Free An Affair to Remember by Karen Hawkins Page A

Harbuckle’s overtures of friendship.
    All had gone well until Lady Harbuckle’s younger brother, a glib wastrel by the name of Lord Talbert, arrived for a visit. Handsome in a blurry, undefined sort of way, hehad immediately attached himself to Anna’s side, despite her determined efforts to keep him at bay. Lady Harbuckle seemed to be amused at her brother’s florid compliments and she would not hear Anna’s attempts to hint that she was being made uncomfortable.
    Anna decided that perhaps she was overreacting to Lord Talbert’s wholesome compliments. After all, it was obvious that Talbert was a practiced flirt. Unfortunately, he was also a pompous ass who believed his money and purchased title gave him the right to access the beds of every female in the household. Anna’s attempt to ignore the young lord merely urged him to new heights of impropriety.
    Things got more and more uncomfortable until one fateful night Talbert, drunk as a fox, forced his way into Anna’s chamber. Had it not been for the nearness of her bedpan, which she used on His Lordship’s rather hard head to dissuade him from his nefarious intentions, Anna was certain she’d have been ravished.
    The ruckus caused by Lord Talbert’s cry of pain on being crowned with the bedpan caused the entire household to come running. To Anna’s shock, Lady Harbuckle listened to her explanation in cold, disbelieving silence. As soon as Anna finished speaking, Lady Harbuckle had called Anna a liar and worse, suggesting that the entire incident was Anna’s fault for “tempting the poor boy.”
    Anna would listen to no more. She had gathered her things and left. She’d been forced to walk almost seven blocks lugging her overstuffed portmanteau, before she found a hackney to take her the rest of the way.
    She arrived home furious and heartbroken, ready to renounce her chosen profession. She’d naively believed that Lady Harbuckle had regarded her as something more than a governess. But now Anna knew the truth—she was a governess and she would never again be friends with a member of her own set. It was a bitter lesson to learn.
    A good night’s sleep and a week of calm reflection had made Anna all the more determined to succeed. She was a governess, and by God, she’d be the best one in all of England. Furthermore, she’d be damned if she’d let a slug like Talbert thwart her.
    True to form, Lady Harbuckle lost no time in informing the world that her new governess had attempted to lure her brother into sin, claiming that Anna had wished to secure the drunken sot as a husband. Had it not been for the Harbuckles’ limited social standing and Grandpapa’s successful manipulation of his cronies, most of whom were society’s most established gossipmongers, it would have been the end of Anna’s career.
    From that day on, she set rigid rules for her own behavior. Rules that protected her from importuning younger brothers and philandering male cousins who came to visit when their pockets were to let. Never again would she allow protestations of friendship to draw her above stairs. Anna had been successful until Lucinda Dandridge had convinced her to attend her soirée. Anna sighed heavily. Even that small foray into the ton had been an error.
    Now, apparently not content to err only once, she’d compounded her error by kissing her future employer. There was no excuse for it. And it would not happen again. Anna sat up and tossed the sheets aside. The first pale glow of dawn approached, breaking through the cracks in the curtains and casting long fingers of pale light across the rug.
    That was all Anna needed. She hurriedly rose and pulled on a gown. The rest of the morning was taken up in a flurry of preparations that did not leave time for useless wonderings about Greyley’s kiss or her own heated reaction.
    At exactly ten, Anna sat in a stiff-backed chair by the fireplace in the front room, waiting. The carriage arrived only a few moments later, just as