Kiss Me Annabel. Eloisa JamesЧитать онлайн книгу.
was standing up on end and his normally grey-blue eyes were black with rage.
Imogen raised an eyebrow. ‘Just remind me again where your authority over me lies?’
‘What do you mean?’ He swung her into a brisk turn and began back up the ballroom floor.
‘What right have you to interrogate even the smallest aspect of my behaviour? I ceased to be your responsibility the moment I married Draven.’
‘I only wish that were the case. As I told you when you broached that ludicrous idea of renting a house, I consider myself still your guardian, and you’ll live with me until you marry again. Or grow old enough to govern yourself, whichever comes first.’
She smiled at him, a movement of her lips belied by her angry gaze. ‘This may surprise you, but I don’t agree with your assessment of my situation. I’m planning to set up my own establishment in the very near future.’
‘Over my dead body!’ Rafe snapped.
Imogen glared at him.
‘I don’t know what you’re playing at with Ardmore,’ Rafe said, ‘but you’re ruining yourself for nothing. The man is looking for a bride, not a flirtation with a silly widow with no plans to marry.’
Suddenly he looked sorry for her, as if his anger were draining away. The last thing Imogen wanted was sympathy from her drunken oaf of a guardian. ‘For nothing?’ she said, taunting him. ‘You must be blind. Ardmore’s shoulders, his eyes, his mouth…’ She gave a little shiver of supposed delight.
Which turned into something quite different, although it took her a moment to realise it. He was shaking her! Rafe had dropped her hand and given her a hard shake, as if she were a child in the midst of a tantrum. ‘How dare you!’ she gasped, feeling pins slide from her hair.
‘You’re lucky I don’t drag you out of here and lock you in your chambers,’ he snapped. ‘You deserve it.’
‘Because I find a man attractive?’
‘No! Because you’re a liar. You said you loved Maitland.’
She flinched. ‘Don’t you dare say that I didn’t.’
‘It’s a pretty way you’ve chosen to honour his memory,’ Rafe said flatly. He had dropped his hands from her shoulders.
A wash of shame tumbled over Imogen’s body. ‘You have no idea –’
‘No, none,’ he said. ‘And I don’t wish to know. If I ever have a widow, I certainly hope she doesn’t mourn me in your fashion.’
Imogen swallowed. Thankfully, they were at the end of the room, because she could feel the tears swelling in her throat. She turned on her heel without another word and walked through the door. Rafe came behind her, but she ignored him, heading blindly for the front door.
At the side of the room, Annabel sighed. Her little sister had always been passionate to a fault, and unfortunately Rafe, comfortable Rafe who liked everyone, had taken a sharp dislike to Imogen almost from the first. As the two of them left the room, the storm of gossiping voices around them reached a high cackle, like hens experiencing a visit from the neighbourhood fox.
‘If Rafe wanted her to marry that Scot,’ Griselda remarked, ‘he couldn’t have done more to force the match.’
‘She won’t marry Ardmore,’ Annabel said.
‘She may not have a choice,’ Griselda said darkly. ‘After Rafe put on such a paternal performance, Ardmore will likely guess that given a modicum of scandal, Rafe will force a marriage, and he could use her estate, if the tales are true.’
‘She won’t marry him,’ Annabel repeated. ‘Have you seen Rosseter tonight?’
Griselda’s eyes brightened. ‘Ah. All that land in Kent and no mother-in-law. I approve, my dear.’ Griselda was always to the point.
‘He’s a nice man,’ Annabel reminded her.
Her chaperone waved her hand. ‘If you believe that silence is golden.’
Annabel settled her scrap of gold silk around her shoulders. ‘I see nothing wrong with his lack of verbosity. I can talk enough for both of us, should the need arise.’
‘He’s dancing with Mrs Fulgens’s spotty daughter,’ Griselda said. ‘But have no fear. Rosseter is not a man to overlook imperfections, is he?’
Annabel looked in the direction of Griselda’s nod to find Rosseter leaving the ballroom floor. He wasn’t the sort of man who immediately struck you as handsome: certainly he was no big, burly man who tossed women around the ballroom as if they were bags of wheat. In his arms one floated around the floor. He had a narrow, pale face with a high forehead and grey eyes. He tended to look expressionless and rather detached; Annabel found that a refreshing change from the puppies who begged her for dances and sent her roses with rhyming poems attached.
Rosseter had sent her only one bouquet: a bunch of forget-menots. There was no poem, only a scrawled note: These match your eyes, I believe. There was something deliciously offhand about his note. She had made up her mind on the spot to marry him.
Now he dispensed with Daisy, as Griselda had predicted, and drifted in their direction. A second later he was bowing in front of Lady Griselda, kissing her hand and saying in his unemotional way that she was looking particularly lovely.
When he turned to Annabel he didn’t bother with a compliment, simply kissed the tips of her fingers. But there was a look in his eye that warmed her heart. ‘Madame Maisonnet?’ he asked, indicating her costume with one slim hand. ‘A superb choice, Miss Essex.’
Annabel smiled back. They didn’t speak as they danced. Why should they? As far as Annabel could tell – and she could always tell what men were thinking – they were in perfect harmony. Their marriage would be riven by neither tears nor jealousy. They would have beautiful children. He was extremely wealthy and so her lack of a dowry would not bother him. They would be kind to each other, and she could talk to herself if she lacked breakfast conversation.
For someone with as little tolerance for inane chitchat as she had, the prospect was entirely pleasing. In fact, the only drawback she could think of was that conversation with oneself held few surprises. Neither did Rosseter’s farewell to her that evening. ‘Miss Essex,’ he said, ‘would it be acceptable to you if I spoke to your guardian tomorrow morning?’ His hand was snow-white, slim and delicate as he pressed her fingers in a most gratifying manner.
‘That would make me quite happy, Lord Rosseter,’ Annabel murmured.
She was having trouble suppressing a grin. Finally – finally! – her heart’s desire was within reach. She had longed for this moment for years, ever since her father discovered that she had a gift for figures and promptly dumped the entire accounting of the estate in her lap. From the time she was thirteen years old, Annabel had spent her days bargaining with tradesmen, shedding tears over a ledger book that showed far more minuses than pluses, pleading with her father to sell the most expensive animals, begging him not to spend all their money at the track…
And was rewarded by his dislike.
But she had kept at it, well aware that her financial management was often the only thing between her sisters and true hunger, the only thing holding off the ruin of the stables her father held so dear.
Her father had called her Miss Prune. If she approached while he was standing with friends, he would roll his eyes at her. Sometimes he would take out a coin and toss it in her direction, and then joke with his friends that she kept him on a tighter string than the worst of wives. And she would always pick up the coin…bend down and pick it up because that was one coin saved from the huge maw of the stables. Saved for flour, or butter, or a beautiful hen for the supper table.
So she had turned to dreaming of the husband she would have someday. She had never bothered imagining his face: Lord Rosseter’s face was as acceptable