Page 60 of A Virgin to Tempt the Duke

“Don’t,” he said.

Percy looked at the door again and meowed.

The carriage turned off the square, and the driver urged the horses up to pace. London moved past the windows in its usual indifferent fashion.

Anna focused her attention on the other carriages, the pedestrians, the grey sky above the rooftops. She sat with her hands in her lap and her bonnet straight and her posture as it should be.

Rachel’s closest friend. Of course I would help a friend of Rachel’s.

She knew. She knew what he would say. She knew what was coming and braced herself, and it arrived anyway and was still, somehow, more than she had prepared for.

I must focus on the positive. I am free.I am going to Wiltshire.

She had a house with her name on it and an allowance and no one directing her days, and she was going toward all of it, and the life she had wanted was ahead of her.

The carriage turned another corner, and Rathbourne House was behind her. She could not see it from the window.

She looked at her hands.She looked at the London street.

She pressed her lips together, which had begun to quiver. She was alone, the carriage was moving, and there was no one to see.

Heavens, she was very tired of being composed. She had ridden a stolen horse through London in a wedding dress. She had written her own name at the bottom of a deposition, had her face held in the hands of a man who would not say what she knew he felt.

Anna pressed the back of her glove to her mouth and wept.

Not quietly. Not in the contained way she usually cried, when she had kept it inaudible, so no one would have the satisfaction of it. The real kind, the kind that came from all the months of it. More specifically, from a man at the bottom of a staircase who had saidof coursein the voice of someone closing a door.

She thought of her parents, of Rachel, of all of it.

The carriage went on; London dissipated into country. She wept until she was empty, and then she sat with her face against the window glass, which was cold, and looked at the road ahead.

It is over.

CHAPTER 23

ONE YEAR LATER

The London market was a crush of color and noise even at this early hour, and Frederick found himself trailing half a step behind Rachel.

“I don’t know why I allowed myself to be dragged out here, just to watch you march through the stalls like a general surveying a battlefield.”

“Oh, come now, brother. It is not that bad.”

“Not that bad? I do not know if I have the strength to survive another half hour of ribbon comparisons?—”

A familiar voice cut through the din, and they turned their heads to find its source.

“Rachel! Rachel, is that you?” the voice called out.

Rachel spun, and the basket on her arm swung wildly enough that Frederick had to catch it before it toppled.

By the time he’d righted it, Rachel had already closed the distance and thrown her arms around the newcomer, laughing in a way Frederick hadn’t heard from her in a long time.

It hit him at his core, as if an arrow had been shot straight into his heart.

“Anna! Oh, you wretched creature, why did you not write to tell me you were coming?”

“And spoil the surprise?” Anna laughed, holding Rachel at arm’s length to look at her properly before embracing her again. “How could I do such a disservice?”