Page 61 of A Virgin to Tempt the Duke

Frederick stood back, watching the reunion and awkwardly clutching the basket. When at last the two women separated, Anna turned to him and dropped into a curtsy.

“Your Grace,” she said with a small smile.

“Lady Birchall.”

He bowed. If his eyes lingered a fraction longer than propriety dictated, he told himself it was curiosity. A single year had dramatically changed her. Time had softened the sharper angles of her face, no doubt a product of all she had endured, and warmed her complexion with a vibrant color he did not realizeshe once lacked. She looked healthy, whole, and undeniably beautiful.

“You look… healthy,” he said.

“I am, Your Grace. And you look well, too,” Anna said with a polite smile.

“When did you arrive?” Rachel had already looped her arm through Anna’s. “You must tell me everything. How is your aunt in Scotland? Is the cottage still standing? Or did you finally set it on fire as you always threatened?”

“The cottage stands, more’s the pity, and my aunt is well. She had a lovely visit a few weeks ago and has returned to Edinburgh. As for me, I arrived only yesterday. I felt ready to return…” Anna’s gaze flicked to Frederick, then away again, quick as a bird. “Rachel, you were kind enough to have visited me three times this year.”

“Three times was not nearly enough,” Rachel said. “I would have come every month, if my brother had allowed it. Something about appearances, securing a husband, the usual.”

“And you, Your Grace?” Anna’s tone was light, almost teasing, but there was something underneath it Frederick couldn’t name. “Not once in a twelvemonth. I had begun to think you’d forgotten I ever existed.”

“I had business that kept me in London through much of the year,” Frederick said, which was true, though it was not the whole of it, and he suspected she knew that as well as he did. “I have not been in the country much, except to check on my estate.”

“Of course.” Anna’s smile didn’t waver, but it didn’t reach her amber eyes either. “Well, I am here now, and so are you, and Rachel has clearly dragged you both out to suffer through the market together. So, let us suffer together properly.”

They fell into step, the three of them, just as they once had so easily. Rachel stood between them at first, then drifted ahead toward a stall of dyed silks that had caught her eye.

“I must look at these!” She said, calling over her shoulder. “Only be a moment.”

Frederick watched her with the cynical caution of an older brother who knew that, where his sister was concerned, “a moment” could easily span an hour.

Never in his life had he felt so terribly divided, at once fortunate and utterly cursed to be standing at Anna’s side. He had dreamed of a moment much like this more times than he could count. The realization that she had fallen silent stole over him gradually.

When he turned to look at her, he found she was blind to the nearby milliner’s wares. Instead, her eyes were fixed across the square upon a cluster of fashionable young mothers, obliviousto the children tumbling about their feet. A pair of overwhelmed nursemaids struggled to keep order, particularly with one tiny toddler who had snarled her bonnet ribbons. She was currently protesting the injustice with a magnificent, piercing outrage unique to early childhood.

“Lady Birchall.” He said her title once, twice, and she didn’t stir. “Anna.”

She turned at last, and there was something unguarded in her face for just a moment before she composed it. “Forgive me, Your Grace. I was woolgathering,” she said as she turned her attention back to the wares.

“What were you looking at?”

She hesitated. He watched her decide something, watched the decision settle into her shoulders.

“I want a baby.”

The space around him swirled as he tried to make sense of the four words she had just spoken, slowly registering them.

Frederick opened his mouth and found, for what might have been the first time in his adult life, that no words arrived to fill it. He stared at her. The market noise seemed to recede very far away.

“I beg your pardon,” Anna said, and now color was rising in her cheeks, “that was abominably blunt of me. I oughtn’t have said it like that, standing in the middle of a market with you looking at me as though I’d announced I meant to rob a bank.”

“It is all right… I merely, erm… I think I am missing something…” he stammered, running a hand through his hair.

“I only meant that I spent a year in the country with nothing to do but think, and I have decided: I want a child of my own. A family of my own. A chance to do it all right. I’ve always loved children.”

“You…” Frederick said at last, and then had to start again. “You require a husband first, my lady.”

“I am aware of that, Your Grace.” There was an edge to her voice now, amusement and something sharper both. Her eyes met his. “It is in fact why I have come to London. To find one.”

He blinked at her. “To find a husband.”