The Captain's Return. Elizabeth Bailey

“I must! Annabel, there is so little time. I can’t leave England, knowing that you care for me, only to be tortured every moment by the thought of you marrying someone else.”

      Annabel tried to drag away. “Let me go! Can’t you see that you are pulling me in half? Hal, this is so unfair! Do you think it cost me nothing to reach that decision? I love you too, but—”

      “That’s all I wanted to hear!” he said gutturally.

      Next instant, Annabel found herself jerked against his broad chest as his mouth sought hers. Warmth flooded her, and for a moment she clung to him, answering the hunger of his lips with a desire as fervid as his own.

      But the image of Papa’s distressing upset thrust rudely into her mind. She wrenched back, the force of her motion breaking his hold.

      “You must not! Hal, for heaven’s sake, let me be! I cannot marry you. I cannot!”

      He did not pursue her as she backed away, but his ragged breath gave her audible evidence of his unabated passion. It had the opposite effect to the one she ought to experience. She could feel her limbs trembling, and a desperate yearning opened up in those hollows that she knew to be most vulnerable to his need.

      “You belong with me, Annabel. This is ruining both our lives, and you know it. And for what? For the ravings of an obstinate devil, who is so eaten up with prejudice that he sacrifices the happiness of his own daughter!”

      Annabel flew at him then, her hands curled into fists. She tried to hit at him, raging.

      “Be silent! Beast! Brute! How I hate you!”

      He had caught her wrists, holding them fast.

      “Wildcat! Stop it!”

      But Annabel was crying with rage, and her protests became the more vehement. She knew not what she said, only that she wanted to kill him for hurting her so…

      How it had happened, Annabel had never afterwards been able to recall. Even now, wakeful in her bed, all this time later. But she had found herself lying upon the flagged stone of the summerhouse, in a tangle of legs and panting breath, with the man who slept tonight in the room below.

      And when Hal, coming for an instant to his senses, would have stopped it, Annabel was guiltily aware that she had been the one so lost in love and desire who had plunged them back into that total consummation.

      Only afterwards, as she lay in his arms, her mind hazy with fulfilment, had the enormity of the proceeding gradually seeped into her consciousness.

      Hal had cursed himself with a will. But Annabel, horrified by the realisation of what had happened, had begged him to go and alert her coachman that she might make a hurried and unseen exit from the ball.

      He had done as she wished, and by the time he had returned, Annabel had been too overwrought to listen to anything he may have said. She could remember nothing of his words, although she knew that he had addressed her in tones of earnest agitation as he had escorted her to the coach.

      What she did remember was the tearful confession she had poured into Papa’s ears. He had been distressed, but not angry—not then. But he had hustled her out of town that very night, and into the country. A tale had been put about by the lady who was sponsoring her that she had been taken suddenly ill, but Annabel had no means of knowing whether it had been believed.

      She had not been seen in fashionable circles since. Like the fictitious Captain Lett, Annabel Howes had disappeared without trace. And until he had thrust himself back into her life this afternoon in her little garden in Steep Ride, Annabel had neither heard from nor set eyes on Captain Colton from that night.