The sun was already starting to come up. He ought to crawl back into bed. He could probably get a few
hours of sleep before he had to get up and head over to Harry’s for breakfast.
He looked over at the window, where the slanted light of dawn was rippling through the glass.
He paused. He liked the sound of that.
The slanted light of dawn was rippling through the glass.
No, that was unclear. For all anyone knew, he could be talking about a brandy snifter.
The slanted light of dawn was rippling through the windowpane.
That was good. But it needed a little something more.
The slanted light of dawn was rippling through the windowpane, and Miss Anne Sainsbury was huddled beneath her thin blanket, wondering, as she often did, where she would find money for her next meal.
That was really good. Even he wanted to know what happened to Miss Sainsbury, and he was making it up.
Sebastian chewed on his lower lip. Maybe he should write this down. And give her a dog.
He sat at his desk. Paper. He needed paper. And ink. There had to be some in his desk drawers.
The slanted light of dawn was rippling through the windowpane, and Miss Anne Sainsbury huddled beneath her threadbare blanket, wondering as she often did, how she would find money for her next meal. She looked down at her faithful collie, lying quietly on the rug by her bed, and she knew that the time had come for her to make a momentous decision. The lives of her brothers and sisters depended upon it.
Look at that. It was an entire paragraph. And it had taken him no time at all.
Sebastian looked up, back at the window. The slanted light of dawn was still rippling through the glass.
The slanted light of dawn was rippling through the glass, and Sebastian Grey was happy.
Chapter One
Mayfair, London Spring 1822
The key to a successful marriage,” Lord Vickers pontificated, “is to stay out of the way of one’s wife.”
Such a statement would normally have little bearing on the life and fortunes of Miss Annabel Winslow, but there were ten things that made Lord Vickers’s pronouncement hit painfully close to her heart.
One: Lord Vickers was her maternal grandfather, which pertained toTwo : the wife in question was her grandmother, whoThree : had recently decided to pluck Annabel from her quiet, happy life in
Gloucestershire and, in her words, “clean her up and get her married.”
Of equal importance wasFour : Lord Vickers was speaking to Lord Newbury, whoFive : had once been married himself, apparently successfully, butSix : his wife had died and now he was a widower, andSeven : his son had died the year prior, without a son of his own.
Which meant thatSeven : Lord Newbury was looking for a new wife andEight : he rather thought an alliance with Vickers was just the thing, andNine : he had his eye on Annabel becauseTen : she had big hips.
Oh, blast. Had that been two sevens?
Annabel sighed, since that was the closest she was permitted to slumping in her seat. It didn’t really signify that there were eleven items instead of ten. Her hips were her hips, and Lord Newbury was presently determining if his next heir ought to spend nine months cradled between them.
“Oldest of eight, you say,” Lord Newbury murmured, eyeing her thoughtfully.
Thoughtfully? That could not be the correct adjective. He appeared about ready to lick his lips.
Annabel looked over at her cousin, Lady Louisa McCann, with a queasy expression. Louisa had come by for an afternoon visit, and they had been quite enjoying themselves before Lord Newbury had made his unexpected entrance. Louisa’s face was perfectly placid, as it always was in social settings, but Annabel saw her eyes widen with sympathy.
If Louisa, whose manner and bearing were consistently correct no matter the occasion, could not keep her horror off her face, then Annabel was in very big trouble indeed.
“And,” Lord Vickers said with pride, “every one of them was born healthy and strong.” He lifted his glass in a silent toast to his eldest daughter, the fecund Frances Vickers Winslow, who, Annabel could not help but recall, he usually referred to as That Fool who married That Damned Fool.
Lord Vickers had not been pleased when his daughter had married a country gentleman of limited means. As far as Annabel knew, he had never revised that opinion.
Louisa’s mother, on the other hand, had wed the younger son of the Duke of Fenniwick a mere three months before the elder son of the Duke of Fenniwick had taken a stupid jump on an ill-trained stallion and broken his noble neck. It had been, in the words of Lord Vickers, “Damned good timing.”
For Louisa’s mother, that was; not for the dead heir. Or the horse.
It was not surprising that Annabel and Louisa had crossed paths only rarely before this spring. The Winslows, with their copious progeny squeezed into a too-small house, had little in common with the McCanns, who, when they weren’t in residence at their palatial London mansion, made their home in an ancient castle just over the Scottish border.
“Annabel’s father was one of ten,” Lord Vickers said.
Annabel turned her head to look at him more carefully. It was the closest her grandfather had ever come to an actual compliment toward her father, God rest his soul.
“Really?” Lord Newbury asked, looking at Annabel with glintier eyes than ever. Annabel sucked in her lips, clasped her hands together in her lap, and wondered what she might do to give off the air of being infertile.
“And of course we have seven,” Lord Vickers said, waving his hand through the air in the modest way men do when they are really not being modest at all.
“Didn’t stay out of Lady Vickers’s way all the time, then,” Lord Newbury chortled.
Annabel swallowed. When Newbury chortled, or really, when he moved in any way, his jowls seemed to flap and jiggle. It was an awful sight, reminiscent of that calf-foot jelly the housekeeper used to force on her when she was ill. Truly, enough to put a young lady off her food.
She tried to determine how long one would have to go without nutrients to significantly reduce the size of one’s hips, preferably to a width deemed unacceptable for childbearing.
“Think about it,” Lord Vickers said, giving his old friend a genial slap on the back.
“Oh, I’m thinking,” Lord Newbury said. He turned toward Annabel, his pale blue eyes alight with interest. “I am definitely thinking.”
“Thinking is overrated,” announced Lady Vickers. She lifted a glass of sherry in salute to no one in particular and drank it.
“Forgot you were there, Margaret,” Lord Newbury said.
“I never forget,” grumbled Lord Vickers.
“I speak of gentlemen, of course,” Lady Vickers said, holding out her glass to whichever gentleman might reach it first to refill. “A lady must always be thinking.”
“That’s where we disagree,” said Newbury. “My own Margaret kept her thoughts to herself. We had a splendid union.”
“Stayed out of your way, did she?” Lord Vickers said.
“As I said, it was a splendid union.”
Annabel looked at Louisa, sitting so properly in the chair next to her. Her cousin was a wisp of a thing, with slender shoulders, light brown hair and eyes of the palest green. Annabel always thought she looked like a bit of a monster next to her. Her own hair was dark and wavy, her skin the sort that would tan if she allowed herself too much time in the sun, and her figure had been attracting unwanted attention since her twelfth summer.
But never—never—had attentions been any less wanted than they were right now, with Lord Newbury staring at her like a sugared treat.