A Wanton for All Seasons Page 14

“Annalee.” Except what in hell was he to say? “I . . . it was”—perfect until Diana arrived—“good to see you,” he finished weakly.

  As she left and he remained with Kitty and Lady Diana and her mother, a pit settled in his gut at the realization that if he pursued that match his mother and the whole world sought for him, then it would mark a complete and final end to his time with Annalee.

  Chapter 11

  Well, hell.

  This was bad.

  The latest edition of The Times stared up damningly, while Annalee, Sylvia, and Valerie stood around Sylvia’s desk, contemplating the latest scandal Annalee had found herself embroiled in . . . and all because of a visit to Madame Bouchard’s most prestigious of modiste shops.

  From the corner of her eye, Annalee peeked at the two women flanking her and the newspaper.

  As usual, Valerie’s expression was a carefully crafted mask that gave no indication as to what the other woman thought or felt.

  Sylvia, however, wore her strain in her eyes and the corners of her mouth, and whether that fatigue was a product of Annalee or the fact she was expecting a babe was hard to say.

  A healthy amount of fear snapped through Annalee. Eventually all tired of her. People tolerated only so much where she was concerned. From nursemaids to governesses to lovers . . . to even parents, ultimately everyone tired of her and her “antics,” as Mother referred to them.

  Perhaps this would prove the last straw for Sylvia. Though that would be the height of irony, indeed. What would bring her down wasn’t the orgies she’d attended or running in her chemise through fountains or her friendship with the two greatest rakes amongst Polite—and Impolite—Society, but her association with the estimably proper and honorable Lord Darlington.

  She would have laughed. If she could have. If she weren’t filled with a hellish terror that she’d be forced to return home, where her dowry had been withheld, dependent upon a family who despised her, who would constantly remind her that her own actions that day in Manchester had been a stain upon the family, just like all her wild behaviors.

  Annalee wrenched her stare away and back over to the front page of The Times.

  And with every click of that Griotte-marble-and-bronze clock punctuating the pregnant silence, an inevitable sense of doom swelled and rose, threatening to engulf her. She couldn’t go back. She didn’t belong there. They didn’t want her. Panic ricocheted around her breast, pinging back and forth like the staccato echo of the bullets that had flown that day in Manchester.

  Except that remembrance only brought out a sweat upon her palms and skin, and bile burnt her throat, climbing higher, and she swallowed quickly several times to keep from casting up the contents of her morning meal right there on that damning sheet that was her source of woe.

  Annalee’s gaze slid to the silver flask she’d foolishly set on the center table as she’d entered the room. Her throat ached, and her mouth went dry, parched for the smooth heat of the liquor that invariably managed to dull the edges of the most unpleasant aspects of life. She eyed her flask covetously. Given the severity of these latest circumstances—with her fate and future in this household and as part of the society that met within this residence, however, all in question—this was hardly the time to draw attention to her love of spirits.

  At last, the silence broke . . . in the form of Sylvia’s sigh. “Well, this is . . . certainly . . . not wonderful.” The recently married viscountess pressed her fingertips against her temples and rubbed them in small circles.

  Or that was another, more polite way of saying it. And if Annalee were capable of a smile or a laugh, that startling contrast between her uncouth thoughts about the situation and Sylvia’s more polite, optimistic one would have been reason for it. But she wasn’t capable of either, beyond the weight pressing down on her like so many bricks, stealing her ability to breathe.

  “I’ll fix it,” Annalee said quickly. She didn’t know how. As it was, each effort she’d made to not be scandalous had been met with only greater scandal.

  “Fix what?” Valerie snapped. “You did nothing wrong.” She turned to Sylvia. “She didn’t do anything. She merely spoke with the baron. Why . . . why . . . He was just as polite and pleasant to me.”

  And yet, neither had Wayland strolled through the shop on Valerie’s arm or helped select fabric, all of which had been reported in the gossip columns.

  Sylvia scoffed. “You don’t have to fix this, Annalee,” she said, her eyes glinting with the passion of her defense. “You visited a respectable modiste, and with a friend at that, at the same time one of London’s most respectable gentlemen should have also attended with his sister.” With a sound of disgust, Sylvia shoved the paper. “As though the perfect place for an assignation is a modiste’s.”

  “Yes, imagine that,” Annalee added weakly. Because, of course, her reputation preceded her, and she’d not always been innocent where modiste shops and gentlemen were concerned.

  “This is what is wrong with society and how women are treated . . . mature women.” Valerie amended her word choice and overemphasized those two syllables. “They see Lady Diana and imagine her, the perfect innocent, to be his perfect match in every way, and then there is the big, bad, terrible wanton, ruining all the good plans between them.”

  “I’ll allow ‘big’ and ‘bad,’ but a ‘terrible wanton,’ too, Valerie?” Even with her attempt at jest, a vicious jealousy snaked around her gut at Valerie’s words.

  For she, like everyone, nay, more than everyone, had heard the tales of Wayland’s heroic rescue that day in Manchester. She’d read those newspapers with his name, admiring him and loving him for who he’d been to that mother, her daughter, and her maid that day . . .

  “Well, either way, it is preposterous,” Sylvia was saying, pulling Annalee out of her own head.

  “Their linking you romantically to one such as Lord Darlington? Darlington?” A snorting laugh spilled past Sylvia’s lips, and she shook her head. “It’s ridiculous.”

  Annalee forced herself to add a chuckle, joining in Sylvia’s mirth, the sound of her own slightly strained. Yes, it was rather hard to conceive. The world would have never dared pair Annalee with one such as Wayland, but the world also didn’t know a thing about the man he’d once been or the passion and fire he was capable of. Where he’d doused that light, however, Annalee had let herself be consumed by it, and those changes from their once equally passionate selves accounted for Sylvia’s incredulity.

  “However much truth there is to it,” Valerie said brusquely, “there still remains the fact that the ton has once more turned their focus on . . . on . . .”

  “My influence,” Annalee quietly supplied. “It is me.” She, who was supposed to be leading the Mismatch Society, had thrown the group into tumult once more. And this time she’d actually engaged in nothing scandalous. Well, not to her usual level of scandal.

  “Yes, well, either way,” Valerie continued, “that doesn’t change the fact that the gossips are talking, and the mothers and fathers and overprotective brothers of our members will certainly have something to say to their daughters and sisters . . .”

  “I said I will fix it.”

  “And just exactly how will you fix it?” Valerie shot back.

  How would she . . . And then Annalee went still. Why, yes, of course. Society saw her as the “other woman.” But . . . what if she were, in fact, not the other woman, but rather, “the woman”?

  Only . . . what if Wayland does, in fact, have feelings for the girl? As soon as the thought slid in, her stomach muscles again clenched. Surely . . . he didn’t. He couldn’t. Why, he was well over a decade older than the duke’s daughter.

  But then, that was what a proper, respectable gentleman would seek in a wife: one who was perfectly virginal and young and not as jaded by life as Annalee was.

  “What are you thinking?” Sylvia asked gently.

  She was thinking she had a sudden urge to cry. “I’ll . . . strike a proper courtship
, and by establishing a respectable image, I’ll be free to lead the meetings and continue educating the other members.”

  Another round of laughter, this time from both Sylvia and Valerie, met that pronouncement.

  “What?” she asked indignantly.

  And then both women’s amusement faded, and a like understanding dawned in their eyes.

  “You are . . . serious,” Sylvia said on a quiet exhale.

  Annalee resisted the urge to squirm. “And why not? It should work.”

  Sylvia found herself. “Because you shouldn’t have to—”

  “You did it.” Annalee interrupted her friend with that reminder. “You enlisted the aid of a respectable gentleman to save the Mismatch Society; why should I not do the same?”

  “Because it’s not the same.” Sylvia frowned. “In fact, it’s entirely different. Clayton and I had a friendship that went back, and he was willing to take part because of our past relationship.”

  And yet . . . not unlike Sylvia, Annalee also had a former friendship with a gentleman who was—if possible—even more proper than Sylvia’s husband, the Viscount St. John.

  “Then I shall strike a courtship with the most proper of lords.”

  “Who are you thinking of?” Sylvia asked.

  Her friend still didn’t realize.

  Annalee spelled it out precisely. “Lord Darlington.”

  “Darlington?” Sylvia echoed, her gaze going to the newspaper and then to Annalee, and back once more to the copy of The Times. “As in”—she tapped a fingernail in the middle of the page—“this Darlington?”

  “Why, he makes perfect sense as a choice,” Annalee said, her words rolling together as she warmed to her quickly evolving plot. “He is my brother’s closest friend. We knew one another as children. And in striking up a courtship, I shall turn what the world sees as scandalous into that which is not only acceptable but also respectable . . .” Annalee spread her arms wide. “A proper courtship.”

  Another round of silence fell. Then, chewing at her fingertip, Sylvia began striding before the table, her pace unhurried, the lines of her brow creased in contemplation. Suddenly she stopped and lifted the copy of The Times. “Why . . . it may just work,” she said quietly.

  “And what happens when your proper courtship comes to an end?” Valerie asked with her usual bluntness. “What then?”

  “Oh, do not be the slayer of optimism and ingenuity.” Annalee softened that scolding by looping her arms about the other woman and hugging her.

  Valerie shrugged her off. “I’m not,” she said flatly. “I’m being realistic.”

  “Perhaps we realize our bond has never moved beyond the deep friendship we had as children. Perhaps he or I discover a desire to travel that the other one helped”—she framed her face with her hands—“open our eyes to.”

  Valerie drew back. “You’d do that?” She looked stricken. “You’d go travel and leave the Mismatch Society?”

  “To save the Mismatch Society? Yes, yes, I would,” Annalee said without hesitation, that declaration coming from a place of love and devotion to this group which had saved her. It would break her heart to miss out on so much as a single moment with the ladies, but for as selfish as she was in so many ways, to save the group, she’d leave. “Even if it means I have to separate from the society altogether.”

  Valerie gasped, visibly recoiling.

  Sylvia lifted a hand. “No one is going anywhere.” She scrunched up her nose. “Other than me to the countryside, but only temporarily. We are a family, and we weather storms and scandals as friends do, damn it,” she finished, punching a fist toward the floor.

  So much love for this woman filled her. Tears pricked Annalee’s eyes, and she tossed her arms around Sylvia.

  “Come now, Annalee,” Sylvia said softly as she folded her in her embrace, stroking her back. “We are friends.”

  Ones of whom, with the way Annalee had decided to live her life, she was undeserving.

  “And there will be no parting with one another,” the viscountess went on. “Ever.”

  Sniffling, Annalee stepped out of her friend’s arms and swiped at her cheeks. “You are entirely too good to me.” A resolve strengthened her spine and brought her shoulders back. “I will make this right,” she vowed. If anyone might restore her reputation and paint her in a new, favorable-to-Polite-Society light, that man was Wayland. “You may rest assured the Mismatch Society will not only be fine in your absence but will also thrive, and you will return to find us flourishing even more than ever.”

  Sylvia smiled. “I do not doubt it. First, however, there is the matter of Darlington and petitioning him for his help. Do you think he will be amenable to assisting us?”

  Petitioning him for his help . . .

  This was a mistake . . . Forgive me. Us, being together . . . It cannot—

  “Annalee?” Sylvia asked hesitantly.

  “Yes! I . . . I expect he will,” she lied. Now came the impossible task of convincing the estimable Lord Darlington to dance with the Devil in a deal that would only darken his reputation.

  Bloody hell.

  Chapter 12

  Following his mother’s invasion of the breakfast room the morning before, when Wayland found his name splashed all over the front pages of The Times for a second time, he knew better than to leave himself like a target at that table.

  He eyed the closed door covetously. His clubs.

  Jeremy’s.

  Any place was safer and better than this one.

  Eventually he’d be found.

  “You have time,” his sister said, walking a path about the table, contemplating the red velvet surface, “before she discovers us.”

  Yes. Because the last place she’d think to find him was in the billiards room. His offices, yes. His library. His rooms. The breakfast room. Certainly not the billiards room. At least not in broad daylight without gentlemen to entertain.

  He made one more appeal. “You know, if you really were the devoted sister you pride yourself on being, you’d leave me to my escape.”

  Kitty snorted. “And leave me with the mess of your making?” she murmured distractedly as she leaned over the billiards table, eyeing her shot. “I think not.” His sister drew back her stick and pressed it forth several times. “I’m a devoted sister, not a martyr, Wayland.” She let her cue fly.

  Crack.

  The balls perfectly split, and two of her whites sailed into opposite end pockets.

  He winced.

  His sister glanced up. “Oh, don’t be a fogy. I don’t really think you did anything,” his sister said with a roll of her eyes. “But what I think doesn’t matter.”

  Nor for that matter was it about what their status-climbing mama believed, either. It was about Wayland’s reputation. A reputation that had to be above reproach. For even as it hardly mattered for himself, it mattered for Kitty and her future. Having lived in a one-room household with meager payments earned for the backbreaking work his father had done, Wayland would see her secure so there was not even the slightest possibility that she found herself back where they’d been.

  Kitty took another shot; her target ball knocked into the one she’d been eyeing, which sailed and then stopped just shy of the pocket. She recoiled. “Oh, bollocks, I’ve missed.”

  This was the last thing he needed, his mother discovering him playing billiards with his sister, and her cursing like a sailor as they did. “You shouldn’t say that,” he said, stealing another glance at the still thankfully closed door.

  Kitty drew her back straight, and flipped over her cue so it thumped angrily upon the parquet floor. “And whyever not? They’re just words.”

  “Words that ladies don’t say.”

  As it was, the papers had been unkind enough about the uncouth daughter of a blacksmith mingling amongst their elite numbers.

  In one fluid move, Kitty flipped her cue back over and brought it down hard over his hand.

  With a curse, he drew his wound
ed knuckles close. “Christ, Kitty. What the hell was that for?”

  Kitty batted her eyelashes. “Oh, dear, how uncouth of you, brother dearest. Tsk, tsk. Swearing in the presence of a lady.”

  He shook his hand out, flexing his palm in a bid to drive back the pain.

  She widened her eyes. “Never say I’ve hurt you?”

  “Would it matter if you did?” he countered, shaking his hand again.

  “Only as so you might recall this moment and why you shouldn’t go about being so stuffy as to think it matters if a lady curses.”

  Wayland set his cue down on the side of the table. “It isn’t about what I think—”

  “No, it’s about what others think,” she interrupted. “Which I find all the worse, Wayland.”

  The door exploded open.

  Winded and perspiring, his mother drew to a sudden stop. “You are playing billiards with your sister?”

  “Well, in fairness, I’ve been playing. Wayland has been doing a whole lot of watching and talking.”

  Ignoring her daughter, their mother swept over. “This outrageous behavior fits very much with your scandalous escapades these past two days.”

  Kitty leaned in and spoke in an exaggerated whisper. “Two days that we know of, Mother. Why, who is to say how many more days or weeks or even months Wayland has been behaving so?”

  “Kitty,” he mouthed silently.

  She winked.

  He was so glad one of them was enjoying this.

  “Kitty, a moment.”

  And by the way their parent didn’t so much as remove her fury-filled gaze from Wayland, he was in for it with a lecture.

  Kitty gave him a last pitying look before taking herself off.

  The moment she’d gone, his mother pounced. “Not one word. Not one single word, Wayland Winston Wallingford Wilks Smith.” His mother clipped out each syllable of that ridiculously long name she’d fashioned for him after he’d received his title. Adding three in between the more common Christian name and surname he’d been born with because, of course, lords deserved more, and alliterative ones at that. “How could you?”