All day, Anwen had waited for Lord Colin to call. She’d knitted, she’d embroidered, she’d tatted lace, and woven fancies by the hour, until Charlotte had asked if she was sickening for something.
“As it happens, I am sickening for something,” Anwen said, stuffing her embroidery hoop back in her workbasket.
Charlotte’s hand was already on the bell pull before Anwen could continue.
“I am dealing with a case of self-reproach,” she went on, getting up to pace. “The affliction is novel, at least in terms of severity.”
Charlotte’s hand drifted back to her side. “You addressed just as many invitations to the card party as we did. Why reproach yourself?”
“We thought you might have overdone, riding in the park earlier this week,” Elizabeth added. “Fatigue always puts me out of sorts, and the whole blasted season is an exercise in staying up too late, imbibing bad punch, and enduring the wandering hands of—”
Charlotte gave the bell pull a tug. “I did fancy the hock Uncle sent to the library. I’m in the mood for raspberry cordial, as it happens.”
Two years ago, for the ladies to order their own bottle of cordial during daylight hours would have caused somebody to notify the duchess. Two months ago, eyebrows would have been raised belowstairs at least.
“Tell us about this self-reproach,” Elizabeth said, patting the cushion beside her.
Anwen ignored the invitation to perch beside her sister. If anything, she wanted another headlong gallop down a bridle path.
“I’ve considered Lord Colin just another handsome face,” she said. “I thought he was charming, a good dancer.”
“He’s all of that,” Elizabeth said, going to the door when a soft tap sounded. She instructed the footman regarding the cordial and closed the door. “He’s quite dashing in his kilt, a man of means, and from a titled family. I like him, to the extent I know him.”
“Do you see what I mean?” Anwen asked, stopping before a bust of Plato sitting on a windowsill. “We do it too.”
“Do what?” Charlotte asked. “Wennie, did you skip luncheon?”
“She didn’t,” Elizabeth said. “She ate her soup, the fish, not much of the potatoes but then she never does, a serving of fruit tart—”
“Stop.”
“—and she had two servings of tea, but also some lemonade. Aunt prefers a very tart lemonade. Perhaps that didn’t agree—”
“You will both cease fretting over me this instant!” Anwen shouted.
If old Plato had spoken, Charlotte and Elizabeth could not have looked more surprised.
“Not a word,” Anwen said. “You will listen to me, and you will hear me. I am well. I am probably in better health than either of you, because I go outside. I must, to escape your carping, and managing, and discussing me as if I were no more animate than he is.”
She slapped Plato on his marble crown.
Elizabeth looked over at Charlotte, who was staring at her slippers. Plain, comfy house mules that might once have been pink.
Elizabeth drew in a breath. “We mean only to safeguard—”
“Wennie’s right,” Charlotte murmured, toeing off her slippers. “We’re getting worse. If we clucked and fussed any more, we’d need beaks and feathers. This season feels longer than all the previous ones put together.”
For Charlotte, that was quite an admission—also, in Anwen’s opinion, the God’s honest truth. The quality of the next silence was both sad and thoughtful.
“I want my own household,” Elizabeth said. “I want to plan my own garden, my own menus, my own social calendar, not limit myself to choosing which bonnet I put on when Aunt drags us about on her endless social calls.”
Elizabeth had hinted, she’d implied, she’d occasionally alluded to this wish, but she’d never stated her preference so plainly.
“Then you go to Westhaven,” Anwen said. “You enlist Rosecroft’s support, and you consult Valentine, who is regarded by our lady cousins as the most sensible of their brothers. You stop treating our cousins as if they are simply handsome lads with a fine command of small talk, and enlist their aid dealing with our elders. That’s what I meant.”
“You’ll have to spell it out for us,” Charlotte said, going to the door to retrieve the cordial. She poured three generous servings. “Here’s to the rest of the season galloping by.”
They touched glasses. Charlotte resumed her place on the sofa, while Anwen stayed on her feet.
“You were saying?” Elizabeth prompted.
“We resent that to the gentlemen, we’re just pretty faces, pretty settlements, a connection to this title, or that landed family. The men don’t see us.”
“They touch us,” Charlotte said, taking another sip of her drink. “I hate that. ‘I beg your pardon, Miss Charlotte,’ when they stumble on the dance floor, and their hands accidentally slip before half of polite society. My knee has had to slip a time or two, despite my vast quantities of ladylike restraint.”
“Mine too,” Elizabeth said, “and I’ve learned the knack of stepping on my own hem. I’ve practiced this, in case I need to repair to the retiring room, which is unfortunate.”
“It’s ridiculous,” Anwen snapped. “Why don’t we simply tell the miserable blighters we don’t waltz with presuming bumpkins? We know who they are.”
“Because a lady doesn’t pick and choose between her partners. She stands up when invited to or sits out the evening,” Charlotte recited.
“Why?” Anwen asked.
“So as not to offend the gentleman’s sensibilities.” Elizabeth sounded unimpressed with her own answers.
“But they can offend us without limit, groping, stumbling, nearly drooling on our bodices. We aren’t people to them, and I could strut about in high dudgeon on the strength of that vast insult, except I’ve been guilty of it too.”
“One develops a certain detachment,” Charlotte said, draining her glass. “If it’s a cattle auction, and we’re the heifers, then we do our best to make them into bullocks.”
“Bulls,” Elizabeth said, saluting with her drink. “Every one of them regards himself as the most impressive champion bull ever to make a leg. I hate it.”
“But some of them aren’t like that,” Anwen said. “I have taken a fancy to Lord Colin, and even permitted him a small liberty or two. At the meeting earlier this week, we had a disagreement.”
“Have some more, Charlotte,” Elizabeth said, topping up her sister’s drink. “This cordial is quite good, and I want to hear all about your disagreement, Wennie—and these liberties you permitted. Every detail, please.”
Anwen took the hassock before the sofa. “His lordship and I came upon the oldest boys at the orphanage where they ought not to have been, and Lord Colin accused them of wrongdoing. I didn’t believe the evidence warranted those accusations, and we quarreled.”
“I hope he apologized,” Charlotte said, topping up Elizabeth’s drink. “A gentleman doesn’t argue with a lady.”
“But friends are protective of one another,” Anwen said. “Lord Colin was concerned not only for the four oldest boys, but for all the children, and for me, and even the Windham family reputation. He’s not simply a charming smile and a fine dancer.”
“He wears the kilt to perfection,” Elizabeth said.
Charlotte touched her glass to Anwen’s. “To kilted laddies.”
“But that’s just it. He’s not a lad. He’s a man. He’s commanded soldiers, he manages his business, and he owns two estates.”
“He’s not a boy,” Elizabeth said softly. “His older brother had the same quality. They’re men who have better things to do than leer at debutantes, amuse the merry widows, and exchange remedies at the club for their sore heads.”
“Aunt calls that bunch handsome idlers,” Charlotte said.
“Uncle calls them much worse than that,” Anwen observed, “but Colin isn’t among their number. He can save the orphanage, and I’m not sure another gentleman in all of Mayfair has either the ability or the motivation to take on that challenge.”
She had no delusions that it would be a challenge. The card party must go off flawlessly and become an annual event. The House of Urchins must maintain a spotless reputation, and something had to be done about the board of directors, most of whom couldn’t be bothered to perform their duties.
“Do you fancy Lord Colin, or fancy his ability to save the orphanage?” Elizabeth asked.
“Both,” Anwen said. “I like that he can argue with me, and that he can listen to me. He doesn’t treat me like I’m about to expire with every sniffle or megrim.”
“Do you have a sniffle?” Charlotte asked.
Elizabeth snatched up a pillow and cocked her arm. “Take that back, Charl. Wennie’s being serious.”
Charlotte downed her cordial in one gulp. “Fire away, Bethan, because I’m guilty as charged, but Wennie, we nearly lost you. You don’t know how that changed Mama and Papa. All you know is they took turns reading to you, telling you stories, playing cards with you, when you weren’t asleep for days at a time. We nearly lost them too. It was terrifying.”
Charlotte offered not a reproach but an explanation.
“I recall Aunt Esther moving in for a time,” Anwen said, “and then Aunt Arabella. Mama wouldn’t listen to anybody else, and even Uncle Percy had to remonstrate with her.”
“But she wouldn’t let the physicians bleed you,” Elizabeth said. “She told Papa that she’d steal you away herself before she’d lose you to quackery, and he’d never find her.”
“What did Papa say?”
“That he’d not lose two of the people he loved most in the whole world, and that as sick as you were, you weren’t getting worse, so Mama’s decision would stand.” Elizabeth, as the oldest, probably had the clearest recollection. “You started to improve from that day forward.”
“You heard Mama and Papa quarreling?” Anwen had no memory of her parents’ disagreement. She recalled crying as Mama had cut her hair, and being so sick of her bed, that Mama had the servants set up beds for her all over the house. She recalled the scent of straw wafting in the windows, for Papa had carpeted the whole drive with straw the better to muffle the noise of coach wheels.
“The entire shire would have heard them arguing,” Charlotte said.
Maybe it was the cordial, maybe it was the conversation, but warmth welled from Anwen’s middle.
“Lord Colin and I can have a difference of opinion, a fair donnybrook, and he still listens to me. I think I’m in love.”
Charlotte beamed, which had to be at least partly attributable to the cordial.
“Is Lord Colin in love?” Elizabeth propped her feet at the edge of Anwen’s hassock. “Westhaven would call that a material consideration.”
“Rosecroft would call it a tactical concern,” Charlotte added, tucking her feet at Anwen’s other side. “He’d be right.”
“Lord Colin seems enthusiastic about my company, he doesn’t need my settlements, and he argues with me. He might not be smitten, but he’s interested.”
Anwen hoped. But if he was interested, why hadn’t he paid her a call and reported on the doings at the orphanage?
Stopped by to ask her to save him a dance at the next ball?
Sequestered himself with her in the conservatory again?
“I’m interested.” Elizabeth studied her drink. “I’m interested in paying a call on Ladies Rhona and Edana.”
“Bit late in the day for that,” Charlotte said.
“We’ll bring them a bottle of Her Grace’s cordial. Anwen, will you join us?”
Oh, they were the best of sisters, when they weren’t hovering and fretting over her. “I’ll be at the front door in five minutes, but two bottles of cordial, I think. One for each sister.”
“Fine notion,” Charlotte said, “and I’ll just take the rest of this one up to my room for safekeeping.”
Her tone was so like Her Grace’s that Anwen was provoked to giggling, Elizabeth followed suit, and Charlotte soon joined in.
Five minutes later, though, they were assembled at the front door, prepared to go calling.
* * *
The ride back to London did nothing to improve Colin’s mood. He’d been robbed, plain and simple, by a lot of indolent, arrogant English lordlings, and—damn them all to the bottom of Loch Ness—he hadn’t seen this betrayal coming.
He’d believed he was developing the right associations, more fool him.
Worse yet, in a few hours he’d be expected to don his dress kilt and go out socializing in company with his sisters. Probably not a fancy ball—those were preceded by bickering between Edana and Rhona, last-minute trips to the modiste, and the occasional slammed door—but a soiree, a musicale, or that worst torment ever devised by woman, the dinner party.
In every case, he’d be confronted with men who’d spent his coin without his permission. The urge to flee to Scotland, where a thief was a thief and a laird was a laird, nearly overwhelmed him.
And yet, the whole business with the misappropriated funds was Colin’s problem—not his family’s, not his commanding officer’s, his. A result of his bad judgment and no other’s.
If Colin spent the evening at home, his sisters would be without an escort, which meant he could not remain home if he valued his continued existence.
Every path before him was unappealing, and yet, he must go forward.
He handed Prince Charlie off to the grooms, charged across the garden, and prepared to storm the family parlor. Tonight he’d be home by midnight, come fire, flood, or French foot patrols.
Feminine voices sounded from the other side of the parlor door. Ronnie and Eddie were likely stirring a cauldron of gossip or deciding with which of their fourteen thousand friends he must stand up and in what order later in the week.
Colin swung open the door. “I don’t care which infernal waste of time ye think yer dragging me to this evening, I’m leaving at midnight with or without ye.”
Five female pairs of eyes turned to him. Five pairs was too many, and two of those eyes—a lovely blue pair—belonged to Anwen Windham.
Shite. Colin managed to not say that aloud, but only just. He was delighted to see her. The joy of beholding her coursed through him the way the fragrance of heather could grace even the dreariest of rainy afternoons.
He was not delighted to have made an arse of himself in the space of a single sentence.
“I beg everybody’s pardon. I am tired and out of sorts.” He bowed—even a complete dunderhead bowed before retreating—and headed for the door.
“Lord Colin, please don’t feel you must change your attire to accommodate company,” Anwen said. “We called late in the day and time has got away from us.”
The ladies had been conspiring. Their smiles and three open bottles of some potation confirmed it, as did Colin’s sense that he’d interrupted a strategy meeting of senior officers. And yet, he was loath to turn on his heel and give up a chance to spend time with Anwen.
They’d had a fair fight at the orphanage—his first with a woman other than Edana or Rhona—and he wanted to do a fair bit of making up with her.
“You should stay,” Rhona said. “We’re considering the guest list for Anwen’s card party. Who among your circle of acquaintances can stand to lose a substantial sum of money for a good cause?”
“A substantial sum?” Colin asked, because the fellows Win had introduced him to were for the most part younger sons on allowances or half-pay officers dangling after banker’s daughters.
“The substantial-er the better,” Miss Charlotte said. “The money is all for Anwen’s orphanage, you know.”
Her smile was a trifle lopsided.
“A very good cause,” Edana said, then hiccupped.
Rhona winked at Colin, or maybe she had something in her eye.
Anwen rose. “Lord Colin, let’s adjourn to the library, so I might make a list of the names you suggest. I’ll pass them along to Her Grace.”
“Fine idea,” Miss Elizabeth Windham said. “I am a firm believer in making lisht. Lists, rather.”
Rhona emitted a delicate burp.
A good brother would stay and monitor the consumption of whatever was in those bottles, for clearly, the ladies were having a genteel drinking party.
Well, let them. A very good brother trusted his sisters to be moderate in their indulgences. “Perhaps we should all adjourn to the library?” Colin suggested. For him to be alone with Anwen under her family’s roof with doors open and relations nearby was one thing, but elsewhere…
“Run along, you two,” Charlotte said, grabbing a bottle by the neck. “We’ll be fine.”
Anwen made for the door, her stride confident—and steady. When they reached the corridor, she took Colin by the hand and pushed him up against the wall.
“I’m about to kiss you,” she said, “unless you object now.”
“I object.”
Russet brows drew down.
Colin brought Anwen’s hand to his lips. “As badly as I’ve missed you all night and all day, as much as I have to discuss with you, and as urgently as I long to wrap my arms around you and whisper sweet indecencies into your ear—”
“Sweet indecencies?”
“For starts. I’ll progress to the bold sort if you allow me to. Regardless, the privilege of initiating this kiss belongs to me.”
Colin didn’t simply initiate the kiss, he gave all his frustrations and longings the order to charge headlong into pleasure he could share with Anwen. The hour was such that servants were belowstairs enjoying a cup of tea, guests would not call, and even the front door was unmanned.
He shifted, so Anwen’s back was to the wall, and he could envelop her in an embrace that included arms, hands, body, mouth, everything. The feel of her clutching at his hair, pressing closer, eased some of the day’s tension, and the taste of her—raspberry, both tart and sweet—drove him to growling.
Arousal joined the conflagration and Colin was glad for it. Money problems, sororal expectations, the situation at the orphanage—those were all messy, tangled, and unappealing. Desire for Anwen Windham was real too, though, and so very lovely.
She subsided against him and patted his chest. “That’s better.”
Better and worse. “I’ve missed ye.” The words of a callow swain, but also the truth. Colin had missed the feel of Anwen in his arms, the sound of her voice, the delicate scent of her lemony perfume, and even the way her hair tickled his cheek.
“You’re upset about something,” she said.
“How can you tell?”
“I can sense it, taste it. Are the boys all right? Don’t protect me from truths you think I’m too delicate to handle, Colin.”
“You’re formidable as hell.” Also precious. To hold Anwen like this did more to bring Colin right than all the hard galloping and harder cursing he’d done throughout the day. “I need your advice.”
He’d never said those words to anybody. In some way, they were more intimate than a kiss.
“I need yours as well. Shall we to the library? Napoleon mounting an invasion wouldn’t part our sisters from the remaining half bottle of cordial.”
“Bless the cordial, then,” he said, leading her to the library three doors down the corridor. The room was modest compared to its Windham counterpart, though what books the MacHughs owned had been read—every page cut—and much appreciated. Hamish had used this room as his estate office, and Colin was doing likewise.
The calculations Maarten had brought remained on the desk, a stack of foolscap weighted with a silver pen tray embossed with the MacHugh crest. A single white rose graced a vase on the windowsill.
“The boys are putting the orphanage grounds to rights this week,” Colin said. “If the weather’s fair. If the weather’s not fair, I was hoping you could teach them to knit.”
“Knitting is easy, needles cost nothing, and I would love to teach them all I know. I’m sure Lady Rosalyn would be willing to help me. The boys are not what troubles you.” Anwen picked up a book of poetry from the desk. “Poetry, Colin?”
“Robert Burns. Hamish favors him. Did you attend finishing school?”
She set the book aside. “Yes, for two years, though the school was only two hours’ ride from the Moreland family seat in Kent. I spent many holidays with my cousins, as did my sisters.”
A pair of straight-backed, utilitarian chairs sat in front of the desk, and a capacious reading chair was angled before the hearth. Colin scooped Anwen up and settled with her in the reading chair.
“This is friendly, Captain Lord MacHugh.”
Colin kissed her nose to help quiet his thoughts. Or something. “I’ve been made the butt of a prank, a very expensive prank.”
She nestled about, like a cat circling before settling to the exact most comfortable spot on a cushion.
“Is the worse hurt to your pride or to your purse?”
“The hurt to my purse is considerable.” He named the sum, lest she think him exaggerating the situation, and explained the jest, if a jest it was.
“They spent that much? In less than a month?”
“I know who did it, between recollection, Maarten’s research, a few pointed discussions with the trades earlier today, and Win’s confirmation. A dozen men conspired to empty my pockets. I’m supposed to make light of it, pay every penny, and stand the perpetrators to another round.”
That Win had joined in the joke rankled badly, though he’d seemed remorseful at how far matters had gone.
Anwen sat up and peered at Colin. “You’re supposed to pretend this is humorous, and merrily hand over a small fortune? That makes no sense. You said it yourself: If our boys had stolen from the orphanage, then letting their misdeeds go unpunished was tempting them to steal again. That would have made us nearly complicit in their next theft.”
Our boys. They were her boys, not Colin’s.
“Winthrop Montague isn’t a former cutpurse. He’s my friend.” On the ride back to Town, Colin had figured out the true problem. He could leave Win’s cronies to pay the expenses they’d incurred, meaning the trades would be unreimbursed.
That in itself was wrong.
The true problem, though, was that Win would also be held responsible for Colin’s decision to not play along. Win would be subtly excluded, whispered about, and treated to small indignities, because Win had tried to open doors for Colin.
Colin could not allow his friend to be treated thus over a prank.
Anwen subsided against Colin’s chest, and if he had been capable of purring, the feel of her in his arms would have inspired him to it. She felt that right, that sweet, and perfect in his lap.
Also that desirable.
“Winthrop Montague spent two years marching about in Spain,” Anwen said. “Though if you question him about the battles, he has little to say. I gather he was more of a secretary than a soldier. Other than that, I don’t think he’s worked a day in his life. Most of his friends can’t claim even a stint in the army. If they stole from you, it’s because they have no sense of what it takes to earn money.”
“They stole from me. They stole my dignity and my coin, and I want both back, but not at the cost of what friendships I have.”
Colin wanted Anwen too. More with each passing moment, which she had to be aware of. She fiddled with his cravat, with his hair, and with the buttons of his waistcoat, while desire fiddled with Colin’s wits.
“Can you pay the debts?” Anwen asked, kissing his cheek.
“Easily, though it will mean moving money from Edinburgh to London. That’s not the point. Win suggests I do nothing in retaliation, and if anybody grasps how gentlemen go on with each other, it’s Winthrop Montague. His advice thus far has been sound.”
A delicate warmth tricked across Colin’s throat.
She’d undone his cravat. “Anwen, I didn’t lock the door.”
“I did. What has Win advised you about?”
Should Colin be dismayed, terrified, or pleased that she’d locked the door? “Win has told me which clubs to join, which tailors to patronize, when to drop in at Tatts. God, that feels good.”
Anwen had wound her hand around Colin’s neck and was massaging his nape. He’d touched her in the same fashion in the park, making the caress all the more intimate.
“My cousins could have told you the same things,” she said, “and done a better job of it. Their friends would not have set you up for penury and called it a jest. Had Win advised you regarding investments, which entertainments to avoid, or whose sister had taken an extended repairing lease in the north last year, I might see your point.”
Anwen made sense, even as she made a muddle of Colin’s ability to think. Hamish was a shy man, not given to even brotherly displays of affection. Edana and Rhona expected Colin to offer his arm at their whim. The men in the clubs might slap Colin on the back or shake his hand.
Nobody offered this, this bliss, this warmth, this combination of affection, pleasure, friendship, and desire.
“If you keep that up, madam, I will become incoherent.”
She kept it up. “I caught Uncle Percival rubbing Aunt’s feet once. I’d forgotten my workbasket in the music room. They didn’t see me.”
Colin would adore having his feet rubbed, among other places. “You’re not the least bit tipsy, are you?” He’d have to return her to her sisters if she was.
“I am drunk on the pleasure of your company,” she said, quite briskly. “You argued with me at the orphanage, Colin. Went figuratively toe to toe with me. Nobody has paid me that compliment since I was six years old. You don’t treat me as if I’m a porcelain shepherdess perched too near the edge of the mantel, and that makes me happy.”
He had no idea what she was going on about, but she was either able to hold her cordial, or exercise restraint around an open bottle. Regardless, he approved. A wife who was too fond of drink, no matter how lovely, sweet, delightful, and passionate, would always cause a man worry.
Colin kissed Anwen, and the closeness necessitated by that liberty meant he caught a whiff of her, up close, where she was warm and well-endowed. Her lemony fragrance acquired a spicy undertone, much as Colin’s falls acquired a snugness.
A wife who greeted her husband like this, who listened to him, who saw him honestly, who took his troubles to heart, such a wife would be…
Wife.
Husbands had wives. For the first time, Colin envied them that good fortune. “Hamish and Megan are happy with each other,” Colin said, “and I know they had their differences. He’s deliriously happy. I’ve never seen Hamish so happy. He glows with it. He laughs, he—”
Anwen’s fingers had gone still. “Megan too. I watched her walk up the church aisle on her wedding day, and I wondered, what fools, what blind idiots, said my sister was plain? She’s never been plain, and to Hamish MacHugh she never will be.”
A certainty took possession of Colin’s heart, a knowing born of instinct, but also of sense and experience. Anwen Windham was different, special, and precious. For a long moment, he simply held her, savoring a sense of peace where all had been frustration and tumult before.
“I’d like to ask you something, Anwen.”
She rested her head against his shoulder, the weight of her in his arms exceeding even perfection, and achieving a sense of completion.
“Ask me anything. I’ll argue with you if we disagree.”
That pleased her, so it pleased Colin. “Would you think me very forward if I requested permission from Moreland to pay you my addresses? Please be honest, because with you, I want no posturing, no prevaricating to spare me embarrassment. I’m known to be precipitous, but that’s not truly my nature. I can be patient, it’s just that—”
“Yes, I would think you forward.”
Well, all right, then. Colin’s heart sank, but he couldn’t blame her. They hadn’t known each other long, and her family had much more consequence than his. He’d bear up, somehow, under a disappointment that made his earlier foul language look like casual remarks in the church yard.
“I would think you forward,” Anwen said, “and I would approve heartily of your initiative. I am so blessed sick of wasting each spring on the company of men I cannot esteem, and I esteem you ferociously, Colin MacHugh.”
That was…that was a yes. That was permission to court, and a lady did not grant permission to court unless she was mightily impressed with a fellow.
“Are you sure, Anwen? Are you very, very sure?”
She scooted around, so she was facing him. “I’m very, very sure, and the door is very, very locked.”