Secrets of a Summer Night (Wallflowers #1)(64)

Remembering how it had felt to kiss her, to finally caress the warm, supple silk of her skin, Simon felt passion threatening to boil up inside him once again. With all his experience, he had thought he was familiar with every physical sensation imaginable. But he had just forcibly been made aware that sleeping with Annabelle would be a different matter altogether. The experience would involve his emotions as well as his body…emotions so alarming that he could not yet bring himself to examine them.

The attraction between them had become dangerous—no less so for him than it was for her. And it was clear that Simon needed to gain some perspective on the situation. At the moment, however, he wasn’t thinking too well.

Leaving the music room with a muttered curse, he straightened the knot of his black silk necktie. Tension strung through his limbs, shortening his usual long stride and making him feel predatory and volatile as he walked toward the ballroom. The prospect of another social evening was nearly maddening. His tolerance for extended parties had never been high—he was not a man who enjoyed hours of indolent chatter and idle amusements. He would have been long gone, had it not been for Annabelle’s presence at Stony Cross.

Brooding, he went into the ballroom and glanced speculatively over the crowd. He immediately caught sight of Annabelle, occupying a chair in the corner with Lord Kendall at her side. Kendall was openly infatuated with her, his enraptured gaze making no secret of his interest. Annabelle looked subdued and flushed, seeming to have trouble meeting Kendall’s admiring gaze. She spoke very little and sat with her hands tightly knotted in her lap. Simon’s eyes narrowed as he watched her. Ironically, now when Annabelle was feeling diminished and uncertain, Kendall’s attraction to her had finally taken root. It would be a nasty surprise for Kendall later, if Annabelle did get him on the string, to find out that his wife was not the timid ingenue that she seemed. She was a woman of spirit and passion, a decidedly ambitious creature who needed a partner of equal strength. Kendall would never be able to manage her. He was too much of a gentleman for Annabelle—too mild and moderate, and too intelligent in the wrong ways. Annabelle would never respect him, nor would she take any pleasure in his virtues. She would come to despise him for the very things she should have admired…and Kendall would shrink from the qualities in Annabelle that Simon would have relished.

Dragging his gaze away from the pair, Simon made his way to the other side of the room, where Westcliff and a few other friends were talking. Turning toward him, the earl murmured, “Enjoying yourself?”

“Not particularly.” Simon shoved his hands into his coat pockets and glanced around the ballroom with simmering impatience. “I’ve stayed long enough in Hampshire—I need to return to London, to see what is happening at the foundry.”

“What of Miss Peyton?” came the soft-voiced question.

Simon considered that for a moment. “I think,” he said slowly, “that I’m going to wait and see what comes of her pursuit of Kendall.” He looked at Westcliff with a questioning arch of his brow.

The earl responded with a brief nod. “When will you depart?”

“Early in the morning.” Simon could not repress a long, taut sigh.

Westcliff smiled wryly. “The situation will untangle itself,” he said in a prosaic manner. “Go to London, and come back when your head is clear.”

Annabelle could not seem to shake the melancholy that clung to her like a mantle of ice. Sleep had been elusive, and she had hardly been able to eat a bite of the sumptuous breakfast that had been served downstairs. Lord Kendall had regarded her wan countenance and her quietness as lingering effects of her recent illness, and he had plied her with sympathy and solace until she had wanted to shove him away in irritation. Her friends, too, were being similarly annoying in their niceness, and for the first time Annabelle took no enjoyment in their cheerful banter. She tried to identify the moment when her spirits had turned so sour, and realized that it had been the moment when she had learned from Lady Olivia that Simon Hunt had left Stony Cross.

“Mr. Hunt has gone to London on business,” Lady Olivia had said lightly. “He never stays long at these parties—the wonder is that he didn’t leave sooner than this. No dust settles on that one, to be certain…”

When someone had questioned why Mr. Hunt’s departure had been so precipitate, Lady Olivia had smiled and shook her head. “Oh, Hunt comes and goes at will, rather like a tomcat. His departures are always abrupt, as he seems to dislike good-byes of any kind.”

Hunt had left without one word to Annabelle, and as a result, she was left feeling abandoned and anxious. Thoughts of the previous night—oh, hideous evening!—kept playing relentlessly in her mind. After the events in the music room, she had been disoriented, so thoroughly occupied with thoughts of Hunt that she couldn’t seem to focus on the here and now. She had kept her gaze down so that she wouldn’t catch an unexpected glimpse of him, and she had prayed silently that he wouldn’t approach her. Mercifully he had kept his distance, while Lord Kendall had planted himself firmly at her side. Kendall had spent the rest of the night talking to her about subjects she didn’t understand and couldn’t have cared less about. She had encouraged him with innocuous murmurs and halfhearted smiles, and had thought dimly that she should be ecstatic about the attention he was paying to her. Instead, she had only wished that he would go away.