He cursed, but nothing eased the heavy weight that was sinking him further into the chair.
Thank you for teaching me what it meant to be wanted. I will treasure that all my days.
She wrote as though she would never see him again. Whatever they had shared was over.
He did his best to convince himself it was better this way. Mere hours ago he had held her and never wanted to let go, but he told himself that he did not care for her.
He cared for nothing.
And he never would again.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“What do you mean you ended your engagement with the Marquess of Sunderland?” her mother demanded, hands on hips, feet planted in the middle of the drawing room. All four of them had arrived at Havercroft, Nathanial’s ancestral seat, the previous day, and Theo still looked faintly green from the travelling.
“We were not well suited,” Annabelle said with a calmness she didn’t feel. At least Henry wasn’t here; she didn’t think she would be able to bear his vindication.
Her mother’s jaw dropped. “But you wereengaged. And may I remind you of the circumstances behind your engagement?”
“There is no need,” Annabelle said, gritting her teeth.
Theo pushed Nathanial’s restraining arm away and sat up straighter. “Anna, look at me,” she said. “Was he cruel to you?”
“Cruel?” Annabelle didn’t have to feign her astonishment. “No, he was—”Helping me to find my poise and confidence. Occasionally unspeakably kind. The only man I have ever wanted. “He was nice,” she finished lamely.
“Never mind nice—he was a marquess.” Her mother narrowed her eyes, and the familiar feeling of being too small swept over Annabelle. “You had no right.”
“I had every right,” Annabelle said.
Theo’s eyes narrowed, and Annabelle had the uncomfortable impression she was seeing too much. She had lost her virtue and she feared it was written across her face.
“Do you dislike him?” Theo asked.
Annabelle tried to keep her expression blank. “No.”
“Then why have you ended an engagement that had a good chance of saving you from ruin?”
“Because he never wished to marry me in the first place.”And he still refuses to marry me. Her head ached.
“Did he talk you into ending it?” Nathanial asked, his voice tight with anger.
“No.” Annabelle clasped her hands behind her back and clenched until her fingernails bit into her palm. “He didn’t know I was going to do it until I sent him a note the day of our departure.” She forced a smile. “The Season is almost at an end, and by late autumn people will have found new things to gossip about.”
“It’s true,” Theo said. “It won’t be so bad, Nate. It won’t, Mama.”
Annabelle kept her decision not to marry to herself. There was no point agitating her mother even more. Of everyone in the room, only Theo would have a chance of understanding, and she was somewhat distracted.
“Is there any way of reversing this?” her mother asked, apparently not listening to anything anyone else said.
“Unfortunately not,” Theo said before Annabelle could. “There has been enough scandal around the engagement already. Like Anna said, we should let the rumours die of their own accord while we’re in the country.”
Their mother’s eyes narrowed. “Very well. But come next Season, Annabelle, Iwillfind you a husband.”
Unfamiliar stubbornness bloomed in Annabelle’s stomach. Her experience with Jacob had taught her two things: what it was like to want without reserve, and that it would never happen to her again. She sucked in a long, deep breath and escaped through the side doors onto the lawn.
The garden at Havercroft was an ambitious affair. The kitchen gardens were growing enough vegetables to feed an army, the grand lawn was interrupted by hedges cut into intricate patterns, and there was a walled lavender garden where bees congregated with a low hum.
Annabelle’s favourite part of the garden, however, was the wilderness that adjoined the lawn. There, wildflowers were allowed to spring up with abandon, and benches were placed along small, enclosed walkways, and—her favourite—there was a swing attached to the bough of a great tree.
