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CHAPTER SEVEN

H ewitt Vaughn did not look like deliverance, seated at the head of the Greenfield table. He looked like a dark angel filled with righteous wrath.

None of the important people Lady Vaughn had wanted were free to dine, all of them otherwise engaged.

She could not even claim the vicar of St. Woolos, Mr. Stanley, who sent back word that he had accepted an invitation to dine at St. Sefin’s, in ongoing celebration of the festivities.

Instead they suffered the addition of one Mr. Rafael Darch, a friend of Calvin’s, leaving Anne and her ladyship the only females to balance out the table of men.

Daron sat glowering at his plate as if he’d been informed the meal was his last. Calvin, with a sour slant to his mouth, kept shooting dark glances at his brother.

Hewitt sat at the head of the table, the position Calvin had occupied up till now, and addressed his plate with steady attention, seeming not to notice any of the hostility, or curiosity, directed toward him.

Anne admired his cool head. She herself became rattled if she detected any animosity in a room, even if it wasn’t directed at her. But Hewitt Vaughn had that training around heavy artillery. Likely a cannon could be shot off right next to him, and he wouldn’t flinch.

What a difference from Anne, who flinched at everything. Especially every time Calvin Vaughn regarded her with a smug, satisfied smile that said, his brother aside, he saw everything he wanted within reach, and all would work out as he wished, whether he deserved it or not.

Mr. Darch was not introduced by way of profession, so Anne couldn’t guess his background, but she could see the man styled himself an Exquisite.

Whatever affectations of fashion Calvin and Daron had contrived, Mr. Darch took to excess.

The lapels of his coat stretched nearly the breadth of his chest. His stock rested beneath his ears, obscuring his chin, and instead of a waistcoat, some stiff insert occupied the front of his chest, making him move like a wooden doll.

His hair was long and dangled nearly to his shoulders.

Anne detested long hair on a man; it looked sloppy.

He had a habit of flicking back locks of it when he spoke, as if he meant for his hair to emphasize his conversational points, and his drawl was certainly affected.

When he was introduced, he produced a bow so deep it seemed almost mockery, twirling a hand in its thick leather glove, and Anne disliked him on the instant.

She felt herself fortunate at the time to be seated at Hew’s right at table, with her brother on her other side, and Calvin across from her, so Darch was left to flatter Lady Vaughn with his forced witticisms.

At least she’d never be forced to take someone like him for a husband.

But Calvin introduced her to Darch as his fiancée, so there was that.

“We are fortunate to see our family so enlarged,” Lady Vaughn said to Darch. “Miss Sutton is about to settle our Calvin’s wildness, and my dearest Hew returned home at long last.” She rested her gaze on her eldest son with a smile that turned thin at the edges.

Hew had done something to displease her—what? Perhaps Lady Vaughn knew the precarious state of the Vaughn finances.

Well, Aunt Gertrude was about to remedy that, wasn’t she?

She would bequeath her fortune to Anne, and Calvin, as Anne’s husband, would control every shilling and pound.

He would shore up Anne’s family and his own, and Aunt Gertrude could look down from her heavenly abode to see that Anne had sold her soul for a secure home.

For a set of new gowns and gloves and a lovely manor house to sleep in, and Calvin would no doubt spend his portion on garish neckcloths and cravat pins.

Unless Hewitt Vaughn could step in and save her.

Anne didn’t need her mother’s advice to daintily pick at her food; she had no appetite.

A sultry heat had followed the sun of the afternoon, and though Lady Vaughn kept the tall windows of the parlor tightly closed, the many-paned windows framed in their green velvet draperies looked out on a landscape blurred with falling dusk.

Wax candles sputtered from the chandelier that dangled crystal droplets low over the table, and the line of candles dividing the long oak dining table, in addition to the sconces on the wall, raised the temperature to the level of a brick oven.

“You need a new coach, Mother,” Calvin said, as if he were spending Aunt Gertrude’s fortune already.

“Your darling Hew ought to deck you out in a new vehicle, don’t you think?

You’ve been racketing about in that old relic far too long.

A smart new phaeton, that’s what a good son would set you up in. ”

“As finances allow, of course,” Hew said, refusing to be needled.

Only Hewitt did not seem made snappish by the heat.

He’d changed to a long, gray tailed coat, one that might have once been perfectly tailored but now hung loose.

His cravat was tied in a simple twist, his waistcoat had only a single row of bronze buttons and no collar at all, and his hair had been trimmed.

He must have taken advantage of Calvin’s valet, if not his wardrobe; his brother was fuller in the chest and belly, though Hewitt was taller.

He wore no gloves, and for some reason Anne found the flex of his fingers utterly distracting.

Why, she couldn’t say, save her disobedient mind kept flashing to that light-drenched moment in the garden when she’d watched him strip a green plant, then pop it into his mouth, exactly as if he were some god of the wood.

That thought made her go hot in the belly, as if she were hungry. But not for the lamb chops fricassee that sat before her.

She wouldn’t call Hew a satyr, one of those bestial men given over purely to lechery and revelry.

That described her would-be husband, Calvin Vaughn.

Hewitt Vaughn was a different creature entirely.

Steady. Solid. He would look almost humorless to some, yet Anne remembered the lines that creased his lean cheeks when he’d smiled at her, and?—

Marrying Calvin Vaughn would save her family.

Anne sawed at her new potatoes in onion sauce.

She would prop up her parents in their advancing age and repay all they had invested in educating and polishing her.

She and she alone could release Daron from debt, free him to marry well once Vine Court was restored.

And she would be married. No longer Miss Anne Sutton, inching down the barren road to spinsterhood. She would be Mrs. Calvin Vaughn, mistress of—well, nothing. Not her own household. Not this house. She would go from living under her parents’ direction to living under a husband’s thumb.

“I would very much like to put up new paper in the Pineapple Parlor,” Lady Vaughn said. “The whole place could use a refurbishing. The last few years have left us very drab.”

“But investing in canals, Mother!” Calvin said heartily. “The canals will pour out money, once the iron ore and coal start flowing. So your darling Hew says.”

Hewitt’s jaw tightened. Did Anne only notice because she was watching him so closely? “The canals will bear out the investment we’ve put into them,” he said, his voice full of forced calm. “It may take a few years, but they will.”

“Need water in the canals to cart your narrow boats. Horses can’t do all the work themselves. And when the ore’s at the seaside, it needs a way to get aboard ship, aye?”

Darch swirled his wine in his glass. He imbibed heartily, matching Calvin drink for drink. Daron tried to keep up, yet Anne noticed whenever he met the stranger’s dark gaze, Daron flushed and looked away.

Anne pushed a piece of turnip through its butter sauce. She couldn’t fret over Daron’s discomfiture when she was so caught up in her own. Mathry, the former maid, danced in her head, pushing out her pregnant belly.

Your intended , she’d told Anne, the indignant hurt showing through her sneer. Came at me the minute I set foot in that house. Like a midge. Wouldn’t let me be.

He’d never shown the least bit of adoration for Anne. Not that she wanted him to.

But she wanted him not to be one of those men. The kind that would see any female as laced mutton—a phrase she’d heard Daron use once, and here it seemed to fit. She didn’t want the man she married to be a man who put his lusts above honor.

She didn’t want to marry a dirty dish. She wanted a clean dish, one with nice-smelling, minty breath. A man who was selective about his pleasure and didn’t follow everything in a skirt.

“Well, once your shares in the canal start producing income, I can put my lady in a new frock or two.” Calvin leered across the table at Anne. “Looking a bit peaky, my Nan. Not the glow of a maid about to be wedded and bedded.”

Hewitt, poised above the loin of mutton, froze with the carving knife gripped in his hand.

Anne glared across the table at her intended. He didn’t get to call her Nan or Nanny. Not ever.

“I am as giddy at the thought of our nuptials as you are, sir,” she said icily.

Darch guffawed. Daron squirmed in his chair. “Now, Nanny?—”

“Nay, Sutton, let the kitten show her claws. I like my fluff to have a bit of bite. No fun when the gel just lies there and takes it.”

The silence in the room hung heavy, rippled with the growl of distant thunder. The heat felt like a hand wrapped around her neck.

“Calvin, my darling, do not tease your bride,” Lady Vaughn said. “Allow the child her last days of innocence.”

Calvin smirked. “You forget, our Anne’s not much on the young side, Mum. Don’t doubt she’s near fainting with impatience to relieve herself of her maidenhead.” His grin widened, revealing stained teeth. “Or p’raps she’ll teach me a thing or three, eh?”