Page 56 of The Language of Love

“Yes, the groom has been—ah, here he comes now.” Henry raised a hand, and the servant slowed the carriage, pulling up beside them. “Let me help you in,” Henry said, lowering the small step and offering his arm.

Once she was settled, he walked to the horses’ heads and held them while the groom climbed down. Annis couldn’t help noticing the servant’s supercilious expression when he switched places with Henry.

Goodness! Even his servants must believe he was Colin Parker.

“How much time do you have?” Henry asked as he climbed up beside her.

“I have the rest of the day.”

“Excellent. Then why don’t we take a trip out of the city? A gentleman I recently met told me I should avail myself of his property in Kensington, which sounds like it has some lovely gardens and even a bit of countryside still surrounds it.”

Annis tried not to show her relief that they weren’t going anywhere near Rotten Row. “That sounds lovely.”

Henry turned the carriage off Bond and onto a side street, and then headed in the opposite direction from Hyde Park.

“You are quiet today, Annis. Am I getting you into trouble inviting you on these jaunts?” he asked a few minutes later, cutting her a quick glance.

“Oh no, nothing like that. It’s just that I thought it would be too distracting to ask questions while you’re navigating these busy streets.”

“This isn’t busy,” he said. “Calcutta and Bombay—now they are busy.”

“You mean they are more hectic than London?”

“At least twice as hectic.”

“That’s difficult for me to imagine. I think London is as busy a place as I ever wish to visit.”

“You would not want to live here?” he asked.

“No, not at all.”

“Ah, so you are a country lass, then?”

“Well, hardly a lass anymore.”

That drew a curious glance from him. “You look no more than eighteen.”

“I know,” she said gloomily.

He laughed. “Why does that bother you?”

“People treat me like a child because I look like one.”

His eyelids were lowered halfway when he turned to her. Annis might have very little experience in life, but even she knew what desire looked like on a man’s face. Not that any man had ever turned such an expression on her before, but she’d seen the way her friends’ husbands looked at their wives.

It was an effort to breathe under such a brooding, heated look.

“You don’t look like a child to me,” he said, and then turned to watch the road.

“Oh. Well. That’s good,” she said in a silly, breathless voice, suddenly uncomfortably hot beneath her lightweight spencer.

“So, how old are you, Annis?”

“I just turned twenty-six. How old are you?”

“Thirty-seven.”

“That’s the same age as Lord Rotherhithe, isn’t it?”