to prevent bowling over the un-suspecting.”
Anne laughed. “Only think how boring it should be to always look where one is going. I confess that I much prefer to back my way through life.” She longed to add, “One meets such interesting people that way,” but she couldn’t decide if that would sound sophisticated or simply fast.
And while she was trying to resolve that dilemma, the hazel eyes left her face and settled, still smiling, on Margaret’s. Anne swallowed her disappointment and turned to look at her young friend as well. Margaret’s brown eyes were still stretched. Indeed, they had widened enough to be outright rude as she stared, openmouthed, at the visitor.
“Hello,” he said.
“’Lo,” Margaret mumbled.
The self-important air of confidence with which she had delivered her message had disappeared. Of course, Anne could hardly blame her for that. They were neither very often exposed to someone who was so obviously Top of the Trees.
“I’m not quite sure how this should be done,” the elegant gentleman was saying, “but I have satisfied Mrs. Kemp as to my identity and my legal position as your guardian. She has agreed that we may leave as soon as you’re ready. Since I gave you no warning, I should imagine it will take you some time to pack. I hope you will make as quick a work of that as you can, however, because the weather is worsening by the moment.”
Margaret said nothing, her eyes and mouth continuing to gape unbecomingly as he talked. When he had finished, and the silence yawned empty for a few seconds, she reluctantly pulled her gaze away from his face to look at Anne.
“It’s not me you want,” she said, pointing a trembling finger. “It’s her. That’s Anne Darlington.”
The hazel eyes followed the gesture, and as Anne’s met them, she realized they were no longer smiling. They had widened as much as Margaret’s, and even that was attractive, she decided.
“You’re Anne Darlington?” he asked, his shock evident.
No mistake about the name, then, Anne thought, trying to make sense of this.
“I am,” she said, inclining her head in agreement, hoping to add a touch of dignity to the confession.
“Colonel George Darlington’s daughter?”
“Did you know my father, sir?” she asked.
Again there was a small silence.
“I served with your father in Iberia, ma’am. May I offer my condolences on your recent loss.”
Anne had never in her life been called ma’am. It was rather shocking, but despite that, finally she was beginning to have a glimmer of understanding. Perhaps this man was indeed her guardian. Perhaps when she was much younger, her father had named a military friend to look after her if anything happened to him. And now that it had…
“Thank you,” she said softly.
She supposed she had grieved in the abstract for her father, but since she had not seen him in over seven years, and not very often before that, she had quickly recovered from the news of his death, about which she had been informed only two months ago.
“My name is Ian Sinclair, and your father’s will asked me to serve as your guardian.”
How strange, Anne thought. Not “your father asked me,” which is what she would have expected, but “your father’s will.”
“And you agreed?”
“Colonel Darlington was a…comrade in arms.”
Anne wondered about that brief hesitation, but then she knew less than nothing about military matters. Apparently her father had chosen from among his acquaintances a man he felt would be trustworthy to look after her.
She wondered how many years ago that decision had been made. And considering Mr. Sinclair’s confusion in thinking Margaret was his ward, she wondered if her father had even remembered how old she was. He had certainly never acknowledged birthdays. In actuality, he had seldom acknowledged her existence.
“As you can see, Mr. Sinclair, I am hardly in need of a guardian,” she said briskly. “I shall be twenty my next birthday, and Mrs. Kemp has very kindly offered me a teaching post here. My father was unaware of the offer, of course, which was made after his death.”
“Then you were in frequent correspondence with your father?”
The hazel eyes were focused intently on her face, and for some reason, Anne found herself compelled to tell him the truth.
“I was not,” she said succinctly.
“I see.”
Even living as she had among the female offspring of parents who obviously did not wish to be burdened with hiring governesses and tutors for them, Anne had finally been forced to admit her father’s total lack of interest in her was unusual. Most of her schoolmates got the occasional letter or present or visit. In all the years she had been at Fenton School, she couldn’t remember receiving any of those things.
“I’m very sorry you have made this journey for nothing,” Anne said. “Especially since, as you say, the weather is uncertain.”
The fine mouth tightened, and again Anne noticed the deeply graven lines that bracketed it. She wondered at his age, but there was something about his face that defied an attempt to judge it, despite the sweep of gray at the temples of his dark chestnut hair. His eyes, when they were smiling, made him seem quite young. Now, however…
“Actually, I have been dreading spending Christmas alone,” he said. And then he smiled at her again.
Anne had not been dreading the holidays. She enjoyed the quieter times they provided. There would be only a few girls left at the school, some of them, like Sally, quite small. Since Anne was the oldest student, and the one who had been here the longest, their Christmas entertainment had always fallen on her shoulders. And she welcomed the task.
There was something about the elegant gentleman’s declaration, however, that tugged at her heart quite as much as had Sally’s quiet sobbing during the first few nights she had spent here. And who are you, Anne Darlington, to be feeling sorry for the likes of him? she chided in self-derision.
“Are you sure I can’t persuade you to join me?” Ian Sinclair continued. “I can’t tell you how excited my servants are at the prospect of having a guest for the holidays. My existence of late has been far too sedate for their tastes, I’m afraid. They were counting on your arrival to give them an excuse for a full-blown, old-fashioned Yule celebration.”
My existence of late. Slowly Anne was beginning to put all the small, yet telling clues together. Ian Sinclair had confessed to knowing her father on the Peninsula. And if he had returned to England while the British forces were still engaged in the war for control of Spain, there could be only one reason. A reason that explained both the lines of suffering in his face and perhaps even that nearly inaudible gasp of reaction when she had careened into him.
If there was anything more likely than a sobbing child to stir a response in Anne Darlington’s heart, it was a creature in pain. If it were not for Mrs. Kemp’s strictures, during Anne’s years here the
