She loved dancing in them. Dipping her toes in them. On occasion, she’d even been found sleeping in them. That was, after a night of excess. She loved how the waters within were a cool balm that never failed to wash away the nightmares.
This time, she’d not been caught sleeping in the fountain. But for all the scandal she’d caused this night—of all nights—she may as well have been.
Though in fairness, if they’d learned the truth—that she’d been out of her head in a moment of insanity—it would perhaps have brought even more of their deserved horror.
Or worse . . .
A panicky little giggle bubbled up her throat, and Jeremy fixed a warning glare on her.
Repressing the urge to shiver from her hopelessly wet gown, Annalee edged closer to the blazing fire at her back.
Seventeen minutes already, and an endless tirade of her parents talking about her and not to her.
Yes, this had all the makings of one of the never-ending exchanges . . .
“Do you have somewhere to be, Annalee?” her mother snapped. “Are we keeping you?” she demanded before Annalee could get a response in.
That had done it, then. A possibility loathsome to the countess: that her daughter would dare dictate any aspect of this exchange.
“Of course not,” she said with a flourishing hand to her breast. “I would never dare leave my big brother’s betrothal ball.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
Her brother winced.
“You are a scandal, Annalee Elise,” her mother hissed, that hideous pairing of almost identical-sounding names falling from her lips for a second time. “A shameful, wicked scandal.”
And that proved the moment Annalee was forgotten. Her mother directed all the rage she felt for her daughter back to her husband. “We have tolerated so very much where she is concerned, but this?” The countess’s nostrils flared, giving her the look of a bull Beckett had rented for a raucous summer party when he’d had a bull-baiter waving a red flag. “This is a line too far, even for her.”
“Is there any line that is too far for her, really?” her father asked tiredly.
Tired. He always had the air of the exhausted when it came to talking about Annalee, or discussing anything with her.
Not that they’d truly spoken. Not for years and years now.
Her father scrubbed a hand beginning to wrinkle across his forehead.
His disappointment had also become familiar enough that the evidence of it had hurt, until it hadn’t. Now it was just accepted.
And were it just her disdainful parents, she would have been all too happy to meet them with the flippancy she reserved for them and their lectures and disappointment.
But this wasn’t about them. Or her.
It took a physical effort to turn her head once more and face her big brother. “I am sorry, Jeremy, for the scandal,” she murmured. “It wasn’t my fault.”
“Not this time” would certainly apply.
After all, many, many, many times before this one, it had invariably been her fault. Nor was she the guilty sort, taking ownership of actions that weren’t her own. She was quite aware of her sins and scandals.
At his silence, she stretched out a hand, which only managed to set the crystal beads dripping from her sleeve shaking and drips of water flying. Water caught her brother in the cheek, and he flinched.
Pulling a kerchief from his immaculate sapphire wool jacket, he patted the moisture from his person.
“It wasn’t her fault, she says,” her mother seethed, pacing back and forth, the only hitch in her stride the moment she faced her elder daughter and had her in her sights.
Annalee looked once more to her brother, Jeremy, hopefully. Hopeful that he could see not only her sincerity but also her regret.
Standing at the hearth, his hands clasped behind him, he caught her glance.
He gave his head a slow, slight shake, a disgusted one. It was a barely perceptible flick of the head Annalee had also become well accustomed to over the years. Not, however, from her brother.
And not for the first time since she’d been caught sprawled in the fountain with her family’s most prominent guests as witnesses, guilt burrowed deep in her chest.
Alas, there’d be no rescue this time, in this place.
Not that she could blame her elder brother; it wasn’t every night a young gentleman had his betrothal ball before all of Polite Society . . . and had that grand affair spoiled by his drunken sister.
Though, in fairness, this time she wasn’t three sheets to the wind, she’d been well on her way to it, and quite happily. Her family’s tedious, always proper, invariably boring affairs had that effect upon a lady.
Wicked ladies anyway. Of which she was decidedly one.
With a sigh, Annalee withdrew a cheroot from her pocket, and heading over to the nearest sconce, she raised the scrap to light it.
“What is she doing?” her mother squawked.
“Smoking,” she said needlessly. “You might find it helps with your nerves.”
“I don’t have nerves,” the countess snapped.
And with a great deliberate show meant to rile, Annalee took a long draw of the smoke, letting it fill her lungs, and then exhaled a perfect ring of white.
Her mother’s eyes bulged. “The only frayed nerves I do have are because of you. You are the source of all the woe of this family.”
Annalee dropped a hip against the wall. “Ohhhh, would we realllly say there’s familial woe? Jeremy is in love. You and Father are obscenely wealthy and well received. Why, some might say that our family is blissfully blessed.” Annalee took another pull from her cheroot.
“What are we to do with her?” her mother demanded as Annalee became invisible to the exchange once more.
“The only thing we can do. The ball is concluded. We return with Jeremy and speak to Sophrona and her family, and she”—her father cast a long, sad look Annalee’s way—“she will not attend. She will return to her residence—”
“‘She’ is still here,” Annalee pointed out gleefully, waggling her spare hand.
Both parents continued to ignore her.
“Yes, yes. You are right. We must try to smooth this over,” her mother murmured to herself, as if she’d just heard words so profound that they now fueled her courage and confidence to face the great challenge of meeting Polite Society after this scandal. “They will be devastated.” The countess pinched her pale cheeks, bringing an immediate splash of crimson to them. “Come along, dear.” Her husband immediately sprang to his feet like a dutiful terrier, and together, the pair made to march from the room.
They lingered at the threshold, casting a questioning glance at Jeremy.
“I’ll be along shortly,” he vowed.
With that they left, and Annalee was, at last, alone with Jeremy. Her elder sibling, and her only brother. Her champion. Or, rather, the former still applied. Much had changed over the years. Everything had changed over the years.
“Well, they took that better than expected,” she said dryly when the door had closed behind them.
“It isn’t amusing,” he said, his tone rich with the same disappointment their parents expressed toward Annalee. “And need you really do that?”
She followed his glance to the scrap between her fingertips. She immediately stubbed out her cheroot. Annalee may not give two damns about her mother’s opinion on the habit, but she quite adored her elder brother. “It was an accident, Jeremy,” she said earnestly, using really the first words he’d spoken to her as an invitation to join him.
“There’s always an accident and some such . . . The time your hair snagged on Lord Wembley’s buttons.”
“It looked worse than it was,” she lied. She’d been doing with Lord Wembley precisely what the whole world had taken it for when they’d come upon her and the earl in Lady Stanhope’s gardens.
“Your being discovered alone at Vauxhall Gardens’ pleasure paths?” he went on.
&nb
sp; And if she could still manage a blush, being called out by her brother for when she’d been caught enjoying a different sort of fireworks on those famed grounds would certainly be the time for one.
But she wasn’t a young girl. Or naive. Or innocent. Not in any way.
“I was alone this time,” she pointed out brightly. Surely there was something to be said for th—
Jeremy pressed at his temples. “Is everything a game with you, Annalee?” And had his tone been as outraged or disgusted as it had been throughout this whole discourse, and not this, this resignation, it would have been a good deal easier.
Apparently there wasn’t something to be said for it, after all.
But then, after having his betrothal ball turned into a source of gossip, Jeremy wasn’t one to receive such an empty reminder as the one she’d given him.
It didn’t matter that she’d been donning her slippers when those fireworks had erupted; it didn’t matter that a memory of a different time, a long-ago, darker one, had intruded. When memories so rarely did. Or that they’d had the same potent, crippling effect and left her facedown in that fountain she’d once so very much loved.
“No. It’s not,” she said quietly. Almost everything was. Her more-loyal-than-she’d-deserved-over-the-years brother? Anything surrounding him and his life was not. Annalee swept over to his side. He’d been the only one there for her following . . . Peterloo. Following that foolish, fateful decision to go to the fields, where chaos had reigned supreme. She caught Jeremy’s hands and gave them a squeeze. “I love you. You are my brother.”
“It isn’t about love, Annalee,” he said in that same tired voice, drawing back his hands. “It is about you making decisions that are dangerous . . . ones that hurt yourself . . . and now . . .”
And now, him. “How can I fix it?” And yet, even as the question escaped her, she knew the answer. There was no fixing a scandal. Once born, forever there, and gone only when replaced with some other juicy morsel. One that she more often than not provided.
“Don’t you see, Annalee? I don’t give a jot about how it reflects upon me. I care about Sophrona.”
She’d once imagined to have a love like the one he knew now. Once upon a lifetime ago, when she’d not been aware of the ugliness in the world, she’d dreamed of marriage . . .
And she’d almost had it.
Annalee gave her head a slight shake, pushing aside thoughts now as unwelcome as the memories of Peterloo. Nay, somehow worse. Because those belonged to a naive girl, so very green, and entirely removed from the reality that was life. At least the thoughts of Peterloo, as unpleasant as the memories were, harkened to a time when she’d ceased being a girl and had become a woman with eyes wide open about what the world truly was.
“I am sorry,” she said, weakly, hearing within the words their inherent uselessness. “For so much.” So very much.
He looked at her for a long while, his blue-green gaze so faintly pitying and sad and resentful that she had to look away.
From within the crystal panes abutting her father’s desk, she caught Jeremy moving with swift, purposeful steps, quitting the room.
Well, that could have been worse.
Liar.
Lighting herself another cheroot, Annalee headed out of her father’s offices, leaving a soggy trail upon the hardwood floor which had previously been cleaned of the water she’d left on her way in. She headed for the foyer, eager to be free of her childhood household. The moment she turned the corner, Annalee stopped.
Halfway down the hall, seated on the floor with his back propped against the wall, was Wayland. Casual in his shirtsleeves, because she’d, of course, stolen his jacket. Nay, he’d given it to her.
He immediately stood, springing to his feet with an ease uncommon for a man as tall and broad as he was.
She briefly considered the path behind her. Of course the great witness to her latest misery should be Wayland. Putting on a brave face, she continued toward him, the dark wool jacket he’d given her slipping open at the front.
He watched her approach warily.
But then that was the way most eyed her—with unease from the proper ladies and sorts. Interest and appreciation from the less proper gentlemen.
There’d been a time when Wayland had felt he knew the woman approaching him even better than he knew himself.
Then Peterloo . . . and time . . . had divided them. They’d gone from two lovers as close as any souls could be to people who, on occasion, ended up at the same social affair and exchanged nothing more than a polite greeting before going their separate ways.
Only for him to discover as she came toward him, exaggerating the sway of her hips, infusing a siren’s stride into her stroll, that he knew something else about this grown-up, mature version of Annalee.
Her sexuality was a shield. Did she even realize it was a barrier she kept up?
And just like that, the favor Jeremy had put to Wayland came whispering forward . . .
You were there that day, and look at you, chap. You’re happy, and hell, you are more proper than ever.
His friend had been right about a part of that statement.
Wayland had been there. He’d survived the hell of that day and battled the same demons Annalee no doubt did. Perhaps Jeremy’s request hadn’t been . . . so far off, after all. Perhaps Wayland might rekindle a friendship with her and, in so doing, make up for past wrongs.
Annalee reached him. Clamping her cheroot between her teeth, she freed her hands and shrugged out of the now wet garment that hung huge upon her frame. “I trust you’re here for this, Wayland-dear.” Wayland-dear. That special name she’d once had for him. How very much he’d adored hearing it fall from her lips, and yet this was what she thought of him?
That the only reason he’d come was to collect his jacket? What did that say about how she’d been treated by others through the years?
“No, I’m . . . not here for my jacket. You are . . . free to it.”
She lingered there. “I . . . thank you for your assistance earlier, Wayland,” she said softly. She took another draw from her cheroot. “You did so much for me this night. Between you and Harlow, you were the only friends I had here.”
Those sad and surprisingly frank words were a kick to the gut . . . and also a reminder of Jeremy’s favor. “You needn’t thank me.” Perhaps he hadn’t tried enough all those years ago to reach her. What if he had? Would they be together even now? Would that sad smile have been the exuberant, joyous one he’d loved to tickle her lips into giving?
Annalee looked at him with a sudden suspicion in her eyes. “Why are you here?”
When other ladies tiptoed around plain speaking, she veered to bluntness. She’d always been direct. It had been just one of the many things he’d loved about her. “I’m here because I wanted to be, Annalee,” he said, opting to leave out mention of Jeremy and the request the other man had put before him. She took another draw from her cheroot. “I wanted to be certain . . . you were all right.” And it wasn’t untrue.
Annalee puffed a little cloud of smoke out from the corner of her closed lips.
When she didn’t speak, he was encouraged to continue. “What happened?”
“I don’t know—”
“Come, Annalee.” He infused a gentleness into that interruption. “I was with you just moments before.”
Her eyes instantly grew shadowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said tersely, and turning, she headed down the corridor.
Wayland stared after her slender form as she slipped inside her father’s offices.
He’d tried.
She’d left.
His obligation to Jeremy was surely complete.
Only, as he stared after the place she’d been, he knew he could no sooner walk away from her than he could cut off his own limbs.
Wayland entered the earl’s offices, closing the door quietly behind him . . . and immediately found her.
But then he’d always ha
d an uncanny way of knowing when she was near. Apparently, for everything that had changed between them, that had remained a constant.
Annalee, however, gave no indication she heard him. She rummaged through the drawers, bypassing papers and ledgers and pens. She was methodical in her search.
Finally, she paused. “Don’t you have . . . other more pressing responsibilities, Wayland?” she asked tiredly, wiping a hand over her brow.
“I’ve nowhere to be at the moment, Annalee.” Somewhere along the way, his being here, however, had less to do with Jeremy’s favor and more with a genuine need to know that Annalee was well.
“Well, then . . . how fortunate for me.” With that, she dismissed him once more and continued looking . . . and then finding. She withdrew a bottle of brandy from the earl’s hidden stash and then straightened. “Nothing to say, Darling?”
“What should I say?” he asked quietly.
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.”
As she removed the stopper, her hands shook. Even with the length of the office between them, he caught that tremble. Her eyes locked with his, and she glared at Wayland, daring him to speak. Daring him to say anything about that quiver.
She tossed the crystal cork onto the immaculate surface of the mahogany desk, and perching her hip on the edge and not bothering with a glass, she drank from the bottle.
She drank deep.
How easily her throat moved as she swallowed.
She was a woman accustomed to spirits.
Wayland ventured deeper into the room, joining her at the front. “You hated liquor,” he noted softly, the way he’d spoken with his father’s fractious stallion. They’d tasted their first brandy together—he, Annalee, and Jeremy. They’d all spit out their drinks and laughed uproariously about the gentlemen who indulged.
Annalee brought her bottle up in salute. “I judged it unfairly.”
Another change wrought by Peterloo.
As if she attempted to horrify or offend him, she took another swig, then wiped the back of her hand over her mouth, smudging upon her fingers what remained of her crimson rouge.
Wordlessly, she held out the bottle.
Her eyes shot up as Wayland came forward and seated himself in a like pose beside her.
A Wanton for All Seasons Page 7