Edith Layton (25 page)

The man, pale, wide-eyed and shaking, one hand on his bloody shirtfront, nodded his head. Camille, her pistol restored to her and in her hand, kept it pointed at the quaking man as she looked at him grimly.

“Damn! We never thought he’d have someone hiding in the underbrush all night,” a tall dark gentleman said as he trotted up to them, holding a smoking pistol. He stopped, and shook his head. “Sorry, Miles. That’s a new one on us, isn’t it, Drum?”

“I’ll remember it, Ewen,” Drum said with regret. “He was as inventive as he was greedy. But he’s done, the doctor says, and off to try to outwit Satan now. I wish them both joy of that.” He shot a bright look toward Annabelle’s father, and added, “In future if, heaven forfend, we ever have to act as seconds for a friend again, we’d be well advised to beat the bushes before we start.

“Well. Let’s clear house, shall we?” Drum said briskly. “Miles, go home. Take your wife and your sister with you, if you please. I can’t remember them ever looking lovelier, because I can’t remember seeing them here at all.”

Miles smiled. “Thank you, gentlemen. Ladies, I can’t thank you, society forbids. I can only love you. Let’s go home. My lord?” he asked his father-in-law, “Would you care to come with us?”

Annabelle’s father looked gravely at his daughter instead of answering.

She stepped out of Miles’s embrace, but didn’t let go of his hand. “Please come with us, Father,” she said. “You owe me nothing. Not now, and not then. You were and are a good father, and that’s all any daughter can ask.”

“Ask more,” her father said softly, glancing at her husband. “Be sure, my girl, that you ask much more and give as much as you ask, now and in the future. No man you love will ever mind that.”

M
iles and Annabelle lay in their wide bed that night and spoke together in hushed voices. They weren’t speaking of love as most people do. But they both knew they were speaking about nothing else.

“You’d have shot him, would you?” Miles asked with a smile in his voice.

“I’d have shot Eric if he’d tried to stop me,” Annabelle declared. “That is, if I’d a chance to protect you.”

“Your father was very brave.”

“No braver than you.”

“I had no choice,” Miles said.

“Neither did he,” she said on a sigh.

They were silent a moment, the only sounds the sheets rustling as Annabelle turned on her side
and raised herself on an elbow to look at him in the faint last light of the candle flickering down to its socket.

“Your mama…?”

“Will go to Bath,” he said grimly. “I’ve told her to lease a house. I’ll buy her one if she likes. The sea air will be good for her, and there are a great many lonely old gentlemen there. She’s too alone at Hollyfields, and now she’d be even more so if we were there. She knows and accepts that.

“Belle,” he said more softly, “I don’t know how involved she was with Proctor’s last plan, and I don’t want to know. Our parents have their lives and we can’t let them interfere with ours anymore. Some of them pay their debts, some…do not, and so shouldn’t be part of our future. But I’d like Camille to stay with us. Do you mind?”

She laughed. “I already asked her. Do you mind?”

“That would hardly matter, as she gets what she wants.”

“I think she wants Eric,” Annabelle said in a troubled voice.

“She gets what she wants,” Miles said again, “but she wants different things every other month. Let it go. We can’t live her life either. Now, about living ours, do you think we might continue?”

“Again?” she asked with a delighted smile. “Oh yes!”

He stroked a shining curl back from her fore
head. “Your hair is growing like weeds. You’ve come back, Lady Annabelle,” he said more seriously. “You’re the most beautiful woman in the
ton
again.”

“No. I’m Belle now,” she said, lowering herself against him. “Belle, your wife and lover, and she doesn’t care about such trivial things. Well,” she added, “not as much.”

He smiled. “Don’t change whatever you are, Belle, Lady Annabelle, Lady Pelham”—he brought his lips to hers—“for I love all of you.”

“We’ll always be here for you,” she promised, and then added, “if, of course, you’re always here for us.”

“A bargain,” he said, “a promise and a pledge, gladly given.”

“Well, then,” she said. “Can we get on with it?”

And gladly, they did.