Marquesses at the Masquerade(64)

What?

It took a moment for him to fully comprehend the small exchange.

Annalise had cut him.

He stood there for another few seconds, staring at the column where she had stood, his anger flooding in.

How dare she treat him this way?

No woman had ever turned him away.

Did she realize how many other women vied daily for his attention?

He had an urge to chase after the ungrateful lady and tell her that he regretted saving her from social disgrace.

These were ungenerous thoughts, yet they bubbled in his mind.

He strode back to his seat. Why was he so wildly angry? Not annoyed, as he should have been, but viscerally irate. Hot, black rage coursed through him. When the next act started, he trained his glass on Annalise.

She sat, expressionless and wooden, watching the play.

Scene after scene he watched her, stewing in his anger and mentally admonishing himself. All the while, he waited for her to look his way.

What was he doing?

Then it finally happened. She glanced in his direction. Their eyes met. Then she glanced back at the stage.

Damn her.

He bolted from his seat and left the theater. He walked in the cold night, avoiding eye contact with prostitutes, peddlers, and conning thieves until he came upon a grimy tavern and entered. He edged through the eclectic, drunken crowd of dock workers, solicitors, seamstresses, and ladies of pleasure until he found a quiet corner in which to hide. He ordered a brandy, and when it arrived, he studied its warm, amber glow in the firelight and sank into his anger at Annalise.

He had saved her from social ruin, and this was how she thanked him. Did she somehow think she was his better? He was a marquess. She was a nobody. Worse than a nobody, she was almost an outcast before he had stepped in.

A drunken customer began singing at the bar. Exmore almost yelled for him to shut his hole, but the man’s lush tenor was surprisingly good. Wonderful, to be more accurate. He wasn’t a trained opera singer, but he had the voice of the common people. He sang of the loss of his love to another man. The tavern turned quiet and somber. The man’s plaintive singing reached to the pain that had driven Exmore’s fellow drinkers to this grim hellhole to drown their despair.

Exmore stared at the tenor but didn’t see him. His beautiful voice summoned Annalise’s face in Exmore’s mind as she had been the night they danced. How her sweet smile, which lit her eyes, had made his heart light, as though he could rise above the disaster of his life.

His anger receded, leaving the seemingly bottomless despondency that had consumed his life since his wife’s passing.

Why did Annalise have to turn away from him?





Chapter Eight





* * *



He told himself he wouldn’t go to the lecture. The morning Visser was speaking, Exmore instead headed out in the rain to a club that was in the opposite direction of the Royal Institution. Yet, when he saw Colonel Lewiston sitting by the window, Exmore kept on walking. At another club, the conversations of others rankled Exmore’s nerves, and he couldn’t keep Annalise out of his thoughts. He wanted to confront her and understand why she had cut him. He composed a mental peal he desired to ring over her, which contained the words gratitude andkindness, but not the phrase, Why did you hurt my feelings? Maybe he had to solve the mystery of her sudden coldness, or express how he felt, even if she didn’t care, or merely see her, but he was driven into the pounding rain to Visser’s lecture after all.

Exmore didn’t spy Annalise among the dusty men in ill-fitting clothes crowding about a man who Exmore assumed was Visser. The gentlemen appeared to know each other and were excitedly chatting about their own botanical studies. They didn’t notice Exmore slip into a chair at the back of the small room. The clock set on the mantel showed three minutes until eleven. What if she didn’t come? What if he had to suffer through a lecture by Visser, who clearly struggled with English, from the snatches of conversation Exmore had overheard. At five after the hour, Visser cleared his throat, and the other gentlemen took their seats. Exmore felt deflated, frustrated, and angry after all the mental drama that had driven him here. She wasn’t coming, despite having pleaded for the details of lecture, after she had said she could barely wait for days. His ire at her rose even higher for trapping him in a boring lecture.

But mostly he felt let down.

In his periphery, he saw a flutter of fabric beyond the threshold of the door and turned. She appeared, a lovely smile radiating from her face despite the wet curls plastered to her cheeks and the water that dripped from her hem. She held a leather portfolio under her arm. He couldn’t deny the lightning sensation in his chest at her sight.

“Mr. Visser.” She curtsied. “My father, Franz Van Der Keer, and I hold you in great esteem.” She spoke quickly, her voice breathy with excitement. “I read your book on your Australian journeys to him in the last weeks of his life. I cherish your work and the memories it has given me.”

“Franz Van Der Keer,” Visser said and then continued in slow, laboring English. “A very good friend. Pardon me. You speak very fast.”

Annalise switched to his native Dutch. Visser’s stiff expression relaxed. Whatever he said to her caused Annalise to clutch her hand to her heart, tears appearing in her eyes. Although Visser gestured to a vacant chair in the front row, she strolled back to Exmore and slipped into the seat next to him and smiled as if the night at the theater hadn’t happened.