Buch lesen: «Anne's Perfect Husband»

Chapter One

“I beg your pardon,” Anne Darlington said, finally looking up from where she was kneeling on the stone floor, her hands full of the grimy edge of Sally Eddington’s woolen petticoat.

She was stitching up the hem of the offending garment so that it wouldn’t drag on the ground as the child walked. Her concentration on the task, which she was attempting to perform while six-year-old Sally was still wearing the petticoat, had prevented her from hearing the first part of the message the headmistress had sent.

“It’s your guardian,” Margaret Rhodes said importantly. “Come to take you home for Christmas.”

“How nice for you, Sally,” Anne said. She took one very large and hurried stitch and then looped the needle through and tied a quick knot. She broke the thread with her teeth before she added, “I didn’t know you were leaving today.”

In all honesty she hadn’t even known Sally had a guardian. Anne distinctly remembered that the little girl had spent the previous holiday at school. There were only a handful of students who did that, and since Anne herself had always been one of them, she certainly knew who the others were. And most of their stories as well.

The loss of a mother, usually in childbirth with the next, too quickly conceived baby. A father’s remarriage, perhaps. Or his disinterest.

Anne supposed she herself might fall into that latter category, but her father’s disinterest was something she had stopped thinking about a long time ago. She was actually grateful for the upbringing he had provided her, even if it had never included his presence. And just this week Mrs. Kemp had offered her a teaching position here for the next school year.

Then she would never have to leave, Anne thought contentedly, automatically straightening Sally’s skirt and smoothing with her hands the carrot-colored frizz that surrounded the little girl’s freckled face.

“But I’m not,” Sally said, her eyes round at the thought.

“Not her, you big silly,” Margaret said. “It’s you he’s come for.”

Anne turned her head, looking full at Margaret for the first time. “For me?” she repeated in astonishment.

“And Mrs. Kemp says you mustn’t keep him waiting.”

Anne opened her mouth to protest, and then closed it again. After all, whatever was going on, it offered to be different from her normal afternoon routine of wiping noses and hearing lessons.

Either the girls were having a joke or there had been some mistake in who had been called for. In either case, going along would prove more entertaining than what she was presently doing. If it were a prank, then the others would enjoy a laugh at her expense, nothing she was averse to. And if it weren’t, the mistake would probably have been straightened out by the time she reached the headmistress’s office. Until then…

“Well, of course, I won’t keep him waiting,” Anne said cheerfully. “Come from London, I suppose.”

“I don’t know about that,” Margaret confided, “but he arrived in a bang-up rig with four of the primest bits of horseflesh I’ve ever seen.”

“If Mrs. Kemp hears you talking like that, my girl,” Anne warned, “you’ll be the banged-up rig.”

She lightened the rebuke with a smile and then ran down the wide hallway with the younger girl at her heels. Not setting a good example, Mrs. Kemp would have said, especially for someone about to become a teacher.

Since the headmistress wasn’t by to say it, however, Anne didn’t see any reason not to run off the excess energy the recent weather’s confinement had produced. She would be so glad when spring arrived and the woods and fields were again available for roaming.

She slowed to a sedate walk as she neared the open door of the school’s office. Working by feel, she tucked a few tendrils of hair back into the neat coil from which they had managed to escape and straightened the shoulders of her linsey-woolsey dress, brushing her hands over the bodice. Then she cast a quick glance behind her to evaluate Margaret’s appearance, knowing that in Mrs. Kemp’s opinion it, too, could usually be improved upon.

She was right. The younger girl’s flannel pinafore was unbuttoned. Anne turned and, still walking backwards, attempted a couple of quick adjustments to the ten-year-old’s attire.

Margaret’s widening eyes should have been a warning, but she didn’t notice them until it was too late. Anne backed into something quite solid and heard a soft gasp of response.

Someone, she realized belatedly when she whirled around. Someone very tall. And dressed in what even such a provincial as she knew to be the height of fashion, from his gleaming tasseled Hessians to the broad shoulders of an expertly cut coat of navy superfine. Considering the weather, there would no doubt be a multicaped greatcoat and a tall beaver hat residing safely in Mrs. Kemp’s office.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

He certainly appeared sturdy enough that she couldn’t possibly have done him damage, but that gasp had sounded pained. And there was something in the tightness of the lines around that beautifully shaped mouth that also spoke of discomfort.

It was not until the mouth tilted, destroying that ridiculous notion that Anne looked up and found his eyes. They were hazel, and they were smiling as openly as were his lips.

Smiling eyes. She had read the phrase once in a novel, that strictly forbidden pastime carefully concealed from Mrs. Kemp, of course. She had never quite known what it meant until today. Until now. And her heart began to beat a little irregularly.

“I believe I have managed to survive your charge,” he said. “It is customary to look in the direction you’re treading, however. Just to prevent bowling over the un-suspecting.”

Anne laughed. “Only think how boring it should be to always look where one is going. I confess that I much prefer to back my way through life.” She longed to add, “One meets such interesting people that way,” but she couldn’t decide if that would sound sophisticated or simply fast.

And while she was trying to resolve that dilemma, the hazel eyes left her face and settled, still smiling, on Margaret’s. Anne swallowed her disappointment and turned to look at her young friend as well. Margaret’s brown eyes were still stretched. Indeed, they had widened enough to be outright rude as she stared, openmouthed, at the visitor.

“Hello,” he said.

“’Lo,” Margaret mumbled.

The self-important air of confidence with which she had delivered her message had disappeared. Of course, Anne could hardly blame her for that. They were neither very often exposed to someone who was so obviously Top of the Trees.

“I’m not quite sure how this should be done,” the elegant gentleman was saying, “but I have satisfied Mrs. Kemp as to my identity and my legal position as your guardian. She has agreed that we may leave as soon as you’re ready. Since I gave you no warning, I should imagine it will take you some time to pack. I hope you will make as quick a work of that as you can, however, because the weather is worsening by the moment.”

Margaret said nothing, her eyes and mouth continuing to gape unbecomingly as he talked. When he had finished, and the silence yawned empty for a few seconds, she reluctantly pulled her gaze away from his face to look at Anne.

“It’s not me you want,” she said, pointing a trembling finger. “It’s her. That’s Anne Darlington.”

The hazel eyes followed the gesture, and as Anne’s met them, she realized they were no longer smiling. They had widened as much as Margaret’s, and even that was attractive, she decided.

“You’re Anne Darlington?” he asked, his shock evident.

No mistake about the name, then, Anne thought, trying to make sense of this.

“I am,” she said, inclining her head in agreement, hoping to add a touch of dignity to the confession.

“Colonel George Darlington’s daughter?”

“Did you know my father, sir?” she asked.

Again there was a small silence.

“I served with your father in Iberia, ma’am. May I offer my condolences on your recent loss.”

Anne had never in her life been called ma’am. It was rather shocking, but despite that, finally she was beginning to have a glimmer of understanding. Perhaps this man was indeed her guardian. Perhaps when she was much younger, her father had named a military friend to look after her if anything happened to him. And now that it had…

“Thank you,” she said softly.

She supposed she had grieved in the abstract for her father, but since she had not seen him in over seven years, and not very often before that, she had quickly recovered from the news of his death, about which she had been informed only two months ago.

“My name is Ian Sinclair, and your father’s will asked me to serve as your guardian.”

How strange, Anne thought. Not “your father asked me,” which is what she would have expected, but “your father’s will.”

“And you agreed?”

“Colonel Darlington was a…comrade in arms.”

Anne wondered about that brief hesitation, but then she knew less than nothing about military matters. Apparently her father had chosen from among his acquaintances a man he felt would be trustworthy to look after her.

She wondered how many years ago that decision had been made. And considering Mr. Sinclair’s confusion in thinking Margaret was his ward, she wondered if her father had even remembered how old she was. He had certainly never acknowledged birthdays. In actuality, he had seldom acknowledged her existence.

“As you can see, Mr. Sinclair, I am hardly in need of a guardian,” she said briskly. “I shall be twenty my next birthday, and Mrs. Kemp has very kindly offered me a teaching post here. My father was unaware of the offer, of course, which was made after his death.”

“Then you were in frequent correspondence with your father?”

The hazel eyes were focused intently on her face, and for some reason, Anne found herself compelled to tell him the truth.

“I was not,” she said succinctly.

“I see.”

Even living as she had among the female offspring of parents who obviously did not wish to be burdened with hiring governesses and tutors for them, Anne had finally been forced to admit her father’s total lack of interest in her was unusual. Most of her schoolmates got the occasional letter or present or visit. In all the years she had been at Fenton School, she couldn’t remember receiving any of those things.

“I’m very sorry you have made this journey for nothing,” Anne said. “Especially since, as you say, the weather is uncertain.”

The fine mouth tightened, and again Anne noticed the deeply graven lines that bracketed it. She wondered at his age, but there was something about his face that defied an attempt to judge it, despite the sweep of gray at the temples of his dark chestnut hair. His eyes, when they were smiling, made him seem quite young. Now, however…

“Actually, I have been dreading spending Christmas alone,” he said. And then he smiled at her again.

Anne had not been dreading the holidays. She enjoyed the quieter times they provided. There would be only a few girls left at the school, some of them, like Sally, quite small. Since Anne was the oldest student, and the one who had been here the longest, their Christmas entertainment had always fallen on her shoulders. And she welcomed the task.

There was something about the elegant gentleman’s declaration, however, that tugged at her heart quite as much as had Sally’s quiet sobbing during the first few nights she had spent here. And who are you, Anne Darlington, to be feeling sorry for the likes of him? she chided in self-derision.

“Are you sure I can’t persuade you to join me?” Ian Sinclair continued. “I can’t tell you how excited my servants are at the prospect of having a guest for the holidays. My existence of late has been far too sedate for their tastes, I’m afraid. They were counting on your arrival to give them an excuse for a full-blown, old-fashioned Yule celebration.”

My existence of late. Slowly Anne was beginning to put all the small, yet telling clues together. Ian Sinclair had confessed to knowing her father on the Peninsula. And if he had returned to England while the British forces were still engaged in the war for control of Spain, there could be only one reason. A reason that explained both the lines of suffering in his face and perhaps even that nearly inaudible gasp of reaction when she had careened into him.

If there was anything more likely than a sobbing child to stir a response in Anne Darlington’s heart, it was a creature in pain. If it were not for Mrs. Kemp’s strictures, during Anne’s years here the school would have become a refuge for every homeless cur or injured squirrel in the district.

In spite of the headmistress’s injunctions, it had secretly sheltered a variety of carefully hidden invalids. Unknowingly, and without any conscious intent on his part, Ian Sinclair had issued an invitation that would have been almost impossible for Anne to refuse.

“Then I should hate to disappoint them,” she said bravely, “especially in this joyful season.”

Not exactly what he had bargained for, Ian thought, as he waited in Mrs. Kemp’s office for his ward to pack.

And Anne herself had willingly provided him with the perfect excuse not to take this farce any further. For some reason, however, perhaps nothing more than what he had indicated to her about his staff’s excitement at the prospect of a Christmas visitor, he had insisted that she come back to Sinclair Hall with him. He could only imagine their reaction when he returned, not with the child they all expected, but with a young woman in tow.

“…shall miss her dearly, Mr. Sinclair. Not that I would begrudge Anne her chance,” Mrs. Kemp said, his name bringing Ian’s wandering attention back to the subject at hand. “She is a most intelligent and deserving young woman, with the kindest heart I have ever known. I am delighted she will be able to take her proper place in society. I was so afraid that her father had not realized the importance of seeing that Anne has her Season.”

The words were chilling. Ian had left home at dawn this morning, expecting to bring a little girl back with him for the holidays. Suddenly, without warning, he had been propelled instead into the role of introducing a young woman into society. And it was a role for which he could think of no one less suitable.

After all, his contact with the ton had been severely limited by his military service and his prolonged convalescence. He had acquaintances within that elite circle, of course, but the implications of being called upon to provide a proper Season for George Darlington’s daughter went far beyond anything he had been thinking when he began this harebrained journey.

Sentimental idiot, Sebastian would have chided. And Dare would have been the first to warn that if he ended up in his grave as a result of driving halfway across the country in a snowstorm, then there would be no one around to see to Anne Darlington’s upbringing. Not, Ian admitted, that she needed much “seeing to.”

In actuality, she was already a woman grown. Most girls her age were married and producing the requisite heirs for their husbands. Just because this one had been hidden away behind the imposing doors of Fenton School for years didn’t mean that society wouldn’t consider her a woman.

“Her Season?” he repeated, his mind considering with near-horror what he knew about such things.

It was little enough. He had danced with his share of debutantes, of course. That was expected of every man about town, but he had never had the responsibility of bringing one out. And it seemed that Mrs. Kemp was now suggesting that he should.

“But of course,” Mrs. Kemp said. “Her mother’s family was quite respectable. Her grandfather was a viscount. And I believe the Darlington name to be equally honorable. Now, Anne’s father…” Mrs. Kemp paused delicately, one brow raised in question. “Was he a friend of yours, Mr. Sinclair?”

“An acquaintance,” Ian said carefully.

He had determined to keep his feelings about Darlington to himself. Airing them would serve no purpose but to rebound unfavorably on his daughter, who did not deserve that stain.

“Ah…” Mrs. Kemp said softly. “I did not think the two of you…” Again she paused, her eyes meeting Ian’s in perfect understanding. “He neglected Anne dreadfully. If it were not for the character of the girl herself, due to his financial neglect I should have been forced to send her away years ago.”

“I understood from the solicitors that her fees had been paid,” Ian said, feeling another surge of anger at Anne’s father.

“Her fees, but nothing else. That poor child has been dependent on our charity for the very clothes on her back.”

“I assure you, Mrs. Kemp, that what is owing to you will come first out of whatever estate Darlington has left. However, knowing his penchant for gambling and other…vices, I’m not sure of how much that consists. You will be repaid for your kindness, I assure you, even if it comes from my own pockets.”

“I don’t want the money, Mr. Sinclair. Especially not yours. I do, however, want Anne to have the chance at the happiness she more than deserves. She’s a good child, with a warm and generous spirit. I want someone to see to it that she is settled into a situation more appropriate to her birth than we can provide for her here. Will you promise me that you will do your very best to give her that chance?”

Ian had come north on a fool’s errand, drawn by sentiment and by the thought of giving a lonely child a festive Christmas. Now he was being asked to make a very different commitment. He might know little about providing a Season for a young woman, but he certainly knew the stated intent of such an endeavor.