Page 51 of The Language of Love

She climbed down with the aid of one strong hand before looking up. “Bahut dhanyavaad, Henry.”

“Hamaare punah milane tak, Annis.”

Annis cocked her head. “You did not teach me that. What does it mean?”

“You can ask me that the day after tomorrow.” He smiled. “I have to keep something to lure you back.”

He released his horses, leaving her standing and watching, wishing she were still up beside him.

***

“Isn’t that true, my dear? Annis?”

Annis’s head whipped up. The way both her uncle and Mr. Norburg were staring told her she’d been daydreaming about Henry instead of listening to their conversation.

“I beg your pardon, Uncle.”

“You seem distracted this evening,” Mr. Norburg observed before her uncle could respond.

Annis met his cold blue gaze and forced a smile. “I’m sorry. I just recalled something my aunt wanted me to do today that I forgot,” she lied, her gaze flickering away from his uncomfortable stare.

Her uncle chuckled. “I’m sure whatever it is, it can wait, my dear. Mr. Norburg just asked if you would like to accompany his party to the theater tomorrow evening?”

“Oh,” she said, sounding like a breathy nitwit. “I’m sure we would l-love to, if Aunt does not have a prior engagement.”

“Mrs. Bowman would not accompany us, Miss Bowman,” Mr. Norburg said, once again heading off the older man. “This would be some of my particular friends—people I should like you to get to know.”

She swallowed, feeling rather like a rodent staring into the eyes of one of the naja najas that Henry had told her about that afternoon. There was something mesmerizing about Mr. Norburg’s eyes and handsome, but austere, face. “I would be honored,” she said when she realized the pause had gone on too long.

He gave her a thin smile and turned back to the bloody roast beef on his plate.

Annis’s shoulders sagged with relief as the two men resumed the business-related chatter, they’d engaged in through most of dinner.

Even a henwit like Annis understood what this meal was all about: Mrs. Bowman wanted Annis married and out of the way—literally and figuratively. And if she married a banker, she would slip into that nether class between cits and the beau monde.

Mr. Harold Norburg, with his slender, elegant features and perfect manners, was undeniably a gentleman. But he was not the sort of man that her aunt wished to seat at her dinner table. If Annis were to marry Mr. Norburg, they would socialize only infrequently.

Annis would have a new circle of acquaintances, likely the people he was planning to introduce her to at the theater.

She unobtrusively studied the man her aunt—and uncle, to a lesser extent—were strongly urging her to marry.

Although he was twenty years her senior, he was still a very handsome man—if one did not look too closely into his eyes, which were a beautiful pale blue, but so very, very cold.

Annis didn’t think that it was her imagination that they seemed to chill even more when they looked at her. It worried her he had not married before. Why now? Why her?

Oh, she wasn’t naïve—a marriage between the two of them would considerably elevate Mr. Norburg’s social status. While they, as a couple, could hardly expect invitations to haute ton functions, his connection to the family of an earl would increase his status. Some might say that an exchange of his money for her connections was a very good bargain for him, even though she was well past her bloom.

A footman came to remove her plate, and she nodded her thanks before glancing at the men. Mr. Norburg was watching her while her uncle spoke to his butler. For a moment—a split second, really—there was an expression in his opaque gaze.

Annis could not identify it, but it sent a shiver down her spine.

***

It did not surprise Annis when her uncle called her to the library to discuss Mr. Norburg the following morning.

The two men had spent an hour closeted together after their port before joining Annis in the drawing room. Although Mr. Norburg had said nothing in particular to her—indeed, he’d barely spoken to her at all—he’d had the self-satisfied look of a man who’d ticked a chore off a list and was ready to move on to more important matters.

When she’d excused herself at eleven o’clock, the two men had retired to her uncle’s office to discuss business. Or perhaps her. Or perhaps she was business.