Once Upon a Wager (16 page)

“Yes,” she replied, surprised by his unexpected compliment. “I thought it an appropriate choice, since we invariably fight in each other's company.”

“I hope to change that this morning,” he said. “After all, we can hardly spend the entire Season at odds with one another.”

“Is that what this is about, then? Are we to chat happily about horses and fashions, and admire the weather, and forget all that happened between us?” She didn't like the bitter tone in her voice. She sounded childish.

“We can't change the past,” he said, his voice sober and serious. “No matter how we might wish it.”

It was a quote, almost verbatim, from their conversation at The Bull's End inn. “How clever you are, Lord Dorset, speaking my own words back to me. I can hardly contradict them that way.”

Alec chose not to respond, and they rode on in silence. Why had he deliberately disappointed his father, when he'd spent his childhood craving the earl's approval? But it wasn't a question she could ask. There was no longer any closeness between them. The silence stretched on, until Alec pulled Mars in front of her horse, effectively halting their progress. “Miss Layton, I didn't ask you to ride with me today to gloss over our differences. Although you are predisposed not to trust me, please believe me in that.”

While she watched him suspiciously, he continued. “I merely wanted to apologize for my behavior yesterday.” The shock of that nearly knocked her off her saddle. “It was wrong of me to jump to conclusions.”

“I take it that you're referring to lures and my willingness to cast them?”

He flushed at that, and Annabelle found his reaction oddly—endearing. Until she remembered she no longer liked him.

“I wish I could have saved you from that experience in Bath. Such men should be beaten to within an inch of their lives.”

“I appreciate the thought,” she said. “But you may rest assured Aunt Sophia and I made him regret his behavior.”

“Let me guess.” He tilted his head to one side, his eyes contemplative. “You had a pistol hidden in your reticule.”

“No,” she said with a hesitant smile. “But silver-tipped parasols have their uses.”

“I'm very glad to hear it.” And then he paused, growing serious again. “Please know I didn't mean to offend you yesterday, or infer that you are lacking in some way.”

“I've not been in the company of many people these past several years, and I will make missteps,” she said, her smile fading. “But I'd never intentionally embarrass you or your mother. I wish you would believe that.”

“I do. You were certainly a hoyden as a child. In fact, it was one of the things I liked best about you. But you've grown up, and thrived in difficult circumstances. And while I may like to pretend otherwise, you don't need lessons on behavior from me.”

She regarded him suspiciously. “You are overdoing your compliments.”

“No, I'm being honest. I thought quite a bit about this yesterday. I have been trying, I think, to make you into something you are not.”

“Why would you wish to do that?”

He looked into her eyes. “Because it's far easier to be angry with you.”

“I don't understand.”

He continued to watch her. “In the absence of that emotion, we will be forced to find out what feelings remain between us.” Then he pulled away suddenly, urging Mars forward. “We seem to have Rotten Row to ourselves,” he called over his shoulder. “Shall we let the horses run?”

In an instant, they were both galloping down the path. Alec opened an immediate and sizable lead, and she had no hopes of catching his horse on this troublesome saddle. But it was better that way. She needed a moment to think, because if she didn't have anger to color her feelings, she wasn't quite sure how she felt about Alec Carstairs.

• • •

After slowing their horses, they rode for an hour or more, and Alec was happy to see some of the distance between them fade. For the most part, they discussed any topic that Annabelle suggested. She'd always been inquisitive, and her curiosity hadn't dimmed during the many years she had stayed close by Astley Castle, injured and alone.

It was a remarkable trait, he thought, watching her eyes follow a flock of geese that had settled on the Serpentine Lake at the center of the park, their wings stirring ripples in its shallow waters. In spite of the challenges she had faced, the losses she'd suffered, Annabelle was remarkably resilient. He could not help but admire that.

There were many things he admired about her.

Like the way her lips, lush and pink, opened on a quick intake of breath when something angered her. The way her eyes softened and her head tilted to the side when she saw something that surprised her, as if an angled view offered an especially interesting perspective on it. The way she'd looked at him when he'd said he was sorry, as if he had finally become the man she'd thought he could be.

Sirens calling to lost sailors from their rocks were less dangerous.

Annabelle sparked thoughts that were disloyal to Jane Fitzsimmons, and if he'd any sense, he'd put as much distance between them as he could. But when she smiled up at him, it was difficult to turn away, and even more difficult to remember why he should. By the time they returned to Marchmain House just before noon, he had offered to escort her to the British Museum the following day. He'd even promised to teach her the waltz.

So much for keeping his distance.

• • •

“One must always appreciate the Greeks' sense of proportion,” Aunt Sophia said, sighing as she studied a large statue of Apollo in the British Museum's collection. Whether she was admiring the sculpture's classical allusions or its rendering of the nude male form, Annabelle couldn't say. She was too busy trying to ignore the god's more manly attributes.

She heard Alec cough discreetly behind her, and turned toward him with such obvious relief that she was certain his lips twitched with amusement. “Would you like me to show you some of the other sculptures in the collection? The Townley Marbles are quite famous.”

“Yes. I'd enjoy that very much,” she said, trying to will away her embarrassment. She'd had a sudden and distracting vision of Alec's body, slick with lake water.

As Aunt Sophia gave them a distracted nod of approval, he took her gently by the elbow, his hand warm and steady as he led her toward a grouping of smaller statues that lined the walls of the oversized chamber. “Perhaps
The Cannibal
will be more to your liking,” Alec said, pointing to the sculpture of a boy biting into a disembodied human leg. At least the boy had his nether regions discreetly covered by a cloth. “Roman, possibly from the first century
B.C.
,” he announced, reading the small sign mounted beside the piece.

“If one wants to eat a leg,” she said, “one should remove the sandal from its foot first.”

“I don't think the sculpture depicts a cannibal at all. I think the leg belongs to the boy's opponent in a game of astragali, and the rest of his body did not survive the journey here from antiquity. Do you see those small, elongated pieces that are chiseled beside him?”

She looked more closely. “They appear to be bones of some sort.”

“They're knucklebones from a cloven-hoofed animal, like a sheep or a goat. In ancient Rome, children played with them. They'd assign number values to the different sides of each bone and roll them like dice.”

“The prize being a pound of flesh? I think I'd have preferred a quiet game of cards,” she said.

“I think our young friend here simply did not like being bested. I'm well acquainted with the type.”

“You are referring to that incident when we played ducks and drakes all of those summers ago. It's most ungentlemanly to mention it.”

“That rock took quite a skip off of the lake, didn't it?” he said with a grin. “One might almost say it defied the laws of physics.”

“I never meant to hurt you, Alec.”

“There I was, with an enormous lump on my brow, and Gareth was doubled over with laughter, tears streaming down his face.”

Annabelle wanted to smile as she remembered it, but suddenly she couldn't, because Gareth was as cold and still now as that marble boy. And even though she suspected Alec would understand what she was feeling, her truce with him was too new and untried. She cleared her throat, and moved toward the other sculptures in the gallery. “So who was this Mr. Townley?”

“He was a famous antiquarian who fell in love with Greco-Roman relics while on the first of his Grand Tours,” Alec replied, falling in step beside her. “He bought so much statuary, he had to build a mansion on Park Street to house it all. When he died there in 1805, the trustees of this museum bought his collection for 20,000 pounds.”

“That's an enormous amount.”

“Yet it's probably half of what he spent to amass the whole of it. No doubt his family was happy to recoup at least some of the monies he spent during his travels.”

“I can only imagine the trouble my father would get into if he had to buy his specimens, rather than collect them in the wild.”

“You don't share his passion for collecting?”

“I'm glad to help my father display his butterflies once he has caught them,” she said after a long pause. “He finds them soothing.”

“That doesn't answer my question, though.”

“The butterflies and the moths he collects are such beautiful creatures,” she said, surprising herself with her reply. “It's sad that the beauty which makes them so desirable is also the thing that traps them. There is a terrible irony to it.”

He stopped short and looked down at her, his head tilted.

“Father surrounds himself with them, and they look like they are alive, but of course, they're not.” She met his eyes. “Sometimes I feel like I'm living among the dead.”

“Oh, Annabelle,” Alec said gently, his striking eyes serious. “You sparkle with life. You always have. But your past, difficult as it has been, is behind you now. Your life is your own to lead.” He spoke with such sincerity that her breath caught, and if the welling in her throat was any indication, she needed a distraction. Otherwise, she would start crying right here in the middle of the British Museum.

She looked about quickly, her eyes landing on a statue of Aphrodite crouching beside a water jar. The goddess was shielding her body, as if a stranger had surprised her during her bath, but her hands barely covered the swell of her breasts, and the angle of her body accentuated her femininity. Instead of hiding her nakedness, Aphrodite was using it to tantalize the stranger. “The clothes have fallen off of the statues again,” Annabelle said, feeling a warm rush of embarrassment. She remembered her own absurd efforts to tantalize Alec when she was younger. She'd practiced swaying her hips just so.

As if that could attract someone like Alec.

Still, he was playing remarkably close attention to the naked Aphrodite. He didn't try to mask his appreciation. His eyes touched on all of the places that hers shied away from. “
The Goddess of Beauty, second-century B.C.
,” he read. “To think the Greeks managed this while we Britons were still running around in bearskins.”

“Aphrodite might have preferred a bearskin, if only to hide herself from so many prying eyes,” Annabelle said primly. But she could hear the envy in her voice.

• • •

Once again, Alec had allowed himself to be talked into something unpleasant. Lady Marchmain, Annabelle, and his mother were shopping for opera gloves to wear to the King's Theatre tomorrow, and he'd been asked to escort them. Of course, he had more important things to do. He'd spent the morning mired in his business accounts, dreading the planned trip. He was spending far too much time in Annabelle's tempting company.

The day was bright and warm, though, and as they walked down Bond Street—Annabelle on his arm, the other ladies walking just behind, his carriage and driver following at a discreet distance—he couldn't help but admire how the sun cast dappled shadows through the overhanging trees. There was a breeze stirring the air, carrying the scent of lilacs on the wind. In truth, this wasn't such an unpleasant duty after all.

Annabelle was dazzling in a bright green walking dress with a Circassian wrapper in the palest lemon cream. Her matching bonnet, tied beneath her chin, featured a cluster of pink flowers, and she wore lavender kid boots and gloves. The sun caught her hair where it peeked from beneath her hat, illuminating her face like a halo. She looked like a study in the colors of spring.

Unfortunately, he wasn't the only man who noticed. More than one buffoon tripped over his feet as their small party walked past, and Alec wondered again if Annabelle could be unaware of the effect she had on others. Wherever she went, one's eyes could not help but follow, in the same way that it was difficult to turn away from a rainbow arching across the sky, because it shimmered and surprised.

She took such delight in her surroundings. The people bustling by, the bright colors and textures on display in the shop windows, the street vendors hawking their wares in rhyme. When he'd first returned to London, he'd been hard pressed to notice the life and vibrancy of the city. He'd been haunted by men—including Gareth—who could no longer enjoy a breeze on their faces, or the laughter of a lovely woman.

God help him, though. He took pleasure in Annabelle's company, and not just because of her beauty. There was no doubt she still suffered pain from her injury, but she didn't allow it to define her. And right now, as she walked beside him, her hand resting on his forearm, he felt at home, at long last. He liked hearing the rustle of her skirts beside him, and the steady intake and release of her breath. Even though it did odd things to his cadenced heartbeat.

“Annabelle, look at that adorable pair of gloves in the window,” Lady Marchmain called out as they passed by yet another shop devoted to fripperies. “White leather with two full inches of gold trim, the very style that Napoleon's Josephine is said to favor.”