Page 15 of The Risk of Rogues
She rubbed her belly, and the unconscious gesture shot envy through him. How he hoped that would be Anne someday, heavy with their own child. But that would only happen if he didn’t muck this up somehow.
“Anyway,” she said, “Anne wrote all the letters and arranged to have merchants donate certain items and for ladies of Shrewsbury society to contribute. A number of townspeople will be coming out here for the sale, so we should be able to raise a great deal of money, if only from the hats alone.”
“Yes, wherearethe famous hats?”
“Down there. There were too many to put anywhere else.”
Delia gestured to the far end, where the supper table held the largest collection of bonnets and hats he’d ever seen outside of a theater cloakroom. There were simple hats and elaborate hats, straw hats and silk hats, hats for the opera and hats for just walking about.
Anne stood at the edge, directing footmen to carry stacks of small, virtually identical hats out of the room. “Where are they going with those?” he asked Delia.
“Oh, those were mistakenly put in here. They’re not for sale.”
“Why not?”
“They’re for the orphans. The blue ones are for the boys and the pink for the girls. We’re sending along an assortment of trims, too, so that if the children wish to adorn theirs further, they can.”
Hats are the most egalitarian creations in fashion.
He nearly choked on the lump in his throat. “That’s a wonderful idea.”
“I thought so. Anne made all the little hats herself. She created several of the larger ones, too, but quite a few are donated hats that we all retrimmed. The little hats are strictly hers, though. For the children.”
“Right.” He damned well better go before he started bawling like a baby, or doing something equally unmanly. “Well, then, I suppose I’ll leave you lot to it.”
One way or another, by the end of this week, he meant to secure Anne as his wife. Because any woman who went to so much trouble on behalf of a bunch of unknown orphans was worth her weight in gold.
Five
OVER THE NEXTweek, Anne took Hart’s advice. She spoke to a number of gentlemen and discovered that despite the rumors and innuendoes, there wasn’t much basis for his wicked reputation. The only gentleman who’d spoken badly of him was clearly jealous of Hart’s facility with women. He kept quizzing Anne about why her supposed “friend” was interested in “a mere cavalry captain” when there were “other, more sober men of higher rank” eager for matrimony.
Fortunately, the other gentlemen she quizzed had nothing but good things to say about Hart. He wasn’t in debt to anyone they knew of, he gambled but not to excess, and he was generally considered to be an “amiable sort of chap.”
Beyond those recommendations, however, people knew little about him, since he’d spent most of his time abroad with his regiment. And even after his return, he’d often been traveling—no one was really sure why or where. That would have roused her suspicions if he hadn’t told her about his work for Lord Fulkham.
Then again, no one seemed to know of Hart’s connection to the foreign secretary beyond his social one, so the whole matter seemed odd. Especially since she felt as if Hart was hiding something from her. Every time she brought up the subject of his prospects, he evaded it. The few bits he’d told her on the bridge were all he’d revealed, and the more she thought about it, the more it worried her. It really did seem as if he was spinning out of whole cloth some future that might never come to fruition. And considering what had happened the last time they’d made plans based on assumptions...
She couldn’t give him her heart again until she knew. Itseemedas if he had no interest in her beyondher,but what if she was missing something?
After all, no other gentlemen had come courting in all these years. A few had flirted here and there, but that hardly counted. Once they’d realized she was no heiress, they’d lost interest.
So she needed more information. Hart had told her she could question any respectable gentleman about him, and Lord Fulkham fit that description. So she’d go right to the horse’s mouth.
She’d tried to get the foreign secretary alone a few times, but to no avail. He’d always been with either friends or his new wife. Since Anne barely knew him, it would be awkward to ask to speak to him privately.
In the meantime, Hart had pursued her relentlessly... and rather effectively. Every day at breakfast, a new embellishment she could use for a hat appeared beside her plate: a partridge feather, an ornate ribbon he’d obviously bought in town, a strip of buckskin... and a lovely gilded tassel he’d said had been on his regimental uniform.
Thatwas not going on any hat. She’d pinned it on her corset close to her heart, though she wasn’t going to lethimknow it was there. Not until she was sure she could trust him with her heart.
Lord knew she wanted to. The more they talked, the more she was reminded of why she’d fallen for him in the first place. They shared the same taste in books—they both liked humorous novels and plays, and they both hated poetry. Neither of them cared much for religion.
They were sort of split on the subject of pets. He liked dogs, but she’d never had any pets, so she didn’t know if she would like one or not. She was willing to try.
Best of all, he’d told her stories—of growing up with a Methodist mother and a coldly aristocratic father, of never knowing quite where he fit in with his four brothers... of missing England terribly while he was in India and Gibraltar and on James Island. He’d shown her part of his real self, although he’d still danced around the issue of his future.
So on the night before St. Valentine’s Day, when she caught sight of Lord Fulkham slipping out of the dining room alone, she seized her opportunity and followed him. He went down a hall, through the drawing room, and out onto one of the balconies. So did she.
She found him lighting a cigar. “Lord Fulkham? May I speak to you a moment?”
