“Yes,” she agreed, smiling an only slightly watery smile, “he will look splendid.”
His mind reached for something to say in reply and found . . . nothing.
He kissed her instead.
Devil take it and a thousand and ten damnations, but he kissed her. He did not know which of them was the more startled. It was not even just a fatherly or brotherly or cousinly peck on the lips either. It was a full-on, lips-parted, head-slightly-angled, arms-closing-about-the-woman-to-draw-her-even-closer kind of kiss. It was a man-to-woman kiss. And what the devil was he doing trying to analyze it rather than lifting his head and pretending that after all it was just a kindly, cousinly embrace designed to comfort her?
Pretending? What else was it, then? That was exactly it, was it not?
While he pondered the matter, his lips continued to move over hers, feeling their softness, their moistness. It was surely the most chaste kiss he had indulged in since he was fifteen or thereabouts. Yet it somehow felt like the most lascivious.
This, he thought, his mind verbalizing the biggest understatement of its thirty-one-year existence, was a mistake.
“I will return you to the bosom of your family if you are ready to leave,” he suggested as he raised his head and released his hold on her. He was happy to hear his voice sounding thoroughly bored.
“Oh yes, thank you,” she said—the brisk, sensible schoolteacher. “I am ready.”
Ten
Anna prattled her way through dinner, telling Elizabeth everything there was to tell about growing up in Bath. She dared not stop.
“Is Joel your beau?” Elizabeth asked as they ate their dessert.
“Oh, not really,” Anna said, awash in nostalgia and regret. “We grew up together as the closest of friends. We could always talk upon any subject under the sun or about nothing at all. He was too close to become a beau. Does that make sense? He was more like a brother. And why am I using the past tense?” She felt a bit like weeping.
“Did he ever want to be your beau?” Elizabeth asked.
“A few years ago he fancied himself in love with me,” Anna admitted. “He even asked me to marry him. But he was just lonely. It happens when people leave the orphanage and have no family or even friends beyond its walls. I am sure now he is thankful I said no.”
“He is very handsome?” Elizabeth asked.
Anna held her spoon suspended over her dish and considered. “He is good-looking,” she said, “and very attractive, I believe. It is hard, though, when you have known a man all your life, to see him dispassionately. But oh, goodness, Lizzie, I have done all the talking even though the meal is almost at an end, and even I know that that is bad-mannered. What about you? Do you have any beaux? Do you hope or even plan to remarry?”
“No, probably not, and no,” her cousin said, and laughed. “Though the very fact that I am in London this year for the Season may mean that the probably not might be perhaps not. You are looking thoroughly confused. I did not have a happy marriage, Anna. In fact, it was worse than unhappy and it has made me skittish. It could be said, of course, that at the age of thirty-three I would make a far wiser choice than I did at the age of seventeen, when I fell head over ears in love with good looks and charm. But to be fair, I saw more in Desmond than just those things. He was a man of property and fortune. He was amiable and mild-mannered and kind. He loved his family and friends. Perhaps strongest in my defense is the fact that my mother and father liked him and approved his suit. I could not have known what actually being married to him would be like, and it is that fact that frightens me whenever I meet a personable and eligible gentleman and am tempted to encourage a courtship.”
“He drank?” Anna guessed.
“He drank,” Elizabeth said with a sigh. “Everyone drinks, of course, and almost everyone drinks to excess once in a while. It is rarely a greater problem than the embarrassment of the fool one can make of oneself when in one’s cups. He did not even drink very often. He would go weeks without. And often when he did drink, he would just grow merry and funny and be the life of the party, if there was a party. But sometimes there was a moment—it was always when we were alone together—when I would know he had crossed some line into becoming something or someone else altogether more ugly. There was something about his eyes—I cannot even describe it, but I would recognize it in a moment. It was as though he had been sucked into a dark hole, and then he would become viciously abusive. I could not always escape in time before he became violent.”
“I am so sorry,” Anna said.
“He was the loveliest man when he was sober,” her cousin said. “Everyone loved him. Almost no one ever saw the dark side of him. Except me.” She closed her eyes for several moments, drew an audible breath, and pressed clasped hands prayer fashion against her lips. But she did not continue. She shook her head, opened her eyes, and attempted a smile. “But let us not be gloomy. I cannot bear those memories or the thought of inflicting more of them upon you. Shall we go to the drawing room?”
“It is such a vast, uncozy room for just two people,” Anna said. “Come up to my sitting room instead. It is very pretty and the chairs and sofa look comfortable, though I have not had any time to spend there yet.”
They settled there a few minutes later, each in a soft, upholstered chair. A servant came and lit the fire.
“I could grow accustomed to luxury,” Anna said after the servant had withdrawn. “Oh, I suppose that is what I will be expected to do.”