Secrets of a Summer Night

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.”