Page 58 of What's an Earl Gotta Do?
As soon as he returned to Cranfield House, Michael formulated a plan. It was a fairly simple plan: prostrate himself before Anne and beg for her forgiveness. Clearly Scudamore and Gladstone had been bamming him with all that rot about knitting scarves for the poor; they probably never imagined it would work so well, that he would turn around and make such a complete cake of himself. But what was just as bad, when he thought back to the specific words he had used… his behavior had been deplorable, and it was no wonder Anne was furious with him. He’d just been so undone by the thought of her not marrying him that he hadn’t been thinking clearly.
He’d made a mess of the whole thing. He’d been in such a hurry to propose before someone else snatched her up, he hadn’t given much thought to what he was going to say. Hell, he hadn’t even told her that he’d been in love with her for the past nine years, nor had he mentioned his thwarted proposal, the fact that he hadn’t read any of her letters, or—his personal favorite—that her former husband was a worthless, lying skunk.
He really had intended to tell her all of that, even if he’d been dreading the last point.
But then Anne had suggested they make love.
He also needed to explain what important work he’d been doing in Canada. Once Anne understood everything he’d been doing, and that he was going to be the next Governor General, she would understand why their future needed to be in Canada.
Because their returning to Canada was not negotiable.
And so he’d hurried home and changed, sent a footman out to procure the biggest bunch of flowers that could be found, borrowed a horse from the nearby mews and arrived at Anne’s town house just in time to see her carriage pulling away.
He hadn’t minded cooling his heels while she had her appointment. He needed to think through what he was going to say. But he didn’t mean to let her escape.
After she departed, he mounted his horse and followed at a discrete distance.
They were heading east. Michael peered at the surrounding buildings. He didn’t know London well, but the neighborhood was growing progressively worse. As he rode past a church, Michael called out to a pair of girls rolling a hoop along the pavement. “Say—what’s the name of that church?”
They looked up, startled, the forgotten hoop clattering on its side. “’Tis St Giles in the Fields, m’lord,” one of them called.
St Giles? St Giles was one of the most dangerous rookeries in London. What in God’s name was Anne doing in St Giles?
The neighborhood continued to deteriorate. Michael tried to stop his racing thoughts, but everywhere he looked, he spotted a new source of peril. The trio of dogs sniping over a bone in the alleyway were likely rabid. That butcher looked a little too efficient with his cleaver. And there was no shortage of miscreants and ruffians, from the irate drunkard being tossed from a basement gin house to the seedy fellow leaning against a building’s corner who was actually twirling a knife as he surveyed the crowd, no doubt in search of his next mark.
Michael could not lose her again. He pictured the past four years of his life, how the excruciatingly acute pain of those first few months after she married Wynters had slowly distilled into a dull ache right in the place where his heart used to be, one that never really went away. He thought of that horrible moment when he woke each morning, when he found himself lying in bed, struggling to find a reason to get up, to keep going without her. He knew what it was to live without Anne, and he was not doing that again. He couldn’t. It didn’t matter what he had to do, he was going to keep her safe, and he was going to start by getting her the hell out of this sad excuse for a neighborhood.
Anne’s carriage halted in front of a large brick building and one of her footmen opened the door. Michael hurtled off his horse, thrust the reins into the footman’s hands, and shoved the man out of the way, blocking her exit.
“What the devil are you doing here, Anne?” he demanded.
Her eyebrow gave a violent twitch. “I am running my society. If you would be so kind as to step aside.”
Not a chance. “You’re not disembarking. Not here. You obviously haven’t noticed, but this is no neighborhood for a lady.”
She rolled her eyes and proceeded to squeeze past him. “Whatever gave you that idea? Was it the flash-house across the street? Or the three drunkards passed out in the alleyway?”
He grabbed her by the arm. “You may think it a joke, but this place is dangerous.”
A crowd had begun to form, drawn, no doubt, by their raised voices, and when Michael seized her arm, a heavyset, black-bearded man whose form of employment was probably pirate stepped forward. Michael immediately moved in front of Anne, but the man surprised him by saying, “You’ll unhand Lady Wynters!”
Michael glared him. “This is none of your concern—”
“’Tis all of our concern,” a reed-thin man with a face full of freckles said, stepping forward to join the first.
“I’m not some vagrant who is going to harm her,” Michael continued, eyeing the ragged trousers of the second man, which had been patched in a dozen different places. “I’m the Earl of—"
“Do you think I give a toss?” Black Beard interrupted.
Michael gritted his teeth. “I am merely trying to assist her. She seems to have gotten turned around and doesn’t understand where she is.”
The small crowd burst into laughter.
“Poor wee lamb,” a white-haired woman chortled. “All turned around and no idea where she be.”
“Definitely wasn’t ’ere yesterday,” added a woman whose basket marked her as a flower seller. “Nor the day afore that, nor the day afore that.”
Michael peered up at the building. What on earth could bring Anne here, of all places? Although, for all that the neighborhood was run down, this was a fairly imposing edifice: six bays wide, in a plain but serviceable red brick. He frowned. “Anne, do you… do you rent space in this building?”
