“Then learn. Surely you can at least do it for her.”
There was noat leastfor Annabelle; she was not the exception to his rules. He wouldn’t let her be. But he did need to find her.
“I’ll bring her to you,” he said, and turned on his heel, striding through the crowd. Annabelle was nowhere he could see inside the ballroom, and although she could have been outside, he doubted she would risk it after the last time.
There was only one other place she could be.
He almost laughed at the inevitability of it as he walked the now somewhat familiar halls of Norfolk House until he came to the library.
This time, there was a lamp casting golden light across the floor and the window, and Annabelle was curled on the window seat, her dress falling beside her, utterly absorbed in a book. There was an uneven stack of novels on the table beside her, he noted, and as she read, the pad of her thumb brushed the soft edges of her page. The faint rasp, imperceptible except in the break in music and laughter that drifted towards them, was almost enough to send him mad.
For a moment, he merely watched her. The anxious line between her brows was absent here; she looked at peace.
He was going to disturb that.
With an odd fierceness, he found he didn’twantto disrupt her. This odd picture of domesticity sent an uncomfortable coiling sensation into his stomach, and he rolled his shoulders, trying to dispel the feeling.
This was a deal and it had always been. The only reason he had entered this sham engagement was to save her reputation by finding her another, and neither of them were going to find one in the library.
“You know, you should really lock the door,” he said conversationally as he strolled towards her. “Anyone could get in.”
She jolted and looked up, and he saw with a lurch that she had been crying.
All other thoughts left his head. She had been crying . . . because of him.
“Leave me alone,” she said, turning back to her book. “I don’t want you here.”
He dropped to his knees in front of her. “Annabelle, I—”
“It’s Lady Annabelle to you.”
“Annabelle.” He gave her a grin he didn’t feel. “Don’t shut me out. Be angry at me. What happened to the temper you cannot help when you are around me?”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“Not even to abuse me to my face?” He reached for her hand but she drew hers away, and he cursed himself. This was not the sort of situation he was accustomed to. “I apologise,” he said abruptly, holding her gaze. “What I said was out of order.”
“Yes. It was.”
“I never intended to hurt you.” He almost said that he hadn’t thought her capable of being hurt, but that was unfair. He had known, of course he had, that she was sensitive, and he was someone who had seen some of her most unguarded moments.
He had taken advantage of her most unguarded moments.
She looked down again, but before she did, he caught the glisten in her eyes, and it was like a punch to his gut. Normally, no one cared enough about him one way or the other to cry when he disappointed them. But Annabelle had, and watching it made him ache.
“I’m your servant,” he said, taking her hand and retaining it when she tried to pull away. “At your mercy. What would you have me do?”
“Go away.”
He attempted another smile. “Anything but that. You see, little bird, there is a ballroom filled with guests hoping to see us, and I am honour-bound to take you back, much as I know you would rather remain here.”
“Without you,” she said, although she was no longer trying to remove her hand from his.
“Without me,” he repeated, the words carrying an odd little sting.
“And you are not honour-bound.” Her gaze cut back to his, tears gone and her eyes blazing. Looking into them was a little like looking into the sun, and much as he had done when he was a boy, braving the damage, he held his gaze.
“Very well, I am a rogue. But for tonight, I am your rogue, and I have made a promise I intend to keep.”
