The Scandal Before Christmas (3 page)

Had he imagined that flash of something more? Had he invented a glimpse of keen intelligence to ease his disappointment? Her head was back down now, hidden behind her straw bonnet, merely a muddy brown marsh wren.

He had to find out. He turned to the colonel. “Is there something wrong with her? Is there a reason she isn’t able to speak?”

“No.” The girl’s gaze came swiftly to his, sharp and incisive. As was her voice, though it was so small, it was beyond quiet. “There is nothing wrong with
me
.”

But for the first time, she looked at him fully, her gaze level and direct, and Ian could see without any doubt that the expression he thought he had seen dancing in the dark depths of Anne Lesley’s golden brown eyes was in actuality, a subtle, refined rage.

Chapter Four

It was everything Anne Lesley could do to sit still, and not throw the entire pot of coffee at Lieutenant Worth’s big, thick, absolutely perfect head.

Not that she had ever thrown a coffeepot in her life, but the moment seemed ripe to start. And it made a nice change from wanting to throw pots and pans and anything else to hand at her mother, who chattered and nattered on and on, just as she always did, until Anne thought she would drown in the rising sea of endless, useless, suffocating noise.

And from the slightly seasick look on the impossibly handsome lieutenant’s face, he now felt the same way. About her.

“If you will excuse me, ma’am.” The lieutenant broke in the moment Mama paused for breath. “I have some business I need to attend to. Pinkerton”—he gestured to the cherubic-looking old salt who had brought in the tray—“will show you to your rooms as soon as you may like.”

Anne liked that very moment, if it would take her away from the drawing room. Away from her parents, who took her obedient compliance for granted because she let them. Away from the wretchedly perfect young man, who was exiting the room as if she stank like day-old fish. Away from her foolish, girlish hopes.

Clearly the perfect young man was already regretting his impulse to offer for her. But he had offered—through her father, of course—and she had accepted, and she meant to keep to the devil’s bargain now. For what else was she to do? How else was she to escape the suffocating, endless noise of her mother’s house? This was her chance, and she meant to take it. At the advanced age of two and twenty, she was so firmly upon the shelf that another offer was not likely to be forthcoming—her father was more than unlikely to have another acquaintance who would bargain for a bride sight unseen.

No. As imperfectly perfect as Lieutenant Worth appeared, she meant to keep him, and Gull Cottage, to boot. The charmingly eccentric cottage was poised by the edge of the sea, and was situated in an equally charming garden—beautifully disarrayed, even in winter. The whole place looked as if a good stiff wind might catch it up, and sail the antique amalgamation of rooftops and chimney pots straight across the marvelously brooding bay.

It was enchanting. And absolutely perfect.

Her father said she was to be left on her own here. She could not imagine a happier fate. Anne wanted nothing more than to be out-of-doors, exploring the frost-covered garden, and finding a way down to the beach that beckoned to her from outside the window, where the howling wind could drown out every other sound so she wouldn’t even have to hear herself think.

Since her parents took no more note of her than they would the furniture—until they had need of her—it took no more than a moment for her to don her heavy cloak, and make her quiet way down the stone corridor toward the back of the house, where she had glimpsed a path leading away to the sea.

But the way out of the house was blocked—the cherubic old sailor was poised over the threshold of what looked like a book room.

“I’ve put the young maidy up above.” He bobbed his white head, and Anne could see his apple cheeks had been polished a glowing red by his exertions in bringing in their baggage. “In the big airy room with the windows over the bay. Best view in the house.”

“Put her wherever you like, Pinky,” came the unseen answer. “Just keep her well away from me.”

Anne knew she should move on. She knew no good could ever come of eavesdropping. But the sharp words were like a blade, carving up her determination. Her confidence had already fallen through the bottom of her belly to land somewhere around her knees, leaving her too unsteady to go any further.

And it was best she knew how Lieutenant Worth really felt about her, without her father’s blustery, inept kindnesses to blunt the blow.

“Now, young sir.” The man Pinkerton shook his head like a sad-faced hound. “Things seem to be going so well. She looks the sort to like it here.”

“Devil take me if she does. We’d best get in considerably more whisky, Pinky, if she’s to look the sort that
I’d
like to have here.”

“Now, now. Perhaps a little more time, young sir, to get to know the little maidy.” The old tar sounded full of sympathetic caution. “Afore ye go about consigning yerself to the whisky.”

“All time in the world couldn’t turn that girl into something more attractive. And I don’t think there is anything on this earth that will convince her to like
me
. I saw the look on her face. She’ll never have me. Not in a hundred years.” The still unseen lieutenant heaved out a frustrated sigh. “And it’s just as well. Save us both a world of hurt. I can’t abide plain, Pinky, you know that. I like to be entertained, and to all appearances Miss Anne Lesley is as dull and unentertaining as a house wren, and it’s clear that she already hates me.”

It was not news to her, this unflattering assessment of her looks, for it was nothing more than she had known from staring into her own mirror. But hearing it stated so bluntly by another hurt all the same. The words had torn some unseen part of her, deep inside, and all she could feel was the numbing heat of leaking blood inside her chest.

“But I haven’t got any choice.” His voice ground inexorably on. “So whisky, I think, Pinky, applied with liberal vigor, as the only effective recourse.”

Damn him. Damn him for an arrogant, unthinking bastard. Damn them both, because there was no alternative for her either. She could not abide the thought of going back. Of returning home a failure.

Anne turned blindly to go, to escape into the frigid air, but she ran straight into a little table set beside the door, bashing her shin, and giving herself away.

The old tar reeled around, his chalky blue eyes taking in everything in an instant. “Oh, miss! I didn’t see you there.”

Behind Pinkerton, a blue oath streamed from beyond the book room door.

So before she had to face her humiliation in person, Anne fled though the doorway, and pitched herself down the nearest path. She followed the salt scent of the wind blindly, until she burst out upon a gray beach where the sand gave way to slate gray water stretching almost as far as her eyes could see. And she could see a long way. Years and years stretching in front of her as flat and overcast as the winter sky.

Years filled with the stink of stale whisky.

Anne picked up a pebble and dashed it into the choppy water with every ounce of mortified frustration she possessed. The stone disappeared without a splash, swallowed whole by the sea. If only she could disappear as easily.

She should have known. She should have anticipated that her father’s scheme would be as harebrained and half-thought-out as all the rest of his interactions with his family had been for the past twenty years—minimal and fleeting.

“Worth.” Her father—a man who had only recently come home from the Royal Marines for good—had given her the name like a souvenir prize captured in battle. “Knew him when we both served on
Audacious
. Good lad. Sure you’ll rub along quite well. There’s a good girl.”

And that was all the explanation of her marriage and potential mate she had been given. And all she had wanted. The news that she was being offered a chance to marry had been like a lung full of fresh air to a drowning woman—an awakening, as if, after years of merely existing, of putting up with her circumstances, her life had finally, finally begun. She had listened to her father’s kind assessment of the lieutenant and his wish to marry, and had been filled with hope. Enough hope to keep her opinions, and the questions that had swirled around in her head, to herself.

But now she had the answers to her unasked questions anyway—Lieutenant Ian Worth didn’t want her for a wife at all.

How incredibly lowering. In fact, Lieutenant Worth’s reaction had been more than lowering—it was only just short of appalling. Because she would rather face the humiliation of being wed to a man who thought her so plain he could barely abide her, than go home again. What other option did she have but to swallow her pride the way that pebble had been swallowed by the sea? How many other chances for escape was she like to get?

At the age of two and twenty, the answer was obvious—none.

Oh, why could Lieutenant Worth not have been what she had hoped—a good lad. A young man as unpretentious and unassuming as herself. A man who had been a colleague of her father, unaccustomed to company after so many years in the navy, who needed an old acquaintance to arrange his marriage? Why could
he
not have been as dull as dishwater? Why could
he
not have been a quiet, weather-beaten sailor man who did not expect to be entertained?

Instead he had been a handsome, polished—such a profusion of gold braid and gleaming boots—worldly young man. She had nothing to entertain—no accomplishments, no wit, no sparkling conversation, and certainly no smile dazzling enough for the Lieutenant Worths of this world. As it was, she could barely speak, let alone entertain. She simply had no words.

No, that was not entirely true. She had plenty of words, masses of them, swirling around in her brain, dammed up behind the barrier of her mouth. But there they stayed. Because words were too powerful to play with so carelessly, like the lieutenant, or her mother. Words could so easily and lastingly cause division and hurt—her mother’s words flowed out in an unabated rush, careless and unthinking, streaming over everything in her path, and so often wounding those around her. Especially Anne, whose ways and demeanor always managed to put Mama in an ill humor.

“A body likes to be doing!” her mother was always exclaiming. “A lady is never idle. How you can be so still, so quiet, saying nothing and doing nothing, is beyond me. A good woman is industrious, not idle and still. I cannot abide you when you are so awfully still and quiet.”

Anne was not industrious or busy. She could never be. She could never concentrate on the things her mother cared about, and constantly pressed upon her—tatting, embroidering, mending, or some such. All Anne wanted to do was think, and read, and walk. All she could do was shut her ears, and bide her time until her mother’s miniscule attention was invariably turned, and she could escape to her attic window seat, or slip away to the quiet windswept hills she loved in silence. A silence she had hoped to find here, with Lieutenant Ian Worth.

But he was as careless with his words as her mother had ever been. And his words had cut her more deeply, for she had invested herself with the one thing that made her vulnerable—hope.

“Miss Lesley.” The smooth voice came from behind her on the sand.

Lieutenant Worth. Of course. She turned toward him because she knew she must, allowing herself only a peek at him before she turned her flaming face resolutely to the sand. But it was enough to see his handsome face creased with something very much like remorse. “Miss Lesley, you needn’t look at me so.”

She hardly knew where to look. The wide expanse of the Solent seemed the safest alternative. “I’m sorry,” she forced herself to say, because she felt she must say something.

A bark of a laugh escaped him. “Don’t be. It’s only right that you should give me a look that makes my cods shrink up into my body for protection. I’ve been in the navy long enough to get used to such looks, and to know when I deserve them.”

Had she really given him such a look? “I didn’t mean—”

“You, Miss Anne Lesley”—he had learned her name—” are a dreadful liar.” He advanced to stand next to her, but thankfully kept his gaze focused out at the sea. “While I am simply dreadful.”

The candid admission startled a reply out of her. “Yes.”

“I should like to apologize. Most profoundly. I know I’m a ramshackle, shallow fellow, Miss Lesley, but I’ve never been thoughtless. Or cruel. But I can see that I was both.”

“Yes.” She could think of nothing else to say. But neither could she say any more. And though she could not bring herself to look at him—at all his noble, handsome misery—she thought she could hear sincerity in his voice.

“Do you think, Miss Lesley, you might be kind enough for both of us, and forgive me?”

What a strange, unsettling, lovely feeling to have such a man ask her for her forgiveness. It almost made her feel merciful. Almost.

“Do you think it would help if I begged? If I got down on my knees, and begged your forgiveness? Like a supplicant in front of a queen.”

The thought of such a man prostrating himself in front of her was such a fanciful, ridiculous image that Anne forgot her anger and humiliation enough to actually look at his face. But it was as if he had been waiting for that moment, because he lavished her with a smile so sweet and so rueful, that Anne was almost ready to forgive him for being so handsome. Almost.

“Please. I beg you.” And here he
did
drop to one knee before her in the sand. “Dear, gracious Miss Lesley. Please forgive me. Please give me another chance to earn your trust. Only say the word and we can start again.”

Say the word.

But that was the problem. She never could
say
the right word. She could think it. She could think of scads of them. But she could never get them beyond the heat that bottled up in her throat.

So she gave him the only word she had. “Yes.”

“Wonderful,” he said. “I am honored to make your acquaintance, Miss Lesley.” He rose as he spoke, and made her a bow—a lovely, deeply respectful bow—to which she found herself making a graceful-enough curtsy in return. “How do you do? I’m Ian Worth. And you’re Anne. And, I think, you’re very shy.”