The Trouble with Anna

Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

A LL THROUGHOUT THE NIGHT, AS bottles of the finest champagne were trotted up from the cellar, as Charlotte shrieked for joy and the Dowager enveloped him in hugs, as the maids and footmen clinked their glasses for the servants’ toast, Julian was conscious of a cold, creeping feeling. It was more insinuating than dread, icier than anger, and carried the distinct spike of acid.

In a lesser man, he might have called it panic.

Even as he smiled and accepted the good wishes frothing up from all sides, even as Charlotte got quite drunk and began to claim all credit, the odd feeling grew.

Married.

To Lady Anna Reston.

When had one spiky little woman become so necessary to him?

Julian unconsciously reached over to hold her elbow, just as he had earlier placed a hand on the small of her back, actions he hadn’t noticed until he saw Charlotte’s smug eyes tracking him. He yanked his hand away and Anna looked up swiftly, pale under all the attention.

His chest clenched at her obvious discomfort, just as it had when she had confronted him in the study, holding herself straight throughout her brutal recitation. It was all he could do not to gallop back to Chatham and raze the Viscount’s gravestone.

Anna stole another look at him, a fast and frankly worried peep under the screen of her lashes, and when he caught her, she whipped her head away. He wanted to clear the room, bring the champagne coupes crashing to the floor and press her back against the table until he’d kissed some color into her face. He wanted to push her up against a wall, hitch her leg up around his hip, and tease her mouth into a smile.

Julian’s head began to throb. He hadn’t asked for any of this, not for a wife and certainly not one who had the power to reach into his chest, wrap her hand around his heart, and squeeze.

What the hell was he going to do with her now that he had her?

Adore her? called an embarrassingly needy voice inside.

He ignored it, trying to imagine Anna taking her place alongside the ladies of London, standing out like a scratchy bolt of wool next to silk. A wall of anger rose up in him at the thought of the tricky little barbs that would be fired Anna’s way, all the people he’d have to murder because of them.

Charlotte, exhausted at last, collapsed backward onto the settee with a gusty “Whew!”

In the curve where Anna’s neck met her shoulder, he saw a small scrape of red from the rasp of his jaw. He wanted to shove Charlotte off the settee, pull Anna down on it, and kiss his way down to that scrape and then past it to the swell of her small, firm breasts, until her dark eyes went dreamy.

His eyebrows snapped together. He’d had plenty of sex, damn it, and he liked it best when it wasn’t made sticky by emotion. Yet it was all he could do not to get Anna against the nearest available surface and complicate a situation already as volatile as lightning.

Julian rose abruptly to his feet and found himself the focus of three sets of eyes. “I regret I have a very early start tomorrow and must bid you good evening.” He gave a short, sharp bow, and strode from the room, conscious of Anna’s startled gaze on his back.

Something slithery coiled tight inside him.

That night in his chambers at Ramsay House, memories landed heavy on Julian’s chest. They fell one by one, like shovels of dirt onto his coffin. He saw his father, drunk and darkening into anger. He saw young Charlotte clinging to Gran’s skirts, and Charlotte’s mother with hectic eyes and heightened color.

It’s all in the past , he yelled at himself as he twisted and turned. You’re in control now. You’ve chosen the kind of earl you want to be.

Except he didn’t feel in control, not lately.

Julian’s mood was no less grim the next morning. He rose as first light crept over the horizon and dressed in near darkness without bothering to ring for his valet. The need to leave beat in his ears like a drum.

His traveling carriage was rolling toward the Bath Road when Julian realized he’d left a sheaf of documents at the Dowager’s. He swore and rapped on the ceiling, and the carriage turned around.

A bleary-eyed Levy opened the door at the townhouse. “My lord! The young ladies—”

“Are still in bed, I presume.”

“No, my lord—”

But Julian wasn’t listening. He stalked past the butler and down the long corridor toward the Dowager’s study. As he opened the door, Charlotte poked her head out from the turn at the end of the hallway, one drowsy eye looking out at him from behind a mess of curls.

“Julian, is that you? We thought you’d be halfway to Bristol by now.”

“What do you want?”

“Such a bear this morning!” She yawned and it turned into a wide, happy smile. “Congratulations again! Hasn’t it all worked out marvelously?”

“Marvelously?” Julian’s head ached so badly that it threatened to explode. “Yes, how marvelous that the next Countess Ramsay is a woman more comfortable with horses than people, who prickles up at the smallest thing and spends half her time yelling at me. How thrilled I am not to choose my own wife!”

Charlotte went white and began frantically shaking her head, but it was the suck of breath from behind her that caught Julian’s attention. He saw a flare of dark green and then the sound of footsteps as someone ran pell-mell down the hall.

Julian’s lungs seized and his heart stopped pumping, but his brain worked all too well.

Dark green, the color of Anna’s favorite riding habit.

No, no, NO!

“Anna!” Julian broke into a run. “For god’s sake, Anna, wait!”

She didn’t stop and he didn’t expect her to. He tore down the corridor and around the turn, reaching the back terrace as she raced down the stairs into the garden, her head a dark pearl below him.

“Anna, goddamn it, wait!” he shouted as she sprinted across the lawn.

He pounded after her, but she reached the little wooden door in the brick wall and was through to the mews behind the Dowager’s townhouse.

“Anna! Stop!”

She was fast but he was faster. She made it halfway to the stables before his hand caught her wrist and he pulled her to a grinding halt.

“What?” she shot at him. “Did you have something else to add to your list? Prickly, yelling—did you miss one? Do go on! Though I must warn you, I value your words very little now I know you’re a liar .”

“I’m a fool! I don’t know what I said. I’ve been an idiot ever since I met you.”

“Oh! So I’m to doubt the evidence of my own ears? I’m to trust you?” The broken sound she made stabbed him. “I tried that just last night. Unhand me!”

She twisted her arm viciously, but he held firm.

“You must listen!”

“I should have listened to my own doubts! I should never have believed you when you said—” Her voice cracked. “I can’t stand that I was foolish enough to think we could be friends .”

“You’ll be my wife!”

Her eyes jerked to his. “I wouldn’t have you if you were the last man alive. Let me go!”

His grip tightened. “You’re not fit to ride in this state.”

“I said let me go !”

He didn’t notice the crop she was carrying until it came down across his hand. Anna shot away and ran for Sally, held saddled and ready by a stableboy whose eyes were as big as wheels of cheese.

Even as Julian lunged for the reins, she was up in the saddle and off, a dark arrow flying away from him.

“Anna!” he bellowed. “Damn it!”

Julian turned to the stableboy, who dropped his gaze at once. “Get me a mount!”

“M-my lord?” the stableboy managed.

“I want a horse, blast it!”

“Yes, my lord. What shall I tell your coachman?”

Julian swore long and hard, and the stableboy’s eyes grew bigger.

He’d forgotten about his carriage. He’d forgotten about the weight of responsibilities calling him to Bristol.

Julian wanted something heavy to throw at the brick wall behind him. Anna was prickly, yelling—everything he said—and yet it was all he could do not to sweep her into his arms. He felt her honor and bravery like a pain in his chest, as if something creaky there were expanding beyond its limits.

How could he make her understand?

Damn it, I didn’t ask for any of this!

Neither did she , spat his conscience.

“Get word to my coachman. I leave for Bristol in ten minutes.”

Julian turned on his heel and strode back to the house and into the Dowager’s study. There was no time to make things right, not when they were both so raw and he was needed elsewhere.

There were, however, three letters he could write.

The first was to his man of business in London. Anna had thrown his proposal back in his teeth, but she was bound to him as firmly as if they’d said their vows in church already. He’d post a second notice of their engagement in the Times , to set the record straight for her and everybody else.

The next letter was addressed to Lord Petersham, who had recently returned to London from Austria with a singular cargo in his possession. It had occurred to Julian one morning back at Chatham with the horses, his eyes following Anna as she and Archer skimmed over the track, that Anna wouldn’t want the traditional set of jewels on her wedding day. He’d buy her Lord Petersham’s prize instead, though it would cost him more than any rope of diamonds.

Julian scratched down the last lines of his revised instructions, ignoring the hollow in his stomach that the present he’d planned so carefully would come instead to Anna as a bribe. He’d pictured her face when she saw it, the startled intake of breath and furtive glance at him. He would have scooped her into his arms, no matter who was watching. He wouldn’t have been able to help himself.

She despises you now, for good reason. No present will change that.

His face shuttered and he picked up a piece of paper for his final letter, the hardest to write. He addressed it first to Anna, but balled it up as soon as his quill scratched out her name. She’d tear up a letter from him rather than read it, especially one filled with commands. The same with Charlotte. He’d get no help from his sister now.

In the end, as the minutes ticked by, he wrote to his grandmother instead.

When the letters were dusted and sealed, Julian climbed into the traveling carriage and rapped twice on the ceiling.

Regret sat heavy in his stomach, like a cannonball.

With a slight sway, the carriage started to move, taking him away from Mayfair, away from London.

Away from his fiancée, who hated him.