Page 1 of The Secret to Swooning (London Secrets #6)
In Which Lady Ann Refuses a Proposal
L ady Ann Martins sat on a bench in Hyde Park, entirely oblivious.
A pack of feral children could tumble in front of her and climb upon one another’s shoulders until they formed a tower as tall as Saint Paul’s Cathedral, and she’d not register the activity.
Lord Byron could stalk past wearing nothing but hessians, and she’d not bat an eyelash, because she wouldn’t have seen a single inch of the naked poet’s backside.
Frustration in matters of the heart could do that, make the world outside the chest and mind disappear entirely. Matters of the heart? With Viscount Trevor? Ha. That particular organ had never been involved.
Her face scrunched up further. Her mother would warn of wrinkles.
“If you frown any harder, Ann my sweet, you’d better hope it doesn’t rain.” A warm body with a voice as familiar as her own sat next to her, nudged her with an elbow. Everette Blake, Viscount Dartmore, future Earl of Bennington. She did not have to turn her head and see his face to know him.
Ann grunted to hide the sound of her fluttering heart.
With him , her heart considered itself fully involved.
Had for a year. Perhaps longer. Ever since he’d stolen her away from the obscurity of the wall at the Malton’s ball and sent her spinning round the dance floor.
A rogue was an odd friend for a proper lady such as herself to have, but she kept the secret tightly to her chest, her only rebellion in a life of obedience.
“If it does rain,” Lord Dartmore persisted, “you’ll likely collect a river. Right here.” He stroked a line between her eyebrows from forehead to nose with the tip of his gloved finger.
She should jerk away from him. Gloves did little to quench the heat of a rogue’s touch, and she knew better. But she only ever found herself leaning closer. With him, she broke the rules with ease, broke her own chains as if they were made of mere paper.
“If you collect a river…” He sighed. “You’ll drown. And then I’ll be in mourning for at least a year. Two perhaps.”
She regarded him with steely apathy.
He whistled. “You really are suffering the doldrums, aren’t you. I’ve never seen you with anything less than perfect posture. What troubles you so?”
She looked up to the sky. “Lord Trevor will not be proposing to me.”
“Thought you had him all but leg-shackled.”
She’d thought so too. The culmination of all her training, all her mother’s wishes and her father’s hopes. “He’s to marry another. Miss Shropshire.”
“Do I know her?” He grinned, bumped his shoulder into hers. “Only woman I can seem to remember is you.”
She rolled her eyes. The incurable flirt.
But her belly flipped over as it always did, pleading with her to return his flirtations—to forget the books on good behavior, the strict training to be a proper debutante and lady, her parents approving, loving smiles when she succeeded.
There would be no smiles from them if she did as she wished and flirted with the man beside her.
So she chained the impulse up tight, locked it away.
“Ann?” A cajoling voice. “Do you wish to tell me more? Or do you wish me to find the man and show him my fist? No one plays with my Ann’s affections and escapes unscathed.”
Her heart skipped a beat, and she breathed steady and slow to tame it.
“You should not flirt so. It’s not proper.”
“You like it.”
She did.
Lord Dartmore pinned her with the most serious look she’d ever seen from him. “He dashed your hopes. I’ll murder him. But first, how are you feeling?”
“Frustrated. Angry.” He’d been her last hope for marriage, for a future as something other than a forgettable spinster.
She’d worked so hard to catch his eye and keep it.
The pianoforte playing, the knowledge of proper dress, the important bits of Debrett’s, memorized perfectly.
Every step to every dance and every proper address for every personage.
She could even watercolor with some skill.
But she did not care for any of it. “Do my achievements count for nothing?”
Silence.
In that caesura, she had a terrible thought. “Does”—she swallowed hard—“my obedience count for nothing?”
Large, warm hands cupped her shoulders, turned her body. More scandalous touches she should shrink from. And did not. Dartmore’s hands felt like freedom, not chains.
“Ann.” His voice, rich as honey, pleaded, “Open your eyes, Ann.”
She did. And looked straight into coffee-brown pools of care that wiped out the park around them, that wove a fairy circle of solitude around only them two. A scandal for his hands to be on her just so, but the freedom his touch evoked dissolved all that care into nothing.
“He’s a prig,” Dartmore said, “and doesn’t deserve you.”
The way he said it… she almost believed him. “I’m two and twenty and have yet to receive a single proposal of marriage.” She sighed, hung her head. “I think I’ll ask Father to arrange a marriage. Anyone will do.”
“No.” His hands flinched on her shoulders.
“And why not?” She shrugged out of his hold. “A lady must marry. To marry the right man is my only purpose. And I have proved a failure at that.”
He cleared his throat. “Ann?” He cleared it again, said her name a second time with less hesitation.
“Yes?” More of a sigh than a word.
“You must marry me.”
So direct. No jokes, no quips. Just simple words on lovely lips that shocked her to her core. She’d never heard him speak so before.
She lifted her head slowly to study him. “You jest, surely. You should not.”
“I do not.” He wore an obstinate expression that ran a skittish pulse up and down her spine.
She stood and darted away from their bench.
He followed, his warmth a heavy shadow at her back. “I do not tease, Ann.”
“You always do .” She stopped and pressed trembling fingers into her temples where her head had begun the steady percussive rhythm of an army’s march toward danger.
“Not this time.” He stopped too; standing closer than he’d stood since the night they’d agreed to forget.
But his tall, strong body pressed so near flooded her with memories—the texture of his lips beneath her own, the taste of his tongue.
A kiss that had felt like freedom. The thrill of pursuing her own desires for the first time in her entire life and finding she liked it, adored it. Adored him.
She stepped away and turned to face him, crossing her arms over her belly.
Protection from her own desires. “Thank you, my lord. Everette.” The first time she’d used his name, and it came out as little more than a whisper.
“We would never suit. I have dedicated my life to behaving, and you’re a rake—”
“No need for insults.” His tone was light, but his shoulders were as rigid as a castle wall. “Say my name again, Ann.”
She shook her head. “And rakes do not behave. I am the very picture of obedience, and my parents require a proper, well-behaved husband.”
“They’re not the ones marrying him.”
She looked down the path, unable to meet his gaze.
“You’ll always do what they say, then? What do you gain by marrying a man you do not love? Tell me.”
“Love is for people who are free to do as they please.”
He stepped forward, pressing close once more. “Money does not constrain you.”
“No, but—”
“And social position is not an issue. I’ll be an earl one day.”
“No.” The word tore through her throat, and her hand clutched at her chest. “I cannot be anyone other than who I am.”
“Be who you are and marry me.”
She backed away from him, shaking her head.
“I cannot be anyone other than the obedient lady you see before you. I-I am sorry. I must leave. I have another social obligation this afternoon. Mama is dragging me to a tea with the Lady Catherine de Bourgh.” She dipped a curtsy and turned her back on him, though her eyes burned with unshed tears.
She had received a proposal today, but not from the man she’d chased for a year. A tear rolled down her cheek, and she wiped it away. Hateful thing.
She’d never dreamed Dartmore would propose.
They were too dissimilar, and her path had already been chosen for her long ago.
Part of her leapt with joy, ached to turn around and run into his arms. A dream she’d never allowed herself had come true.
Dartmore had thrown wide a new path, beckoned her down it with promises of pleasure, excitement, and freedom.
But what would happen if she followed him?
Her parents—the only people who had ever smiled at plain, unpretty Ann—might never smile at her again.
So she turned from the dangerous path calling out to her and continued as she always had, marching steadily toward the type of man—proper and pristine—who would suit her parents perfectly and guarantee their smiles and love for the rest of her days.