“Yes.”
He squeezed her hand. “Well,” he said, “I’m sure it is better to face hell together, Annabelle, than heaven separately. Does that help build your courage and strengthen your knees?”
“No,” she said.
He laughed. “It was always the knees that gave most trouble before a battle,” he said.
“Are you comparing this to a battle?” she asked.
“Not really.” He grinned down at her and paused to kiss her swiftly on the lips before they stepped onto the cobbled courtyard before the doors of the house. “This is worse.”
The Earl of Wetherby dismissed his valet and checked his appearance once more before the full-length mirror in his dressing room. He was wearing what he had planned to wear for the occasion: ice-blue knee breeches, silver-embroidered waistcoat, a slightly darker blue coat, all satin, white stockings and linen, a copious amount of lace at neck and wrists.
It was a very formal outfit for the country, but not too formal for a man whose betrothal was about to be announced to the world. And for a free man? He would wear the clothes anyway, he had decided. They were what Henri had prepared for him.
Did Rosamund know yet? he wondered for surely the dozenth time in the past hour. He could still hardly believe it himself.
Josh had summoned him from the billiard room to the library, and he had found Annabelle there, her face white and set. She had resisted Josh’s attempt to take her hand and she had silenced him with one hand when he had begun to speak.
“No, Joshua,” she had said. “I must say this.”
Lord Wetherby had stood inside the door, noting every gesture, every expression, every exchange of glances, so that by the time Annabelle had turned to him, her eyes directly on his, and said what she had to say, he had been hardly surprised.
“Am I just being rejected, Annabelle?” he had asked her. “Or is Josh being accepted?”
She had flushed painfully and bitten her lower lip, and Josh had taken over the explanations.
It had all been over in five minutes. He had assured Annabelle that he honored her honesty and her courage in speaking to him herself, and he had hugged her and kissed her cheek and shaken Josh by the hand and wished them well. He had assured Annabelle that he would speak with his mother and his sister and that indeed they would not hate her for the rest of her life. And that of course he would attend the evening ball. Why should he not? He had been invited, as everyone else had, to attend the marquess’s birthday celebrations, had he not?
It had all been over in five minutes. And then a stroll in the formal gardens with his mother on one arm and Marion on the other—a difficult half-hour, but one that had ended well enough. He was not feeling humiliated, he had assured them, or upset. Only a little relieved, perhaps, to have his freedom restored. And that had set his mother back to her normal self, reminding him of his age and his responsibility to his position, and applying her mind to the task of deciding which ladies of her acquaintance might be suitable matches for him.
There had, of course, been two more interviews, one with the marquess and marchioness, one with Lord and Lady March. Both couples had clearly been feeling mortified and distressed at having to face him, but again all had ended well enough. He had come on the understanding that Annabelle was to be free to accept or reject him, he had reminded them. And though she had accepted him three days before, it had been understood at the time that the betrothal was of a tentative and informal nature. He certainly did not feel as if he had been jilted.
“I am so sorry,” Lady March had said, taking his hand. “I would have liked you as a son-in-law, my lord.”
“We were looking forward to having you as a member of our family,” Lord March had added, taking his hand in a strong clasp.
And so it was over, all of it, except for some embarrassment during the evening, he supposed. It was all over. He could scarcely believe it despite the turmoil of the past few hours.
And he wondered if Rosamund knew yet.
And if it would make any difference to her. She had told him just a few days before that what they had shared had been a purely physical thing.
Had it been, for her?
But he dared not think along such lines. Not yet.
Rosamund took one last look at herself in the full-length mirror in her room. Her dark-green silk gown flattered her figure, she thought, and was suitably plain and decorous for a twenty-six-year-old widow. Leonard had liked her to wear bright colors and to look youthful. But she was no longer youthful. It would no longer be appropriate to try to outshine the young girls—Eva and Pamela and Christobel and Annabelle.
For the same reason, her hair was dressed smooth and high with none of the stray curls or ringlets that the maid had wanted to add for the occasion.
Rosamund’s mind flashed back to an occasion not long before when she had worn a bright-orange silk gown with an indecorously low neckline and slippers one size too large. She sighed and turned from the mirror.
It was almost over. She had to endure for only a few hours longer. Perhaps, if the announcement was made early, she would even be able to slip away to bed before the ball was over without appearing ill-mannered. After all, she had the excuse of a journey to make the next day.
She wandered idly to the table beside her bed and picked up her Bible. It opened to the place where the pressed daffodil lay. She ran one finger lightly over it. She had still not thrown it away. She wondered if she ever would.
There was a knock on her door and Lord March answered her summons.
