Free Susan Johnson by When Someone Loves You Page B

over.”
    “ Everyone? ”
    “Including the dowager duchess, sar.”
    The marquis’s eyes widened. “Even Grandmama is making plans for me, it seems,” he said with a faint smile. “Well, bring the bloody things up, I suppose, and we’ll see what we have.” Throwing back the bedclothes, he rose from the bed. “Better yet, I’ll come down. There’s hot water on the stove, right?”
    “Yes, sar.”
    “You can douse me with it outside. It’s a fine, warm day and if I’m reading my family’s concern right, I’d better see that I’m spotlessly bathed, dressed to the nines, and on my best behavior with Miss Foster. Good Lord, I must have been a worry to them all,” he noted, striding over to the window and leaning on the sill. “Although the sun does seem to be shining with an added glow these days, Eddie. Damned if it doesn’t.”
    “I’m pleased to hear it, sar. Would you be wearing somethin’ new today?”
    Duff swung around. “Has my mother replenished my entire wardrobe?”
    “A right good part of it, sar. What with your weight loss and all, she been keeping Weston busy.”
    Duff chuckled. “Pick out something. I don’t care. Although, keep in mind my family’s censure will fall on your shoulders should I not be outfitted to perfection,” he added drolly.
    “I’ll do me best, sar.”
     
     
    While the marquis was dressed by his batman, Annabelle was attended to with the same degree of attention. Molly had ironed every little wrinkle from the pink muslin and the bonnet ribbons, Mrs. Foster had insisted on helping Annabelle with her hair, and even Cricket and little Betty had been propped up to oversee Annabelle’s toilette. As Annabelle twirled around at the last to show off her ensemble, the babies cooed their approval and smiled, as if even they understood the importance of the occasion.
    “This is just a race meet, Mama,” Annabelle said, feeling the need to point out the obvious in the midst of such giddy expectation.
    “Of course it is, sweetheart. We know that, don’t we, Molly?”
    At which point the women both giggled and grinned, and Annabelle’s apprehensions grew in direct proportion to her companions’ all-atwitter moods. But it was pointless to belabor the issue, Annabelle decided, when neither woman was willing to accede to reality. And to see her mother in such high spirits was truly a miracle. So she kept her counsel and let her mother and Molly buzz around her, both of them fussing till the last with a tweak to her hair or a smoothing of her skirt or some exhortation of one kind or another warning her to be polite and smile.
    As if she didn’t know how to deal with a gentleman.
    As if she wasn’t the consummate companion if she wished to be.
    The real question was whether she did or not.
    Or to what degree she wished to please the marquis.
    Although she couldn’t help but smile as Duff brought his smart black phaeton to a halt at her garden gate shortly before one, secured the reins, leaped down, and strode up her garden path, whistling.
    There was something about Darley that made one want to smile, she thought, watching him approach—as though he were capable of transferring his good cheer to you with ease. She didn’t quite know what to make of it. She wasn’t giddy by nature. Or frivolous.
    She’d never had the opportunity.
    Her father had been ill for several years before he’d died, and she’d helped him with his silversmithing as a child. As his illness progressed, she’d taken on more and more of the burdens of his business. She half smiled. She still could turn a pretty bowl or candlestick if she’d been so inclined. And if her father’s creditors hadn’t taken advantage of her mother after he died, she might have been a silversmith today. They’d been left with nothing but the small shop, empty of merchandise and mortgaged to the hilt.
    At Duff’s knock on the door, she shook away the melancholy memories, put a smile on her face—she was an