
his is what came of being impulsive. Anne had proposed to the major, but had not thought the thing through. If Reverend Morgan stood up three Sundays in a row and said her true name aloud, word would spread like wildfire that she was here.
Her father had sent that investigator Mulgrew after her once. He would do so again. Mr. Mulgrew could be very persuasive, especially when he shackled one.
If the minister simply said “Anne Mont,” and she married under an assumed name, the marriage would be illegal. Her father and the trustees would never give her the inheritance and she’d be locked in her room again.
“What are you hiding, Mrs. Mont? At least give me your name,” Gareth said gently.
“It’s Anne now,” she whispered. “My middle name.”
His blue eyes were sharp, but he smiled. “Anne. Annie. That suits you. What was it before? Was there ever a Mr. Mont?”
She avoided the questions. “I think I’ve been hasty.” She waved an arm between them over the crumpled sheets. “Never mind about all this.”
“Now, you cannot dangle a fortune and a beautiful bride in front of a poor man and then yank them back.”
The man looked amused, but none of this was a laughing matter.
“I’m not beautiful. And you probably would not want to marry me if you found out who I am anyway.”
“I realize you have no reason to trust me, but I used to be a somewhat honorable man. Is there a price on your head?”
“No, of course not. I’ve said
I’m
not a murderer.”
“Nor am I. Who is the father who frightens you so that you had to run all the way to Wales?”
She leaped from the bed. She couldn’t tell him—he would be disgusted. “Really, I’ve been foolish. I always am. Let’s forget I made this silly proposition. We’ll find another way for you to keep your home.”
“Annie.”
Just the one word. A name that wasn’t really hers, but the way he said it caused her heart to kick. She could imagine him whispering it in her ear right in this bed.
If she washed the sheets first.
The heat traveled up her throat to her cheeks. What on earth was wrong with her? She had no intention of being under any man’s control. Being under any man.
He held out his hand as she skittered up against the open window. “I can’t forget. And I actually think I can persuade the good reverend to bend the truth enough. Let me talk to him and see what he says.”
“I don’t want a real marriage!” she burst out.
“So you’ve said. I would never force my attentions on an unwilling woman.”
Gareth seemed sober. Sincere. She took a step toward him. “If you were my husband, you’d have every right to.”
“That’s true. And you are a very appealing woman. Tempting. It would be hard to resist you.”
Anne glanced down at her battered black dress. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Who has hurt you, Annie?” he asked softly.
“N-no one.” She wouldn’t,
couldn’t
tell him. It was one thing confessing to Evangeline. After all, she’d held a gun on the poor woman—it was the least she could do to explain the reason for her very odd behavior.
“All right.” He sighed, rose from the bed, and met her in the middle of the room. “Get dressed. We’ll go down to the village and talk to Ian Morgan. If you need privacy to divulge your secrets, you’ll have it. We’ll have three weeks to get to know each other better. Maybe by then you’ll feel more comfortable with me and tell me what is troubling you so.”
“I’m not troubled, not at all.”
He gave her a wry grin. “You may not drown your troubles in spirits like I do, Annie, but I recognize a fellow traveler.”
“Will you stop drinking?”
Gareth towered over her. The cut on his cheek was healing, but he hadn’t shaved again today. Dark bristles edged his jaw, and she held her hands together so she wouldn’t touch them. When he looked down at her like that with those blazing blue eyes, she almost forgot what her true name was.
“I promise I’ll try.”
She allowed herself a small smile. “I guess that’s the best you can do.”
“You’ll have to help me. Keep me busy so I won’t be idle.” Anne flinched as he laid a teasing calloused finger on her cheek. He noticed and dropped his hand to his side.
“I did tell you to do the laundry.”
“So you did. I’ll get right to it once we come home. Now I’ll have to make myself decent so fire and brimstone won’t rain down upon us. Will you be ready to leave in half an hour?”
Anne took a deep breath. “Fifteen minutes.”
“I need a button sewed on my coat. Can you manage that?”
“I-I think so.” She had spent years poking needles through linen, going mad with chain stitches and French knots as she worked on the insipid embroidery which society deemed was so necessary to prove oneself a lady. She’d failed miserably.
The major tugged open a drawer and returned with a bent brass button. “The coat is hanging downstairs in the front hall cupboard under the stairs. Don’t hurry. I have to dress and help Martin with the horses. You do ride?”
One of her greatest pleasures. Something her father had restricted once he knew how much it meant to her. “Yes.”
“I think we still have my mother’s saddle. Her riding habit might be in one of the attic trunks if the moths haven’t dined on it. It would be too long for you, though.”
“I’ll go up and look for it.” She didn’t want to beg a favor from the vicar in her hand-me-down maid’s uniform.
“An hour then for both of us to become presentable. I’ll see you down in the kitchen when you’re ready.”
Anne was grateful for the extra time, as it seemed she would be sewing and altering clothes. She ran up the attic stairs and pushed into the cavernous space, wishing she’d brought a lantern. The grimy windows let very little of the gray winter light through. There were trunks and boxes stacked against the north wall, the dust on the floor around them undisturbed except where she’d stepped the other day in her exploration of the house.
Pinching her nose to stop a sneeze, she was rewarded with victory on the first trunk she threw open. Even in the dimness, the silks and satins and velvets shone. Everything was decades out of date, of course, but a woman who knew what to do with a needle and thread could have a field day. Alas, that was not her talent, but she unfolded a dark green thick wool habit from the middle of the lavender-scented pile and held it up against her. Gareth had overestimated his mother’s height. Anne thought she might get away with simply rolling up the waistband. The jacket and stitched linen blouse seemed a little big, but they would do. A large canvas drawstring bag held a pair of well-worn leather boots, which fit almost perfectly when Anne wiggled into them.
Wasn’t she a shallow creature? She’d worn servant’s clothes for less than two weeks of travel and work, and already she thrilled to exchange them for a dead gentlewoman’s leavings. She’d like to get her hair back to its natural color again as well. That bath tomorrow . . .
She could not think about relaxation when she held the fate of both the major and herself in the palm of her somewhat grubby hand. What could she do to convince Mr. Morgan to cooperate? As a man of the cloth, he had sworn not to lie. Sometimes the Commandments were very inconvenient—Anne was totally disregarding honoring her father’s wishes just now, but was sure God would want her to in this instance.
She clambered down the stairs to her room with her new clothes. It was misting outside, but at least she wouldn’t have to sink in the mud all the way into the village. As she dressed and re-braided her hair, she practiced confessing a brief but accurate summary of the liberties her father had taken with her. She was determined not to cry in the retelling, but would if her tears caused Mr. Morgan to take pity on her and fudge her name.
The spotted glass showed her determined freckled face under Mrs. Ripton-Jones’s green velvet hat. Anne looked entirely respectable and even a little dashing.
The major’s button! She fished it out of the pocket of her discarded apron and hurried down the stairs. He was waiting for her at the kitchen table wearing a fresh shirt, a length of crumpled linen draped over his shoulders. He was hunched over Mrs. Smith’s book, so entranced by whatever receipt he was reading he didn’t even look up.
“I don’t suppose you could play valet? I can’t seem to get my tie right.” His eyes lifted from the page and lit. “Why, Mrs. Mont—Annie—you are a vision.”
Her gaze dropped at the strength of that blue stare. His eyes really were extraordinary. “There’s no need to flatter me.”
“I disagree. If I’m to be your affianced husband, I need to be convincingly smitten.”
Anne pulled the sewing basket from the shelf. “No, you don’t. Your neighbors already know that I’m your housekeeper. They will simply think I trapped you in some way. Go fetch your coat.”
“A honeyed trap indeed,” he said, his lips quirking. He disappeared down the hallway and Anne sank into the rocking chair by the hearth. The threads were a tangle, the needles rusty in their paper packet. Cecily had not been as vigilant with the mending as she had with the pantry.
Gareth returned holding a jacket of dark blue superfine. It was shiny at the elbows and seams. “I’ve nothing better save my uniform, and I’m not going to peacock about in that. When I sold out last year I was relieved I wouldn’t have to wear it.”
“Where were you serving?”
“In India, until my father’s letters became desperate. By the time I got back, he was in way over his head. I should have come home after Waterloo. There might have been a chance to set Ripton Hall to rights if I had.”
That explained the faintly golden skin in the middle of a Welsh winter, and why he was in such desperate financial straits now. Things had been left too long.
“I was home for just three months before I had my accident,” he continued. “Ironic, isn’t it? All the French bayonets and native uprisings didn’t make a dent in my armor, but I was defeated by leaky thatch.”
He didn’t sound as bitter as he had earlier. But in the short time he’d been home, his life had been completely up-ended. His career gone. His love, too. Anne needed to ask him about Bronwen, but would not do so now. She licked a length of navy blue thread and passed it through the needle’s eye. “Give me the jacket, please.”
Her fingers were clumsy and the needle too blunt to poke through the thick wool easily.
“Here.” Gareth rummaged through the basket and handed her a tarnished thimble. It helped some. She would never be an expert needlewoman—she suspected she’d never be an expert on anything domestic no matter how hard she studied Mrs. Smith’s book.
She tied the knot and bit off the end of the thread. “What were you reading?”
“ ‘
An Excellent Way of Washing to Save Soap and Whiten Cloaths
.’ I will need all the help I can get now that you’ve deputized me to do the laundry. This is the most interesting book.”
How very strange it was for them to be sitting in the warm kitchen together talking of household chores. On their way to visit a parson. Anne watched as Gareth shrugged into his coat. “May I fasten your sleeve?”
“If you don’t mind.”
She was nearer to him now than she’d ever been, folding up the cuff to his elbow and securing it with several bent pins. Perhaps when they were done with Mr. Morgan she’d purchase a fresh set of pins at the little shop and announce their intentions to the world.
In a month’s time she would be a married woman. What the future held after that, she didn’t dare to think upon.
He looked down on her, his eyes dark. “A kiss for good luck, Annie?”
A kiss
. He smelled of mint and lime, his dark hair clean and brushed back from his intelligent forehead. He was so very, very handsome, though there was pain still etched in the lines of his face. Anne realized he was as uncertain as she was that this mad scheme might work.
If it did, he would have his home. She would be safe from her father.
But not, perhaps, from Major Ripton-Jones.
She closed her eyes and pursed her lips, expecting a quick peck. That was not what she received.
At first his lips brushed hers so gently she though he was done. Her lashes fluttered open but he was still there, nose to nose with her, his own eyes shut, his brows knit. Anne felt the incremental pressure and his warmth. She trembled and felt his hand steady her shoulder. His mouth was still closed, as was hers, but she swore she tasted something even though her tongue was firmly behind her top teeth. Something dark yet delicious, like Portugal Cake. There had been no plums at breakfast—and she couldn’t bake anyway, she thought stupidly. The man tasted sweet and smelled better, and she lifted her head the better to rise toward him.
She would have to stand on a box if they did this often standing up—he was much too tall for her. Anne needed to take a breath to fill her suddenly constricted lungs—she felt light-headed. Instead of using the perfectly good nostrils God gave her somehow her lips parted for air, and that was all Major Ripton-Jones needed.
She had inadvertently invited him in, but he was still polite, his tongue hesitant, respectful. Anne had never been kissed like this by any of the men she’d used to toss her honor away. Major Ripton-Jones would not want to kiss her if he knew about them. Even if she never spoke of her father, her reputation was ruined—she’d eloped, committed theft and mischief, done everything she could possibly think of to shake herself loose from the paternal bondage. If she somehow helped the major prove his innocence, he’d still be a laughingstock for marrying her. How could she help him improve his standing in the community if people learned she was Imaculata Egremont? Everyone thought the worst of her, and rightfully so.
All the more reason for her to leave him once they were married. People would understand he’d been tricked. He’d have his money and she’d have her freedom.