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Chapter Seven

A shriek rent the air. Annabelle, in the midst of buttering her bread, looked up in alarm. Theo was holding the newspaper to her face, eyes narrowed, her nostrils flared.

Annabelle took a moment to collect herself before responding. A week had passed since Lady Cavendish's recital, and Annabelle had done her best to put it fully from her mind. Just as she had the way Lord Helmsley had touched her, and the way he had assumed she would accept his unwelcome caresses.

The way he had assumed she had gone into the garden to be clandestinely with him.

Her blood boiled every time she thought about that.

But he had not called on her since then, and she had every hope that his inability to find her had resulted in him losing interest. She had slipped back inside the house and spent an inordinate amount of time in the washroom, staring at her flushed reflection in the mirror and trying to remember what had happened to the person she had been before the Marquess of Sunderland had put his hands on her.

In the time that had passed, she had thought she had got away with her indiscretion.

Theo looked at her in shock, however, that made Annabelle wonder if news had finally come out. Her hands shook and she closed them around her knife. "What is it?"

"Have you seen this?" Theo thrust the paper at Annabelle, who scanned the announcements. Once, then again.

Lord Shrewsbury, the fourth Earl of Shrewsbury, and his wife, Lady Shrewsbury, announce the engagement of their daughter, Lady Annabelle Beaumont, to Lord Sunderland, the sixth Marquess of Sunderland.

There was no marriage date mentioned.

For five long seconds, she was speechless.

Surely this had to be a mistake of some kind. Someone had printed her name beside his in error. She could not be engaged. The Marquess had not so much as asked her—and although she was no expert on the matter, she did think a proposal was a requirement for an engagement.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "No. I am not engaged." With the words came all her memories of that night, and she cleared her throat to block them out. "I barely even know him. This has to be a mistake."

"In The Times?" Theo clucked her tongue. "Unlikely, I think."

"But how can this be real? I am not engaged, Theo!"

"Perhaps he thinks you are?" Theo suggested. "Or perhaps Mama does." Theo paused as though gathering her thoughts, and Annabelle tried to force her shock into a smaller, more manageable ball. "Or, perhaps, Mama hoped to hurry things along and took matters into her own hands?"

Annabelle felt as though she could not take any more blows. Her head pounded. "You mean she may have sent an announcement to the newspaper to encourage the Marquess to propose to me?"

"Well, it reads as though it is from the parents of the bride, and that is tradition, you know. And she is keen to get you married." Theo made a noise akin to a scream and threw her napkin to the table. "Where is Nate? Of all days to be late to breakfast."

Annabelle cast a glance at the clock. It was not yet ten, and Nathanial did not like an early breakfast, especially when they'd been at a function the night before. "What do I do?" she asked faintly. "I won't marry him."

"Barrington?" Theo shuddered. "I should think not. I heard he killed a highwayman in cold blood and left his body on the road."

Annabelle thought back to the prowling, roiling energy about the Marquess. Yes, she could believe it, and the thought made her blood ice in her veins. "I won't do it," she repeated.

Velvet darkness, his hand on her waist, his lips grazing her ear. Hot breath and burning skin and that heady, endless sensation of being wanted.

No. She most certainly could not marry him.

Nathanial pushed open the door of the morning room and yawned. "What has happened so early in the morning to cause such a ruckus?" he asked as he took his place at the head of the table. "I could hear you at the other end of the hall."

"Someone has put an announcement in The Times of the engagement of Annabelle's forthcoming marriage to Lord Sunderland!" Theo said, snatching the paper from Annabelle and shaking it.

Nathanial blinked. "An announcement of their engagement?"

"Were you not listening? Yes. And it's written as though Mama and Papa are announcing it, though I hardly know why they would. Well," Theo amended. "I doubt Papa had anything to do with it."

But why the Marquess of all people? That was the point Annabelle could not move past. Coming a week after their clandestine meeting in the garden, no matter how innocent, it felt as though it must be connected, but she could not see how.

"Intriguing," Nathanial murmured, reading the paper. "It is a good thing my mother is indisposed." He looked back up at Theo. "You think your mother did this?"

"Well who else? Think, Nathanial. If Anna married Lord Sunderland, Mama would have one daughter married to a duke and the other to a marquess. That has always been her dream."

"While I'm flattered to have played a role in her machinations," Nathanial said, half distractedly, "I feel I must remind you that I proposed to you unprompted."

"And a terrible proposal it was too, but that's not the point, Nate." Theo turned to face Annabelle again. "We need to get to the bottom of this."

He heaved a sigh. "Then I suppose we need to visit your mother."

Annabelle had not visited her parents' London house many times that Season. Theo had offered to sponsor her, now she was a duchess, and Annabelle had been only too relieved to escape the escalating tension in her parents' home. Her father hadn't stopped his gambling habits, even with the debts pouring in, and only Nathanial's generosity kept them afloat. It was safer, and made more sense, for Annabelle to leave.

As a result, she had a peculiar feeling of foreboding as she followed Theo into the house. Everything was just as she remembered it, although some of the paintings and ornaments had gone; sold, probably, to pay for their household bills.

"Theo," their mother said from the drawing room where she had been writing a letter. "Annabelle. And oh, Nathanial. What an unexpected surprise. I was going to call on you later." She dropped a butterfly-light kiss on Theo and Annabelle's cheeks. "Don't you both look lovely. I was just writing a letter to your Aunt Theresa, girls, if you remember her, to update her on this Season's happenings."

"Mama," Theo said carefully. "Have you read the papers today?"

"Read the papers?" Their mother shuddered. "Why should I do that? If there's anything important there, I'm sure your father will see."

Theo and Annabelle exchanged a look. If her mother was playing innocent, she was doing so extremely well.

Annabelle had the overwhelming temptation to throw her head back and scream at the ceiling. It would achieve nothing but perhaps it would ease the overwhelming knot in her chest.

Engaged.

The word stuck in her brain, tripping up every other sentence. And to Lord Sunderland. Jacob Barrington. The Devil of St James. A man who gambled fortunes away at the card table and picked fights wherever he could. Reckless and rash and almost always, in her limited experience, at least a little drunk. Of all the men in London she could have been engaged to, it had to be him.

"There's been a development," Theo said. "About Annabelle. It was in the papers today."

"About Annabelle." Her mother looked up again, eyes sharp and slightly wary. "How so?"

"There was a notice announcing Annabelle's engagement to the Marquess of Sunderland," Nathanial said smoothly. "Written as though her parents had been the ones to insert it."

"The Marquess of Sunderland?" her mother clarified, a line appearing between her brows. "But he hasn't even been courting you. Has he, my dear?"

Annabelle gritted her teeth. "He has not. And—" She bit back the words before she could tell everyone he had told her he had no wish to be married.

"Well I certainly made no announcement," her mother said, looking at them both. "And neither did your father. He has probably forgotten he has one daughter yet unmarried," she added with a trace of bitterness.

"As I thought." Nathanial's voice was a little grim.

Annabelle rubbed her eyes wearily."But if you didn't, then who did?"

"An excellent question." Theo threw herself down on the sofa and tugged her gloves off. "And one I desire the answer to immediately."

"I'll make enquiries," Nathanial said.

"As shall I." Theo chewed her bottom lip. "We're supposed to be attending Lady Windermere's dinner in Vauxhall tonight. The perfect place to find out any gossip. Do you think someone has done it as a prank, Anna?"

"A prank?" Annabelle tried to think past the roaring in her ears. "Why would someone do this for fun?"

"I agree," Nathanial said. "It's unlikely anyone would do this as a joke, and if they did, it's in extremely poor taste. Not to mention risky once word gets out of who was behind it." His expression left Annabelle under no illusions as to what measures he would take. "I suspect whoever was behind this had something to gain."

"Like what?" Theo tossed her hands in the air. "Who could possibly have anything to gain from unifying the biggest rake in London to my sister?"

Nathanial sent Annabelle a long look that made her stomach curl in dread. "A dowry, perhaps? Or a union with the sister of a duchess?"

The Marquess had told her he had no wish of being found with her, implied he had no desire to be married, but perhaps he had lied. And if her mother was not responsible, there could be no other explanation.

"Lord Sunderland," she said.

Nathanial gave a grim nod. "Lord Sunderland."

Jacob was accustomed to being an object of scandal. He had spent half his life fashioning himself into someone who was frequently associated with depravity and to have whispers follow him wherever he went was hardly unusual.

What was unusual, however, was the fact that the whispers did not seem to involve the fact he had, the night before, challenged a viscount's brother to a duel. Something he would have achieved if the viscount himself hadn't stepped in and towed his unfortunate brother home. Ordinarily, that would have been a cause of gossip, but it appeared as though there was something else going on.

For once, Jacob was at a loss what had inspired this particular set of interest. He prowled through Vauxhall's dimly lit paths, dodging courtesans in too much rouge and young gentlemen in laughing, cocky groups, doing his best to avoid the curious gazes.

When he joined his friends by the orchestra box, Viscount Villiers was staring at him with an expression torn between disgust and hilarity.

"Not you too," he said.

"Unspecific." Jacob selected a glass of champagne from the silver platters being carried around by blank-faced waiters. The orchestra was playing now, Jacob and his friends stood at the back of the crowd. "You will have to try harder."

"Marriage," Villiers said, making a face. "You've finally fallen foul of the last trap left to mankind."

Jacob tossed his champagne back, the bubbles stinging the back of his throat. "Hardly."

"It's in the papers."

"What?"

"Your marriage," Villiers said impatiently. The girl on his arm, a redhead with abundant freckles, stared at him curiously. "This morning. Don't you read the papers?"

"Not if I can get away with it." Attention finally caught, Jacob looked away from the redhead's ample cleavage. "What do you mean, my marriage is in the papers. I'm not married."

"You're engaged."

"I can assure you," Jacob said, suppressing a snort, "I am not."

"That's what it said in the papers, my lord," the redhead said, a broad accent betraying her unfortunate background. An opera dancer, perhaps. Or a singer. Or perhaps just one of the ladies that patrolled these shadowed havens, looking for a gentleman all too willing to part with his purse. Either way, Jacob knew Villiers kept company like this in part to pique his father. "You're to marry Lady Annabelle Beaumont."

Jacob froze, the effects of the champagne dissipating. There was the chill of dread in his chest. Above it all was disbelief.

"Quite," Villiers said when he saw Jacob's dumbstruck face. "I take it you didn't know about this?"

Anger replaced his shock by inches, burning away the ice that had momentarily formed in his chest. That little minx—she had told him she had no intention of marrying and now here she was, trying to trick him into marriage. No doubt she would use the garden incident against him.

Well, if she was hoping she would capture a gentleman that way, she hoped wrong. He was not a gentleman, and he had no intention of being caught. If she refused to end the engagement, he would, and to hell with any damage it would do to his reputation—he didn't exactly have much of one to begin with.

"She's a pretty thing," Villiers said dismissively. "A little quiet for my taste."

The Lady Annabelle he had come to know, in the sorts of quiet corners a young lady should never inhabit, had not precisely been quiet. Then again, the fact she frequented places like darkened libraries and gardens should have been a sign that she was as much a lady as he was a gentleman.

He eyed his glass darkly. He was not drunk enough for this. "Then you can have her," he said. "For I, you can be sure, will not."

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