Tess’s eyes narrowed. “You do like him, don’t you?”

“Who wouldn’t? He’s given up his hopes for a wealthy bride, and accepted me without a word of reproach,” Annabel said, tossing her handkerchief onto the bedside table.

“Sounds like a milksop to me,” Josie said dispassionately.

“That’s because you haven’t met him yet, you little termagant,” Tess told her. “Ardmore is—well, Annabel, how would you describe him?”

“He’s a Scot. He’s not as complex as an Englishman, and yet more honorable. He says what he thinks. I would guess that he is kind in his dealings with servants and that he cares for his tenants.”

“But do you like the way he looks?” Tess insisted.

Annabel shrugged, trying to push away an image of the earl’s gleaming muscles when he stood shirtless in the hotel room. “He’s not objectionable.”

Suddenly her elder sister was grinning like a cat with a saucer of cream. “I take back my offer of a house,” she said. “I think a dose of Scottish air is just what you need. Whenever you wish, you shall come back to London and we’ll all be comfortable. All right?”

“All right,” Annabel said slowly.

“Now, darling, here’s what I wish that Mother had been alive to say to me before my wedding night.”

“Splendid!” Josie exclaimed.

“It’s nothing you’ll find terribly interesting,” Tess said to her.

“How can you say that? I find everything interesting!”

“As regards the marital bed…”

Josie leaned forward. “Yes?” she asked breathlessly.

“It is my firm opinion that gentlemen have some trouble expressing what they would like,” Tess said. “Perhaps because it is difficult to speak to ladies. And it’s not just my Lucius who—”

“Who is rather on the expressionless side,” Josie interrupted.

“Not always,” Tess said, with an impudent grin that made Annabel laugh for the first time in three days. “At any rate,” she continued, “the solution is to observe that a man will do to you exactly as he would wish you to do to him.”

Annabel blinked at her sister. She had a fairly good understanding of the mechanics of marital consummation, and there was no way that she could—could—she didn’t have the equipment, for one thing.

“Not that,” Tess said, understanding her expression. “And I’m not going to be more explicit because you are barely sixteen,” she said to Josie. “Just watch what Ardmore does…He will likely treat you to exactly the kind of behavior he would most like to see, except his good manners won’t allow him to ask for it directly.”

Annabel thought about it. She had some trouble imagining Ardmore not asking for anything he wished. But perhaps people became more tongue-tied in the bed. “Thank you, Tess,” she said finally.

“Thank you for nothing!” Josie cried. “I certainly hope that someone will be a little more forthcoming with me next year. I fully intend to marry within my first season, you know.” She looked down a little uneasily at her body. “Miss Flecknoe knows of a reducing diet, and she’s going to put me on it four months before the season begins.”

Annabel shook her head. “Don’t do it, love. Your figure is exquisite.”

“No, it’s not,” Josie said. “I’m plump as a Bartholomew chicken, just as Papa used to say.”

“Papa,” Annabel said, “could be unkind.”

“He was truthful,” Josie said.

A memory darted into Annabel’s head of her father in a fury, staring her down over a ledger of her own carefully recorded figures. “You’ll never be the woman your mother was!” he had shouted at her then. “Your mother would never have spoken to me in such a churlish fashion. You’ll never make a biddable wife!” She sighed.

“Father was not always right,” Tess said. “And when it came to the way he teased you over your figure, Josie, he was always wrong. And the way he was so unkind to you as well, Annabel.”

A faint smile touched Annabel’s lips. She was unlikely to be a biddable wife, so their father was right in that respect.

“I’ll give it six months,” she said suddenly.

Tess blinked. “What?”

“I just can’t do it. I can’t face the misery of a lifetime of poverty,” she said, the truth bursting out of her. “But”—she steadied her voice—“if I just think that it’s only a six-month exile, and that perhaps I could return and live with you, Tess, I think I could bear it.”

“Oh, darling, you could always live with me.”

“I wouldn’t be in your way,” Annabel said. “I just need a—a refuge to think about.”

“I will always be your refuge!” Tess said, clutching her so tightly that it was almost as comforting as Ardmore’s hard arms around her. “You know that, darling.”

“Then I shall be off to Scotland in the morning,” Annabel said, swallowing back more of those unruly tears. “And I’ll see you very soon…perhaps for Christmas!”

Thirteen

It wasn’t until they had trundled on their way clear out of London that Annabel thought of a problem. That wasn’t quite true; for the last three days she had thought of nothing but problems, and only a few of them solvable. But this was a true problem, and it had to do with the world and everyone in it thinking they were man and wife. Lord and Lady Ardmore. Thinking she was a countess, an empty title if there ever was one.

“We’re not yet married,” she ventured to say.Ardmore sat opposite her, hair tossed by the wind, looking boneless and indolent, as if he hadn’t pounded alongside the carriage on a magnificent thoroughbred for the first three hours of their journey.

He flashed her a grin. “We will be.”

“But we are not at the moment. Yet we’ll be stopping at an inn for the night. How—how shall we arrange ourselves?”

His grin grew wider. “I’m afraid you’re right, lass. We’ll have to share a room. But the happy side of it all is that you can’t be ruined.”

“Because I already have been.” Her heart sank. She was no Puritan, but she had thought to marry before…

“No, no, you can’t be ruined because in the eyes of the world we’re married.”

So this would be her wedding night. In a manner of speaking.

But he was leaning forward. “When we’re truly married, Annabel, a night in a shared bed will be quite different from that we’ll have tonight, I promise you that.”

Not her wedding night, after all. She could feel color stealing up her cheeks. It was something about the way he grinned at her.

“What we should do is get to know each other better,” he said. “In the normal course of events, I’d be courting you now, trying to discover whether you sing off-key, whether you drink tea or coffee and, of course, whether I could bear to look at you every morning over breakfast. And you’d be doing the same for me.”

“In fact, I have been wondering if you have any relatives, my lord?” It was appalling, how little she knew of the man she was to marry.