called in an unfamiliar accent. He freed one hand to point ahead. “Just along that next coombe.”
She had no idea what a coombe was. She turned forward in time to see the roofline of Rosefield Hall come into view above the trees. Annis had expected an ostentatious sort of building, like the lavish Fifth Avenue mansions, but this was different. She was no authority on architecture, but it seemed obvious the central hall had been added to over long years, a wing here, a stable block there, but everything constructed with careful taste. The result was elegant and restrained, a big, graceful house unlike anything she had seen in New York. They drove past formal gardens, where a white pergola stood in a well-tended shrubbery. Gargoyles jutted from the roof of the hall, and a medallion, carved with the same crest that adorned the carriage, hung above the entrance.
As they drew near, Frances murmured an excited commentary on the grandness of the house, but Annis wasn’t listening. Still with her head out the window, she had spied a stone-fenced pasture beyond the gardens. Half a dozen glorious white horses grazed there, the faint dapples of their coats gleaming like silver coins in the sunshine. As she watched, a coal-gray foal galloped in a circle around its elders, tossing its head and flicking its tail.
“Such beautiful horses!” she called to the footman.
“Yes, miss. My lord’s Andalusians.”
“Indeed! I thought they must be!”
Suddenly she couldn’t wait to escape the confines of the carriage. For a moment she felt like her usual self, thrumming with energy, avid to run through the gardens to the pasture, to lean across the stone fence to admire those horses.
Frances tugged on the back of her jacket. “Annis! Stop acting like a child. Get back in here, and do something about your hair. Tuck your scarf into your bodice, for pity’s sake, and put your hat on.”
To Annis’s dismay, the odd lassitude that had troubled her in recent days seized her again. She didn’t want to obey Frances’s order, but she seemed to have lost her ability to resist. She pulled back inside the carriage without argument. She repinned her hair, smoothing the disordered strands back into place. She settled her hat on her head, and Velma, under Frances’s critical eye, resettled the pins.
Annis’s joy at the sight of the horses evaporated. She folded her hands in her lap and gazed blindly forward, wondering what was wrong with her.
When the carriage rolled to a stop before a set of broad steps leading up to the front door of Seabeck Hall, Lady Eleanor was waiting for them. She sent their maids around to the service entrance and dispatched two footmen up the stairs with their trunks before she led Frances and Annis into a parlor to meet their fellow guests.
There was an awkward issue with the small case Frances seemed so reluctant to part with. Annis thought it odd, because her stepmother rarely carried anything herself if she could help it. In this case she did ultimately relinquish the little valise into the hands of a footman, but it had seemed for a moment she might carry it with her into the parlor.
A flurry of introductions enveloped them, and the ceremony of tea proceeded. The afternoon slipped away in a fog of small talk and formalities. Annis relinquished her urge to visit the horses and hoped, vaguely, that the morning would provide an opportunity.
The other guests were all terribly old. Lady Whitmore she had already met. Her husband was a gloomy man whose vest strained over a protuberant belly and whose nose was prominently veined. Annis had to pinch herself to keep from staring at it. The Hyde-Smiths were a gray-haired pair with a startling resemblance to each other, with thin, arching noses and vanishing chins. The Derbyshires were even older, and rather withered, like plants that hadn’t had enough water.
The flame of resentment toward Frances for forcing her to endure such an afternoon burned lower in Annis’s breast than she might have expected. She sat quietly, letting the innocuous conversation drift around her in bits and pieces. She repressed her yawns and tempered her usual bluntness out of respect for the advanced ages of the company.
As they climbed the stairs to dress for dinner, Frances remarked in an undertone, “You were charming with all those ancient people, Annis! I think the dowager marchioness was impressed. You surprised me.”
Annis cast her a sidelong glance. Frances didn’t look surprised at all.