A Wanton for All Seasons Read online

  Her sister’s head shot up. “Hey! What are you doing?”

  “Go. You want to watch the festivities.”

  A blush pinkened her sister’s cheeks. “I’d prefer to stay with you.”

  “Liar.” She softened that with a wink and a tug of Harlow’s ringlets.

  “Well, most times,” Harlow allowed. The little girl flashed a wide, gap-toothed smile. Their mother had long lamented that wide space between Harlow’s front teeth. Annalee, however, had forever insisted to her sister, troubled by the gap, that it lent character and intrigue to her.

  “But this promises to be more interesting than Mother’s usually dull affairs.” Her sister hesitated a moment. “You . . . could always come . . .”

  “I will,” Annalee promised. It was just the longer she stayed away, the less likely she was to shame her family in some way . . . or risk the crowd chasing out her demons. “I’ll return shortly.”

  “No . . .” Harlow fiddled with the hilt of her sword. “I mean . . . home.”

  Oh, God. There it was.

  Harlow rushed to fill the thick silence. “If you did, we could be together. We could sneak off here and not have to worry about Mother’s nagging.”

  And here she’d believed there was no greater misery than the hell of Peterloo. With her sister’s softly spoken child’s words ripping a hole through her heart, she discovered how wrong she’d been.

  “Oh, poppet,” she began. “If I were here, there’d only be fighting between Mother and me . . . and that wouldn’t be good for you.”

  “I wouldn’t care!”

  “And there is . . . the Mismatch Society.”

  “But Sylvia and Valerie and the others—”

  “I’ve been tasked with leading the society in a whole new direction.” One that no other woman in the entire organization was capable of. Not in the way Annalee was. She’d been leading those discussions for almost a week, and yet she still could not fully fathom that she’d been elevated to a leader of the group she so loved.

  With a selflessness better suited to a woman ten years her senior, Harlow’s entire visage brightened, and she brought her hands close to her chest. “You should be a leader. You are one of the bravest, strongest, most wonderful women I know!”

  So much love for her sister filled Annalee. Since the society’s inception, she’d taken a peripheral role, content to let the others shape the path the group had taken. Not even really believing herself capable to lead. Hell, she wasn’t sure she was.

  “What are you doing?” Harlow asked.

  “I’m helping educate women about relationships between men and women.” She settled for honesty—choosing her words carefully, however. “Too many young ladies are unaware of what happens when they get married.” Her sexual experience, which had earned her society’s condemnation, would now be used to help women who were deliberately kept ignorant learn about marital relations. Her role had been elevated, her purpose there expanding to one where she actually contributed.

  Harlow released a wistful sigh. “I cannot wait to be part of the Mismatch Society.”

  “Someday,” Annalee said. “Now, run along before you miss all the fun.”

  “I’ll come back, though,” Harlow promised. “Because . . . because . . .” Just like that, her smile faded.

  Because it was one of the only times Annalee could steal with the girl. When she chose to live apart from her family, she’d found a freedom that saved her sanity but sacrificed the purest, most loving relationship she could ever hope to know. And yet it was the spirits and wild nights and mindless distractions which had also kept her sane. A wave of melancholy swept through her. Annalee scooted nearer her sister and looped an arm around her shoulders. “Come here.” She drew Harlow in close for a sideways hug.

  The faintest little sniffling from Harlow hinted at her sister’s tears. “I’m staying,” she whispered.

  “You will not.” Annalee squeezed her lightly. “There will be plenty more times for us to see one another, now that Jeremy and Sophrona are to be married. The formal dinner parties between our families. The wedding breakfast. The ceremony. The ball.” And as much as she’d rather pluck out her fingernails, and then toenails, with her teeth than suffer through family affairs, she’d happily do so if it allowed her time with Harlow. “Now go,” she urged. For all the joy Annalee found being with her sister, neither was she so selfish as to see the girl denied that which brought her happiness, just for her own pleasure.

  “Oh, very well,” Harlow said with a feigned reluctance Annalee allowed her. “If you insist.” With an excited little wave, her sister stood and darted to the front of the room.

  Harlow paused briefly at the Jacobean-style oak door that led from the conservatory to the hallway, before letting herself out.

  Annalee’s sister closed that panel behind her with a firm and damning thwack.

  The moment she’d gone, Annalee let her eyes slide shut. All her muscles clenched and twisted at the loss of Harlow. When it came to how she’d lived these past years, Annalee regretted little. What would hurt her until she took her last breath, however, was that her decisions also happened to be the reason she was kept apart from her youngest sibling.

  Her fingers shaking, Annalee grabbed a cheroot from the pocket sewn along the inside bodice of her gown, and withdrew the scrap. She touched the tip to a candle; the corners curled black and then red as, with a little sizzle, it was lit.

  Resting on her elbows, she turned her head and brought a hand up, taking a pull from the cheroot. The first time she’d taken a draw, she’d choked and gasped and fought to see through tears.

  With time, the little scrap had come to have a soothing effect. In this moment, however, it didn’t help.

  Click.

  Ah, it had been inevitable.

  She’d been found.

  The footfalls that drifted closer were as determined as a military man’s, marking her guest as one who moved with purpose.

  Only one man moved like that.

  Then he was there. Stopping above her, his broad blacksmith’s frame blotting out the moon’s glow that had previously poured through the crystal roof.

  Tilting back her head, Annalee raised her cheroot for another puff and then exhaled a perfect cloud of white toward him.

  “Tell me, have you taken to subterfuge, stooping to following little girls, Lord Darling?” she drawled from where she lay.

  She’d ask Wayland if he stooped to following little girls? “Of course not,” Wayland sputtered indignantly. “I—” He caught the little glimmer in Annalee’s crystalline eyes. She was teasing.

  Ever so slowly, she pushed herself up from that almost perfect recline she’d been in, and held out her cheroot for him.

  He eyed the loathsome scrap a moment and then gave his head a terse shake. “I’ve not come to smoke with you, Annalee.”

  “The loss is yours.” With a little shrug, Annalee took one more puff before tamping that noxious piece out on her mother’s stone floor. She did not, however, make any attempt to rise. “It does beg the question, Darrrling,” she purred. “Why have you sought me out?”

  Unbidden, his gaze slid lower. With her burnt-orange skirts rucked up high as they were, her graceful limbs were put on perfect display. Those long, delicately contoured legs, encased in crimson lace stockings.

  He swallowed hard.

  Get in quick. Get out faster.

  That had been the mantra rolling around Wayland’s head from the moment he’d been tasked with finding Annalee Spencer.

  The part he’d not added on had been, With the lady in tow.

  Because that would be the decidedly tricky part.

  “Unless”—Annalee let her thighs part slightly, the satin shifting in a hedonistic rustle—“there are other more enjoyable reasons you’ve come, Darling.” She enticed like the Eve she’d always been to him.

  Lust bolted through him. Of its own volition, his gaze lingered there . . . on well-muscled thighs, ones t
hat had gripped him hard about the waist as she’d urged him on to completion.

  A coy smile on her lips, Annalee caressed a hand over the tops of her lacy garters. He swiftly averted his gaze. But it was too late; the image of her had seared his brain and would remain.

  You are as much a bastard as you always were where this lady is concerned.

  He slogged his way back to a place of propriety, which had been a near impossible task when they’d been younger and she . . . innocent. Now, with her this siren of sin and seduction, it was a labor not even Hercules would have undertaken. “Of course not,” he said gruffly.

  Annalee pouted, her lush, crimson-rouged lips forming a perfect moue that put all manner of different, but no less wicked, thoughts in his head. “Oh, come; you weren’t always a prude.”

  “I’m no prude.”

  “Splendid. You’re still bedding young ladies of the ton,” she purred, and from any other woman there would have been resentment and stinging inflection. Not Annalee.

  Even so . . . shame tightened his gut. “I don’t bed young ladies of the ton,” he said tersely. She’d been the only one. And those exchanges hadn’t been born of just passion, but love.

  “That is a shame,” she said in those sultry tones. There came a slight rustle, and unbidden, his gaze slipped lower, and she let her legs part wider, an invitation to sin and decadence and—

  She chuckled, a full, throaty sound that sent blood rushing to his cock.

  Shifting, Wayland discreetly hid the bulge there.

  Annalee hopped to her feet with the agility of his favorite childhood cat, Stew. Yes, think of Stew. Thoughts of Stew are safer. “You have lost your ability to detect a jest,” she said, her voice laden with humor, which also proved how unaffected she was. “I was jesting, Wayland.”

  Wayland.

  Since he’d been granted a title, she was the only one who referred to him by that moniker of his birth.

  That was, when she called him anything. Invariably, they were moving in different directions.

  “Forgive me for not finding such matters amusing.”

  She pouted again. “My, you are a prude.”

  Once impetuous and careless and given to thrills and excitement, he’d ultimately seen the price paid for such flaws in his character. He prided himself on the man he’d become. As such, the lady’s genuine disappointment shouldn’t matter. And it didn’t. Yet, oddly, it grated.

  It also brought him back to the matter at hand. Wayland glanced down at the bottle of champagne, the pair of glasses—one empty, the other half-full—and then looked to the rumpled lady before him. He tightened his mouth. Once, it had also bothered him that Annalee Spencer had been linked to any number of disreputable gentlemen. So much so that he’d believed the rumors to be rumors. Until at a family gathering—the most awkward of family gatherings, at that—she’d confirmed the veracity of those stories.

  Reclining against the oak worktable with her elbows propped upon it, she eyed him knowingly. “You’re passing judgment, Darllling.” The extra syllable she tacked on to that husky drawl transformed his name into an endearment.

  “I’ve said nothing,” he said tightly. “I don’t have an opinion of you and your actions, one way or the other.”

  She trilled a laugh, and then pushing away from the table, she strolled sleekly over, very much the cat he’d likened her to moments ago.

  He automatically backed up a step, but his legs collided with a work stool behind him, and he tumbled onto it. At eight inches past five feet, the lady was taller than most men; being seated as he was, however, managed to put them nearly at eye level.

  It was a dangerous place to be, where Lady Annalee Spencer was concerned.

  By the coy smile on her rouged lips, she knew it, too.

  He swallowed hard. “We have to . . .” His words trailed off as she brought her palms up, pressing them against his chest.

  And this time, swallowing, that most reflexive of actions, became an impossibility, and his heart thumped a powerful beat where her hands touched. She tugged free his silken cravat, and his mouth formed the words of a protest . . . that, God help him, he couldn’t force out.

  She’d always been a siren to him. Forbidden to him by her birthright, and because of his relationship with her brother. And now . . . forbidden to him for altogether different reasons. That reminder was enough to break through his hungering.

  She laughed, that husky contralto wrapping around him. “Do you truly believe I’m trying to seduce you, Wayland? Even I would not do that.”

  His ears went hot. His face. His entire body. The burn of mortification that he’d even thought—

  Annalee leaned in, placing her lips close to his ear. “At least not in the midst of my brother’s betrothal ball,” she whispered, and then she darted out her tongue, flicking that flesh along the sensitive shell of his ear.

  He croaked, “Annalee.”

  “Oh, hush, you fusty thing.” And then, with an intimacy befitting the wife he’d once yearned for her to be, she gave several firm tugs to the cravat she’d mussed a short while ago. “I’m merely fixing you.” She adjusted the folds of that silken article. “Mustn’t send you out rumpled, Lord Darling.” She clucked her tongue. “Whatever would people say?” And with a greater efficiency and rapidity than even his own valet, she was done. “There,” she murmured, and this time, she sounded so very much like . . . Annalee of old. The bold but still respectable lady he’d intended to make his wife . . . until the world had caught fire and their relationship had been devoured by that conflagration.

  Annalee rested a hand on his thigh; his muscles went tight under that bold touch. She stilled, a knowing glimmer lighting her blue eyes, and ever so slowly, she stroked her fingers higher. She continued that path, and when she showed no hint of stopping as she reached the place near the vee between his legs, he immediately caught her fingers. Even as he stopped her, that traitorous flesh between his legs sprang harder than ever. “I preferred you rumpled.” She winked, the graceful glide of her long, flaxen lashes a different form of temptation, but one no less dangerous.

  Firming his mouth and his resolve, he removed her hand from his person. “I’m not here to play games, Annalee.”

  “That’s unfortunate, because I do have cards for vingt-et-un. Or . . . whist? I do believe you were a whist man?”

  She knew. She knew because he’d been the one to teach her everything she knew about cards and wagering. Both pastimes she now engaged in freely with all the most disreputable members of Polite Society.

  “Your brother has asked . . .” Bloody hell. He’d once been smoother with his words. “He said . . .”

  Annalee’s lips curled up slowly at the corners. She would enjoy his discomfort in this. Determined to just have it done, he got to the heart of the reason for his being here. “He asked that you return to the ball,” he said flatly. What would she say if she learned of the other request Jeremy had put to him?

  “On your arm?” Annalee slapped her fingers to a daringly low neckline, bringing his focus to the lush flesh straining the lace-trimmed bodice. “Do imagine the scandal, Darling.”

  He wrenched his focus away. “Not with me. Ahead of me. Just so that—” He caught the sparkle in her eyes. “You’re teasing,” he muttered under his breath.

  She leaned forward and, bringing the tip of her thumb and forefinger together, whispered, “Just a bit. I don’t need a nanny or a governess or any other manner of keeper, Wayland.” It was the first hint of frosty cool, a deviation from her usual flirting and baiting and teasing. Annalee gave him a once-over, the look cursory. “Not from you, and not from any man.” And with that, she filled her arms with the nighttime picnic materials she’d assembled and headed toward the doorway which led outside.

  Wayland stared after her retreating frame. “I don’t wish to control you, you know,” he called after her.

  Without looking back, she raised an arm, and giving a wave, she headed for her mother’s ou
tdoor gardens.

  He should have known this wouldn’t be easy. Not with Annalee as the impossible charge he’d been instructed to guide back to the festivities. As she disappeared outside, he hesitated, going back and forth between the favor Jeremy had put to him and the woman who had no interest in being escorted.

  With a curse, he started after her.

  Chapter 3

  I don’t wish to control you, you know, he’d said . . .

  That had been one of the reasons she’d lost her girlish heart to him. Having a mother who bowed to society’s constraints, and a father whose strategy for life was “please thy wife and live in peace,” she’d always chafed at her mother’s demands that she be a certain way. And for eighteen years, Annalee had been that way publicly. Only when she’d been alone with Wayland had she let herself live freely. And she hated that she remembered any of it. The past life she’d lived.

  Setting down her provisions beside the enormous stone watering fountain at the back of the gardens, she grabbed the blanket she and Harlow had occupied and snapped it open. She’d just finished depositing her things upon the edges of the fabric to keep it from blowing and twisting with the occasional night wind when the churn of gravel gave him away.

  He stopped beside the fountain. “Annalee, your brother asked for your return.”

  Goodness, he’d always been obstinate. That tenacity he’d once put toward more important goals . . . like exacting change for the oppressed and improving the lives and lots of people born outside the aristocracy.

  “And tell me . . . What if I don’t do what I’m supposed to, Wayland-dear?” She leaned forward, putting her bosom on display. “What if I refuse to head abovestairs? Will you”—his gaze fixed on her breasts spilling over her bodice, as she’d intended—“force me?”

  He instantly recoiled, jolting. “Of course not,” he sputtered.

  And Annalee didn’t know whether to laugh or be offended. Any other—nay, every other—man whom she’d pressed herself against in that way had gotten tongue-tied, and had been hopeless to do anything but stare at her bosom.