The Raven Prince (30 page)

“I’ve come on an, er, errand from the earl.”

“Indeed?” Mrs. Wren still did not look up.

“Yes.” He was at a loss as to how to continue. “Won’t you have a seat?”

Mrs. Wren glanced at him in puzzlement and took her seat.

Felix cleared his throat. “There comes a time in every man’s life when the winds of adventure blow out, and he feels a need for rest and comfort. A need to toss aside the careless ways of youth—or at least early adulthood in this case—and settle down to domestic tranquility.” He paused to see if his words had registered.

“Yes, Mr. Hopple?” She appeared more confused than before.

He mentally girded his loins and labored on. “Yes, Mrs. Wren. Every man, even an earl”—here he paused significantly to emphasize the title—“even an
earl
needs a place of repose and calm. A sanctuary tended by the gentle hand of the feminine sex. A hand guided and led by the stronger masculine hand of a, er, guardian so that both may weather the storms and travails that life brings us.”

Mrs. Wren stared at him in a dazed way.

Felix began to feel desperate. “Every man, every
earl,
needs a place of hymeneal comfort.”

Her brow puckered. “Hymeneal?”

“Yes.” He mopped his brow. “Hymeneal. Of or pertaining to marriage.”

She blinked. “Mr. Hopple, why did the earl send you?”

Felix blew out his breath in a gust. “Oh, hang it all, Mrs. Wren! He wants to marry you.”

She went completely white. “What?”

Felix groaned. He knew he would make a hash of this. Really, Lord Swartingham was asking too much of him. He was only a land steward, for pity’s sake, not cupid with his golden bow and arrows! There was no other choice now but to muddle on.

“Edward de Raaf, the Earl of Swartingham, asks for your hand in marriage. He would like a short engagement and is considering—”

“No.”

“The first of June. Wh-what did you say?”

“I said no.” Mrs. Wren spoke in a staccato. “Tell him that I am sorry. Very sorry. But there is no possible way that I can marry him.”

“But-but-but . . .” Felix took a deep breath to quell his stutter. “But he is an earl. I know his temper is quite foul, really, and he does spend a good deal of time in mud. Which”—he shuddered—“he actually seems to like. But his title and his considerable—one might even say
obscene
—wealth make up for that, don’t you think?”

Felix ran out of breath and had to stop.

“No, I don’t.” She moved toward the door. “Just tell him no.”

“But, Mrs. Wren! How will I face him?”

She closed the door gently behind her, and his despairing cry echoed in the empty room. Felix slumped into a chair and wished for an entire bottle of Madeira. Lord Swartingham was not going to like this.

A
NNA PLUNGED A
trowel into the soft earth and viciously dug up a dandelion. What could Edward have been thinking when he sent Mr. Hopple to propose to her this morning? Obviously he hadn’t been overcome by love. She snorted and attacked another dandelion.

The back door to the cottage scraped open. She turned and frowned. Coral was dragging a kitchen stool into the garden.

“What are you doing outside?” Anna demanded. “Pearl and I had to half carry you up the stairs to my room this morning.”

Coral sat on the stool. “Country air is supposed to heal, is it not?”

The swelling on her face had gone down somewhat, but the bruising was still evident. Pearl had packed her nostrils with lint in an attempt to heal the break. Now they flared grotesquely. Coral’s left eyelid drooped lower than the right, and Anna wondered if it would rise again with time or if the disfigurement was permanent. A small, crescent-shaped scar was scabbed over under the drooping eye.

“I expect I should thank you.” Coral tilted her head back against the cottage wall and closed her eyes, as if enjoying the sunlight on her damaged face.

“It is the usual thing to do,” Anna said.

“Not for me. I do not like being in other people’s debt.”

“Then don’t think of it as a debt,” Anna grunted as she uprooted a weed. “Consider it a gift.”

“A gift,” Coral mused. “In my experience, gifts usually have to be paid for in one way or another. But perhaps with you that truly is not so. Thank you.”

She sighed and shifted position. Although she had sustained no broken bones, there’d been bruises all over her body. She must still be in a great deal of pain.

“I value the regard of women more than men,” Coral continued. “It is so much rarer, especially in my profession. It was a woman who did this to me.”

“What?” Anna was horrified. “I thought the marquis . . . ?”

The other woman made a dismissive sound. “He was but her instrument. Mrs. Lavender told him I was entertaining other men.”

“But why?”

“She wanted my position as the marquis’ mistress. And we have some history between us.” Coral waved a hand. “But that does not matter. I will deal with her when I am well. Why are you not working at the Abbey today? That is where you usually spend your days, is it not?”

Anna frowned. “I’ve decided not to go there anymore.”

“You have had a falling out with your man?” Coral asked.

“How—?”

“That is who you saw in London, is it not? Edward de Raaf, the Earl of Swartingham?”

“Yes, that’s who I met,” she sighed. “But he’s not my man.”

“It has been my observation that women of your ilk—principled women—do not bed a man unless their heart is involved.” Coral’s mouth quirked sardonically. “They place a great deal of sentimentality on the act.”

Anna took an unnecessarily long time to find the next root with the tip of her trowel. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I did place a great deal of sentimentality on the-the
act.
But that is neither here nor there now.” She bore down on the trowel handle, and the dandelion popped out of the soil. “We argued.”

Coral regarded her with narrowed eyes for a moment and then shrugged and closed her eyelids again. “He found out it was you—”

Anna looked up, startled. “How did you—?”

“And now I suppose you will meekly accept his disapproval,” Coral continued without pause. “You will hide your shame behind a faηade of respectable widowhood. Perhaps you could knit stockings for the poor of the village. Your good works will surely comfort you when he marries in a few years and beds another woman.”

“He’s asked me to marry him.”

Coral opened her eyes. “Now that is interesting.” She looked at the growing pile of wilted dandelions. “But you refused him.”

Whack!

Anna started hacking at the dandelion pile. “He thinks me a wanton.”

Whack!

“I’m barren and he needs children.”

Whack!

“And he doesn’t want me.”

Whack! Whack! Whack!

Anna stopped and stared at the heap of broken, oozing weeds.

“Doesn’t he?” Coral murmured. “And what about you? Do you, ah,
want
him?”

Anna felt heat flooding her cheeks. “I’ve been without a man for many years now. I can be alone again.”

A smile flickered across Coral’s face. “Have you ever noticed that once you have had a taste of certain sweets—raspberry trifle is my own despair—it is quite impossible not to think, not to want, not to
crave
until you have taken another bite?”

“Lord Swartingham is not a raspberry trifle.”

“No, more of a dark chocolate mousse, I should think,” Coral murmured.

“And,” Anna continued as if she hadn’t heard the interruption, “I don’t need another bite, uh,
night
of him.”

A vision of that second night rose up before her eyes: Edward bare-chested, his trousers undone, lounging in that chair before the fire like a Turkish pasha. His skin, his
penis,
had gleamed in the firelight.

Anna swallowed. Her mouth was watering. “I can live without Lord Swartingham,” she declared very firmly.

Coral raised an eyebrow.

“I can! Besides, you weren’t there.” Anna suddenly felt as wilted as the dandelions. “He was horribly angry. He said terrible things to me.”

“Ah,” Coral said. “He is uncertain of you.”

“I don’t see why that should make you happy,” Anna said. “And, anyway, it’s much more than that. He’ll never forgive me.”

Coral smiled like a cat watching a sparrow hop near. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“W
HAT DO YOU
mean, you won’t marry me?” Edward paced from the curio shelf at one end of the small sitting room to the settee at the other end, pivoted, and came back again. Not such a great feat since he could cross the entire room in three strides. “I’m an earl, goddamnit!”

Anna grimaced. She should never have let him into the cottage. Of course, she hadn’t had much choice at the time, since he’d threatened to break down the door if she didn’t open it.

He had looked quite capable of doing it, too.

“I won’t marry you,” she repeated.

“Why not? You were eager enough to fuck me.”

Anna winced. “I do wish you would stop using that word.”

Edward swung around and assumed a hideously sarcastic expression. “Would you prefer
swive?
Tup?
Dance the buttock jig?
”

She compressed her lips. Thank goodness Mother Wren and Fanny had gone shopping this morning. Edward was making no effort to lower his voice.

“You don’t want to marry me.” Anna spoke slowly and enunciated each word as if talking to a hard-of-hearing village idiot.

“Whether I want to marry you or not isn’t the issue, as you well know,” Edward said. “The fact is, I must marry you.”

“Why?” She blew out a breath. “There is no possibility of a child. As you have made abundantly clear, you know I am barren.”

“I have compromised you.”

“I’m the one who went to Aphrodite’s Grotto in disguise. It seems to me that
I
compromised
you.
” Anna thought it commendable that she did not wave her arms in the air in exasperation.

“That’s ridiculous!” Edward’s bellow could probably be heard back at the Abbey.

Why did men think that saying something louder made it true? “No more ridiculous than an earl who is already engaged proposing marriage to his secretary!” Her own voice was raised now.

“I’m not proposing. I’m telling you we must marry.”

“No.” Anna crossed her arms.

Edward stalked across the room toward her, each step deliberate and meant to be intimidating. He didn’t stop until his chest was inches from her face. She craned her neck to meet his gaze; she refused to back away from him.

He leaned down until his breath brushed across her forehead intimately. “You will marry me.”

He smelled of coffee. Anna dropped her eyes to his mouth. Even in anger, it was disgustingly sensual. She retreated a step and turned her back. “I am not going to marry you.”

Anna could hear him breathing heavily behind her. She peeked over her shoulder.

Edward was looking thoughtfully at her bottom.

His eyes snapped up. “You will marry me.” He held up a hand when she started to speak. “But I’ll quit the discussion of when for now. In the meantime, I still need a secretary. I want you at the Abbey this afternoon.”

“I hardly think”—Anna had to stop to steady her voice—“I hardly think in light of our past relationship that I should continue as your secretary.”

Edward’s eyes narrowed. “Correct me if I am wrong, Mrs. Wren, but weren’t you the one who initiated that relationship? Therefore—”

“I said I was sorry!”

He ignored her outburst. “
Therefore,
I fail to see why I should be the one to suffer the loss of a secretary merely because of your discomfort, if that is the problem.”

“Yes, that’s the problem!” Discomfort didn’t begin to describe the agony it would be to try and carry on as before. Anna took a fortifying breath. “I can’t return.”

“Well, then,” Edward said softly, “I fear I’ll be unable to pay you your wages to date.”

“That’s . . .” Anna lost her power of speech in sheer horror.

The Wren household had been counting on the money that would be paid at the end of the month. So much so that they’d already accrued several small debts at the local shops. It would be bad enough, not having a job. If she couldn’t have the wages she’d already earned as Edward’s secretary, the results would be disastrous.

“Yes?” Edward inquired.

“That’s unfair!” Anna burst out.

“Now, dear heart, whatever gave you the idea that I played fair?” He smiled silkily.

“You can’t do that!”

“Yes, I can. I keep telling you that I’m an earl, but it hasn’t seemed to have sunk in yet.” Edward propped a fist beneath his chin. “Of course, if you come back to work, your wages will be paid in full.”

Anna closed her mouth and breathed rather forcefully through her nostrils for a bit.