“Is he one of your lovers?” Valerie asked curiously.
“Hmm?”
And then it registered what her friend was asking—whether Wayland was one of the men she’d taken to her bed.
Oddly, the answer was both . . . yes and no. It had been a lifetime since she’d made love to Wayland. He’d also been her first, the man she’d happily surrendered her virtue to. “No,” she finally brought herself to murmur. Those moments belonged to another time, between a different woman and a different man from a lifetime past. “He is . . . a friend of my brother’s.”
“Ahh.”
Valerie’s murmuring belonged to someone who thought she’d pieced together a connection, and yet . . . she couldn’t know, truly. Because no one knew about the years Annalee had been head over heels in love with the gentleman. Back when she’d believed in love.
Just then, Madame Bouchard squired off Wayland’s sister, a bundle of blushing cheeks and guileless eyes and so much innocence and—and the oddest pang struck, and for the oddest reason. She didn’t miss the woman she’d been. And yet . . . Annalee’s gaze locked on the crimson fabric she’d haggled with Valerie over.
The young woman’s eyes landed on Annalee, lighting not with the disdain so familiarly turned Annalee’s way.
“Annalee!” she exclaimed, and with an absolute lack of ladylike decorum that Annalee fell a little bit in love with her for, the girl rushed over. “It is ever so good to see you here in London! I have missed seeing you.”
“I . . .” A swell of emotion filled Annalee’s throat at that unexpected pronouncement from the younger girl. “May I introduce my friend, Miss Valerie Bragger.”
All of London knew Valerie Bragger—at least they knew of her name from the scandal sheets. And given Wayland’s full immersion in Polite Society, there could be no doubt his sister was well aware of the other woman’s reputation.
“How do you do?” Valerie murmured with a deep curtsy.
“Oh, no. None of that at all!” Kitty Smith brushed off that politesse with a wave of a gloved hand. “I forbid it. I despise that formality!”
Surprise lit Valerie’s eyes.
Kitty turned back. “Wayland!” The young lady waved her arms exuberantly. “Look who I have found!”
Annalee’s eyes slipped over to the devoted brother, who paused in his conversation with the head shopkeeper. His gaze slid away from Madame Bouchard, and he froze, and in that moment, it was as though time ceased moving altogether, and everyone else within the room melted away but for her and Wayland.
Annalee’s mouth went dry as recognition flared within those striking green-blue depths, and her body recalled all over again that slight tightening of his fingers as he’d sunk them into her hip. And Lord smite her for the wicked creature she was, her imaginings took an even more forbidden turn as she imagined straddling him and him gripping her that same way. She bit her lower lip hard, and even with the space of the shop between them, she caught the narrowing of his lashes as his focus locked on her mouth.
The moment was shattered, and time resumed its movement, with a dizzying rapidity. “Wayland!” his sister called out as she once again motioned for him. “Do come over.”
Wayland murmured something to Madame Bouchard, and a pretty blush stained the young shopkeeper’s cheeks.
A tart taste filled Annalee’s mouth, and she followed his approach. He’d always been a charmer. From the girls in the village where they lived to, by the reports she’d read within the papers, all the most respectable ladies in London. He’d always possessed a way of making a woman feel as though she were the only person present. She’d not, however, witnessed . . . that charm in action. On other women, that was.
Wayland reached their trio and immediately doffed his hat, tucking the elegant article under his arm. “Look, Wayland,” Kitty said happily. “I’ve found Annalee.”
“I see that,” he murmured, his eyes sliding to Annalee’s once more, and doing all those dangerous things to her belly, flutterings and flips that she’d forgotten with time’s passing and then buried with the jaded course she’d set. Apparently, those butterflies had been resurrected by the power of Wayland’s piercing eyes.
He sketched a bow. “My lady.”
Alas, that singular focus proved entirely one-sided as he slid his attention away all too easily.
Madame Bouchard swept over. “Viens, viens, mon cher. Il y a beaucoup à faire.”
Kitty beamed, offering another enthusiastic wave. “Perhaps you would be so good as to keep my brother company for a short bit?”
“That won’t be necessary,” he said quickly, too quickly, as his sister rushed off.
“Forgive me,” Annalee said after the girl had gone. “Lord Darlington, allow me to introduce my dear friend, Miss Valerie Bragger.”
She reflexively positioned herself closer to Valerie. Wayland of old would not have ever been anything less than welcoming and warm to a woman of Valerie’s reputation. The new Wayland, married to respectability and his good name—and reputation—was a man she didn’t know. And as such, she knew even less how he’d receive—
“Miss Bragger,” he murmured, offering a deep, respectable bow. “It is a pleasure.”
“My lord,” Valerie said with the usual cool she reserved for men.
“I have read much of yours and Annalee’s work with the Mismatch Society.”
Annalee tensed.
“I think it is admirable that you and she have taken on such an important venture.”
He did?
“Do you?” the other woman said gruffly, though without the same amount of her earlier vitriol.
Wayland lifted his head. “Indeed.”
“Thank you. It is . . . a pleasure meeting you, as well, my lord,” Valerie murmured.
He dropped a bow. “Any friend of Lady Annalee’s is a friend of mine.”
And if she were capable of falling in love again, it would have been in this moment, with this man who didn’t cut her friend, and who might disapprove of her society but had also spoken respectfully of it to Valerie.
Dropping a hasty curtsy, Valerie slipped off.
And with that, she left Annalee and Wayland . . . alone.
Leaving was the wisest course.
He’d exchanged the suitable degree of politeness, with greetings and proper formality. As such, dropping another bow and heading in the opposite direction while he waited for his sister was the safest thing to do.
Particularly after the scandal that had come from just a dance.
Whatever would the world say to a coincidental meeting the next afternoon following the set that had the ton talking?
A meeting that was, in fact, chance, but the world wouldn’t see it that way.
And yet knowing all that and committed to avoiding scandal for the sake of his family, still, something kept Wayland frozen to the floor.
Go.
He made to bow . . . but the earlier hesitancy had cost him.
“I daresay the world would be agog if we were seen here, conversing,” Annalee murmured. “As such it would be best for you, Lord Darlington, if we parted ways as quickly as possible.”
A challenge dwelled in the slight up-tilt of her intonation.