Anita Mills Read Online Free PDF Page A

certainly could not. Not with the awful pounding in her head.
    A scant twenty-four hours ago she’d been snug in her bed at Mrs. Philbrook’s, blissfully unaware of what was to befall her. Quentin Fordyce, her newly discovered cousin, was yet to come for the promised visit to her grandfather. He had not yet revealed himself as the unprincipled blackguard that he was.
    How could she have been so deceived? Had her eagerness for acceptance by her father’s family made her foolish? Mentally she reviewed her brief acquaintance with Mr. Fordyce, wondering if she’d somehow missed something, some clue that ought to have warned her. But he’d seemed so kind, so interested in righting an old wrong. And she, seeking escape from the intolerable burden of Mrs. Phil-brook’s grudging charity, had been taken in by his dashing, elegant manners. She could not have known he would turn into a lecherous fiend, she consoled herself. But he had.
    Once inside his carriage, he’d shared a basket of sinfully rich pastries from Gunther’s, something she’d only heard of but had never tasted before. And then he’d plied her with a bottle of expensive wine, all the while paying lavish compliments to her face, her form, her hat, and her dress, until she’d begged him to be serious. But he’d pronounced himself smitten from the first, saying despite the brevity of their acquaintance, it was his hope to make her his wife. As his hands had possessed hers, she’d begun to feel quite odd, as though the carriage were spinning, separating her mind from her body. She remembered accusing him, hearing herself say, “You never intended to take me to Oakhill, did you?” But if he’d answered her, ’twas after she’d sunk into a drugged oblivion.
    The next thing she could recall was her painful awakening in that miserable inn. And Quentin Fordyce’s amorous advances. She closed her eyes briefly, seeing for perhaps the hundredth time his inert form upon the shabby carpet. And the awful fear that he was dead, that she’d killed a man, once again assailed her, knotting her stomach. She swallowed hard, thinking she ought to have stayed to face the authorities, to have explained she’d done it to save herself. But she’d panicked, allowing a stranger to persuade her to flee. A stranger whose own past was apparently utterly notorious. A stranger who’d killed someone also.
    And now she was in another carriage with him, bound for Nottingham, a place utterly unfamiliar to her, with little hope of getting back to London before Mrs. Philbrook turned her off. Not that she really wished to return to her elderly employer, for even if she somehow were exonerated in the matter of Mr. Fordyce, if she somehow managed to keep her position, she’d be certain to hear of her folly long and often.
    “Humph!” the old woman had snorted when Quentin had come calling. “Cousin indeed! Mark my words, missy—a man of any substance don’t waste his time on a penniless female. Plain as the nose on your face—he thinks you no better than your mother! And this faradiddle about your grandpapa wanting to see you—why, ’tis utter nonsense! The Morlands is too high in the instep for the likes of an opera singer’s daughter!”
    “Mama was as much a lady as you!” she’d wanted to shout back, but somehow she’d held her tongue. Now she wished she hadn’t. Just once she’d like to speak her mind to the woman without fear of the consequences.
    Instead, it would be she listening to her employer’s smug crowing. Mrs. Philbrook would be sure to linger over her paid companion’s foolishness, sniffing yet again that she ought to have known better than to waste her money by dressing above her station. And after cataloging Anne’s follies, the old woman would discharge her, then wait for her to beg to stay. And, in the absence of any other opportunity, Anne would have to do it.
    She did feel utterly foolish. She’d squandered the awesome sum of ten guineas on a dress