Page 74 of The Language of Love

Chapter 12

“What do you think he means?” Annis asked in a tremulous voice as the curricle began to move.

“It sounds like he might have had you followed today.”

“Oh God.” Annis squeezed her eyes shut, feeling faint. She felt a large hand cover hers.

“Don’t worry, Annis.”

What if Uncle Thomas saw me today?

It was all she could do to keep breathing as her fertile imagination created incident after incident, each more horrid than the last. What if her aunt, uncle, and her cousins had seen her today?

The curricle rolled to a gentle stop, and Annis opened her eyes. They were already in front of her uncle’s house.

While Uncle Thomas’s carriage was nowhere in sight, a servant was waiting outside the front door and another servant came scurrying from the direction of the mews.

Henry tossed the groom the reins and jumped down, coming around to her side of the carriage and helping her.

“Don’t worry,” he said again, more softly this time. “Everything will be fine. I promise.”

He looked and sounded so certain that she was almost convinced. Almost.

In the foyer, Annis struggled with the ribbon on her bonnet, making the knot worse.

Henry wordlessly took the ribbon from her shaking fingers and made quick work of it. She was just removing her cloak when her Uncle Thomas entered the foyer with Coombs on his heels.

“Coombs will dispatch a messenger to Lord Rotherhithe immediately. You, Annis, may wait in the—”

“You needn’t bother with the message. I am Lord Rotherhithe, Mr. Bowman.”

Her uncle’s jaw sagged and her aunt—who’d entered the hall just in time to catch his announcement—made a very undignified squawking sound.

“You most certainly are not!” Mrs. Bowman stormed up to her husband, placing her tall form between Henry and Uncle Thomas as if to protect him. “I don’t know what this—this person has told you, but he is most emphatically not the Earl of Rotherhithe. He is a clerk—a servant.”

Henry ignored her. “Could we step out of the foyer to discuss this, Mr. Bowman?” He cast significant glances at the butler and two footmen hovering with their eyes as round as coins.

Aunt Agnes gasped at his condescending tone. “Thomas, I don’t know what—”

“Come, my dear,” Uncle Thomas said. “This gentleman—whoever he is—is right about this not being the place to discuss anything. Don’t send anyone until I sort this out,” he told Coombs. And then his gaze—colder than Annis had ever seen—settled on her. “The fewer people who know about this particular subject, the better.” He took his wife’s elbow and gently, but firmly, guided her up the stairs. “Come along, Annis,” he barked over his shoulder when she paused and turned to Henry.

Henry frowned at the older man and Annis feared he was about to say something—likely combative—so she hurried up the stairs behind them.

Coombs had barely closed the door behind him when her aunt turned to Henry, her demeanor that of an attacking dog. “Just what do you think you are doing? Who do—”

Uncle Thomas raised one hand. To Annis’s surprise, her aunt closed her mouth.

Her uncle turned to Henry, who was lowering himself into a chair with no invitation.

“There seems to be some confusion about who you really are, sir. I demand an explanation.”

Henry casually stretched out his long, muscular legs, the very picture of a man at ease. “I’m ashamed to admit that any confusion is entirely my fault.”

He didn’t look or sound ashamed. In fact, Annis thought he was quite proud.

The door to the study exploded inward, slamming hard enough against the wall to make the windows rattle.

Her cousin Percy stood in the doorway, Miriam and Susanna flanking him. The women hung back while Percy strode into the room, staring at Henry as if he were Beelzebub incarnate.