Secrets of a Summer Night (Wallflowers #1)(47)

Her friends did their best to cheer and entertain her, for which Annabelle was acutely grateful. Evie sat at her bedside and read aloud from a lurid novel purloined from the estate library. Daisy and Lillian came to deliver the latest gossip, and made her laugh with their mischievous imitations of various guests. At her insistence, they dutifully reported who seemed to be winning the race for Kendall’s attentions. One in particular, a tall, slender, fair-haired girl named Lady Constance Darrowby, had captured his interest.

“She looks to be a very cold sort, if you ask me,” Daisy said frankly. “She has a mouth that reminds one of a drawstring purse, and a terribly annoying habit of giggling behind her palm, as if it’s unladylike to be caught laughing in public.”

“She must have bad teeth,” Lillian said hopefully.

“I think she’s quite dull,” Daisy continued. “I can’t imagine what she has to say that Kendall would find of such interest.”

“Daisy,” Lillian said, “we’re talking about a man whose idea of high entertainment is to look at plants. His threshold of boredom is obviously limitless.”

“At the picnic after the water party today,” Daisy told Annabelle, “I thought for a supremely satisfying moment that I had caught Lady Constance in a compromising position with one of the guests. She disappeared for a few minutes with a gentleman who was not Lord Kendall.”

“Who was it?” Annabelle asked.

“Mr. Benjamin Muxlow—a local gentleman farmer. You know, the salt-of-the-earth sort who’s got some decent acreage and a handful of servants and is looking for a wife who will bear him eight or nine children and mend his shirt cuffs and make him pig’s-blood-pudding at slaughtertime—”

“Daisy,” Lillian interrupted, noticing that Annabelle had suddenly turned green, “try to be a bit less revolting, will you?” She smiled at Annabelle apologetically. “Sorry, dear. But you must admit that the English are willing to eat things that make Americans flee the table with screams of horror.”

“Anyway,” Daisy continued with exaggerated patience, “Lady Constance vanished after having been seen in the company of Mr. Muxlow, and naturally I went looking for them in the hopes of seeing something that would discredit her, thereby causing Lord Kendall to lose all interest. You can imagine my pleasure at discovering the two of them behind a tree with their heads close together.”

“Were they kissing?” Annabelle asked.

“No, drat it. Muxlow was helping Lady Constance to replace a baby robin that had fallen from its nest.”

“Oh.” Annabelle felt her shoulders slump as she added grumpily, “How sweet of her.” She knew that part of her despondency was caused by the effects of the snake venom, not to mention its unpalatable antidote. However, knowing the cause of her low spirits did nothing to improve them.

Seeing her dejection, Lillian picked up a tarnished silver-backed hairbrush. “Forget about Lady Constance and Lord Kendall for now,” she said. “Let me braid your hair—you’ll feel much better when it’s off your face.”

“Where is my looking glass?” Annabelle asked, moving forward to allow Lillian to sit behind her.

“Can’t find it,” came the girl’s calm reply.

It had not escaped Annabelle’s notice that the looking glass had conveniently disappeared. She knew that her illness had ravaged her looks, leaving her hair dull and her skin drained of its ususal healthy color. In addition, her ever-present nausea had kept her from eating, and her arms looked far too thin as they rested limply on the counterpane.

In the evening, as she lay in her sickbed, the sounds of music and dancing floated through her open bedroom window from the ballroom below. Envisioning Lady Constance waltzing in Lord Kendall’s arms, Annabelle shifted restlessly amid the bedclothes, concluding morosely that her chances of marrying had all but vanished. “I hate adders,” she grumbled, watching her mother straighten the collection of articles on the beside table…medicine-sticky spoons, bottles, handkerchiefs, a hairbrush, and hairpins. “I hate being sick, and I hate walking through the forest, and most of all I hate Rounders-in-knickers!”

“What did you say, dearest?” Philippa asked, pausing in the act of setting a few empty glasses on a tray.

Annabelle shook her head, suddenly overcome with melancholy. “I…oh, nothing, Mama. I’ve been thinking—I want to go back to London in a day or two, when I’m fit to travel. There’s no use in staying here. Lady Constance is as good as Lady Kendall now, and I don’t look or feel well enough to attract anyone else, and besides—”

“I wouldn’t give up all hope just yet,” Philippa said, setting down the tray. She leaned over Annabelle and stroked her brow with a soft, motherly hand. “No betrothal has been announced—and Lord Kendall has been asking after you quite often. And don’t forget that enormous bouquet of bluebells that he brought for you. Picked by his own hands, he told me.”

Wearily Annabelle glanced at the huge arrangement in the corner, its perfume hanging thickly in the air. “Mama, I’ve been meaning to ask…could you get rid of it? It’s lovely, and I did appreciate the gesture…but the smell…”

“Oh, I didn’t think of that,” Philippa said immediately. Hurrying to the corner, she picked up the vase of nodding blue flowers and carried them to the door. “I’ll set them out in the hall, and I’ll ask a housemaid to take them away…” Her voice trailed away as she busied herself for a few moments.