The Official Essex Sisters Companion Guide (29 page)

“I didn’t know,” Annabel said guiltily.

“I just wasn’t thinking. I should have moved her into one of the cottages while your family is here. But she takes so badly to change . . .”

“Oh dear.” They both looked at Rosy, who seemed oblivious to them.

Ewan sighed. “I’ll tell her nurse that she must keep a sharper watch. The problem is that Rosy is used to freedom. You’re the first visitor we’ve had in ages, and she took so well to you that I stopped being cautious.”

“Men pose the problem,” Annabel said.

“And she’s getting worse about it,” Ewan said flatly. “She attacked him, you know. Look.” He nodded to the wall where Rafe had been leaning. The floor was littered with broken crockery. “She threw a vase at him that was half her size. If she’d hit him in the face, it could have done considerable damage.”

Annabel couldn’t think what to say.

“Gregory’s getting older. She sometimes forgets who I am, and attacks me. If she did that to Gregory . . .”

“He doesn’t seem to think of her as his mother.”

“But he knows the truth of it. And it would be damaging to have one’s mother turn into a lunatic and attack you. He didn’t come downstairs, did you notice?”

Annabel shook her head.

“He can’t stand seeing her like this.”

Rosy got up and ambled away. Mac was waiting by the door and gently took her arm and began to lead her upstairs. Ewan held out his hand and Annabel snuggled down in the curve of his arm.

“You’re very kind to her,” she said, feeling a surge of adoration. “Most people would have had her sent away.”

“She would be miserable away from here. Let’s talk about something else. I’ve been wanting to tell you something.” He tipped up her eyes, and skimmed her mouth with his. “Open your eyes, Annabel. I love you. I want to shout it,” he said, sliding his lips across her cheek. “I’ve never been in love before. I want to shout it from the mountaintops.”

“You’re a romantic,” she said, battling to keep her head clear.

“And you’re not?” he said. It was no use keeping up a front before him. He knew what she was thinking. “You love me, Annabel,” he said. “You’re in love with your husband.” He kissed her eyes. “You’re deliriously in love with your husband,” he whispered, kissing her nose. “You’re beside yourself in love with your husband,” and he’d reached her mouth.

“Yes,” she said, winding her arms around his neck. “Oh, yes, Ewan. Yes.”

Sometime later the fire was tumbling in on itself, sending just a wavering spark now and then into the darkening chimney. The great huge house was quiet. Not even a servant could be heard. Father Armailhac and Rafe had come in and gone up to bed . . . The butler, Warsop, had sent the last footman away.

Ewan was thinking about taking Annabel upstairs. After all, they had a perfectly comfortable bed waiting for them, and although this couch was very nice, it wasn’t quite long enough and—

“Ewan,” she said. She was pulling off his cravat, which really meant that he should pick up his beloved wife and make their way upstairs. “Do you remember the coney’s kiss?” she whispered into his neck. Her hands were making their way under his shirt now.

“Forgotten since last night, have you?” he said. “And you the one of us with a decent memory. I suppose I’ll have to give you a demonstration, lass.”

“Do you remember when I asked you what its mate might be?” Her eyes were sparkling in the last glow of the fire.

“Its mate?” he asked, but her hands were at his waistline. “No!”

“What’s sauce for the goose is fit for the gander,” she said severely, and started to kiss a line down his stomach.

Ewan looked down at her curls and made one last attempt at gentlemanly behavior. “You needn’t,” he gasped.

“Of course I needn’t,” she said, looking up at him for a moment. “I want to. Wouldn’t you like me to?”

He blinked at her. No decent gentlewoman—he couldn’t think how to phrase it.

“Ewan,” she said, “an honest answer. Wouldn’t you like me to?”

There was no way to answer that, but with honesty. They’d hewed that between them, with all their question games on their journey here. Any time one of them mentioned honesty in the same breath with question . . .

“Aye,” he said at last, “I’d love nothing better.”

She smiled at him brilliantly. “In that case . . .”

“When I get married,” Josie said, “I want to marry a man just like Ewan. I want him to have a castle, and a million servants, and stables just like Ewan’s—”

“I don’t think there is another one,” Imogen said. “I am amazed. I am truly amazed, Annabel.”

Annabel grinned. She and Imogen were sitting at one end of Imogen’s bed, and Tess and Josie were at the other. “Do you think it’s too much good luck?” she asked, with some anxiety. “That something will happen?”

Josie’s eyes shone. “Such as, Ewan has another wife, hidden somewhere, perhaps on the Continent! Does he ever talk in his sleep?”

“Do you get these ideas from those novels from the Minerva Press?” Tess asked, looking rather scandalized. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have bought them for you.”

“There’s a great deal of helpful guidance in them,” Josie told her. “I know all the signs of a man who is perfidious to the core.”

“And those are?” Annabel asked, grinning.

“Well, for one thing, he should have black hair. And he should stalk about, tossing his hair in the wind.”

“Ewan doesn’t do that,” Annabel observed.

“If he were French, we would know for certain,” Josie said.

“Not a drop of French blood that I know of,” Annabel said.

“If he has a guilty secret, he’ll talk in his sleep. Or moan. Kind of like this.” Josie put her hands up to her hair and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “
Oooooo . . . Marguerite . . .
I cannot forget her . . . Oooooooo!
” Then she put down her hands and looked at Annabel. “Does he ever do that?”

“No!” Annabel said, laughing.

“Does he say
anything
in his sleep?”

“Not that I’ve heard.”

“Oh well,” Josie said. “Even so, your marriage does seem like the beginning of a novel, complete with a mad wife in the back bedroom.”

“Rosy is not someone to make fun of,” Annabel said, frowning at her.

“All right.” Josie sighed. “But you must admit that your life is rather like a fairy tale: you wanted to marry a rich man, and then you had to marry due to scandal . . . and finally here you are, living in a castle! Lucius says that Ewan’s holdings rival his own.”

Tess was smiling at Annabel. “That money doesn’t make a great deal of difference, though, does it?”

Annabel opened her mouth, and then closed it.

“Ewan wouldn’t have had a chance at Annabel if he had nothing more than a few chickens to his name,” Josie pointed out. “When she thought he was poor, she was most reluctant. You can’t have forgotten all those lectures she gave us last year about marrying for practical reasons and not for love. I know Imogen hasn’t, because Annabel was constantly lecturing her.” She raised her voice to a hectoring level and said: “
The best marriages are those between levelheaded persons, entered into for levelheaded reasons, and with a reasonable degree of confidence in compatibility
.”

“Be quiet, you little termagant,” Annabel said. “I certainly hope that you don’t have ambitions to go on the stage.”

“But now you are overtaken by passion, aren’t you?” Imogen asked her.

Annabel bit her lip. “I—”

“You look head over heels in love to me,” Josie put in irresistibly.

“Did you always talk this much?” Tess said. “I seem to remember days in which you were a quiet, sweet little thing.”

“That’s because you’re getting so old that you’re losing your memory,” Josie retorted.

“So are you in love?” Imogen asked again.

“I—I suppose so,” Annabel said, feeling queerly embarrassed. Why should she be embarrassed? These were her sisters, the dearest people in the world to her, next to Ewan.

Josie answered that question, hooting with laughter. “How the mighty have fallen!” she chortled. And she went back to mimicking Annabel. “
I have no expectation of ever falling in love, in fact it seems a most uncomfortable business
!” She broke off. “So, is it uncomfortable?”

“Not so far,” Annabel said. She was looking at Imogen. “I owe you an apology. I didn’t respect your feelings sufficiently, back—back when Draven was alive. I didn’t understand what love felt like.”

Imogen smiled, even if her smile wavered a bit.

“I had no idea how important someone could become,” Annabel said simply. “I don’t know what I would do without Ewan.”

“You just go on,” Imogen said. “Day by day, that’s all.”

Annabel felt her throat tightening at the mere thought. “I couldn’t do it, Imogen. I’m just so sorry for what’s happened to you. I don’t know how you are—”

“Surviving?” Imogen asked, her voice brittle. But her eyes were tearless. “Or do you mean, how can I flirt with Mayne?”

Tess leaned forward from the other end of the bed. “Don’t, Imogen!”

But Imogen was off the bed in a swirl of black hair, looking out the window. Her fists were clenched, shoulders stiff.

“That’s not what I meant,” Annabel said, feeling a flash of irritation. Imogen was so quick to take affront. “I only meant that I understand for the first time what you felt for Draven.”

“You will never understand that,” Imogen said fiercely, still staring out the window with her back to them.

“But I can—”

“You will never understand, because Ewan loves you,” Imogen said.

There was a moment’s silence. Annabel looked at Tess, panicked.

“Draven did love you,” Tess said. “I was there when he died. I remember how much he loved you. Don’t diminish his love, now that he’s not here to repeat it to you.”

Imogen turned around. Her face was white, but still tearless. “I do not diminish his love for me,” she said, cutting her words off sharply. “I would never do that. I know precisely how much he loved me: as much as he was capable of loving any woman, probably. He loved me somewhat . . . after his stables, perhaps more than his mother.”

“Oh, Imogen,” Tess said. “Why—”

“Because grief is like that!” Imogen snapped. “You can only fool yourself so far. And now I’ve seen that two of my sisters are truly loved. I saw it in Lucius back when we
met at the races, the first time after you married. And Ewan fairly beams when he looks at Annabel.”

“I do not agree with your idea that Draven did not love you,” Tess said firmly.

“He did love me! He just didn’t love me very much. I know that, Tess. And you, who are married, know as well as I do how many tiny things each day tell you precisely how much you are valued by your husband. I have had nothing to do but think over the two weeks Draven and I were married. I know
precisely
how he valued me.”

“Well, if you’re right, you might as well stop weeping over him,” Josie said, with her customary brutal frankness. “Why grieve at all if he didn’t treat you properly? And what did he do, anyway?”

“That’s none of your business!” Imogen snapped. “And I’m not crying, am I?”

“Is that why you’ve taken up with Mayne?” Annabel asked. Somehow the whole idea of Imogen taking revenge for Mayne’s jilting of Tess didn’t ring true to her.

“Mayne doesn’t love me either.”

“I feel as if violins should be wailing in the background,” Josie remarked. “If you’re looking for love, I think you’re going about it the wrong way. Kidnapping Mayne is not going to make him love you.”

“I don’t give a damn if Mayne ever loves me!”

“Come sit down again,” Tess said. “Please, Imogen.”

Imogen hesitated and then moved toward the bed.

“How was your trip?” Annabel asked Tess, feeling that they desperately needed a new subject of conversation.

“Fatiguing,” Tess said.

“Exciting,” Josie put in. “There we were, dashing to the aid of a desperate young maiden, after all. So confess, Annabel. Did you get Tess’s letter in time or not?”

“I had it in time,” Annabel said. She could feel a little blush rising on her neck.

“But you’d already seen the castle,” Josie guessed.

Annabel nodded reluctantly. She hated the idea that the castle had influenced her decision.

“She’d seen Ewan as well,” Tess said.

“I’ll say,” Josie said. “Every day for a fortnight in a carriage. You’re lucky you don’t have a weak stomach like Griselda. Ewan would probably have cried off, and there would have been no decision for you to make.”

“The castle was not relevant to my decision,” Annabel said firmly.

Josie looked skeptical. Even Imogen raised an eyebrow.

“It wasn’t!” Annabel repeated.

“Well, you’ll have to forgive our hesitation,” Josie said. “After all we only knew you for twenty-two years as our hardheaded, unromantic sister who repeatedly announced that she wanted to marry a man with a title and a castle. And here you are: married to a man with a title and a castle. But not for those reasons, or so you say.”

“Don’t be unkind, Josie,” Tess said. “Ewan is a lovely man. Anyone with the faintest claims to being observant can see reasons why Annabel would wish to marry him that have nothing to do with his title, or anything else of that nature.”

“It was those other things,” Annabel said. “I was so grateful to Lucius for finding Miss Ellerby, Tess. But by the time I got the letter I truly wished to marry Ewan, for himself, not for the castle.”

Josie leaned forward. “Don’t you find it a bit awkward, being married to a man with his own pet priest? I mean, Papa didn’t exactly bring us up to be hymn singers.”

“Father Armailhac seems to be a very kindly man,” Tess said.

“A foolish one as well,” Imogen said dispassionately. “Do you know, I heard him telling Rafe that whiskey was a gift from God? Clearly, he’s not very observant or he’d see what whiskey is doing to our beloved guardian.”

“It is odd sometimes,” Annabel said. “The whole household goes to Mass, for example.”

“Lord,” Tess said sympathetically. “Do you even know what to do, Annabel? Catholic Masses are quite different from our own services, aren’t they?”

“Not so different, as a matter of fact. I went to Mass last Sunday, and I stood up when everyone else did. But I didn’t know any of the prayers.”

“So there’s a darker side to life in the castle,” Josie said with relish.

“It’s not
dark
,” Annabel said.

“It sounds very dreary to me.”

“I rather liked it,” Annabel confessed, her eyes seeking out Tess’s. “The service was very quiet, after all, and it gave me time to think.”

“And you have much to think about,” Tess offered with a smile.

“Exactly.”

“The priest who came when Draven was thrown from the horse was very kind,” Imogen said. “I still remember the way he said:
In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust.
I had a flash of hope that perhaps praying would help. Of course, it didn’t do any good. Draven died anyway.”

Annabel reached forward and stroked Imogen’s foot. “I think that Father Armailhac would say that Draven is happy now,” she said.

“Perhaps,” Imogen said. “I hope so.”

“I expect that Draven’s heaven is a place where his horse wins a twenty-pound Cup every day,” Josie said.

“Quite likely,” Imogen said, but without that bitter edge that she had so often in her voice. There was even a faint smile on her face. “He would ride the horse himself to a blazing victory, of course.”

“What would Lucius’s heaven be?” Josie asked Tess. “A day in which his stocks doubled in value?”

Tess thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. I think it would be the two of us. And perhaps a Roman ruin or two.”

“A Roman ruin!” Josie said, struck. “I had no idea Lucius was interested in antiquities.”

“Oh, he has many interests,” Tess said airily. Annabel noticed that Tess had gone slightly pink.

“And Ewan’s heaven?” Josie asked her.

“I don’t know,” Annabel said. “But I expect since he believes in the soul, he probably has a traditional view.”

“White clouds and harps,” Josie said. “All the sinners—i.e., interesting people—excluded and no one left but a bunch of people singing.”

Annabel felt that she should defend her husband, but she didn’t have the faintest idea how to do so. “I think that he sees heaven as something quite ordinary,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Imogen asked. Annabel wished she’d asked Ewan herself what heaven consisted of. After all, Imogen had more reason to be interested in the place than the rest of them did.

“Ewan doesn’t seem to have any idea of punishment or purity, really,” she said, thinking it out. “He believes that he has a soul. And that he can’t lose his soul unless he does something truly terrible, since his God is merciful.”

“Ah,” Josie said with satisfaction. “Shakespeare said it: mercy fallest as the gentle rain from Heaven.”

“Yes, exactly,” Annabel said. “Which play?”

“Maybe in
Measure for Measure
?” Josie said tentatively. “It’s all about a girl who wants to become a nun, but then she meets a duke and a bunch of other things happen and before you know it, she’s married rather than a nun.”

“You should tell Gregory about it,” Annabel observed. “He wants to become a monk, you know.”

Josie snorted. “That boy? A monk?”

“Why not?”

She shrugged. “He doesn’t look like one.”

“What does a monk look like?”

“Ewan,” Josie said rather unexpectedly. “Ewan looks like a monk. All in black and those eyes. Very kind, they are.”

Annabel smiled. “Yes.”

“And the way he takes care of that poor mad girl,” Imogen put in.

“Yes, that too.”

“You did well,” Tess said, smiling at her.

“Not through any effort on my part,” Annabel said. “I don’t deserve him.”

“Well, that’s true,” Josie said. “I’m much nicer than you and—” but she scrambled off the bed when Annabel swatted at her, and then they all left for their own bedchambers.