Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

I t occurred to Anna, not for the first time, that there was not enough room for three people in the phaeton’s seat. However, since they were so tightly jammed in together, there was no real fear of falling out, despite the horrible driving.

Anna was fairly sure that if she had not been sandwiched between her two friends, she would have gone sailing out onto the wet, gray streets of London quite some time ago.

She could put up with elbows digging into her sides for a while, under those circumstances.

“Here we are, then,” Henry sing-songed, pulling his phaeton to a bouncing stop.

Anna didn’t dare glance back at Beatrice’s maid, who was perched on the back seat. The last time she’d looked, the poor woman was positively green.

It was simpler to go out with her two friends. Henry had his phaeton, and Beatrice had a maid who could chaperone them. Anna could not, of course, afford a personal maid. It wasn’t as if anybody could ever tell that she had done up her own hair.

Beatrice jumped out of the seat first, bouncing down to the ground without any need for assistance. She was short, decidedly round, with a pleasant heart-shaped face and a mass of reddish-gold curls. Moonlight glinted off her spectacles when she glanced up at the phaeton.

“I’ll just pop inside, Anna,” she announced. “I want to see if Emily has read that book I lent her. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Would it matter if I did?” Anna countered.

Beatrice chuckled. “Come along, Phoebe.”

The poor maid stumbled down from the back of the phaeton and went sighing after her mistress.

Anna and Beatrice—the formidable Miss Beatrice Haversham, bluestocking extraordinaire, thank you very much—had been friends since they were children.

At their coming out, at the ages of eighteen and nineteen respectively, they had been determinedly befriended by one Lord Henry Stanley, the second son of some powerful duke, aspiring artist, and Adonis in the making.

Naturally, there’d been a great deal of speculation over which of the ladies Lord Henry would marry. The general sentiment leaned in Anna’s favor, on account of her being pretty and well-bred, but Beatrice was the rich one and was therefore strongly in the running still.

It hardly mattered, because the gossips were wrong and the three remained friends and only friends. Lord Henry was tall, handsome, blond-haired and blue-eyed, but he did not seem interested at all in marriage. He was on the cusp of being declared a Determined Bachelor, apparently.

Of course, that was nowhere near as humiliating for a man, to be declared terminally single, as it was for a woman.

A woman such as Anna.

She moved to slip out of the phaeton and follow Beatrice inside, but Henry reached out and tapped her shoulder.

“Hold on a moment, old girl,” he murmured. “I want a word with you.”

She rolled her eyes. “ Old girl ? I’m not a dog. Or a horse. I’m sure I’ve heard you call your horse an old girl before.”

“Prickly, aren’t we? Listen, Anna, I just wanted to make sure you are alright.”

There was a pause.

“Of course I am,” Anna managed, at last. “Why do you ask?”

Henry narrowed his eyes at her. “Well, we were having a lovely evening at the opera, and suddenly you get a small hole in one of your gloves and you all but lose your mind. You kept talking about going home and fixing it until I thought you’d take off haring through the streets to get back. I know that…” He hesitated, glancing over at the shadowy shape of the manor looming above them. “I know that all of this is tricky. I know times aren’t easy. I am worried about you.”

Her shoulders sagged. She glanced down at her glove. It was the right one, a delightfully soft calfskin glove with golden stitching. She’d caught it on a protruding nail, or something like that, in their opera box, and the tearing sound had made her stomach drop. She could see a fingertip-sized sliver of skin at the base of her thumb.

“Papa bought me these,” she said softly. “For my coming out. I’ve treasured them for years. I can’t afford another pair. We can mend things, but if the hole gets too big, it’ll be harder. I was just conscious of time going by, and the stitches ripping, and the material stretching…” She bit her lip. “I’m sorry. It was silly.”

“It’s not silly,” Henry said emphatically. “I should have been more considerate. What sort of friend am I?”

“An absent-minded one. What’s the matter, too many art lessons? Can you think of nothing but painting these days?”

It was almost a joke between the three of them, Henry’s slavish devotion to his paints and canvases. He intended to be a painter, much to the horror of his wealthy, noble family.

Tonight, though, Henry didn’t smile. He shifted to stare out over the horses’ heads, his gaze fixed on the distant, silvery line of the pond further down the courtyard.

Frankly, Anna was glad they’d arrived in the dark. That way, her friends couldn’t see the state of the gardens or the dilapidated house. They knew that things were bad, of course, but not how bad.

Not the ‘owning only one pair of gloves’ sort of bad.

“George thinks I’m distracted,” Henry said at last, his voice small. “We had an argument. He… he says I worry too much about what others think.”

Anna conjured up an image of Henry’s art tutor, the one he’d had for the past year and a half. A short, stocky, good-natured man, with large, square hands that could create the most exquisite paintings she had ever seen.

He was dark-haired and sported a neatly trimmed beard. Naturally, an art tutor could not accompany them to the opera or parties, but she suspected that, if given half a chance, Henry would bring him along.

“It’s not the worst thing in the world, caring what others think,” Anna said, shrugging. “We can’t isolate ourselves entirely, can we? Everybody needs love and approval.”

Henry flinched. “Yes, I suppose so.”

A light went on in one of the upstairs rooms. Most of the windows in the manor were dark, to conserve candles, but doubtless Octavia would be waiting up for Anna.

Better get inside .

Beatrice appeared, looking peevish, talking animatedly to her maid.

Anna winced. “I probably should have told her that Emily was almost certainly in bed.”

Henry shook his head. “Yes, you should have. Anna, wait.”

She’d moved to slip out of the phaeton, but she paused to glance back at him.

Henry drew in a fortifying breath. “I’m your friend, Anna. If you need help—no matter how serious the matter is—talk to me. Please. I’ll help you if I can. I want to help.”

A lump formed in Anna’s throat. “Thank you, Henry. That means a lot.”

Muttering to herself, Beatrice stomped across the courtyard, before hauling herself back into the phaeton. “I’m tired, Henry. Will you take me home?”

“Your wish is my command,” Henry responded, cracking his whip flamboyantly in the air.

Snorting, Anna dropped to the ground. “Goodnight, you two. Try not to tip the carriage over before you get home. Good luck, Phoebe.”

The maid shot her a mournful look.

Beatrice arranged her wrinkled skirts, clearly enjoying the new space. “Oh, and do tell your guest I’m sorry to have disturbed him, Anna,” she added as Henry wheeled the phaeton around.

Anna frowned. “Guest? What guest?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t recognize him. He was in the drawing room. Goodnight!”

Henry cracked the whip over the horses’ heads, and they surged forward. The phaeton rattled down the drive.

Anna stood there, watching them. As always, she felt a pang at parting from her friends.

What guest? she silently wondered.

A cold wind blew across the grounds, and Anna shivered. Her ball gown—three years out of fashion, naturally—was far too thin and flimsy to handle the late-night cold. Sighing, she turned to let herself in.

There was no night footman on duty, of course. They couldn’t even afford a day footman. Taking off her shawl, she tossed it carelessly onto a chair in the hallway. The doors would need to be locked for the night, but first, she had to mend her glove. Gingerly pulling off the glove in question, she headed towards the drawing room.

The small, upstairs drawing room, that is—the one that was simply decorated and easier to heat, and also opened up onto her mother’s rooms. It was a convenient location, beside the library, and it had allowed them to eschew heating and cleaning the large drawing room downstairs.

A good two-thirds of the rooms at St. Maur Manor were closed up, perhaps more. At this rate, they’d end up limiting themselves to a single sitting room and one bedroom to share.

She saw the light from the open doorway down the hall. The sewing box would be there, of course. The girls were in bed, but her mother would doubtless be awake.

She would be reading, most likely, her pince-nez sitting on the tip of her nose. Their routine was always the same. She would glance over them, asking question after question about Anna’s night.

The meaning was always the same.

Have you found a rich man to fall in love with yet?

Can you save us?

But when Anna shouldered the drawing room door open all the way, it wasn’t Octavia waiting for her on the sofa.

Instead, it was the Earl of Downton.

Anna stopped dead, her gloves falling from her slack fingers.

The man was sprawled over a two-seater sofa, his arms and legs open wide. His cravat was loosened, showing a triangle of white chest hair. He was unshaven and flushed with drink.

There was a tense moment of silence while they regarded each other. Anna’s hand shot out to grab the doorframe as if to steady herself, and he slowly, slowly sat up. She noticed a glass of whiskey in his hand and an open decanter standing on a nearby table.

“You,” she breathed.

The Earl grinned. “It is I. Well, well, well, Miss Belmont. I can hardly believe how long it has been since I last saw you! A full three years, yes?”

“Three years is not long enough,” she managed, her voice wavering. “I don’t think you should be here. Who let you in?”

He inspected his nails. “Your mother let me in.”

He seemed to be getting at something, dropping a hint, but Anna could not work out what it was.

“I think you should leave,” Anna said, strengthening her voice as best she could. “Right now.”

“Haven’t you ever wondered,” he drawled as if she’d never spoken, “why I never called in your father’s debt? If I had, you would have lost this house, as well as any modicum of respectability. And yet, here you are. Odd, is it not?”

She pressed her lips together. “I assumed my father owed you gambling debts. We wouldn’t be responsible for paying off that sort of thing.”

“Oh, you poor, sweet girl. You truly don’t understand the way the world works. You know, I would have thought you would resent the man more. And yet, I see portraits of our dear Viscount everywhere I go. You all adore him, don’t you? You adore the man who ruined you. And yet, if you only knew what I have done for you, you’d be putting portraits of me in the Great Hall.”

While Anna was fumbling for something to say, torn between shock and fury, he got abruptly to his feet.

She could smell the alcohol when he was only halfway across the room. He kept advancing on her, and Anna found that her feet were stuck to the floor.

“How you have grown,” he murmured, reaching out clammy fingers. They brushed against the curve of her cheek, skimming her jaw.

She felt sick.

“What do you think you are doing?”

They both flinched, spinning around.

The adjoining door to Octavia’s room was open. Octavia stood there, her face pale, wearing a robe that had seen better days.

“We are only having a conversation.” The Earl laughed, his eyes flashing in warning. Anna was more confused by the minute.

“It’s time to go,” Octavia rapped out. “Don’t touch my daughter. Ever. I thought I made that clear.”

Made that clear? How many meetings have you had? What’s going on?

The Earl shrugged, knocking back his glass of whiskey. He set the glass down on a nearby table with a clack .

“I shall leave, then. But you’ll both come round to my way of thinking, sooner or later. It’s inevitable, really.”

Anna glanced at her mother, waiting for her to give him a sharp retort, to say something cutting or perhaps throw something at him, but she only stood there with her arms folded.

The Earl took his sweet time. He strolled down the dark hallway, his whistling drifting back up to them, echoing in an unsettling way. Anna hurried to the banister, watching him collect his hat, cane, and gloves from a hidden spot behind the door. He paused, turning to glance up at her, and flashed her a quick smile, lifting his hat.

Then he was gone, leaving the front door swinging.

Shuddering, Anna hurried back into the drawing room. Octavia was now sitting on her usual armchair, her face gray. She looked exhausted. Her hair was bound up in a braid, for sleep, but was fighting its way out.

“Mama,” Anna said, her voice tight, “what is going on? Why is he here?”

Octavia avoided looking her in the eye. “There were things we had to discuss.”

“He said that if he called in Father’s debt, we’d lose everything. The house. Our small allowance. Is that true?”

Octavia’s face twisted in misery. “Yes, it’s true.”

Anna let out a long, shaky breath and sat down heavily. “Oh. Oh .”

“I’m sorry, darling. I saw no need to worry you. Everything is fine.”

“I don’t believe you.”

The words were out before Anna could stop them. She flinched, but Octavia barely seemed to register them.

“You must marry, Anna,” she said tiredly. “Marriage is a protection. You’ll be safe if you marry.”

“Safe from what?”

Octavia didn’t answer, but Anna wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

They sat there in silence for a few long moments.

It seemed ridiculous to imagine that, only an hour ago, she left the opera in a bustle, with her two dearest friends, with only a hole in her glove to worry about. And now…

Well, Anna wasn’t entirely sure what she had to worry about now, only that it was more serious than she had imagined, and it was not likely to go away.

The silence stretched out. Anna noticed, for the first time, that a fire was crackling in the hearth, and felt a flare of pure fury at the Earl. They could rarely afford such a blaze and generally had to burrow under blankets and shawls in an attempt to get warm.

Tonight, it was so warm in the small drawing room that the Earl had loosened his cravat and stripped off his jacket. The heat prickled Anna’s skin, warm enough that sweat beaded on her brow and the back of her neck.

She got to her feet, smoothing down her skirts. “It’s alright, Mama. I’m going to fix this.”

Octavia smiled weakly.

Anna saw tears gathering in the corners of her mother’s eyes, and that hurt her more than she could ever have imagined.

“Oh, my sweet girl…”

“No,” she said, with all the strength she could muster. “I have a plan. I will get us out of this mess. I… I’m going to get married, Mama.”

Octavia jerked back, her eyes widening. “I… what? That’s not possible. You haven’t had any callers, you aren’t courting… who are you going to marry? You can’t possibly be betrothed!”

Anna bit her lip. That was the tiny, tiny hitch in her plan, but she was confident it could be smoothed out.

“Well, I’m not betrothed . I haven’t asked him to marry me, yet.”