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When Annabel was born, and Lady Catherine bled for a fortnight, the Earl of Clarenmore put his foot down. There would be no more babies. His wife’s life was not worth the risk. But then came Eloise. Small, pink, and squalling from the moment she drew her first breath.
Lady Catherine survived the birth, but her health…her health was never quite the same. And while the earl took enormous pains to protect his wife, there was nothing he could do when she took ill with pneumonia.
Exactly one month after she fell sick, Annabel’s mother passed away, sending the entire family into shocked mourning. A mourning that intensified twice over when their father, for reasons unknown aside from being in the wild grips of grief, went walking out on the lake one early in February, fell through the ice, and drowned.
Following the sudden death ofboththeir parents, the Rosewood siblings retreated completely from theton. Instead of enjoying her debut, Annabel spent the next twelve months ensconced at Clarenmore Park. Twelve months that turned into twenty-four when James failed to return from his travels abroad.
He hadn’t wanted to embark on his Grand Tour and leave his sisters behind, but after they’d all but shoved him out the door, he had left for India by way of Spain, Italy, and Greece. Some had questioned their decision to let him go, but with Lenora, the second eldest, to look after them, they hadn’t reallyneededJames…whereas James had desperately needed to satisfy his wild, wandering spirit before he settled into his new (and very much unwanted) role as the Earl of Clarenmore.
For the first few months, they’d received a letter nearly every week. Long, detailed descriptions of his travels and all that he’d seen. Then, right before he was due to sail the architectural marvel that was the Suez Canal, his letters had abruptly stopped.
They’d tried sending letters of their own, which came back unread. Lenora even went so far as to use their limited funds to hire a private investigator, but his exhaustive search failed to yield any satisfactory answers. James was simply…gone. Notgone, gone. Annabel refused to believe that he was with their parents. They couldn’t have lost another family member. They just couldn’t. But hewasmissing with no knowledge of when he would return, leaving his sisters to continue their lives without him.
Over the past year, that continuation had included two marriages, one for Lenora to Perth Stewart, the 8thDuke of Monmouth, and another for Bridget to Graham Northam, The Viscount Croft. Both unions had occurred in such rapid succession that Annabel was still a bit stunned to realize her sisters were married…and she wasn’t. A notable error that she intended to rectify with her belated debut into High Society. A debut that wasn’t goingquitelike she had imagined it would.
Before Lenora fell in love with Perth, she had planned to be the last sister to marry.
With her nose buried in a book, Bridget had been seemingly oblivious to Graham’s advances until after they were wed.
Eloise would rather shove a fire poker up her nose than endure anything that resembled a courtship.
But Annabel…Annabelwanteda husband. She had always wanted a husband; someone dashing and dear to ride in on a white horse and sweep her right off her feet. She wanted to be a wife and a mother. She wanted the great love story that the fairy tales had promised her as a child.
Instead…
Instead, she had Lord Wimplebottom.
“….Mommy Dearest was unable to eat the soup, you see, because it was too hot, and then we had to leave….”
Goodness.
Was hestilltalking?
The very instant that the waltz ended, she managed to withdraw herself from his sweaty grasp and was halfway across the room before he had time to call her name, hobbling towards the nearest exit as fast as her throbbing feet would allow. Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of Lenora standing beside Perth by the refreshment table, and a few feet away Bridget was being escorted onto the dance floor by Graham. There was no sign of Eloise, but that came as no great surprise. The youngest Rosewood abhorred any type of social event; she’d spent most of the house party in a tree. Trying to force Eloise to enjoy a ball was like trying to stuff a cat into a barrel of water. The two things didn’t mix, and whoever tried would be left with more than a few scratches.
Another discreet glance to ensure that none of her family was watchingherwhile she watchedthem, and Annabel ducked out onto the second-story terrace. As soon as the cool winter air brushed across her warm, flushed skin, she paused and took a deep breath, closing her eyes as the grimace of pain she hadn’t allowed herself to show inside the ballroom unraveled across her countenance like a spool of thread come undone.
It just wasn’tfair.
Lenora had Clarenmore Park.
Bridget had her books.
Eloise had her trees.
But this–the dancing, the music, the champagne–was meant to be Annabel’s area to shine. This was what she used tolove. The fashion, the attention, the flirting. This was what she’d kept her mind focused on whenever it started to stray into places that were too dark for comfort. This was what she’d been looking forward to for two long, hard, sad years.
They’d moved into Perth’s enormous manor bordering Hyde Park eight days ago. This was her third ball. The twenty-eighth bachelor she’d waltzed with. And she had never been more miserable.
There was a tinge of jealousy, of course. She wasn’t too proud to admit that she was a tad envious of her sisters for finding their husbands even before the Season began. But it was more than that. It was…it was the disappointment of building an event up so high that when it finally came to pass, it couldn’t possibly meet the expectations that had been set. It was being given a gold necklace, only to find out upon cleaning it that the metal was nothing more than painted tin. It was feeling lost in the one place that should have felt like home.
After her parents died, Clarenmore Park, once beautiful and grand, had become a ghost of its former self. The rooms had lost their light. The familiar smell of her mother’s perfume, a floral combination of roses and peonies, had gradually faded away. The cozy sheen covering her childhood had been peeled back, revealing the rambling estate in itstrueform. An old building made of crumbling brick and sinking floorboards that was badly in need of repair.
Courtesy of Perth’s deep pockets, those repairs were scheduled to begin in the spring. Clarenmore Park would be rebuilt, better than ever before. But the damage was already done. Annabel didn’t want to linger in a place that reminded her of everything she’d lost. She wanted something new. She wanted something better. She wanted a future completely free of the past.
London was supposed to give her that.
Her Season debut, two years delayed, was supposed to give her that.
