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.
Conceived 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.