Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
“ I think we can count tonight a success,” Frederick said much later that night, as the coach set off on its return to Heartwick Hall. “At least four of the men you met tonight have made further inquiries about you with me or another friend. I observed several of them watching you throughout the ball.”
Despite this assertion of their success, Frederick found that he did not feel the unalloyed triumph it should surely merit. Something was gnawing at him.
“That’s good,” Annabelle yawned. “Isn’t it?”
“You’ve made only the first step,” he cautioned. “Now we must plan the next steps. What did you think of them all?”
“They seemed nice,” she answered rather dutifully. “Especially Lord Easterly.”
“Nice,” Frederick said the word with a laugh that came out almost scornful despite his intention to be only civil and neutral. “Yes, I suppose he is. Lord Easterly is said by all the mamas to be a very nice young man. But forget him. Easterly was only your practice target. What about Oswald Quince? He’s a man of more substance and seemed to take to you. You did well to keep his attention for so long.”
He looked keenly at Annabelle’s face for some reaction. She had indeed managed several long conversations with Lord Darrington and danced with him twice. If there had been any man who mattered tonight, it had been Quince.
While Frederick had disrupted other men’s attempts to partner Annabelle on the dance floor in order to raise their interest for future events, Darrington had given him no chance. Annabelle had returned to Frederick’s side laughing and jolly after each dance. Yes, there was promise in that connection.
Now, as she sought to answer his question, Annabelle looked proud at the compliment Frederick had just given her, if unsure of her reply.
“It was not so hard to keep Lord Darrington’s attention as I thought it might be. He actually seemed… interested in me. I don’t know how I did it but he seemed to like me as a person and to want to talk to me.”
Despite an initial sense of physical and mental weariness as they had entered the carriage after the ball, Frederick could not now help smiling back at Annabelle. She was so pleased with herself for making this new acquaintance and putting her new skills into action.
“Yes, no one could doubt his interest in you. But what did you really think of him, as a man?” he followed up.
“He is one of the most amiable men I’ve met,” Annabelle said artlessly. “Lord Darrington likes gossip, watching the people of the ton and dancing, just like me. His friend Captain Rawlings teases him about his gossiping, just as you tease me.”
Frederick laughed aloud and shook his head at such childish trivia. Truly Annabelle was not a woman of the world.
“Everyone knows that Oswald Quince is a most amiable man, Annabelle. I was asking for your view of him as a potential match. Could you see him as your husband? He has a large fortune, good family and excellent manners. Stephen could not object to such a prospect.”
These words were unexpectedly difficult to speak. Frederick liked Oswald Quince personally and felt sure that he would treat any wife kindly and fairly, as he treated all his friends and deserving acquaintances. Still, the idea of him marrying Annabelle did not seem to Frederick the glowing prospect he had expected it to be. He supposed he must just be tired.
“As a match…” Annabelle said slowly, thinking and frowning before shrugging her shoulders, her unfastened cloak falling back onto the seat behind her. “I don’t really know how a good match should feel. I liked him but when we danced, I didn’t feel like…”
She stopped here and shook her head, some of her long red-gold ringlets fallen now from their loosened pins and trailing over the pale expanse of her quite magnificent décolletage . While the light from the carriage lamps was dim, Frederick could tell from her body language and long familiarity that Annabelle was blushing at her own thoughts.
Dancing with Oswald Quince didn’t feel like what? Like dancing with Frederick..? Annabelle rarely danced with anyone else either tonight or in previous seasons. She could only be thinking of him and Frederick felt a deep involuntary response to this idea. It was something he knew he should not and could not act on. He must distract himself.
Knocking on the roof of the carriage, he stuck his head out of the window.
“Take the longer route back,” he ordered the coachman. "We wish to look at the moon.”
It was indeed a beautiful night with a high waxing crescent moon and galaxies of visible stars clustered about the deep blue sky. Yes, they would take the long route home and look at the night sky together. That was both pleasant and safe, was it not? He rolled down the glass of the window, letting the June breeze into the coach.
“Isn’t it late for a drive?” Annabelle asked Frederick doubtfully as he settled back into the seat. “It’s well after midnight."
“Well, I did promise that we’d be spending our nights together, didn’t I?” he reminded her with a grin that made her smile bashfully once again.
“When you do find a suitor,” continued Frederick, “whether Oswald Quince or another man, you may well go out driving with him in the evening. Let us practice that.”
“Stephen always makes me take Myrtle in my carriage unless I am with another lady,” Annabelle observed. “He says that appearances are as important as realities.”
“Luckily for you, Stephen is not here and I shall not require you to take Myrtle out driving on any romantic trysts,” Frederick laughed. “You want to keep your suitor and bring him to a proposal, not frighten him away.”
“I suppose so,” agreed Annabelle, returning his smile. “Myrtle can be rather disapproving, although not quite so much as Stephen.”
“Forget them both for now,” he told her decidedly. “Look at that moon instead.”
“It is so very bright tonight, isn't it?” Annabelle remarked, leaning closer to the window, with apparently no consciousness of how her breasts moved with her in that revealing gold and blue gown.
Frederick shifted his eyes very deliberately to the night sky and away from the contours of Annabelle’s figure opposite him in the coach.
“Soft, pale and glowing,” he murmured to himself as he regarded the luminous crescent hanging above them. “I have rarely seen anything so lovely.”
“It feels like you could almost reach out and touch it, doesn’t it?” said Annabelle wonderingly, reaching her hand out of the carriage in a mirror image of her words.
“It does,” Frederick agreed, his eyes drawn inexorably back to his present companion, following the arc of the crescent moon down her small graceful hands and back along the pale inviting curve of her arm.
Even more of her hair had descended now, giving Annabelle a distinctly tousled look. The bosom on which it rested, rising and falling lightly with her breath, looked as though it was mere inches from escaping Madame Deveaux’s carefully constructed bodice. With his experienced eyes, Frederick knew how little effort it would take to free those tempting globes from their silken prison and caress them in his hands.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Annabelle asked him, breaking in on his unintended erotic reverie.
Frederick started at this blunt but innocent question and covered himself quickly.
“Why not? Surely any suitor is bound to look upon a beautiful woman in so fine a dress. If you intend to encourage Oswald, or some other man, ask a different kind of question. Ask whether they find you pleasing, for example, or what is in their thoughts.”
“Is that not too forward?” she queried uncertainly.
“Not if you wish to encourage him,” Frederick assured her. “Then you should be a little forward. How else will an honorable man know that his attentions are welcomed? He might interpret too much modesty as disinterest.”
“Oh, I had not thought of that,” she remarked, before glancing once more at the moon as though gathering her thoughts, and then back at Frederick.
“What were you thinking of when you looked at me, Frederick?” Annabelle said very softly. “Is there something in the moon that made you think of me?”
“Yes,” he breathed, the words rising of their own accord from the depths of his mind. “Your skin is as luminous as moonlight.”
His hand had taken one of hers, seemingly of its own volition and Frederick became conscious of how close their heads now were at the carriage window. A night-time drive had never really been a safe distraction and part of him had wanted it anyway, thirsting to reach this moment.
Wide and wondering, Annabelle’s blue eyes fixed on Frederick. If he leaned forward a little and captured her lips with his own, he knew her eyes would close and she would make the same little sounds of startled pleasure as when he had kissed her that night in the drawing room.
Frederick’s self-control was ebbing, sapped by the moonlight and Annabelle’s inner radiance. Stephen, Myrtle and the mores of the ton all seemed to him as distant as the stars. There was only Annabelle and his hunger to embrace her again, to cover her with kisses and fill his eyes and hands with the magnificence of her physical form.
Yielding to instinct, Frederick inclined his head but before their lips could touch, the carriage jolted slightly and came to a halt. Perceiving that they were actually now outside Heartwick Hall, they both swiftly drew back from one another, Annabelle busying herself in putting on her cloak and Frederick in fastening his coat.
By the time the coachman opened the door, they both appeared entirely calm and composed. Annabelle’s face under the hood of her cloak was inscrutable and still, making him wonder if she even realized how close she had just come to semi-ravishment at his hands.
Then after he had jumped down and offered his arm to descend, Annabelle hesitated and looked at him with wary eye before she lightly laid her hand on his forearm.
She evidently knew that something had just passed between them, even if she could not say what. Frederick himself knew that he would have to tread even more carefully from now on. They were on very, very thin ice and if it broke there was no hope of rescue.