AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Anne clutched her soup spoon and glared down the table. Edward was hanging on Hawthorne’s every word. There was a sourness in her stomach, and she pushed her bowl away a fraction of an inch, enough for the footman to remove it in an instant. She wished they could as easily remove the fatted calf that had been hauled out before her husband.
Edward was twenty-one, having barely gained the age of his majority. Since he was a lad of eleven, she had taken a firm hand in his education and his social introductions. He would be the next Duke of Hawthorne, and she took her responsibility to him and to the title seriously. Why, the Queen herself had commended Anne on the fine job she had done to raise a young man of such good character.
Was her influence gone now? Was Hawthorne regaling him with tales of his exploits in Paris? Was that why Edward was laughing so hard, in a way that he never laughed with her?
Anne realized she was still holding her soup spoon, even though the bowl had long been removed. What a horror. She set it down, and a footman picked it up and placed a new course in front of her. Thin slices of roast pheasant were piled in an artful way with a few spears of asparagus on the gold-rimmed plate. Though she had lost her appetite, she took a requisite bite and then busied herself in talking to her neighbor, while keeping an eye on the betrayal that was playing out at the end of the table.
Florence, Hawthorne’s sister, fussed over her after dinner. “Let me seat you by the fire. The place of honor.” She handed Anne a glass of warm spiced wine and hovered over her until she sat, carefully shielding her from the drafty room by a painted screen. It was well-known how little she liked the cold.
Just like a dowager. Why, Hawthorne’s great-aunt was nodding herself to sleep in the chair next to hers. She gripped the crystal stemof the wineglass hard enough that she feared breaking it. This was not to be borne. She was far from her dotage.
Anne spied Hawthorne next to the bay windows, laughing with his cousins like he had never been away. He slapped them on their backs, his manners easy and warm, and for a moment she hated him for all the charm that he possessed. Granted, his cousins seemed far more reserved. They didn’t reciprocate his smiles as widely, and one of them kept glancing around as if looking for escape. Perhaps Hawthorne was going to have to work for their affections after all.
If she were to lose her consequence among his family, then Anne had no one. And if Hawthorne took back the work of the dukedom, she would have nothing. What had all her hard work been for if she was to be forgotten, even while she stood among them?Would generations to come know her only as a scrawl in the family Bible or a footnote in Debrett’s? Anne, eldest daughter of the Earl of Clydon, childless wife of the Duke of Hawthorne. What was her legacy, if not the work that she put into the dukedom?
She ought not to have raised a finger on the Hawthorne family’s behalf if this was to be her reward.
Anne managed through a few well-placed stares to be seated next to Edward when tea was being served in the drawing room.
“Aunt Anne, thank you for being here tonight. Mother told me that I really ought to start having more gatherings, and I daresay she is right. It makes it easier when there are people I like in attendance.”
Anne didn’t miss his sidelong glance at Hawthorne as he delivered his last remark. “I am always happy to be with family,” she said. “You know you can count on me.” She patted his knee a little awkwardly. She wasn’t one to touch people, as a rule, but Hawthorne seemed so natural at it. Maybe it was part of the key to his success.
“It’s smashing that Hawthorne is back in town, isn’t it? He has ever so many stories. Well, you must have heard all of them by now, I suppose.”
“Of course.”
In fact, Anne had heard none of them. At least, not from Hawthorne. There had been plenty of people over the years whohad been only too pleased to drop the lateston-ditsin her ear. In the guise of concern for her situation, of course.
As if the mere mention of his name had the power to conjure him, Hawthorne ambled up to them and sat beside Anne. The sofa was narrow, and his thigh pressed against her own, radiating heat like it was a brand. She eyed his leg. Maybe he truly did have infernal powers.
This was the closest they had been since their wedding night. She wondered if he was thinking the same thing.
“Well, here we are all together at last,” he said. “Edward, my lad—or I suppose you would prefer the title now that you are no longer a stripling, wouldn’t you? My apologies, Kensworth. You should come by the house more often. One day, I expect that it should be your own. You might as well be familiar with it.”
His ears turned red. “Oh, I am quite often at Hawthorne House. I also spend time at Hawthorne Towers every summer as Aunt Anne’s guest. She has been ever so insistent on it.”
“I have long considered it important to encourage Kensworth to consider the Hawthorne properties as his own.” The name felt odd on her tongue. She never called Edward by his title, though he had been Marquess of Kensworth for years, and would be until he became the Duke of Hawthorne himself someday.
Hawthorne gazed at her for a moment, then turned to Edward. “I should bring you round my club, introduce you to some very fine people. Call on me at my apartments and I should be glad to take you anytime you wish.”
Anne stiffened. The gentlemen’s clubs were purviews that she could not enter, and Hawthorne knew it. She hated how his influence could reach further than her own because he was a man and the duke.
Why could he not have stayed in Paris?
“That sounds like a good deal of fun.” Edward grinned. “I say, might I ask why I need to send word to the Albany? Why are you not both at Hawthorne House?”
Hawthorne’s expression didn’t change. “Renovations.”
Anne shot a look at him.Renovations?That was the reason he was giving for having a separate address? She wondered how manypeople believed it. To give him credit, it wasn’t a bad decoy if it prevented polite society from thinking about his illicit love affairs despite all the rumors that had floated across the Channel.
Hawthorne and Edward fell into an easy conversation about the theater, as Anne sat beside them. Was this to be her fate now—to act for all the world like a good wife?
Quiet. Invisible. Entirely proper.
Entirelyboring.
She stood no chance against the force of her husband’s charm. She had never predicted that Hawthorne would return, or that he would want to integrate himself back into theton. Everything that she had built was now at risk.
