Heartless (10 page)

He turned his thoughts determinedly to the coming evening and the two sets he would dance with Lady Anna Marlowe. She was something like a breath of fresh air in his life. He hoped she would smile at him again tonight and flirt with him again even when he was not dancing with her. He knew he would spend the whole evening in the ballroom even if he danced only the two sets, merely for the pleasure of looking at her and observing her uncomplicated exuberance for life.

•   •   •

The
three days prior to her wedding passed so quickly for Anna that there seemed no time to catch her breath. She kept promising herself that she would think things through, find some way out of the dilemma that temptation and impetuosity had got her into. But she never seemed to find the time.

The Duke of Harndon danced with her twice at Lord and Lady Castle's ball, as promised, and watched her all evening long with his deceptively lazy eyes, his absurd fan alternately clasped, closed, in his hand and waving, opened, languidly before his face. He was wearing cosmetics again, powder and rouge, and a black patch high on one cheek. He looked very different from that first night, dressed all in pale ice blue and gleaming white with a quantity of diamonds sparkling in the folds of his cravat and on his fingers and on the hilt of his dress sword.

Anna watched him all evening too, though she danced every set, and she flirted with him over the shoulders of her partners, over the top of her fan, and with open smiles across the room. She did not believe she once stopped smiling.

But it was different tonight. It seemed that the fact of their betrothal was general knowledge. This time they watched each other and flirted with each other in public, under the interested and indulgent scrutiny of fashionable society. It was exhilarating and wonderful. And the very fact that he gazed at her, surely knowing himself observed, felt wonderful. He wanted her, he had told her. And she could feel that it was true. He wanted her.

The next day he drove her in the afternoon to take tea with his mother and his sister. The announcement of their betrothal and imminent marriage had been in the morning newspapers so that now it was all very official—as if it had not been so before.

The Dowager Duchess of Harndon greeted her graciously, and Lady Doris Kendrick actually hugged her and kissed her cheek. It seemed she had been approved. She was, of course, she reminded herself, both the daughter and the sister of an Earl of Royce, a bride of suitable rank for a duke even if she was without fortune.

While the duke sat in near silence and his sister smiled warmly, the dowager proceeded to tell her about Bowden Abbey and the busy round of duties that awaited any Duchess of Harndon there.

“You will, of course, supersede all others who share your title once you marry Harndon,” the dowager explained. “That will be my daughter-in-law and myself. You will be Lucas's duchess, Lady Anna, and mistress of Bowden.”

She did not sound sorry about the fact that she would be superseded, Anna thought. But then of course that had happened to her when her husband died and her eldest son had become duke. Anna had learned that the duke—
her
duke—had had an elder brother, married, who had held the title for three years after the death of his father. But the elder brother had had no children, no sons.

She would be expected to bear the present Duke of Harndon a son without delay, she thought, and her stomach did a somersault.

Lord Ashley Kendrick came striding into the room before they had finished tea. He had just come in and had been told that she was taking tea with his mother, he explained to Anna, smiling his boyishly handsome smile and making her a courtly bow before taking her hand and kissing it.

“I could not be more delighted,” he said. “If I had had the choosing of my own sister-in-law. Lady Anna, I could not have chosen better.”

She laughed with him and with Lady Doris while their mother looked on graciously and the duke watched her with those sleepy eyes that were not sleepy at all and she felt excitement curl inside her.

Lord Ashley turned to shake his brother by the hand and wish him well and assure him that he was a lucky devil, though his mother reproved him sharply for his language before ladies.

He was a very handsome and eager young man, Anna decided, and her thoughts moved to Agnes and the annoyance she, Anna, had felt at the theater when Lord Severidge had prevented Lord Ashley from resuming his place beside her. They would be perfect together and were surely not far apart in age. Lord Ashley was considerably younger than the duke, she guessed. Surely he was not much older than Victor. Perhaps she would be able to encourage a match between her sister and her husband's brother.

Her husband. Her stomach lurched and she felt panic grab at her. But she put it ruthlessly aside. It was not for public moments.

The next day Victor arrived, alone. He had left Constance at home with her parents, he explained, since there had not been enough time to arrange to bring her with proper chaperonage and to find suitable friends with whom she might stay. He was delighted for Anna, he said, hugging her tightly and kissing her on both cheeks. He had been very afraid that in the course of nursing their mother and caring for their father she might have lost her chance for an advantageous and happy marriage.

“Of course,” he said, “there was the expectation for a while that Blaydon would offer for you and that you would accept, but I was never much in favor of it. He was a pleasant enough fellow but too old for you, Anna. Almost as old as Papa, I warrant you.”

She had made no comment but had asked about his own wedding plans, set for later in the autumn. Constance's parents wished her to celebrate her eighteenth birthday before she wed.

The Duke of Harndon came during the afternoon to meet Anna's brother and to take tea. The two men withdrew later to talk privately together. There was no dowry to discuss, of course, and there was no question of consent since she was of age, but it seemed that the two men still deemed it necessary to go apart to discuss some business aspects of the marriage. It seemed absurd that Victor should be discussing her marriage with her betrothed. He looked so very boyish still despite his bag wig and his fashionable clothes.

And tomorrow, Anna thought, left alone with her godmother and Agnes, was her wedding day. Tomorrow at this time she would be Anna Kendrick, the Duchess of Harndon. Panic rushed at her again and had to be quelled as she smiled and agreed that yes, Victor had grown into a very handsome young man and that he was carrying his new title with sense and dignity.

Sometimes, she thought, concentrating her mind on those facts, everything that had happened seemed worthwhile. Victor, of course, would have succeeded to the title anyway on the passing of Papa, but there might have been nothing else. There was precious little now beyond the property itself, but at least there was that to build upon. And Victor had intelligence and sense and the ability to work hard. Oh yes, she must remember that she had done some good. She must remember that.

The three days rushed by and dragged by. When she was with other people she could keep the panic at bay. When she was alone, it assaulted her from all sides like very real demons from hell. She could not go through with the marriage. She could not. She must tell him. The very next time she saw him she would tell him.

She had been mad, utterly mad to have given in to the temptation. But it seemed that the madness gripped her every time she saw him, and clad her in the mask of smiles and flirtatious ways so that she felt sometimes that she clawed at it from the inside, desperate to get out so that he could see her—see her as she really was before it was too late. But she could not tear away the mask.

It had to be madness, she told herself. In reality there were no demons and there was no mask. All she had to do was tell him. It was not too late and would not be too late until they had been through the marriage ceremony. Ghastly as it would be to break the betrothal now when everything had been made so public, when the license had been procured, when Victor had come, it could still be done. It was not too late.

But every moment that passed brought her one moment closer to too late.

She could not marry him. She could not. And yet tomorrow she was to do just that. Tomorrow morning. The clothes she was to wear had already been chosen and laid out. Her godmother had already had a talk with her, explaining what she could expect to happen tomorrow night in her marriage bed and how she was to respond. But she must not be afraid, she had been told. The Duke of Harndon was a man of thirty years and had doubtless had a great deal of experience. He would know how to calm her fears and cause her the minimum of pain as he broke through the barrier of her virginity. And Anna was fond of him and he of her. Lady Stern had smiled. Anna would come to enjoy it after the shock of the first night or two.

During that last night—the night before her wedding day and the night before her wedding night—Anna knew that she was going to do what could not be done. She was going to marry him. She closed her eyes after lying for hours staring up at the canopy of her bed and pictured him, only a little taller than she, graceful and handsome and gorgeously fashionable almost to the point of effeminacy, except that there was nothing remotely effeminate about the man himself.

He was a man she wanted. She admitted it to herself at last.

And he wanted her. He loved her.

Perhaps . . . oh, perhaps the great impossibility might after all be just possible. Perhaps.

By this time tomorrow night . . . Anna swallowed convulsively. By this time tomorrow night he would have done to her body those things Aunt Marjorie had described to her in quite graphic detail. Perhaps.

By this time tomorrow night she would be a married lady. And perhaps, too, by this time tomorrow night her marriage would be over.

She wondered where Sir Lovatt Blaydon was at this precise moment. Still in America? On his way back to England? In England? Dead? She wished he was dead. She wished only one thing more than that. She wished he was dead and she could know about it.

She waited for guilt to assault her at wishing for the death of another human being. But it did not come.

She wished he was dead.

•   •   •

Sir
Lovatt Blaydon was sitting up late, alone, a decanter of brandy at his elbow and an empty glass in his hand which he had not refilled for longer than an hour. He stared into the dying embers of the fire his valet had built up a long time ago.

Beside the decanter was a morning newspaper that was almost two days out of date. It was opened and folded at the page of announcements. He knew the announcement by heart.

He had accomplished what he had gone to America to do. He had bought property and a house and had furnished the house with care and taste. He had hired servants recommended for their domestic skills and their air of gentility. And he had stayed to establish himself in the neighborhood, to be accepted and liked and sought after. He had always found it easy to make people like him. As far back as his childhood his mother had used to say that he could charm the birds from the trees if he so chose.

He had got everything ready. For her. For Anna. And then he had come back for her. She would be waiting. He was confident of that. Poor Anna, he had made sure that she would wait. But it was time now for her to be weaned of her family. They no longer needed her. They were no longer dependent on her for everything in life. His dear, strong Anna, who had borne all the burdens alone, keeping her family together while Royce crumbled before her eyes, afflicted by an addiction to alcohol and gambling, loving him and caring for him while keeping the worry off the shoulders of her sisters and even of her brother, doing everything in her power to repay the debts so that they would not all face total ruin, so that the brother would have something to inherit.

Well, now it was all over for her. Now she was free. And now was the time he would take her to the life of plenty and ease that she had earned. She would never have to know another moment of anxiety. Now she would be able to reap the rewards of her efforts. For the rest of his life he would lavish on her everything that was his to give, including his undivided devotion. And even beyond his life he would care for her. He had made provision for her.

His Anna was going to be happy.

Or so he had thought until he returned and found that she was not at home, that there was no one there except the youngest girl. Anna had gone to London with one of the other sisters—Agnes—to spend a couple of months with her godmother.

He had arrived in London to find this—he half turned his head to the newspaper, but he did not pick it up. He knew it by heart. She was betrothed to the Duke of Harndon, to be married to him two days after the announcement. Tomorrow.

Something inside Sir Lovatt Blaydon had died. And something else had turned to icy fury. Had she not understood? Had he not seen to it that she knew beyond any doubt that she was his, that he owned her? He owned her mind. He owned her body. He had left her in no doubt of those facts. Had he not been quite convinced that she understood beyond any doubt, he would not have gone to America without her. He would not have allowed her the year to mourn for Royce and to see her brother and sisters well on the road to recovery.

She had not understood. But yes, she had, of course. His Anna did not lack for intelligence. Neither did she lack for courage. She had not seen the whole picture of her life and had concluded that he only wanted to destroy her. She did not know what he had planned for the rest of her life. She had thought to escape him.

His dear, courageous Anna. Surprisingly he could not hold on to his anger against her. He could feel only a reluctant admiration for her defiance. And with the admiration had come a decision. His first instinct, of course, had been to see to it that she did not solemnize this marriage. But he had decided that he would allow it. And for a very good reason.