Love Finds You in Annapolis, Maryland Read online

  And she loved him, as his own sisters had pointed out two years ago.

  Wiley narrowed his eyes. “Emerson, you know I would welcome you eagerly into our family, but I confess the longer this drags out, the more misgivings I have. You treat my sister no differently now than you did when she was a child, dogging your heels and sending us up a tree to escape her.”

  Perhaps that was the problem. She still seemed twelve to him, as she had been when he’d returned from England to fight for freedom from it. She still looked at him with the same blind adoration, still sat silently by whenever he was near.

  That would change once they were wed though, surely.

  “Emerson.” Wiley’s tone had turned hard, though barely more than a murmur. “I will see my sister happy. If you still dream of Elizabeth, if you cannot love Lark, then release her from the betrothal and let her find someone who can.”

  The name snapped his spine straight. Fight as he might against it, the image nonetheless surfaced of a woman as opposite Lark as one could find. Did he dream of her? Only in his worst nightmares. “Rest assured your sister is loved.”

  His friend’s eyes narrowed. “If I did not know better, I would call that a cunning evasion. Loved she is. But I would have her loved by you.”

  As would he. He could manage it, assuredly. He simply must put his mind to it, as he had to Newton’s Principia Mathematica back at King William’s School. “You have no reason to fear for your sister’s heart, Wiley. I will be a good husband.”

  In three short months.

  “You look more frightened than when we saw our first Redcoats advancing, muskets at the ready.” Amusement laced its way through the frustration in Wiley’s tone. “I would have many a laugh over this were it not my favorite sister that made you wince so.”

  “I am not wincing.” Much.

  “Benton, Fielding! There you are.” Hendricks’s voice came from the corner of the room, where the man had stood and waved a greeting to them. “I shall join you in a moment.”

  “We await you eagerly,” Wiley replied with his usual grin. When he turned back around, it shifted and hardened into the expression few knew. But Emerson did, from the field of battle. It was the look that had always appeared on his friend’s face moments before he let out a war cry and charged into the thick of things. “If you hurt Lark,” he murmured so quietly Emerson could barely hear him, “I will kill you—or make you wish I had.”

  “I know you would. ’Tis not at issue.” Twenty-five years of friendship had not been threatened by competition, an ocean’s distance, or the ravages of war. He would not allow it to be distressed by one small, unassuming woman.

  Chapter Two

  8 December 1783

  Lark let her brother lead her around a muddy spot, then she cast her gaze out over the dormant fields. A few months past, they had been lush and green. A few months in the future, fresh life would spring up in the softest of shades. But for now all was dry and dead, unappealing to the eye.

  She could commiserate well with the feeling.

  “Perhaps they will meet with another delay. A bridge could be out. A river swollen. Perhaps the way is still covered in ice.”

  Lark laughed at Wiley’s tone, hope coated in good humor. “Bad as this winter is thus far, there is no snow right now. I fear Aunt Hester and Penelope shall arrive today as planned.”

  “I fear it too.” Her brother flashed a grin and pulled her closer. “But I fear for you even more than myself. I can escape with Father to the coffeehouse or tavern, and in two short days I shall depart for Annapolis. You, on the other hand, shall be forced to remain in our cousin’s company hour after hour. Day after day. Week after week.”

  She let out a groan. Partly because Wiley expected it, but more because she dreaded the very thought. “Perhaps Charlton shall revise his policy and allow women to patronize his establishment, so I may come with you. Or if not, I could always don your old breeches and pretend to be a man.”

  Wiley gave her a playful nudge and then caught her before she could stumble off the path and onto uneven terrain. “You would faint in horror given some of the things men will say when not in the company of women.”

  “A risk worth taking.”

  He chuckled. “You could yet come with me to visit the Randels. Mr. Randel was quite insistent in extending the invitation to you, assuring me his daughter would enjoy the company of another young woman to hasten by the winter.”

  How was she to know if this Miss Randel would be any better a companion than Penelope? She had never met the family. “I cannot. Mother would never allow me with the Moxleys here, nor with the wedding looming so near.”

  She fell silent for a moment and soaked up the warming sunshine, the first they had seen in weeks.

  “Prithee, Lark, tell me what distresses you.” Wiley, it seemed, could always hear what she thought as well as what she said. “For a young lady who should be aflutter with plans for her nuptials, you are alarmingly melancholy.”

  With anyone else, she would have glossed over her feelings with a smile and wave of the hand. Not with her brother. “I feel as though my arms are bound and my feet on a tottering plank. Pirates at my back and a watery grave before me. No matter where I step, naught but misfortune awaits.”

  Wiley drew her to a halt and turned to face her, revealing the furrow in his brow. “I thought you loved him.”

  “I do. But he cares not for me, Wiley. He has proven it time and again over the last two years, and he proved it anew on my birthday.” When she shook her head, she could feel the breeze tug at her hat. “Perhaps his words were right, but I know the look of a man in love. When Emerson looks at me…I think he sees only my shortcomings.”

  “You have no shortcomings.” He chucked her under the chin and winked.

  Usually she gave herself happily to his cheer. Not with this topic. “Then he sees me not at all.”

  Wiley sighed. “I wish I could assure you otherwise, but on this score I confess my own concerns. I want to be delighted about the match, yet I fear I will watch you both fall into misery.”

  Lark gripped his arm a little tighter. “You know him better than anyone this side of heaven. What ought I do to gain his affections? What can I?”

  He shook his head and gazed into the distance. “I have no advice, Lark. I cannot fathom why he keeps such distance between you. I have spent these years hoping, praying my eyes deceived me or something would change. I told myself he must be exceptionally fond of you, or he would not have asked for your hand.”

  “You sound as though you are no longer so illusioned.”

  He patted her hand, as he had done when she was a child upset about some frivolity. “He insists he wishes to wed you. I cannot fathom why he would not want to, but his behavior has proven him anything but eager. It is unseemly, the way he has prolonged this betrothal. Certainly it would have been understandable during the war, or if he were traveling or building a home for you. But he has been a mile away this whole time. I know not how you suffered the insult so long, Larksong.”

  Though she knew it would be cold, she sank down onto the iron bench positioned under the bare trellis. “I was afraid to push, lest he run the other direction. Afraid to learn his heart belonged elsewhere. I am reaching the point where fear of an unhappy marriage is outweighing the fear of spinsterhood, however. Tell me truly, brother. Is he in love with another?”

  “No.” The answer came quickly, but not so quickly she thought it an overeager falsehood. “There was a young lady while he was in England, a gentleman’s daughter. But when the war broke out and he confessed he would return to fight on the side of the Patriots, her father forbade a union. I thought the heartache might lead him into something rash when first he came home, but he has fully recovered from it. Of that I am certain.”

  And why, after a two-year engagement, was she only learning this now? From her brother, instead of her betrothed? “I can hardly take offense at something so long put to rest. Though the kn
owing of it would have been welcome.”

  “Lark.” He sat beside her. His eyes, the same blue she and their sister, Violet, shared, gleamed both bright and dark. Like a slip of moonstone caught in shadow. “If you have misgivings, if you feel the marriage would be a mistake, I pray you—cry off.”

  “I could never disappoint Mamma and Papa by ending it, Wiley. It would be my ruin, and theirs.”

  “Nonsense. They want you to be happy, as do I. I admit it may cause a stir, but soon enough another gentleman would step forward to claim you.”

  “I doubt that very much.” She studied her hands, which had gone chapped and dry. “I have neither Mother’s beauty nor Father’s charm. The only thing to attract another suitor is the Benton name and the Benton wealth—but since an attachment based on those would carry no more affection than this one, why bother with the change?”

  His finger caught her under the chin and urged her face around. “Listen to me, Lark. You are more than you think yourself, and any man who does not agree is a fool. You are lovely, you are sweet, you are full of wit. There is a man out there who will adore you, and you ought not settle for any other. Even Emerson.”

  The sentiment warmed her…but it answered none of her questions. For all his support, her brother would not be the one to feel it most keenly if she were to gain the stigma of a broken engagement. He would not be the one to feel the long gazes of the gentlemen at every ball, to hear the titters behind the ladies’ fans. To awake each morning wondering if ever a day would dawn that would see loneliness banished.

  “I will give it thought and prayer. But it is a hard decision to make. I do love him, Wiley, though oft I wish I did not. Only…I do not want to be a stranger to my husband, and that is what I feel like, even after knowing him all my life. I…” Having no idea what more she could say, she shrugged.

  Wiley blew a long breath through his lips. “I shall be thinking and praying too, Larksong. Weigh well what you want, what you can live with. What will make you happy. And know whatever you choose, I will support you.”

  “I know you will, and I thank you for it.” When a rumble intruded on her hearing, she lifted her face toward the drive. And sighed. “They have arrived.”

  “Quick, let us make our escape. If we hurry we can catch the post and be in Annapolis by week’s end.”

  Lark chuckled and let him help her to her feet. “If only, my brother.”

  They wound their way out of the sleeping gardens and toward the side entrance of the house. Lark looked out over her home with a little sigh. She had seen the same stately drive, the same outbuildings all her life. The three-story brick abode with its elegant white columns had always been home.

  Perhaps it always would be. She was grateful to have been born into one of the area’s leading families, but to her mind the plantation was Wiley’s legacy, not hers. Would she be relegated to living out her days here, though, the doting spinster aunt to her brother’s eventual children?

  They entered together and shed their hats. Lark positioned the lace of her mobcap back into place as commotion sounded at the front doors.

  Mamma exited her drawing room, and she favored them with a smile that was resplendent, in spite of the advances of age. “There you are, darlings. Was your exercise pleasant?”

  “Better than this will be, at any rate.” Wiley’s cheeky grin was all that saved him, Lark was sure.

  Mamma narrowed her eyes playfully but otherwise scolded him not. “Come, they ought to be inside by now.”

  She led the way, but Lark was happy to move at the sedate pace her brother set. Her aunt Hester and uncle Moxley she liked well enough, but cousin Penelope… Perhaps she had changed in the year and a half since the Bentons had visited them in Philadelphia. If not, it would be an interminable winter.

  They rounded the corner into the front hall but were still in the shadows of the flying staircase when their visitors came into view. Lark felt her eyes bulge when she caught sight of her cousin.

  Penelope had always been beautiful, boasting the same flaxen hair and milky complexion as their mothers. Her eyes had always gleamed large and blue, and she had grown into a young woman with a shape to be envied. Lark had just never expected that shape to be so evident for all to see. “What is she wearing?”

  Wiley attempted a cough to cover his laugh. “I believe, dear sister, the appropriate question would be ‘What is she not wearing?’”

  Lark pressed her lips down against a giggle. Knowing Penelope as she unfortunately did, she was sure the younger woman was in the height of fashion—she simply had no idea when the fashion had become walking around in one’s undergarments, with one’s hair hanging loose around one’s shoulders as if fresh from bed.

  Mamma had apparently put the question to her, though certainly with more tact. Penelope’s silver-chime laughter rang out. “Isn’t it lovely? New from France, where Marie Antoinette sat for a portrait in it. They call it a chemise gown.”

  “For obvious reasons,” Wiley mumbled into Lark’s ear.

  She confined her response to a smile, since the Moxleys stepped forward to greet them. Her aunt embraced her first, and then Penelope pressed a kiss to her cheek.

  Lark barely stemmed a sneeze at the scent of lavender that wafted from her cousin. “Lovely to see you, Penelope.”

  “Likewise, cousin. Did this fashion baby make it all the way down here? You really ought to try the style. The simplicity would not overpower you like those larger skirts do.”

  Lark forced a smile. “How kind of you to think of me. But no, yours is the first we have seen.”

  “’Tis a charming fashion,” Mamma said. Lark couldn’t be sure if she meant it. Her smile was bright, but she had always favored the extravagant styles. “And your hair is lovely like that.”

  “Well, one can hardly wear it piled high in a gown of such low profile—one would look terribly unbalanced.” Another chime of laughter. “And I am all relief for you, Lark, that powdering is going out of mode, but for the most formal events. With your coloring, it always made you look so placid. Oh, but I am so sorry to have missed your birthday. Twenty! I never thought to be visiting you here when you turned twenty.”

  Penelope had most assuredly not changed.

  Mamma cleared her throat. “Had you been delayed much longer, you could not have. The wedding will be the seventh of March. We will be quite overwhelmed with preparations these next months, so I am very grateful for your company, Hester dear. And I know Lark is glad to have a friend.”

  Indeed she would be, had a friend been present.

  Penelope’s gaze shifted in shade, though Lark knew no name for that particular glint within it. “Do you know, cousin, I have never even met your betrothed? I have heard others echo your claim that he is handsome, though.”

  Mamma clasped her hands together. “Oh, he is indeed. My darling songbird has charmed the most sought-after man in all Virginia. They will be joining us for dinner tomorrow before we send Wiley off to Annapolis the following morning, and you can all meet him and his family.”

  Penelope fluttered her lashes. “Oh, you are leaving so soon, Wiley? Would we had not been delayed so we might have enjoyed more of your company. But alas.” Lark had no trouble at all interpreting that smug little smile on her cousin’s face. “I am very much looking forward to meeting the Fieldings, Aunt Margaret.”

  In a move a stranger might have mistaken for friendly, Penelope linked her arm through Lark’s. “You know, cousin, I quite admire you for this protracted engagement. To think of all the time you have had to become acquainted! You must be so very close by now. I confess I would lack the patience, but you are to be commended for your self-restraint.”

  As arrows went, that one had been both straight and true. Perhaps she ought to accept that invitation to the Randels’ in Annapolis after all.

  * * * * *

  “What a monstrous little minx.”

  Lark smiled as Isabella Fielding, the eldest of Emerson’s younger sisters,
positioned herself close to her side and cut Penelope to pieces with her gaze. “Did you hear her insult my dress? And it straight from London! Send her directly back to Philadelphia, Lark, before she tries to steal all my beaux. Look at her, flirting with my brother as if you are not sitting right here.”

  Though Lark could grin at how quickly Isabella had seen through the sheen of Penelope’s charms, that particular command was one she had no desire to obey. Since the moment Emerson had entered the room, her cousin had been batting her golden lashes at him and sending him a series of simpering, supposedly shy smiles.

  Surely he responded only out of politeness. Had she not heard him and Wiley laugh time and again over mutual acquaintances who fell prey to asps like Penelope? He could not be interested in a woman like that. If he were, he would have chosen one of the many young ladies who had been playing the coquette with him all his adult life.

  “However will you tolerate her until March?” The second Fielding sister, Sarah, had taken Lark’s other side. “Perhaps you ought to have the banns read and move the wedding to January. Then you will have only Christmas to survive.”

  The third and final Fielding girl, Horatia, shook her head, her big brown eyes going wider still. “But Wiley will be away. And they could not possibly put the wedding together so quickly with all the guests they’ve invited. Why, General and Mrs. Washington will even be there!”

  “Not that he will be the general then. Papa has said he is resigning his commission soon and retiring to Mount Vernon,” Sarah said.

  Isabella waved that away with her fan. “Just assure me the little monster has not been named a bride-maid.”

  Lark sighed. “Aunt Hester is already at work on her gown.”