Page 13 of The Nabob's Designing Daughter
“Perhaps…” Perhaps he should begin with the obvious. “Let us start with an apology.” He hated to grovel, but in this case, he’d been in the wrong. “I ought not to have kissed you in the Beecham’s garden.”
She studied the graveled path. “I see.”
“And I did apologize for the, er, remarks made in your cousin’s study.”
“The kiss was nothing, only a friendly peck. One friend comforting another. Errol, are we friends? Or can we be?”
Friends? She was a girl with an enormous dowry, one who’d been clutching the arm of an eligible earl.
“Perhaps we should leave well enough alone. Your husband will have something to say about—”
“I’m not married.”
Not yet. Lord Cuttingwell—or whatever the man’s name was—had looked to Ann for permission to take Edme back.
He managed a smile. “You are a rich heiress, Miss Strachney,” he teased. “And I’m still a poor innkeeper’s son.”
She snorted. “Really? Dr. Robillard. Doctor of Medicine.” She pressed her lips together. “If you wish to be formal and put on airs…” She sucked in a breath and her gaze softened. “Drat it all. I miss those years when we were all together at the Beechams. I miss the boys and the little ones. I even miss you, sometimes.”
That is surely a lie. The girl who’d coerced him into writing and then didn’t reply to his letter? He swallowed a spurt of anger. He could act as gentlemanly as any earl. “The rain is coming. We should get you indoors.”
“I’m not some wilting flower. As you know.”
He paused and studied her. The same porcelain skin in an oval face, touched by a deepening pink on her cheeks. She was beautiful.
But there were faint smudges under her eyes that hadn’t been there the night before.
“You are thinner than you used to be. Paler as well,” he said, improvising. “Have you been ill? Let us get you indoors.”
She pressed her lips together. “Father likes to confine me indoors as well. And to be perfectly honest, he’s also convinced that noblemen like their matrimonial prospects younger and morewillowyis the word the companion he hired to torture me uses. I’m to hide the fact that I’m a spinster of almost four and twenty.”
“That’s absurd.”
“I’ve been perfectly healthy.” She gazed up at him and took his hand. “Unless you’d like to examine me to be sure.”
He blinked and heat surged in him, his tongue tying itself up in knots. Where was the quiet mousey Ann? The Ann who’d asked him to write her about his lectures in pharmacopeia?
He glanced around. They were on a sheltered section of the path and there was no one around. He tugged her closer and watched her lips part and her eyes widen.
And remembered: she was no longer a girl abandoned to an aunt and uncle. Her father had returned. She was an heiress and he was no fortune hunter He stepped back.
She blinked, her eyes flooding with moisture. “What is wrong with you?”
“You have to ask? I wrote to you, as you requested. You never replied.”
One unlady-like stomp sent gravel flying. “Oh Errol.” She swore an unladylike oath and stomped her other foot. “Thatblastedman. And you. Could you not have puzzled out why I never replied? Who was interfering? He hates mepottering aboutwith herbs.”
He let out a long breath. “Your father.”
“A duchess doesn’t work in the still room, he said. He had Miss Lancaster hide my books and the servants follow me everywhere. I’ve had to… manage. Honestly, Errol. I’ve been starved for conversation. You must tell me everything you learned.”
“I assumed…” William had said Ann was now a great heiress with plans to marry a duke.
He blinked.This duke, the Duke of Kinmarty. Strachney must have been furious when his plan didn’t work out. He threw back his head and laughed.
“Oh Ann. William said you were to marry Kinmarty. Were you terribly disappointed?”
A smile lit her face. “Poor Father. The duchess—well she wasn’t the duchess yet, not until later that evening—had taken the job as the duke’s housekeeper to be closer to her cousin, Mrs. MacDonal. You should have seen my father’s face when the duke had her join us for the Christmas Eve dinner.”
