CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Anne had received just two terse communications from her husband since he departed for London. The first arrived a week after his departure and advised her he was purchasing a carriage and four horses and would be bringing them home. He directed her to make certain Frankie had space for the coach as well as for the four new horses. The second communication reached Grex three weeks later. In it Daniel informed Anne he would be home shortly.
After the first note’s arrival, Anne and Frankie had made certain that the space Daniel requested in the stables was provided. Then Anne had waited for what she expected to be her husband’s imminent return with said horses and carriage.
The weeks went by with no sign of Daniel. During that time the days had grown shorter, colder and gloomier. At night Anne huddled in her solitary bed, trying not to think about how much warmer she would be if Daniel were beside her. For the first time since her marriage, Dorothy was allowed to join her mistress in bed. Daniel had evicted the little dog when they married, but Anne had no compunction about letting Dorothy sleep with her head on her absent husband’s pillow. Dorothy could stay there permanently as far as she was concerned.
Daniel’s second note had outraged all her sensibilities. The nerve of the man! she thought as she stared at the two lines of writing. He was treating her as if she were his housekeeper. Well he would soon find out he was mistaken. She lay awake for most of the night, counting over her grievances. She had to be strong, she told herself. He didn’t deserve her love, and she most certainly would not offer it.
When Anne opened her eyes in the morning, and remembered Daniel would be returning to Grex that day, panic seized her. She drank a cup of tea in bed, hoping to settle her stomach, then slowly arose. She allowed her maid to dress her and took Dorothy down to the kitchen for her breakfast. Her brain wanted to get out on a horse, but her stomach was not cooperating.
She managed to eat a roll, then she took a tour of the house. She wanted Daniel to be stunned by the progress she had made in his absence. The servants’ attic bedrooms were finished and furnished. The new rugs made the downstairs rooms look both elegant and cozy. And a carriage house was in the process of being constructed so Daniel would have a permanent place to house the coach and curricle, as well as the ancient trap Anne used to drive around the neighborhood.
Anne picked at her luncheon, then she and Miss Bonteen retired to the parlor. At two o’clock, after Anne had moved the figurines on the chimneypiece four different times, Miss Bonteen suggested she go upstairs and read. “You won’t miss Mr. Dereham’s arrival, my love,” she said coaxingly. “You can see the driveway from your sitting room window.”
Anne’s nerves felt stretched as tightly as the string on a bow. “Perhaps I will,” she said, and went upstairs. She picked up the book she had been reading and stared at the print without seeing it. After a few moments she got up and went to the window. She repeated this pattern eleven more times before she was rewarded by the sight of a splendid coach drawn by four magnificent horses coming up the driveway. She watched as the coach pulled up in front of the door and the man seated next to the driver jumped down from the high seat.
Her heart began to hammer. He wore a hat so she couldn’t see his face, but only one man she knew moved that gracefully. It was Daniel.
She would have to go and greet him. As she turned to start across the floor to the closed doorway, a knock came and one of the new maids, Nancy, said, “Mr. Dereham has arrived, my lady.”
“Thank you,” Anne said. She passed out of the room and progressed down the stairs at a steady gait. He was still in the front hallway speaking to Miss Bonteen when Anne arrived.
“Welcome home,” she said in a steady voice. “All of us at Grex are pleased to see you again.”
He stepped forward to greet her. She looked up into that archangel’s face and offered her hand instead of her cheek. His brows rose in surprise, but he took her hand into his, raised it to his lips and kissed it.
A treacherous shiver ran through Anne’s body. She almost snatched her hand back. He smiled, but his eyes were grave. “I’m glad to be home,” he said.
He looked thinner, Anne thought. He had been slim when he left, but he had definitely lost weight. Had he been eating properly? She said, “Have you eaten since breakfast? Would you like some tea?”
“I am rather hungry,” he said. But the way he said it, and the look in his eyes as he regarded her, gave his words a meaning that made Anne flush. He smiled slightly, turned to Miss Bonteen, who had gradually taken on the role of housekeeper, and said, “Might we have it served in her ladyship’s sitting room?”
“Of course, Mr. Dereham, Miss Bonteen replied. “I’ll see to it right away.”
“Shall we go upstairs?” Daniel said to Anne. “I have a few things I need to discuss with you.”
“And I with you,” she returned, relieved that her voice didn’t tremble.
# # #
Daniel had known from the moment she spoke that Anne was angry with him. The coolness of her voice, the way she pulled her hand away after he kissed it, told him clearly she hadn’t forgiven him for disappearing to London. As he went up the stairs behind her, he regarded her rigid back and thought about how he could bring her around.
The sitting room door was open and Anne went in. Daniel waited until she chose a single green velvet chair before he took a seat upon the room’s rose-print sofa and said, “Anne, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I went off the way I did. It was stupid and thoughtless and hurtful, and I’m very, very sorry. Will you forgive me?”
“Of course,” she said, clearly not meaning it.
He looked at her face, at the beautiful lines of her eyebrows, at the large long-lashed brown eyes that had always looked at him so honestly, at the long, swan-like neck that was so graceful. He loved her. How was he going to make this right?
“I had business in London that needed attending to,” he said.
“So you said in your brief note.”
This was not going well. “I should have waited to speak to you, I know. It was just…”
His voice trailed away.
“You didn’t think it was important,” she continued for him, her face pale and set.
“Of course it was important! But I had a dreadful head from drinking and I just wanted to get out into the air. I thought I could write you from London.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth he knew he had made a mistake. She picked up on it immediately. “But you didn’t write me from London, at least not about your ‘business.’ You wrote me twice, once to tell me you had bought a carriage and once to tell me you would be arriving the following day. Was buying a coach the reason you went to London?”
“It was one of the reasons,” he said cautiously.
She didn’t reply but her whole expression told him she didn’t believe him. He was beginning to get annoyed. Annoyed with himself for having been such an idiot, and annoyed with her because she wasn’t forgiving him. There she sat, not three feet away, and he might have been on the other side of the ocean as far as she was concerned. He wanted her. He wanted to take her into his arms, to press his body against hers, to take her, have her, never let her go. He loved her. Couldn’t she see that?
She said, “Are you going to tell me now what your business was?”
Damn. He had set a trap for himself. If he told her no, she would be even angrier. But he didn’t want to tell her about the will. He still didn’t want any questions about his mother.
She waited, and when he didn’t speak, she said, “I see,” in a tight little voice.
He saw the hurt she was trying to conceal and gave in. “I wanted to see exactly how much money the jewels I brought back from India were worth.”
Her eyebrows lifted into two fine question marks, and he told her the sum that Rundell and Bridges had given him as an evaluation. Stunned, she stared at him wordlessly.
“Yes,” he said. “It was more than I thought it would be.”
She let out her breath. “That maharajah must have liked you very much indeed.”
“There was plenty more in his palace and his storeroom. The rich in India are rich beyond the stretch of our English imaginations, Anne. Our aristocracy counts its wealth in land. The Indian princes count it in more tactile materials.”
She was silent, waiting for him to continue. Doggedly, he went on. “I had my will drawn up. I know I should have done it when we married, but I never got around to it. If anything should happen to me, you and Grex will be well looked after, Anne. Half of those jewels will go to you.”
The color drained from her face. She leaned forward in her chair, closer to him. “Are you ill, Daniel? Is that why you went to London?”
He heard the concern in her voice and was reassured. “I’m fine, Anne.”
She sat back again. “I’m glad to hear it.”
This time he leaned toward her, trying another apology. “Annie, I’ve said I’m sorry, and I am. I should never have left you the way I did. I won’t ever do it again. Can’t you forgive me? Can’t we get back onto our old footing? We get along so well, sweetheart. Why create a rift between us?”
He neglected to say he had missed her. He neglected to say he loved her.
Anne stood up and smoothed down her skirt. She said in that cool voice he was coming to hate, “Of course I forgive you, Daniel, now that you have explained yourself so fully. But you are not the only one with news.” She looked down at her hands, which were clasped across her stomach, then up again. “I am with child.”
His eyes stretched wide. He jumped to his feet to go to her and hit his shin against the tea table. Cursing under his breath, he moved to stand in front of her. He took her hands in his and held them tightly. “You’re having a baby?”
“Yes. I am having a baby. We are having a baby.”
He blinked, trying to assimilate this news. He raised her hands to his lips and kissed them both. When she tried to pull them away, he wouldn’t let her. “But that’s wonderful, Annie! It’s just … wonderful.”
“I’m happy you are pleased.”
He thought there was a softer note in her voice as she said these words, and held her hands even tighter. “I’ve been a fool,” he said. “I ran away because I was afraid of what you would think of me now you knew I was a … a bastard. I felt I had lied to you by not telling you that before we married. I never intended to tell you, but then my … mother’s husband…came and told you. And, well, I was scared what you would think.”
Anne’s brown eyes changed in a moment from ice to fire. “Daniel Dereham, are you seriously telling me you thought I’d reject you because of your birth? Don’t you know anything about me? How could we have lived together for all these months and you not know I would never reject you? I love you! I don’t care about your birth! I love you. I don’t give a damn who your father was!”
Daniel’s throat was tight and he felt tears dangerously close to his eyes. He hadn’t cried since he was sixteen years old and he wasn’t going to cry now. He reached out and pulled her against him. He was holding her too tightly but she didn’t complain, only reached her arms around his waist and held him back. At last a shudder ran through his whole body and he loosened his hold.
“I’m hurting you,” he said. “I never want to hurt you, Annie. God, I love you so much!”
She leaned back in his arms and looked up into his face. “Say that again.”
“I love you,” he said again. “I love you with all my heart and with every ounce of strength and energy that’s in my body. You are the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Her face was radiant as she raised herself on her toes and softly kissed his mouth. He smiled as she returned her heels to the ground. “How are you feeling? Have you been sick?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just a little nauseated in the mornings.”
“Only in the mornings?”
“Yes.”
“That means you’re feeling well just now?”
She reached up to cup his face in her hands. “I am feeling perfectly fine. Shall we go next door to our bedroom? Are you perhaps feeling a little weary from your long drive?”
He grinned and picked her up in his arms. “Come along and let me show you just how weary I am.”