Free Annabelle by MC Beaton Page B

abed in the dark listening to the wind in the trees outside and the high monotonous call of the watch, she began to turn over the events of the evening in her mind. She should never have left the girl alone with Varleigh. He had not been with Lady Jane for long, and it looked as if he would not be with her for much longer, but she certainly wasn’t going to let Miss Annabelle Quennel know
that!
She then thought of her assailant. Could someone be trying to kill her? Fiddlesticks!Who could want to? Probably I’m the target of some mad bet, thought Lady Emmeline sleepily. They’ll find something else to bet on, on the morrow. She was suddenly very tickled at the idea that her name might be appearing at this very moment in White’s betting book.
    As for the Captain, she would tell him to play things easily. Annabelle was too shy and country bred to appreciate someone like the Captain. She needed some town bronze. Let her cancel the engagement. She would be engaged to the Captain again before the Season was out. He was just like his father, thought Lady Emmeline dreamily. Captain Mac Donald’s father had been her one and only love. Unfortunately she had been married to the Marquess at the time or perhaps Captain Jimmy MacDonald might have been her own son.
    Annabelle should come about. All it needed was a bit of plotting and careful handling. Damn Varleigh! Why did he have to start poking his long nose into her affairs…

Chapter Six
    “What the
hell
is going on?” demanded Captain MacDonald two days later. He had stayed on at Brick Hill to enjoy the roistering after the prize fight, and the first he knew of the end of his engagement was when he saw it staring up at him in black and white from the sheets of his morning paper.
    “Damme,” he said wrathfully. “Can’t you control that girl?”
    “Quiet down and listen,” said Lady Emmeline, admiring the Captain’s handsome figure. “We rushed the girl, you know. Handle her gently and she’ll come about.”
    “Why
Annabelle
” demanded the Captain wrathfully. “Lots of other gels would be glad to have me.”
    “I’m sure of it,” said Lady Emmeline soothingly. “But my late sister, Caroline, was fond of Annabelle’s mother. Poor Caroline was always fretting about the Quennells and when she knew she was dying, she made me promise to help them. And so I shall. I’m fond of you, Jimmy, love you like a son, but a family promise is a family promise.”
    “But the gel won’t get any money an’ she marries someone else?” demanded the Captain.
    “Don’t know,” said Lady Emmeline. “She saved my life, you know. I suppose it was all meant as a joke or some sort of wager, but I’d have died if I’d gone into that river.”
    “What on earth are you talking about?” demanded the Captain. “Has everyone gone
mad
?”
    Lady Emmeline told him all about her adventure, and the Captain said nastily that he thought it sounded more like a production at the Haymarket Theatre, and then followed it up with a hearty laugh as he saw the clouds gathering on Lady Emmeline’s wrinkled brow.
    He started pacing up and down the room, his brow creased in thought. “Look! Let me talk to Annabelle and I’ll put it right. I’ll do what you say, of course. I won’t rush my fences.”
    “Very well,” said Lady Emmeline, touching the bell. “Send Miss Quennell down,” she said to one of her many footmen who had answered the summons. “Do not say that Captain MacDonald is here. Merely say that I wish to see her.”
    And so it was that Annabelle, tripping lightly into the room some ten minutes later, found only the Captain, waiting beside the fireplace with one glossy Hessian boot propped on the fender and the inevitable glass of ruby red liquid in his hand.
    She looked at him, blushing with embarrassment, but he merely smiled at her in a kindly way and said, “Don’t take fright, Annabelle. I ain’t going to eat you. I only want to say how sorry I am that our engagement