Lord Welles’s fleshy lips peeled back in a grin that was more smirk than smile.
Bloody fabulous.
“There you are, sweet,” he purred. All the while his hands remained firm at her waist.
Oh, bloody hell. The absolute last wish she had or thing she wanted was a run-in with a gentleman.
I don’t have time for this, Welles, she wanted to screech. Except screeching would summon spectators, and spectators would spread salacious gossip. And that would mean more scandal, and . . . She gritted her teeth. No, she really did not have time for this. Annalee firmly disentangled his fingers from her person. “My lord, if you’ll excuse me?”
Shock brought his fiery eyebrows shooting up.
God, give her the confidence of a pale, doughy-faced man of the peerage.
“Excuse you? When we’ve only just met up?”
“Yes, yes. That is it. You have the right of it. Now if you—”
A sudden understanding dawned in his eyes. “Ah, I see.”
What exactly it was he thought he saw, she neither knew nor cared to know. All Annalee knew was the need to escape. Damning this night all over again, she stepped around him.
He shot out a hand, catching her firmly by the arm, wringing yet a second gasp from her this night: outrage. It burnt like fire in her veins, and she glared at him. “Release me this instant, Lord Welles.” She’d almost been a victim before. Since that night of Willoughby’s arrival, she’d not found herself so accosted. Some of that was no doubt a product of the protection afforded her by her close relationship with Willoughby and Beckett.
The baron sniggered. “You like the chase, do you? I heard as much. From Lord Gravens.”
Lord Gravens, who’d spread stories of her wickedness during that, her first foray into the decadent. Her rejection, followed by her departure from that event with Lord Willoughby, had stoked the rumors of her sordidness.
Until the myth became the legend, and she was a whore forevermore to Polite Society.
She fixed another glare on him. “Step aside, Welles. As it is, I bed men, not pathetic, begging boys,” she taunted, and wrenching her arm free of his grip, she hurried around him.
He proved quicker than she’d expected. But then, when they had assault on their minds, there was little to slow them down.
He cut her off once more.
And this time, his tenacity recalled the past terror. It came raging back. That feeling of helplessness, once experienced, was one a woman always recalled. It never left one, and always reared its head. Briefly crippling, a paralysis of the mind and body that slowed one’s flight and cast one further into peril. Annalee shoved off that fear, a useless sentiment that saw no person saved.
This was not one of the wicked affairs she preferred to frequent, where everyone in attendance had the same expectations of debauchery and there wasn’t a risk of ruin. “The duke and duchess would hardly appreciate your engaging in such scandal in the middle of the only ball they throw,” she said coolly.
His smile widened, revealing two rows of crooked teeth. “I trust one such as you is better at clandestine trysts.”
“Better than whom? You? Certainly. But my first rule is always a willing partner. Of which I am decidedly not.”
Like a child denied a treat, he stomped his foot. “Ah, it is simply that you’ve met someone else,” he whined, his already nasal tones pitching a decibel higher. “I was too late to scratch your itch, was I? I’ve also heard that,” he jeered, scraping a stare over her, one that sought to strip her of her dignity. “That you’ll take anyone between your legs when you’re foxed—”
A roar of primal beasts thundered around the hall, bringing Welles spinning around. Wayland launched himself at Welles.
Several stones heavier, and several inches taller, he easily took the wiry man down.
Annalee gasped. “Wayland.”
But it was as though he didn’t hear. And mayhap he didn’t. He was a man possessed, pounding the other man again and again. Blood sprayed from Welles’s nose, staining Wayland’s brown cravat with crimson drops that turned the fabric black.
Grabbing Welles by his lapels, Wayland dragged the shorter man up until his feet dangled several inches from the floor. “Say it again,” Wayland snarled in the other man’s face. “I dare you to say a single goddamned word about her.”
“But everyone kn-knows what sh-she is,” Lord Welles blubbered, tears and snot and blood painting his already purpling face into a hideous mask. The baron glanced to Annalee. “T-tell himmm.”
“Tell him that I’m a whore? I’d rather not. Even if I was, I was never meeting you,” she spat.
“She’s lying! You lying wh— Ahhhh,” Welles cried out as Wayland knocked the man’s forehead with his own, a veritable battering ram.
His lips drawn back in a snarl, Wayland had the look of a medieval warrior come to life, eager to end the life of the man before her. In all the years they’d known one another, she’d seen him many ways, but never . . . like this.
“You will not go near her.” Propelling the smaller man hard so that his back collided with the wall behind him, Wayland stuck his face in Welles’s. “You will not speak an unkind word about her. In fact, you will not speak her name. Am I clear?”
Sobbing, Welles nodded, the tears falling down his cheeks converging with the blood dripping from his bulbous nose and turning into a sanguine river that emptied onto his powder-blue cravat and waistcoat, staining those silk articles. And then Wayland punched the other man hard in the stomach. All the air exhaled from the baron’s swollen lips, and he slid slowly to his knees.
Annalee stood motionless, shocked into immobility. He would do this . . . for her? This volatile show went against the gentleman he’d become, who didn’t display emotion. She didn’t want this for him. And certainly not because of her. “Wayland,” she said quietly. “Wayland,” she repeated, this time more insistently. He brought his arm back once more, and she caught it between both of her hands, gripping him tightly in a bid to break through whatever insanity now gripped him. “Stop.”
He glanced back, his gaze locking on her fingers upon his elbow.
His eyes glinted with a half-mad sparkle, and then he blinked slowly, and she knew the moment she’d penetrated whatever murderous rage had so consumed him. “He insulted you,” he said on a furious whisper.
“A lot of people have.”
His eyes frosted over all the more. “I’ll kill them all.”
And she caught the inside of her lower lip hard at that defense—an undeserved one. “Oh, Wayland. You need to stop. You’ll kill him, Wayland.”
“And happily.” Because of her. When no one, not even her own brother, had believed her honor was worth defending.
At their feet, Welles curled his arms over his head and rolled into a fetal position.
“I don’t want that,” she whispered. “It is not worth it. He is not worth it.” I am not worth it. All held true.
She’d ruined so much in her life. She’d brought unhappiness to so many. Her parents. Her brother. His betrothed. Her friends. She could not see Wayland and his family added to that list of those to whom she brought hurt.
In the end, it appeared it was her lot to bring scandal and shame.