Anne's Perfect Husband

“I thought she was a child. I was imagining a lonely little girl, forced to spend Christmas in a deserted boarding school.”

“And when you saw her?”

A more difficult question, Ian admitted. With a more complicated answer—especially after the events of that journey. He might admit the answer to his own conscience, but he would certainly not offer it for his brother’s consideration.

“Her headmistress suggested that it’s my responsibility to find her a suitable husband,” he said instead.

Dare’s lips pursed, and then he stood, putting the glass back on the table before he looked down on his brother again. “And how do you intend to go about that? Anyone who served with you knows what Darlington did. None of your friends will even be civil to the girl.”

“Including you?” Ian asked. “Rather Old Testament, Val.”

“Good God, you don’t anticipate that I should have to meet her, do you?”

“Like it or not, she is my ward,” Ian said simply. “You are my brother, and the head of this family. I don’t see how you should avoid meeting her.”

“I shall avoid it by the simple expedient of refusing to meet the daughter of the coward who almost cost my brother his life.”

“She doesn’t know any of that,” Ian said.

“And you don’t intend to tell her,” Dare guessed.

“Would you?”

The silence stretched a moment, and finally, Dare turned away from the bed and seated himself again in the chair. “Then what do you intend to do?” he asked. Both the sarcasm and the anger had been wiped from his voice.

“I intend to find her a suitable husband.”

“Does she have any assets that make her marriageable?”

Ian thought about the girl he had brought back from the north, picturing her in his mind’s eye. And as he did so, he attempted to divorce his unexpected and highly improper physical response from his judgment.

There was no doubt she was lovely and unspoiled. Unsophisticated as well, he acknowledged. And courageous beyond any woman he had ever known, with the possible exception of Dare’s Elizabeth. Having avoided London society for the last few years, Ian wasn’t sure, however, if any of those qualities, other than the first, would be considered an advantage there.

“Ian?” Dare prompted.

“Money, do you mean? Very little, I would imagine. The solicitor is still investigating the estate, but whatever Darlington had he usually gambled away.”

“Looks?”

“She’s…pleasant enough, I suppose,” Ian said carefully, remembering that pale face in the moonlight, framed by strands of bedraggled hair. He had thought her incredibly beautiful at that moment, but then she had just saved his life, so he supposed he could not be considered entirely unbiased. “I’m not sure what type of beauty is currently in vogue.”

“And what type does she possess?” Dare asked, his voice for the first time holding the familiar amusement with which he normally confronted the vagaries of life.

“She’s tall. And rather slender. Her hair is…auburn.” At the last second, Ian had avoided his original choice of words. As out of touch with the beau monde as he might be, even he knew that redheads had not managed to take the town by storm in his absence.

“Her eyes are fine. Very speaking,” he finished lamely, meeting the earl’s equally fine eyes, which were, without any doubt, also speaking. And Ian wasn’t entirely sure he liked what they were saying.

“Good luck,” Dare said.

“I shall need more than luck, Val. I shall need your help,” Ian said doggedly.

This was not a duty he had sought, nor one he wanted, but he could not fault the girl for her father’s sins. He knew the narrow world to which they both belonged would, however, if that story got out. It was a world whose membership was determined strictly by birth, which Anne Darlington did possess. And it seemed that might be the only attribute she could claim that would have any meaning there.

“My help to do what?” Dare asked, the amusement gone. “Surely you don’t mean my help to find her a husband?”

“To launch her into society, at least. I promised her headmistress she should have her chance.”

“You promised her headmistress,” his brother repeated disbelievingly.

“She should have her chance to make a proper marriage, one commensurate with her birth. And the only place that may be accomplished quickly, and at this late date, is in London.”

“The Season.”

“Of course,” Ian said.

“And what do you believe I can do for her there?”

Again there was silence in the room. By virtue of her own birth and title, Dare’s countess certainly belonged to the world of the haute monde. Normally it would have been under her auspices that any young woman sponsored by the Sinclair family should be brought out.

However, the Countess of Dare had forfeited her social standing in a cause as noble as the one her husband had undertaken. A cause which had cost Elizabeth her reputation. And the scandal that had erupted within the ton when Dare married her had not yet died down.

“If you are determined to embark on this venture, you may have the London house, of course,” Dare said, apparently answering his own question. “And whatever funds you have need of, if only to get her off your hands.”

“I don’t want your money,” Ian said, “but I’ll accept the offer of the town house. If you are serious.”

“I am never serious,” Dare denied, “but you are very welcome to the house. Remember, however, that by using it, you may face guilt by association. Association with Elizabeth and me,” he added, a trace of bitterness in his voice.

“I consider myself honored by that association.”

“They won’t,” Dare said bluntly.

“You have seldom cared what ‘they’ think. Why begin now?”

“Wait until next year,” the earl advised, ignoring the comment. “By then, the scandal will have died down. And perhaps…” He hesitated.

“And perhaps I won’t be such a crock,” Ian finished the unspoken thought, smiling up into his brother’s eyes, which had suddenly become far too serious to suit him.

“What can it hurt to wait?”

“Miss Darlington will be twenty by the time this Season begins. Her age will be a strike against her, of course, and if I wait another year…”

Again Dare’s lips pursed. “We could buy her a husband.”

Ian laughed, relieved to believe Dare’s good humor had been restored. “Except she has no fortune.”

“I’d be willing to dangle enough money to interest some worthy cit. Or even a needy younger son.”

“I think she should probably prefer to choose a husband for herself,” Ian said, remembering that flash of temper in Anne’s brown eyes. Speaking, indeed, he thought, amused by the memory.

Dare laughed. “Have you been talking to Elizabeth by any chance?”

“I beg your pardon.”

“My wife has some rather interesting notions about the marriage mart. You must ask her about them sometime,” Dare said, his smile lingering.

There was something in the earl’s eyes that created an unexpected frisson of envy in his younger brother, who had never before envied Dare any of the things he possessed by virtue of his earlier birth.

“I shall, if you wish,” Ian said. “Is Elizabeth with you?”

“I didn’t trust the roads.”

“I wish I had been as wise,” Ian said, and was glad when Dare was kind enough not to comment again on that ill-advised journey north.

“So you want to arrange a suitable marriage for Darlington’s brat and make it a love match,” the earl said. “Why don’t you arrange for the defeat of the French while you’re at it?”

Not a kindness, then, Ian thought, but simply an attack from the flank. “You think it’s an impossibility?”

“If her father’s actions become known. Especially since he named you as her guardian.”

“No official inquiry was ever held,” Ian said, trying to reassure himself that this would not become a cause célèbre. “An officer can’t be charged on the basis of how he should have behaved in an action. Only if he failed to obey a direct order, which was not the case. Besides, most of the men who knew about Darlington’s cowardice are either dead or are still fighting in Portugal. And perhaps the fact that I am now Anne’s guardian will quell any gossip that might reach London. At least until she has had an opportunity to make a suitable match.”

“An improbability, then,” Dare amended. “Considering that she has no fortune and nothing to recommend her beyond red hair and, I believe the phrase was, speaking eyes.”

“I didn’t say she has nothing to recommend her.”

“You didn’t have to. I’ve had enough of that sort thrown at my head through the years.”

“She isn’t ‘that sort,”’ Ian denied, with perhaps too much emotion.

He realized his mistake as soon as he saw his brother’s face. Dare knew him too well not to have noticed that unaccustomed vehemence. The earl’s head cocked slightly and one dark brow lifted in question.

“I see,” he said softly. A small twitch, quickly controlled, tugged at the corner of his lips. His tone, when he spoke again, was briskly impersonal, however. “If you are determined on this, then I shall have them make the town house ready. And you’ll need the name of a good dressmaker. I can recommend someone if you wish.”

“Of course I wish. I shall need all the help you and Elizabeth are willing to offer. And Val,” Ian added, “don’t be angry that I feel I must do this.”

“Angry with you?” Dare asked. “I am never angry with my brothers. That’s your office. But if you let anything happen to you, my noble pigheaded gallant, while you are trying to find the perfect husband for this bothersome girl, I promise you I shall strangle her and her headmistress. And then I shall seek Darlington out in Hell to have a go at him.”

“I believe you would at that,” Ian said, laughing again, despite his resolve not to let Dare provoke him.

The coughing the laughter produced this time was thankfully of shorter duration. And when it was over, he looked up to find Dare’s blue eyes focused on his face, their customary amusement again missing.

“I would go to Hell to prevent your suffering any more than you already have. And I swear, Ian, if you let this chit hurt you, she’ll be sorry Darlington ever produced her.”

“Hurt me?” Ian repeated in bewilderment. Dare could not possibly be aware of what he had felt as Anne had knelt beside him in the snow that night.

“Dealing with her has already put you in bed for a week.”

“You can hardly blame her for that.”

“No, nor for that harebrained journey north in the midst of a snowstorm. That was your fault.”

“It wasn’t snowing when we set out,” Ian said, smiling. “And John brought help as quickly as he could, despite the stable fire. Nothing that happened was her fault. It was simply a combination of unfortunate events.”

“And somehow I have a feeling you are about to embark upon another series of those.”

“I?” Ian asked in astonishment. “I assure you, Val, my life is most circumspect. By necessity, perhaps, but I’m beginning to consider the possibility that I am simply boring by nature.”

“Good,” Dare said. “Until your health is fully restored, I intend to see that you continue to be thoroughly bored. And boring. Now, go back to sleep,” he ordered, picking up his book.

And after four or five minutes of watching Dare studiously pretend to read the same page, Ian felt his eyelids begin to droop. He briefly fought their heaviness, and then finally succumbed to the lure of a world where there were no worries or concerns. Particularly no concerns about a lively redhead, whose assets in the husband hunt were as meager as Dare had suggested.

He would deal with that when he had to, Ian decided, just before he drifted back into the invalid’s world of exhausted sleep.

“Believe me, Mr. Sinclair, I truly wish I could disagree with the opinions of your surgeons. I’m afraid, sir, I must concur with what you were told on the Peninsula. Your lungs were irreparably damaged. They will always be prone to infections. That, in and of itself, however…”

“It is the ‘however’ that concerns you,” Ian Sinclair said.

While he was again being prodded and poked, this time by the man many considered to be the finest physician in England, he had determined that whatever the outcome, this would put an end to it. Whatever McKinley told him, he would accept. And he would live his life, whatever remained of it, exactly as he had lived it before—to the best of his ability.

“The largest piece of shrapnel within your chest is indeed, given its location, impossible to remove. The attempt would kill you outright. Frankly, I can’t understand why it didn’t kill you immediately when you were hit,” McKinley said. “However, if there is anything I have learned through the years, it is that the human body is a remarkable instrument, frequently quite capable of healing itself. If we doctors could let well enough alone,” the physician added, smiling.

Ian returned the smile, recognizing what the Scottish-trained doctor was trying to do. And it wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the effort. It was simply that he preferred his truths unvarnished. Even if the varnishing was intended to make them more palatable.

“Are you suggesting that if we leave it where it is…” Ian began cautiously, knowing this was the only question that mattered. For reasons he chose not to examine right now, it seemed to matter more than it had when he had first been given this same diagnosis more than a year ago.

“It may stay in place for the next forty years, and if it does, you will die an old man, peacefully in your own bed. Or it may shift tomorrow and pierce your heart. In that case…”

He paused, and Ian finished it for him. “In that case, I won’t die an old man, peacefully or otherwise.”

McKinley let the silence build a moment, but he didn’t deny the truth of what his patient had said.

“I should advise you to avoid the kind of physical exertion you recently engaged in. That may not be the life you would have chosen for yourself, Mr. Sinclair, but it is life,” the doctor said. “And much preferable to the alternative, I should think.”

“I appreciate your honesty,” Ian said, fighting the disappointment of a ridiculous hope he hadn’t even realized he had been harboring.

“I take it your brother doesn’t know.”

“I prefer that he never does. What good would it do?”

“He is very anxious about you. Since you have not told him the truth, he quite naturally feels that your convalescence has been unnecessarily slow.”

“And no doubt certain that your well-known skills could remedy the situation.”

“I would that they could, Mr. Sinclair,” McKinley said.

“So do I,” Ian admitted with a smile. “However, since they can’t…And not one of us is guaranteed even one more day, of course. That is a lesson I saw demonstrated quite effectively in Portugal. I have simply received notice to live each of mine as well as I can.”

“I have no doubt that you will. What do you wish me to tell the earl?”

“That he isn’t rid of me yet,” Ian said. “It is, after all, nothing less than the truth.”

“I’m sure he’ll be relieved,” McKinley said. And then, as his patient reached for the bell on the table beside the bed, “Don’t bother the servants. I can see myself back to the parlor. If you have need of my services in the future, do not hesitate to send for me.”

As the door closed behind the physician, the eyes of Ian Sinclair focused on the fine plaster ceiling above his head. The verdict had been nothing he hadn’t known, he told himself.

There were things in his life he regretted, but the actions that had led to his being wounded were not among them. And he would therefore deal with the consequences of them without complaint. It was better, however, that he deal with them alone. He had always known that. Better for him. And much better for his family.

Chapter Four

It had been a very lonely Christmas, Anne thought on the bleak, snowy morning following that equally bleak holiday. Whatever Ian Sinclair had intended when he had brought her to his home, she must believe it had not been this.

Of course, there had been a formal Yuletide dinner last night, which had included all the traditional dishes of the season and which she had eaten in solitary splendor in the dining room. The whole house was decorated quite beyond anything she was accustomed to at Fenton School.

What she was unaccustomed to, however, and the lack of which she had felt most severely, was companionship. She missed the girls. She missed taking care of the younger ones and she had worried about them. She also missed having someone to talk to and with whom to share games and cherished holiday pastimes.

If, as her guardian had indicated, his servants had been looking forward to providing a festive Yuletide celebration for his ward, Anne had not, during the long, lonely days she had spent in his home, been able to detect any sign of that intent. They had probably been disappointed that she was not the child they expected. And it was apparent they held her responsible for Mr. Sinclair’s illness. She didn’t blame them. She, too, considered his condition to be her fault.

The doctor, identifiable by his bag, had come and gone several times during the past eight days. From her bedroom window, worried and anxious about the cause of each visit, she had watched him arrive and depart. And her new guardian’s older brother, the Earl of Dare, had stayed for several days before finally departing this morning.

Neither of them had spoken to her, of course, although she was perhaps the person most in need of information. After all, no one doubted that Mr. Sinclair had been made ill as a direct result of his rescue of her. A rescue that must surely satisfy every longing for adventure she had ever felt.

A longing she would never feel again, Anne vowed. She saw, thankfully only in memory now, the face of the man with the torch, missing tooth revealed by that ghastly, leering smile, and she shivered. And if it hadn’t been for Ian…

For Mr. Sinclair, she corrected. It would not do to presume, even in her thoughts, which had centered, almost exclusively, throughout these long days and nights, around her guardian. And some of those thoughts—

There was a discreet knock on the door, and Anne scrambled off the high bed across which she had been sprawled in unladylike abandon. She straightened her dress and then her hair, tucking in tendrils before she hurried across the room. She even bit her lips and pinched her cheeks to give them some color.

It was not until she was halfway to the door that she realized this visitor could not possibly be her guardian. And she couldn’t imagine for whomever else in this household she might be concerned about her looks. The acknowledgment that she would wish to appear attractive before Ian Sinclair was a clear affirmation that she had spent too much time daydreaming about him in the last few days, she told herself sternly.

She opened the door and was confronted by the disapproving features of Mrs. Martin, the Sinclair family housekeeper. Unfamiliar with the protocol governing the servants in such a large house, Anne wasn’t sure if she should invite the woman in or converse with her standing in the hall.

“Mr. Sinclair wishes to see you, miss. Mind you now, no matter what he says, I won’t have you tiring him out,” the housekeeper warned. “Ten minutes and no more. You understand?”

“Has he been so very ill?” Anne asked, the fear she had lived with through these lonely days rising to block her throat.

“Mr. Sinclair allows no discussion of his health. Those of us who wish to keep our positions in his household learned that long ago. Something for you to remember,” Mrs. Martin added.

The housekeeper turned and bustled forward with an important jingle of keys, passing door after door along the long hallway. Anne followed, wondering exactly what her warning had been meant to convey. That if Anne mentioned Mr. Sinclair’s health, she would be sent back to Fenton School?

An idle threat, considering that during the past week she had pined for its safe familiarity. She regretted the thought as soon as it formed. Whatever Mrs. Martin meant, Mr. Sinclair had risked his life to save hers. And at last, it seemed she would have the opportunity to tell him how grateful she was.

Finally the housekeeper stopped before one of the doors. She leaned her ear against it for a moment before she straightened and knocked.

“Come in,” someone instructed.

Anne couldn’t tell if it had been her guardian’s voice, but she wasn’t given much time to wonder. Mrs. Martin opened the door and indicated with her hand that Anne should step inside.

Only when she had did Anne realize that the housekeeper wasn’t coming in with her. She started to protest, just as the housekeeper stepped away from the door she had opened and started down the hall. Anne drew a fortifying breath and then looked back toward the room she had just entered.

Ian Sinclair was seated in a comfortable chair before the cheerful fire. He was fully dressed, as elegant as the first time she had seen him. Expecting an invalid, perhaps even a dying one, Anne could not have been more surprised had she entered the room and found one of the men who had attacked them that night holding court.

“I understand you have been ill,” she said, walking forward.

There was a small, uncomfortable silence.

“And I wonder who told you that?” her guardian asked.

He sounded as if he really wanted to know. Remembering Mrs. Martin’s warning, Anne understood why. And despite the servants’ coldness, she had no wish to get any of them into trouble.

“After several years of looking after the younger girls, my powers of deduction are well-honed,” she said. “You disappeared the night we arrived, and I haven’t seen you since. In that time, both a physician and your brother have come to the house, the former on several occasions and the latter for a visit of some days. It seemed rather obvious.”

“I’m sure none of your charges were ever able to put anything over on you,” Mr. Sinclair said, laughing.

And then his laughter became hard coughing. Lucy Bates had died last year of such a cough. Of course, Lucy had never been very strong to begin with, Anne reminded herself, remembering the fragile little girl, whose arms and legs had been more like sticks than like the sturdy, rounded limbs of most of her girls.

And just because something terrible had happened to Lucy Bates didn’t mean anything terrible would happen to Mr. Sinclair. She could not, however, control the surge of anxiety as she listened to the deep congestion the cough revealed.

“Are you all right?” she asked finally as it faded.

“Of course,” he said.

His hand was pressed against the center of his chest. However, since Mr. Sinclair preferred it, Anne gave in to the pretense that what had just happened had not happened and that he had not really been very ill at all.

“I have wanted to thank you since that night,” she began, determined to say all the things she should have said then and had not had the chance to say since.

“I truly wish you would not.”

“I owe you my life, Mr. Sinclair. Or at least…”

She almost said my virtue, but then thought that the expression of that reality might be improper. Although she had had a sheltered upbringing, there had been no doubt in her mind about the kind of danger she had faced.

“You owe me nothing of the kind,” he said into her pause. “Quite the reverse, I believe. If you hadn’t taken a hand, the outcome might have been very different. You had an uncomfortable journey and a dangerous encounter with a couple of rogues you should never have been exposed to. On top of that you have spent a lonely holiday in a house full of strangers. I can only promise you that was not my intent and apologize profusely.”

“I am not to express my gratitude for your rescue, and yet you may apologize for a series of things that were not your fault and were undoubtedly beyond your control?”