Kiss Me, Annabel

“Those were very good potatoes,” he said over his shoulder. “A man could live on potatoes like that.”

“Poo!” Annabel said. “They tasted like ash.”

“All the better for a little seasoning.”

Then Ewan was gently pulling her to her feet. “Annabel?” he asked. There was a question in his voice that didn’t need to be spoken out loud.

For a fleeting second, Annabel thought about what she was about to give up. She had always scorned young women who found themselves in the family way and without a husband. But none of that was relevant to Ewan; to the hunger in his eyes, and the ragged sound of his voice. Nor did it seem relevant to the ache she felt.

She didn’t want any more kisses—or at least, not only kisses. She was tired of going to sleep with her heart pounding, her body squirming against the sheets, feeling unsatisfied, curious and desirous, all at once.

She turned her lips to his throat and kissed him softly, but the taste of him made her shake with excitement. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, Ewan…Yes. Please.”

Twenty-two

They were sitting in the courtyard of the Pig & Sickle, waiting for a light supper before they climbed back into the carriage for three more hours. Josie was braving a scolding from Griselda by taking off her bonnet and sitting in the last rays of afternoon sunshine reading. Mayne had found to his delight that the innkeeper had an only slightly out-of-date copy of Racing News, and he was reading every line. Naturally, Imogen was devoting herself to irritating him.

“Draven loved Scotland,” she was saying, thankfully without that edge of grief that often haunted her voice. “He always said that horses trained better here. He thought the air was bracing, and that when you took them back down to England they would run faster, because their lung capacity had grown from breathing Scottish air. Do you agree, Mayne?”He muttered something. Anachronism had won the Newmarket Stakes; he couldn’t believe it. He’d considered buying the roan and decided she needed too much work. Apparently the Syvern stud had seen the same potential and done the work. If Anachronism was in top form, the horse would certainly beat his own entry in the Ascot.

Imogen broke into his thoughts again. “One thing you can say about Draven was that he did things with all his heart.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You,” she said pointedly. “You and your flirtation with horses. Anyone can tell that you’re utterly obsessed, just as obsessed as Draven ever was.”

Mayne cast her an irritated look. “I’m not planning to take a race so seriously that I leap on the horse’s back myself, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

“Uncalled-for,” Imogen remarked, tapping her fingernail against the table and eying him in a way he didn’t like. “For all Draven made mistakes, he was no dilettante. He took his study of horses seriously.”

Mayne turned over his racing sheet. “Thank you for your suggestion,” he said, controlling his voice to an even keel.

“I’m just thinking that you might take more pleasure in life if you allowed yourself to actually be interested in horses,” Imogen said, showing no reaction to his rebuff.

Mayne bent his head to read a squib about Burlington’s stables at Raby.

“I think you’re bored. You’re all of, what? Thirty-seven years old?”

“Thirty-four!” he snapped.

“You’ve more money than you know what to do with, no ambitions to take a wife or set up a family and no particular interest in your estate.”

“I take all proper interest in my estate.”

“I’m sure you do,” Imogen said in a soothing voice that wouldn’t have fooled a child. “Likely the roofs are mended, but that’s not my point. It doesn’t interest you.”

“And what precisely could interest me about it?” he asked, irritated beyond all bearing. “Are you suggesting I take up farming?”

She shrugged. “Lord knows, I don’t know what gentlemen do. Some of them seem to find it all quite engrossing. Look at Tuppy Perwinkle.”

“Tuppy fishes,” Mayne said flatly. “I cannot imagine anything so tedious as sitting on a riverbank in the rain.”

“In all probability, he would feel the same about the stables,” Imogen persisted. She opened a sewing box and was beginning to pull apart the tangled mess inside.

“Just what are you going to do with that?” Mayne said in a feeble attempt to change the subject.

“Sort Griselda’s embroidery yarns,” Imogen said, and then she turned directly back to the subject. “You’re in a malaise from pure boredom. You’ve nothing to do.”

“I’ve a great deal to do,” he answered, nettled beyond all bearing.

“No, you don’t. You have an excellent man of business, and I happen to know that Tess’s husband advises you on what to sell and such things, so you needn’t make any decisions there.”

“Only a fool would reject Lucius’s advice,” Mayne said. “What’s your point?”

“You’re bored. That’s my point.” Her rosy-tipped fingers danced over the skeins, selecting a plum-colored one. She started to tease it from the tangle.

Mayne considered going for a walk, anything to get away from her.

“Perhaps you should take up your seat in the House of Lords,” Imogen suggested.

He tried to imagine himself standing up on the floor, lecturing to all and sundry about the Corn Laws. And then his imagination failed. “No.”

“It is difficult to imagine you in such a place,” Imogen agreed. “It’s unfortunate that you have developed such a distaste for dalliance, since that kept you happily occupied for the last ten years.”

Mayne didn’t like that statement, however casually it was delivered. He didn’t like it that his memories of the last ten—no, the last fifteen—years were made up of little more than a glittering sweep of intrigues, stolen kisses, furtive erotic encounters and the odd duel with an enraged husband. Meetings with complacent husbands who didn’t give a damn had become routine. As had a few tears dropped on his sleeve once he made it clear that he had decided to move to another woman. Another woman, and another, and another.

Thinking over those years gave him a sour taste in his mouth.

Imogen had managed to free the plum-colored yarn and was starting on a sky-blue one. “There’s no use in bemoaning the past,” she said, without even looking at him. “I expect you enjoyed yourself at the time.”

Mayne’s lips twisted. In retrospect, those perfume-saturated evenings seemed tediously similar, tawdry and shallow, fueled by too much wine and a hearty sensual appetite.

Until the sensual appetite deserted him…and left him with nothing.

“But you seem to have lost your predilection for illicit dalliance,” she said, as if she read his thoughts. “Consider me, for example. You look at me with all the interest of an altered tomcat.”

“That’s disgusting,” Mayne snapped, at the same moment that Josie inquired, “What’s altered about a tomcat?”

“You must be the most indelicate female of my acquaintance!” he told Imogen, ignoring Josie’s question.