One of Elizabeth's cardinal rules, however, was never to place yourself in a position where your reputation could be compromised. And venturing any distance from the lights and the crowd had the potential for danger.
She pulled her gaze away from the invitation of the garden to scan the mob again, searching for Lady Laud. Or even for her partner, who should certainly be on his way back by now, refreshments in hand. Seeing neither, and taking that as a sign, she began to make her way through the throng towards the doors across the ballroom.
Only later would she realize that at almost any step on that fateful journey something might have happened to change its outcome. She might have encountered Lady Laud or been approached by either her next partner or her last. The ever-present Mr Travener might have come to speak to her. As might any of the host of people to whom she had been introduced to tonight.
Unfortunately, none of those things occurred. Her eyes still searching the crowd as she hurried across the floor, she bumped into someone instead. An elderly gentleman in outdated evening dress had been escorting his equally elderly partner onto the floor just as Annie had almost reached the safety—and the anonymity—of its other side.
"I do beg your pardon," she said, embarrassed that she had drawn attention to herself.
After all, she realized, the eyes of most of the people in the vast ballroom were now focused on the dance floor, waiting for the music of the reel to begin. And most of those who intended to participate in that lively dance had already assumed their places.
She wished now, of course, that she had edged around the perimeter of the room, but when she had started across the polished parquet she had believed she had time to make it before the music began. And if there had not been so many people leaving it from the last set and an equal number coming onto it for the next, she might have managed.
She smiled at the old man as she apologized, expecting an equally apologetic response. Instead the gentleman's black eyes fastened on her face.
"Darlington's chit," he said.
An acquaintance of my father's, Annie thought, feeling a sense of relief.
"I am indeed, sir," Annie said, smiling at him again. "Did you know my father?"
As she awaited for his answer, it seemed a sudden stillness had fallen over the room. The orchestra was not yet playing. The dancers were in position for the reel, breathlessly awaiting the signal if it's first notes. And far too many of the guests were watching the dance floor in anticipation.
Only a few minutes before, she would have welcomed this lull in the eternal hubbub. Now she was uncomfortably aware that hundreds of pairs of eyes seemed focused on the very spot where she and her Father's friend were standing. And as she awaited his reply, the silence in the room deepened.
"I knew your father," the old man said, his voice carrying clearly through that unnatural stillness. "I knew him for what he was—a coward and a murderer. And I have no wish to be in the same room as his daughter."
Annie could not have been more shocked had he struck her. As his words reverberated, she tried to make sense of them. Before she could, and certainly before she could formulate any answer to that incredible accusation, the gentleman deliberately turned his back on her.
Instead of walking off the floor as he had threatened, however, he simply stood there. And it took a few seconds for her to realize what that gesture meant. He was offering her a direct cut, the worst possible insult one person could give another in this setting.
The back of his evening jacket, which hung loosely from thin, narrow shoulders, seemed to be all she could see. And she could hear nothing, enclosed in a soundless vacuum of horror. It seemed that no one in the vast room was saying a word.
His, however, echoed over and over. I knew just for what he was—a coward and a murderer. I have no wish to be in the same room as his daughter. Perhaps they sounded only in her head, but if so, they were loud enough there to drown out a cannon fire.
Her first instinct was to flee, but Annie Darlington had never run from anything in her life. No matter what else she might be, she told herself, she was not a coward. Her second instinct, coming closely on the heels of the first, was to put her hand on the old man's shoulder and pull him around to demand what he had meant.
As his words continued to beat in her consciousness, however, she realized that somewhere inside she had always known there was something shameful about George Darlington. And in that terrible isolation, alone and yet surrounded by scores of people, a hundred subtle clues she should have put together before now ran through her brain like summer lightning, shimmering and intense.
Ian's lack of response to her questions about his relationship to her father. His strange wording concerning the will on the first day she'd met him. The look in Elizabeth's eyes when Annie had remarked on Ian's supposedly close friendship with her father. And, most telling, her guardian's reaction to her comment about taking her courage after her father. Coward and murderer.