Eloisa James - Kiss Me Annabel

‘No one seems to know much about the man,’ Griselda said. ‘Lady Ogilby told me that she had it from Mrs Mufford that he’s poor as a church mouse and came to London specifically to find a dowried bride.’

‘But didn’t Mrs Mufford spread that rumour about Clementina Lyffe running off with a footman?’

‘True,’ Griselda said. ‘And yet Clementina is happily married to her viscount and shows no propensity whatsoever to court the household staff. Lady Blechschmidt generally can scent a fortune hunter at fifty yards, and there was no sign of Ardmore at her soirée last night, which suggests he was not invited. I must ask her if she has any pertinent information.’

‘His absence from that particular event may simply indicate an intolerance for boredom,’ Annabel remarked.

‘Tush!’ Griselda said, laughing. ‘You know Lady Blechschmidt is a great acquaintance of mine. I must say, it is unusual for there to be such mystery about a man; if he were English we would know everything from his birth weight to his yearly income. Did you ever meet him when you lived in Scotland?’

‘Never. But Mrs Mufford’s speculation about his reasons for coming to London is likely true.’ Many a Scottish nobleman hung around her father’s stables, and they were all as empty in the pocket as her own viscount of a father. In fact, it was practically a requirement of nationality. One either remained poor or married a rich Englishman – as Imogen had done, as Tess had done and as she herself meant to do.

‘Ardmore doesn’t look the sort to be fooled by your sister,’ Griselda said.

Annabel hoped she was right. There was a brittleness behind Imogen’s artful exposure of her bosom that had little to do with desire.

Griselda rose. ‘Imogen must find her own way through her grief,’ she said. ‘There are women who have a hard time of it, and I’m afraid she’s one of them.’

Their eldest sister, Tess, kept saying that Imogen had to live her own life. And so had Annabel.

For a moment a smile touched Annabel’s lips. The only dowry she had was a horse, so she and the Scotsman were really two of a kind.

Scottish pennies, as it were.

Lady Feddrington was in the grip of a passion for all things Egyptian, and since she had the means to indulge every whim, her ballroom resembled nothing so much as a storage house kept by tomb raiders. Flanking the large doors at one end were twenty-foot-high statues of some sort of a dog-human. Apparently they originally stood at the doors of an Egyptian temple.

‘At first I wasn’t certain that I quite liked them. Their expressions are not… nice ,’ Lady Feddrington had told Annabel. ‘But now I’ve named them Humpty and Dumpty. I think of them rather like superior servants: so silent, and you can tell in a glance that they won’t drink to excess.’ She had giggled; Lady Feddrington was a rather silly woman.

But Annabel had to admit that from the vantage point of the other side of the room, Humpty and Dumpty looked magnificent. They gazed down on the dancers milling around their ankles with expressions that made the idea that they were servants laughable.

She pulled a gauzy piece of nothingness around her shoulders. It was pale gold, to match her dress, and embroidered with a curling series of ferns. Gold on gold and worth every penny. She threw a glance at those imposing Egyptian statues again. Surely they should be in a museum? They made the fluttering crowds around them look dissolute.

‘Anubis, god of the dead,’ a deep voice said. ‘Not the most propitious guardian for an occasion such as this.’

Even after having met him for only a moment, she knew Ardmore’s voice. Well, why shouldn’t she? She had grown up surrounded by that soft Scottish burr, though their father threatened to disown herself and her sisters if they used it. ‘They look like gods,’ she said. ‘Have you travelled to Egypt, my lord?’

‘Alas, no.’

She shouldn’t have even asked. She, if anyone, knew the life of an impoverished Scottish nobleman all too well. It involved hours spent trying to eke a living from tenants battered by cold and hunger, not pleasure trips up the Nile River.

He slipped a hand under her arm. ‘May I ask you to dance, or should I request the pleasure from your chaperone?’

She smiled up at him, one of her rarer smiles that didn’t bother to seduce, but just expressed companionship. ‘Neither is necessary,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’m sure you can find someone more appropriate to dance with.’

He blinked at her, looking more like a burly labourer than an earl. She’d come to know quite a lot about earls – aye, and dukes and other lords too. Their chaperone, Lady Griselda, considered it her duty to point out every man within eyesight who carried a title. Mayne, Griselda’s brother, was a typical English lord: sleek and faintly dangerous, with slender fingers and exquisite manners. His hair fell in ordered waves that shone in the light, and he smelled as good as she herself did.

But this Scottish earl was another story. The earl’s red-brown hair fell in thick rumpled curls down his neck. His eyes were a clear green, lined with long lashes, and the out-of-doors sense he had about him translated into a kind of raw sensuality. While Mayne wore velvet and silk, Ardmore was plainly dressed in a costume of black. Black with a touch of white at the throat. No wonder Imogen thought he would complement her mourning attire.

‘Why do you refuse me?’ he asked, sounding surprised.

‘Because I grew up with lads like yourself,’ she said, letting a trace of a Scottish accent slip into her voice. Lad wasn’t the right word, not for this huge northerner who was so clearly a man, but that was the sense she meant. He could be a friend, but never a suitor. Although she could hardly explain to him that she meant to marry someone rich.

‘So you’ve taken a vow not to dance with anyone from your own homeland?’ he asked.

‘Something like that,’ she said. ‘But I could introduce you to a proper young lady, if you wish.’ She knew quite a few debutantes endowed with more-than-respectable dowries.

‘Does that mean that you would decline to marry me as well?’ he asked, a curious little smile playing around his mouth. ‘I would be happy to ask for your hand, if that would mean we could dance together.’

She grinned at his foolishness. ‘You’ll never find a bride if you go about behaving in such a way,’ she told him. ‘You must take your pursuit more seriously.’

‘I do take it seriously.’ He leaned against the wall and looked down at her so intently that her skin prickled. ‘Would you marry me, even if you won’t dance with me?’

You couldn’t help but like him. His eyes were as green as the ocean. ‘I certainly will not marry you,’ she said.

‘Ah,’ he said, sounding not terribly disappointed.

‘You cannot ask women to marry you whom you barely know,’ she added.

He didn’t seem to realise that it wasn’t entirely polite to lean against the wall in a lady’s presence, nor to watch her with lazy appreciation. Annabel felt a flash of sympathy. He would never be able to catch a rich bride at this rate! She should help him, if only because he was her countryman.

‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘Compatibility is not something one discovers after five encounters rather than one. One must make an educated guess.’

‘That’s just it: you know nothing of me!’

‘Not so,’ he said promptly. ‘Number one, you’re Scottish. Number two, you’re Scottish. And number three –’

‘I can guess,’ she said.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he finished, a fleeting smile crossing his face.

He had his arms crossed over his chest now and was smiling down at her like a great giant.