His gaze continued to linger there.
He wanted to kiss her.
Annalee’s heart pounded.
He was going to kiss her.
Wayland, her first lover and London’s most proper gentleman . . . Here, in the middle of the earl and countess’s ballroom floor.
And she wanted it. Desperately. She shifted her hips to alleviate some of the ache between her legs. Her efforts proved futile.
But then Wayland’s gaze slid away from her mouth and back to that point of her tiara. And as a woman with a knowledge of men and desire and gaming, she now knew that to be his tell. When he didn’t trust himself, he stared at the top of her head. It was a new action from a man she’d once known so intimately as to have had the exact count of freckles and birthmarks upon his naked chest and bare back.
As he guided her through another deep, sweeping turn, one that left her light-headed with passion, she whispered huskily, “You remember dancing in the fields of Manchester?”
A flush dulled his cheeks, and his jaw rippled, his mouth tensed. But straitlaced as he was, he still did not confirm that which she already knew to be truth anyway.
“And you loved it.” She pressed herself closer; near as their bodies were, she detected . . . every subtle nuance of his movements—his audible swallow, the way his throat worked. “You loved every single moment of it, Wayland Smith. I think you miss those days when you were free.”
“No,” he said so sharply she almost believed his denial. “No, I do not. There is nothing good that comes from being careless or impulsive, Annalee. I matured, and I learned what I wanted, and . . . this is it.”
She followed his glance out to the swarm of dancing partners, and to the even greater swarm of people watching on the sidelines.
This was what he craved. This, as in Polite Society. As in acceptance amongst the ton. A people he still had yet to learn never truly accepted anyone because they’d rather cut a person off at the knees and subsist on the scandals and gossip that came when they ultimately fell.
In short, he wished to belong to a world that she never, ever would truly belong to. Not again.
And something in that left a bitter taste on her tongue.
“You might profess to having matured with . . . life.” Odd that Peterloo had been such a part of their lives, the final moment they’d shared as young lovers, and yet they had never, and likely would never, speak of it. “But you were never content with being a blacksmith’s son. You were always determined to be viewed and treated differently, Wayland. And have more.” After all, hadn’t that been why he’d been at Manchester in the first place? Fighting for a seat at the proverbial table? Calling out—and justly so—for a voice in a world that reserved speaking for those born to the most privileged class? “You were always craving . . . this.” As a naive, lovestruck girl, she’d believed she was what he wanted most. Foolish, foolish child.
His nostrils flared. Wayland of old would have called her out, gone toe to toe to challenge Annalee of her opinion, unconcerned about being viewed as polite, instead treating her as an equal in debate or discourse . . . It had been one of the things she’d loved about him. And also, apparently, one more thing that had changed about him that day.
The music came to a stop, and Annalee and Wayland glided to a halt amidst the other partners.
“I found my way, and I’ll not make apologies for who I’ve become, Annalee,” he murmured as the lords and ladies around them lifted their hands to politely clap at the efforts of the orchestra.
“And without blood on your hands or talks of revolution or sedition, my lord.” She inclined her head. “Imagine that.”
He jerked like she’d struck him. The color leached from his cheeks. And if she were a better woman, perhaps she’d feel some compunction about so wounding him. But damn him, she didn’t feel bad. She was angry with him for passing judgment on her when he had become . . . become . . . this.
And alas, because he was ever the gentleman he prided himself on being, Wayland dipped a stiff but still polite bow. “My lady,” he said tersely, and then stalked off, leaving Annalee alone.
The hum of whispers immediately went up . . . as they invariably and inevitably did.
With a smile, Annalee lifted her shoulders, and with her head back, she cut a path across the ballroom floor, waving and smiling as she went. Because to hell with them. She’d not be made to feel less. Not when she’d come to find herself and realized she was deserving of more.
God, how she was done with all this already.
Suffering through politeness was a torment she’d take on only for her sisters of the Mismatch Society.
Once she reached the foyer and her carriage was called, she shrugged into the cloak handed over by her hosts’ dutiful servant. Annalee fastened it at her throat; however, a short time later, after she’d boarded her carriage and the conveyance rumbled onward, she wrestled off those fastenings, suffocating.
How she despised those stilted affairs. Not because she was every person’s favorite object to gawk at and whisper about. To her mother’s horror, Annalee had never really cared about that. She’d cared even less after Peterloo.
Rather, it was the tiredness of the affairs, a place where women’s souls went to die. At the respectable events, ladies were expected to behave a certain way, and anyone who didn’t found herself cast out of the ton’s good graces.
As though there were even such a thing as “good graces” where the ton was concerned.
And yet oddly, this night, Annalee hadn’t found herself minding Lord and Lady Sinclair’s ball so very much. She hadn’t minded it at all.
Reasons that had to do with the thrill that had coursed through her from being in Wayland’s arms.
Back in his arms, rather.
It was the first time they’d ever publicly waltzed. When they’d been all but children, playing at pretend, imagining what they thought life would be, she’d taught him the steps they’d danced tonight. Motions and movements they’d practiced only in private, he with his hand gripping her tighter, closer than the world would have ever deemed wicked. And she’d reveled in it. Those dance sessions that had ultimately dissolved and seen her on the grass with him above her, moving within her as they’d partaken in the most primitive of dances.
Her body grew heated.
That was the only reason she’d needed out of that ballroom and away from Wayland . . . and the memories. Because he’d aroused within her a hungering that was strictly based on the sexual.
Even so, restlessness fueled her strides as she climbed the steps of Lady Wilmot’s palatial residence. Dutiful servants threw open the doors, allowing Annalee entry into that which was most familiar to her: a world of sin and decadence.
Handing over her satin cloak, she headed inside.
Long-standing gold candelabras lined the corridors, the light lent by those tapers casting a bright-orange glow upon the crimson carpeting. And as always, whenever Annalee walked these halls, she marveled at the hostess’s boldness in lighting such a path, when the ones who would be wandering it were the most intoxicated, most unsteady members of Impolite Society.
As she passed parlor after parlor, each room converted into a makeshift gaming hall, she didn’t bother looking. Instead, she headed for the room most familiar to her.