“How lovely,” she said, smiling determinedly and snapping the Bible shut before returning it to the table. “Am I to have an escort down to the drawing room, Dennis? You do look fine.”
“You haven’t heard?” he said, coming inside the room and closing the door behind his back.
“Heard?” She looked at him with raised eyebrows.
“Anna has called off the engagement without even consulting Lana or me first,” he said. “We thought you should know before you go down.”
“Called off the engagement?” Rosamund said. “Impossible, Dennis. She has seemed so determined in the last few days.”
“I could wring Joshua’s neck,” he said. “He has convinced Anna that he loves her and has got her to say she will marry him, and so a marriage planned nine years ago must go out the window.”
Rosamund motioned him to a chair.
“And they went and talked to Wetherby before coming to Lana and me, the pair of them,” he said. “This is a major embarrassment, Rosa. I don’t know quite how to show my face tonight.”
“But if it is true,” Rosamund said, “then perhaps it is as well that the truth has come out before it is too late.”
“Before it is too late?” He grimaced. “The family was told three nights ago, and doubtless all sorts of rumors have leaked into the countryside via the servants. The earl and his mother and sister are here. I wish a hole would open up in the ground and swallow me up. That’s what I wish.”
“How did his lordship take it?” Rosamund asked.
“Very decently, actually,” he said. “He acted as if he had not just been treated as shabbily as a man can be treated.”
“Perhaps he really feels that way,” she said.
“He’s just being the perfect gentleman,” Lord March said. “For which we must be eternally thankful, I suppose. I have never raised my hand to Anna, Rosa, but I could cheerfully take her over my knee at this moment and spank her until my hand is too sore.”
“No, you couldn’t,” she said, stepping behind the chair, setting her hands on his shoulders, and bending to kiss the side of his head. “You gave Anna her freedom, Dennis, just as you gave me mine, though I did not realize it at the time. And she has used that freedom, as I did, to do what you consider unwise. Let’s hope that it turns out as well for her as it did for me.”
He passed a hand over his face. “My mother-in-law has been weeping,” he said. “She has had her heart set on this match for nine years. Gilmore is already reminding her that Joshua is his heir and that they should be over the moon with happiness at the way things are turning out. I suppose there is that way of looking at it.”
“Yes, of course,” she said. “Annabelle will be the Marchioness of Gilmore one day.”
“He is a shocking rake,” Lord March said.
“I have heard that rakes make the best of husbands,” Rosamund said, wrapping her arms about him from behind and resting her cheek against his. “I don’t think Josh would take marriage lightly, Dennis. And I have reason to believe that he really loves Annabelle.”
“I hope you are right,” he said. “You are going to ruin my neckcloth, Rosa. It took my valet all of ten minutes to get it just so.”
“Did it?” she said, pecking him on the cheek before straightening up. “Escort me downstairs, then. I shall give you courage.”
He sighed. “Sometimes,” he said, “just sometimes, I feel glad there was just Anna. Imagine if there were half a dozen more.”
“But you would have been quite an expert at the end of it all,” she said gaily, patting his arm.
She would give him courage, she had said. He probably had no idea of the fact that she would have been quite unable to leave her room if he had chosen to leave without her.
The betrothal was at an end. Justin was free.
Not that it would make any difference to her, of course. In fact, it would have been better if things had remained the way they were. At least then she could have dreamed about the way things might have been but for circumstances.
No, it made no difference to her at all.
Justin was free!
Chapter 16
It was immediately obvious to the Earl of Wetherby that all the house guests knew. As soon as he set foot in the drawing room before dinner, everyone treated him with almost exaggerated heartiness.
