Secrets of a Summer Night (Wallflowers #1)(66)

When she had finally regained herself, she looked down at the chessboard, trying to understand his last move. How had he taken her queen? Rapidly she calculated the previous locations of the pieces. Then she realized…he had lured her forward with the defensive pawn, positioning her perfectly for capture by his rook. And with her queen having been eliminated, her king was threatened and…

He had put her in check.

He had tricked her with that humble pawn, and she was in jeopardy. Letting out an incredulous laugh, Annabelle turned from the chess table and paced around the room. Defense strategies filled her head, and she tried to decide on the one he wouldn’t expect. Obeying her instinct, she turned and headed back to the chessboard, smiling as she wondered what Hunt’s reaction would be, once he discovered her counter-move. As her hand hovered over the board, however, the flood of warm excitement died away completely, and her face turned to stone. What was she doing? Continuing this game, maintaining even this fragile communication with him, was pointless. No…it was dangerous. There was no choice to be made between safety and disaster.

Annabelle’s hand trembled a little as she reached for one chess piece after another, arranging them neatly in the box, methodically packing the game away. “I resign,” she said aloud, her throat painfully tight. “I resign.” She swallowed against the painful lump that the words engendered. She wasn’t fool enough to allow herself to want something…someone…who was so obviously wrong for her. When the chess box was closed, she backed away from the table and stood looking at it for a moment. She felt faded and abruptly weary, but resolute.

Tonight. Her ambiguous courtship with Lord Kendall would have to be resolved this evening. The party was almost over, and now that Simon Hunt had returned, she couldn’t afford to risk having everything ruined by another complication with him. Squaring her shoulder, she went to tell Lillian, and together they would come up with a plan. The evening would end with her betrothal to Lord Kendall.

CHAPTER 18

“The trick is all in the timing,” Lillian said, her brown eyes gleaming with enjoyment. Surely no military officer had ever conducted a campaign with more determination than Lillian Bowman currently displayed. The four wallflowers sat together on the back terrace with glasses of cool, pulpy lemonade, giving every appearance of indolence, while in reality they were carefully plotting the evening to come.

“I’ll suggest a nice before-supper walk through the garden to awaken our appetites,” Lillian said to Annabelle, “and Daisy and Evie will agree, and we’ll bring our mother and Aunt Florence and anyone else we happen to be talking with—and hopefully by the time we reach the clearing on the other side of the pear orchard, you will be seen in flagrante delicto with Lord Kendall.”

“What is flagrante delicto?” Daisy asked. “It sounds illegal.”

“I don’t know, precisely,” Lillian admitted. “I read it in a novel…but I’m sure it’s just the thing to get a girl compromised.”

Annabelle responded with a halfhearted laugh, wishing that she could feel even a modicum of the Bowmans’ enjoyment of the situation. A fortnight ago, she would have been beside herself with glee. But somehow it felt all wrong. There was no pleasurable anticipation in the prospect of finally prying a proposal out of a peer. No sense of excitement or relief, or anything remotely positive. It felt like an unpleasant duty that had to be done. She concealed her apprehensiveness while the Bowman sisters plotted and calculated with the expertise of seasoned conspirators.

However, it seemed that Evie, who was more observant than the rest of them put together, perceived the true emotions behind Annabelle’s facade. “Is this what you w-want, Annabelle?” she asked softly, her blue eyes filled with concern. “You don’t have to do this, you know. We’ll find another suitor for you, if you don’t want Kendall.”

“There’s no time to find another one,” Annabelle whispered back. “No…it must be Kendall, and it has to be tonight, before…”

“Before?” Evie repeated, tilting her head as she regarded Annabelle with soft perplexity. The sun illuminated her scattered freckles, making them glint like gold dust on her velvety skin. “Before what?”

As Annabelle kept silent, Evie lowered her head and drew a fingertip along the edge of her glass, collecting fragments of sweetened pulp that had clung to the rim. The Bowman sisters were talking animatedly, debating the question of whether or not the pear orchard was the best place to waylay Kendall. Just as Annabelle thought that Evie would abandon the side conversation, the girl murmured softly, “Have you heard, Annabelle, that Mr. Hunt returned to Stony Cross late last night?”

“How do you know that?”

“Someone told my aunt.”

Meeting Evie’s perceptive gaze, Annabelle couldn’t help thinking that woe befall anyone who ever made the mistake of underestimating Evangeline Jenner. “No, I hadn’t heard,” she murmured.

Tilting the glass of lemonade slightly, Evie stared into the depths of sugar-clouded liquid. “I wonder that he never took you up on your offer of a kiss,” she said slowly. “After all the interest that he’s sh-shown to you in the past…”

Their gazes met, and Annabelle felt her face redden. Her eyes implored Evie to say no more, and she shook her head quickly.

Understanding passed like a shadow over Evie’s face. “Annabelle,” she said slowly, “would you mind awfully if I didn’t come along with the others to catch you with Lord Kendall tonight? There will be m-more than enough people to witness it. No doubt Lillian will bring an entire crowd of unsuspecting witnesses. I would be s-superfluous.”