Their Foreign Affair (Scandalous Family--The Victorians Book 3), page 16
Adam shifted across the deck toward her
“Is your breathing clear?” he asked her, his gaze roaming over her face.
“Yes,” she said quietly, self-conscious. She bent around Adam to peer at Filip.
Filip watched both of them, his eyes narrowed. When he saw her look at him, he said, “What are you wearing, by the way? It is rather fetching…especially now it is wet.”
Ann looked down at the cloth, which clung to her in damp layers. Her cheeks burned.
“This deck is filthy.” Filip sounded surprised, as if he had just noticed it. He pushed himself to his feet and gripped the roof of the wheelhouse and brushed off the dirt.
“What are you doing here in Constantinople?” Ann asked him, for the question was uppermost in her mind.
“Why else would I be here?” Filip asked. “I came to find you.”
Adam drew in a breath and let it out but remained silent.
Filip paid Adam no attention at all. His gaze was upon Ann. “You should know that I have dismissed Harry Dahl. He is no longer in service to me or my household.”
Ann caught her breath.
But Filip was still speaking. “The man behaved outrageously. I was nauseated when I learned what he had done in Munich.” For the first time, his gaze took in Adam. “To both of you.”
“Is that an apology?” Adam asked dryly.
“The beginnings of one,” Filip replied. “I will have to extend myself a great deal more to even begin to make up for what the man did to you. If the word itself will help, then I do apologize. Profusely. Dahl overextended himself. He…misinterpreted my motives.”
Adam shook his head. He pushed to his feet and moved to the back of the boat and spread his legs, easily holding his balance upon the rolling deck.
Filip’s gaze had returned to Ann. She drew her legs up against her hip on one side. She didn’t think she could stand upon the rolling deck as Adam was, and she didn’t want to risk falling back into the water.
“I must speak frankly, Ann,” Filip said, jerking her attention back to him.
She hid her sigh. “Perhaps, when we return to dry land…”
Filip shook his head. “Forgive me, but no. I will not risk you running away from me again, not before I have had a chance to try to make amends—”
“Amends?” Ann repeated, startled.
Even Adam gave a soft, surprised sound.
“Yes, I have much to make up for,” Filip continued, “and Harry Dahl is the least of it.”
“I have done nothing but embarrass you, all across Europe,” Ann said. “How can you possibly feel you are the one in the wrong?”
Filip gave a small nod. “I have done a great deal of thinking in the last few days.” He grimaced. “In between reading newspapers very carefully,” he added. “I believe I have finally come to understand why you could not face me in the cathedral.”
Ann’s heart thudded heavily. Her abused throat closed down. “About that—”
Filip raised his hand. “No, please. Let me finish. We will dock soon enough, and I must make my case before we do.”
Ann pressed her lips together and nodded.
Filip cleared his throat. His gaze shifted to Adam. “I am afraid I must speak frankly.”
Adam’s gaze measured Filip. “Ann prefers direct speech.”
“Yes, indeed,” Filip said. “I wish we were anywhere but here, but my wishing for perfect circumstances is the reason we stand here now.” His gaze shifted to Ann. “I kept waiting for the perfect opportunity to tell you…to explain…” He cleared his throat once more, his gaze flickering toward Adam and back. “I have loved you almost from the moment we met. Certainly, by the end of that night, I knew my heart had been snagged in a way I’ve never felt before. Your directness, your freshness, your beauty…”
Ann let out a shaking breath, wonder mixing with her dismay. He loved her?
Filip continued. “All the time we were preparing for the wedding, I kept waiting for a moment to reveal how much you had swept my feet out from under me, but the perfect moment never arrived. The wedding arrangements were…”
“Endless,” Ann murmured.
“Yes,” Filip said, his tone heartfelt. “I should have spoken. I should have told you how I felt, right from the start, but I lacked the courage. I felt foolish for having fallen so quickly and so thoroughly, and that was my undoing.” His gaze cut away from her. “If you had known how I felt, then this…this adventure would not have happened.”
Ann stared at Filip’s strained expression, the genuine pain in his eyes.
He loved her.
“I have been following you across Europe,” Filip added. “Only hours behind you at times, but I never could catch up with you. Then Munich and Dahl’s mishandling…” He paused. “I hired a special and paid for best speed, by the shortest route, with an extra payment if the train got me to Constantinople before you arrived. The engineer earned his bonus by only two hours.” Filip’s gaze was steady, his pale eyes warm. “Come back to Silkeborg with me, Ann. Let us start again and this time, dispense with the formalities and the excess ceremony. Let us be married for the best of reasons, instead of the political ones.”
Ann dropped her gaze to the salt-encrusted deck. She could not look at Adam, even though she longed to.
Filip was offering her exactly what she had sought to find with Adam. A marriage in the truest sense of the word. A mutually happy relationship.
She closed her eyes, as trembling set in. What was she to do? How could she tell Filip no?
The engine beats slowed, and the boat wallowed. The sides scraped against the dock, as the driver fended the boat off with a boat hook, then drew them slowly up against the old stone wharf. He threw a thick rope over a bole and nodded at Filip and patted the watch in his pocket, with a grin.
Adam moved to Ann and held out his hand to help her to her feet. “If I give my word that Ann will not abscond this time, Your Grace, will you give me a moment alone with her?”
Filip considered Adam. The two of them were a similar height and they looked each other in the eye.
Ann stared at them, horror building in her.
“Take your moment. For watching over her and fending off rabid journalists, you have earned it…and my thanks,” Filip said.
Adam nodded. He did not smile, and his jaw was hard. He bent and caught Ann’s hand in his, for she had failed to take his hand when he offered it. His gaze met hers. “Will you speak with me alone?”
“Of course I will!” she cried. “I don’t understand…” she added as Adam helped her to her feet.
“I know, but…un moment.”
She held inside her all the bewildering questions, while Adam drew her up the old stone steps to the top of the dock. Her borrowed finery was a dripping, soggy mass of cloth, clinging to every inch of her in a most alarming way. She tried to pluck the layers away from her skin, to preserve her modesty. At least the fabric was not completely transparent the way muslin could become when it was wet.
Adam’s business office and the place where she had fallen from the dock was much farther along the extended, curved wharf from here. There were smaller boats everywhere, most of them with gulls circling overhead.
Fishing boats, she realized.
The dock itself was not nearly as busy, either. Adam drew her through the men moving in all directions over the dock, heading for boats or for the warehouses and buildings at the back of the dock.
He cast about, examining the buildings, then shook his head. “There is nowhere better than right here,” he said, turning to her. Men moving about their business slipped past them on either side, in all directions.
Ann wanted to reach for him, to reassure herself. She raised her hand, but Adam shook his head. “The Duke watches us,” he said, his tone grim.
She aborted the movement, unhappiness swirling through her. She did not like the cool expression in Adam’s eyes. She glanced toward the dock, and saw that Filip stood at the top of the stairs, watching them, just as Adam had warned her. “How am I to tell him no? Oh, Adam, this is awful…”
Adam simply studied her, until Ann shivered in fear.
“Say it,” she said quickly. “Please.”
“You must go back with him.”
It was as bad as she had begun to fear. “No.” She shook her head. “I cannot.”
“Yes. You must,” he said firmly. “You were wrong about him. I misjudged him badly, too. He is not the inhuman man you thought him to be, Ann.”
“I cannot marry him!” she cried softly. “Not now.”
Adam’s hand, the hand farthest from the dock, curled into a hard fist. “Yes, you can,” he insisted. “All the reasons, all your noble, good intentions which drove you to accept him in the first place…they are still there, Ann. The family is still reeling under the impact of the bank collapse and Vaughn’s imprisonment. A good match will help. And if you go back with him now and marry him, then the public will forgive you for everything, and the family, too. It will remove whatever stain you might have added by running from the man in Silkeborg. Do you see?”
Ann wrapped her arms around her middle, cold despite the sun on her face. “But…” she began, her voice bodiless.
But…what protest could she make? Adam was being reasonable and logical. “I was to marry you…” she whispered. It was the only thought that was clear in her mind.
“To save the family,” Adam finished. “But now you do not need that escape.”
Escape.
Ann stared at him, her eyes aching. “We were working to end this…this affair, so we could marry because we wanted to.”
“The Duke has a greater claim on you,” Adam replied. “And he wants you, still,” he added and paused, his jaw working. There was a furrow between his brows, that was growing deeper as he spoke. “He is willing to take you back despite everything that has happened. The only honorable thing you can do now is to return to Silkeborg with him and make the marriage work.”
Ann rubbed her forehead. Her hand trembled. “I don’t know how to do that.”
“But you know I am right.” Adam’s voice was flat, devoid of any emotion.
She did know. The knowledge burned in her heart. Ann drew in a shuddering, shaky breath. Her vision blurred and she blinked to clear the tell-tale tears away. “I am to simply turn and walk away from you?” She could barely make herself speak the words. Her throat hurt.
“Just go to him,” Adam said. “Go on.”
Ann blinked hard once more. She would not be able to kiss him farewell, not here in this very public place. She could not touch him, either. She shifted on her feet, as Adam watched her, his jaw working.
“I cannot!” she cried softly, her words distorted with unshed tears. “Adam…I…”
“God, Ann, please, just go.” He shook his head. “Do you think I want to send you back to him?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know what to think… It wasn’t supposed to end like this!”
The furrow between his brows deepened. His throat worked. “Just turn. Do that much. Just turn to look at him. Go on.”
She drew in a breath that hitched. She cared less whether she made the society sin of weeping in public or not. She simply could not move her feet. “Adam…” she whispered, her heart tearing in two.
He shut his eyes and hung his head. Then he took a deep breath, opened them and reached for her shoulders. Gently—oh, so gently!—he turned her until she was facing toward the dock, where Filip waited.
“Go,” he breathed. “Don’t look back.”
She could not bring her foot up.
“Just one step,” Adam said. “Then another. This is what you wanted, Ann. To save the family, to restore honor. This is how you will do it, by taking that step. You have the courage of lions. I’ve seen it for myself. Show me that courage one last time.”
She drew in a shuddering breath and took the step. Her bare foot moved over the ancient cobbles. Then another step.
It was easier, after that, to keep moving. She kept her gaze on Filip and saw his shoulders rise and fall as if he had taken a large breath.
When she reached him, Ann drew in a deep breath herself. “I…do not know how to do this,” she told him. “But, if you mean what you say, then I will marry you.”
Filip’s smile was small. “I mean what I say,” he replied. “You have made me very happy, Ann.”
She realized that she was supposed to agree with him but couldn’t. From somewhere within, different words came to her. “I suspect a large portion of Europe’s journalists and judgmental matrons will be very happy about it, too.”
Filip’s eyes widened. Then he laughed softly. “There. There is the woman I fell in love with.” He held out his elbow. “Let’s find you some shoes…and some clothes that will keep the judgmental wives happy.”
He led her across the wharf toward the road that led deeper into the city. Ann could not help but look back.
Adam was gone.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Silkeborg. Late August, 1889. Seven weeks later.
Filip was determined that this time, they do everything very differently. “No cathedral, no national flower bouquets and blue carpet,” he told Aunt Bronwen, who had become by default the one to arrange the wedding, as Dahl was no longer Filip’s secretary.
“Then perhaps I might have a date to work with?” the Duchess had asked, with a raised brow.
“Not yet,” Filip said firmly, his gaze upon Ann. “When Ann is ready, she will propose a date.”
Nor had Filip spoken of returning to Norway. He seemed content to remain indefinitely in Silkeborg. He sent the dozen daughters of Norwegian nobility and Danish royalty back to their families, too. “Ask whoever you want to attend you,” he told Ann and kissed her hand. “I know how much it distressed you to not ask those closest to you, before.”
Filip kissed her hand and her cheek often. Sometimes, he kissed her lips, too. And he smiled a great deal, especially at her.
It was as if Filip had peered into her mind and itemized everything that had dismayed her, previously, and was determined to reverse that. He cancelled her Norwegian lessons, telling her she could learn the language when she was settled in Hamar, and perhaps even acquire it naturally, the way children did.
He sent everyone who had travelled from Hamar to assist with the wedding back to Norway, too.
Ann realized belatedly that Filip was only now showing his true nature. He was a complicated and private man, but for her, he lowered the shield. The man behind the shield was an admirable one.
The newspapers had already proclaimed him the most dashing Duke in Europe. His impetuous pursuit of Ann across Europe and his return to Silkeborg with her on his arm had sent the more sensational newspapers into raptures over the romantic ending to the affair.
The more Ann grew to like Filip, though, the more unhappy she became. Filip was in no hurry to formalize their wedding and was truly waiting for her to be ready, but the more days that slipped by, the less ready she felt. A great restlessness gnawed at her.
She walked a great deal through the woods which covered most of the palace grounds and in the town itself. Her adventure and her return had earned her a happy acceptance amongst the townsfolk, who greeted her in stilted English wherever she went.
Walking did not remove the emptiness in her middle, though.
The leaves of the enormous chestnut trees around Silkeborg were showing the very first hint that they were about to turn, the day she returned from her afternoon walk, weary in body and soul.
She made her way to the small private suite which Aunt Bronwen had given her for the duration of her stay in Silkeborg. Mary was in the front sitting room, at Ann’s desk and turned as Ann entered and smiled at her.
“This arrived this afternoon,” she said. “I was just leaving it for you.”
Mary was another of Filip’s thoughtful gestures. Instead of Bronwen’s Danish ladies-in-waiting as companions, he had found Mary, a well-educated Englishwoman recently widowed, to take care of Ann’s correspondence and other needs.
Mary moved out of the way of the desk. “I will send the maid up to help you dress for dinner,” she murmured, heading for the door.
Ann didn’t hear the door close. She was momentarily bereft of hearing and incapable of speech.
A small leather valise sat upon the desk, looking considerably more dusty than when she had last seen it, in Constantinople.
Ann moved toward the desk and the valise, drawn there as if a line reeled her toward it.
The door opened once more. “Ann, my darling,” Filip said. “How would you feel about by-passing all the drawing room fuss tonight and having dinner with me in my sitting room…why, what is that?”
Ann made herself look up at him. She moved her mouth into a smile as she rested her hand on the top of the valise. “Spanish leather, Bruges lace and Kirkaldy tweed,” she told him.
Filip tilted his head to examine the valise. “By the look of those stamps, the thing has been rattling around most of Europe for weeks.”
“It is the valise I used when I…went away,” she finished inadequately and unbuckled the straps. “I am utterly astonished it made its way back here.”
“So am I,” Filip admitted, coming over to the desk. His expression was curious.
“I think…I believe I owe a great debt to a certain M. Bellerose, a conductor upon the Orient Express,” Ann told him. “For that is where this valise and I parted.”
“I will ensure his employers know of his dedication,” Filip said. “Are you going to open it? There surely cannot be much in it. You left Silkeborg wearing satin and tulle…” He rolled his eyes. “Kirkaldy tweed and Bruges lace. Now I understand. May I see this Kirkaldy tweed I hear so much about from the ladies?”
“Of course.” She gave him the best smile she could manage, even though her heart was aching in a way that made her feel a little ill. She raised the lid and let it drop open.
