The Devil's Waltz. Anne StuartЧитать онлайн книгу.

      When she awoke it was well past her usual time of rising, though the house seemed relatively still. The sun had risen, though the shutters were still closed against the light, and she slid out of bed to push them aside. It was a bright, sunny day, early enough that few people were out, and even the park looked empty. Most people waited until a more social hour—eleven or so, to make their grand promenade, to see and be seen. It hadn’t been far off that hour when Annelise had been forced to go chasing after Hetty, and she wondered absently where her charge’s rooms were. And whether they could be equipped with a lock.

      She was already dressed when she heard the shriek, and while it sounded far from disastrous she bolted out of her room without her shoes on, wondering whether the nefarious rake had managed to sneak into the house. Or whether it was a more literal snake.

      It was neither. It was easy enough to find Hetty’s room—it was at the far end of the hall, the door was open and, while the excited shrieks had calmed, Miss Hetty was still in an obvious state.

      Annelise halted in the open doorway, giving her a moment to take in the full splendor of Hetty’s bower.

      It looked as if a pink sugarplum had exploded, covering the room with dripping pink icing. The entire place was awash with pink lace and satin—from the bed coverings to the chairs to the discarded clothing that some maid had neglected to take care of. Hetty had probably banned her from the room.

      The entire effect was that of a bordello for fairies. And then she caught the scent of roses, and realized what had excited Hetty’s attention: pink roses, masses of them, overblown and gaudy, perfuming the room like a flower shop.

      Apparently Miss Hetty was so delighted with the offering that she was inclined to be welcoming. “Aren’t they gorgeous?” she demanded of Annelise. “He must have bought every pink rose in town!”

      “There certainly are a lot of them,” she agreed, but Hetty was too pleased to notice the reservation in Annelise’s voice.

      “Such a darling, extravagant man!” Hetty cooed, looking as if she wanted to embrace the wall of roses against her young bosom. She’d regret it if she did—that strain of roses had particularly nasty thorns, and while the flower seller would have done his best to remove most of them, it was an impossible task, making that type of rose more expensive than any other.

      Annelise knew her roses—she missed the rose garden she’d tended so faithfully almost as much as she’d missed her father—and she wondered why Montcalm would have selected them. It could be no one but he—the rose was showy, just a wee bit gauche, and the sheer abundance of them was almost a mockery of a gesture. One that was totally lost on Hetty.

      She was holding the card in her hand. “He says, ‘These roses can’t begin to do justice to your beauty.’” She turned to Annelise with a triumphant smile. “Didn’t I tell you? I’ve managed to capture the most beautiful man in society in a matter of a few short weeks.”

      “He needs a wealthy wife,” Annelise said gently, almost sorry to remind Hetty of the sordid realities of life.

      But Hetty simply shrugged. “They all seem to. If I have to be married for my money I may as well pick someone beautiful.”

      “Beauty is only skin deep,” Annelise said, sounding like her old nurse, sounding like she was a crotchety seventy-year-old.

      “And everything he does is pretty,” Hetty said dreamily.

      She was thinking of his kisses, Annelise thought with a sudden flare of feeling that she refused to define. Christian Montcalm said Hetty was a far better kisser…the rat bastard! She’d only just remembered that part, having been too distracted by the actual event.

      She couldn’t bring herself to say anything else. She suddenly remembered she was standing there in her stocking feet with her hair still loose down her back, not a very ladylike way to appear.

      “I’ll see you at breakfast, my dear,” she said, hoping the affectionate term might make her feel more dignified.

      Hetty waved her away, barely noticing, and Annelise gritted her teeth as she started back down the hallway.

      One of the maids waited outside her door. It was the same one she’d dragged to the park with her—Lizzie. She bobbed a polite little curtsy when Annelise approached her, and she felt an unpleasant sense of foreboding.

      “I wondered if I could be of any assistance, miss. I have some experience as a lady’s maid, and Mrs. Buxton said it was all right if I offered my services to such an honored guest.”

      It had been so long since she’d had a personal maid attend her that the notion was disconcerting. “That’s very kind of you, Lizzie, but I’m used to looking after myself.”

      Lizzie looked disappointed. “As you wish, miss. But you’ve only to let me know if you change your mind.”

      “Thank you.” She expected Lizzie to head back down the stairs, but still she lingered. “Did you want something else?”

      “Miss Hetty isn’t the only one who got flowers this morning, miss. I just put them in your room.”

      Oh, God, Annelise thought. What kind of insult had he come up with now? Weeds? Cattails?

      No, it couldn’t be Montcalm—he didn’t even know her name. Oh, horrors, it couldn’t be Chipple himself, could it? If she was going to have to fight off his advances she’d leave Hetty to the not so tender mercies of the rakehell, Montcalm.

      But she didn’t betray her agitation. “Thank you, Lizzie,” she said. “That’s all for now.”

      The poor girl wasn’t happy with her dismissal, but Annelise was not about to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing her reaction. She waited until the maid had vanished down the hallway toward the servants’ stairs and then went into her room. She managed to close the door behind her before she stopped still.

      Beautiful spring flowers. Irises, daffodils, delicate tea roses, all in the softest pastel shades. Small, perfect, exquisite.

      The card lay on the table beside them, and her name was written quite clearly in dark ink, an impatient, masculine hand. The Hon. Annelise Kempton. And she felt a sudden, wrenching disappointment. They couldn’t be from him. Christian Montcalm didn’t know her name.

      And for heaven’s sake, why would he be sending her flowers? She was a thorn in his side, far worse than the ones still adorning Hetty’s pink roses, and he was hardly likely to be rewarding her. It had to be Chipple, except that she lived in his house, had seen his garish taste, and he couldn’t have ordered such a perfect, delicate bouquet.

      And then she saw the snapdragons amidst the flowers. She opened up the sealed envelope, gingerly, as if she expected spiders to pop out. The actual note was even worse—“Dragon—let me know when you’re ready for lesson three.”

      She could feel color suffuse her body, and she was a woman who had trained herself not to blush. It was the same handwriting—he knew her name after all, even if he preferred to call her that awful term. Dragons were large, fire-breathing, scaly creatures, and besides, they were the ones who endangered the maidens, weren’t they? He was getting his mythology all wrong.

      If she had sense at all she’d open the windows and dump the flowers out into the garden below, so that one of Chipple’s army of servants would take care of them. But there were times when beauty overruled her senses, and flowers were one of her weaknesses. She loved the scent of spring flowers,