Page 6 of The Language of Love

As if she could forget.

“Annis? Annis?”

She looked up to find her grandmother frowning in confusion. “I beg your pardon, Grandmamma, what was that?”

“I said you should pay a call on that son of mine while you are in London.”

Annis was grateful her grandmother couldn’t see her grimace. Lady Cecily’s only living child was Thomas Bowman, a man as different from Annis’s dear deceased papa as the proverbial chalk from cheese.

The idiom caught her attention like a briar snagging clothing: As different as chalk from cheese.

She knew this idiom.

Annis’s fingers drummed on the faded blue muslin that covered her knee as she dredged her memory for the expression’s origin. It was Middle English—of that she was certain—

“Annis, dear? Are you there?” Her grandmother was turning her head to-and-fro, as if she could actually see the tiny parlor around her.

“I’m sorry, Grandmamma, I was just thinking about the journey,” she lied—yet again. “I’m afraid I didn’t catch the last thing you said.”

“I said you should accept your uncle’s offer to frank you this Season.” Lady Cecily frowned, deepening the grooves that bracketed her mouth. “Your aunt is not always an agreeable woman, but she will be frantic to marry off those girls and will drag them about madly this Season.”

All the more reason that Aunt Agnes wouldn’t want an impoverished niece trailing along. But Annis didn’t point that out.

“I will call on them, Grandmamma.” She shuddered at the thought of subjecting herself to a frosty half hour with her aunt and her unmarried daughters—Susanna and Miriam—and the horrid, spoiled heir, Percy.

Lady Cecily sighed. “I know I shouldn’t mention it, but I’d had such hopes for Mr. Leech. He was such a nice young man, and I thought you were rather taken with him. Oh, not that I would have liked losing you to him, my dear. And it would have grieved me if you’d had to move to Yorkshire once you married, but…” The old lady let the thought fade away.

Yes, Annis, too, had liked kind, handsome Mr. Leech. She’d like him so much that she’d entrusted him with everything they had

She was such a fool!

It was all Annis could do not to fling herself at her grandmother’s feet and confess all. But that would spread her misery to a person who had done nothing to earn it, even though she’d suffered the most damage.

Annis swallowed back her tears, shame, and rage. What point was there in wishing she’d behaved differently? Wallowing in pity, that is what that would be. She needed to fix things, not wallow.

And to fix things, she’d need money: £11,072.

Annis bit her lip hard enough to draw blood just thinking about the amount.

There was only one way for a woman of gentle birth to get that much money quickly: she must marry a rich man. And she’d need to do so quickly. It was the only way to ensure that her grandmother did not end up in some wretched home for the blind or insane—which is where her aunt would likely try to put poor Lady Cecily.

If anyone could find a husband for Annis, it would be her Aunt Agnes—a woman who was as pragmatic and ruthless as an army general. The type of man her aunt would find for her was not to be thought about. After all, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

She almost smiled at the idiom—of mid-sixteenth century origin.

“I have decided I will accept my uncle’s offer,” Annis announced—making it sound as if she’d been giving it a great deal of thought and had not just decided thirty seconds ago.

Her grandmother’s smile illuminated the room. “I am glad to hear you say that. You are a beautiful, accomplished young woman with a loving nature. I know my son and his family can be trying, but Agnes will help you find the husband you deserve, my dear.”

Annis folded the letter, her grandmother’s words ringing in her ears: you will find the man you deserve.

She shivered at the thought of what kind of man she deserved. Her—a woman so foolish that she’d given the nest egg of the person she loved most in the world to a vile, thieving imposter?

No, if there was one thing Annis knew for certain, it was that she never wanted to meet the man she deserved.

Two Weeks Later, London, The Clarendon Hotel

Henry Singleton, the seventh Earl of Rotherhithe, sipped fine claret and surveyed the opulent hotel dining room.