“We do,” Annalee said, the stronger one of the pair of them, who was actually able to formulate coherent words. “Jeremy and Wayland were the dearest of friends, and they were”—she looked his way briefly—“good enough to allow me to tag along.”
Diana sighed. “He is ever so thoughtful, isn’t he?”
“Ever so,” Annalee murmured, and Wayland couldn’t sort out heads or tails of what she was genuinely thinking in that moment.
“Diana!” That sharp call from the duchess cut across the shop.
Diana pouted. “Oh, dear. Mother calls. It was so lovely meeting you.”
Annalee curtsied. “The pleasure was all mine.”
Another smile lit the girl’s face as she turned her adoring gaze up to his. “I promise to return after I make my selection, Wayland.”
“I . . . look forward to it.”
Giving him another little wave, she hastened off.
The moment she reached her mother’s side, the duchess started speaking quietly and sternly. Then Diana stole a stricken glance over her shoulder toward him and Annalee, and his stomach fell all the further.
He’d never allowed himself to really imagine a match between them. She’d been a child at their first meeting, and in his mind that was how she’d remained. And yet that didn’t erase the possibilities that came for Kitty from a marriage between him and Diana.
“I . . . I should go. I”—Annalee picked up the bolt of blue—“did not anticipate just how quick this trip would be, but it was, thanks to your help.”
“Annalee.” Except what in hell was he to say? “I . . . it was”—perfect until Diana arrived—“good to see you,” he finished weakly.
As she left and he remained with Kitty and Lady Diana and her mother, a pit settled in his gut at the realization that if he pursued that match his mother and the whole world sought for him, then it would mark a complete and final end to his time with Annalee.
Chapter 11
Well, hell.
This was bad.
The latest edition of The Times stared up damningly, while Annalee, Sylvia, and Valerie stood around Sylvia’s desk, contemplating the latest scandal Annalee had found herself embroiled in . . . and all because of a visit to Madame Bouchard’s most prestigious of modiste shops.
From the corner of her eye, Annalee peeked at the two women flanking her and the newspaper.
As usual, Valerie’s expression was a carefully crafted mask that gave no indication as to what the other woman thought or felt.
Sylvia, however, wore her strain in her eyes and the corners of her mouth, and whether that fatigue was a product of Annalee or the fact she was expecting a babe was hard to say.
A healthy amount of fear snapped through Annalee. Eventually all tired of her. People tolerated only so much where she was concerned. From nursemaids to governesses to lovers . . . to even parents, ultimately everyone tired of her and her “antics,” as Mother referred to them.
Perhaps this would prove the last straw for Sylvia. Though that would be the height of irony, indeed. What would bring her down wasn’t the orgies she’d attended or running in her chemise through fountains or her friendship with the two greatest rakes amongst Polite—and Impolite—Society, but her association with the estimably proper and honorable Lord Darlington.
She would have laughed. If she could have. If she weren’t filled with a hellish terror that she’d be forced to return home, where her dowry had been withheld, dependent upon a family who despised her, who would constantly remind her that her own actions that day in Manchester had been a stain upon the family, just like all her wild behaviors.
Annalee wrenched her stare away and back over to the front page of The Times.
And with every click of that Griotte-marble-and-bronze clock punctuating the pregnant silence, an inevitable sense of doom swelled and rose, threatening to engulf her. She couldn’t go back. She didn’t belong there. They didn’t want her. Panic ricocheted around her breast, pinging back and forth like the staccato echo of the bullets that had flown that day in Manchester.
Except that remembrance only brought out a sweat upon her palms and skin, and bile burnt her throat, climbing higher, and she swallowed quickly several times to keep from casting up the contents of her morning meal right there on that damning sheet that was her source of woe.
Annalee’s gaze slid to the silver flask she’d foolishly set on the center table as she’d entered the room. Her throat ached, and her mouth went dry, parched for the smooth heat of the liquor that invariably managed to dull the edges of the most unpleasant aspects of life. She eyed her flask covetously. Given the severity of these latest circumstances—with her fate and future in this household and as part of the society that met within this residence, however, all in question—this was hardly the time to draw attention to her love of spirits.
At last, the silence broke . . . in the form of Sylvia’s sigh. “Well, this is . . . certainly . . . not wonderful.” The recently married viscountess pressed her fingertips against her temples and rubbed them in small circles.
Or that was another, more polite way of saying it. And if Annalee were capable of a smile or a laugh, that startling contrast between her uncouth thoughts about the situation and Sylvia’s more polite, optimistic one would have been reason for it. But she wasn’t capable of either, beyond the weight pressing down on her like so many bricks, stealing her ability to breathe.
“I’ll fix it,” Annalee said quickly. She didn’t know how. As it was, each effort she’d made to not be scandalous had been met with only greater scandal.
“Fix what?” Valerie snapped. “You did nothing wrong.” She turned to Sylvia. “She didn’t do anything. She merely spoke with the baron. Why . . . why . . . He was just as polite and pleasant to me.”
And yet, neither had Wayland strolled through the shop on Valerie’s arm or helped select fabric, all of which had been reported in the gossip columns.
Sylvia scoffed. “You don’t have to fix this, Annalee,” she said, her eyes glinting with the passion of her defense. “You visited a respectable modiste, and with a friend at that, at the same time one of London’s most respectable gentlemen should have also attended with his sister.” With a sound of disgust, Sylvia shoved the paper. “As though the perfect place for an assignation is a modiste’s.”
“Yes, imagine that,” Annalee added weakly. Because, of course, her reputation preceded her, and she’d not always been innocent where modiste shops and gentlemen were concerned.
“This is what is wrong with society and how women are treated . . . mature women.” Valerie amended her word choice and overemphasized those two syllables. “They see Lady Diana and imagine her, the perfect innocent, to be his perfect match in every way, and then there is the big, bad, terrible wanton, ruining all the good plans between them.”
“I’ll allow ‘big’ and ‘bad,’ but a ‘terrible wanton,’ too, Valerie?” Even with her attempt at jest, a vicious jealousy snaked around her gut at Valerie’s words.
For she, like everyone, nay, more than everyone, had heard the tales of Wayland’s heroic rescue that day in Manchester. She’d read those newspapers with his name, admiring him and loving him for who he’d been to that mother, her daughter, and her maid that day . . .