Page 77 of The Trouble with Anna

Charlotte opened her mouth to wade in, but the Dowager squeezed her knee.

“Leave them be!” she whispered. “Can’t you see what a marvelous time they’re having?”

Julian ignored his grandmother and flicked the corner of his newspaper down. “Anna, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Why do you never take your horse out?”

“You must be quite blind. Sally and I are out nearly every morning.”

“I meant Charon. Remember, the horse I gave you?” Julian paused while Anna choked. “My poor darling, have you swallowed something?”

“No! I’m fine!”

“Wonderful.” Julian turned back to his paper. “Then let’s take Charon out tomorrow.”

“I’m afraid tomorrow doesn’t suit,” Anna said weakly.

“The day after, perhaps?”

Help me,Anna mouthed across the room, but Charlotte ducked her head like a coward and hid behind a long sip of tea.

“I—I—I…” Anna sat up straight as inspiration struck. “I can’t! I’ve sent Charon to Chatham. He’s not used to being cooped up in a city—he didn’t like it.”

Julian’s lips quirked. “How odd. I seem to recall that Lipizzaners are bred and trained in Vienna. Quite a large metropolis, I believe.”

“What’s that enormous red patch on your neck, Anna?” called Charlotte, rallying. “Is that from when Julian dragged you off down the corridor to ‘discuss something urgent’? Julian, if you’re going to have regular urgent discussions, you must try for a closer shave. In the meantime, I have a choker that’s just the thing for such situations.”

Julian snapped his paper down. “Which you wear with alarming frequency!”

“You’re in no position to lecture right now. In fact, you’re so wonderfully wrong-footed it seems the perfect time to confess any number of my crimes.” Charlotte considered. “I’ll spare us both and simply forgive myself.”

The Dowager smacked Charlotte with a pillow from the settee and Charlotte yelped.

“Gran! Was that necessary? Lady Cardiff told meyoukissed any number of men before my grandfather.”

“That was for interrupting!” Something on the pillow caught the Dowager’s attention and she held it up to examine it more closely. “For heaven’s sake, Charlotte! Why must you keep embroidering ants everywhere?”

The Dowager was quite right—Anna was having a marvelous time with Julian. Her day didn’t start until she heard him bounding up the front steps, and the thrill of a big bet coming good was nothing to the thrill of his hand low on her back as he escorted her into yet another party. Or better, escorted her into a dark corner, where his hands could roam rather more freely.

On the rare occasions she found a second to breathe, she tried to be rational.

You mustn’t run headlong!

But her heart wasn’t listening, or couldn’t hear her over its own pounding.

Best of all, Julian seemed to be in the same state as Anna. He had even begun to work in the Dowager’s study. Lady Alice looked on bemused as stacks and stacks of papers were delivered to her house and messengers arrived at all hours of the day.

“Pay me no mind! I only live here,” she said, when Julian apologized for the constant knocks on the door and the strangers clogging her foyer.

Anna was fascinated by all of it—the new laws introduced in the House of Lords, the railroads and foundries, the mines, the port cities expanding every day. When Julian realized the breadth of her interests, he opened the door to her, inviting her to attend any meeting or ask any question she wished. She dove into his books each day after she finished with Chatham’s, and her interest seemed to please him. Until it began to disturb him in equal measure.

“Will you answer a question for me?” he asked Anna one morning. They were in the study together with the door open, as the Dowager insisted. Though Julian was endlessly inventive when it came to finding places to be alone, ferreting out all the nooksand quiet hallways where he could kiss Anna until she was badly in need of Charlotte’s choker and he was ready to bang his head against a wall. “How is Charlotte, do you think?”

Anna looked at him blankly. “Charlotte is hot-tempered. Lavish. Ever so slightly criminal. She’s my closest friend. What sort of question is ‘How is Charlotte’?”

“A straightforward one, I presumed. I’ve tried to give her everything a young lady needs, but lately I’ve wondered. Has she found purpose? I suppose I’m wondering if she’s happy?”

Anna allowed her mouth to drop open. “The great Earl Ramsay, reconsidering his position? On the needs of young women, of all things.”

“Answer me, please.”

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