She cast him a cold smile, saddened that so much could shift in an instant. “Then, it is fortunate that I will be leaving as soon as possible.”
Breezing past him, holding her breath in case he reached for her, Anna walked through the adjoining door to her bedchambers and locked it behind her. She locked the main door too, just in case.
CHAPTER 20
“Yer Grace, what do ye want us to do about all of these?” one of Jeremy’s servants asked with a gesture to the array of curtains, blankets, and ropes that still divided Stonebridge Manor.
It had been three days. Three days since he heard Anna moan his name. Three days since he had seen the full majesty of her body, her skin, her scent, her impassioned cries, her total surrender to the ecstasy that overwhelmed her. Three days since his desires had been returned. Three days since she told him to stay away and that all doors would be locked to bar his entry.
She had meant it.
Ever since, Anna had either been locked in her bedchambers or her study. On the occasions when she had emerged, she would busy herself in the gardens, tend to the goats, or go for her daily walks… but always chaperoned. Always with that maid, Katherine, at her side and the butler walking a short distance behind.
It was beginning to take its toll on Jeremy’s sanity, as he couldn’t even approach her and certainly couldn’t get her alone again.
“Yer Grace?” the servant prompted, when Jeremy still hadn’t answered.
“Take them all down,” he muttered, casting a vexed glance at the curtains that covered the entrance to Anna’s side of the residential quarters. “Leave that one.”
The servant bowed his head. “Aye, Yer Grace.”
Underneath the dark cloud of a grim mood, Jeremy trudged down the stairs to the entrance hall. There were servants everywhere he looked, and everywhere he stepped, all helping to make the final preparations for the fast-approaching house party.
An event that Jeremy wished he had cancelled, though it was too late to do so now. Besides, no matter his mood or his lack of inclination to involve himself in society, he needed to make a decent impression for Sophie and Beatrice, if not for himself.
“Do ye want the flowers here?” someone called out to him.
“What about the tapestries, Yer Grace?” someone else asked.
“Shall we put away the good rugs?”
“What do ye think of these garlands, Yer Grace?”
And on and on, an endless barrage of silly questions for a house party he could not care less about. After all, it was supposed to be an auction of sorts, where the only thing to bid on was Anna’s hand in marriage. A thought that haunted him every day and night since he was forced out of Anna’s dressing room and sternly forbidden from ever being near her again.
Would ye cry their name as ye cried mine? Would ye feel with them what I made ye feel? Will some other wretch truly have ye for the first time?That last question made him want to punch something, frustration and jealousy rising through him like a fever.
“Your Grace, what about the–” a maid tried to say, but Jeremy was already on his way to the front door, striding out before he lost his mind completely.
Anna sat in the window seat of her beloved bedchamber and gazed out at the glittering night. Carriages had been arriving since late afternoon for the house party that Jeremy had arranged, a steady flow of guests invading her home, though she had not been there to greet a single one of them.
I will not be part of this cattle market…She had repeated the sentiment constantly with every new arrival, and every guest that had been shown to their chambers, and every new voice shehad heard echoing down the halls. Although she had not heard anyone come down the hallway where her bedchamber was.
“How many people do you think will be staying for the next couple of days?” Katherine asked as she came to join Anna by the window.
They had sequestered themselves after checking on the goats, because although this was supposed to be an event for Anna to find a husband, she was not going to play her part. If she had to stay in her chambers until all the guests left again, so be it.
“I have not the faintest notion, and I do not care,” Anna replied grumpily, as girlish shrieks rose up from somewhere below. The gardens, most likely.
They will be trampling my flowerbeds in the dark, and they shall not be the least bit bothered.
She had spent a year and a half restoring the gardens and was excited to see the results of her labor this summer. However, with so many people wandering through those painstakingly tended gardens, she doubted she would get to see her creation in its full glory. There would be damage, and she doubted she could fix it in time.
And I likely will not be here next summer…
“You really won’t be attending?” Katherine cast her a sideways glance.
“I would rather bathe in a vat of grease,” Anna replied.
