Lady Anne's Deception (The Changing Fortunes Series Book 4) by M. C. Beaton Page A

a moment ago,” she said, peering around hopefully. Everyone began to look around in a ludicrous way as if the Marchioness of Torrance were a missing handbag.
    “Then,” pursued the marquess, “since you cannot produce my wife, perhaps you can enlighten me as to why so many of you delightful ladies have called for tea.”
    “It’s a meeting. We’re organizing a ball to raise funds to support the Vote for Women movement,” volunteered Mrs. Winton, after a short silence in which no one spoke.
    “And it was my wife’s idea?”
    “Well, no,” blustered Miss Hammond. “I asked dear Ann—Lady Torrance if we could use her house and she said we could. Of course, she is a devoted supporter.”
    “Obviously a strong feminist,” said the marquess sweetly, “since my house has become not ‘our’ house but
her
house.”
    “Oh, your lordship will have your little joke.”
    “Yes, I will, won’t I. Ah, Shaw-Bufford! Have you just arrived?”
    The chancellor had been trying to glide silently through the hall behind the marquess’s back, but somehow the marquess, in some peculiar way, had seemed to sense he was there without turning his head.
    He came to stand beside the marquess in the open door-way.
    “Perhaps you can tell me the whereabouts of my wife?” asked the marquess.
    “I was talking to her a little moment ago. I sent her to fetch Miss Hammond and bring her to see me in the study. I…” His voice trailed off under the marquess’s look of bland surprise.
    “Then perhaps you sent her scurrying off on another little errand? Dear me. Is it the servants’ day off by any chance? No, it can’t be. I quite distinctly see several of them at least, ministering to all your needs.”
    “My lord, I—”
    “So I suppose I had better look for her myself.” The marquess ambled off after bestowing another sweet smile on all and sundry.
    There was an awkward silence. Mr. Shaw-Bufford collected his hat, cane, and long gray coat with the astrakhan collar. Two little spots of color burned on his cheeks. He could never understand why such a useless dilettante as the Marquess of Torrance always contrived to make him feel ridiculous.
    Annie, tossing and turning on her bed in the throes of a fever, felt a cool hand laid on her brow. It was taken away to be replaced by a cloth soaked in iced water and cologne.
    “Oh, that’s very good, Barton,” she mumbled, only to be answered by a masculine voice saying gently, “The doctor will be here soon. Try to lie still.”
    “Jasper!” she said, reaching out and clutching his sleeve. “Where are you?”
    “I’m here.”
    “Don’t go away!”
    “I won’t. Be still.”
    Annie fell into, a feverish dream in which Mr. Shaw-Bufford was chasing Miss Hammond through the maze at Hampton Court. “I shan’t be caught,” Miss Hammond was crying. “I shall be a martyr instead.”
    Then she awoke to the murmur of masculine voices, a Scottish one—the doctor?—saying, “Her ladyship has the influenza, my lord. I will go myself to the chemist’s and have her medicine made up and return with it directly.”
    And then Annie plunged back into tortured dreams.
    For the next forty-eight hours, it was hard for Annie to separate her dreams from reality. At one time it seemed as if Marigold was in the room, looking down at her with bright, malicious eyes. Marigold was saying shrilly, “Are you sure she is
really
ill? She would always do anything to get attention.”
    And her husband’s voice replying, “Please leave my house and don’t dare come back until you are invited.”
    And sometime later a pleasant sensation of strong hands lifting her into a warm, scented bath, rubbing her down with a fleecy towel, carrying her back to bed again.
    And then it seemed, at last, as if she awoke properly. Her head was clear and everything in the room looked sharp and new.
    Her husband was sleeping in a chair beside the embers of the fire. He was unshaven and wrapped in his dressing