Not that he was jealous, nor did she care one way or the other whether he was.
“Under different circumstances,” he said brusquely, “it is hardly my affair whom you were meeting”—he flicked a cool, condescending stare over the blanket—“or where . . . but in this particular instance, it is my business.”
“Shove off, Wayland,” she said, giving him a shoulder.
He slapped a hand against his thigh. “Your being out here in the middle of your brother’s betrothal ball isn’t proper.”
“And you are nothing if not proper,” she drawled. Perfect. And prim. A paragon. And every other p-word for one of his flawlessness.
All those terms she’d delighted in applying to him in recent years proved a delicious incongruity with the muscular, six-foot form he possessed. A blacksmith’s body was what she’d always said. With biceps that bulged through his shirts, and sinew in his thighs wide enough to rival a tree trunk.
“I’m here as a friend,” he said quietly.
“To whom? Me?” She swiveled back around, facing him. “Or Jeremy?”
“Why can’t it be both?”
“Because we haven’t spoken in years.” In part because she’d never answered his notes after Peterloo. In part because of the contents of those notes. And in larger part because she’d gone out of her way to avoid him.
“That . . . is a fair point.” He abruptly quit that distracted thumping of the side of his leg. “Annalee, as I said, I would never presume to tell you who to meet or where to meet them,” he began.
So that was what this was to be, then?
A lecture.
To her annoyance, this would prove one of the few times where she hadn’t been engaging in the very activities he assumed she had. “I wasn’t meeting anyone.”
He knitted his brows. “You . . . weren’t.”
Except, that wasn’t quite true. “I wasn’t meeting a lover.” She didn’t know what compelled her to tell him that detail.
Did she imagine the slight sag of his shoulders?
Of course she did.
It was merely being alone with this man, her first love and lover, all these years later, which created an illusion that he might have cared whether she’d been meeting a man.
And furthermore, why should it matter either way what he thought about her or her reasons for being out here? The fight drained out of her, and she slid onto the side of the fountain. “You should just go,” she said tiredly.
He hesitated, then took a seat next to her.
“I was playing whist with Harlow, and just talking with her. I . . . don’t get to see her anymore.” She had to swallow several times around the pain of that.
Annalee couldn’t explain how or why she’d shared that piece with him.
“I . . . have heard as much,” Wayland murmured.
Annalee glanced over. “From Jeremy?”
He nodded.
Raising her voice a smidgen, she spoke through her nostrils. “I’m a shameful, wicked influence who will only corrupt.”
Wayland looked her way. “Your mother?”
And this time, Annalee nodded.
They shared a smile, and it . . . felt oddly wonderful; it was a shared bond with a friend from long ago. That was what it was. That was all it was. Even so, that connection proved unnerving. Restless, Annalee leaned down and scooped up a handful of pebbles and gravel. Sifting through them, she proceeded to toss the larger stones, one at a time, off into the opposite side of the fountain. Each one landed, pinging droplets. “Whenever I come here”—which was rare—“I find whatever time I can to steal with Harlow.”
“She has your spirit.”
“Don’t let my parents or brother hear you say that.” The way he said it, however, made her heart leap in the funniest little way.
“Jeremy is the one who said it,” he said. “Numerous times.”
“Oh.” It had been Jeremy. More of that oddly placed disappointment filled her. “It also seemed better to stay out of the way, as trouble invariably finds me.” She glanced his way. “You should have a care. You’re going to get your jacket and trousers wet; people will talk.”
“No one is going to pay close enough attention to me to notice.”
“Because you’re the stuffy, proper gentleman?” she asked without inflection.
“Precisely.” He winked. “See, there is some good in it. I’m spared notice and free to enjoy myself.”
It was a dream she couldn’t even imagine. Granted, she’d never conducted herself in a way that would see her permitted the same luxury he enjoyed.
She released her last rock, then dusted the gravel from her palms. “Do you know how to enjoy yourself anymore, Wayland?” Curiosity made her ask the question that, at the most unexpected times, would come to her when she allowed herself to think of him.
“I do.”
Did he recognize both the pause between her query and his answer and the hesitancy that made his answer a lie? She spun on the makeshift bench she’d made of the ledge, and facing him, she drew up her knees. “All right. Out with it. What brings the great Wayland Smith, now the Baron Darlington, joy?”
“Annalee,” he said, his voice pained.
She swatted him. “Don’t be stuffy. I promise to return to the festivities if you answer it.”
“Very well.”
Annalee snorted. “That’s all it took? I should have offered a lesser prize.” She motioned with her palms. “Tell. Tell.”
“I . . .” His high, broad brow creased. “I . . .”
She pointed at him. “You don’t know, because you don’t really find pleasure in anything.”
“I do,” he said indignantly. “I . . . I . . . like my coffee,” he said on a rush, as though he’d just landed on it.
A laugh exploded from her lips, a great big snorting noise born not of the past years’ cynicism but of genuine mirth that she’d forgotten the feel of. And how very good it felt, too. She laughed so hard her shoulders shook, and she leaned against him.
Wayland bristled. “What?”
“Th-that isn’t a life’s pleasure,” she said when she managed to rein in her hilarity. Annalee brushed the moisture from her cheeks.
“It is.” He paused. “Though, I’ll allow, a simple one.” He made to stand. “Now you promised to re—”
Annalee snatched his sleeve and dragged him back to the seat beside her. “There has to be . . . more.”
“I enjoy my meetings at Parliament.”
She smiled wistfully. “That I can believe.” And she could. A man who’d once yearned for a voice had been granted one through the title he’d earned for his heroic act of bravery that day at Peterloo. “Is it . . . everything you had hoped? Having a voice?”
Wayland brushed some of the remnants of gravel that remained from before off the edge of the fountain and back onto the ground below. They rained down with faint little plinks. “I find myself, ironically, with a title that allows me to be part of the government and yet unable to exact any real change. I may be amongst their ranks, but I’m not really part of the nobility. The members of Parliament know it, and that matters very much in brokering legislation.” He straightened, dusting his hands together. “But . . . I am not as powerless as I once was, and so I take hope in that.”