He ran a hand over the side of his face. Everything was confused in his mind. Why was it confused?
Annalee. It was because of her.
Annalee had always had the ability to challenge him and make him see angles of discussions he’d missed. That hadn’t changed.
“I always respected you,” Annalee said sadly. “I admired you, because you wished to change the world. Where is that man?”
And something within him snapped.
He took her lightly by the shoulders, gripping her, his fingers curling into her arms. “And what did that get either of us?” he hissed. “Was the world made better? For you? For me? For anyone that day?”
“The world is what we make it.”
“You’d condemn me, but what did you make it? An Eden for you to sin all day long in.”
Her lips parted slightly and moved, but no words were forthcoming.
Oh, God. He recoiled from his own words. And he shook his head. “Annalee . . .” I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t mean to have ruined your life that day . . . That was the apology she deserved, but that stuck in his throat.
You’d condemn me, but what did you make it? An Eden for you to sin all day long in.
Her chest . . . ached and throbbed. And for the oddest reason, at that. Wayland spoke words of truth before her, about her. He wasn’t wrong.
After Peterloo, she had committed herself to her pleasures and pursuits, to bury the memories of that day. To feel again. To feel something that was different from the terror and agony that had consumed her.
To forget him.
Instinctively, she folded her arms around her middle and hugged herself hard, trying to ward off this pain.
Perhaps this was merely a reminder that the wild life she’d dedicated herself to had been for naught.
Annalee drew in a soft breath through her teeth, and letting her arms fall, she stepped away. This wasn’t about her . . . and him. They’d just made it so. “You might think the Mismatch Society is wicked, for no other reason than because of my involvement with it.”
He tried to protest, but she touched a finger to his mouth, stifling that lie. For that was precisely what it was. Even if he couldn’t admit as much to himself. “You know nothing about us, Wayland,” she said through the pain knifing away at her still. “You read about how we are scandalous and challenging norms, and yet I would say to you, that is a good thing. You don’t know how we have helped women avoid marriages to men who would have beaten them.” Some emotion she couldn’t identify filled his eyes. Once she would have been able to make sense of it. Not anymore. “Or how we’ve helped other ladies once afraid to share their opinions to share them, and to do so proudly.” She pressed a finger against his chest. “There is good in what we do. And I’ll not have you besmirch my society.”
They stood there, chests heaving, their gazes moving swiftly over one another’s faces. And then, Wayland’s eyes slipped, falling to her mouth. He lowered his head slightly, then drew back, but then—like that magnet she’d once observed the bluestocking member of the Mismatch Society, Brenna Kearsley, playing with—he was compelled forward, lowering his lips once more. His lashes swept low, and she proved her desire for this man would be forever greater than her pride.
With a moan, she lifted herself up on tiptoe and kissed him.
His hands were immediately on her buttocks, dragging her close to the hard ridge of his shaft tenting his trousers.
Afire, she stroked her palms up and down the sleeves of his jacket, gripping those blacksmith’s muscles he’d not lost, that were as hard and large as ever.
“Why am I mad about you still?” she rasped against his lips.
He slipped his tongue into her mouth, and mated it against hers. Twisting and tangling with Annalee’s.
He lusted after her, but he’d never want anything more. Why, he didn’t even want his sister near her. The sharp edge of that truth gave her the power to wrench herself free of his arms.
“Is this some sort of test, Lord Darlington?” she taunted, adjusting the bodice of her dress.
The color of his cheeks, flushed from their embrace, deepened. “Of course not.”
“But it does feed your ill opinion, doesn’t it?” she purred. “Wicked, whorish Annalee.”
“Do not call yourself that,” he said harshly.
As though he were offended . . . for her. “Isn’t that what I am? To the world. To you?”
He appeared stricken. “Never,” he whispered. The slight knob of his Adam’s apple moved. “I’ve never . . . seen you that way.” And by the force of the emphasis he placed upon that word, she . . . could almost believe him.
But his opinions and his demands for her and his sister, Kitty, however, were proof enough.
“But that is the way I am,” Annalee said gravely. “Men can bed who they wish freely, but the moment a woman does it, they cast all manner of hideous labels upon her.” With a sound of disgust, she stepped away from him. “I may be a sinner, but I’m not so bankrupt inside as to try to interfere in the lives of those I love because of a fear of what people who don’t truly care about anyone but themselves have to say about those I love.” She gripped him by the lapels, dragging his face close. It was a mistake; she faltered, his breath wafting upon her lips, and remembered the feel of his mouth. She wrestled through the pull he’d always have over her, and released him suddenly. Annalee gave him a long look. “And we are not a club. We are a society, Lord Darlington.” She grabbed up her slippers.
“Annalee,” he said quickly.
Not breaking stride, she lifted her finger in a vulgar salute and dashed off.
She flattened her mouth.
To hell with stuffy, overbearing, and oppressive brothers . . . and fathers. Nay, to hell with all men.
More specifically, to hell with Wayland Smith, the illustrious Lord Darlington.
With every step that carried her away from those gardens and down the halls of the duke’s carpeted corridors, her frustration and ire grew.
Wayland, with his pompous, judgmental views on her Mismatch Society. A group he would have once fully supported and applauded, he should now condemn.
Because of you.
And she hated with every fiber of her being that his low opinion should cleave through her heart. That she was still weak for him.
She stole a glance over her shoulder to be sure he’d not followed her.
As though he would.
Why, he was likely out of his mind, elated at being free of her company.
And to hell with this fancy affair she had no part of and wished she’d never come to . . . not even to rehabilitate her reputation.
To hell with it all.
All of it.
She wanted a drink, and she needed it.
Her whole body hungered for the numbing satiation spirits brought.
Annalee raced around the next corridor and crashed headfirst into a solid wall; the velocity of that collision expelled all the air from her lungs.
Her slippers flew from her fingers, and she sucked in a silent gasp as she was flung backward.
But firm hands were on her waist, catching her before she hit the floor, keeping her upright on her feet.
Dazed, Annalee gave her head a slight shake, registering that she’d run into not any wall, but a leering lord.