“Speaking to her about what, exactly?” he asked, straining to follow.
“Annalee’s future.”
Her future? Warning bells clanged in his brain.
Jeremy frowned. “You’re like another brother to Harlow . . . and me.” Pain ravaged the other man’s features. “And I need help with this, man,” he whispered. “I cannot do this alone.”
“Can’t do what?” he demanded.
“My parents are sending her away.”
The other man’s quiet pronouncement knocked Wayland back on his heels. They’d shutter her away in the country, stripping her of her choice of remaining in London.
They cut me off . . . because I bring much shaaame to the family name . . . So much shame that they’ve pleaded with me and threatened to send me away, back to their country house in Ma-Manchester . . . They would send me back to the place of my nightmares . . . just to be free of me.
“My God, man,” he said on a furious whisper. “You cannot allow that.” To force her back to that place, of all places? Did they love their daughter so little? Did his friend care not at all for the demons Annalee battled? “She will be haunted.” More haunted than she was. All those who’d lived through Peterloo had ghosts and demons they battled daily.
“With the life she is living here in London, how she conducts herself, the drinking and the smoking . . . What else can they do?” The strained lines at the corners of Jeremy’s eyes and the brittleness of his mouth spoke of a man who’d wrestled with his parents’ decision—but ultimately capitulated. “Perhaps had she wed you, she wouldn’t be in this . . . situation,” Jeremy said tiredly.
“Would you have supported a match between us?” Wayland asked, the curiosity he’d carried all these years bringing him to ask the question he’d always wondered.
And he knew by the way Jeremy’s eyes slid away from his, and by the hesitancy in his response, everything he’d always known as a young man desperately in love with Annalee: his suit would have never been accepted. It had been destined to be met with nothing but resistance from her powerfully connected family. Even his best friend.
“I don’t know,” Annalee’s brother said.
Lying to himself, and to Wayland.
Did the other man even know it?
The door exploded open.
And just like that, Wayland found he’d been wrong earlier. There was a meeting worse than one with Jeremy. One with Annalee’s young sister.
Harlow stormed inside, her rapier drawn. She shoved the door shut with the bottom of her bare foot and stormed over.
Donning a strained smile, Jeremy straightened and made to greet his youngest sister. “Har—”
“Not one word.” She stuck the tip of her rapier against her brother’s throat, ending the remainder of his words. “I’m not pleased with you and will decide when you talk.” She turned all her thirteen-year-old ire Wayland’s way, and he tensed.
Except . . . she smiled, her eyes soft. “You defended her.”
“I . . .”
“Annalee,” she said, as though there’d been a bevy of other women for whom he’d intervened and the matter required clarifying. Harlow tapped the side of her blade onto his right shoulder. “I knight thee.”
“I thought you were more the pirate sort,” he said solemnly, and bowed his head to accept that high praise she’d conferred.
“Yes, well, in matters of heroism and heroics, a certain ceremony is required. I reserve the pirate’s wrath for”—her features immediately went dark as she swiveled her focus over to an unfortunate Jeremy—“dastards like youuu,” she seethed.
“Harlow,” Jeremy began again.
The girl brought her blade slashing down close to her brother’s face in a decisive X she wrote in the air. “I’ve not given you permission to speak. I’m still recognizing Wayland’s valor and honor.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. The moment he’d really needed to save Annalee had been at Peterloo. It was a failure that could never be forgiven.
Harlow smiled. “Thank you,” she said softly, her lower lip trembling, and in that moment, her tender years were on full display.
“I only did what was right, and what she deserved.”
Harlow nodded. “She did deserve it. Because she is a good woman who just happens to be surrounded by disloyal kin.” She fixed another glare on Jeremy, pointing her rapier at her brother’s heart. “What do you want?”
Bringing up a hand slowly, Jeremy guided the tip down. “I thought we might speak.”
She folded her arms, her weapon dangling menacingly at her side. “Well? Out with it, then.”
“There are . . . concerns about Annalee.”
“What kind of concerns?” Harlow asked for the both of them.
Jeremy dropped to a knee. “You know when you caught that fever five years ago?”
She hesitated, and nodded.
“You were sick,” Jeremy said. “Well, there are many different types of sick. When you’ve got an upset stomach, or when you’ve a fever or—”
Unease tripped along Wayland’s spine.
“Would you spare me the child’s explanation,” Harlow snapped, as impatient as Wayland was to understand just what the other man was on about. “I know what sickness is. Who is sick?” She peered at him a moment. “Is it you?” Not waiting for him to respond, she switched her attention over to Wayland. “Are you? You do have a queer look about you.”
“I’m . . . not.” Though he did feel close to casting up the contents of his stomach.
“There are . . . sicknesses of the spirit and soul,” Jeremy continued in what rang as a scripted explanation he’d run over time and time again until memorized.
That apprehension grew in Wayland’s gut. His mind slipping down a path it didn’t want. Praying he was wrong.
“Will you just get out with it?” Harlow shouted. “Who is—”
“Annalee.”
All the air left Wayland on a swift, noisy exhale.
“Annalee is sick.” And with that, Jeremy began speaking quickly, all the words tumbling from his lips. “And she has been making decisions that are not safe, and so Mother and Father—we,” he amended, “have made the decision to send her away to a place where she will be cared for.”
And there it was.
The cruelest place to ever consider sending her. The one place she didn’t wish to be.
“Where is she going?” Harlow whispered.
“Not . . . one of those places,” Jeremy said quickly.
Wayland blinked slowly, knocked off course by that response, which was decidedly not “Manchester.”
Not one of those places? Surely his friend wasn’t saying what . . . Wayland thought he was? That they were thinking of . . . Nay, planning to send Annalee to a goddamned institution? A place where men and women were locked up and stripped of their dignity and beaten and abused, all in the name of reform and—
Wayland squeezed his eyes shut.
I’m going to be sick . . .
Harlow scrunched up her brow. “What places?” When neither gentleman spoke, she looked back and forth between them, ultimately settling on her brother. “What. Places?”