A Night Like This (19 page)

Granby’s arms remained stiffly at his sides. “It is hardly a matter of changing my mind.”

“If that’s what you say.” The man placed the card back in his breast pocket, waited for one more moment, then left the house.

Anne placed her hand over her heart and tried to take deep, silent breaths. If she’d had any doubts that the attack at Whipple Hill had been the work of George Chervil, they were gone now. And if he was wiling to risk the life of the Earl of Winstead to carry out his revenge, he wouldn’t think twice about harming one of the young Pleinsworth daughters.

Anne had ruined her own life when she’d let him seduce her at sixteen, but she would be damned before she alowed him to destroy anyone else. She was going to have to disappear. Immediately. George knew where she was, and he knew
who
she was.

But she could not leave the sitting room until Granby exited the hal, and he was just
standing
there, frozen in position with his hand on the doorknob. Then he turned, and when he did . . . Anne should have remembered that he missed nothing. If it had been Daniel at the door, he would not have noticed that the sitting room door was slightly ajar, but Granby? It was like waving a red flag in front of a bul. The door should be open, or it should be shut. But it was never left ajar, with a strip of air one inch wide.

And of course he saw her.

Anne did not pretend to hide. She owed him that much, after what he had just done for her. She opened the door and stepped out into the hal.

Their eyes met, and she waited, breath held, but he only nodded and said, “Miss Wynter.” She nodded in return, then dipped into a small curtsy of respect. “Mr. Granby.”

“It is a fine day, is it not?”

She swalowed. “Very fine.”

“Your afternoon off, I believe?”

“Indeed, sir.”

He nodded once more, then said, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred, “Carry on.” Carry on.

Wasn’t that what she always did? For three years on the Isle of Man, never seeing another person her own age except for Mrs. Summerlin’s nephew, who thought it good sport to chase her around the dining table. Then for nine months near Birmingham, only to be dismissed without a reference when Mrs. Barraclough caught Mr. Barraclough pounding on her door. Then three years in Shropshire, which hadn’t been too bad. Her employer was a widow, and her sons had more often than not been off at university. But then the daughters had had the effrontery to grow up, and Anne had been informed that her services were no longer needed.

But she’d carried on. She’d obtained a second letter of reference, which was what she’d needed to gain a position in the Pleinsworth household. And now that she’d be leaving, she’d carry on again.

Although where she’d carry herself to, she had no idea.

T
he folowing day, Daniel arrived at Pleinsworth House at precisely five minutes before eleven. He had prepared in his mind a list of questions he must ask of Anne, but when the butler admitted him to the house, he was met with considerable uproar. Harriet and Elizabeth were yeling at each other at the end of the hal, their mother was yeling at both of them, and on a backless bench near the sitting room door, three maids sat sobbing.

“What is going on?” he asked Sarah, who was attempting to usher a visibly distraught Frances into the sitting room.

Sarah gave him an impatient glance. “It is Miss Wynter. She has disappeared.”

Daniel’s heart stopped. “What? When? What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah snapped. “I’m hardly privy to her intentions.” She gave him an irritated glance before turning back to Frances, who was crying so hard she could barely breathe.

“She was gone before lessons this morning,” Frances sobbed.

Daniel looked down at his young cousin. Frances’s eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, her cheeks were streaked with tears, and her little body was shaking uncontrolably. She looked, he realized, like he felt. Forcing down his terror, he crouched next to her so that he could look her in the eye. “What time do you begin lessons?” he asked.

Frances gasped for air, then got out, “Half nine.”

Daniel spun furiously back to Sarah. “She has been gone almost two hours and no one has informed me?”

“Frances, please,” Sarah begged, “you must try to stop crying. And no,” she said angrily, whipping her head back around to face Daniel, “no one informed you.

Why, pray tel, would we have done?”

“Don’t play games with me, Sarah,” he warned.

“Do I look like I’m playing games?” she snapped, before softening her voice for her sister. “Frances, please, darling, try to take a deep breath.”

“I should have been told,” Daniel said sharply. He was losing patience. For all any of them knew, Anne’s enemy—and he was now certain she had one—had snatched her from her bed. He needed answers, not sanctimonious scoldings from Sarah. “She’s been gone at least ninety minutes,” he said to her. “You should have

—”

“What?” Sarah cut in. “What should we have done? Wasted valuable time notifying
you
? You, who have no connection or claim to her? You, whose intentions are—”

are—”

“I’m going to marry her,” he interrupted.

Frances stopped crying, her face lifting up toward his, eyes shining with hope. Even the maids, still three abreast on the bench, went silent.

“What did you say?” Sarah whispered.

“I love her,” he said, realizing the truth of it as the words left his lips. “I want to marry her.”

“Oh, Daniel,” Frances cried, leaving Sarah’s side and throwing her arms around him. “You must find her. You must!”

“What happened?” he asked Sarah, who was still staring at him slackjawed. “Tell me everything. Did she leave a note?” She nodded. “Mother has it. It did not say much, though. Just that she was sorry but she had to leave.”

“She said she sent me a hug,” Frances said, her words muffling into his coat.

Daniel patted her on her back even as he kept his eyes firmly on Sarah. “Did she give any indication that she might not have left of her own volition?” Sarah gaped at him. “You don’t think someone kidnapped her?”

“I don’t know what to think,” he admitted.

“Nothing was out of place in her room,” Sarah told him. “All of her belongings were gone, but nothing else was amiss. Her bed was neatly made.”

“She always makes her bed,” Frances sniffled.

“Does anyone know when she left?” Daniel asked.

Sarah shook her head. “She did not take breakfast. So it must have been before that.”

Daniel swore under his breath, then carefuly disentangled himself from Frances’s grasp. He had no idea how to search for Anne; he didn’t even know where to start. She had left so few clues as to her background. It would have been laughable if he weren’t so terrified. He knew . . . what? The color of her parents’ eyes?

Wel, now,
there
was something that was going to help him find her.

He had nothing. Absolutely nothing.

“My lord?”

He looked up. It was Granby, the long-standing Pleinsworth butler, and he looked uncharacteristicaly distraught.

“Might I have a word with you, sir?” Granby asked.

“Of course.” Daniel stepped away from Sarah, who was watching the two men with curiosity and confusion, and motioned to Granby to folow him into the sitting room.

“I heard you speaking with Lady Sarah,” Granby said uncomfortably. “I did not intend to eavesdrop.”

“Of course,” Daniel said briskly. “Go on.”

“You . . . care for Miss Wynter?”

Daniel regarded the butler carefuly, then nodded.

“A man came yesterday,” Granby said. “I should have said something to Lady Pleinsworth, but I wasn’t sure, and I did not want to tell tales about Miss Wynter if it turned out to be nothing. But now that it seems to be certain that she is gone . . .”

“What happened?” Daniel asked instantly.

The butler swalowed nervously. “A man came asking for a Miss Annelise Shawcross. I sent him away instantly; there is no one here by that name. But he was insistent, and he said Miss Shawcross might be using a different name. I did not like him, my lord, I can tell you that. He was . . .” Granby shook his head a little, almost as if trying to dislodge a bad memory. “I did not like him,” he said again.

“What did he say?”

“He described her. This Miss Shawcross. He said she had dark hair, and blue eyes, and that she was quite beautiful.”

“Miss Wynter,” Daniel said quietly. Or rather—
Annelise Shawcross
. Was that her real name? Why had she changed it?

Granby nodded. “It is exactly how I might have described her.”

“What did you tell him?” Daniel asked, trying to keep the urgency out of his voice. Granby was feeling guilty enough for not having come forward sooner, he could see that.

“I told him that we had no one in residence who matched that description. As I said, I did not like his aspect, and I would not jeopardize Miss Wynter’s welfare.” He paused. “I like our Miss Wynter.”

“I do, too,” Daniel said softly.

“That is why I am teling you this,” Granby said, his voice finaly finding some of the vigor with which it was usualy imbued. “You must find her.” Daniel took a long, unsteady breath and looked down at his hands. They were shaking. This had happened before, several times back in Italy, when Ramsgate’s men had come particularly close. Something had rushed through his body, some kind of terror in the blood, and it had taken him hours to feel normal again. But this was worse. His stomach churned, and his lungs felt tight, and more than anything, he wanted to throw up.

He knew fear. This went beyond fear.

He looked at Granby. “Do you think this man has taken her?”

“I do not know. But after he left, I saw her.” Granby turned and looked off to the right, and Daniel wondered if he was re-creating the scene in his mind. “She had been in the sitting room,” he said, “right over there by the door. She heard everything.”

“Are you sure?” Daniel asked.

“It was right there in her eyes,” Granby said quietly. “She is the woman he seeks. And she knew I knew.”

“What did you say to her?”

“I believe I remarked upon the weather. Or something of equal unimportance. And then I told her to carry on.” Granby cleared his throat. “I believe she understood that I did not intend to turn her in.”

“I’m sure she did,” Daniel said grimly. “But she may have felt that she must leave, nonetheless.” He didn’t know how much Granby knew about the curricle accident at Whipple Hil. Like everyone else, he probably thought that it had been Ramsgate’s work. But Anne obviously suspected otherwise, and it was clear that whoever had tried to hurt her did not care if anyone else was injured, too. Anne would never alow herself to put one of the Pleinsworth girls at risk. Or . . .

Or him. He closed his eyes for a moment. She probably thought she was protecting him. But if anything happened to her . . .

Nothing would destroy him more completely.

“I will find her,” he told Granby. “You can be sure of it.”

A
nne had been lonely before. In fact, she’d spent most of the past eight years feeling lonely. But as she sat huddled on her hard boardinghouse bed, wearing her coat over her nightgown to keep out the chil, she realized that she had never known misery.

over her nightgown to keep out the chil, she realized that she had never known misery.

Not like this.

Maybe she should have gone to the country. It was cleaner. Probably less dangerous. But London was anonymous. The crowded streets could swalow her up, make her invisible.

But the streets could also chew her to bits.

There was no work for a woman like her. Ladies with her accent did not work as seamstresses or shopgirls. She’d walked up and down the streets of her new neighborhood, a marginaly respectable place that squeezed itself in between middle-class shopping areas and desperate slums. She’d entered every establishment with a Help Wanted sign, and quite a few more without. She’d been told she wouldn’t last long, that her hands were too soft, and her teeth too clean. More than one man had leered and laughed, then offered a different type of employment altogether.

She could not obtain a gentlewoman’s position as a governess or companion without a letter of reference, but the two precious recommendations she had in her possession were for Anne Wynter. And she could not be Anne Wynter any longer.

She puled her bent legs even tighter against her and let her face rest against her knees, closing her eyes tight. She didn’t want to see this room, didn’t want to see how meager her belongings looked even in such a tiny chamber. She didn’t want to see the dank night through the window, and most of al, she didn’t want to see herself.

She had no name again. And it hurt. It hurt like a sharp, jagged slice in her heart. It was an awful thing, a heavy dread that sat upon her each morning, and it was all she could do to swing her legs over the side of the bed and place her feet on the floor.

This wasn’t like before, when her family had thrown her from her home. At least then she’d had somewhere to go. She’d had a plan. Not one of her choosing, but she’d known what she was supposed to do and when she was supposed to do it. Now she had two dresses, one coat, eleven pounds, and no prospects save prostitution.

And she could not do that. Dear God, she couldn’t. She’d given herself too freely once before, and she would not make the same mistake twice. And it would be far, far too cruel to have to submit to a stranger when she’d stopped Daniel before they had completed their union.

She’d said no because . . . She wasn’t even sure. Habit, possibly. Fear. She did not want to bear an ilegitimate child, and she did not want to force a man into marriage who would not otherwise choose a woman like her.

But most of al, she’d needed to hold onto herself. Not her pride, exactly; it was something else, something deeper.

Her heart.

It was the one thing she still had that was pure and utterly hers. She had given her body to George, but despite what she had thought at the time, he had never had her heart. And as Daniel’s hand had gone to the fastening of his breeches, preparing to make love to her, she had known that if she let him, if she let
herself,
he would have her heart forever.

But the joke was on her. He already had it. She’d gone and done the most foolish thing imaginable. She had falen in love with a man she could never have.

Daniel Smythe-Smith, Earl of Winstead, Viscount Streathermore, Baron Touchton of Stoke. She didn’t want to think about him, but she did, every time she closed her eyes. His smile, his laugh, the fire in his eyes when he looked at her.

She did not think he loved her, but what he felt must have come close. He had cared, at least. And maybe if she’d been someone else, someone with a name and position, someone who didn’t have a madman trying to kill her . . . Maybe then when he had so foolishly said, “What if I married you?” she would have thrown her arms around him and yeled, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

But she didn’t have a
Yes
sort of life. Hers was a series of Noes. And it had finaly landed her here, where she was finaly as alone in body as she had been for so many years in spirit.

Her stomach let out a loud groan, and Anne sighed. She’d forgotten to buy supper before coming back to her boardinghouse, and now she was starving. It was probably for the best; she was going to have to make her pennies last as long as she could.

Her stomach rumbled again, this time with anger, and Anne abruptly swung her legs over the side of the bed. “
No,
” she said aloud. Although what she realy meant was
yes
. She was hungry, damn it, and she was going to get something to eat. For once in her life she was going to say yes, even if it was only to a meat pasty and a half pint of cider.

She looked over at her dress, laid neatly over her chair. She realy didn’t feel like changing back into it. Her coat covered her from head to hem. If she put on some shoes and stockings and pinned up her hair, no one would ever know she was out in her nightgown.

She laughed, the first time she’d made such a sound in days. What a strange way to be wicked.

A few minutes later she was out on the street, making her way to a small food shop she passed every day. She’d never gone inside, but the smels that poured forth every time the door opened . . . oh, they were heavenly. Cornish pasties and meat pies, hot rols, and heaven knew what else.

She felt almost happy, she realized, once she had her hands around her toasty meal. The shopkeeper had wrapped her pasty in paper, and Anne was taking it back to her room. Some habits died hard; she was still too much of a proper lady to ever eat on the street, despite what the rest of humanity seemed to be doing around her. She could stop and get cider across the street from her boardinghouse, and when she got back to her room—

“You!”