Page 45 of The Trouble with Anna

“Marry me!” he commanded with a hard shake.

“Oh, all right!” she cried, and he swooped down and shredded her up all over again.

CHAPTER19

ALL THROUGHOUT THE NIGHT, ASbottles of the finest champagne were trotted up from the cellar, as Charlotte shrieked for joy and the Dowager enveloped him in hugs, as the maids and footmen clinked their glasses for the servants’ toast, Julian was conscious of a cold, creeping feeling. It was more insinuating than dread, icier than anger, and carried the distinct spike of acid.

In a lesser man, he might have called it panic.

Even as he smiled and accepted the good wishes frothing up from all sides, even as Charlotte got quite drunk and began to claim all credit, the odd feeling grew.

Married.

To Lady Anna Reston.

When had one spiky little woman become sonecessaryto him?

Julian unconsciously reached over to hold her elbow, just as he had earlier placed a hand on the small of her back, actions he hadn’t noticed until he saw Charlotte’s smug eyes tracking him. He yanked his hand away and Anna looked up swiftly, pale under all the attention.

His chest clenched at her obvious discomfort, just as it had when she had confronted him in the study, holding herself straightthroughout her brutal recitation. It was all he could do not to gallop back to Chatham and raze the Viscount’s gravestone.

Anna stole another look at him, a fast and frankly worried peep under the screen of her lashes, and when he caught her, she whipped her head away. He wanted to clear the room, bring the champagne coupes crashing to the floor and press her back against the table until he’d kissed some color into her face. He wanted to push her up against a wall, hitch her leg up around his hip, and tease her mouth into a smile.

Julian’s head began to throb. He hadn’t asked for any of this, not for a wife and certainly not one who had the power to reach into his chest, wrap her hand around his heart, and squeeze.

What the hell was he going to do with her now that he had her?

Adore her?called an embarrassingly needy voice inside.

He ignored it, trying to imagine Anna taking her place alongside the ladies of London, standing out like a scratchy bolt of wool next to silk. A wall of anger rose up in him at the thought of the tricky little barbs that would be fired Anna’s way, all the people he’d have to murder because of them.

Charlotte, exhausted at last, collapsed backward onto the settee with a gusty “Whew!”

In the curve where Anna’s neck met her shoulder, he saw a small scrape of red from the rasp of his jaw. He wanted to shove Charlotte off the settee, pull Anna down on it, and kiss his way down to that scrape and then past it to the swell of her small, firm breasts, until her dark eyes went dreamy.

His eyebrows snapped together. He’d had plenty of sex, damn it, and he liked it best when it wasn’t made sticky by emotion. Yet it was all he could do not to get Anna against the nearest available surface and complicate a situation already as volatile as lightning.

Julian rose abruptly to his feet and found himself the focusof three sets of eyes. “I regret I have a very early start tomorrow and must bid you good evening.” He gave a short, sharp bow, and strode from the room, conscious of Anna’s startled gaze on his back.

Something slithery coiled tight inside him.

That night in his chambers at Ramsay House, memories landed heavy on Julian’s chest. They fell one by one, like shovels of dirt onto his coffin. He saw his father, drunk and darkening into anger. He saw young Charlotte clinging to Gran’s skirts, and Charlotte’s mother with hectic eyes and heightened color.

It’s all in the past, he yelled at himself as he twisted and turned.You’re in control now. You’ve chosen the kind of earl you want to be.

Except he didn’t feel in control, not lately.

Julian’s mood was no less grim the next morning. He rose as first light crept over the horizon and dressed in near darkness without bothering to ring for his valet. The need to leave beat in his ears like a drum.

His traveling carriage was rolling toward the Bath Road when Julian realized he’d left a sheaf of documents at the Dowager’s. He swore and rapped on the ceiling, and the carriage turned around.

A bleary-eyed Levy opened the door at the townhouse. “My lord! The young ladies—”

“Are still in bed, I presume.”

“No, my lord—”

But Julian wasn’t listening. He stalked past the butler and down the long corridor toward the Dowager’s study. As he opened the door, Charlotte poked her head out from the turn at the end of the hallway, one drowsy eye looking out at him from behind a mess of curls.

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