Anne had sometimes wondered how she would feel when this moment finally came, the moment she saw Michael again. She had honestly never been sure. There were times when she had missed him so much, she would have given anything to have him with her, even for just an hour.
But then there were times when she had cried herself to sleep, wondering why her one-time best friend, the boy who used to write her twice a week from school without fail, wouldn’t answer any of her letters.
There were moments when she thought of Michael warmly, as her dearest friend. But if she was being honest, there were also moments when she felt hurt. Confused.
Even angry.
And so she had never been sure what her reaction would be. But now that he was here…
She was glad to see him. So glad.
It was such a relief to find that she felt that way.
Michael embraced her warmly. When Anne drew back, they were both smiling, even if she had tears in her eyes. He reached up and carefully removed her mask.
Standing mere inches from him as he unfastened the ties, Anne felt shy. Her first instinct had been correct: without the mask, Michael was everything that was tall, dark, and handsome.
Sometime in the past four years, the little boy she’d grown up with had turned into this magnificent specimen of the male species. It was going to take some... getting used to, that was all.
She took a hasty step back once he finished with her mask. “It’s so good to see you.”
“It’s wonderful to see you, too.” He gave her a look. “And I’m relieved to see you still remember who I am.”
Anne laughed. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you! In my defense, you were wearing a mask. And you must know, Michael, how much you’ve changed in the last four years. Why, you must be a full foot taller than you were when last I saw you.”
“Not quite. Only eight inches. I now stand six feet, five inches.”
“Well, you look marvelous.” Anne’s voice broke on the last word, and tears formed in her eyes anew. “I’m so sorry, I…” She looked away, unable to continue.
Suddenly she was in his arms again. She found herself flush against a warm, solid expanse of chest. Those tree trunk-thick arms enveloped her completely, and it felt wonderful. She could feel his breath in her hair and the slight scrape of his jaw when it brushed her forehead.
Her breath was shaky, and her heart was racing like a hummingbird’s wings. Which was ridiculous! This was… this was nothing. It wasn’t as though Michael meant anything by it. Why, this was just like all the times she’d hugged him right before he left for school, the exact same hug she had given her brothers.
This felt distinctly unlike hugging her brother.
“It’s all right,” he murmured into her hair.
“I just…” She swallowed, squeezing her eyes shut. “I missed you so much, Michael.”
His voice was rough when he replied, “I know, Anne. Believe me, I know.”
They remained there for a moment before it dawned on Anne that anyone might come out onto the balcony and discover them in what appeared to be a compromising position. Not that it was, of course! Michael wasn’t interested in her in that way.
Her face fell a trifle as she recalled the day she had learned that with absolute certainty.
Anne stepped back. “Look at me, crying when I’m happy.” She dabbed at her tears with the back of her glove. “Tell me all about Canada.”
“Canada is...” The corners of his lips turned up and his green eyes sparkled. “Do you remember how when we were younger, you and I could always dream up the best adventures?”
“Of course, I remember. Pirates and sea monsters. Knights and dragons and damsels in distress.”
“I don’t recall you ever having been in distress.”
She strove to make her voice light. “I was referring, of course, to Caro. And occasionally to Harrington.”
He laughed, a full-throated sound that made her heart squeeze, she hadn’t heard it in so long. “Indeed! And that’s what Canada is like. I had adventures there. Real adventures.” He paused, and when he looked at her again, his eyes were very... intense. “When I was there,” he said carefully, “I felt like I had almost everything I’ve ever wanted.”
Her cheeks flushed. This is Michael, you dolt, she reminded herself. He didn’t mean that the way it sounded.
And yet, the look in his eyes when he said it… Anne and Michael were so close growing up, they’d joked that they could read each other’s faces. Her siblings even had a rule that they weren’t allowed to be partners in whist, because he would take one look at her face and throw down a trump card, able to intuit when she couldn’t pick up the trick. Sometimes Anne felt like she could glean more from the quirk of Michael’s eyebrow than she could from an hour of someone else’s conversation.
And the way he was looking at her right now… Why, if Anne didn’t know better, she would have said his expression was… ardent.
She shook herself. That was the crux of it, she did know better. “I look forward to hearing about every one of those adventures.” She forced a bright smile.
But she found she couldn’t hold it.
“Michael,” she said, dropping the mask of false cheerfulness, “what happened?”
It felt unreal to Michael, after four years of struggling to accept that Anne would never be his, to be standing on the balcony of this fancy London town house, different in every way to the square log cabin he had inhabited out on the Canadian frontier, with Anne standing close enough to touch.
He was so glad her mask was off and he could finally see her. She looked much the same as he remembered—perhaps a touch paler than she’d been four years ago and missing the spray of freckles that typically appeared across her nose in the summertime, which made him wonder if she spent too much of her time stuck indoors. Her figure had ripened a bit since last he saw her, and although she couldn’t be described as anything but slender, she’d lost the slightly coltish quality she’d once had. Michael didn’t much mind either way—he’d thought she looked perfect before, and she looked every bit as perfect now.
Those were the only changes he could detect. She wore her warm brown hair the same way, piled atop her head, highlighting her long, elegant neck. As for her eyes… Michael knew Anne wished she had blue eyes like her sisters, but he’d never understood it. He could stare into Anne’s big, rich, gorgeous brown eyes for days.
He drew in a breath, and there it was: a hint of strawberries. She had always smelled like strawberries; he happened to know it was from the hand cream she used. He’d caught the scent the second he swept her into his arms, and his knees had gone slightly weak, so much did that sweet, familiar scent remind him of her.
He felt the way you did after a bad chest cold, the kind where no matter how desperately you gasped and struggled, you could never get a satisfying lungful of air.
Seeing Anne again… it was as though he had drawn his first full breath in four years.
He found his gaze drifting to her lips. Anne’s lips were naturally rose-pink, and they were full and wide enough that when she smiled, that smile had a way of taking over her whole face. No one could smile at you like Anne Astley. When she did, it all but knocked him flat.
Notably, she was not smiling at him at the moment. And he couldn’t say that he blamed her.
He cleared his throat, recalling that she had asked him a question. “I’m so glad I can finally tell you. I’ve been wanting to explain everything for so long. Although—” he broke off, inclining his head toward the crowded ballroom “—perhaps not right here.”
Anne nodded. “I understand. Your father told me… well, nothing detailed. But he implied that you were on some sort of mission for the Crown.”
“I was. Although the details shouldn’t get out, at this point, there’s no reason I might not confide in you. And I will, Anne. I swear, I’ll tell you everything, just as soon as we’re somewhere we won’t be overheard.”
“It’s not so much that. I mean…” A guilty look crossed her face. “Of course, I want to hear about it. But it’s more…” She looked down, and he watched her steel herself. “Did you receive my letters?”
He had known this was coming, too. How could it not? They had corresponded regularly for all the years he was away at school, first at Eton and then at Oxford. It must’ve been jarring when he stopped writing altogether.
The problem was that it was impossible to write a coherent reply when one hadn’t read the recipient’s original missive. After Michael had completed the task that brought him to Canada, he’d made his way to his father’s farm near Lake Simcoe. There he’d found a small mountain of correspondence waiting for him. He could remember searching through the pile for Anne’s hand and struggling to open her letter with fingers that shook, his heart in his throat at the prospect of reading her answer to his proposal.
But it contained no answer, no mention of his proposal at all. It was as though she’d never received his letter. And what was more, it contained such unexpected, horrific news that he fell to his knees when he read it: she had married someone else.
He hadn’t opened any of her letters after that. He couldn’t bear to. If they had contained one word of her happiness with another man, it would have gutted him.
Anne was waiting for him to respond. He decided to tell her the truth.
At least, some of it.
“I did receive them,” he said.
It was physically painful to see the heartbreak steal over her face. She swallowed. “Then may I ask why you didn’t reply?”
Michael froze, scrambling for a response.
After a moment, Anne continued, “I wondered if it was something I’d done, if you were mad at me, or—”
“I’m not mad at you,” Michael said. That at least was true.
To be sure, there had been moments when he had been furious, not with her but with himself (why had he let her go to London without declaring himself first? How could he have been so stupid as to assume she knew?) He had also been mad at fate, which had seen fit to separate them at the worst possible moment, when Anne was making her debut upon the Marriage Mart.
But as he worked his way through the rest of his mail, it became clear that something had gone terribly wrong. That Anne had somehow never received his letter. That her parents had formed the impression that she had refused him and had therefore given their consent when she announced her wish to accept this Lord Wynters.
And by the time they realized she had never received his proposal it had been too late.
However miserable he had been, he’d always known deep down that it wasn’t Anne’s fault.
She was awaiting his answer. He studied her face, hating to see sadness in her eyes. “I hurt you. I mean—of course I did. How could it not have hurt?” He took both of her hands in his. “I am sorry for it, Anne. Because hurting you is the last thing I would ever want to do. There’s a reason I didn’t write back. That I couldn’t. And I’ll explain everything, I promise you.” He made a sound of frustration. “Just as soon as we’re not surrounded by four hundred people.”
She peered up at him for a moment, and Michael could scarcely breathe, so anxious was he for her reaction. Then he saw her brow slowly unknot, her shoulders relax, and he felt her squeeze his hands. “Thank you for that,” she said. “I’m sure once you’ve had a chance to explain, it will all make sense.”
It was such a relief to see the sorrow gone from her face. “So,” he said, eager to redirect the conversation, “I’ve been travelling for the past three months. How are you?”
“I’m doing well, just focusing on the Ladies’ Society, as always.” A smile stole over her face. “The most wonderful thing happened recently. It’s a long story, but I came into possession of this little bejeweled box that turned out to be an ancient Egyptian artifact. It sold at auction last month and fetched enough that the Ladies’ Society will be able to double in size.”
“That’s marvelous. An Egyptian artifact—how on earth did you come by that?”
Anne’s eyes went wide as guineas. “Oh dear, you probably haven’t heard. My husband died a year ago.”
Oh, he had heard, all right. “I’m so sorry,” he said, which wasn’t even a little bit true, but seemed like the correct thing to say.
“He won it at a hand of cards just before he passed away.” She pressed a hand to her heart. “I hope I didn’t imply I was glad my husband died!”
Michael for one wouldn’t have minded. “Not at all.” He cleared his throat. “So… you’re a widow now?”
She tilted her head. “Well, of course. What else would I be?”
“Indeed, I was just wondering if you had perhaps remarried already, or were promised to someone else,” Michael said, the words spilling out in a rush. This was his greatest fear. As soon as Wynters had died, everyone he knew had immediately written to him with the news.
His friends had been so prompt that their letters had all gone out on the same ship.
And that sack of letters had gone astray, moldering in some godforsaken corner for six months, so that he only received them twelve weeks ago. His father’s more recent missives, asking what the hell was taking him so long, had suddenly made sense.
He’d rushed back as quickly as he could, feeling sick with worry that Anne would accept another man’s suit before he got there. He peered at her, his heart in his throat. “Are you?”
“I am not. I only just left off full mourning.”
“And are you planning to remarry?” Michael asked, striving to make his tone conversational.
“I am. You know I’ve always wanted a large family. And I didn’t have any children. With Lord Wynters.” She flushed, turning to rest her hands on the balustrade and gaze out over the gardens.
Michael took up a position next to her. “I see. Well, are there any leading contenders?”
“None so far. I’ve only just started my search. It’s actually the reason I’m here tonight—to look for a husband.”
Suddenly Michael felt better than he had in… about four years. “And you’ve found him,” he muttered under his breath.
Apparently he hadn’t spoken as quietly as he’d intended, because Anne’s head whipped around and her mouth fell open. “What was that, Michael?”
“Er, nothing.” Although, judging by the pack of men scrapping after Anne’s dance card, the sooner he declared himself, the better. He couldn’t risk waiting too long.
Again.
“Actually, Anne, the truth is…” He swallowed. This was it. He took her hand in both of his, gathering his courage. “The reason I came back—”
“I say, Morsley,” came the familiar voice of Anne’s brother Harrington, “just how long were you planning to monopolize our sister?”
Michael gave the Astley brothers, who emerged from the ballroom, a look of incredulous annoyance. “A bit longer, as it happens.”
“What’s this scowl?” returned Harrington. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”
“I would rather speak with your sister,” Michael said pointedly.
“She is, after all, so much better looking than I am,” Harrington replied.
“Better smelling, too,” Michael muttered.
“Now, don’t be silly, Harrington,” Anne said. “Michael and I have catching up to do. You know we’ve always been best friends.”
Harrington rolled his eyes. “Oh, yes, best friends. I have a best friend, too, yet I cannot recall the last time I scooped Thetford into my arms and—”
Without even looking at him, Fauconbridge reached out and cuffed his younger brother upside the back of the head. “Harrington. Behave,” he intoned.
Harrington sighed. “It will go against form, but just this once, I suppose I could give it a try.”
“Glad as I am to see you both,” Michael said, giving them a glower that said he wasn’t glad at all, “is there any particular reason you have interrupted my time catching up with your better-looking, better-smelling sister?”
“Indeed, there is,” Fauconbridge replied. “As you may have noticed, Anne has caused quite a sensation this evening. The first dance is almost over, and Gladstone has the second. He has already vowed that, unlike Bassingthwaighte, he will call you out if you take his dance.”
Michael was already turning back to Anne. “Fine. Let him call me out. Now, if you two will excuse us—”
“Michael! No!” Anne exclaimed. “I won’t have you taking such a risk.”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, please, Anne. I was at school with Gladstone. He’s the worst shot in the world. He probably doesn’t even know which end of the gun to load.”
She took his arm and began tugging him back toward the ballroom. “All the more reason not to duel with him. He’s like to kill you by mistake while attempting to delope.”
“I’m willing to take the chance,” Michael grumbled, digging in his heels and pulling her to a halt just shy of the ballroom.
She turned to face him. “Well, I’m not. There will be no taking of unnecessary chances. Not when I’ve just gotten you back after such a very long time.”
Her voice was tremulous with sincerity, which managed to penetrate his annoyance. “I suppose I can accept that.”
“Morsley!” Fauconbridge called from inside. “Are you coming?”
“I suppose I should be calling you Lord Morsley, too,” Anne mused, “at least when someone’s around to hear.” The rest of the Astley brood called him by his courtesy title, but he and Anne had always used each other’s first names, as far back as he could remember.
“Don’t you dare,” he whispered. He still had her mask, and now he lifted it to her face, gently fastening the cord behind her head. He purposely swept his fingers along her hairline as he finished, framing her face. “Perfect,” he said softly. He felt her shiver, which was immensely satisfying. “I take it your dance card is full for the rest of the evening?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I feared as much. So, when can I see you again? For more than two minutes between dances?”
“Tomorrow. I join Edward and Harrington for shooting practice once a week. You’ll come, won’t you?”
“I’d like nothing better.”
“Meet me at my house at nine o’clock.” Anne wrote the address on the cover of her dance card, then ripped it off and handed it to him.
“Nine o’clock. Perfect.”
Anne left then to fulfil her promised dances. As anticipated, he found few chances to speak with her, and never for more than a minute or two.
But that didn’t matter. Tomorrow he would find a way to shake off her brothers so they could be alone.
Tomorrow, at long last, he would propose.