A Wanton for All Seasons Read online

  The ones that had irrevocably changed Annalee’s life.

  As such, she was the last person he wished to be near . . . for so many reasons. But the fact remained: Jeremy had put the favor to him, and he could no sooner reject that plea for help than he could free himself of the guilt of the past.

  Wayland held Harlow’s gaze with his own.

  She gave him a wary look.

  “Your brother sent me in search because he is worried,” he said gently, in those same tones he’d adopted with his own sister years earlier. Wayland also played upon the one thing or person to match her devotion to her elder sister . . . the girl’s love for and loyalty to her brother.

  Indecision filled Harlow’s blue eyes. They were her sister’s eyes, putting him in mind of Annalee when he and she had been younger. She’d been a mischievous girl who’d slip under tables and tie the laces of his ancient boots together.

  His chest constricted, and he shoved back those long-ago memories of yore.

  “He’s not worried for Annalee,” she said sharply. “He’s worried about his betrothed.”

  Ah, so devotion to her sister had come to take place above any loyalty to her brother. Alas, having a sister of his own, he’d learned such was the way of sisters.

  Wayland stood. “He loves them both. Why can he not worry equally about Annalee and Sophrona?” he cajoled.

  And then, with reluctance in her every movement, the girl stepped aside. “Because he doesn’t,” she said with sadness tingeing her voice. “No one really cares about Annalee anymore. Except me and her friends.” Fire lit Harlow’s eyes. “To loyal friends!” She unsheathed her rapier and pointed it in a salute toward the small crystal chandelier dangling overhead. With that, she stepped aside so he could pass.

  Dropping another bow, he started forward.

  He tensed his jaw. Were it anyone else, and not a child, speaking so passionately before him, he would have told her just what he thought of the company Annalee kept.

  Those . . . loyal friends.

  As in the Mismatch Society, a scandalous league of women who’d come together to challenge society’s structure and norms. The club, which met weekly, had become notorious and was also regularly written of and whispered about.

  It was so very Annalee.

  That was, this new version of Annalee. Annalee of old had spoken of marriage and love and been innocent in ways that she was now only jaded.

  Harlow called out after him, stopping him in his tracks. “I don’t know why everyone is so unfair to Annalee.”

  There was a wealth of sadness in the child’s tones, and confusion, and a host of so much emotion that he desperately wished to keep walking. To just get on with the task Jeremy had charged him with. A task that he wanted no part of but was helpless to refuse.

  Alas, he was also helpless when it came to the misery and confusion there in Harlow’s voice.

  With a sigh, he turned and headed back the length of the hall. “It is . . . complicated, Harlow.”

  Harlow snorted. “That was what you came all the way back to say?” She dropped her voice to a deep, slightly nasally intonation. “It is complicated.”

  He bristled. “I don’t—”

  “Sound like that? You do. Like you’re trying too hard to sound like”—she nudged her chin in the direction of the doors leading to the ballroom—“them.”

  Because he had spent years practicing so that he might fit into a world to which he’d not been born but always aspired.

  He rubbed a hand over his forehead and got back to the initial statement that had brought him over. “The truth of it is, it is complicated.” This was really a conversation for the little girl’s parents or brother. “Life is sometimes—”

  “Messy?”

  “Yes. And—”

  “There aren’t always answers that are sufficient to explain?” she correctly supplied.

  “Yes. And—”

  “And I think I have the gist of it,” Harlow said dryly.

  The right corner of his mouth pulled up in a wry smile. “Yes, well, I think you have it even better than me,” he said, ruffling the top of her tangled curls.

  Giggling, she swatted at his hand. “I know I have it better than you.”

  Stumbling back in false affront, he slapped a hand to his chest, all the while walking backward in his retreat.

  Harlow’s mirth faded as quickly as it had come. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted after him, “She is a grown woman and should be free to live her life precisely as she wishes to.”

  Drinking. Smoking. Wagering. And . . . carrying on with wicked reprobates?

  Was that what Annalee was doing even now, during Jeremy’s betrothal ball?

  Fury sizzled through his veins. Perhaps the embers of those fiery sentiments weren’t wholly extinguished, after all.

  That outrage was surely a product of her relationship to Jeremy and this family. It had nothing to do with anything Wayland and Annalee had shared in the past. They’d been children. So very different from one another. The chasm between them . . . Those differences had only become an ever-widening gulf as they each coped with Peterloo in very different ways.

  “Darling?” Harlow called warningly.

  He touched four fingers to his brow in salute. “Your concerns are duly noted.”

  But not agreed with. He, however, had no intention of debating the child on all the reasons Annalee’s actions and behaviors were dangerous and unsuitable . . . not just for a woman, but for anyone.

  Perhaps Harlow might help him find Annalee, and he could be done with this chore for the both of them. All of them. He called after her, “I don’t suppose you have any idea where I might find . . . ?”

  Harlow, who’d already started her retreat, didn’t even turn around to face him. “I’m not doing your dirty work for you, Darling.”

  So it appeared he was on his own in this, after all.

  Bloody hell.

  Chapter 2

  Lady Annalee could puff out a perfect white circle of cheroot smoke with the best of the gentlemen.

  She could drink most grown men under the table.

  And she’d never lost a wager.

  That was, as long as she’d been sober, she’d not lost one.

  When she was drunk, she lost any number of them.

  At this precise moment, however, she was certainly not foxed. Though she wished to be. Polite affairs tended to have that effect upon her. Add ones hosted by her prim-and-proper, always disapproving mother into the proverbial pot? And then, well, there wasn’t enough drink to get a woman through.

  It was why, in the midst of her brother’s betrothal ball, with all the most powerful and respected members of Polite Society in attendance, Annalee happened to be . . . on the fringe of the festivities. She was well aware of the wagers that had been cast, and the coins that had been flowing, predicting she’d land herself in the middle of a scandal this night.

  This time, however, it wasn’t an attempt to win a bet herself . . . but rather to keep from fulfilling the expectation the world had of her.

  Not that she cared herself what they said about her. After Peterloo, she’d developed a whole new way of viewing everything. She’d not given two flying rats what the world said about her or how she conducted herself. She’d survived.

  Since then, by both the respectable and the reprehensible, Lady Annalee was whispered about, and talked about, to a like degree.

  Some whispered stories of wicked escapades, of which she was always the center.

  Most spoke freely and frequently about the scandals she found herself in.

  None of it, however, was gossip.

  Gossip involved unconstrained conversations and included details that were not confirmed as being true.

  None of the stories associated with her name were untrue. One witness or another could vouch for the veracity of every scandal she found herself part of.

  Nor was she apologetic about a single one.

 
Following her near death at Peterloo, Annalee had opened her eyes to a new way of looking at the world—at the precarious middling between life and death. One went from blissfully innocent and contented one moment, to nearly trampled by a swarm of panicked people, all bent on survival.

  Nay, at the end of the proverbial day, any person—man or woman—who cheated death as she had would stop and reevaluate . . . everything.

  As they should. Otherwise, what was the purpose of one’s surviving?

  Having witnessed and lived through what she had had led Annalee to carefully assess the world around her and, more specifically, a woman’s place in it.

  Click.

  From where she sat on her parents’ conservatory floor, tucked behind a table, a forgotten game of whist scattered across the tiles and a cheroot clenched between her teeth, she glanced up.

  Annalee trained her ears on the still-invisible-to-her guest.

  Silently cursing, she tamped her cheroot on the floor and wafted away the lingering smoke.

  A small, familiar figure stepped out from behind the table.

  “I thought you weren’t coming back,” Annalee greeted her younger sibling. Largely barred from seeing Harlow outside of the formal events their parents hosted and expected the whole family to attend, Annalee took every opportunity she did have to see the girl.

  “I told you I would,” Harlow pointed out, removing the rapier from her scabbard and plopping herself down across from Annalee and the cards laid out between them.

  The moon’s glow played off the bright shine of that beloved weapon her sister was never without.

  As Harlow set the rapier down beside her, exchanging it for the cards she’d abandoned when she went off to see if anyone was looking for Annalee, and commenced with prattling on, Annalee’s gaze—of its own volition—was drawn to that flash of metal, her eyes locking briefly upon it. It should so work out that her youngest sibling’s fascination and one true love should happen to be . . . that thin-bladed weapon.

  Laughter filtered around the conservatory, echoing in Annalee’s mind, the exuberant sound mingling and mixing with squeals and screams of the past.

  “Isn’t that hilarious, Annalee?” Harlow was saying, and Annalee came jolting back to the moment. “Annalee?” Harlow repeated . . . this time questioningly.

  Giving her head a slight shake to clear the cobwebs left by the past, Annalee laughed. “A search party, you say?” she said, picking up the few words she’d heard her sister speak. As a rule, Annalee didn’t pay too much attention to the rapier. She did, however, support her sister’s unconventional love of the thing. Because even loathing weapons as she did, Annalee appreciated far more that her sister was unique enough to have blazed her own way and found a love of something the world would not expect a lady to love.

  Harlow’s eyes glimmered with a mischievous twinkle that may as well have been a mirror reflection of her own.

  And just like that, Annalee’s demons fled. It was so easy, being with her sister, loyal and loving. There was also something peaceful in the way Harlow accepted Annalee for who she was. She never compared Annalee to the person whom she used to be. And mayhap that was why it felt so very comfortable being with the one person who didn’t remember Annalee from back then.

  “Annnnd there’s more,” Harlow whispered conspiratorially, leaning in.

  She mimicked the little girl’s enthusiasm. “More? Surely not!”

  Harlow nodded excitedly. “Oh, yes!” Stretching out her legs, her sister crossed her ankles, warming to her story. “You’ll never guess who’s at the center of the search.”

  “Mother.” Annalee paused. “Father.” Her stomach sank. “Jeremy.” Please, don’t let it be Jeremy. Jeremy, who should only be at the center of his betrothal ball with his Sophrona, and shouldn’t have to be worrying about—“Oomph.”

  Harlow kicked the bottom of Annalee’s bare foot hard with the heel of her boot.

  Annalee grunted. “What the hell was that . . . ?”

  “Because you’re usually better at this. Mother and Father aren’t impressive guesses. They’re the obvious ones.”

  “Yes, you’re right there,” she muttered, directing her focus back on the thirteen cards in her hands. She tossed down a jack of clubs, the highest suited trump card in her hand.

  Harlow held up a finger. “I’ll allow Jeremy going about like a fogey in the middle of his betrothal ball would be reason to make him a more interesting guess.” She added her eight of clubs.

  Winning the trick, Annalee collected the cards and added them to her pile. Considering the seven of diamonds revealed, she assessed her hand and paused. “Never say . . . Sophrona.”

  Sophrona, Jeremy’s fiancée, who generally went out of her way to avoid Annalee. Well, as all good ladies did. She tossed down a queen of hearts.

  “That is a better guess,” her sister allowed. She waggled her eyebrows. “But not the correct one.”

  Her interest piqued, Annalee raised her gaze to Harlow, who was now intently studying her hand. She nudged her young sister in the foot in much the same way she had knocked Annalee’s, and the girl grunted. “You must tell . . . ?”

  Haphazardly, Harlow threw down a jack of hearts. “Darling.”

  The cards slipped from Annalee’s fingers, raining down about the makeshift gaming table they’d made of the floor, scattered faceup and facedown.

  Her sister scrambled forward. “I know,” she said on a furious whisper. “The gall of him.” She paused. “I mean, it is interesting that proper Darling is missing the festivities, but all the more so that he’d betray you in this way.” Harlow’s eyes lit, and she hovered her little fingers over the hilt resting near her left hand. “Unforgivable.”

  Annalee had accustomed herself to that weapon’s unfailing presence with her sister. But that, now coupled with mention of . . . Darling, as society had come to call him . . .

  It was a newer name, not the one he’d gone by as a young man or boy, but rather one he had been gifted years later. It suited him. The darling of society, rescuer of innocents. A hero. Who’d happened upon a carriage overturned at Peterloo and rescued the occupants inside . . . while others had been battling for their own salvation on fields run red with blood and echoing with screams and—

  Grabbing her champagne flute, Annalee downed the liquid in a long, slow swallow.

  “Well?” her sister prodded.

  “Wayland is merely looking out for Jeremy.” Wayland, because she was never going to call him by that silliest of titles or monikers . . . except when he was near. Then she’d do so just for the sole pleasure it gave her to tease him for it. “It is what friends do, Harlow.”

  They stuck beside one another, through good times and bad. Through peril and peace.

  And despite herself, a cynical smile curled her lips at the corners.

  Harlow’s eyes bulged. “You’d . . . defend him?”

  She shrugged, reaching for the half-empty bottle beside her. She added more of the bubbling brew to her flute. “Don’t have much of an opinion of the gentleman one way or another.”

  That hadn’t always been the case. They’d been as close as two people could have ever been. That had been, of course, back when she’d been young and innocent and believed men and women could share a deep, unbreakable bond. With time, she’d come to appreciate that sex was just sex. And there weren’t really any bonds that were sacred. And the only love a person was best knowing . . . was a love of oneself.

  Her sister’s face fell. “But . . . but . . .”

  “Leave it, Har,” she advised.

  “But he was your friend, Annalee. You said that once.”

  Yes, she had. After a family dinner party when he was in attendance—as he always had been for her family’s polite gatherings. She’d been drinking too much and had a discussion with Harlow where she’d said too much. And her sister had never let go of that information; she’d seized upon it as a seeming thing of great fascination.

  Ha
rlow tugged Annalee’s hem, calling back her attention. “There’s nothing more important than a pirate’s loyalty. It’s part of the code. You know,” she said on a rush, “where members were asked to make their mark and swear an oath of allegiance or honor . . .”

  “Argh!” Annalee drawled in low, guttural tones as she put her spare hand to her brow in a pirate’s salute. She let her arm fall to her lap. “But the Darlings of the world, Har?” she began gently. “They’re no pirates.” Once there’d been bitterness at what Wayland had become. A living, breathing example of the opposite of the man she’d once loved . . . back when she believed in love.

  Harlow dropped her chin into her hand and stuck her lower lip forward in a perfect pout. “He sounded more fun and better then, the way you described him.”

  “Oh, he was,” she said softly, before she could call it back. A wistful smile stole across her face. “You would have liked him very much.”

  With time, in the days and months and then years following Peterloo, she’d appreciated that the experience had changed them all . . . in different ways. And none of the men, women, or children who’d been caught up in the hell unleashed upon humanity that day should be judged for how they’d come out of that experience.

  “But he’s not so very bad now, right?” It was a lie. Wayland was a complete stranger to Annalee now, and as such, she couldn’t say much about him one way or the other. She knew he was loyal to her brother and their family. He was also kind to her sister . . . which should not be underestimated, given how Polite Society, on the whole, treated women and made invisible young girls like Harlow.

  “Yes, I suppose,” Harlow said unconvincingly.

  And because they’d already spoken too much about the last person Annalee wished to speak about, the one man she’d taken pains to avoid all thought of, she proceeded to gather the cards.