“You should have told me that this was what you wanted.” He raised his head to gasp. “I would’ve obliged you.”
She seemed incapable of coherent thought, let alone speech.
“You had only to say the word and I could have taken you on my desk in the library, in the carriage with John Coachman up front, or even here in the garden.”
She tried to form words through the fog of her confusion. “No, I—”
“God knows I’ve been hard for days—weeks—around you,” he ground out. “I could’ve tumbled you at any time. Or can’t you admit that you want to bed a man whose face looks like mine?”
She tried to shake her head, but it fell helplessly as he bent her back over his arm. His other hand dropped to her hips and jerked them into his own. The unyielding hardness of his erection pressed against her soft belly.
“This is what you crave. What you traveled all the way to London for,” he whispered against her mouth.
She moaned in denial even as her hips arched into his.
He stilled her movement with an iron grip and tore his mouth away from hers. But almost as if he couldn’t leave the lure of her skin, he returned. His mouth trailed across her face to catch an earlobe between his teeth.
“Why?” His question sighed into her ear. “Why, why, why? Why did you lie to me?”
She tried again to shake her head.
He punished her with a sharp nip. “Was it a jest? Did you find it amusing to lay with me one night and then play the virtuous widow the next? Or was it a perverse need? Some women find the thought of bedding a pox-scarred man stimulating.”
She jerked her head violently then, despite the pain when his teeth scraped across her ear. She couldn’t—could not—let him think that. “Please, you must know—”
He turned his head. She tried to face him, and he did the most terrifying thing yet.
He let her go.
“Edward! Edward! For God’s sake, please listen to me!” Strange that this was the first time she had called him by his Christian name.
He strode down the garden path. She ran after him, her eyes blinded by tears, and tripped over a loose brick.
He stopped at the sound of her fall, his back still to her. “Such tears, Anna. Can you produce them at will like the crocodile?” And then, so softly she might have imagined it, “Were there other men?”
He walked away.
She watched as he disappeared through the gate. Her chest felt tight. She thought vaguely that perhaps she’d hurt herself in the fall. But then she heard a guttural, rasping sound, and a cold little part of her brain took note of what a strange noise her crying made.
How swift, how harsh was the punishment dealt for stepping outside her staid widow’s life. All the lessons and warnings, spoken and unspoken, that she’d been taught growing up had, in fact, come true. Although, she supposed her punishment wasn’t that envisioned by the moralizers of Little Battleford. No, her fate was far worse than exposure and censure. Her punishment was Edward’s hatred. That and the knowledge that she had never gone to London merely for the sex. All along it had been to be with him, Edward. It was the man she’d craved, not the physical act. It seemed she had been lying to herself just as much as she’d lied to him. How ironic to have finally tumbled to that realization now when all was ashes around her.
Anna didn’t know how long she lay there, her old brown dress growing damp from the overturned dirt. When her sobs finally died away, the afternoon sky had become overcast. She pushed herself up with both arms to a kneeling position and from there lurched to her feet. She wavered, but caught herself, one hand holding the garden wall for support. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. Then she picked up the shovel.
Soon she would have to go home and tell Mother Wren that she no longer had a job. She would face a lonely bed tonight and a thousand nights after for the rest of her life.
But for now, she’d simply plant roses.
FELICITY PLACED A cloth dampened with violet water on her forehead. She’d retired to the little morning room, a place that usually brought her quite a bit of satisfaction, especially when she thought about how much it had cost to refurbish. The price of the canary-colored damask settee alone would have fed and clothed the Wren household for five years. But at the moment, her head was simply killing her.
Matters were not going well.
Reginald was moping about, moaning that his prize mare had miscarried. Chilly had gone back to London in a sulk because she wouldn’t tell him about Anna and the earl. And that same earl had been annoyingly obtuse at the soiree. Granted, most men in her experience were slow to one degree or another, but she wouldn’t have guessed Lord Swartingham was so thickheaded. The man had seemed not to know what she hinted at. How was she going to convince him to keep Anna quiet if he was too dim to realize he was being blackmailed?
Felicity winced.
Not blackmail. That sounded too gauche. Incentive. That was better. Lord Swartingham had an incentive to stop Anna from blathering Felicity’s past peccadilloes all over the village.
The door banged open at that moment, and the younger of her two daughters, Cynthia, skipped in. She was followed by her sister, Christine, at a more sedate pace.
“M’man,” Christine said. “Nanny says we must get your permission to go to the sweet shop in town. May we?”
“Pepp-er-mint sticks!” Cynthia skipped around the settee Felicity lay on. “Le-mon drops! Turk-ish delight!” Oddly, her youngest resembled Reginald in many ways.
“Please stop that, Cynthia,” Felicity said. “M’man has a headache.”
“I’m so sorry, M’man,” Christine replied, not sounding sorry at all. “We’ll leave as soon as we get your permission.” She smiled coyly.
“M’man’s permission! M’man’s permission!” Cynthia chanted.
“Yes!” Felicity said. “Yes, you have my permission.”
“Huzzah! Huzzah!” Cynthia ran from the room, her red hair streaming behind her.
The sight made her frown. Cynthia’s red hair was the bane of Felicity’s life.
“Thank you, M’man.” Christine closed the door primly.
Felicity groaned and rang for more toilet water. If only she hadn’t written that incriminating note in a fit of sentimentality. And what had Peter been thinking to save that locket? Men truly were idiots.
She pressed her fingertips over the cloth on her forehead. Perhaps Lord Swartingham really hadn’t known what she was talking about. He’d seemed confused when she had said they both knew the identity of the lady he’d met at Aphrodite’s Grotto. And if, in fact, he did not know her…