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CHAPTER NINE

T hey were back in the parlor where they had dined the night before, this time with the sideboard set for breakfast. Anne’s stomach rumbled, but she didn’t believe she was hungry. She didn’t believe she would be able to put food in her mouth ever again.

Her emotions had her in a roil, from head to toe, as if she were a teased-up skein of yarn, tangled past bearing. And she couldn’t even sort out what she was feeling. The tangle of sensations writhed about her, and within her, like Medusa’s snakes.

The paper on the wall was hand-painted with some bushy-looking pattern of blooms in a combination of sand brown and pea green.

Anne focused on that. She studied the thick cornices that lined the ceiling.

The elaborate marble mantelpiece and the carved panels that rose above it, classical figures surrounding a mirror.

The tall sconces hanging from the walls.

The bay window with its drapery. The pattern of the carpet—some exotic birds entrapped in vines and foliage.

Greenfield was opulent, but faded. Nicks and marks marred the surface of the long mahogany table at which she sat, Hew beside her, prisoners facing the tribunal of justice.

Arranged on the other side of the table were her accusers: Lady Vaughn, who looked peeved.

Calvin Vaughn, outraged. And her brother, green around the gills as if he were sick with drink.

“Explain this,” Lady Vaughn rapped out. “This—this abomination.”

Hew snorted and rose, turning to the sideboard and its silver covers holding back steam. “Abomination? I’m hardly the first man to steal his brother’s bride, Mother.”

“It’s an outrage!” his mother squawked. Her light brown eyes bore a red rim, as if she’d been weeping. She pinned her anxious stare on Anne. “Did he—did my son— force you?”

Anne tried to push out words. Her voice had failed her somewhere between pulling on her round gown from the night before and furling a shawl about her shoulders as she hurried toward her inquisition.

“He didn’t …” Her voice was so small. She sounded like a fainting maiden. But she wasn’t a maiden anymore, was she? That was the entire point.

“He did not force me,” she said, and glory, she almost sounded calm. Like a woman in charge of herself and her emotions. Not a woman about to deposit last night’s accounts on this polished if somewhat scarred table.

Hew continued pouring out the pitcher he held. “Anne came to my room?—”

“She came to you?” Calvin broke in, adding his glare to his mother’s.

Anne shrank in her chair, wishing she could disappear into her shawl.

She’d known there would be a raking-down, of course, if she were to go about ruining her reputation.

But she hadn’t imagined the specifics, and they were so much worse than what she could have conjured.

Daron continued to look sick.

“Anne came to my room to discuss her future with me.” Hew returned to the table and set a cup in its dish before Anne. Chocolate. As if she could abide anything in her belly at this moment.

“We concluded that she and Calvin did not suit.” Hew leaned back in his chair, as casual as if he were entertaining morning callers. “But she and I do.”

Calvin curled his hand into a fist and pounded it on the table. “You just want the money, you greedy cur!”

Hew folded one booted leg over his knee. He’d dressed as if he meant to go riding, and his casual polish offset his brother’s fussy fashion. Hew glanced in Anne’s direction. She felt his gaze on her face like a caress.

Like the way he’d touched her last night. Oh, heavens, she couldn’t think of such things here . She’d go up in flames in her chair. What she’d done with him—what she’d felt?—

She was ruined, indeed. One did not go back to genteel maidenhood after that .

But marriage? She gulped. Marriage was what she had hoped to escape.

“If you believe I was thinking about her dowry last night,” Hew drawled, “then your upper story is unfurnished.”

He meant he’d been overtaken by lust. For her. Finally, she’d driven a man to want something more from her than her inheritance.

You’re not supposed to feel flattered by that, simkin .

Right. Angry. She should be enraged. She’d made plans to free herself from a man who wanted her for Aunt Gertrude’s tiny portion and wound up with a man who wanted her for—what?

There was the rage. She curled her hands into fists on her thighs. They were shaking too much to bring the cup of chocolate to her lips.

“She is clearly a cunning baggage out to hook her claws into you. And you were so foolish, Hew?” his mother fretted.

“She was going to marry into the family anyway,” Hew said. He adopted a casual pose, but something in him seemed coiled tight. Ready to spring. “So why not marry me?”

“Because you are the heir, and now you have fallen into her trap,” Lady Vaughn snapped. “I wanted better for you, Hewitt.”

Anne reached for the chocolate. If she were to be marched to the gallows, she wanted chocolate in her belly, rather than this seethe. One last dram of pleasure.

Though she’d had pleasure enough last night, hadn’t she? Because of him.

Anne took a larger swallow of chocolate than she’d intended. It burned down her gullet, searing and bittersweet.

“I don’t see how I could possibly find better than Anne,” Hew remarked.

He was being so gallant. He was being so frustrating . What did he mean, she was to marry him?

“Because of the money!” Calvin roared again. “You just want it for your investments, instead of?—”

Anne rapped her dish onto the table, startling them all. Even Calvin went silent, blinking at her.

“I am so relieved,” she said to him, acid in her voice, “that I have not, in my faithlessness, dealt any blow to your pride, or to your heart. Clearly, your only concern is my supposed dowry, and who shall have the disposal of it.”

Calvin moved his mouth like a fish pulled from the water. “No … ’course I don’t … that is …”

Daron shifted and regarded Anne blearily. “He won’t ’elp us,” he slurred.

“I beg your pardon,” Anne said. “I presume you, also, are concerned about my supposed inheritance? Since that is the only reason to concern yourself with me at all?”

Daron blinked. “No reason t’elp our family,” he said. “Mum’ll not have her fripperies. Father won’ hold up his head. Turn us out into the street, this ’un’ll.”

“If you are to be connected to this family, then there is no way we will allow you, or anyone connected to you, to suffer penury,” Hew said coolly. “Anne and I will see that your parents are taken care of.”

The two of them. Together. As if they were matching salt and pepper boxes. Not Hew controlling her fortune or dictating her life, but they two making decisions together.

Anne rewarded herself with another sip of chocolate, since she hadn’t cast back up the first.

Marriage. To Hewitt. She’d simply sprung from one trap to another.

As a wife, she would be his property. Her income would be his, her person would be his.

He would want children. She would have to risk what Gwen had gone through, perhaps several times, all to carry on the Vaughn name, not even her own heritage.

She would live here, or wherever he told her.

She would have to plead for pin money and to borrow the carriage and have new gowns made up.

She would walk into dinner on his arm and have calling cards embossed with Mrs. Hewitt Vaughn.

She’d been facing the prospect of marriage for years and yet she’d never seen its outlines so clearly.

Married, she would be subject to her husband’s whims, his peeves, his decisions about what she could or could not do with her time, who she could or could not see.

He would have complete control over her person.

He would have unrestricted access to her bed. And she to his.

Anne clamped her legs together. Her capricious mind, rather than focusing on the issue at hand, kept drifting back to the pleasure of the night before. The astounding sensations she’d felt in his arms. The echoes she still felt in her body, between her legs. A memory.

And a desire to feel that again.

Lady Vaughn tried a new tactic, pleading. “Hewitt, you have not even been back a day. You haven’t met any of the girls about. You do not even know Anne. You cannot imagine that a step such as marriage ?—”

“Mother.” Hew set down his own coffee cup—black, no sugar or cream, Anne noted. He fixed his mother with a cool stare. “She was found in my bed. You can’t imagine that I would do any but the honorable thing.”

Anne’s arms went cold to her fingertips, as if her shawl had slipped from her shoulders, leaving her exposed to the air.

He’d known this would happen. He’d known .

He’d arranged it.

She’d come to him bleating about being ruined, thinking she could be found in his bed, cast into the street with her things tossed out the door behind her, and walk away with her reputation in tatters, her head held high, freedom in both hands.

He’d planned all along for this result: that they would be required to marry.

Because Hewitt needed money to shore up the Vaughn family fortunes, and he also thought Anne had it. If she married Calvin, then he would be pleading with Calvin to invest in his canals or ships or whatever the solicitor had spoken about.

But if he married Anne himself?—

She stood up, knocking a knee against the table in her haste, but it was as if her limbs were acting without her conscious direction. So was her mouth.

“I beg your pardon,” she said. “This has been—a trying morning. I am overcome.”

She whirled and headed for the door. A footman in livery, approaching with a covered platter, dodged out of the way while another footman leapt before her to open the parlor door.

Daron scrambled after her. In the hall, she tried to remember which way lay her bedchamber, so she could march there in a righteous fury. He caught her wrist.

“Nan,” he bleated. “The money?—”