Page 130 of The Language of Love

But it wasn’t lovely, not quite.

While they sat in companionable silence, it was silence. Henry appeared quite involved in whatever he was working on and scarcely looked up.

Annis sat in front of the fire and did needlework for an hour, but she was making even more of a hash of her project—a cushion cover—than usual. So, she set aside her tambour and sat down at the small secretary desk that she’d been using for her correspondence.

She’d received letters from Lorie, Portia, Serena, Freddie, and Miles over the past few days.

The first four had been easy to answer. The one from Miles, which had come only that morning, was far more difficult.

“Dearest Annis:

I write you this letter in the strictest confidence. I don’t know if Henry told you, but I am betrothed to Miss Mary Barnett.”

Henry hadn’t told her, and Annis was curious beyond bearing how he knew such a thing.

She glanced up at him through her lashes. He was wearing the spectacles he needed to read. Was something wrong with her that she found the sight of such a powerful man wearing glasses wildly attractive?

His brow was furrowed in concentration and the brackets around his mouth were deeply graven. He looked unapproachable, to say the least.

She suspected that tonight would not be a good time to ask him such a question.

Annis turned back to the letter.

“It was Freddie who introduced me to my wife-to-be.”

Annis bit her lower lip, her eyes prickling. Of course, it was Freddie. She would have known that if she’d hadn’t helped Miles, he would have married the first heiress who angled for him.

All their friends knew the story of how Miles’s father had tried to force him into marriage years earlier. Miles had joined the army and gone to war rather than marry for money.

Now he had no such refuge.

“I know you use the same man of business as Freddie,” Miles wrote.

Indeed, it was Annis who’d introduced Freddie to Mr. Pears, who’d worked for Annis’s father for years and had been happy to take charge of Freddie’s meager savings.

Because Freddie had no family, she had made Annis a co-signatory. Annis thanked God that Freddie’s paperwork had been with Mr. Pears and not at her grandmother’s house or Mr. Leech would have stolen it, too.

“I know you are a signatory for Freddie. I want you to give Mr. Pears the money left over from selling my commission. I want him to add it to Freddie’s annuity. Of course, she cannot know the money is from me.”

“Is something wrong?”

Annis’s head jerked up at the sound of Henry’s voice. He was staring at her with some concern.

“No? Why would you ask?”

“You just made a whimpering sound.”

“No, nothing wrong.”

His gaze dropped to the letter in her hand. “Something upsetting in your letter?”

She forced a smile. “I was laughing. Maybe that’s what you heard,” she lied. “Freddie has several amusing stories about your former employee,” at least that was the truth. “I shall give it to you to read when I’ve finished replying to it.”

Today’s letter from Freddie was the third she’d received. Annis had shared the previous two—which had detailed Colin’s antics in his pursuit of Susanna—with Henry.

“I see you received a letter from Avington.”

“Yes, I did.”