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But then Lenora married Perth, and all of their financial woes simply…disappeared.
A pleasant side effect of marrying England’s wealthiest duke.
Now, Annabel could buy her maid whatever she wanted. And the red scarf with green checkered trim wrapped around the neck of a mannequin looked particularly lovely.
“I’m heading in here,” she said, pointing at the window display and the wooden sign above it that read, in slightly cramped lettering,‘Lady Emily’s Emporium of Fine Goods and Unique Gifts’. “I’ll be but a moment.”
Eloise huffed and threw herself down onto a wooden bench. “See you in an hour.”
“I do still need something for Anastasia,” Lenora mused, referring to her mother-in-law, the Dowager Duchess of Monmouth, who was due to arrive tomorrow afternoon before the other guests and stay through to the New Year when they’d all travel back to London together. “I wonder if that shawl comes in pearl?”
“Twohours,” Eloise moaned, dramatically throwing a hand across her temple.
Lenora rolled her eyes. “Bridget, please remain out here with your sister and make sure that she doesn’t wander off. After this, we can walk to the center of town to view the ice sculptures, and then stop in the White Rose for some tea and ginger biscuits.”
Eloise brightened. “Iloveginger biscuits.”
A bell rang out when Annabel and Lenora entered the shop. Almost immediately, a round-faced woman, brown curls streaked through with threads of gray, bustled over and greeted them. With a merchant’s keen eye for who held the larger purse strings, she led Lenora over to a vibrant arrangement of shawls and cloaks, permitting Annabel to browse through the shop by herself.
The wooden floor, worn in some spots and threadbare in others, creaked beneath the soles of her leather ankle boots as she admired the vast assortment of scarves, mittens, muffs, and more.
There were glass ornaments hanging from an evergreen branch. An entire drawer filled with shiny gold pocket watches. Beautiful stacks of embellished stationary in thick white vellum. There was even a bowl of lemons, although to be honest, she didn’t know if they were for sale or for decoration.
She settled on the red scarf that had initially caught her eye through the window, and after it was packaged up and paid for, waited patiently by the door for Lenora to join her.
“Did you buy the entire store?” she asked, noting the sheer number of boxes and parcels that were piled so high in her sister’s arms that it was difficult to see her face. She turned the doorknob, and then held the door open wide so that Lenora could precede her outside without dropping any purchases.
“I wasn’t sure what Anastasia would like,” Lenora confessed, her voice muffled behind a beige box tied with green silk ribbon. “So I got a little bit of everything. I’ll give the excess away on Boxing Day.” She stopped short in the middle of the busy pavement, her bundle of presents leaning precariously to the left as she spun around in a circle. “Where are Eloise and Bridget?”
Annabel glanced at the bench, and wasn’t entirely surprised to find it empty. Eloise wasn’t exactly renowned for following orders, and Bridget had the attention span of a butterfly. Put together, it would be a miracle if they’d waited more than five seconds before wandering off.
“They probably went to the White Rose without us,” she said. “Or they just went home.”
“If they took the carriage and I have tocarrythis all the way back…” Lenora gritted her teeth. “For their sake, I hope they’re eating ginger biscuits.”
They struck off for the popular tea shop, Annabel walking in front to clear a path for her sister in the bustling crowd of shoppers. So that when her highwayman unexpectedly appeared right in front of her, she saw him first. He saw her as well, and their eyes both widened before they exclaimed simultaneously, “You.”
“Why aren’t we moving?” Lenora complained. “These aren’t light, you know. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have bought the lemons.”
“You bought the lemons?” Annabel asked without taking her gaze off the blond-haired Adonis whose kiss had haunted her dreams every night since the ball. “Why on earth would you do that?”
“Because they were there, and I want this Christmas to be perfect, and–who is that gentleman?” There was another empty bench beside them, and Lenora unloaded the brunt of her packages onto it, retaining only a small, flat parcel wrapped in white paper before she rejoined her sister who hadn’t moved a single inch, her feet frozen fast to the ground beneath her.
“What gentleman?” Annabel asked, doing her best to sound noncommittal.
It didn’t work.
“The one in the burgundy jacket that you’re staring at and who is staring straight at you.”
“Oh,” she said with a flat titter. “Thatgentleman. That is…um…he is…ah…he…”
He isn’t supposed to be here,she thought silently.What is he doing here? And how does he look evenmorehandsome than he did at midnight?
It was true.
In the shadows, he’d had a dark, sinister appeal. Something you knew that you weren’t meant to touch, but you wanted to anyway, just to find out what would happen. But in the light of day, with the full force of the afternoon sun shining on that glossy, glorious lion’s mane…it was a wonder he wasn’t pushing women away left and right.
He wasgorgeous.
