Chapter Ten
“I’m going to Holland,” Annalise whispered to herself as her uncle gripped her elbow, escorting her outside. The watch might as well have arrested her in the middle of Lord Warrington’s ball for all the curious looks she garnered.
In the carriage on the way home, her uncle warned his wife and Phoebe to remain silent. Despite this instruction, her aunt begged, “What is wrong, Mr. Sommerville?”
“It’s not for your innocent ears.”
Phoebe cast Annalise commiserating looks but remained obediently silent.
Annalise gazed out the window, watching the blur of light outside the glass. She felt oddly numb about her disgrace and coming journey to the Continent. Shouldn’t she feel more? Perhaps embarrassment, humiliation, or fear? Instead, her mind turned over Exmore’s words. His personal descent now made sense: the rakishness, the self-destruction, the pain. How disorientating to learn that the person you loved most in the world never loved you, that she had been pretending all along. Exmore had unwittingly built his marriage and life on lies. Annalise and Patrick had never shared the intimacy of a marriage bed or spent years building a life together. Yet, she had been devastated at his abandonment. She couldn’t imagine how Exmore must feel. Love, sadness, anger, remorse, and disillusionment. He had admitted that one never stops loving someone, and she knew that to be true, but she wished it was otherwise. She wished a powerful tide would sweep memories of old love away to a forgotten ocean, leaving a clean shore to start again, as if the past hadn’t happened. She wished so for Exmore’s sake.
At home, her uncle sent his wife and Phoebe to bed as though they were five years old. Annalise knew wily Phoebe waited on the stairwell, listening.
“Come to my parlor,” her uncle commanded.
Annalise forced herself to take a long, slow breath. She wouldn’t let him anger her. “I’m leaving for Holland tomorrow,” she said calmly.
He flung out his arms. “That’s it? You just leave? Do you have a ticket?”
“No.”
“Do you know where you are going in Holland?”
“No.”
He shook his head incredulously. “You halfwit. I don’t know whether to be amused or angry with you.” He stepped closer, until Annalise could smell the tinge of his sour perspiration on his coat. “Tell me, my girl, have you opened your legs to him?” There was predatory anticipation on his moist lips.
Annalise stepped back, keeping her spine erect, refusing to be dragged down to her uncle’s base understanding. “Lord Exmore and I are friends. You wouldn’t understand our relationship because you don’t comprehend beauty or grace.”
“It is you who do not comprehend these things.” He pounded a side table with the padded edge of his fist. “Beauty and grace? What do you fashion yourself now? A poetess? What you need to learn about are decency and chastity.”
“I won’t listen to your insults any longer. I’m leaving as soon as may be.”
“You do not tell me what you are going to do.” He grabbed her arm. “You will obey my wishes.”
A servant cleared his throat. “Sir, the Marquess of Exmore,” he announced.
Annalise turned her head as Exmore walked in. His gaze drifted from her face to where her uncle squeezed her arm. His lips made the slightest tremor, his nostrils flared, yet when he spoke, his voice was low and smooth. “Good evening.”
Her uncle rushed forward, almost tripping on the foot of a chair. Barely recovering his balance, he performed a stumbling bow before Exmore. “My lord.”
“I desire to speak to you in private regarding your niece,” Exmore said.
“Annalise is a witless—”
“Not another word dishonoring Miss Van Der Keer,” Exmore thundered. He pointed to the closed double doors at the back of the room. “Is this the study? It usually is in such drab, middling homes. How can you bear to live in this rodent’s hole?”
Her uncle paled at having his home belittled by the great man. Exmore didn’t wait for him to answer but strode toward the parlor. He didn’t look back when he addressed the servant. “Have tea and biscuits brought to Miss Van Der Keer.” He opened one of the doors. “Come, Sommerville.”
As her uncle passed, he looked to Annalise for sympathy at Exmore’s belittling of him. Annalise ignored her uncle. Exmore closed the study door behind the men.
What was Exmore’s game? She had a nervous inkling that she knew the answer. She couldn’t let him do this. He didn’t love her but was acting out of honor.
She wanted to burst into the parlor and cry, No, no, this isn’t necessary.
She had only to survive one more night under her uncle’s roof, and then she would sail away, liberating herself and Exmore.
The conversation between the men was quick, not five minutes, but it seemed like an hour to a fretting Annalise. When it was over, her uncle bounded out, his demeanor radically changed. He appeared overly pleasant, trying hard to be the congenial man he wasn’t.
“Well, now, here she is. Hee hee. So beautiful. Ready to make you a very happy man.”
Annalise’s gaze shifted between her uncle and Exmore. “Smile, girl,” her uncle commanded. “He wants to marry you.”
“May I have a moment alone with my bride-to-be?” Exmore said.
“Of course, of course.”
Annalise waited until her uncle retreated from the room, bowing as he went. Silence permeated the room. When she opened her mouth to speak, Exmore rested his hands on her shoulders. “No, Annalise, don’t turn me away yet. Listen to my case.”
“I can go to Holland. I have enough money of my own. This is all unnecessary.”
His fingers slid down her arms until they interlocked with hers. “I want to marry you,” he said quietly. “If you will have me?”
“But I…” She gazed up at his eyes, not expecting to see the vulnerable yearning in them. She wanted to say she loved him. She wanted to give him everything Cassandra hadn’t. But she couldn’t. Tears burned in her eyes. “I don’t love you. I’m sorry.”
“Shhh. I know you don’t love me. But you are honest. You hide nothing.”
“That is not enough for a marriage.”
He sank to one knee. “For months, I’ve wandered about in a haze of despondency. Nothing could lift me from my low spirits, except brandy and gambling and…” He didn’t finish, but she knew he found empty pleasure in women. “Then one day, I wandered into a print shop to waste hours, for I had so many hours in my day, and this lovely lady arrived. She had such a light around her, and she spoke of exotic creatures. Later, she met me at a masquerade and I concealed my identity to keep her near me longer, because she broke through my gloom. Then she spoke to me in a tea shop, and her presence was like sunlight in my darkness.” Annalise’s tears were free-flowing now. He kissed her hand, letting his lips caress her skin. “And I hope I’m not presumptuous when I say that you find happiness in me.”
“I do,” she choked through her tears. “Very much.”
“What waits for you in Holland, Annalise? Maybe love, maybe more emptiness. I am here. I simply want your companionship. That is all. We can be a marriage of friends.”
She shook her head. “No, no. Years from now, you may fall in love again. I shall hold you back.”
“I’ve been in love before, and so have you. How did it feel?”
“Don’t make me think about that!” She remembered waiting, waiting for Patrick to write, refusing to believe he had abandoned her. Days had trudged on as she had hand-fed her dying mother and learned to manage a home for her father. Her mind had known he was gone, enchanted by a new land, but her heart didn’t speak the language of her mind. It had hurt and yearned. It had driven her to write letters to Patrick, to replay all their memories, trying to recapture the magic of his love while she was cleaning oozing bedsores on her father’s body.
“I think friendship may be better than love,” he said.
Annalise wasn’t convinced. “But if we are married, you will require an heir and… and a true wife would… I don’t know if…” She released a nervous breath. “I’m having a difficult time saying this. A marriage is intimate.”
He rose to his feet, all the while keeping his gaze on hers. “May I kiss you?”
She studied his lips. They were soft, waiting, and she wasn’t averse to knowing their touch. “Yes,” she whispered.
Yet, he didn’t. He gently stroked her cheek with his thumbs, taking in her face. Then he closed his eyes, slowly lowered his lips, resting them on hers. His were warm, the edges slightly roughened where he shaved. His scent—like pine trees in the winter—filled her. He began to move his lips, asking her for more. She opened her mouth, letting him inside. Their tongues tentatively touched, tasted, caressed.
Kissing Patrick had been a wild, almost desperate sensation. She hadn’t been able to get close enough to Patrick, her body alive and cracking with wild energy. Kissing Exmore was a lulling, sweet sensation, like the steam off of the hot tea and the peaceful tap of the rain from that day at the tea shop. And like that day, she didn’t want the kiss to end, but go on and on. He finally pulled away, but only to rest his forehead upon hers.
“Will that do?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
“Are you sure I’m who you want? Me? Odd, curious me? You don’t love me either.”
Again, he rubbed her cheek. “Marry me, Annalise. You once said that you felt like a stranger to yourself… I know that feeling. I will give you space to find who you are. You can study botany and naturalism, and I will tell you how brilliant you are. You can delight me with your odd, curious, and wonderful insights. We can read to each other as you did to your father in the garden. We can talk over tea and let the hours fly by. Marry me.”
She couldn’t go back to her old home, and she couldn’t find the London she had known with Patrick. It had all passed away, like her parents. The future in Holland waited with relatives she had never met—strangers who were hundreds of miles of ocean away. She didn’t love Exmore in the way she had loved Patrick. She couldn’t deny the advantage of his title and that their children would always be provided for. But more than anything, she admired Exmore and trusted him. He made her laugh. And that meant so much after being lonely and sad for so long.
He kissed her forehead. “We will be content. Say yes, my Annalise.”
My Annalise. No one had called her that since her father died.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”