Jacob was accustomed to being an object of scandal. He had spent half his life fashioning himself into someone who was frequently associated with depravity and to have whispers follow him wherever he went was hardly unusual.
What was unusual, however, was the fact that the whispers did not seem to involve the fact he had, the night before, challenged a viscount’s brother to a duel. Something he would have achieved if the viscount himself hadn’t stepped in and towed his unfortunate brother home. Ordinarily, that would have been a cause of gossip, but it appeared as though there was something else going on.
For once, Jacob was at a loss what had inspired this particular set of interest. He prowled through Vauxhall’s dimly lit paths, dodging courtesans in too much rouge and young gentlemen in laughing, cocky groups, doing his best to avoid the curious gazes.
When he joined his friends by the orchestra box, Viscount Villiers was staring at him with an expression torn between disgust and hilarity.
“Not you too,” he said.
“Unspecific.” Jacob selected a glass of champagne from the silver platters being carried around by blank-faced waiters. The orchestra was playing now, Jacob and his friends stood at the back of the crowd. “You will have to try harder.”
“Marriage,” Villiers said, making a face. “You’ve finally fallen foul of the last trap left to mankind.”
Jacob tossed his champagne back, the bubbles stinging the back of his throat. “Hardly.”
“It’s in the papers.”
“What?”
“Your marriage,” Villiers said impatiently. The girl on his arm, a redhead with abundant freckles, stared at him curiously. “This morning. Don’t you read the papers?”
“Not if I can get away with it.” Attention finally caught, Jacob looked away from the redhead’s ample cleavage. “What do you mean, my marriage is in the papers. I’m not married.”
“You’re engaged.”
“I can assure you,” Jacob said, suppressing a snort, “I am not.”
“That’s what it said in the papers, my lord,” the redhead said, a broad accent betraying her unfortunate background. An opera dancer, perhaps. Or a singer. Or perhaps just one of the ladies that patrolled these shadowed havens, looking for a gentleman all too willing to part with his purse. Either way, Jacob knew Villiers kept company like this in part to pique his father. “You’re to marry Lady Annabelle Beaumont.”
Jacob froze, the effects of the champagne dissipating. There was the chill of dread in his chest. Above it all was disbelief.
“Quite,” Villiers said when he saw Jacob’s dumbstruck face. “I take it you didn’t know about this?”
Anger replaced his shock by inches, burning away the ice that had momentarily formed in his chest. That little minx—she had told him she had no intention of marrying and now here she was, trying to trick him into marriage. No doubt she would use the garden incident against him.
Well, if she was hoping she would capture a gentleman that way, she hoped wrong. He wasnota gentleman, and he had no intention of being caught. If she refused to end the engagement, he would, and to hell with any damage it would do to his reputation—he didn’t exactly have much of one to begin with.
“She’s a pretty thing,” Villiers said dismissively. “A little quiet for my taste.”
The Lady Annabelle he had come to know, in the sorts of quiet corners a young lady should never inhabit, had not precisely been quiet. Then again, the fact she frequented places like darkened libraries and gardens should have been a sign that she was as much a lady as he was a gentleman.
He eyed his glass darkly. He was not drunk enough for this. “Then you can have her,” he said. “For I, you can be sure, will not.”
Chapter Eight
To Annabelle’s dismay, news of her engagement had spread like wildfire, rendering it impossible for them to merely quietly break the engagement off. Whatever they did would end in scandal. Her only, brief, reprieve was that Nathanial’s mother was bed-bound with a fever, and so Annabelle would not have to endure her shock at the engagement. She was not sure if the Dowager would be relieved Annabelle was finally to be married, or disappointed in her apparent choice of husband.
Regardless, Annabelle endeavoured to put it from her mind. If she thought about the Dowager’s disapproval, she would never have the strength to end the engagement; whatever the Dowager’s thoughts on the marriage, she would not condone a lady breaking it off once an announcement had been made, and without a severe transgression on the gentleman’s behalf.
In that regard, at least, she could still have hope.
As Annabelle and her party entered Vauxhall Gardens and reached Lady Windermere’s box, they had been subject to a level of attention Annabelle never wished to be accustomed to. Theo, chatting away as though nothing in the world was wrong, seemed to have no problem keeping a smile on her face. Annabelle, who had never been good at chatting, and was certainly no expert on smiling, kept her eyes fixed to her plate. For something to do, she counted her peas and thought about all the ways she wanted to throttle Lord Sunderland. With her hands would be the most satisfying, but she rather suspected ribbons would be fitting, in a way.
Something light and feminine around his throat, his dark eyes on her as she took hold of the ends and pulled.
There was something somewhat appealing about that image, but not for strictly bloodthirsty reasons, so she abandoned that train of thought before it disturbed her too much.
When she glanced across at Theo again, her face was a little blank, and Nathanial appeared to be nodding off in front of his empty place setting.
