The Raven Prince (Princes #1)(50)

Edward waved them back down again. No doubt he’d interrupted a morning gossip. Without explanation, he continued through the kitchen and out the back door. They crossed the wide stable yard, his boot heels ringing on the cobblestones. The morning sun shone brightly, and the stables cast a long shadow behind them. Edward rounded a corner of the building and stopped in the shade. Anna glanced around, looking puzzled.

Edward had a sudden, awful feeling of uncertainty. It was an unusual gift. Maybe she wouldn’t like it or—worse—be insulted.

“This is for you.” He gestured abruptly at a muddy lump of burlap.

Anna looked from him to the burlap. “What—?”

Edward stooped and threw back a corner of the bundle. Underneath lay what looked like a bunch of dead, thorny sticks.

Anna squealed.

That noise had to be a good sign in a female, didn’t it? Edward frowned uncertainly. Then she smiled up at him, and he felt warmth suffuse his chest.

“Roses!” she exclaimed.

She dropped to her knees to examine one of the dormant rosebushes. He’d carefully wrapped them in damp burlap to keep the roots from drying out before departing from London. Each bush had only a few thorny branches, but the roots were long and healthy.

“Careful, they’re sharp,” Edward murmured to her down-bent head.

Anna counted busily. “There’s two dozen here. Do you mean to put them all in your garden?”

Edward scowled at her. “They’re for you. For your cottage.”

Anna opened her mouth and for a moment seemed at a loss for words. “But… even if I could accept them all, they must have been terribly expensive.”

Was she refusing his gift? “Why can’t you accept them?”

“Well, for one, I couldn’t fit them all in my little garden.”

“How many could you fit?”

“Oh, I suppose three or four,” Anna said.

“Pick out the four you want, and I’ll send the rest back.” Edward felt relief. At least she wasn’t rejecting the roses. “Or burn them,” he added as an afterthought.

“Burn them!” Anna sounded horrified. “But you can’t just burn them. Don’t you want them for your own garden?”

He shook his head impatiently. “I don’t know how to put them in.”

“I do. I’ll plant them for you in thanks for the others.” Anna smiled up at him, looking a little shy. “Thank you for the roses, Lord Swartingham.”

Edward cleared his throat. “You’re welcome, Mrs. Wren.” He had a strange urge to shuffle his feet like a little boy. “I suppose I ought to see Hopple.”

She simply looked at him.

“Yes… Ah, yes.” Good God, he was stuttering like an imbecile. “I’ll just go find him, then.” With a muttered farewell, he strode off in search of the steward.

Who knew giving presents to secretaries could be so stressful?

ANNA ABSENTLY WATCHED Lord Swartingham walk away, her hand fisting in the muddy burlap. She knew how this man felt against her in the dark. She knew how his body moved when he made love. She knew the deep husky sounds he produced in the back of his throat when he reached his climax. She knew the most intimate things one could know about a man, but she didn’t know how to reconcile that knowledge to the sight of him in the daylight. To reconcile the man who made love so sublimely to the man who brought her rosebushes from London.

Anna shook her head. Perhaps it was too hard a question. Perhaps one could never understand the difference between the passion of a man at night and the civil face he showed during the day.

She hadn’t realized what it would be like to see him again after spending two unbelievable nights in his arms. Now she knew. She felt sad, as if she’d lost something that had never truly been hers. She’d gone to London with the intention of making love to him, to enjoy the physical act as a man would: unemotionally. But as it turned out, she wasn’t as stoic as a man. She was a woman, and where her body went, her emotions followed willy-nilly. The act had somehow bound her to him, whether he knew it or not.

And he could never know it now. What had transpired between them in that room at Aphrodite’s Grotto must remain her secret alone.

She stared blindly down at the rose stems. Perhaps the roses were a sign that things could still be healed. Anna touched a prickly rose branch. They must mean something, surely? A gentleman didn’t usually give such a lovely gift—such a perfect gift—to his secretary, did he?

A thorn pricked the ball of her thumb. Absentmindedly, she sucked on the wound. Maybe there was hope after all. As long as he never, ever discovered her deception.

LATER THAT MORNING, Edward stood calf-deep in muddy water, inspecting the new drainage ditch. A lark sang in the border of Mr. Grundle’s field. Probably ecstatic it was dry. Nearby, two smock-clad laborers from Grundle’s farm shoveled muck to keep the ditch free of debris.

Hopple also stood in muddy water, looking particularly aggrieved. This might be in part because he had slipped and fallen in the scummy water once already. His waistcoat, formerly an egg-yolk yellow with green piping, was filthy. The water from the ditch gushed into a nearby stream as the steward explained the engineering of the project.

Edward watched the laborers, nodded at Hopple’s sermon, and thought about Anna’s reaction to his gift. When Anna spoke, he had a hard time keeping his eyes off her exotic mouth. How such a mouth had come to be on such a plain little woman was a great mystery, one that apparently could enthrall him for hours. That mouth could lead the Archbishop of Canterbury to sin.