Chapter 8
Dancing with Wayland seemed like the safest way of touching him while still avoiding scandal.
Not that she would have much cared.
He, on the other hand, would have.
For all their earlier repartee and teasing about his mother, Wayland cared very much about fitting in amongst Polite Society.
This world she’d been born to—that she’d be more than happy to be without—he’d been attempting to bind himself to since he’d been titled.
Mayhap it had really been long before that.
When she thought about the future they’d imagined, and the talks they’d once had, there were signs that he’d cared: His fear of revealing the nature of their relationship to Jeremy. His insistence that he’d be something more . . . that he’d create an existence greater so that she could have the life she deserved.
Even as she’d assured him that he was all she wanted.
In retrospect, as a woman fully grown, matured by time and struggle and suffering, she could now see Wayland had been fighting for a grander life for himself as much as for her. Mayhap even more than.
But it was her business, however, to care now, too. For the reasons Sylvia had raised.
Still, it did not keep her from wishing that she and Wayland could go back to the more comfortable sparring they’d been enjoying moments ago.
Nay, he was all stiff and proper, once more.
Her body, however, didn’t seem to care . . . or even mind, for that matter.
Quite the opposite. It reveled in the challenge he posed with his decorous self.
There was a tautness to his powerful physique, to their nearness. To the eyes now trained upon them. It hadn’t ever been this way when they’d danced. “I daresay your dancing instructor did not do an adequate job in teaching you that relaxing one’s body and feeling the music is the most important part of the waltz, my lord,” she murmured.
A lifetime ago, a smile would have grazed his lips; nay, they would have turned up in a wide grin. “I had the finest instructor.”
Those lessons had come without the benefit of music, just what she’d hummed and sung while guiding him through the motions and movements. The strains of the orchestra muted the noise of the room, and Annalee closed her eyes, surrendering herself to the music and the joy that had always come in dancing.
Liar . . . in this man’s arms. There’d always been something splendorous about the way their bodies had moved so beautifully in time.
And yet . . . it was also not the same, and she silently and secretly mourned this change that time had wrought.
Annalee opened her eyes.
Wayland’s gaze remained directed at the top of her head, and his lips moved faintly, the way they had when he’d counted steps. “Relax, Wayland,” she murmured, careful to not let her mouth move lest the world now watching saw his name falling from her lips. “It is just a dance.”
Nor was her concern wholly about him, if she were being honest with herself. Since Sylvia’s talk earlier, Annalee had committed herself to proper behavior.
“I know,” he said stiffly. “I’m not concerned.”
She snorted. Surely he didn’t believe it. “You’re always worried about your reputation.” Annalee lightly stroked her fingers at his shoulder; the muscles rippled and rolled under her touch.
“Some of us don’t have the luxury of not caring, Annalee,” he said quietly.
Annalee followed his pointed stare across the room to where his mother stood alongside a white-skirt-wearing young lady, who smiled, where the older woman was scowling. Eyes as warm as they’d always been when Annalee had come ’round to visit. “She is all grown up,” Annalee said, more to herself. Kitty was near an age to Annalee when she’d gone off to meet Wayland on the fringes of that Manchester field.
“She is. And she is not received. And while I don’t give a damn about myself, I do care about Kitty.”
“What a devoted brother you are,” she murmured.
His mouth tightened. “You’d make light.”
Because he, like the rest of the world, believed Annalee incapable of solemnity or somberness.
In fairness, over the years she’d given little reason for the world to believe. She’d lived a carefree existence, one where she put her own pleasures and needs and happiness first, and yet neither did that mean she was an empty-headed person who didn’t take anything seriously. She held his eyes. “On the contrary, Wayland,” she said softly. “I do believe you are devoted to your sister and family, and I can only find that honorable . . . But do you know what else I think?”
He adjusted his hold at her waist, his fingers dipping a shade lower as he glided her through a perfect turn, a dizzying one that left her faintly breathless. Or perhaps it was the feel of his palm on her person.
He searched his gaze over Annalee’s face. “What is that?” His fingers moved almost reflexively at her waist as he drew her faintly closer. Or was it that she leaned into Wayland, drawn as she’d always been, a moth to that fiery flame?
“I believe there is a part of you, perhaps one you’re not aware of or capable of acknowledging to yourself, that cares very much”—perhaps just as much as he did about his sister and mother—“what the world says about you and thinks about you.”
His fingers curled almost reflexively as he clasped her. “That’s not true.” He paused. “But if I did, would that be so very wrong?” he asked brusquely.
“That you deny yourself happiness? There is a lot bad with that.”
“I don’t deny myself happiness. I live with caution and care.”
As he hadn’t before.
The message and meaning were clear as day, even as those words went unspoken.
“And there is something to be said of that, Annalee,” he added.
“Ah, unlike me, who plays with fire?” she purred.
She stroked her fingers along his sleeve, that caress born not of a deliberate need to taunt or tempt, but rather to fulfill this insatiable need to just . . . touch him. With every back-and-forth glide, those muscles tensed and eased. The heat burning through her had nothing to do with the crush of the crowd or the thousands of candles drenching the countess’s ballroom in light.
Her husky urging of years past whispered forward. “Waltz with me, Wayland . . .”
“We’re naked, Annalee.” And yet he came to his feet anyway and gathered her in his arms, their bodies pressed close as they danced a different, forbidden dance together that morning.
An ache pulsed between her legs, a throbbing need born of those erotic thoughts of the past.
Their eyes locked; his eyes glinted and glimmered, reflecting his desire and her own within those greenish-blue pools. Wayland’s gaze slipped to her mouth, and seeing his focus where it was, where she wanted it, Annalee slowly, deliberately flicked her tongue along the middle portion of her lower lip, inviting him to look.
His chest moved fast, and reveling in that display of his desire, Annalee continued to glide that tip of flesh he was so focused on to the corner, and then up and around.
Wayland dipped his head lower. She knew propriety was the night’s effort, the sole reason for being here, and yet she was hopeless against the magnetic pull that brought her neck back as she lifted her mouth.