Page 20 of The Language of Love

Annis clapped her hands. “It is like Christmas—I’m only sad the others cannot be here.”

The others being the four teachers that Annis, Freddie, and Miles had once worked with at the Stefani Academy for Young Ladies.

Three of the four teachers—Portia Stefani, Honoria Keyes, and Serena Lombard had recently married. The fourth was Lorelei Fontenot. Lorie had taught English literature and composition but now lived with her brother at his vicarage all the way down in Cornwall.

“I shall save Serena’s letter until after dinner,” Freddie said. “But right now, you could help me draw up my plan of attack for the Earl of Rotherhithe. I have promised to have a list for him by midweek.”

“I would be glad to help,” Annis said, pleased to keep busy and forget about her morning for at least a few hours more.

But later that night, when Annis lay awake in her room staring at the ceiling, she could no longer keep away the dreadful events of that morning.

First had been the visit to Mr. Pears, where she’d seen the mortgage paperwork on her grandmother’s cottage.

“But neither Grandmamma nor I ever signed such a thing.”

Mr. Pears put the signature in question next to a document Annis had just signed that day.

Annis had gasped when she stared down at identical signatures.

“I would have contacted you when Mr. Leech brought me the paperwork, Miss Bowman, but he brought the proxy letter and knew so much about you. I thought since you were engaged—”

“What?”

Pears had winced and then got that look on his face that said he was preparing to deal with an emotional female.

“He forged my name.”

“If that is true, then you must contact the authorities about Leech, Miss Bowman.”

“Oh, please, Mr. Pears. That would ruin Lady Cecily.” If anyone would be ruined, it would be Annis if Leech ever told a magistrate what she had done. “Please—say nothing.”

“I shan’t say anything if you’d rather not. But what will you do? The best I can arrange is a grace period of perhaps two or three months. But if your grandmother cannot come up with the money, she will need to vacate her cottage.”

Three months.

Annis had wanted to weep.

Instead, she’d said, “I understand, Mr. Pears.”

Yes, she understood that Richard Leech was pond scum in human form, a vile, verminous man gifted with a handsome face and a charming manner.

And you are the fool who believed him.

She whimpered at the painful truth. It was all her fault. And no surprise, either.

Her mother’s last words to her, before she’d died, once again rang in her head, “You are a henwit, Annis, you’ve inherited that quality—along with your freakish eyes and scrawny figure—from your father’s mother.”

Lucy Bowman had given Annis the half-affectionate, half-derisive look she seemed to reserve for her only child. “In fact, I can’t see one thing you inherited from me.”

No, Annis had nothing in common with her shrewd, russet-haired, green-eyed siren of a mother—a woman who’d been so lushly beautiful she’d even attracted the attention of a bookworm like Annis’s father, although she hadn’t held on to Thomas Bowman’s attention for long, a fact that had turned her bitter and shrewish.

“You’d better leave your father’s dratted books alone and cultivate a biddable nature, my girl, because your looks won’t be enough to catch a man.”

Annis’s eyes burned at the memory, which only infuriated her more. She was a henwit. She knew that her friends—Freddie, Miles, and the others—loved her, but she also knew they considered her a dreamer who needed somebody to take care of her.

Well, she’d proven their belief by allowing a man like Richard Leech—a name which suited him—to take complete advantage of her.

Leech had come to stay at a small house close to her grandmother’s cottage, a man of the cloth enjoying a brief respite in the country before moving north to assume his curacy in Yorkshire.

His charm and angelic good looks had swept away Annis and all the others. It hadn’t taken him long to worm his way into all their lives and convince Annis that he loved her.

Because she was a henwit.

And then there was that horrible, horrible night. Every time she thought about it—and his mocking laughter—she felt physically ill.

And now she would pay for her idiocy by indenturing herself to her uncle and aunt and cousins, and all in the far-flung hope that she could catch a rich husband and keep her poor grandmother from ending her life in some horrid asylum.

In only three months!

Her mother had been right: dowdy, desperate, and hen-witted—that was Annis Bowman.