Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
“Don’t write to him.” Annabelle had Lady Rosenhall’s wrist before the older woman had crossed half the entrance hall of Fairmont House. “Please. Give me until morning, at least, to think what’s to be done.”
“There is nothing left to think on, Annabelle, and I have already written it.” Lady Rosenhall did not slow.
A footman took her cloak without being asked; she handed it off without looking at him, her attention fixed somewhere past Annabelle’s shoulder, on the staircase, on the rest of the night she had already decided how to spend.
“The letter went out by express an hour ago, while you were still upstairs having your hair put right. It will reach Fairmont Hall tomorrow.”
“You wrote it before we’d even left Lord Harcroft’s.” Annabelle heard her own voice come out thin and hated it. “Before you’d so much as asked me what I wished.”
“I did not require your wishes to know what your brother is owed.” Lady Rosenhall finally turned, and the candlelight from the wall sconce found every line in her face that the evening had put there.
“He left you in my keeping, Annabelle. Not in your own. That was the arrangement he made with me, and I intend to honor it whether or not it is convenient to you tonight.”
“Mama.” Helena had come up behind them, still in her gloves, her bonnet ribbons untied and trailing. “You might at least have waited. Given Annabelle the chance to write to him herself, in her own words, rather than have him learn it from a stranger’s hand on the mail coach.”
“My hand is not a stranger’s. He has known my hand since he was a boy in short coats.
” Lady Rosenhall’s voice gentled by exactly enough to show Helena she had heard her, and no further.
“I will not apologize for doing the thing I was brought into this house to do. If I had waited for permission from either of you, I should have waited until it no longer mattered, and that is precisely how reputations finish themselves, my dears—by women who meant to act tomorrow.”
She went up the stairs without another word, one hand on the rail, her back straighter than Annabelle had seen it all evening.
Helena watched her go, then looked at Annabelle, and didn’t say anything at all for a moment, which was somehow worse than if she had.
“Come and sit,” she said instead, and steered Annabelle by the elbow into the small parlor off the hall, the one with the good fire and the worn cushions, because the formal drawing room would have meant facing a dozen society portraits and Annabelle did not think she could bear being looked at by anyone tonight, painted or otherwise.
Newton was curled on the window seat when they came in, and he opened one eye, judged the hour and the company unworthy of further attention, and went back to sleep.
Annabelle sat beside him anyway and put a hand on his flank, and the cat’s small, steady breathing under her palm was the only thing in the room that felt unchanged.
“He won’t marry me,” she said. “You heard him say it yourself, in the garden. And now Lucien will have it from Lady Rosenhall before he has it from me, and he will come back from Fairmont believing the worst of all of it, and there is no version of what happens next that does not end with him calling out a duke.”
She pressed her palm harder against Newton’s side until the cat shifted, unimpressed, and resettled.
“I have ruined every single one of us in one evening. You, for being seen leaving with me. Lady Rosenhall, for failing to prevent it. Lucien, who will be made to defend a sister who didn’t ask to be defended and won’t thank him for trying.”
Her throat had gone tight, and she made herself say the rest of it anyway, because saying it seemed better than letting it sit unsaid in her chest.
“I was an idiot. I am an idiot. What have I done, Helena?”
“Darling,” Helena said, settling beside her, taking Annabelle’s free hand in both of hers. “I don’t think you committed the crime my mother is making it out to be.” She squeezed once, firm. “And you have not ruined me.”
“You were the one who came looking for me.”
Helena’s mouth pulled into something that wasn’t quite a smile, more an attempt at one for Annabelle’s benefit than her own. “We are a fine pair of fools, then, the two of us. At least we’ll have ruined ourselves together.”
Annabelle laughed, short and without much humor in it, but it was something, and Helena’s hand stayed wrapped around hers, warm, while the fire worked through a log. Newton’s purring started up beneath her other palm, low and constant, indifferent to the wreck of the evening around him.
For a few minutes, Annabelle let her head tip back against the cushion and watched the firelight move across the ceiling, and tried to imagine her brother’s face when he opened that letter.
She could not finish the thought before it became unbearable.
The knock at the front door came just past midnight, three sharp raps that carried clean through the closed parlor door.
Annabelle was on her feet before she had decided to stand. She heard the housekeeper’s voice in the hall, low and startled.
Then a man’s voice answered it.
Her eyes widened.
Next, the parlor door opened.
Dominic stood in the doorway with his hat still in his hand, his coat buttoned wrong by one hole.
Lady Rosenhall came down the stairs behind him at a pace that suggested she had not yet undressed for bed, her dressing gown belted over her evening clothes, her face unreadable in the low light.
“Your Grace.” Lady Rosenhall stopped two steps from the bottom, one hand on the rail. “What are you doing here?”
Dominic’s eyes went past her, to Annabelle standing in the parlor doorway with Newton’s hair still on the sleeve of her gown.
“Marry me, Annabelle. I should have said so in the garden, and I did not, because I was a coward.” He looked at Lady Rosenhall again.
“When Lucien returns, I will speak with him myself, about the license, the settlements, whatever arrangements he requires of me. I will not have him hear from anyone but me about what is owed to his sister.”
“He will hear it from my letter before he hears it from you, Your Grace. It is already on its way to Fairmont Hall.” Lady Rosenhall’s hand came off the rail, and something in her shoulders loosened that had been set rigid since the garden.
“But this is well done. Better late than never said at all, and I will own I had begun to think you incapable of it.” She came the rest of the way down the stairs.
“I will have the housekeeper bring tea, and we can discuss what is to be settled before the hour grows any later.”
“That won’t be necessary tonight.” Dominic’s gaze had not moved from Annabelle. “I’ll call properly tomorrow, with my solicitor, and do this as it ought to be done.”
He inclined his head to Lady Rosenhall, the same short bow he’d given her in the garden, and then he looked at Annabelle once more.
She looked back at him and waited to feel something like relief, the way she had imagined relief might feel in the carriage on the ride home, turning the word ruin over and over until it had no shape left. Instead, she found only his eyes on hers, without anything behind them she could name.
“Goodnight, Lady Annabelle,” he said, and the title in his mouth sounded wrong, formal, a door closing somewhere she hadn’t seen swing open.
He left before she could answer.