The Raven Prince (28 page)

Anna dragged the first batch into the garden and let them flop down in the muddy path. She straightened and glanced around in search of a likely spot to plant them. The garden had a pattern once upon a time, but now it was almost impossible to discern what it had been. She shrugged and decided to divide the plants evenly between the four main flower beds. She picked up her shovel and began hacking through the tangled growth in the first bed.

A
NNA WAS IN
the garden when Edward found her that afternoon. He was irritable. He’d been searching for her some fifteen minutes, ever since Hopple had informed him that she was at the Abbey. Really, he shouldn’t have sought her out at all; he’d made just that resolution this morning. But something inside him seemed constitutionally incapable of keeping away from his secretary when he knew her to be nearby. So he was frowning at his own lack of fortitude when he spotted her. Even then he paused by the garden door to admire the picture she made. She had dropped to her knees in the dirt to plant a rose. Her head was uncovered, and her hair was coming down from the knot at the nape of her neck. In the bright afternoon sunlight, the brown locks gleamed gold and auburn.

Edward felt a tightening in his chest. He rather thought it might be fear. He scowled and paced down the path. Fear was not an emotion that a strong man such as himself should feel when confronting a meek little widow, he was sure.

Anna caught sight of him. “My lord.” She brushed the hair from her brow, leaving a smear of dirt behind. “I thought I would plant your roses before they died.”

“So I see.”

She gave him an odd look but evidently decided to make nothing of his strange mood. “I’ll plant some in each bed since the garden is laid out in such symmetrical lines. Later, if you wish, we could surround them with lavender. Mrs. Fairchild has some lovely lavender plants by her back walk, and I know she would be pleased to let me take some cuttings for your gardens.”

“Hmm.”

Anna stopped her monologue to brush away her hair again, further smearing the dirt on her forehead. “Bother. I forgot to bring the watering can.”

She frowned and started to climb to her feet, but he forestalled her. “Stay there. I can fetch the water for you.”

Edward ignored her aborted protest and strode back up the path. He reached the garden door, but something made him hesitate. Forever after, he would ponder what impulse made him pause. He turned and looked back at her, still kneeling by the rosebush. She was packing the earth around it. While he watched, Anna raised her hand and with her little finger hooked back a lock of hair behind her ear.

He froze.

All sound stopped for a terrible, timeless minute, as his world shuddered and toppled around him. Three voices whispered, murmured, babbled in his ear and then coalesced into coherent language:

Hopple by the ditch:
I thought when that dog went missing for several days, we were well rid of it.

Vicar Jones at Mrs. Clearwater’s soiree:
I wondered if she’d bought a new dress on her trip.

And Hopple again just today:
Mrs. Wren didn’t come to work whilst you were in London.

A scarlet haze obscured his vision.

When it cleared, he was almost upon Anna and knew that he had started for her even before the voices had become understandable. She was still bent beside the rosebush, unaware of the approaching storm until he stood over her and she glanced up.

He must have worn the knowledge of her deceit on his face because Anna’s smile died before it had fully formed.

Chapter Sixteen

Cautiously, Aurea lit the candle and turned to hold it high over her lover’s form. Her breath caught, her eyes widened, and she gave a start. A very small start, but enough of one to send a drop of hot wax spilling over the lip of the candle and onto the shoulder of the man who lay beside her. For it was a man—not monster or beast—but a man with smooth, white skin; long, strong limbs; and black, black hair. He opened his eyes, and Aurea saw that they, too, were black. A piercing, intelligent black that, somehow, was familiar. On his chest glinted a pendant.

It was in the shape of a small, perfect crown inlaid with glowing rubies. . . .

—from
The Raven Prince

Anna was debating whether or not she’d set the rosebush at the right depth in the hole when a shadow fell across her. She glanced up. Edward stood over her. Her first thought was that he had returned too soon to have brought the watering can.

And then she saw his expression.

His lips were drawn back in a rictus of rage, and his eyes burned like black holes in his face. In that moment, she felt an awful premonition that he’d somehow found out. In the seconds before he spoke, she tried to rally, to reassure herself that there was no possible way he could have discovered her secret.

His words killed all hope.

“You.” She didn’t recognize his voice, it was so low and terrible. “You were there at the whorehouse.”

She’d never been good at lying. “What?”

He squeezed his eyes shut as if at a bright light. “You were there. You waited for me like a female spider, and I fell neatly into your web.”

Dear Lord, this was even worse than she had imagined. He thought she’d done it for some kind of sick revenge or joke. “I didn’t—”

His eyes snapped open, and she threw up a hand to ward off the hell she saw in them. “You didn’t what? Didn’t travel to London, didn’t go to Aphrodite’s Grotto?”

Her eyes widened, and she started to rise, but he was already on her. He grasped her by the shoulders and lifted her easily, effortlessly, as if she weighed no more than thistledown. He was so strong! Why had she never before realized how much stronger the male was in relation to the female? She felt like a butterfly seized by a great black bird. He swung her body against the nearby brick wall and pinned her there. He lowered his face to hers until their noses nearly touched, and he could surely see his own reflection in her wide, frightened eyes.

“You waited there, wearing nothing but a bit of lace.” His words washed over her face in a hot, intimate breath. “And when I came, you flaunted yourself, offered yourself, and I fucked you until I couldn’t see straight.”

Anna felt each puff of his exhalation against her own lips. She flinched at the obscenity. She wanted to deny it, to say that it did not describe the sublime sweetness they’d discovered together in London, but the words caught in her throat.

“I was actually worried that contact with the prostitute you sheltered would ruin your good name. What a fool you made me. How could you hold back your laughter when I begged your pardon for kissing you?” His hands flexed on her shoulders. “All this time I’ve been restraining myself because I thought you were a respectable lady. All this time when you only wanted
this.
”

He swooped in then and devoured her mouth with his own, ravishing her softness, making no allowances for her smaller size, for her femininity. His lips crushed hers against her teeth. She moaned, whether in pain or desire, she could not tell. He thrust his tongue into the cavern of her mouth without preamble or warning, as if he had every right.

“You should have told me that this was what you wanted.” He raised his head to gasp. “I would’ve obliged you.”

She seemed incapable of coherent thought, let alone speech.

“You had only to say the word and I could have taken you on my desk in the library, in the carriage with John Coachman up front, or even here in the garden.”

She tried to form words through the fog of her confusion. “No, I—”

“God knows I’ve been hard for days—
weeks
—around you,” he ground out. “I could’ve tumbled you at any time. Or can’t you admit that you want to bed a man whose face looks like mine?”

She tried to shake her head, but it fell helplessly as he bent her back over his arm. His other hand dropped to her hips and jerked them into his own. The unyielding hardness of his erection pressed against her soft belly.

“
This
is what you crave. What you traveled all the way to London for,” he whispered against her mouth.

She moaned in denial even as her hips arched into his.

He stilled her movement with an iron grip and tore his mouth away from hers. But almost as if he couldn’t leave the lure of her skin, he returned. His mouth trailed across her face to catch an earlobe between his teeth.

“Why?” His question sighed into her ear. “Why, why, why? Why did you lie to me?”

She tried again to shake her head.

He punished her with a sharp nip. “Was it a jest? Did you find it amusing to lay with me one night and then play the virtuous widow the next? Or was it a perverse need? Some women find the thought of bedding a pox-scarred man stimulating.”

She jerked her head violently then, despite the pain when his teeth scraped across her ear. She couldn’t—
could not
—let him think that. “Please, you must know—”

He turned his head. She tried to face him, and he did the most terrifying thing yet.

He let her go.

“Edward!
Edward!
For God’s sake, please listen to me!” Strange that this was the first time she had called him by his Christian name.

He strode down the garden path. She ran after him, her eyes blinded by tears, and tripped over a loose brick.

He stopped at the sound of her fall, his back still to her. “Such tears, Anna. Can you produce them at will like the crocodile?” And then, so softly she might have imagined it, “Were there other men?”

He walked away.

She watched as he disappeared through the gate. Her chest felt tight. She thought vaguely that perhaps she’d hurt herself in the fall. But then she heard a guttural, rasping sound, and a cold little part of her brain took note of what a strange noise her crying made.

How swift, how harsh was the punishment dealt for stepping outside her staid widow’s life. All the lessons and warnings, spoken and unspoken, that she’d been taught growing up had, in fact, come true. Although, she supposed her punishment wasn’t that envisioned by the moralizers of Little Battleford. No, her fate was far worse than exposure and censure. Her punishment was Edward’s hatred. That and the knowledge that she had never gone to London merely for the sex. All along it had been to be with him, Edward. It was the man she’d craved, not the physical act. It seemed she had been lying to herself just as much as she’d lied to him. How ironic to have finally tumbled to that realization now when all was ashes around her.

Anna didn’t know how long she lay there, her old brown dress growing damp from the overturned dirt. When her sobs finally died away, the afternoon sky had become overcast. She pushed herself up with both arms to a kneeling position and from there lurched to her feet. She wavered, but caught herself, one hand holding the garden wall for support. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. Then she picked up the shovel.

Soon she would have to go home and tell Mother Wren that she no longer had a job. She would face a lonely bed tonight and a thousand nights after for the rest of her life.

But for now, she’d simply plant roses.

F
ELICITY PLACED A
cloth dampened with violet water on her forehead. She’d retired to the little morning room, a place that usually brought her quite a bit of satisfaction, especially when she thought about how much it had cost to refurbish. The price of the canary-colored damask settee alone would have fed and clothed the Wren household for five years. But at the moment, her head was simply killing her.

Matters were
not
going well.

Reginald was moping about, moaning that his prize mare had miscarried. Chilly had gone back to London in a sulk because she wouldn’t tell him about Anna and the earl. And that same earl had been annoyingly obtuse at the soiree. Granted, most men in her experience were slow to one degree or another, but she wouldn’t have guessed Lord Swartingham was so thickheaded. The man had seemed not to know what she hinted at. How was she going to convince him to keep Anna quiet if he was too dim to realize he was being blackmailed?

Felicity winced.

Not blackmail. That sounded too gauche. Incentive. That was better. Lord Swartingham had an
incentive
to stop Anna from blathering Felicity’s past peccadilloes all over the village.