He took the decanter and set it beyond her reach. “What happened tonight?”
“You saw it all,” she said, not pretending to misunderstand. “I was discovered in the fountain.”
He’d wager his very soul he hadn’t seen it all. “I mean when I left you, Annalee.”
Her lips grew pinched at the corners, and she stared over at the bottle she’d been drinking from. “I was startled by the fireworks.” She stared at that carafe as if it contained the answer to mankind’s existence. “I should have anticipated my parents would have had such a garish display commemorating the night.”
He shifted closer. “The noise,” he murmured. “It bothered y—”
“La, do not be such a killjoy.” She pouted. “I don’t want to talk about my latest scandal.”
Except, it wasn’t her scandal he spoke of. It was whatever had landed her in that fountain after he’d left her.
Jeremy’s urgings from earlier rang clear in his head. Annalee’s need for a friend. And help.
“Loud noises still startle me, Annalee. They always will,” he said, attempting to rekindle a bond that would always be between them. One she refused to acknowledge. “I’ve found there are far better ways to find joy than in a bottle,” he said without inflection.
Annalee scooted closer, pulling herself near until their legs touched.
He tensed.
“Tell me more about those better ways to find joy, Wayland,” she whispered, resting her fingers on his thigh. “I want to know all about them.”
“Annalee,” he said hoarsely.
Step away. She was only attempting to distract him.
But the Devil take his soul, he’d always been hopeless where this woman was concerned. He did not resist, as he should. Annalee continued to glide her fingers up and down, stroking him.
His mouth went dry. She caressed her palm up, higher, along that expanse of his thigh, moving it higher still, closer to that bulge pressing at the front fall of his trousers, as she’d done earlier in the conservatory.
This time, however . . . This time, he did not pull away.
His breath hitched noisily, and like a siren, empowered and emboldened by his surrender, Annalee slid off the desk and stepped between his legs.
“Annalee.” He repeated her name, a guttural prayer. For more? So that she would stop? It was all jumbled in his thoughts.
“I love the sound of my name on your lips, Wayland,” she whispered. Raising her head, Annalee took his mouth, and there was . . . a sense of coming home in these, the first lips he’d ever kissed.
Annalee caught her hands in the fabric of his shirt and dragged him closer, and God help him, he went.
“I want to taste you,” she breathed against his lips, nipping at that flesh, suckling his lower lip, urging him in every way to allow her entry.
With a groan, he let his mouth open and granted her that which she sought.
He gripped her firmly by the hips, his fingertips sinking into her flesh with an intensity and possessiveness to his touch, firmer than it had been all those years ago, and she reveled in that primitive grasp he had upon her. Then he was drawing her closer to his cock, and she pressed herself against him, rubbed along him.
There grew a franticness to their kiss, and he stroked his tongue against hers, that flesh gliding along Annalee’s, and she rocked her hips in time to the erotic dance they now engaged in with their mouths.
And then, knowing what she’d once loved, he drew up her skirts, and she let her legs fall open and settled herself atop his thigh. With a breathy sigh signaling a sybaritic relief, she rubbed herself against the perch he offered.
And just as he’d done long ago, he caught her by the waist and helped guide her on to the pleasure she found from this simplest and yet most erotic of acts.
“So close.” She panted. “I’m so close.” And he swallowed the remainder of her words with his kiss.
Wayland’s mouth slid from hers, and he trailed a path of kisses down the curve of her cheek, lower to her neck.
He suckled that flesh, and on a long, low groan, Annalee let her head fall back, opening herself to his worship.
How he’d missed these moments in her arms.
Annalee’s breathing grew labored, and her movements more frantic as she rode him, grinding herself against him in a bid to reach her peak.
It was so good. It had always been good between them . . .
Biting her lower lip, she buried her head in the crook of his shoulder. “Wayland.”
And then suddenly he stopped; the sound of his name wrenched from her lips brought him crashing back to earth . . . and the moment.
He blanched. Good God, what manner of cad was he?
Wayland remained with his hands upon her waist, and a growing horror filled him, knotting his insides. His fingers clenched and unclenched reflexively upon her before he caught himself.
As if she’d caught fire and he’d been burnt, he yanked back his hands. “Annalee,” he said hoarsely, shame coursing hot where desire had once raged. “I shouldn’t . . . That is to say . . .” He held up his hands.
“Shame,” she murmured, her lips forming a sardonic twist. “What a cute emotion.” Annalee straightened and pushed down her dress. The satin skirts, still damp from her tumble into the fountains, fell around her in a noisy rustle, their descent slowed as the article caught on his knees. He immediately pushed that fabric from his person.
As she casually went about straightening her garments, Wayland did so as well, with a rapidity born of his horror.
When they’d both finished righting themselves, they stood across from one another.
“Annalee,” he began gruffly. “Forgive me,” he stammered. Jeremy had asked him to go to her as a friend, and this was how he behaved? Nearly tupping her . . . and in the earl’s offices, no less. “I . . . Please—”
Annalee caught him by his shirt, effectively silencing him in an instant. “It was nothing,” she whispered against his mouth. She managed to give him an up-and-down look, then freed him. “Truly.”
And with that incisively delivered insult, she swept off.
Standing there alone in the earl’s offices long after she’d gone, Wayland was reminded all over again of the danger that came in being close to Annalee Spencer, and why Jeremy’s favor was an impossible one.
Chapter 6
Leave it to members of the Mismatch Society to each find themselves presented with a copy of Thérèse the Philosopher, the salacious but eminently informative book, and to not have a single question on it.
“If I might direct you to the title page,” Annalee said, turning the book around and revealing the scandalous sketch of the voluptuous woman bent over while a priest caned her.
Alas . . . not a single woman was compelled to open her volume.
Loud chattering filled the room.
“I for one believe if Annalee wished to go swimming in a fountain, then that was her choice to do so. She was fully clad.”
“But what if she wasn’t clad? Should she be open to society’s condemnation, based on that?”
Annalee used to believe nothing was more fascinating for young, virtuous ladies than the mysteries of men and matters pertaining to sex.
Except her scandal. It appeared that was the one thing.
In the past fortnight since she’d begun leading the discussions and sharing literature, she’d fielded questions about everything from what took place in the marital bed to just how, exactly, what she’d explained could be in any way pleasurable.
“If I might bring you back . . . If I could . . .” But her calls were to no avail.
Mayhap this had been a disastrous idea, after all. The idea that she could lead. Because she was decidedly not a leader.
Since its inception, there’d been any number of scandals faced by the Mismatch Society, an organization dedicated to promoting a world where women lived freely and challenged society’s norms and expectations for them.
Conc
eived by Miss Emma Gately, who’d severed a lifelong betrothal, and spearheaded by the former Lady Sylvia Norfolk, now Viscountess St. John, this society was the living, breathing persona of ton-ish scandal.
Why, even the idea of three young women living together was perceived as wicked.
Granted, one of those women was a former fighter who’d also been the lover of Sylvia’s late husband—but that was neither here nor there—and the other was Annalee, who was, well, Annalee.
At every turn, their venture was met with outrage from angry parents whose daughters had found their way into the society’s folds. Or horror and fear from brothers and guardians who were more concerned with marrying off their charges and being free of their responsibility to those women than with each respective lady’s happiness.
The papers printed exaggerated stories of their wicked intentions.
All the while, gentlemen were allowed their meetings and their opinions and their clubs.
But then, such was the way of the world. Men could have, run, form, and visit any manner of club or establishment, but the minute women formed such a venture, society was up in arms, and there came the calls of shutting it down.
Sylvia took command. “We’ve certainly faced scandal before.”
Murmurs of assent went up from the other members.
Those other members, however, issued their assurances from behind the newspapers that so consumed their attention.
Yes, they had faced scandal before. But not when they’d been on the cusp of creating something of the nature that they were. Not when Annalee had been on the cusp of finally stepping forward into a leadership role, capable at last of truly contributing something to the ladies of society.
Sylvia caught her eye, and Annalee couldn’t even feign her usual droll humor. Nothing. Just an aching regret and panic at what she might cost their members. “It looked a good deal worse than it was.”
Anwen Kearsley tossed down her paper, where it hit the table with a loud thwack. “But neither should it have mattered if it was,” the bespectacled lady asserted with as great a firmness and boldness as Annalee had ever recalled of the quietest, usually meekest of the many Kearsley sisters. “Why should she not have been dipping her toes in a fountain or dancing in those waters with a dashing gent?”
Annalee cleared her throat. “If I may?” She lifted what remained of her cheroot. “I’d also reiterate that I was not dancing in a fountain. This time.” It bore pointing out and repeating because she was a scandal, but she’d not have her friends believe even she would go about conducting herself as she’d done countless times before in the middle of her brother’s betrothal ball.
“Then what were you doing in the fountain?” Miss Isla Gately asked, the intonation of her query and the roundness of her eyes a model of intrigue.
As one, all the younger girls shifted on their seats and angled their attention on Annalee.
“Yes,” Cora Kearsley pressed. “I trust it was something outrageously fun and delicious that sent you into the waters.”
Fun and delicious . . .
Screams pealed around her mind, the distant echo of gunfire melding with the distorted cries of a confused crowd.
A panicky little laugh built in her chest and tumbled free of her lips.
Brenna Kearsley clapped her hands happily. “I knew it was something wonderful!” With a sigh she dropped her chin atop her hands, and all the other girls sighed in return.
But the stares remained from a sea of young women who believed they’d worked themselves to the answer, with no input needed from Annalee herself to either confirm or deny.
And suddenly, Annalee’s palms slicked with sweat—nay, that perspiration coated all her body—and she wished she’d kept her damned mouth shut. That she’d been content to let even her closest friends and supporters to their ill opinions about her and what she’d been up to. Because any of that was better than admitting her past had any hold over her still.
Her hands shook slightly, and to steady herself, Annalee took comfort where she so often did, in the remaining bit of her cheroot. Raising it to her lips, she sucked deep, filling her lungs, welcoming the way it warmed her.
Feeling Valerie’s and Sylvia’s gazes, ones filled with concern and not the rabid curiosity the others possessed, was somehow . . . worse.
“What else would it be, dear girls?” Annalee said to the room at large, her rhetorical question still met with a bevy of answering nods and murmurs of assent. “After all, you each know my love of fun . . . and good times.” Grabbing the flask resting beside her, she raised it, toasting herself.
Then Annalee heard it. Even through the noisy chatter of their approving members. “I wish I could be her.” Brenna Kearsley’s soft sighs and quiet murmurings reached Annalee. Along with the agreement that came from her sisters seated beside her.
For so long, all the years since that fateful day in Manchester, Annalee had thrown herself fully into living an existence free of the constraints that had once bound her, the ones that shackled ladies to rules so very one-sided where the genders were concerned. Only recently had there been a feeling of . . . emptiness to it all.
Sylvia cleared her throat. “There is, however, still the matter of our membership to consider,” she said cautiously. As their members slid looks her way that were equal parts disapproving and stunned, she rushed to clarify. “I am not saying that we should change our ways—”
“Then what are you saying?” Isla Gately demanded of their apparently not-so-fearless leader.
“I am saying that there is a difference between asserting our views of the world and being mired in scandal. These constant scandals? They threaten everything we’ve established. Everything we hold dear.”
And yet . . . Annalee’s stomach sank. The truth remained—they did have to pay some mind to what the world said . . . not for themselves, but rather . . . for one another. For the young ladies who were here to learn new perspectives and challenge the norms and think for themselves, out from under the thumbs of their domineering mamas and papas, could do so only if they didn’t offend the world too greatly. It was a delicate waltz they danced. Challenge the existing order, but do it too wildly or too outrageously and the very existence of the society would be threatened. And the young ladies who attended could find themselves instantly recalled by a disapproving parent.
“I for one do not want Annalee to change,” Anwen Kearsley announced to the room at large. “I’d have her just the way she is.”
And perhaps Annalee was tired from the endless night that had been her brother’s betrothal ball. Or mayhap it was simply that she was going soft, but at that gentle show of support from the young woman, a wave of emotion filled her throat. The polite sort didn’t defend her. Why, even the members, until now, had viewed and treated her as more of a fascinating oddity. Or that was what she’d believed anyway. Clamping the cheroot at the side of her lips, Annalee looked to her friends. “There are no worries; I’ve no intention of changing. Now, if we can return to Thérèse?”
And this time, the ladies took out their copies, and Annalee found herself spared from any further questioning or concern about her latest descent into madness.
There was only one certainty . . . The women here were dependent upon her, and she’d an obligation to get her bloody mess of a life together and start behaving in a way that didn’t jeopardize everything they’d created.
Chapter 7
“Nothing exciting happens here.”
Standing on the side of Lady Sinclair’s ballroom’s crowded dance floor, with guests throughout the room sipping tepid lemonade and conversing amongst one another, Wayland couldn’t agree more with that unusual-for-her whining pronouncement from his sister.
For Wayland, however, “nothing exciting,” following Peterloo, was what he’d come to strive for, and had also committed himself to.
“Nothing at all,” Kitty continued muttering to herself. “With the exception of last evening at Lord Jeremy’s, that
is.”
Alas, his spirited sister proved of a wholly different mindset.
He tweaked a dark, perfectly formed curl. “And here I believed you couldn’t imagine anything more exciting than attending a London ball.”
His sister’s mouth puckered with her annoyance. “That was before,” she muttered. “Must we remain?”
He had opened his mouth to tease once more when he caught the strain at the corners of her eyes and the tension on her lips. And he followed her stony gaze out . . . across the ballroom to where a quartet of young ladies stared boldly back, tittering behind their hands. The white-clad misses made no attempt to conceal their mockery.
His gut clenched.
“Stop it, Wayland,” his sister whispered.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re looking at me all pityingly, and you’re only going to make it worse.”
Make it worse, as in the bullying that had been directed her way—rather, their way—from the moment he’d been granted a title. The bullying toward him? It had faded . . . mostly. He had a title. It eased Wayland’s way, but still did not make it better. His sister would always carry the stigma of being, to Polite Society, just a blacksmith’s daughter . . . unless he made a respectable match. One that his mother and the world desperately wished to be with Lady Diana for the romantic roots attached to their connection. Of course, only Wayland seemed to realize there was nothing heroic about him or what he’d done that day . . .
He steeled his jaw.
But he would not fail Kitty. His sister, whom he could spare pain and hurt . . .
“It will get better, Kitty,” he said quietly.
She rolled her eyes. “No, it won’t. We will never belong. You will. But certainly not me. And they will never be kind, and that is fine.” She patted his shoulder. “Now, if you will please let it rest.”
Let it rest.
Let her suffer unkind cut after unkind cut? He’d sooner lop off his own limbs. Nay, it was why the match his and Lady Diana’s mothers expected him to make was vital. That union the ton cheered for would be that which made it so for Kitty. He knew that. He’d resolved himself to ultimately making that match. For his family. He didn’t love Lady Diana. He’d already given his heart. But he admired her. He respected her. And he didn’t doubt, in time, there could—or would—be more. “I’m going to make it better for you, Kitty.”
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