Page 33 of What's an Earl Gotta Do?
“Oh, look at this,” she said, picking it up. “This must have been what was clinging to my skirts. It must’ve come from that duck who tried to steal my strawberry tart.”
Michael did not seem to have heard her. He was still staring blankly across the water. “I always knew that wouldn’t work,” he muttered to himself.
Anne frowned. “What was that, Michael?”
He shook his head, then looked at her, a rueful grin spreading across his face. “I’ll just stay in my seat this time, and I daresay it will go much better.” He cleared his throat. “Anne, I—”
“Ho there, is everything all right?” a male voice called. “We heard someone scream.”
At this point, Michael said a word he wouldn’t normally use in Anne’s presence, although she had heard her brothers say it before. (Well, she had heard Harrington say it. Obviously Edward would never curse in front of a lady).
“Yes,” Anne called to the pair of young men approaching in their own skiff, “that was just me. I thought I saw a spider.”
Both men grinned. “Ah, I see,” one of them called. “Jolly good, then.”
Anne turned back to Michael. He was surveying the Serpentine. There were now a half-dozen other boats, as well as a family playing by the riverbank.
Anne cleared her throat. “I’m so sorry about that, Michael.”
“Hmm?” Michael blinked, distracted. “Sorry about what?”
“You know.” Anne flushed. “Landing on top of you.”
“I’m not.”
“Wh-what?”
“I’m sorry about a few other things. But not that part.”
Anne shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
Michael looked her square in the eye as he took up the oars and began pulling them toward shore. “You will. Tonight.”
Anne was left to ponder that for the rest of the afternoon.
Chapter 11
That evening, while Anne’s maid Sarah was getting her ready for the Sunderland ball, Hugh knocked at her door. “You have a visitor, my lady.”
Anne had just finished her preparations, so she hastened downstairs, wondering who could be calling at such a late hour.
She found her visitor in the front parlor. He was a young man, probably around Edward’s age. He was handsome, his blue eyes set off nicely by his bright red coat.
He stood to greet Anne, and that was when she noticed that he had an artificial leg.
Her heart rate ratcheted up a notch.
“Lady Wynters,” he said, bowing over her hand with military precision, “forgive my intrusion. I am Lieutenant Phillip Avery. This afternoon I received a letter from Horse Guards regarding a boy I accompanied back from the Continent. His name was—”
“Nick Palmer,” Anne finished for him as she curtseyed. She laughed at his startled expression, pressing a hand to her heart. “Forgive me, Lieutenant Avery, I just… you cannot imagine how pleased I am to see you.”
She gestured for him to sit on the yellow-striped silk sofa before the fireplace, taking the facing chair for herself.
“I wish I could say I was pleased,” Lieutenant Avery said. “I beg you not to mistake me, I am not displeased with you, and I am grateful beyond measure for what you have done. But…” He squeezed his eyes closed. “Am I to understand that Nick has spent the last four years as a climbing boy?”
“I’m afraid so.”
He rose to pace before the fireplace. “I never would have let him get in that carriage, had I known. I thought he was going to be placed in an apprenticeship—a respectable apprenticeship,” he clarified. “A good trade, where he could—” He broke off with a sound of disgust.
