Jeremy’s face crumpled. “I would never—”
“Wouldn’t you?” She cut him off, sneering with a vitriol no girl of her tender years should know. And yet . . . she was right to her resentment. “Aren’t you trying to send Annalee away? And someday, when I’m not the proper lady, you’ll let our parents send me away, too.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Excuse me if I don’t believe you,” she spat, and with a sound of disgust, she headed for the door.
Wayland stood there stiffly. He’d been so very certain there was nowhere in the world worse than Manchester. Every utterance Annalee had spoken, every challenge she’d issued at the Fitzhughs’, about her place in this world and lack of security, was actualized in this hideous moment with a cowardly Jeremy. Her family would send her to York, and after that . . . when . . . nay, if she were freed? She’d never recover. Her soul would wither and die, and he couldn’t bear it.
“There is another way.” Before he could talk himself out of it, Wayland called out, his voice hoarse. He wouldn’t.
That brought Harlow to a jarring halt. She whipped around, facing him with such hope that it reached all the way across the room.
“I will court her,” Wayland said to the room at large, breathing his idea aloud.
It made sense. This was the only way.
Harlow ventured over with a tentativeness that bespoke a fear of believing too hard that her sister had been saved.
“What are you saying?” Jeremy asked.
He’d been the reason she was at Peterloo. He’d been the reason her life had fallen apart after that fateful day. And yet . . . this time . . . it was different. What was at stake was Annalee’s freedom . . . and her future. To shut her away would be to put her through a different kind of death. And she’d suffered so much already. “I’m saying . . . I was with her last night. My name has been linked to hers, and . . . a courtship can kill that gossip.” And he would also be providing Annalee with precisely the favor she’d put to him. Only now, its purpose proved . . . twofold.
“But—”
Wayland glared the other man into silence. “What the hell would you do? Send her to a bloody institution?”
All the color bled from Jeremy’s cheeks. Good, let the bastard feel guilty. Wayland had made enough mistakes where Annalee was concerned. He’d be damned if he’d sit idle and allow her family to silence her, punishing her and hurting her in a way that she could likely never recover from.
“If she’ll allow me to court her, I will.” He glanced between the pair. “And none of this is spoken beyond us three. Is that clear? If it is, then all of this is for naught, and the earl and countess will succeed in . . . in . . .” Wayland couldn’t get the rest of that out past the fear and horror of it clogging his throat.
Brother and sister exchanged a look, and then Jeremy nodded.
“You are a hero, Wayland,” Harlow whispered, and then going up on tiptoe, she pressed a kiss upon his cheek. “I was right to have knighted you.”
A hero.
It was the last thing he’d ever been where Annalee was concerned.
But mayhap, in this, this time, he could make it right.
Chapter 21
That morning, following his meeting with Jeremy and Harlow, one matter took importance above all others: making himself seen.
As someone who’d sought to avoid and steer clear of scrutiny, it was a new way to find himself . . . and singularly miserable.
Wayland’s first order of business had been to go to one of the most famous, and even more importantly, the most frequented, hothouses in London, and now with a ridiculously large—and also deliberately eye-catching—bouquet of fuchsia and pale-pink peonies in hand, he descended the steps of his crested carriage and marched a deliberately slow path up the steps of the infamous Waverton residence.
He was no hero, as Harlow had called him that morn.
But he was determined to help Annalee out of this mess she found herself in, in some part because of his violent outburst at the Duke of Fitzhugh’s ball.
Cresting the stairs, Wayland looped the velvet-tied flowers behind his back, putting them on display for the passersby, and raising his spare hand, he collected the ring and brought it down hard.
He was going to make this right . . . for Annalee.
He’d never be absolved of his sins that day in Manchester, but he could spare her this pain her family would inflict upon her.
Puzzling his brow, he stared at the pretty painted pale-green door.
That was, if a servant bothered to open the door and he had the opportunity to put his suit to Annalee.
At last, footfalls fell on the other side of the panels, and Wayland straightened.
“I’m coming. I’m coming,” an impatience-filled voice called out.
The doors were jerked open, and the most unconventional of servants glared back. Tall as Wayland’s six feet, and as broad of shoulder, he fit more with the laborers Wayland had grown up alongside, and Wayland himself, than with the usual scrawny fellows stuffed into grand uniforms and wigs propped atop their heads.
The man gave him an annoyed once-over. “Which one are you?”
Which one? Which meant . . . Annalee was accustomed to fielding suitors, and for a minute his pretense in being here, the real role he played at pretending, was forgotten by the rush of jealousy for—
“Well?” the butler demanded, taking a step forward. “Which daughter or sister are you trying to claim?” And then, with a menacing slowness, the servant locked his fingers together and cracked his knuckles.
“Daughter or sister?” Wayland repeated back slowly. And then it occurred to him . . . The man wasn’t speaking of men who’d come here in pursuit of Annalee, but rather of the outraged papas and other protectors who’d come to claim their daughters from attending her society.
“Uh . . . neither?”
“That’s the correct answer.” The butler grunted. “I thought so.” He made to close the door in Wayland’s face.
Oh, bloody hell. Wayland reflexively shot out the hand with Annalee’s flowers, the enormous bouquet preventing that panel from closing, but also subsequently suffering the beheading of three of those blooms and badly rumpling the others.
“Now, see here,” he began firmly.
“Are you looking to threaten me?” And by the gleeful relish there in the bulky butler’s eyes and voice, he was decidedly hoping the answer was in the affirmative.
“Of course not,” Wayland said, calling for calm to defuse a situation that was rapidly getting away from him. “I’m here to call on Lady Annalee.”
There was such a long break in silence, with only the rattle of passing carriages and the clip-clop of horses’ feet, that Wayland suspected the older man may have not heard him. He tried again. “I am here to see—”
The butler found his voice. “I heard you,” he snapped. “The lady ain’t receiving. Not of the gentleman sort. Not of any of the man sort.” And this time, Annalee’s loyal servant slammed the door shut so hard it shook the frame.
There came the slight thwack of a lock falling, and just like that, Wayland found himself barred entry, standing there with nothing but one empty hand, the other holding an increasingly tired-looking bunch of peonies.
Glancing down at the forlorn heads chopped off by Annalee’s front door, he muttered a curse under his breath.
Well, this wasn’t going to plan. This wasn’t going to plan at all. Wayland was to arrive and be shown to a formal parlor, and she was to come down immediately. At no point in how he’d played this out in his mind had it gone the way of him being barred entry and denied the right to see her.
And now, here he stood . . . with no access to Annalee . . .
Feeling gazes upon him, Wayland glanced over his shoulder . . .
At some point an audience had assembled to watch the show that Wayland had found himself putting on for their benefit.
But there was the attention from members of the ton
that he’d managed to gather himself that morning. In fairness, that was one thing that had gone to plan about all this.
People had noted his arrival with flowers, and as such, some of the day’s goals had been achieved.
The most important piece of this whole charade, however, the one that would ultimately spare Annalee from a fate she didn’t deserve, was speaking to the lady herself.
Firming his jaw, he took a step forward and pounded again on the panel. Any other time, he would have appreciated that Annalee had a butler who scared off male visitors. But he’d be damned if he was turned out. Not with what her brother had revealed to Wayland that morning.
Alas, after three solid minutes of knocking—as confirmed by his timepiece—it became clear there’d be no entry.
Not through the front door anyway . . .
Christ in hell. He’d have to become one of the criminal sorts, then. Finding a different entry. Wayland had started down the steps when, suddenly, there came the scrape of the latch lifting, and the door opened a fraction A birdlike woman ducked her head out, her white hair frazzled, her buglike eyes round. “You there,” she called, and Wayland immediately came bounding up, taking the stairs two at a time.
“Yes,” he said quickly.
She jabbed a finger through the opening and wagged it in warning. “Don’t think to break in, or I’ll clout ye good.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he hurried to assure her. He lied. If it meant sparing Annalee from what her family sought to do, he’d do it. Scandal be damned. Broken promises to this woman or anyone be damned.
The servant’s gaze went to his flowers and then back to Wayland. She glanced over her shoulder. “You looking for Her Ladyship?” she asked on a loud whisper.
“I am,” he said calmly.
“Are your intentions honorable or not?” she asked, peppering him with questions.
He bowed his head. “The most honorable.”
Her eyes immediately narrowed, suspicion blazing from within the tiny pinpricks they’d formed. “Don’t trust the honorable sorts. They’re always coming in here with their fancy speech and stately manners, and causing nothing but trouble for the ladies here.”
Wayland mentally filed that revealing bit away. “I am a . . . friend of Annalee’s?”
The old woman angled her head, eyeing him with a new interest. “Never ’eard of you before,” she said, her voice slipping between Cockney and a proper King’s English. “And just because you used to be friends before doesn’t mean your intentions are good now.”
Ironically, what the old servant couldn’t know was that he’d been driven to this doorstep, and this moment, by only good intentions.
It had been everything else that had come before this moment where Annalee was concerned which had proven dishonorable.
“I’m a friend still,” he said quietly, and . . . he was. He realized that the bond between them hadn’t been broken by the divide Peterloo and time apart had wrought. That, to Annalee’s question of just this: Were they friends? They had been and always would be.
The servant peered closer. She must have seen something there in the sincerity of what he spoke. “You’re not looking to shut the misses’ society down?” she finally asked, revealing the first hints of wavering.
Wayland raised the bouquet in his hands, touching it to his chest. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Wouldn’t be able to do it if you wanted to anyway,” she snapped. “Other men have tried. They’ve all failed.”
And with Annalee’s spirit and strength and courage, those men had been destined for defeat. Admiration filled him. “I don’t doubt it,” he said, a wistful smile on his lips. She’d gone and taken on the most powerful peers of Polite Society, and Wayland, who’d once attempted that very thing, was left admiring Annalee for having remained committed to challenging the ways of the world. When he himself had so failed. And he’d be damned if her family locked her away. Wayland moved his face close to the opening. “Will you help me speak to her? I believe she will not turn me away.”
“No gentlemen allowed,” she said gruffly, and his hope for this woman being his entry in to Annalee flagged, but was quickly raised once more by her next words. “But if you were looking to speak to the lady, you might find your way around the back to the ladies’ gardens.”
Relief zipped through him as, with that most important of offerings, she shut the door in his face.
Grinning, and flowers in hand, Wayland bounded down the steps and made his way along the side of the residence, following the gated, graveled path that emptied out to a . . . He skidded to a halt, his boots kicking up pebbles, as he stared up at the ivy-covered wall. A veritable fortress suited for a medieval manor surrounded what he presumed were the gardens . . . and the back entry.
Stepping back several feet, Wayland rested his hands on his hips, leaving the bouquet to dangle at his side as he considered his path forward.
You’ve changed . . .
And yes, she’d been right.
Wayland, however, had been given to scaling trees and even trellises and walls to see her.
With that in mind, he stuffed the flowers he’d brought between his teeth. Several pink petals fell down around his feet. He assessed the thick swath of English ivy climbing along Annalee’s wall, eyeing the thickest, densest patch of the plant.
Experimentally testing, he fished around the leaves, searching for the bricks underneath and footholds within.
And with a quiet sigh and a long prayer, Wayland proceeded to climb.
It had been years since he’d done so.
He’d once been rather good at it.
Particularly as, invariably, on the other side of whatever structure he’d been scaling, there’d been Annalee, who would have been awaiting him. This time was no different.
A branch broke under his foot, and he cursed around a mouthful of flowers as his leg slid out from under him.
He was too old for this.
And big.
He’d always been big, but he’d grown even more through the years in height and stone to make entry by climbing—hell, entry by anything other than a respectable door—not only folly but also a dangerous one at that.
At last, he neared the top. He made the mistake of glancing back.
Ten feet were between him and the ground. He’d no doubt survive it, but he certainly didn’t want the pain that came with a tumble such as this one.
Catching the edge of the wall, he used all his effort and muscles and energy as, with a grunt, he heaved himself up and shimmied onto his stomach.
Out of breath from his efforts, Wayland paused at that two-foot-wide purchase he found and readjusted the flowers in his teeth. And clasping the edge, he lowered himself.
“Intruder!” someone cried.
Something hit him square in the back.
At that unexpected shout, his grip slackened, and the ground rushed up to meet him.
Oh, Christ.
He closed his eyes, and instead of tensing, he forced himself to relax, and rolled slightly.
Even so, when he landed on his back, all the air was knocked out of him.
“Have we killed him?” That voice, decidedly not Annalee’s, sounded entirely too gleeful at the prospect.
“No. No,” came another. “See, his chest is moving.”
His chest was moving, but his entire body hurt. He’d underestimated how activities which had come so easily, and actions—like a fall—that had once resulted in barely the blinking of an eye, now came harder and hurt like the very devil. Wayland couldn’t help it.
He felt a large shadow move over him. “Oh, yes. He is alive.” And once more, this youngish voice, belonging to a different lady, contained the greatest disappointment . . . at his being alive.
Wayland opened his eyes. Alas, the hothouse flowers, having landed directly on his face, offered nothing beyond an eyeful of pale pink and fuchsia, silken-soft flowers. Fighting back a groan of misery, he reached up, remo
ved the flowers, and then pushed to his feet.
A group of women formed a line across from him, all ten of them wearing identical expressions of suspicion and fury.
Wayland swallowed hard.
He’d scaled the wrong wall. There was nothing else for it.
Wayland lifted his hand in greeting, and as one, his audience looked to his sorry flowers. Along the way he’d lost another six heads of the peonies, leaving him holding a bouquet of more bare stems. “Uh, hullo?” he greeted dumbly.
And interestingly, a polite hello proved the wrong thing to say.
There came a flurry of cries, more like war whoops of all their cries and shouts rolling together, with only the periodic word peppered through making sense.
And none of them proving good . . .
“Intruder . . .”
“Finish him off . . .”
Cursing, Wayland hurriedly backed away, making for the same wall he’d just tumbled from. And like soldiers in the midst of rushing into battle, they converged upon him.
“Wait!” That cry, piercing through the melee, was a familiar voice, sparing him from being finished off by a bloodthirsty mob of young ladies in mostly white skirts. “That isn’t an intruder!” The group parted and his sister stepped through. She cleared her throat. “That is . . . my brother.”
Ah, so this was the Mismatch Society. Whenever Wayland had read of Annalee’s organization, he’d assumed society’s concern and disapproval of it had stemmed from reasons related to the unconventionality of it—daughters of the ton assembling to discuss societal norms they wished to break.
In this moment, with bloodlust still brimming from their eyes and the pugnacious stance they’d all assumed, the group, feared by men of all ages, of all ranks amongst the peerage, should be feared for many, many reasons.
“Your . . . brother?” one of the ladies asked hesitantly, breaking the silence.
“I . . . am afraid so,” Kitty announced, and moved out from the line of ladies and over to Wayland’s side with a reluctance he didn’t believe for one moment he’d imagined.
A Wanton for All Seasons Page 26