Chapter 51: BEGINNING

"How is he?" Annie asked the Earl of Dare

She had been waiting in the hallway outside Ian's bedroom for most of the morning. She had not been brave enough to stop the doctor in order to pose her question. Some time in the slow hours that had passed, however, her reluctance had been pushed aside by her growing anxiety. 

"He's asleep," Dare said. 

He attempted to walk around he, probably headed downstairs for breakfast or dinner, neither of which he had bothered with before. Annie took a step to the side, blocking his passage. 

Dare stopped, one dark brow raised as he looked down into her face. He was taller then his br6, she realized, and though the family resemblance was clear, his classically handsome features were most finely formed. And right now, his cold blue eyes seemed to be boring a home through her. 

"I really need to know how Mr Sinclair is, Lord Dare," she said. "Would you please tell me?"

"And why are you so interested in my brother's condition? Guilt, perhaps? I understand your were instrumental in the beginning that ridiculous contretemps in which he was injured."

"Ridiculous, my Lord?" she asked, stung by the accusation. "I don't believe your brother thought it ridiculous."

She could feel her cheeks begin to flush, this time from anger. Although there was certainly an element of guilt in her concern for Ian, it was not over her defence of the child. 

"Did you give him an opportunity to decide whether or not your interference on that boy's behalf was worth dying for?"

The word chilled her blood. "Dying?" she whispered. 

"He isn't, thank God. No thanks, however, are due to you for that. A gentleman has little choice about coming to the defence of a woman in his charge, even if her actions are both ill-advised and foolhardy."

"The man was beating a child. What would you have had me do, my lord?"

"I would have had you refrain from putting my brother into danger for your own quixotic motives."

"I see," she said tightly. "And it is quixotic to you to attempt to rescue a child?"

"As quixotic as it was of Ian to attempt to protect you from the consequences of your actions. Believe me, I'm thoroughly annoyed with both of you."

Again he attempted to move past her, and again she stepped in front of him. 

"There is little I can do about your opinion of me, Lord Dare," she said. Nor do I give a damn what it is, she thought rebelliously. "However, I should still like an answer to my question, if you please"

"I don't please. If you will excuse me, Miss Darlington..." He offered her a half-bow, the gesture far too polite for the tenor is of the conversation they were having. 

"You don't like me," Annie said. "And you have made that abundantly clear. Whatever I've done to inspire that dislike—"

"I don't dislike you, Miss Darlington. I dislike the fact that you endanger my brother. I warned him from the beginning that this guardianship would be nothing but trouble. Even I couldn't convince, however, how right I should be proven to be."

"From the beginning," she repeated. "And why would you have believed, even before you met me, that I should prove troublesome? I can assure you that has never been my reputation. Nor was it your brother's opinion of me. I wonder why it should have been yours, my lord."

There was a small hesitation and, if possible the Earl's eyes seemed to grow colder then they had been before. 

"Perhaps I am simply an outstanding judge of character, Miss Darlington."

"But at the beginning of your brother's guardianship, you had no way of knowing mine."

Dare's lips tightened, as if he had clamped them shut against the rejoinder he wanted to make. And from what was in his eyes, there was no doubt he wanted to make one.

When he finally opened them, he said instead, "You told Ian the boy was too old. Would you explain to me what you meant?"

The question was almost incomprehensible because she had been expecting something very different. Something caustic and bitter. Accusing. His tone had been neither, and that, too, confused her. But the only boy she and Ian had ever discussed had been the climbing boy. 

The one who had started everything yesterday with his cries and his pleas for rescue. What the child's age could have to do with anything...