Addicted (16 page)

“After.” Ann caught her about the waist and held tight. “First you must take care of yourself. You’ve had nothing to eat. You must be famished.”

Anais felt the queasiness that always accompanied the dizziness surge up through her belly, and she feared her face had turned a ghastly shade of green. “I’m afraid I’m not up to eating right now.”

Ann studied her quizzically. “Surely you must be starving. You barely ate anything yesterday and here it’s already past noon. You must at least have a bite of toast and a coddled egg.”

The image of runny egg whites and rich yellow yolk made Anais retch. Wildly, she waved for the chamber pot. Ann reached it with no time to spare. What little contents remained in Anais’s stomach rose up with a vengeance and by the time she was done retching, she was left with the bitter taste of the laudanum that Robert had spooned down her throat the night before.

“You’re an awful color, Anais. Lud, you’re the same shade of yellow wax that Lord Weatherby is,” her sister prattled on as she took the chamber pot from Anais’s shaking hands. “You won’t believe the site of him, his eyes are as yellow as lemons.”

“Not now,” Anais whispered, wiping her mouth with the cloth Ann held out to her. She didn’t want to hear any reminders that they were now indebted to Lindsay’s father for food
and shelter. She had too many things to think about. How would she prepare herself for that first glimpse of Lindsay since that dreaded night at the masquerade? How would she conceal the secrets she steadfastly clung to?

No, staying here was much too dangerous. Not only were her secrets threatened by staying under the same roof as Lindsay, but her heart, as well. Despite everything that had happened, her damnable heart still beat for him. Why couldn’t it have beat for Garrett? Things would have been so much simpler then. But nothing had ever been simple where Lindsay was concerned. Anais feared it would always be like this for her. She was the type to love only once, and that love had always belonged to Lindsay. It still did, no matter how much she wished otherwise.

“Shall I call for Louisa?” Ann asked. “Perhaps a warm bath will make you feel better.”

“That would be nice.”

Ann pulled the red velvet cord, ringing for the maid. “Geraldine went home. Lord Raeburn sent a footman to escort her into the village.”

“That was very kind of you to allow your maid to return to her family.”

“Mother was horrified, of course.”

“Mother is self-absorbed. She looks only as far as the end of her nose. If Geraldine wished to return to her parents, then you were right to allow her, Ann. Now, what of the other staff?”

“Most have gone home, to their families. Lord Raeburn has collected their locations so that they can be notified when to return. He’s also gone back to the house, or what is left of it.
He brought a cart with him, but he was unable to salvage anything. It’s basically all ash. He’s really been rather good at organizing everything.”

Yes. He had always been very good at that sort of thing. When it came to taking care of people, no one was more dedicated than Lindsay. Too bad he had never actually seen to taking care of himself.

“After he returned from the house, he came back only long enough to change his clothes. Even now, I’m afraid, he is out waking the local architects from their warm beds. He’s determined to start rebuilding our home as soon as possible. What a gentleman he is, Anais.”

Anais’s mind was swimming, not to mention her stomach was still reeling from her bout of nausea. She couldn’t seem to think straight knowing that at some future point in the day she would come face-to-face with the man she had loved all her life. What would she say?

“What design should we encourage father to build? I am rather fond of the new gothic style. But then again, I am something of a romantic—”

“Dearest, you’re prattling.” Anais shot her sister a placating smile. “Just give me a few minutes. It is somewhat daunting to awaken to memories of falling out one’s bedroom window and discovering that one no longer has a home in which to live. I fear I’m having some difficulty taking it all in.”

“Sorry. I guess I forgot. I’ve had all night and morning to assimilate the happenings of last night. As the house is we are going to have to stay here until Aunt Millie arrives from Town and takes us back with her to live, but that won’t be till the
holidays are over. How I wish Papa had not sold our town house,” Ann said with a sigh. “I’m afraid that I don’t really like it here.”

Ann looked up into Anais’s face and kissed her cheek. “I’m so very glad that you have finally awakened. Mama has spent the entire morning with Papa and, well, Lord Weatherby has done nothing but grumble about the whole unexpectedness of our household descending upon him. Lady Weatherby has been busy organizing her staff and overseeing preparations for Christmas dinner and I feel as though I’m only in the way. Frankly, there is no one about to talk to with Lindsay gone into the village. I was hoping you would soon awaken so that you could keep me company.”

“Yes, dearest,” Anais said, lowering herself back onto the bed. “Perhaps I might do so now. Let me have my bath. And then after that we will figure out what clothes I shall wear—for I cannot go about wearing my night rail and wrapper—and then we will go together and see Papa.”

Ann left in search of a servant to fill the tub, while Anais stood before the cheval looking glass that was beside a dressing screen. Untying the satin ties of her night rail, she let it slide down her shoulders until her large, swollen breasts were revealed. Her nipples were darker, more sensitive and perhaps a bit more plump than before.

Atop her left breast was a purple bruise that marred her nearly translucent flesh. With a gasp, the memory of her dream came to her. Lindsay had sucked her there, lost in the throes of his climax. Her fingers shook as she traced the mark that had been left from Lindsay’s greedy, sucking mouth. Her knees felt curiously weak as she traced his mark with her fingertip. That
beautiful dream had been real. He had come to her, and she had allowed it—welcomed him.

Oh, God, how was she to face him this morning? How had she allowed herself to be intimate with him? This—Lindsay’s reappearance—was something she could not afford. Everything would be ruined if he discovered things about her and Garrett. And that was the one thing she would not allow. She could not allow Lindsay to come between her and her secret.

Her gaze scanned the bruise once more and the dream came back, every vivid, beautiful moment. A memory she would clutch to her breast. A beautiful night that could never happen again. She had to promise herself that she would not weaken and allow him in. She must not.

How would she ever manage it, for she was a weakling and a fool when it came to Lindsay and her love for him.

After dressing in a gown that Robert Middleton’s wife had sent for her, Anais searched out her father’s sickroom. She found her father dozing, propped up on pillows, his head wrapped in white bandages that were shadowed with blood. Robert had dosed him well with laudanum owing to what her father said “was like gunfire going off in his head.” She sat for long minutes, holding his hand, watching his stubbled cheeks sink in and out with his snoring breaths. Her mother’s impatient sighs mingled with her father’s peaceful breaths, and Anais found she could not sit in the chamber with her mother any longer, watching the wretched woman sitting beside her father, knowing that her mother had never cared about her husband.

“We have nothing now,” her mother cried, despair ringing in
her voice. “All my gowns, my jewels,” she wept. “The new furniture and the rugs. All of it gone. What shall become of me?”

“The house and its contents were insured, Mother,” Ann said sharply. “You should be giving thanks that Lord Raeburn talked Papa into taking out the new policies that Lloyd’s began underwriting. Very forward thinking, if you ask me.”

“Yes, but how long will the business take to settle?” her mother cried, glaring at her daughters over her shoulder as they stood at the foot of the bed. “What if Lord Raeburn was wrong about this business of paying for insurance? What assurances do we have that they will come through with the money to replace what I’ve lost!”

“What
you’ve
lost?” Ann asked incredulously. “What we have all lost. And furthermore, I have heard you complain of nothing but the loss of material possessions, things that can be replaced very easily. It could have been much worse, Mother. You could have lost your husband. You could have lost Anais.”

Her mother’s eyes settled on her. There was no love lost between them, she knew, but Anais was confronted with the harsh reality of the truth when she saw the way her mother looked at her. In that instant she knew her mother would have gladly thrown her into the flames if it would have saved her jewels.

It should have hurt her—cut her to the quick—to see what very little a child could mean to its mother. But the truth was, it did not. A year ago, she could not have believed, let alone understood, how someone could be so utterly mercenary. She understood now, she comprehended the workings of the world. Her naiveté was lost, replaced by life’s lessons.

“Now I shall be forced to live with your father’s sister,” their mother snapped as she looked away and glared at her sleeping
husband. “Why did your sister have to go scampering off to Cádiz for the winter? We should be staying with her. She should be taking care of me.”

“Mother,” Anais chastised. “Abigail is newly married. You cannot fault her for deciding to honeymoon someplace warm.”

“She has already been gone two months! She doesn’t need to be gone till spring.”

Anais sighed. “Even if Abigail were home for the winter, there is no guarantee we could travel such a distance and in such weather. The north of Scotland is not an easy trek. No, it is much more prudent to go and live with my aunt until Abigail arrives home in the spring.”

“I suppose it is impossible to think that the house will be rebuilt by then.”

“No, Mother. The house will not be rebuilt. It will take nothing short of a miracle to have that happen in four months.”

Her mother snorted, disgust marring her considerable beauty. “Then I am stuck with her, my sister-in-law. Lord, I cannot abide that woman—not a fashionable ounce in her over-flabby body. There will be no balls, no dinners, no excursions to the pleasure gardens. Just intolerable afternoons and evenings spent in her drab little house in Portman Square.”

“Mother,” Ann retorted. “We are indebted to Aunt Millie for her kindness to our family. She has never been anything but generous and loving toward us.”

“I cannot live
there,
” her mother snapped. “I cannot abide her small home and her silly society of women. I cannot stand that unfashionable creature she calls her companion—
I will not
be seen in that girl’s company.”

“Jane has been a support to Millie,” Anais challenged, hating to hear her mother taint the merits of her aunt’s companion. Anais had always thought of Jane as a friend, and listening to her mother abuse her friend’s name set her teeth on edge. Her mother wouldn’t know a true friend if it hit her over the head.

“Millie has supported that…that
nobody
for years. That girl has taken everything away from Millie—it should have been yours, girls. It could have bought you a duke,” her mother said with a menacing glare. “All that money that Millie keeps hidden could have been yours if not for that conniving girl. And now, ham-fisted as Millie is, I will have to suffer her small home and poor furnishings and penny-pinching ways. I cannot begin to know how I shall show my face in society. What will my friends think? Oh, why did Abigail’s husband have to steal away to the wilds of the Mediterranean? No one considers my thoughts or my needs.”

“I will not listen to another word of this,” Anais snapped. “Abigail is off on her honeymoon. Be happy for her. She has caught herself a rich lord. Was that not your goal?”

“It was my goal for each of you, but
you
will not achieve it.”

Anais felt the familiar barb, though the sting was much less than it was a year ago. “You may send word to me when Papa awakes. I will come to visit when you have vacated the room. I can’t imagine it will be too much longer as compassion and caring for your family was never high on your list. We could never come before a new ballgown or an invitation to a prestigious soiree, could we?”

“Ungrateful, spoiled child. I should have thrown you to the streets.”

As her mother glared at her, Anais felt the unexpected nausea
rear in her belly. How easy it would have been for her mother to toss her aside, and the reality cruelly gripped her middle.

Anais couldn’t help but wonder if the numbness she had felt settle in her soul these past months was because she was turning into the same sort of selfish woman as her mother. As she looked from her mother to her father lying asleep in bed, the vision changed so that she saw Garrett lying there, and herself sitting beside the bed, pining away for another man while the one who loved her lay helpless in the bed before her.

Suddenly she felt very weary—tired of inflicting pain on a man who had never been anything but kind and compassionate to her. It was time to let the past go. It was time for her to seek her future. That future, she told herself over and over again, could not include Lindsay.

9

The waning sun slipped behind a heavy, gray cloud, casting the salon in shadow and snuffing out the melancholy memories of Anais’s afternoon visit with her mother. It was early evening and supper was to be served as a buffet for the guests that had come to partake of the Christmas festivities with Lord and Lady Weatherby.

Anais wished to be anywhere but the salon. She would have asked for a tray to be sent to her room, but she could not in all conscience leave Ann alone on Christmas. It was bad enough that her mother had made no attempt to show some Christmas spirit, despite the fact it was obvious their father was not in any danger of succumbing to his wounds. No, Anais could not leave young Ann alone, so she found herself seated on the settee closest to the fire, arranging her hands in her lap, praying she looked tranquil and at ease.