The careful timing of her family’s arrival.
Rutland would have her ruined to free Margaret for his attention. Anne had been nothing more than a pawn to advance Rutland's selfish desires.
In the end, Anne would pay the ultimate price, her good name, her reputation, so the ruthless Rutland could at last claim Margaret.
If only the bastard had bothered to ask, Harry would have told Rutland he was welcome to her. The moment Anne had slipped into Lord Essex’s conservatory, all other women had ceased to matter.
And on the heel of that staggering realization was the dawning truth…he did not feel compelled to offer for Anne out of obligation. He wanted her because he could not imagine his life without her.
For the first time that evening, Harry smiled.
I love her.
Chapter 21
Since Anne had entered the Duke of Bainbridge’s carriage behind her mother and sister, shock had robbed her of words. Her sister’s regret, her mother’s shame, tangible and painful, ravaged her conscience. And yet, for the life’s worth of bad decisions she’d made where Harry, was concerned, she’d do nothing differently. She loved him. Loved him with a hopeless, helpless passion that defied logic and reason and baubles that promised one the heart of a duke. She braced for the impending barrage, and when it came it was fast and volatile like a summer lightning storm.
“Whatever were you thinking?” Mother cried. “I’ve warned you time and time again about the earl.” She leaned across her seat. “You insisted you’d no interest in him.”
“I lied,” Anne whispered. Pity fairly seeped from her sister’s eyes and Anne glanced away, detesting the sentiment.
“That is what you’d say to me? You lied?” Mother jabbed a finger in Anne’s direction. “You’ve been ruined. A young lady is never permitted to be alone with a man. And a man such as Stanhope, no less.”
“No one knows, Mother,” Katherine said softly.
Sweet, supportive Katherine who’d always sought to protect Anne from herself. “No one knows. Isn’t that correct, Anne?” A twin look passed between them. The unspoken language that only they two understood. Just as Anne would sacrifice everything and anything for her sister, so too would Katherine do anything within her means to spare Anne pain. And now, she sought to protect Anne from their mother’s wrath.
However, sometime between Lord Essex’s conservatory and this moment Anne had changed; grown from the carefree, whimsical miss to a sensible woman who finally knew there were consequences to her actions.
“Anne?” her sister said, a plaintive note in that one word utterance.
She was no longer a child to be protected by her sisters.
Anne’s silence served as her answer.
Mother buried her face into her hands. “I’d had such grand hopes for you. I’d indulged you in your first Season and didn’t truly begin to worry until your second Season. Now this?” She wept noisy tears that transported Anne back to the long ago day she’d come upon Mother sobbing about the rumors that had circulated during Anne’s Come Out regarding her late husband’s infidelity.
“Perhaps we can still right this.” Katherine looked hopefully to her husband. .“Isn’t that right, Jasper?”
Envy tugged at Anne’s breast. She’d trade anything and everything to have another person with whom she could unburden all the woes and fears she carried. What a vastly less lonely world it would be for her.
“Lord Rutland knows,” she whispered, knowing the temporary reprieve Katherine sought on her behalf was just that—temporary. Rutland knew all….and soon the entire ton would know.
A muscle ticked at the corner of her brother-in-law’s eye.
Rutland, notoriously ruthless in all matters, wouldn’t hesitate to shred Anne’s reputation.
Then her mother murmured perhaps the truest words she’d ever spoken. “This cannot be undone.”
Anne folded her arms about herself and hugged tight remembering Harry’s pledge to do right by her.
“He will wed her, Mother,” Katherine said in a gentling tone one might reserve for a fractious mare. “I’m certain of it.”
Anne didn’t doubt he’d sacrifice his own happiness to protect her from Rutland’s scheming. Everything she’d known of Harry before these past ten days had changed so very greatly. The man she’d once taken as an ignoble libertine was honorable, valiant, and all things goods.
“Wed her?” Anne cringed at her mother’s high-pitched squeal. “Wed her? I’d have her sooner wed—” She slashed the small space with a furious hand. “Any number of gentleman than that shameless rogue.”