Annabelle by MC Beaton

is at an end.”
    “I am sorry to have caused you so much distress, sir,” said Annabelle in a low voice.
    “Oh, I’ll be all right,” said the captain cheerfully, “except, of course, that there ain’t a war on, and I’ve become used to squiring a lady around. You won’t mind if we stay friends, will you? Until you’re suited, that is?”
    Annabelle moved over to the window with her back to him and gazed out into the square. How was she tobe expected to meet anyone else if she were to be constantly seen in the Captain’s company?
    But as she gazed into the square, a smart highflyer phaeton rolled past with Lord Varleigh at the reins and Lady Jane perched up behind him, laughing and holding on to a ridiculous little hat.
    “Thank you,” said Annabelle in a subdued voice and turning round. “That is very kind of you.”
    “Splendid,” beamed the Captain. “Tell you what— run and fetch your bonnet and I’ll take you for a drive. You haven’t seen much of London apart from St. James’s.”
    The sun shone in at the window. Everyone else who mattered seemed to be out there having a marvellous time.
    Annabelle agreed and was ushered off the premises by an ecstatic Lady Emmeline.
    “I know what I’ll do,” said Captain MacDonald when Annabelle was safely ensconsed beside him in the carriage. “I’ll take you to all those places they show the country cousins. You’ll like that.”
    Annabelle turned her head away to hide a smile. The Captain could not be said to be a model of tact.
    To her surprise she found herself thrilled and surprised by her outing. They drove first to the middle of Westminster Bridge and stopped to look at the great green and gray river with its barges and wherries and brown sails. Upstream lay the terraced trees and houses in front of Westminster Hall, the new Millbank Penitentiary and the low, willowed banks, and downstream, the crumbling old taverns and warehouses of Scotland Yard.
    Then they drove over the high-balustraded bridge, with its bays and hooped lampposts, to the Surrey shore. After a short depressing ride through rows of mean, small dwellings and dingy factories, they returned once moreto the river and over the camelback of London Bridge where the river narrowed into cataracts and poured down through arches. And so into the City, the commercial hub.
    Annabelle found it all bewilderingly unlike the quiet streets of the West End.
    Postmen in scarlet coats with bells and bags mingled with porterhouse boys with pewter mugs. Bakers cried “Hot loaves,” chimney sweeps with brushes, hawkers with bandboxes on poles, milkmaids with pails, all were crying their wares over the din made by the bells of the dust carts and the horns of the news vendors.
    And the shops!
    Windows were piled high with silks and muslin and calicoes, china and glassware, jewels and silver. Businessmen in broadcloth edged past children bowling hoops and workmen in aprons and padded leather jackets and raree-show men carrying the magic of their trade on their backs.
    Annabelle stared openmouthed as they bowled across the wide cobbled expanse of Finsbury Square. Then across Old Street and past the gloomy facade of St. Luke’s Hospital for the insane with its large figures of Melancholy and Raving Madness. And then a long way round by Islington and Pentonville, out to Hampstead and Highgate, back towards London past the Yorkshire Stingo Pleasure Gardens at Lisson Grove and Mr. Lord’s cricket ground—now scheduled for building—and along the Edgeware Road where Annabelle at last recognised the wooden Tyburn turnpike and the northern wall of Hyde Park.
    All through the journey the Captain kept up a light easy flow of conversation. Annabelle found she had enjoyed her day and was no longer afraid that the Captain would subject her to an
excess of civility
. And nor didhe. Instead of trying to kiss her, he merely bent punctiliously over her hand and said he hoped to see her at the opera.
    Annabelle found