His stomach churned.
Coward that he was, it would have been a great deal easier were she making light.
“I am capable of . . . seriousness, you know,” she added, and by the solemnity of her declaration, he wasn’t sure whether she was attempting to convince him or remind herself. Her expression hardened. “People think I can’t . . .”
“I don’t think that.” He moved closer in his seat. “I’m not one of those people.” And without realizing what he did, his fingers moving as though of their own free will, he collected her palm in his.
He froze, as did Annalee; both of them looked down at the same moment to the sight of their joined fingers. Taking her hand was an act so natural, one he’d done so many times in his life as to lose count, and yet he had not done it in so long that there was a . . . new awkwardness to locking his digits with hers. One that he mourned and regretted and resented.
Reluctantly, he disentangled their hands, and Annalee formed a steeple with the tips of those gloveless digits. How he missed the warmth and naturalness that had once existed. A naturalness that was no more.
“I do not see how my courting you will help . . . your club.”
She chuckled, that sound low and husky. “Of course you do. I’m the villain. The seductress setting out to ruin you. But . . . if they believe that there is something proper between us . . .” Annalee’s fingers pinched at the lacy overlay of her seafoam muslin, and she briefly dropped her gaze to her lap. When she glanced up and caught his focus upon that nervous movement, she immediately stopped. Her eyes locked with his. “Then they will cease speaking ill of me . . . at least for now . . . and I will be free to run my lectures. Furthermore, a lady who is courted by a respectable man is different from one who has a vast collection of lovers.”
A vast collection of lovers.
How casual she was with that.
She may as well have kicked him in the teeth, then punched him hard between the legs for good measure.
His facial muscles froze. His entire body coiled, and he tried to breathe. And he failed.
Because he well knew the stories about her and various rakes and rogues, but . . . hearing her speak it aloud, lending a real life to what had previously been gossip, shredded him inside.
“I don’t, you know,” she said, the slightly strained quality of her contralto at odds with the airy show she put on. But he knew her. Even all these years later, how to pick out the telltale tension, the way she dipped her head ever so faintly. Her slightly tucked chin. “Have a collection of them.”
But she did have lovers, and that truth would break him and then break him down all over again with each time he let himself think of it.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I want to help you, Annalee.”
Her eyes lit so bright, those blue depths vibrant with such joy and hope that he wanted to give her what she sought. “Splendid! I knew I could rely upon you, Wayland.”
He tried to interject but it proved impossible.
“You’re worried.” She rightly identified that emotion but misunderstood the reason for it. “Rest assured, the arrangement needn’t be for long, and I will be entirely well behaved.” She laughed. “As much as I’m able, of course.”
God, she was determined to make this impossible for him.
“Annalee,” he began quietly.
That managed to penetrate her elation.
“What . . . is it?”
He wanted to give her what she asked of him.
And yet . . .
He briefly closed his eyes.
He couldn’t.
When he opened them, he found Annalee staring back without her usual show of confidence, and it was the hesitancy there that made him falter once more.
Quitting his seat, he fell to a knee beside her. “Annalee,” he said. “I . . . don’t want a ruse.”
Her lips slipped a fraction, and then she moistened her full lips. “You want a real courtship, then?”
Color splotched his cheeks, and he instantly fell back on his haunches.
Her pretty blue eyes sparkled with a glimmer that had shades of sadness contained with that sparkle. “I’m teasing, Wayland.” She laid her palm over his gloved one. “Obviously you don’t.”
He stared blankly at her hand resting on his, eyes fixed on the leather of his glove—a stark contrast against her flesh.
Of course he’d once hungered for a relationship with her, one with a permanence to it and not the clandestine secret they’d been forced to keep because of their different social statuses and his relationship with Jeremy. There hadn’t been anything he’d wanted in the world more than that future with her. She was all he’d ever wished for. But time had divided them; it had stuck a great big wedge between them that they’d only just begun to peek around to see the other person still standing there.
“And of course, I don’t want a real courtship with you, either,” Annalee said, wielding those words like a master swordsman laying the blade upon a weaker opponent. Her lips twitched. “Or any gentleman, for that matter.” She grew serious once more. “I . . . This rejection . . . Is it because of . . . Lady Diana? Is there something more between you?”
“No.” He surged to his feet. “Yes.” Only in some small part.
“Oh,” Annalee said, her voice soft and sad.
Surely he imagined that sentiment.
He tried to explain. “Diana . . . she is still a child, but there remains an expectation . . . and I have to be careful in all my dealings with her.” If he didn’t make the match the world expected . . . if he made missteps in that relationship, he would be vilified, and his sister would pay the price.
Annalee’s lowered lashes concealed whatever she thought of that.
Wayland swiped a hand through his hair. “Annalee, nothing good can come from us playing games before Polite Society.” He tried to make her see reason. “There’s nothing I can truly contribute to this . . . or you.”
“Actually,” she said calmly, sliding forward in her seat. “Something very good can . . . My reputation stands to benefit, and because of that, the Mismatch Society’s, which stands to improve the lives of women, and as one who dedicated much of his earlier years to improving the lives of people, then yes, I think very much it is something you could and would get behind.”
He ran his eyes over her face. He’d never before seen her this . . . solemn. Not even when she’d been a young girl and young woman had she been so . . . serious. This didn’t fit with the new Annalee the world had come to know. And for that reason alone, even if there hadn’t been so many other reasons before this, he wanted to give her what she sought. “Annalee,” he began, carefully picking through his words, “I am honored you think I might help.”
Her eyes hardened. “Please do not take that appeasing tone with me. I’m not a child.”
“I don’t think you are,” he bit out. “I’m trying to be polite.”
“Well, you’re failing. Try harder. Your tone is coming across as pompous.”
“Very well.” He spoke flatly and plainly this time. “Your society is scandalous.”
She eyed him for a long while. “Scandalous.”
“And that is . . . fine,” he said on a rush. “I respect your convictions and your spirit, and what you wish to do. But I have only just managed to establish respectability for myself.” She recoiled. God, he was making a muck of this. Wayland scraped his hand through his hair. “Even as much as I wish I could help you, I don’t have the same luxury of just doing what I want. Having been born outside the peerage,” he explained, needing her to understand, “I am not afforded those choices.” Even if he had been, however, putting himself in close quarters any more than he already had with Jeremy’s sister would prove a disaster because of Wayland’s own weakness. For her. He’d always been weak where she was concerned. These past days had proven just how dangerous it was, being with her. Every moment spent with Annalee, he remembered just how much he’d missed her . . . And yet, there could not be a future between them.