Or out-drink it. Or out-wager it.
He knew her demons. He’d faced them, too. Nay, he’d battled them far better than she ever had. And something in that, in his presence, and in their different but still shared experiences of that day, allowed her to find her way back from the horrors. She touched her fingertips to the beloved planes of his face, tracing the bold slash of his right cheekbone to his chin. Why had she turned him away as long as she had? Fear had made her fight a friendship that had been the one great, most wonderful thing in her life.
The dark slashes of his brows came together. “What are you thinking?”
“I was just thinking . . . that if I’d returned your letters, how life . . . me . . . us, all of it would be different.”
His face twisted, a paroxysm of pain and grief that shredded her heart, a heart that still beat for him. It always would. She’d denied it all these years because it had been easier to tell herself she was over what they’d shared than to meet him again after Peterloo as the changed woman she’d been. Perhaps if . . . she had let him be there when he attempted to, then he would have been her crutch, and not spirits and meaningless assignations and all the other vices she’d freely surrendered herself to.
“Annaleeeee?” Her sister’s calls severed the moment, and they glanced in the direction of where Harlow’s voice had called from.
And this time when Annalee stepped out from behind the pillar, she stretched her fingers back toward Wayland, and they made the walk to Harlow’s side . . . together.
Chapter 25
Wayland’s time with Annalee at the museum had been . . . magnificent. Every aspect of every moment spent with Annalee and her sister that morn had been. Witnessing the joy she felt while freely joining the younger girl.
Even the hardest, most painful part . . . Annalee’s collapse . . . had seen them joined in a kindred place, born of a shared experience, and had been ideal, for it had been an exchange that was long overdue, one that needed to happen, and also one that had united them.
Yes, everything about the day was perfect.
It was why, immediately following, he’d paid a visit to Lady Diana and made sure, as gently as possible, to explain that his affections were reserved for another. There’d not been the tears he’d feared or anticipated. There’d been a casual . . . indifference from the always stoic lady. And there’d been a . . . freedom when he’d taken his leave.
Whistling, Wayland bounded up the steps, doffed his hat, and skidded to a stop.
The cheerful tune died on his lips.
Or rather, the day had been perfect. All such vestiges of happiness were effectively quashed in this very moment.
His mother stood there in the center of the sundial ornamentation etched within the marble foyer. Just beyond her shoulder, five steps higher and elevated slightly above their mother, Kitty waved frantically. “Run,” she mouthed.
And Wayland was more than half-tempted to do just that.
Plucking the hat from Wayland’s fingers, his butler ultimately made the decision for him.
“To what do I owe this eager welcome?” Wayland drawled, shrugging out of his cloak and handing over the garment to the servant.
Belding’s lips twitched in the hint of a smile.
Descending the remainder of the steps, Kitty shook her head vigorously as she joined Wayland and their mother on the marble floor. “Big mistake, dear brother,” she said.
“Splendid. I was hoping I had some nightmare to deal with.” His sister giggled. Wayland leaned in with a palm concealing half of his mouth. “What is the magnitude of this catastrophe?”
His sister stretched her arms out on opposite ends. “Huge.”
“If you two are quite done with your ill-timed and ill-advised jesting?” their mother snapped. “I quite dislike this lighter side of you, Wayland.”
“Well, I rather suspect I know what accounts for the changes in him, and I quite like it,” Kitty interjected. “I’ve missed the more fun version of you.”
He grinned. This more fun version of him.
That was . . . certainly what it was. He was lighter. These past days, he’d not given a single thought about how the world viewed him or the image he had to maintain to fit in, in a world that would, as he’d said to Annalee, never truly accept him. And it felt . . . freeing. In being with her, he’d been reminded of how much he’d loved . . . just being with her and laughing and all of it.
“If I may see you in the Rose Parlor, Wayland?”
Ah, the Rose Parlor.
So aptly named for the overabundance of blooms painted upon the pale-white silk wallpaper, and adorning the upholstery of the furnishings, and the regularly installed urns of those blooms. Wayland had found the room nauseatingly overdone . . . until Annalee. Until he’d noted the new fragrance she dashed upon her neck and behind her ears. He smiled. Nay, he’d never again think of a rose without—
“Wayland!” his mother squawked. “Are you daydreaming?”
“Yes,” he said. Catching his sister, he swung her in a wide circle around the butler, who didn’t make any attempt to hide his grin. “My head, I fear, is firmly in the clouds, and—”
“Annnd I advise you to step down to earth once more.”
He released his sister, and she twirled off, and a footman caught her before she could bowl him over.
And reluctantly he headed off to join his mother. God, when was the last time he’d been this happy? Years. It had been . . . years. He’d largely existed, and all the while had failed to realize all he was missing.
The moment they reached the parlor, he shut the door behind himself and his mother.
“What is the meaning of this?” she demanded, stopping in the middle of the parlor. “This . . . affair between you and Annalee.”
“I don’t owe you any explanations, Mother,” he said coolly, tugging off his gloves. He stuffed them into the front of his jacket.
“No, but do you know who you owe explanations to?” She stuck out a foot. “The Duke and Duchess of Kipling. The duchess, who came by today and asked the meaning of . . . of all of this.”
Oh, bloody hell.
And there it was.
Somewhere along the way, his mother’s hopes for a greater connection between Wayland and the most powerful of noble families he’d saved that day had at last materialized into a most real possibility.
He scrubbed a hand over his face.
“I . . . do not have feelings for the lady.”
“Bah, what is this?” She scoffed. “You saved her. You were her hero, and from that, feelings will grow,” his mother said with a crisp pragmatism born of her ruthless ambition to climb higher than either of them could have dreamed. “You aren’t a romantic. Look at what romance got you. Nearly killed. Other people dead.” She whisked over. “You, dear son, are now calm and rational and logical, and as such, you know that nothing good can come from a relationship with Annalee, and only everything great can come of a partnership with the duke’s daughter. So . . . whatever”—she swirled a palm in the air—“this is between you and Annalee, get it out of your system. Bed her. Make Annalee your lover after you marry, but by God, do your responsibility by this family.” Sweeping around him, his mother marched for the door.
A haze of fury fell over his eyes. Bed her. Make Annalee your lover after you marry . . .
“This is not over,” he said between grated teeth.
“No, but it very nearly was.” Whirling back, she glared at him. “The duchess expressed that the duke is quite put out with you. That his daughter has developed affection for you and is quite hurt by your disinterest. And that the only reason he is not giving us the cut direct is because, for reasons I cannot understand, Lady Diana still wants to marry you.”
“No, that is not what I’m referring to, Mother. I’m referring to this discussion between you and me. I am in love with Annalee.”
A horrified gasp exploded from her lips. “What?”
“I have always loved her. A
nd . . . if she’ll have me, I intend to marry her.”
Horror wreathed her face. “My God. You cannot be serious. That woman is a scandal!”
Yes, she had been.
“She has had lovers,” she pressed, four words that in their truth were a lash upon his soul and always would be.
And yet . . .
“I don’t care.” Not in the way his mother expected he should. He cared that other men had known her in ways that he had, and had hoped to be the only one to know her. “That doesn’t matter to me.”
“That is different, and you know it. Ladies are to be chaste. Annalee could not be further from that. And an arrangement with her would be selfish,” she spat. “Utterly and completely selfish. It is a match that does not take into consideration your sister and her own lack of prospects.” Hands on her hips, she stormed over. “Prospects that will be considerably lessened from her already nonexistent ones, Wayland. You’d put your happiness first, and not think of Kitty.”
Guilt knotted at his chest, and yet—
“I can’t forsake the woman I love. Not for anyone. She is a good woman, Mother,” he said, imploring her to see that. “She is a woman of strength who survived something the most hardened soldier shouldn’t have to face.” And he should have stormed her family’s household years earlier when she rejected his letters. To find out why. And to remind her of his love. So much time had passed. But it was not too late.
His mother scoured his face, and then, touching trembling fingers to her mouth, she rocked back. “If you think I will be happy for you, I will not, Wayland.”
“No,” he said coolly. “I don’t think you would or could, because my happiness is secondary to this new life you’ve dreamed up for yourself and our family. It isn’t enough that we have the funds to know safety and security, and that should Kitty wish to never marry, she’ll still be financially protected by what we have.”
“You don’t know that. It’s not enough.”
“No.” He looked down the length of his nose at her. “That is my point exactly. It will never be enough. But I? I will have happiness . . .” That was, if Annalee would have him this time. “I’ve already paid a visit to Lady Diana.”
His mother recoiled. “What did you do?” she whispered.
“I explained as gently as I could that I couldn’t offer her the love she wanted.”
“No.” His mother’s voice emerged weak.
Continuing over her interruption, he added a firmer layer of insistence, one that would put to bed once and for all the delusions she’d allowed herself where Wayland’s and Lady Diana’s futures were concerned. “I reminded the lady that her feelings for me might be misdirected, born of her girlish fantasies and encouraged by two matchmaking mamas.”
His mother cried out. “How could you have said those things to her?” She began to pace frantically back and forth. “The duke and duchess will never forgive this transgression. Never.”
He took a placating tone. “You may rest assured, the meeting was amicable.” The calm and almost indifference of the lady’s response had confirmed the sentiments she’d carried had not been the passionate ones motivated by any real feelings on Lady Diana’s part. “I wished the lady much joy and reminded her that she would only have it were she to marry a man who was capable of loving her as she deserved. Which I am . . . decidedly not, as my heart belongs fully and completely to Annalee. She was reserved. Completely emotionally detached.”
His efforts at infusing calm proved in vain.
His mother abruptly stopped and stormed over in a whir of skirts. “You selfish, self-centered man. You had your sister to consider, and instead, you’ve put Annalee first.”
“As I will always do from this day forward.” As he should have done long, long ago.
If looks could kill, he would have found himself a victim of maternal filicide in that very moment.
And with his mother breaking down into a fit of tears, Wayland stalked off . . . feeling freer than he had since Manchester.
Chapter 26
Entering through the front doors that she’d come through so many times before as a girl, Annalee swept her stare over the expansive marble foyer, expecting to be suffocated, as she inevitably was by her family’s residence.
This time . . . her parents had extended her an invitation.
Granted, it had come because her parents believed Wayland was courting her in truth.
And this welcome would go away.
And along with it, so much else would be gone, too.
Her time with Wayland.
Refusing to let herself be bogged down in the misery of what would come when their time together ended, she greeted the butler, murmuring a word of thanks to the servant, who assisted her out of her cloak. “Tanning, old chum.”
His eyes twinkled. “It is so very good to see you, Lady Annalee.”
She moved her gaze upward to the top of the staircase, where her sister sat, dejected, with her right cheek on her knees and her rapier at her side. Annalee gave a little nod up toward her. “What is going on there?” she murmured in hushed tones to Tanning.
The smile instantly faded from the older man’s long face. “I . . . could not say, Lady Annalee,” he whispered. “She has . . . been this way for some time now.”
Cupping her hands around her mouth, Annalee called up to her younger sibling. “Why so glum, chum?”
Instead of popping up and shimmying down the banister, as was her way, Harlow lifted her shoulders in a jerky little shrug.
Bypassing the parlor, where her family had no doubt assembled, Annalee lifted her hem and headed abovestairs. “You’re disappointed because you won’t be permitted to play pianoforte when dinner is done?” she asked in a bid to elicit a smile or laugh. The whole Spencer family well knew the younger girl’s aversion to instruments.
“I hate playing,” Harlow mumbled.
“I know.” Annalee leaned in. “That’s why it is a jest. If it is any consolation, dearest sister, I feel much the same way about dinner parties with Mother and Father. Look at it this way: at least you are spared suffering through it.” That was normally true. Not this night. Not with Wayland present.
Harlow edged away, shifting closer to the wall, refusing to look at Annalee.
A deepening worry took root. “What is it?” she asked softly, taking a seat beside her younger sibling. “Has Mother been harping on your swordplay?”
Harlow hesitated, then muttered under her breath, “She always does. Nothing new there.”
No, there wasn’t. So then what accounted for this . . . sadness?
“Hey, now. Perhaps it will be good to talk about what is bothering you,” she said gently. “I find it always helps to talk to my friends about what has upset—”
“Like you did with Lila?” her sister charged. “When you ran away from Lila during Mother’s musical?”
She drew back. Her sister had seen that exchange. And more . . . How much had she heard? Either way, Harlow’s words . . . they were fair. Or they had been. “I’ve begun opening up more, too, poppet. That’s how I know it is important to not just keep my feelings inside. Lila and I spoke . . . about my departure.” Annalee had eventually gone back to Lila after her breakdown and talked about everything. Every last piece of herself and Peterloo she’d resisted speaking to her friend about: The demons that had haunted her. The vices she’d sought out to cope. The life she wanted for herself.
Her sister looked at her. “You did?”
She nodded. “I did. And it helped.” For so long, she’d been pushing away the people who could most understand her experience. She’d depended upon liaisons and other distractions to keep the emotions from overwhelming her. “I’ve come to appreciate my friendships and learn that talking through”—my experiences—“anything”—she substituted—“is a balm.” And because of those gifts, her need for other distractions had lessened. “Wayland helped me to see that,” she said softly to herself.
Her sister stare
d at her with stricken eyes, bringing Annalee back to the moment.
She folded an arm about Harlow’s small, narrow shoulders. “I thought you should like that I’m coming around more.” The time they’d had together since Peterloo had been limited, cut off by their mother and father, who sought to keep their last remaining innocent daughter unsullied.
“I do. But do youuuu?”
“I . . . Of course I do.”
“You hate it here.”
“I love being here because you’re here.”
“But you were never happy like this before, and . . . what if Wayland wasn’t . . . courting you, would you still be happy to visit?”
Annalee sat back on the seat.
“Because it won’t last,” Harlow whispered.
No, it wouldn’t.
“You’ll do something to displease Mother and Father, and Wayland . . .” Her voice broke, and something lit her eyes, but then was gone. Her sister looked away.
Annalee frowned. Her sister knew something. Warning bells banged loudly in her mind. “And what of Wayland?” she urged.
Harlow shook her head hard, then made to rise.
Annalee caught her by the shoulder. “What is it?”
“Mother and Father want to send you away,” Harlow said, her voice threadbare. “To a hospital. They were going to, but then Jeremy shared their intentions with Darlington.”
Annalee’s heart pounded in her ears, drowning out the remainder of her sister’s words. There it was. That great fear she’d always carried. That eventually her parents would tire of her and send her away. Not just to the country, but to the very place her sister now spoke of.
Her breathing grew labored.
And Wayland had known as much.
It was why he’d had the sudden change of heart. It was why he’d been so insistent. Because he’d known her family would send her away, and he’d have spared her both that fate and that humiliation.
Her eyes slid shut.
He’d been so consumed by guilt; it had been there in his initial letters after Peterloo. Why, it had lived and breathed with a lifelike force, even in their every exchange all these years later.
A Wanton for All Seasons Page 31