A Wanton for All Seasons

by Caldwell, Christi

  Panting hard from her flight, she staggered to a stop, and hunching over, she let her palms rest atop her knees and fought to breathe. She fought for control.

  Then she heard it.

  The faintest gurgling.

  The tinkling pitter-patter of drops of water striking water. Distracting and soothing as they’d come to be, and they called.

  As she walked, Annalee hopped on one foot and freed herself of first one slipper, then the other.

  The moment she reached the side of the palladio garden fountain, she hiked up her skirts and stepped over, dipping her feet in. The icy-cold water closed over her ankles, and gooseflesh rose on her legs and arms, a balm that instantly cleared those cobwebs from her mind.

  Mayhap this was what those mermaids pulled from sea felt when they returned to the waters—a homecoming. A baptism that cleaned the soul, if even just briefly.

  She felt him before she heard him, knowing his footfalls and sensing his presence in the same way that she’d felt his gaze in the ballroom. “Lord Darlington,” she called, not glancing back.

  There was a moment’s hesitation, and then the slight crunch of gravel, indicating he’d moved.

  The moment he reached her side, she rested her palms on the limestone edge of the fountain and glanced up, smiling at him.

  “Am I . . . intruding?”

  Was she meeting Lord Welles?

  That was the question he was really asking.

  “No,” she murmured. Would he even believe that denial? And why did she care if he did?

  What was he doing here? Why had he come? Why had he left his Lady Diana’s side?

  So many questions rolled through her mind, ones that she could not ask and desperately wished to know the answers to.

  Wayland clasped his hands behind him, staring at the mighty Aphrodite that stood at the top of the fountain, letting water fall from her fingers.

  Annalee hated this silence between them. “Never say you’ve sought me out.” She kicked her toes, splashing him slightly. Several drops landed on the front of his jacket, and he frantically wiped them off as though he were scrubbing lip rouge from his person.

  She couldn’t help the sad smile. How she missed the rebel he’d once been.

  “Wayland of old would have sat beside me, shucked his boots, rucked up his trousers, and joined me in soaking his feet.”

  “Wayland of old also wouldn’t have joined you at a formal ball hosted by a duke and duchess,” he said quietly. “But here we are.”

  Annalee drew up her knees and folded her arms around them. “Yes, here we are.”

  Then, he did the most unexpected of things: he . . . joined her, seating himself beside her on the edge of the fountain.

  And . . . strangely, for all the tumult this night had brought, there came a sense of peace in being here, alone with this man, now.

  “Tell me, Wayland,” she said conversationally. “Why do you think I’m always off meeting a lover?”

  “Are you?”

  She tried to make out anything in those syllables. “No.” Annalee turned her head, studying the upside-down version of this tensely aloof Wayland. She looked him over. “You don’t believe me. Do you know the truth?”

  He hesitated, and then gave his head a slight shake.

  Annalee leaned in, whispering against his ear, “I’ve never met a lover at a fountain.” She raised her mouth to claim a kiss.

  “But you’ve had lovers,” he said, just as their lips would have met.

  “And haven’t you?”

  She wasn’t so naive as to have failed to hear the places he’d once visited with her brother. His cheeks went red with splotches of color. A blush. Of guilt? Embarrassment? Shame? What accounted for it?

  Chapter 16

  Wayland knew the very moment he’d fallen in love with Lady Annalee Spencer.

  He’d been swimming in her family’s lake, and she’d scaled an enormous oak, climbing to the highest possible branch. The moment she’d reached the top, she’d shucked all her garments until she was nude. And then, with a stunning grace and elegance, she’d brought her arms above her head and launched herself into a flawless dive, disappearing beneath the serene water’s depths before breaking through, splashing him and declaring that neither he nor any boy could or would ever dive as perfectly as she did.

  That confidence, that gumption—her sense of pride and the knowledge she’d possessed of her own accomplishment—had fascinated him.

  But that had been when they’d been children. And his life from that moment on had never, ever been the same.

  As he’d grown up and become a man, and she a woman, he’d learned the real reasons he’d been so hopelessly and helplessly in love with her: her strength. Her belief that people, regardless of station or gender, should have a seat at the table that was the world.

  He’d never known there could be a woman like her.

  Hell, he didn’t know a single person like her.

  It only made sense that they should meet now, beside water, when it had always beckoned to her.

  And yet, that love of water had also become something that wasn’t just intimately known by him. These fountains that had come to represent trysting spots.

  And fire seared his veins at the thought of her meeting Welles . . . or anyone else . . . out here.

  “Do you want to know why I’m always in fountains, Wayland?” she whispered, leaning close.

  He shook his head tightly.

  “It is because I like them. I search them out because they relax me. They soothe me.”

  They relax me . . . They soothe me . . .

  Those weren’t the same reasons she used to give.

  “Because of Peterloo,” he said somberly.

  She stiffened, and his body tensed alongside hers.

  It was the first time they’d ever spoken of it. In those earliest days, when her family had rushed her off to London and he’d been left behind in Manchester, he’d written note after note. Pleading forgiveness. Swearing to atone for having placed her in the path of danger that day.

  At last, she spoke. “Because of Peterloo,” she said softly. “It was hot that day.”

  “So hot,” he added needlessly, his voice rough, and yet echoing that reminder forged the memory in his mind.

  They were speaking of it. And it felt . . . right. And freeing. Speaking to her, the one woman whom he’d loved more than anyone else.

  “Oppressive. Like the crowds.”

  The crowds. Yes, when he’d left her, she’d been far in the distance on the side of the road, but the crowds had swelled and soared and been dispersed in every direction that day. She fell silent. They both fell silent. And he knew she wanted to let the discourse die.

  Only he’d always been selfish where Annalee Spencer was concerned. And now that they’d begun speaking of that summer’s day in Manchester, he didn’t want to let the moment of closeness go. A fledgling bond had been kindled, forged from that day of hell. He wanted to keep talking with her about it. Because then, mayhap if they did, it would bring them back to a place they’d once been—if not lovers . . . then friends.

  “I never saw that many people in my life,” he murmured, staring vacantly at his image beside hers reflected in the duke’s watering fountain. “I couldn’t imagine there was anything more exciting than all those men and women, come together to advocate for change.” The pings raining down from Aphrodite’s fingertips, little teardrops upon his and Annalee’s frames, were so very fitting, a metaphor for both that day and what had happened to their friendship. “A damned fool, I was.” Bitterness lent a hard edge to that utterance.

  There was a slight rustle of satin, indicating Annalee had shifted closer. “Because you sought to bring about reform to the existing way of life? A way that is unfair?” She rested a hand on his sleeve, her fingers finding a purchase upon his person as though it were the most natural thing in the world to touch him so. “What you saw, what you spoke of, Wayland,” she said, her voic
e impassioned enough to let him know she actually believed the words she spoke, “were all the men who were and are unfairly denied the vote. You spoke up and out against a law passed to pay for a war on the backs of the most oppressed, the ones with the least financing the luxuries of the few.” She looked up at him. He saw it in those same waters, a reflective mirror that allowed him to look upon the two of them together, but also to avoid her eyes as the coward he was. “Those were your words, Wayland. You spoke them.”

  He swallowed painfully past a wad of bitterness. “I was a naive schoolboy who resented that I didn’t have more.”

  “And there was nothing wrong with expecting you should be afforded the same rights,” she said calmly.

  A woeful smile brought his lips up. “When did our roles become so reversed?”

  She let her arm fall from his sleeve. “I always believed those things you were fighting for, Wayland. You were the one who stopped.”

  When he’d been granted his title.

  She didn’t speak with recrimination. She didn’t speak with anything beyond a relaxed matter-of-factness. So why was he unable to meet her eyes, even in that watering fountain? Why did shame turn in his belly?

  “I don’t suppose that is why you’ve come?” she gently prodded him, dropping her chin atop her knees and rubbing that dainty point back and forth along the yellow fabric. “To speak about Peterloo?”

  “No,” he said gruffly. And he found he’d been wrong earlier. With her gentle challenges and questions, ones that made him think about those aspects of Peterloo and his own life which he didn’t wish to contemplate, he was grateful for the shift away from talks of that August day.

  “What is it, Wayland?” she asked softly, trailing the tip of her right toe along the surface of the water, writing a little line with the ripples she made, then erasing it with the heel of her foot. “You are serious.” She paused, smiling up at him. “That is, more serious than usual.”

  He’d not always been the stuffy, grave figure she now took him for. She’d known him back when he’d been lighter, and life easier. But her remarks also served to remind him of why he was here. “I wanted to speak to you about Kitty,” he began, hating himself even as he got those words out, because he knew they’d sever the brief but beautiful connection he and Annalee had found here.

  She smiled. “I adore her. She’s grown into—”

  “She cannot be part of your club,” he said flatly before she mistook this meeting for anything other than what it was.

  And just like that, all the warmth they’d shared, the kindred connection they’d forged of their past, and the high opinion she’d once carried for him, died a quick death. All the light in those eyes went dark. And in that instant, he wished he could call back the real reason for his being here. Restore them back to that connected plane they’d existed in. A place he’d never again thought to be with her.

  “That is why you’ve sought me out?” Annalee narrowed her eyes upon his face, and the glint icing her eyes, a shade of blue that would forever captivate him, marked the death knell for any further closeness between them. “Bah.” She stormed to her bare feet. “Of course that was why you came looking for me. The stuffy, always proper Lord Darlington would nevvver”—she wagged her palms—“seek me out unless I served as some possible threat to you and your precious reputation.”

  His cheeks fired hot. “That is not the case.” He paused. “Not entirely.”

  He’d always been a terrible liar. “The hell it isn’t,” she shot back, giving him a derisive once-over. “You’ve come to tell me . . . what? That I should rescind my invitation and turn your sister away?”

  When she put it in those terms . . . he certainly heard the damning sound to them. And yet . . .

  “Oh, my God.” Annalee recoiled. “That is why you’ve sought me out this evening.”

  She went absolutely silent, her features frozen, and his heart ached because of her hurt.

  And then . . . Annalee burst out laughing. Her laughter doubled her over, and she clutched at her sides as tears of mirth streamed down her cheeks.

  He brought his shoulders back and looked straight ahead. That amusement at his expense grated. It was mocking and condescending, and looking at this exchange from her perspective, she was within her rights to that condescension. It did not, however, make it any less . . . acute.

  Regaining control of her hilarity, Annalee dashed the moisture from her cheeks and met his gaze.

  She promptly dissolved into another gleeful fit.

  Wayland beat a hand against the side of his leg. Oh, this was really enough. “I’m glad you find this amusing.”

  Her amusement receded, and the ire came back in her eyes so quickly that he perversely found himself preferring the lady’s earlier sarcasm. She took a step toward him. “I find it amusing that you know me so little as to believe that I would ever dare bar your sister because of something any man has said to me.”

  He jerked. At Manchester, he’d witnessed men being run through, and the sharp way in which her words knifed him, he’d a taste of that unexpected pain. Hell, with the way she’d referred to him—“any man,” despite all they’d shared—he’d have preferred it to the way she severed any connection between them. “You think so little of me,” he said quietly.

  “I don’t even know you,” she replied with a lightning quickness, an unflappability at odds with the tumult running amok inside him. “Not anymore.”

  They didn’t know one another. That appeared to be something they did find common ground on.

  “But you? Seeking to interfere in your sister’s life? Choosing the activities that you deem proper and attempting to cut off those you don’t? In this? Yes, my opinion of you is not a good one, my lord.”

  My lord.

  From the moment he’d learned he’d be granted a barony because of his act of bravery at Peterloo, he’d hated everything about that title. For Wayland, it had become synonymous with that day and everything he’d lost.

  But this? Hearing those two little syllables fall from this woman’s lips was like another blow to the belly. It shouldn’t matter what she thought, and yet it did. It mattered so much. He tried to make her understand.

  “My father toiled. He worked until his hands bled, and we still had but a one-room household, one that was cold in the winter and blazing hot in the summer. And when patrons found another who could do work cheaper, there was even less security. I don’t want that life. And I’ll see my sister settled so she is secure, and yes, if that means behaving a certain way and being”—someone he wasn’t—“the stuffy lord you take me for”—his jaw flexed—“then by God, I’ll do that for her.”

  Annalee took a step closer, and continued coming until the tips of his boots brushed her bare feet. “Are you speaking about your sister’s security, Wayland?” She looked him squarely in the eyes. “Or your own?”

  “I . . .” Her question confounded him.

  Heat blazed through him, as it always did when she was near.

  She wasn’t finished with him, however. “Who are you, even?” she asked sadly. “You, the great voice of those without ones in their government. The men and women struggling for food, and striving for a leg up in the world . . . That you should so quit, because why? Hmm?” Annalee slashed a hand back toward the duke and duchess’s palatial residence that could have fit a thousand of the hovels he’d lived within. “Because your life improved? Because you are now included amongst the ranks of the people who once shut you out?”

  And he was grateful for the cover darkness provided to keep from revealing the stain of shame on his cheeks. Except . . .

  “You don’t know what it is to be without that security, Annalee,” he said, willing her to understand. “You have always belonged to this world, one that is secure and safe.” In fact, the only time it had proven not to be the case for her had been when she’d ventured into those fields and mingled with the riotous masses of Manchester. The guilt of that would follow him unti
l he drew his last breath.

  She stared at him for a long moment, and he tensed, bracing for the sting of her next biting attack.

  That didn’t come . . .

  “Don’t I?” she asked curiously. “If I wed, I’m at the mercy of a man, nothing more than his property. And even as a grown woman, I’ve had my dowry withheld, and any monies that were to be mine remain locked away. I’m at the mercy of Lady Sylvia’s generosity, and any funds I do have are because of any wagers I’ve won.”

  “My God,” he whispered. “They cut you off.”

  “They cut me off,” she confirmed, “because I bring much shaaame to the family name.” Those words flowed so freely from her tongue, there could be no doubting she’d had them tossed her way. “So much shame that they’ve pleaded with me and threatened to send me away, back to their country house in Ma-Manchester.” Her voice broke, and his heart cracked along with it.

  He took a step closer to her, but she shot up a palm, forcing him to stop, telling him with that brusque flip of her hand just how much she wanted or welcomed comfort from him in this moment.

  “They would send me back to the place of my nightmares,” she whispered, “just to be free of me.”

  And it was the first time in the course of his life that he hated her family. Her parents, for cutting her off. Jeremy, for allowing it to happen. And . . . himself, for not having known. Wayland fisted his hands tight.

  Her eyes sparked with a determined glint, but her gaze was one that moved through him as though he weren’t there. As though at some point she’d ceased speaking to him and spoke only to herself.

  “You see a woman with more freedom than I truly have, Wayland,” she said, her eyes fixed beyond him to that fountain she’d been perched beside. “You see a lady who, because of her birth to a noble family, has security. But I don’t. Not really.” Annalee slid her gaze back to his, holding his eyes with her own. “No woman does.”

  “I . . . never quite thought of that perspective,” he said softly, his shame compounded by the truth of that admission. “I . . . simply saw members of the peerage, all of them . . . as secure. Free from strife.” Because as a boy born outside her world, he’d been an outsider looking in.