Page 26 of Somewhere Along The Way (Mackinnon #3)
And what about Jonah? At least she wasn’t in a whale’s belly. The worst thing that could happen was that God would listen and then leave things as they were. There was one good point about being at the lowest rung on the ladder of despair—one couldn’t go any lower.
In Annabella’s mind, it was now or never.
Despite her formal religious upbringing, Annabella, when she prayed in private, had a tendency to depart from the traditional Anglican rigidity.
Her prayers were more along the line of a running discourse with the Almighty than any form of fervent entreaty, since she, herself, had no particular obsession for ponderous supplication.
“Are you sure,” she said matter-of-factly, her serious gaze directed at the moon, “that you have this alliance with the earl and myself thought through? I’m sure you know what you’re doing and all, but I see no harm in making sure you hadn’t aligned me with a man I find so unattractive, just because we both happened to be available, and in the same general vicinity. ”
She sighed, wondering if God was making any more sense out of all this than she was.
“I suppose I ought to feel a little ashamed of myself,” she went on to say, “for bothering you at a time like this, when you have so many other concerns to worry about—things that are more important than a whining girl and her troubles, but I think you should know it isn’t devilish easy being betrothed to a man you don’t particularly like. ”
She gazed into the misty glow of moonshine, imagining that to be the Almighty’s mantle of flowing white hair.
“But, you see, my problems are very important to me.” Now I’ve done it.
Now the bolt of lightning will come. When it didn’t, she breathed a sigh of relief and decided to press on, hoping God took this dramatic bit of prayer as earnest. “Please don’t misunderstand.
I’m not being ungrateful, and I’m not asking you to go to a lot of trouble to change any of your preset plans for congenial circumstances around the world.
But if you just happen to have another Scot lying about—one you need to marry off in a hurry, I wouldn’t mind at all if you wanted to reconsider and gave me a different one. ”
She took a fortifying gulp of air and waited in suspense for a moment, then, as an afterthought, she added, “And if he happened to look like the Duke of Dunford’s grandson, I wouldn’t mind that in the least.”
On this night filled with music and soft, gentle breezes, this young girl could not easily attune her mind to thoughts of a man she wasn’t the least attracted to, or to one twenty years older than herself.
Thoughts of Huntly soon left her mind, and Annabella, with her elbows resting on her knees, her chin propped on her hands, her eyes on the changing shapes of mist swirling about her, soon occupied herself with delicious thoughts where a certain duke’s grandson was greatly admiring her quietness, manners, and dignity.
Annabella knew it was unlikely that the duke’s grandson was encapsulated in a world that revolved around a beautiful but hopelessly inexperienced girl—regardless of her quietness, manners, and dignity.
But Annabella liked to daydream. You just never know when a miracle might occur , she often told herself.
She always held to a few rose-tinted ideas about what might happen to her if a miracle did indeed occur; and at the present time, she was right in the middle of a most romantic set of circumstances with a frightfully handsome man.
Just exactly what frightfully handsome man it was and what the most romantic set of circumstances were was hidden in an unrecognizable haze, so Annabella saw no harm in giving the man in her vision the face of Lord Ross Mackinnon and putting the two of them together in a heavily scented arbor where Ross was busily employed with the kissing of her hand—between spurts of verbosity in which he declared his undying love.
Suddenly all of the hand kissing and spurts of verbosity were shattered by a most terrifying noise.
Stopping within earshot of her, Ross was amused at the way the gracefully poised young woman he had seen earlier had vanished, right before his very eyes, to be replaced by a loose-limbed hoyden draped over a boat hull.
He grinned, both charmed and intrigued with what he had heard, and stepped closer, the better to hear her next round of dialogue with the Almighty.
Just at that moment a cat ran across his path and he stumbled over it.
As abrupt as a clap of thunder in the still of night came the piercing squeal of the cat as the animal bolted, passing close to Annabella and disappearing into the darkness.
She sprang to her feet and turned, feeling the numbness of terrifying fear grip her and turn her muscles to water.
The silken cord holding the small ivory fan to her wrist broke.
The fan fell to the ground. With a helpless sense of dread, Annabella lifted her eyes and saw in the dimness a few feet away the duke’s grandson.
He looked as fierce and daring and forbidding as a pirate in his black clothes.
Her heart pounded painfully in her chest until she feared it capable of flying right out of her body. She had never felt more fragile or more terrified.
Across the rocky distance that separated them, Annabella’s eyes looked large and luminous and shyly timid. Ross looked at her standing there like a small statue that watches over a garden. “Well, bless my bones,” he said in grandfatherly tones. “Have I stumbled upon a beached mermaid?”