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Chapter Two

For a few breathless moments, Hal’s poise near deserted him. He had made a dreadful mistake! Was this whey-faced creature—this demure little matron, becapped and respectable—was this his fiery Annabel? She had never been a beauty, but she’d been spirited. She’d had a special magnetism that had haunted his dreams, along with those flashing green eyes.

Then he realised that they were staring at him in both shock and bewilderment. That there was a gauntness in her cheeks where there had once been bloom. But recognition surfaced just the same. This was Annabel.

Disappointment thrust at Hal, driving down the guilt, and he was conscious of a craven wish that he had not come. But his scheme—designed to thwart the inevitable defiance of the remembered Annabel—was fairly embarked, and he was as well trapped himself as he had thought to trap his quarry.

He became aware of the cleric at his elbow, the innocent Mr Hartwell, whom he had suborned into establishing his claim in a bid to make it impossible for Annabel to repudiate him.

“Mrs Lett is a good deal overcome, sir.”

An understatement. She was clearly near swooning with shock. There were two females fussing to either side of her, the younger of whom was despatched by the other to fetch a glass of water. He had not intended Hartwell to make so public an exhibition of the affair.

“I feared that it would prove overwhelming,” he responded, and noted with dismay that Annabel’s silent figure flinched at the sound of his voice. She evidently knew him.

The vicar’s expression was expectant. It flashed through Hal’s mind that his assumed role demanded more of him. He hesitated. Should he go to her? Would a true husband at this juncture seize her in his arms? He could not bring himself to do it! Not to the female staring at him in so bemused a fashion. He did not even know what to say to her.

In truth he had not planned beyond the softened presentation by a local man of the cloth. But then it had not occurred to him that he would find so altered a creature in the woman he had loved and wronged. Nor that he would meet with anything other than a rebuff. Hence Mr Hartwell.

“If Jane will only hurry with that water,” came worriedly from the older female, who was chafing one of Annabel’s hands. “I fear she may faint away, Mr Hartwell!”

“I never faint.”

Hal felt his guts go solid. Annabel’s voice was a thread, but he would have known it anywhere. Its clear tone was in his head in too many recollected utterances to be mistaken. Deep inside the stranger he was confronting lurked the woman he had known.

He knew that it behoved him to consolidate the position he had adopted, but some quality in Annabel’s dull green gaze—it had used to be anything but lacklustre!—made him pause.

His soldiering instincts came to his rescue. When baulked by the enemy, retreat and regroup. He set his shoulders and summoned a hearty air.

“Perfectly true. To my knowledge, she never has fainted.” He turned to the vicar. “All the same, I believe it will be best if we withdraw for a space, my dear sir, and allow my wife a little time to recover.”

Annabel stared after his retreating back. Wife? His wife? She became aware of coolness against her lips.

“Drink, Annabel.”

She did so, bringing up a wavering hand to clasp the cool glass. There her fingers encountered Jane’s, bringing her a little more alert.

“I think I can manage.”

“Very well, but I will remain close by.”

The glass came into her full possession and Annabel drank deeply. Her head began to clear. But an odd sensation, as if she were living in a dream, possessed her.

If she was not asleep, then Hal was here! Hal, whom she had last seen on that fatal night which had shattered her then known life, casting her adrift in this alien sea. Forced to hide her identity under a living lie, that a false cloak of respectability might be cast over the shadowed little creature that was her innocent daughter.

Hal, whom she had been unable to forget—unable to forgive!—reminded daily by the growing likeness in Rebecca’s face and hair. How had he traced her here? Why had he done so? Foolish question! The answer was in Mr Hartwell’s announcement.

Murmurs above her head reached vaguely through the cloudy thoughts that roamed her mind.

“He is so extremely handsome, don’t you think?”

He had ever been so, and he had changed little—if she had been in any condition to judge. A dashing red-coat, who had returned her deep regard—inexplicably! Many had been her rivals, and no one had been more surprised than Annabel when he had sought her out.

“And so like Rebecca. There can be no doubt of his being her father.”

No doubt at all. And so everyone must suppose who saw him. Oh, she was undone indeed!

A faint protesting sound escaped her, and the two ladies immediately bent towards her.

“Poor Annabel, are you a little recovered?”

She turned her eyes on Charlotte Filmer’s anxious features. “I think I shall never recover.”

“Oh, don’t say so!” exclaimed Jane Emerson. “You are shocked, of course, and have not yet had time to realise—”

She was cut off with unusual curtness by the gentle Mrs Filmer. “Hush, Miss Emerson! She has time enough for realisation. Dear Annabel, take one little step at a time, I urge you. To be so suddenly re-united with your husband must be a severe disorientation.”

“Oh, yes, and he clearly saw it,” agreed Jane eagerly. “It shows such delicacy of feeling in Captain Lett to have brought Mr Hartwell to pave the way.”

Captain Lett! She had forgotten. Hal had come here posing as her husband, revoking her pretended widowhood. She was not ruined, but rather vindicated—but by a further lie. And one which gave him rights he did not have!

Abruptly, the implications of his action leaped into her mind. A surge of warmth overtook her as a memory—long thrust away as too painful to be contemplated—burst into life.

That little summerhouse! She had gone there, dragged by his impatient hand, only to indulge in a quarrel so empassioned that the deep-seated emotions that had bound them together had flamed, disastrously consuming them both.

Annabel had not blamed him for it, though he had bitterly condemned himself. She had been as much at fault, had owned as much to Papa. Only—

Her chest locked as the long-buried hurt rushed up to taunt her. Only Captain Henry Colton, in whom she had believed so implicitly, had failed her. And now—more than three years too late!—he dared to return in a mockery of that role he should rightly have assumed at the outset, as her husband.

Wrath burned as she recognised how he had trapped her. Before three witnesses, no less. It would be all over the area before the cat could lick her ear! Useless to beg her friends to keep silent. They would, if she required it, she knew. But to what avail?

Mrs Amelia Hartwell was probably already in possession of the news. From the vicar’s wife to the world was but a short step. And what hope had she of hiding anything when Aggie Binns was living not one hundred yards from her own door?

All vestige of that earlier shock had left her, replaced by fury such as Annabel had not felt in years. At his arrogance. At his sheer audacity!

Gripped by impatience, she rose abruptly. “I must thank you both for your kindness. Will you think me rude if I ask you to leave me now?”

Her voice was shaking, and Jane instantly picked up on it.

“My dear Annabel, you are in no condition to be left alone!”

“Indeed, my dear, I am persuaded you ought to lie down upon your bed for a little,” added the anxious Charlotte.

It was only by a supreme effort of will that Annabel prevented herself from shouting at them to go. But the habit of these last years reasserted itself. She was used now to suppressing the volcano of her feelings! She managed to summon a smile.

“Truly, I am over the shock now. But you will understand that the situation demands a degree of privacy.” Her tone became vibrant, despite that tight control. “I must speak with Hal alone!”

“Hal? How charmingly that suits him!” exclaimed Jane Emerson.

Annabel could have screamed. It was plain that her friend had been carried away by the romance of it all. Well, if she was determined to approve the bogus Captain Lett, let her do so. She might sing another tune if she knew the truth!

To Annabel’s relief, Charlotte Filmer intervened. “Come, Miss Emerson, we must take our leave. There must be so much to be said, and we are abominably de trop.’

Even as she spoke, the two gentlemen were seen to be returning around the corner of the house. The sight of Hal in person threw Annabel back into a degree of disorder, so that she scarcely took in the varied remarks of the well-wishers through the leave-taking. Yet in no time at all the murmur of voices died away, and she was left standing under the overhang of the chestnut tree, confronting a ghost from the past.

The silence lengthened. Hal knew not what to say. Almost he wished he had taken the sage warnings of his brother to heart. His determination, in the face of the apparent stranger that Annabel Howes had become, seemed to him now the product of that reckless temperament Ned had so often deprecated.

Regret his hastiness he might, but having taken this fatal step, he would stand buff. Only how to open communications with the creature he now faced utterly defeated him.

He drew a breath. “I have taken you by surprise.”

An abrupt spurt of mirthless laughter escaped Annabel’s lips. “To say the least.”

Hal stiffened. “It was meant for the best.”

Sudden fire from the green eyes took him aback. Annabel—much more the Annabel he remembered!—threw back her head, thrusting a defiant chin into the air.

“It was meant, Captain Colton, to ensure my acquiescence. It has not been so long that I am unable to recall your skill with tactics.”

Hal let out a reluctant laugh. “The devil! And I thought you’d changed beyond recognition.”

Annabel’s fire died, and she tried to recover her rapidly slipping control. It was like a nightmare. Standing here in his presence, hearing his voice, a prey to every outraged feeling he had ever made her feel, so that she knew not what to feel or think. She barely knew that she answered him.

“I have changed, yes. Circumstance has a way of making one do so.”

“So I see.”

He received a bleak look that struck him between the ribs. Her voice had taken on coldness. She blamed him for the change! Why would she not? Guilt rose up. He took a pace towards her.

Annabel drew back. “Keep your distance! You need not imagine that your usurped identity gives you any rights concerning me.”

Despite himself, Hal felt his temper rising. “What do you take me for? I have no intention of—”

“I am glad you chose to bring up the subject of your intentions, sir, because I am excessively interested to know what they might be.”

Hal found it necessary to set his teeth against unwise utterance. He tried for a calmer note. “Annabel—”

She cut him short again. “Mrs Lett to you, sir.”

“Oh, the devil!” he snapped, exasperated. “I am supposed to be your husband.”

“Not by any will of mine.”

“That I concede.”

Annabel put a hand to her forehead, kneading it painfully. This could not be happening. If only she could think straight! She felt as if she had lost command of both her reason and her tongue. She did not want to bandy words with him. She wanted to fly across the intervening grass and batter at him with her fists! How dared he come here like this? How dared he presume so far? He, whose perfidy had brought her to this pass.

“I cannot talk to you,” she managed, her hand falling to her side. “There is too much confusion—too much pain.”

Hal watched her move unsteadily to the bench and sink down upon it. Compunction seized him. What had he done? Blundering in upon an ill-considered impulse. Devil take it, Ned had been right! He had taken an extreme measure that suited his own conscience, without thought to what distress it might cause at the other end.

Yet one thing spurred him. The short glimpse of that Annabel of his memories. She lay dormant, perhaps, but she was there. She had survived!

He dared to approach within a couple of paces of the figure that sat with bowed head, one hand pressed below her breast where an agitated motion was visible.

“Annabel.”

Her eyes opened, and she looked up at him. Her eyes were dim with incomprehension. Her voice was an anguished whisper.

“How could you serve me so?”

Hal shifted his big shoulders uncomfortably. “I acted without thinking it through. I thought you would refuse even to see me, let alone allow me to make reparation.”

The expression in her eyes became bleaker still. “Reparation. Is that what you came for?”

He dropped back a pace. “I came to take on responsibility for my actions. It is what I would have done a long time ago, as you must very well know.”

Annabel’s confusion deepened. “Must I? I have lived three years and more without knowing it!”

Hal stared at her for a moment, more puzzled than angry. “Oh, this must be to punish me. You cannot accuse me of deserting you, Annabel. It was you who vanished without trace. My regiment was posted away, it’s true, but—”

She thrust a hand up to stop him. “Pray do not make me any pretence of this kind. It is more than I can endure.”

He frowned deeply. But the solution leaped to the eye. “I see your father’s hand in this.”

At that she flared again. “Don’t dare speak hardly of my father! He has done more for me than you would have done.”

“Sending you here? What sort of a life is this?” He waved an impatient hand. “But let that pass. You wrong me, Annabel. I see what it is. Even in this extremity, your father would not unbend from that haughty arrogance that first parted us.”

Annabel got up abruptly. “It was not my father who took me in the summerhouse that night!”

Hal’s hot temper flared. “You need not taunt me! Do you suppose I have not suffered agonies of remorse? Do you think I have not tried by every means in my power to make amends? Devil take it, Annabel! Have I no honour in your eyes?”

“Is it honour then that has brought you here today?”

She strode restlessly away across the grass, moving in a jerky fashion that spoke clearly the agitation of her spirits. In movement and in voice, she resembled more and more the woman of Hal’s remembrance. But her words pricked him.

“It is precisely that! I wronged you, and I have wanted ever since to right you in the eyes of the world.”

Annabel turned on him. “Indeed? And so you have chosen to do so by ensuring that I live with you in sin!”

Hal’s indignation deserted him. This aspect of the matter had not occurred to him. He lifted his fingers and smoothed at his moustache.

It was a characteristic gesture, and a shaft of affectionate memory gave Annabel a sensation as of melting. Just so had he always stood, caressing the short red hairs, whenever he had been disconcerted.

“Well, no one knows that,” he said, recovering. “And once we are truly married—”

“How?” struck in Annabel. “When we are thought to be already married?”

He worked on his moustache for a moment or two in silence. Then he flung up a hand in a hopeless gesture.

“I had not thought of all this. You will think me a fool, I suppose. But the truth is that when I heard of your predicament, I acted instantly upon the knowledge with no thought for the consequences.”

Yes, it had been ever his way, she remembered. Then the substance of his remarks penetrated. “How did you hear of it? Did you go to my father? No, he would not have told you!”

Hal pounced. “Aha, you see! I knew he had thwarted me.”

But Annabel’s gaze was accusing. “How did you know?”

“I set a man to find you. He was here for some days not long since. He discovered not only your whereabouts, but your circumstances too. He thought you were a widow, but I remembered that Lett was your mother’s name, and I knew it wasn’t so. That is why I came.”

But the realisation that Captain Colton had spied upon her was the crowning insult. Her voice shook.

“You took too much upon yourself, sir. You think you have out-jockeyed me, but you are mistaken. A man may be seen to return from the dead, I grant you. But he may equally be seen to be recalled to his regiment! And that, Captain Lett, is precisely what is going to happen.”

With which, she turned on her heel and left him flat, heading for the rear of the little cottage.

Sleep eluded Annabel, despite a deadness of sensation that consumed her body. It had been a fatiguing day. When she had escaped from Hal, she had found herself so plagued by conflicting emotions that she had run past Janet and her daughter in the kitchen, startling them both, and had fled upstairs to indulge in a hearty bout of weeping.

This had proved so efficacious that she had been able at length to descend again, determined to present Captain Colton with a list of distinct rulings by which he might remain for a short time in his usurped status. In this she had been immediately balked on discovering from Janet that Hal had departed with Mr Hartwell, who had apparently waited for him.

“Gone? He has gone—and without a word said?”

“He’ll be back, he said,” the maid had responded, adding in the curt way habitual to her, “It’s him, isn’t it?”

Annabel had sighed out the abrupt sensation of renewed shock that had attacked her, and had plonked down on the sofa. Rebecca had promptly climbed into her lap, and Annabel had received her automatically, her eyes on Janet’s thin-lipped disapproval.

“He’s calling himself Captain Lett.”

Janet had snorted. “And where are we to put him, ma’am, if I may make so bold?”

Annabel had flushed. “You need not set your imagination to work, Janet! You had best make up the truckle bed in the back room.”

The maid had sniffed. “If I can set aside the bits and bobs of your sewing tackle.”

This had been speedily dealt with. “Put them in my room for the time being.”

Annabel had not doubted of its being only the first of the many inconveniences occasioned by the advent of a man into the little cottage. She had appropriated the smaller room behind the parlour for use as a workroom, ostensibly for the purpose of sewing clothes for herself and the infant, and for Janet too. But having begun by taking in a little mending to help a friend, Annabel had gradually acquired a small circle of clients among the more needy of the local ladies for whom she fashioned gowns, often out of old ones which she refurbished in the current mode. It was not an occupation that she cared to advertise. However, both Charlotte and Jane had used her services, along with others of the Guarding teachers and a gossipy spinster in Abbot Giles by the name of Lucinda Beattie.

It had been imperative to Annabel to conceal this activity from Hal. She did not wish him to think her reduced to such straits. Bad enough that she must tolerate his hateful condescension. He had come to make reparation indeed!

By the time he had returned, driving his own phaeton, and bringing with him a batman—whom Janet immediately stigmatized as the Jack-at-warts she had encountered hanging about the village green not long since—the light was fading and Rebecca had been long abed. Annabel, having resented Hal’s arrival, had been for several hours in a fume at his prolonged absence.

“Since you left word you would come back, it would have been a courtesy in you to have said what time we might expect you,” she had complained angrily.

“I couldn’t because I didn’t know,” Hal had responded briefly, his bulk dwarfing even the large family room of Annabel’s cottage.

Since it offered the most space, she had furnished it both with a sofa and one chair about the fireplace and a dining-table next to the window. A judiciously placed screen shut off the draught from the front door, which opened directly on to the room. So used to its inconvenient restrictions was Annabel that she no longer noticed them. Until tonight, when Captain Colton’s appearance had made her all too aware of the shortcomings of her accommodation.

Balked of her complaint, she had sought another weapon with which to belabour him. “If you are expecting dinner, you will be disappointed, for we ate hours ago.”

“I had a bite at the Hartwells before I left.”

Annabel’s frustration had deepened. “Janet says you have a man with you. Where you expect us to put him, I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Oh, I’ve arranged for that,” Hal had announced, infuriatingly offhand. “He’s to put up at a farm nearby, along with the phaeton and horses. I knew you could not have stabled them. And it was imperative that Weem remain with them, for I value my cattle too highly to leave them in charge of a farmhand.”

There had been a pause. In the light of the few candles Annabel had left burning in one small candelabra, Hal’s blue-grey eyes had glinted down at her from his superior height. Annabel’s had met them defiantly, almost daring him to ask the question that hovered between them.

“Where have you put me?”

She had felt her colour rush up. “I dare say you will find it excessively uncomfortable.”

Hal had smiled grimly. “I’m a soldier, Annabel. I’ll sleep on the floor in the kitchen, if need be.”

Annabel had swept to one side, avoiding his gaze. “We are not reduced to quite that extremity. Janet will show you the room.” Without looking at him, she had offered grudgingly, “If you are hungry, I dare say she can find you bread and cheese, or some such thing.”

He had refused it, and Annabel had murmured a gruff good night and escaped, leaving Janet to see to his needs. After she had heard the maid take herself to bed in the small room adjoining Becky’s, Annabel yet could not sleep.

The unseen presence below stairs seemed to pervade the house, and her wandering thoughts were distressing enough to keep her wakeful. Inevitably, they drifted back to that fateful night at that last fashionable ball…

Without meaning it, her eyes had strayed automatically to every scarlet coat, discarding each broad-shouldered back as she did not find the familiar red-gold hair above it. In the event, Hal had found her instead. A touch on her shoulder, and as she turned, the familiar rush of warmth engulfed her as she encountered his serious gaze.

“I must speak with you alone!”

The low tone was anguished, and Annabel longed to give in. But in honour bound, she protested, her voice equally muted.

“To what avail, Hal?”

“Come with me, Annabel, I beg of you!”

He grasped her arm. Resistless, she allowed herself to be drawn through the motley crowds and out at the French windows. He took her hand, and pulled her across the terrace.

“For heaven’s sake, Hal! If anyone were to see us!”

Hal’s hurrying pace did not waver. “There’s a summerhouse of sorts. We can talk there.”

Her heart was beating like a drum, and Annabel knew she ought to turn back. But so dearly had she longed to see him again that she could not fight the impulse that drove her to match swift steps to his.

Night swallowed them up as the light that spilled on to the terrace fell further behind them. Hal slowed, guiding her silently across the grass. A shadow loomed ahead, and Annabel found herself stepping up into an arboured place, of circular structure, lit only by the stars and a splatter of moonlight thrusting through a patterned fretwork to lie unevenly upon the flagged floor.

Breathless, and not altogether from the chase, Annabel felt herself released. She shifted away from the large silhouette that was her discarded love, her pulses in riot. She broke into shaky speech.

“Why have you brought me here? There is nothing to be said between us, Hal. It is finished.”

She could hear his uneven breath, and knew that his tempestuous nature was aroused.

“Yes, so you said a week ago. I was too upset, too angry to think then, Annabel. But I’ve had time enough since. You acted under your father’s commands, I know it.”

“Under his guidance,” she corrected. “How could I marry you when he is so much opposed to it?”

“Even when his opposition is dictated by unreasoning obstinacy?”

Her eyes were growing accustomed to the dark, and Hal’s big frame was becoming more visible. His nearness was torture to her. Yet she must adhere to that resolve that had driven her to reject him.

“Hal, we have had all this out. I am his only child. It is natural that he should wish a better future for me than—”

“Than is to be had with a younger son who has only just acquired a captaincy,” he finished bitterly. “Don’t tell me it again, for I don’t believe it! Mr Howes knows well that I am a full-pay officer with a promising future.”

“He will not have me follow the drum, Hal.”

“If you don’t care for that, why should he?”

“If Papa had forbidden me, or had treated me badly over this, I would not have hesitated,” she uttered, low-voiced. “He has tried instead to overcome his scruples—”

“Scruples!” burst from Hal. “His unreasoning prejudice rather.”

“Nothing of the sort. I assure you, he tried to hide his disappointment from me, but I could see his unhappiness. It was that which has been my undoing.”

“Emotional blackmail!” scoffed Hal.

“Don’t say that! How dare you say that? Papa would never use me so. He allowed our betrothal. It is I who chose to break it off. How can you abuse him?”

Hal gave a laugh in which bitterness sounded. “With ease, Annabel. My darling, he is using your affection for him, don’t you see? He may have given his consent against his will, but he gave it! And you have allowed him to twist you away from your own heart.”

“Oh, stop!” cried Annabel, thrusting away as far as the small space would allow. “This is all so useless! Why can you not see how you hurt me with this persistence?”

“And what of my hurt, Annabel? I love you!”

Her heart twisted. “Don’t, Hal!”

He moved swiftly, catching at her shoulders and pulling her to face him. “I must! Annabel, there is so little time. I can’t leave England, knowing that you care for me, only to be tortured every moment by the thought of you marrying someone else.”

Annabel tried to drag away. “Let me go! Can’t you see that you are pulling me in half? Hal, this is so unfair! Do you think it cost me nothing to reach that decision? I love you too, but—”