Kiss Me Annabel. Eloisa JamesЧитать онлайн книгу.
believe that I can,’ Imogen stated.
Griselda waved her fan meditatively. ‘An interesting choice lies ahead of you. Were I to take a lover, for example, I should wish to continue the affair beyond two weeks. My dear brother certainly has had many ladies on whom to practise, and yet he invariably drifts to another woman within the fortnight. Moreover, I myself would find the notion of being compared to the many beautiful women who had come before me unnerving, but I expect I am simply squeamish.’
Annabel grinned. Griselda looked a perfectly docile, perfectly feminine lady. And yet…
Imogen looked as if she were thinking. ‘Fine!’ she said finally. ‘I’ll take the Earl of Ardmore, then. Since he’s only been in London for a week or so, he can’t possibly compare me to anyone else.’
Annable blinked. ‘The Scottish earl?’
‘The very one.’ Imogen gathered up her reticule and shawl. ‘He’s not worth a penny, but his face can be his fortune, in this case.’ She caught her sister’s frown. ‘Oh, don’t be such a pinched ninny, Annabel. Believe me, the earl won’t get hurt.’
‘I agree,’ Griselda put in. ‘The man has a palpable air of danger about him. He won’t get hurt, Imogen. You will.’
‘Nonsense,’ Imogen said. ‘You’re simply trying to talk me out of a decision I’ve already made. I’m not willing to sit around in the corners, gossiping with dowagers for the next ten years.’ That was a direct insult to Griselda, who had lost her husband years ago and had (to Annabel’s knowledge) never entertained a thought either of a lover or a husband.
Griselda smiled sweetly and said, ‘No, I can see that you’re an entirely different kind of woman, my dear.’
Annabel winced, but Imogen didn’t notice. “Now I think on it, Ardmore is an altogether better choice than Mayne. We are countrymen, you know.’
‘Actually, that’s a reason not to distract him,’ Annabel had to point out. ‘We know how hard it is to live in an old rambling house in the north country without a penny to support it. The man has come to London to find a rich bride, not to have an affair with you.’
‘You’re a sentimentalist,’ Imogen said. ‘Ardmore can take care of himself. I certainly shan’t stop him from courting some silly miss, if he wishes. But if I have a cavalier servente, the fortune hunters will leave me alone. I shall just borrow him for a while. You’re not planning to marry him, are you?’
‘The thought never crossed my mind,’ Annabel said with something less than perfect truth. The Scotsman was absurdly handsome; a woman would have to be in her grave not to consider him as a consort. But Annabel meant to marry a rich man. And she meant to stay in England. ‘Are you considering him as a possible spouse?’
‘Certainly not. He’s lummox without a fortune. But he’s pretty, and he dresses so sombrely that he matches my clothing. Who could want more in a man?’
‘He doesn’t appear to be a man to fool,’ Griselda said, serious now.
‘If he needs to find a rich wife, you ought to be straightforward,’ Annabel added. ‘He may well think that you would consider matrimony.’
‘Pish,’ Imogen said. ‘The role of a hidebound moralist doesn’t suit either of you. Don’t be tedious.’ And she swept out of the room, closing the door behind her with a little more force than necessary.
‘Though it pains me to admit it,’ Griselda said meditatively, ‘I may have mishandled that situation. If your sister is determined to make a scandal, she would have done better to direct herself toward Mayne. At this point, it is almost a rite of a passage for young women to have a brief affaire with my brother, and so the ensuing scandal doesn’t really take fire.’
‘There’s something about Ardmore that makes me wonder if she can control him as easily as she thinks she can,’ Annabel said with a frown.
‘I would agree,’ Griselda said. ‘I haven’t exchanged a word with him, but he has little in common with the average English lord.’
Ardmore was a red-haired Scot, with a square jaw and broad shoulders. To Annabel’s mind, he was a world away from Griselda’s sleek brother.
‘No one seems to know much about the man,’ Griselda said. ‘Lady Ogilby told me that she had it from Mrs Mufford that he’s poor as a church mouse and came to London specifically to find a dowried bride.’
‘But didn’t Mrs Mufford spread that rumour about Clementina Lyffe running off with a footman?’
‘True,’ Griselda said. ‘And yet Clementina is happily married to her viscount and shows no propensity whatsoever to court the household staff. Lady Blechschmidt generally can scent a fortune hunter at fifty yards, and there was no sign of Ardmore at her soirée last night, which suggests he was not invited. I must ask her if she has any pertinent information.’
‘His absence from that particular event may simply indicate an intolerance for boredom,’ Annabel remarked.
‘Tush!’ Griselda said, laughing. ‘You know Lady Blechschmidt is a great acquaintance of mine. I must say, it is unusual for there to be such mystery about a man; if he were English we would know everything from his birth weight to his yearly income. Did you ever meet him when you lived in Scotland?’
‘Never. But Mrs Mufford’s speculation about his reasons for coming to London is likely true.’ Many a Scottish nobleman hung around her father’s stables, and they were all as empty in the pocket as her own viscount of a father. In fact, it was practically a requirement of nationality. One either remained poor or married a rich Englishman – as Imogen had done, as Tess had done and as she herself meant to do.
‘Ardmore doesn’t look the sort to be fooled by your sister,’ Griselda said.
Annabel hoped she was right. There was a brittleness behind Imogen’s artful exposure of her bosom that had little to do with desire.
Griselda rose. ‘Imogen must find her own way through her grief,’ she said. ‘There are women who have a hard time of it, and I’m afraid she’s one of them.’
Their eldest sister, Tess, kept saying that Imogen had to live her own life. And so had Annabel.
For a moment a smile touched Annabel’s lips. The only dowry she had was a horse, so she and the Scotsman were really two of a kind.
Scottish pennies, as it were.
Lady Feddrington was in the grip of a passion for all things Egyptian, and since she had the means to indulge every whim, her ballroom resembled nothing so much as a storage house kept by tomb raiders. Flanking the large doors at one end were twenty-foot-high statues of some sort of a dog-human. Apparently they originally stood at the doors of an Egyptian temple.
‘At first I wasn’t certain that I quite liked them. Their expressions are not…nice,’ Lady Feddrington had told Annabel. ‘But now I’ve named them Humpty and Dumpty. I think of them rather like superior servants: so silent, and you can tell in a glance that they won’t drink to excess.’ She had giggled; Lady Feddrington was a rather silly woman.
But Annabel had to admit that from the vantage point of the other side of the room, Humpty and Dumpty looked magnificent. They gazed down on the dancers milling around their ankles with expressions that made the idea that they were servants laughable.
She pulled a gauzy piece of nothingness around her shoulders. It was pale gold, to match her dress, and embroidered with a curling series of ferns. Gold on gold and worth every penny. She threw a glance at those imposing Egyptian statues again. Surely they should be in a museum? They made the fluttering crowds around them look dissolute.
‘Anubis, god of the dead,’