This wouldn’t do.
This wouldn’t do at all.
Scowling at Grieves, he abruptly yanked his tailcoat back and shoved his arms into the sleeves. “I have return to the park. I forgot something.”
“Would you like for me to fetch it for you, Your Grace?” asked the valet politely.
“What I need you cannot get me, Grieves. Unless you’re able to claim a last word on my behalf.”
“I would never presume to be able to do that, Your Grace.”
“Poetry,” Derrick muttered under his breath as he stalked to the front door and threw it open. “I’ll show her poetry.”
Except when he returned to where he’d left her, she wasn’t there. Nor was she by the bridge. Or the pond. Or a little wooden bench that was just the right size to draw her onto his lap and-
Dear God.
What waswrongwith him?
Dragging his hands across his face, he began to calculate the distance to the nearest gentleman’s club. Then, out of the pristine blue sky, he heard it. The distant, but unmistakable, sound of a honk.
“Constantine, you bastard.” He spun in a circle, narrowed eyes searching the manicured bridle paths and walking trails for signs of his arch-nemesis. He saw young children being shepherded by weary looking governesses. Two dowagers yielding canes out for a very slow stroll. A buggy carrying a man and a woman that couldn’t look away from each other. But to his utmost annoyance, there was no sign of a goose. “Where thehellare you?”
Part IV
“We are all fools in love.”~Pride and Prejudice written by British novelist Jane Austen
“I am sorry that you didn’t find the man of your dreams,” Becca consoled Annalise later in the day as they took their afternoon tea in the shade of the side veranda. “You can always try again tomorrow.”
“I was so sure he would be out there.” With no appetite to speak of, Annalise stared glumly at her cucumber sandwich. How wretched it was, to feel something with such absolute certainty… only to have that something never materialize. Instead, she’d spent her morning being dragged about by a duke who she was beginning to suspect hadn’t ever hadanyintention of helping her find a husband.
How cruel, to have wasted her time.
And how foolish, to have allowed it to be wasted.
Maybe her father was right. Maybe itwasbetter to live safely behind glass walls rather than risk the pain of breaking free. Why, she was willing to bet her entire hair ribbon collection that the man of the bay mare didn’t evenhavegout. He probably would have made a very fine husband. Except she hadn’t gone looking for fine. She’d gone in search of extraordinary. Instead, all she’d found was Derrick.
Derrick, the duke with two poet’s names who despised poetry.
Derrick, the self-proclaimed rake.
Derrick, the first man to have kissed her.
Derrick, the first man to have broken her heart.
Well, she amended, poking a finger at her sandwich, maybe notbroken. She was made of sterner stuff than that. But he had hurt her feelings. To have walked away like that, as if the time they’d spent together, while admittedly short, had meantnothing…
“Has your food offended you in some way, my lady?”
Startled, Annalise raised her gaze from her plate to find Becca watching her. “Oh… no. I’m sorry. I’m not… I’m not hungry at the moment.”
“I can see that. You know,” the lady’s maid began as she freshened both their tea cups, “it has not escaped my notice that you spent thrice as long feeding your geese at the park today, yet when I sought out where you regularly feed them, you were nowhere to be found.”
Guilt, sticky and uncomfortable, like the sweat that clung to her chest when she tried to sleep in the middle of summer, weighed heavily on Annalise’s shoulders. “I… took them to a new spot. On the other side of the pond.”
“Did you,” Becca murmured, giving her tea a stir.
“Oh, very well!” she cried, wringing her hands together. “I confess. I snuck away in the company of a gentleman and he kissed me.Twice. At first he said that he was going to help mein my search, but then along the way I began to think thathemight be whom I was searching for, except he said he wasn’t good enough for me, and then he left.” Her bottom lip wobbled. “He left, Becca.”
