The Official Essex Sisters Companion Guide (26 page)

He hurried away inside. Annabel turned the letter over in her hand and then ripped it open. For all the messenger’s assurances, she couldn’t help feeling a leaden pit of fear in her stomach. Why on earth would anyone send a man on horseback, all the way from London to Scotland, unless the news were—

Her breath caught in her chest at the thought and she ripped open the seal. The letter read:

Dear Annabel,

I am writing you with all haste. Do not marry Ardmore!

My husband has solved everything, in his usual inimical way. It turns out that a certain Miss Alice Ellerby (a Miss A.E.) is quite desperate to escape her parents’ grasp, and Lucius paid her a large sum of money that will enable her to do so. She penned a truly scintillating account of her “relationship” with Ardmore, publishing it in
Bell’s Weekly Messenger
, naturally . . . and then ran away to America with her beloved, a groom, as I understand it. Thanks to Felton, they will be able to set themselves up in comfort in New York.

So please, Annabel—don’t despair! I am sending this by man on horseback. He will try to intercept your carriage, but we decided it was most important for him to get the letter into your hands before the marriage is solemnized, so he will likely stop only to change horses.

Just stay calm, darling, and we’ll have you back in London in no time. I’m sure Ardmore, who seems a most reasonable man, will entirely understand. We are coming to you with all possible speed.

There may be a bit of a palaver about your marriage that never was—but since it truly never was, we all believe that the scandal will die down. We will ask Ardmore to return with us and maintain the truth of your nonmarriage, of course. And I have every expectation that he will be agreeable. He will find his reputation as a rake has grown and blossomed in his absence: what with Imogen’s behavior on the dance floor, and now the ardent Miss Ellerby, he is quite the man of the moment.

In the expectation of seeing you within a few days at the most,

Your loving sister, Tess.

P.S. When I say that we are all coming, I truly mean it. I do hope that Ardmore has enough linens for a large group. Otherwise, perhaps there is an inn nearby?

Annabel drew a deep breath and looked around her. The chapel lay utterly silent before her, dusky sunshine filtering through the tall firs. She turned the letter over in her hands. Freedom lay before her: freedom to return to London and find a rich Englishman,
a sleek, practical man who would understand the limitations of their obligations to each other. Who wouldn’t confuse her with talk of his soul or—worse—her soul. Who wouldn’t embarrass her by saying that she was the best of God’s creations, and other naive compliments along those lines.

What’s more, she had a suspicion that Father Armailhac would likely lure her into that chapel someday and before she knew it, she’d be out on the battlements in the rain, singing prayers with Gregory. She didn’t want to become a psalm-singing righteous type of woman. She’d always found them boring.

But—she reminded herself—marrying Ewan wasn’t a question of marrying Father Armailhac. It was about Ewan.

It was while thinking about Ewan that a smile grew on her lips that she didn’t even realize was there, not until Ewan himself came down the path. In a flash, she saw him with all that objectivity she’d lost since leaving London. He was tall, and wickedly handsome, and powerfully built. He had russet hair and green eyes. He spoke with a Scottish brogue. He was absurdly far from the rakish dissolute that Londoners now believed him to be, thanks to Tess and her husband. He’d lost his parents, brother and sister, and found another family for himself. He’d made Gregory into a son, and Rosy into a sister. He’d—

He’d made her fall in love with him.

Then Ewan stepped out from under the fir tree and smiled at her, that wicked little smile that said he was thinking about kissing her and damned with the questions, and she let the letter fall to the ground.

A second later he had her in his arms, and she had her hands buried in his hair and he was kissing her as if he were starved for her, as if they hadn’t kissed so much in the carriage that morning that her lips were bruised with it. He was rocking against her too . . . gently, just a reminder. And she didn’t leap away from him, brandish the letter, announce her freedom . . . no. She melted against him and relished the rasp of his breathing, and the way he was about to pull his mouth away—because she knew before he did it.

“Will he marry us
soon
?” he asked, his voice as rich as dark honey.

“I think so,” she said, smiling up at the Earl of Ardmore with such an open, happy grin that he almost closed his eyes against the beauty of her, all that rumpled hair, the color of gold coins falling over his arm, and her eyes, with their seductive laughter, and the intelligence of her face, and the courage there too—

He pulled himself upright, on the very edge of lowering her to the ground.

“Ah, Ewan,” Father Armailhac said, showing a sense of brilliant timing, “have you come to find Miss Annabel, then?” His gaze flashed to the letter crumpled on the ground, and then his smile grew. “My dear, am I to take it that you have come to a decision?”

“My family is coming to see us,” she told Ewan.

He shrugged that off, his eyes searching hers. “I didn’t realize that there was a decision to be made.”

Annabel blushed, wondering if a monk could possibly look as if he knew precisely how she felt. “I would . . .” She paused and looked up at Ewan. The gold glints in his eyes were shining. “I would like to marry you, Ewan Poley, Earl of Ardmore.”

“That’s Ewan to you,” he said, and took her in his arms again, heedless of the benevolently smiling monk, and gave her a hard kiss.

The castle had great doors hewn from oak that swung open to reveal a vast antechamber, large enough to receive a king and all his court. The ceiling arched far above them, the stone looking solid, ancient, and dirty. The walls were hung with tapestries.

“The Battle of Flodden, 1513,” Ewan remarked, bringing her to the left wall. “My great-great-great grandfather had these tapestries woven in Brussels as a warning to all future Ardmores to avoid war. He lost two sons in the battle.”

Annabel peered at the tapestries, which were positively littered with men and horses. The light was not the best.

“The ground is covered with dead young men. This tapestry and the warning in it saved our lands from being taken over by the Butcher in 1745.”

A faint chill of ancient, raw stone hung in the air, and Annabel shivered. Suddenly living in a castle didn’t seem quite as romantic as it sounded. But Ewan was leading her through a door to the right, and then they were in a warm, cheerful parlor, heated by a trim iron stove set in the enormous stone fireplace, but otherwise not looking very different from any of Rees’s best sitting rooms.

“My father ruthlessly modernized,” Ewan explained. “He was fascinated by Count Rumford’s inventions, and had several Rumford stoves installed, and a Rumford range placed in the kitchen that provides heated water. You can look at all this later. For now, why don’t I show you our suite?” Considering that he was a Christian man, he had one of the most wicked glints in his eyes that Annabel had ever seen.

The bedchamber was dominated by an enormous bed. Over it hung a canopy of wildly entwined and colorful flowers, embroidered by a master.

“It’s lovely,” she said, awed.

“My parents brought it back from their wedding trip,” Ewan said. He hadn’t touched her since they entered the chamber, but his eyes held a caress. “Shall we travel to celebrate our wedding, Annabel? Perhaps up the Nile?”

But Annabel could hardly think past the wedding night, let alone consider trips. “I will go nowhere in a coach for the foreseeable future,” she said.

He laughed. “Then we’re stuck here for the moment. I’m afraid that the coastline is some distance.”

The most fascinating thing about the bedchamber was the bath. The walls were tiled blue and white, with a frieze of laughing mermaids, and the bath itself was made of white marble. “Mac had it sent from Italy,” Ewan said. “I do believe that it’s large enough for two.”

She looked up at him.

“Of course I’ve never tried that method.” He smiled wolfishly. “But I can think of several ways in which we might . . . christen it, so to speak.”

Annabel turned away, suddenly terrified that she would fail him. She’d never thought to marry a man who had been without a woman for years. A rake would have been different: more knowledgeable, and she would have had no part in the business but to follow along and see whether she enjoyed it. But with Ewan . . . for one thing, he had an uncanny ability to know everything she was feeling. All that advice she received from
women in the village, about appearing to enjoy it no matter what one truly felt, was not going to work.

Her maid, Elsie, bustled into the chamber, followed by two footmen with Annabel’s trunks. Anxiety bristled in the air about her. “You don’t have a single white gown that won’t need to be bleached after all this dust, not but what that’s a newfangled idea anyway—”

“Anything will do,” Annabel told her.

Elsie gaped at her. “Anything will
not
do, Miss Annabel! This is your wedding, after all.” Elsie had originally been hired to be a nursemaid, and sometimes she seemed to forget that her charge had left the nursery long ago.

“I shall leave you to your preparations,” Ewan said. “Perhaps we might marry in a half hour?”

“A half hour?” Elsie half shrieked. “Certainly not! First, Miss Annabel has to decide on a gown, and it must be sponged and pressed, and she needs to bathe, and her hair—”

“Whenever you finish your ministrations,” Ewan said to her. “There’s no particular hurry.” It was clear to Annabel that he meant precisely the opposite.

As soon as he was gone, Elsie began clucking like a nervous chicken. “I’ll run the bath,” she decided. “Although whether that great behemoth will actually fill with hot water is another thing. I don’t believe it. I’ve no doubt but what I’ll have to call for buckets in the old-fashioned way.”

“I could wear the plum-colored sarsenet,” Annabel said.

“The one trimmed with swansdown?” Elsie said, thinking about it. “At least the trim would be white. And it has a nice long train.”

Annabel nodded. She wasn’t certain that the dress in question was really appropriate for a wedding. After all, Imogen had given it to her, and the bodice was low-cut. But the dress made Annabel feel beautiful. Majestic, even. And somehow, when one found oneself marrying an earl who lived in a castle with fifty servants, one felt the need to look regal.

Elsie thought for a moment and nodded. “That might work. It’s at the bottom of one of the trunks, and will have been protected from the worst of the dust. We can sponge the swansdown thoroughly and it will dry in a twinkle.”

She ran into the bathroom and then trotted directly back into the bedroom. “I’d better find the gown first, and perhaps the housekeeper might have someone sponge it for me. Although whether I’ll be able to find the housekeeper is another question. It’s monstrously large, this place.”

“There seem to be footmen everywhere who can direct you.”

“I never thought to work in a castle,” Elsie told her. “Never!”

Annabel laughed. “I never thought to marry a man who lived in one either. Now, let’s see if we can get this bath to work.”

It did. Hot water gushed from the taps into the smooth marble bath.

“The mermaids are a bit heathen to my mind,” Elsie said with a sniff. “Not but what this is a most godly household, miss. Do you know that they have chapel on Sundays and the servants attend with the family, rather than going to the village?”

Annabel thought about that. “You needn’t if you don’t wish to. I’ll speak to Lord Ardmore.”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Elsie said earnestly. “The service is given by a monk, a real one. And though my mum never held with Papists—thought Catholics were a terrible heathen lot, always kissing pictures and the like—he seems quite lovely, rather like my grandfather. Plus, I wouldn’t want to miss the service, miss; it might seem as if I were putting on airs, and that would never go over well with the butler, Mr. Warsop.”

Annabel cautiously put a toe into steaming water, and a second later she was leaning back, bathed in pure bliss.

“That’s right, then,” Elsie said. “If you don’t mind, miss, I’ll just take this dress down to Mrs. Warsop and ask her to have it sponged for me. I wouldn’t like anyone to iron it whom I don’t trust, but sponging is another matter.”

“Don’t hurry,” Annabel said, wiggling her toes so that little ripples spread through the bath.

The door clanked shut behind Elsie, and Annabel lay back and tried to think wise thoughts. Premarital advice. What would Mama have said to her? But since their mother had died when Annabel was only six years old, she found herself unable to imagine that particular brand of advice.

Instead she found herself thinking about Ewan. She was marrying a man who was almost her complete opposite. She prided herself on thinking through situations without allowing a romantic haze to muddle her deliberations, whereas he seemed to embrace the idea of romance. She believed fervently in the power of money; he believed in God and
seemed to give love the same importance. Would he come to wish that he had married someone who wanted to go to endless prayer services with him?

Annabel regarded her pink toes. A better woman than she would send the romantic earl into the sunset on his own, castle, wealth, and all. A better woman would recognize that the holy part of him would never be matched in her. In fact, if she really loved Ewan, she would send him off to find a psalm singer like himself.

But along with Annabel’s practicality was a ruthless self-knowledge. She would never give up Ewan. Godless sinner that she was, she wanted his deep, honest nature, his laughing green eyes, the goodness of him, too much. She felt safe around him.

At the same time, she was worried that somehow it might all disappear. It was too perfect: that she, Annabel Essex, who had never been very ladylike or romantic, should end up in love. And in love with a rich man.

But sometimes good things happened. Perhaps it was just her turn. Annabel tried to imagine a white-haired old man looking down at her from a cloud and deciding to toss a windfall in her direction, but she gave up after a moment. The whole idea of religion eluded her.

Elsie came back, gasping and holding her sides. “These stairs, miss! To reach the housekeeper’s room, I have to go down the back stairs, and then down another set on the left, and then up again, and then down once more!”

Annabel stepped out of the bath into a towel warmed before the fire.

“The dress is all ready. Mrs. Warsop offered to do it with her own hands, and a beautiful job she’s done as well. Do you know, she and Mr. Warsop have been married
these forty-three years? And he’s been the butler here at the castle since he was twenty-six.”

Elsie kept talking while Annabel’s hair dried, and while she brushed it until it shone. Finally Annabel put on her chemise, and then her corset, the French one that Imogen bought her, that made her breasts look twice as large as they really were. And then the dress: a long sweep of plum-colored, figured sarsenet that hugged her curves and then widened into a long train. The swansdown trim followed her bodice, and the edges of her sleeves. Elsie tied Annabel’s hair into a knot of curls, and finally Annabel looked at herself in the glass. She thought she looked fit for a castle. For an earl. Even . . . perhaps . . . for a man such as Ewan. But she caught herself up trying to coax her face into a pious expression: the kind of look that Ewan’s wife ought to wear. Love was one thing, and playacting quite another.

“It’s to be a private meal for the two of you,” Elsie said. “Mrs. Warsop said as how the earl laughed and said he’d give you a chance to cry off.” She smiled. “As if the whole castle couldn’t see the two of you were as happy as could be, and the earl that impatient to have his wedding!”

Annabel’s hands shook during dinner. Ewan didn’t seem to notice but talked of the castle, and of Rosy, Gregory, his uncle, the crofters, the servants . . . It seemed she had hardly drawn a breath when Mr. Warsop removed the last covers.

Ewan said, “I just want to make absolutely certain that you wish to marry me, Annabel. Back in London, I didn’t mind very much the idea of marrying you because of that blasted article. Now I find that I do.”

“Do what?” Annabel said, gathering her scattered thoughts. It was distracting, being so close to Ewan. She couldn’t help thinking of things that made her blush. Like the coming night.

“I mind marrying you, if you are doing so merely because of that article,” he said, watching her.

“I am not,” she said promptly. “But—” She stopped.

“What is it?” Ewan reached over and took her ungloved hand.

“I am worried that I shouldn’t marry you,” she said, love warring with practicality. “I shouldn’t marry you because at heart, Ewan, I’m a terribly greedy person. I truly wished to marry a rich man. And I don’t think I shall ever feel the way you do about the church. I’m just—I’m afraid that we wouldn’t suit, in the long run.”

He smiled at her in such a way that she felt a prickle of annoyance. Wasn’t he listening to her?

“I really did consider that adultery was a certain part of my future,” she told him fiercely.

“If you had married someone else, God forbid,” Ewan said, “and I met you after the fact, I expect I would be thinking about adultery as well.”

“You are not listening to me,” she told him. “I do
not
fear for my soul. I would have shot those robbers without blinking, if I’d had an appropriate weapon!”

“Man and wife do not have to be in agreement on all things,” Ewan observed. “And I consider that God’s love brought you to me. You and no other. And I tell you truthfully, Annabel, you’ve ruined me for other women. I either marry you, my little hedonistic pagan, or I marry no one.”

She couldn’t smile because the lump in her throat was too big.

He turned over her hand and brought her palm to his mouth. “Would you wish me to marry someone else?” he asked. “With honesty.”

They had a code between them now, and that was a question, and there was the question of honesty attached . . .

“Never,” she said, her voice husky with tears. “I’d kill the woman who tried to marry you, Ewan. With the first pistol that came to hand.”

He threw back his head and roared with laughter. “I’m to marry a bloodthirsty wench, that’s for certain.”

“You’ll have to guard my soul for me,” she said.

“It would be my honor,” he said, and his voice sounded a little husky too. And then he kissed her, and they rose from their chairs and went to the door.

“No last regrets?” he asked.

“Do you want me to have them? You’ve asked so many times.”

“No!”

The wedding was a matter of a brief half hour. Father Armailhac laughed at the special license when Ewan produced it. “And how am I, a Catholic monk, to use a license issued by an Anglican bishop?” he inquired. “Nonsense, my lad. I have need of no other authority than that given to me by God and—thankfully—by the Scottish government as well. For you could be married by the blacksmith here,” he said, turning to Annabel, “if you had the inclination.”

“I should prefer you,” she said, smiling at the monk.

“In that case, I shall use the words of the Scottish wedding service, as they are most beautiful,” he said. “They seem to me to echo the best parts of the wedding service as I know it, in the French language. And God means the same thing any way you say it, dears.”

They married in that little chapel, all lit with candles because the evening had come on by that time.

Annabel didn’t listen very closely to the service. She felt as if she were walking through a dream: not an unhappy dream, but . . . Could this be she, Annabel, marrying without her family present? She realized about halfway through the service that had they waited a week or so, she could have been married with Tess, Lucius, Griselda, and Rafe in attendance.