“Annalee?” Sylvia asked hesitantly.
“Yes! I . . . I expect he will,” she lied. Now came the impossible task of convincing the estimable Lord Darlington to dance with the Devil in a deal that would only darken his reputation.
Bloody hell.
Chapter 12
Following his mother’s invasion of the breakfast room the morning before, when Wayland found his name splashed all over the front pages of The Times for a second time, he knew better than to leave himself like a target at that table.
He eyed the closed door covetously. His clubs.
Jeremy’s.
Any place was safer and better than this one.
Eventually he’d be found.
“You have time,” his sister said, walking a path about the table, contemplating the red velvet surface, “before she discovers us.”
Yes. Because the last place she’d think to find him was in the billiards room. His offices, yes. His library. His rooms. The breakfast room. Certainly not the billiards room. At least not in broad daylight without gentlemen to entertain.
He made one more appeal. “You know, if you really were the devoted sister you pride yourself on being, you’d leave me to my escape.”
Kitty snorted. “And leave me with the mess of your making?” she murmured distractedly as she leaned over the billiards table, eyeing her shot. “I think not.” His sister drew back her stick and pressed it forth several times. “I’m a devoted sister, not a martyr, Wayland.” She let her cue fly.
Crack.
The balls perfectly split, and two of her whites sailed into opposite end pockets.
He winced.
His sister glanced up. “Oh, don’t be a fogy. I don’t really think you did anything,” his sister said with a roll of her eyes. “But what I think doesn’t matter.”
Nor for that matter was it about what their status-climbing mama believed, either. It was about Wayland’s reputation. A reputation that had to be above reproach. For even as it hardly mattered for himself, it mattered for Kitty and her future. Having lived in a one-room household with meager payments earned for the backbreaking work his father had done, Wayland would see her secure so there was not even the slightest possibility that she found herself back where they’d been.
Kitty took another shot; her target ball knocked into the one she’d been eyeing, which sailed and then stopped just shy of the pocket. She recoiled. “Oh, bollocks, I’ve missed.”
This was the last thing he needed, his mother discovering him playing billiards with his sister, and her cursing like a sailor as they did. “You shouldn’t say that,” he said, stealing another glance at the still thankfully closed door.
Kitty drew her back straight, and flipped over her cue so it thumped angrily upon the parquet floor. “And whyever not? They’re just words.”
“Words that ladies don’t say.”
As it was, the papers had been unkind enough about the uncouth daughter of a blacksmith mingling amongst their elite numbers.
In one fluid move, Kitty flipped her cue back over and brought it down hard over his hand.
With a curse, he drew his wounded knuckles close. “Christ, Kitty. What the hell was that for?”
Kitty batted her eyelashes. “Oh, dear, how uncouth of you, brother dearest. Tsk, tsk. Swearing in the presence of a lady.”
He shook his hand out, flexing his palm in a bid to drive back the pain.
She widened her eyes. “Never say I’ve hurt you?”
“Would it matter if you did?” he countered, shaking his hand again.
“Only as so you might recall this moment and why you shouldn’t go about being so stuffy as to think it matters if a lady curses.”
Wayland set his cue down on the side of the table. “It isn’t about what I think—”
“No, it’s about what others think,” she interrupted. “Which I find all the worse, Wayland.”
The door exploded open.
Winded and perspiring, his mother drew to a sudden stop. “You are playing billiards with your sister?”
“Well, in fairness, I’ve been playing. Wayland has been doing a whole lot of watching and talking.”
Ignoring her daughter, their mother swept over. “This outrageous behavior fits very much with your scandalous escapades these past two days.”
Kitty leaned in and spoke in an exaggerated whisper. “Two days that we know of, Mother. Why, who is to say how many more days or weeks or even months Wayland has been behaving so?”
“Kitty,” he mouthed silently.
She winked.
He was so glad one of them was enjoying this.
“Kitty, a moment.”
And by the way their parent didn’t so much as remove her fury-filled gaze from Wayland, he was in for it with a lecture.
Kitty gave him a last pitying look before taking herself off.
The moment she’d gone, his mother pounced. “Not one word. Not one single word, Wayland Winston Wallingford Wilks Smith.” His mother clipped out each syllable of that ridiculously long name she’d fashioned for him after he’d received his title. Adding three in between the more common Christian name and surname he’d been born with because, of course, lords deserved more, and alliterative ones at that. “How could you?”
He folded his arms at his chest. “I’m afraid you must be a trifle clearer.”
She sputtered. “As though you do not know? Do not play games with me, Wayland. This is nothing to make light of. We have a reputation to consider.”
“And I’m forbidden from being in any of the places that Lady Annalee is?” he drawled.
“Yes. Do you truly believe I think this was a coincidence?” she demanded. “You took your sister with you and met that woman, and you’d flaunt her in front of Lady Diana?”
A curtain of rage briefly hazed his vision. “‘That woman’ is Annalee Spencer,” he said in quiet tones, icy enough that it seemed to penetrate the boldness his mother had stormed in here with.
She faltered. “You would defend her because of your relationship with her.”
“Tell me this, Mother . . . Why was it, when I was nothing but a blacksmith’s son, you were always encouraging me to pursue a relationship with her, but now that I’m a titled gentleman, you don’t have need of her?”
“Because she is not the same woman she was, and you know that,” she said quietly.
He jerked. Restless, he wanted to flee. He wanted to run from this talk about Annalee and his mother’s reminder about the changes that had overtaken her . . . after that day in Manchester. “I will not cut her. I won’t do it.”
“She didn’t want anything to do with you following Peterloo, Wayland.”
It was a testament of how dire his mother found his suspected relationship with Annalee for her to mention that day. The only references she allowed their family about Peterloo had pertained to how his heroism had “saved them,” and the beautiful friendships they’d forged because of it.
He remained there, frozen to the floor, his arms locked at his chest, unable to call forth a single word in response. But really, what was there to say?
“You wrote her,” she reminded him viciously of memories he didn’t need. Ones that had haunted him for years. “You sent her notes.” His mother’s scent for blood was even greater than the Duke of Kipling’s hounds’, and she was as merciless, maternal bond be damned. “And did she ever write you? Hmm?” She didn’t allow him a chance to answer; neither, however, did he suspect she needed or wanted one anyway. “And do you know why?”