Page 79 of A Virgin to Tempt the Duke

“Who said anything about marrying Lord Wexford? I’ve only let him call on me, as I feel I must…”

“Amiability is easy to live with, I suppose. But it is a very cold comfort when your mind is stubbornly fixed… elsewhere.”

Anna looked up from her fruit plate and set her fork down.

“Elsewhere?”

Rachel murmured something under her breath, and her gaze was up at the afternoon sky rather than at Anna. A faint, uncharacteristic softness stole over her features as she stared into the distance. For a moment, Anna wondered if she were talking about herself instead.

“You deserve someone whose name you find yourself writing in the margins of your thoughts, entirely against your own good sense,” she said finally.

“What do you mean, Rachel? I don’t understand what you speak of,” Anna asked, her heart racing.

“I am speaking of no one in particular,” Rachel interrupted briskly. “I just always imagined a love match for you, after all you have been through.”

“A love match? In the ton?”

“It’s what any of us can hope for…”

“I see,” Anna said, picking up her fork and eating again.

“I merely suggest you do not mistake Wexford’s lack of vices for the presence of an interesting personality,” Rachel recovered as her personality snapped back into place, her focus fully back on Anna. “It makes for a very quiet parlor, and a terribly lonely life. What will we talk about at dinner with Wexford?”

“Horses.”

“A reasonable topic,” Rachel said, and they laughed.

Anna tried, that evening, to be reasonable about it all. She had enjoyed a quiet supper and retired to her quarters immediatelyafter. Her mind raced as she considered all she had been through, and all that may be.

Much as she wanted to secure a good match, there was something to Rachel’s words that stirred within her. She sat at her dressing table and brushed her hair. She looked at herself with something approaching detachment. She was young, and beautiful to some, she supposed, but that wouldn’t last.

I must be wise. Lord Wexford is a good man. He would be a kind husband. I could do worse… I have done worse.

She cataloged their interactions as she stroked her hair. There was no mistake that he had indicated that he found her company agreeable. She knew he would not be averse to finding it on a permanent basis. There was not a single thing about him that she could identify as a flaw worth objecting to. Yet, he made her feel entirely, completely nothing.

In many ways, this is more than I could have ever dreamed of.

She looked at herself in the mirror for a while longer. When she realized she had been brushing her hair for an hour, she blew out the candle and went to bed.

At Lady Fontaine’s musicale, as Anna learned there could never be too many musicales, Frederick stood at the back of the room with Lord Larthby. Both men paid rapt attention to the stringquartet. Anna sat three rows ahead, and she was aware of him with the irritating, helpless precision of a compass aware of north. She heard a small rustle next to her and turned slightly to the right. She watched from the corner of her eye the moment Lord Wexford settled into the empty seat beside her.

She did not look toward the back of the room to see whether Frederick noticed. She was very carefulnotto look. She did, however, possess the sense to isolate the sounds in the room, the string instruments, whispering voices, the clinking of glasses, to note a small cough from the back of the room.

Check.

Later, she was equally careful not to notice the way Frederick’s gaze tracked Wexford across the room during the interval. She also did not outwardly note the flatness that settled over his expression when Wexford brought her a glass of lemonade and leaned in to say something that made her laugh. Anna did not notice any of this because she was a grown woman who told herself that there was nothing to notice. She was absolutely determined to believe it or at least play the part.

“Tell me what Lord Wexford said that was so funny,” Rachel said as she arrived at her side and ushered her toward a quiet spot near the windows.

“He made an observation about the violin player,” Anna said, trying to recall the details.

“What was the observation?”

“It was more amusing in the moment,” Anna said, unable to admit she had feigned laughter in an attempt to provoke her brother. “I think.”

Rachel shook her head, and they stood together in peaceful quiet. Anna noted that Frederick had been claimed by Lady Fontaine herself. Lord Larthby was nearby and caught Rachel’s eye across the room. It was peculiar to Anna. A brief, unplanned thing, immediately corrected. Rachel quickly looked at Lady Fontaine’s fireplace, her cheeks pink.

“Rachel,” Anna said, turning closer to her and moving a step closer.