Anna’s cotton chemise stuck to her skin as she walked. Why was she nervous? She’d paid visits to Cassie before and there was nothing clandestine about this one. Mama knew all about it, and a maid walked very properly behind.
Cassie had promised her an opportunity to make things right with Lewis. It had been a week since that dreadful night at Almack’s, and she had not seen him once. That shouldn’t matter—yet she had come to depend on his support, his and Cassie’s. More than that, his friendship. She’d had no chance to explain her compulsion to dance with his brother, and Cassie said he’d been hurt by it.
Did he really like her well enough to be hurt? Surely he was merely being kind?
“Anna!” Cassie cried, trotting into the hall when Anna arrived at the house. “Oh, do send your maid home. We’ll see you get home safely. Robert, please ask Meg to send some lemonade up to the morning room.” She linked her arm with Anna’s and led her upstairs. “We won’t get intruders there. At least, none that we don’t want.” She giggled. “Poor thing, you’re so pale. Isn’t this weather dreadful?”
Anna suppressed a sigh. “I wish it would just rain. Maybe it would wash everything away and we could start over.”
Cassie spied up and down the hallway and eased the door shut. “Lewis doesn’t know you’re coming. It’s like an ambush.”
Anna didn’t like the sound of that. So deceitful.
They talked of fashions. That is, Cassie talked. Anna interjected a word here and there as she sipped her lemonade, cool and sweet.
“I wish you’d have some of this shortbread,” Cassie complained. “Otherwise I’ll eat it all.”
Anna took a small piece, but it still sat on her plate untouched when Lewis strolled into the room a few minutes later.
“Robert said you wanted to—” He broke off with a frown when he saw Anna. He bowed in her direction, avoiding her gaze. “Miss Spain.”
She sat straighter in her chair. “Good day, Mr. Aubrey. I hope you are well?” There were shadows under his eyes.
“Quite well. Thank you.” He did not return the civility. He stood for a moment, twisting his hands behind his back. “What did you want me for, Cassie?”
Anna flushed. He was often tongue-tied, but always polite—he must be angry indeed. She jumped from her chair and took a couple of hasty steps toward him. “I hoped I might see you at the Willetts’ concert.”
He shook his head. “I had other—er—commitments.”
Cassie spoke up. “Jack’s been dragging him about town every night, keeping him out until dawn. Doesn’t he look dreadful?”
“Not at all,” Anna replied. His rigid mouth and the crease between his eyebrows showed his annoyance with Cassie’s remark—not the best time to attempt an apology. But it might be the best chance she would have.
“Mr. Aubrey, I must tell you how sorry I am for reneging on your dance last week. It was—”
He cut her off with a sharp gesture. “Forget it, please. It doesn’t matter.”
She moved closer. “But it does. I was horribly rude, and I’m not surprised you’re angry. After all the consideration you’ve shown me…”
“This is quite unnecessary, Miss Spain. I’m not—”
“Please let me finish.” How can I make him understand? “When I saw Gid… When I saw your brother, I felt such rage, I simply had to use it. I think my blood would have boiled away.”
She had his attention now, at least. “Didn’t look like anger.”
“I could hardly stab him in the middle of Almack’s, no matter how badly I wanted to do so. You are the one who taught me to smile when I feel least like doing so.” She saw doubt in his eyes, but his expression softened. Had he missed her too, this week past?
“Good heavens, Lewis,” cried Cassie, “why do you think Gideon was so incensed afterward? If she had just laid her heart at his feet, he’d have been grinning like a cat in the cream-pot.”
Anna touched his sleeve, a momentary gesture she doubted he could feel. “I cannot bear the thought of spending the rest of the Season as your enemy, Mr. Aubrey. Please say you understand. And if we should find ourselves at the same event, may I hope you won’t cut my acquaintance entirely?”
“I’m sorry I took it the wrong way, Miss Spain.” He bowed low over her hand in a formal gesture, touching his lips to her fingers. “I could never think of you as an enemy.”
“There, that wasn’t so hard,” Cassie said. “Now, both of you sit down and have some shortbread.”
For Anna, it had been very hard indeed. But Lewis sat beside her, and for the first time in a week, she felt hungry.
The following day it rained, and Lewis resumed his visits to the Spain residence. Cassie accompanied him once or twice, but he preferred she should not know how often he went. Anna accompanied him and the Wedburys to a concert one evening, the theater another.
Lewis and Captain Fuller escorted Anna and Cassie to a picnic “for the young people” hosted by the Landrums in Richmond Park. Jack cried off, as he usually did these days. “Why would I want to watch Miss Landrum making sheep’s eyes at Gideon? I see plenty of Gideon in the hells at night.”
In the end, Gideon never came. Miss Landrum moped all afternoon. And it rained.
When Lewis visited her at home in the days that followed, Anna seemed pleased to see him, offering a sad smile and a bit of quiet conversation. Each time she appeared more wan than the time before, the shadows beneath her eyes more pronounced. Any color she had looked painted on.
And then one day early in June, she wore no smile at all. The smiles came instead from her mother, who welcomed him almost as though he were Gideon.
“Why, Mr. Aubrey! What a delightful surprise on this dull afternoon. We were just saying we needed a visit from you to cheer us up. Were we not, Anna?”
Anna murmured something Lewis couldn’t catch and shot him a look he couldn’t interpret. Then she devoted her attention to her hands, tense in her lap.
Mrs. Spain gestured to a seat on the sofa. He winced when she sat beside him, her skirts touching his leg. Cornered.
“Poor Anna is feeling this muggy weather. She is so sensitive, so—”
“Mama!”
Mrs. Spain ignored her. She placed a hand on Lewis’s sleeve and spoke, so softly he had to lean in to hear her. “The truth is, dear sir, she’s pining for you.”
Lewis drew back and almost laughed out loud. Did she think he was such an idiot? “I think we both know better than that, ma’am.”
“Your attentions have been rather marked, you know. Lady Bridgmont said to me only yesterday—”
“Please, Mama!” Anna’s cheeks were scarlet. This strident, thoughtless woman had no business raising children, any more than his own parents did. No doubt she would say she only wanted the best for her daughter. Until today, she had thought him far from the best.
“I honestly do not know what Mr. Spain will do if she comes home unattached. I fear he…” Here she paused, with one hand to her brow and a spurious expression of concern. “I’m going to leave the two of you alone. Don’t be shy, Mr. Aubrey. She’s dying to hear the words.”
Mrs. Spain stood. Lewis did too, purely a matter of ingrained courtesy. Abandoning the throaty, conspiratorial voice she’d used on him, Mrs. Spain spoke again. “Anna, you come sit here with Mr. Aubrey. I want none of your missish airs, now. Mr. Aubrey has no time to waste on that nonsense.”
Anna did as she was commanded. Lewis watched her, but if she looked his way at all, she saw no higher than his knees.
He remained standing until the door closed behind Mrs. Spain. Then he sat again.
And Anna jumped up. “I can’t… This will seem rude, Mr. Aubrey, and I truly don’t mean it to be, but you must go now.”
He scrambled back to his feet. “Miss Spain, what’s wrong? Is there some sort of trouble?” He took her hand, holding on to it when she attempted to pull away. “Please tell me. Is it something I’ve done? Is there any way I can help?”
“No, there’s nothing. It’s nothing to do with you.” Jerking her hand from his, she strode to the door and yanked it open.
“I hate to leave you so upset.”
She summoned a smile that seemed to break in the middle. “I’m quite well, Mr. Aubrey. Thank you for calling.”
For five days Lewis attended every bloody social event there was, but he saw no sign of Anna or her mother. Finally, he called again in Clifford Street but got no response to his knock.
Frowning, he rapped the knocker again. The sharp click of metal on metal resounded through the hall inside. Still no butler, no maid, no one at all. What the devil? He hadn’t known what sort of reception to expect, but it wasn’t this.
He knocked once more. Still the door stared back at him, obdurate.
He lowered the bouquet he’d brought, face down to the ground. Sweet Williams and cornflowers, the girl had said. A waste of money.
Admitting defeat, he trod down the steps and glanced up at the façade. No movement, no ashen countenance in the bow window above him. Perhaps she had paled into invisibility.
But Mrs. Spain would never consent to that. And where in hell’s name were the servants?
Anna had said they’d be in London until the end of June, when their lease expired. Two more weeks. Then they’d pack up and join the exodus from the city, along with Lewis, the Wedburys, and every other soul who had anyplace else to go. Already London felt sticky and sluggish, the smells festering.
If he had more time, he might ask her… God no, not for her hand. She was not ready for that, and neither was he. Merely, whether she would welcome a visit from him later in the summer, should he happen to find himself in Bristol. Whether she liked him well enough to consider his suit at some unspecified time in the future.
But he did not have two weeks, or any time at all.
Lewis handed the flowers to an old woman trudging her way down the street. “Bless you, laddie,” she said.
What a gudgeon he was. A gullible, feeble-minded greenhorn.