Seeing her dejection, Lillian picked up a tarnished silver-backed hairbrush. “Forget about Lady Constance and Lord Kendall for now,” she said. “Let me braid your hair—you’ll feel much better when it’s off your face.”

“Where is my looking glass?” Annabelle asked, moving forward to allow Lillian to sit behind her.

“Can’t find it,” came the girl’s calm reply.

It had not escaped Annabelle’s notice that the looking glass had conveniently disappeared. She knew that her illness had ravaged her looks, leaving her hair dull and her skin drained of its ususal healthy color. In addition, her ever-present nausea had kept her from eating, and her arms looked far too thin as they rested limply on the counterpane.

In the evening, as she lay in her sickbed, the sounds of music and dancing floated through her open bedroom window from the ballroom below. Envisioning Lady Constance waltzing in Lord Kendall’s arms, Annabelle shifted restlessly amid the bedclothes, concluding morosely that her chances of marrying had all but vanished. “I hate adders,” she grumbled, watching her mother straighten the collection of articles on the beside table…medicine-sticky spoons, bottles, handkerchiefs, a hairbrush, and hairpins. “I hate being sick, and I hate walking through the forest, and most of all I hate Rounders-in-knickers!”

“What did you say, dearest?” Philippa asked, pausing in the act of setting a few empty glasses on a tray.

Annabelle shook her head, suddenly overcome with melancholy. “I…oh, nothing, Mama. I’ve been thinking—I want to go back to London in a day or two, when I’m fit to travel. There’s no use in staying here. Lady Constance is as good as Lady Kendall now, and I don’t look or feel well enough to attract anyone else, and besides—”

“I wouldn’t give up all hope just yet,” Philippa said, setting down the tray. She leaned over Annabelle and stroked her brow with a soft, motherly hand. “No betrothal has been announced—and Lord Kendall has been asking after you quite often. And don’t forget that enormous bouquet of bluebells that he brought for you. Picked by his own hands, he told me.”

Wearily Annabelle glanced at the huge arrangement in the corner, its perfume hanging thickly in the air. “Mama, I’ve been meaning to ask…could you get rid of it? It’s lovely, and I did appreciate the gesture…but the smell…”

“Oh, I didn’t think of that,” Philippa said immediately. Hurrying to the corner, she picked up the vase of nodding blue flowers and carried them to the door. “I’ll set them out in the hall, and I’ll ask a housemaid to take them away…” Her voice trailed away as she busied herself for a few moments.

Picking up a stray hairpin, Annabelle toyed with the crimped wire and frowned. Kendall’s bouquet had been one of many, actually. The news of her illness had prompted a great deal of friendly sympathy from the guests at Stony Cross Manor. Even Lord Westcliff had sent up an arrangement of hothouse roses on behalf of himself and the Marsdens. The proliferation of flowers in vases had given the room a funereal appearance. Oddly, there had been nothing from Simon Hunt…not a single note or flower stem. After his solicitous behavior two nights ago, she would have expected something. Some small indication of concern…but the thought occurred to her that perhaps Hunt had decided that she was an absurd and troublesome creature, no longer worthy of his attention. If so, she should be grateful that she would never again be plagued by him.

Instead, Annabelle felt a stinging pressure behind her nose and the threat of unwanted tears in her eyes. She didn’t understand herself. She could not identify the emotion that moved beneath the mass of hopelessness. But she seemed to be filled with a craving for an indescribable something…if only she knew what it was. If only—”

“Well, this is odd.” Philippa sounded thoroughly perplexed as she reentered the room. “I found these just inside the door. Someone has set them there without a note, and no word to anyone. And they’re completely new, by the looks of them. Do you think that they are from one of your friends? It must be. Such an eccentric gift could only have come from the American girls.”

Raising herself up on a pillow, Annabelle found a pair of objects deposited in her lap, and she regarded the offering with blank surprise. It was a pair of ankle boots, tied together with a dapper red bow. The leather was buttery-soft, dyed a fashionable bronze, and polished until it shone like glass. With low stacked-leather heels and tightly stitched soles, the ankle boots were sensible but stylish. They were ornamented with a delicate embroidered design of leaves that extended across the toes. Staring at the boots, Annabelle felt a sudden laugh rise in her throat.

“They must be from the Bowmans,” she said…but she knew better.

The boots were a gift from Simon Hunt, who was fully aware that a gentleman should never give an article of clothing to a lady. She should return them at once, she thought, even as she found herself clutching the boots tightly. Only Simon Hunt could manage to give her something so pragmatic and yet so inappropriately personal.

Smiling, she untied the red bow and held one of the boots up. It was surprisingly light, and she knew at a glance that it would fit her perfectly. But how had Hunt known what size to request, and where had he gotten the boots? Slowly she traced a finger across the tiny, exquisite stitches that joined the sole to the gleaming bronze upper.

“How attractive they are,” Philippa remarked. “Almost too nice for walking through the muddy countryside.”