“You disapprove of my choice,” he remarked when Annalee remained silent.
“Not at all,” she said, and the instantaneousness of that reply sent a lightness slipping around his chest. “I am . . . surprised,” she continued as they headed down the pathway leading to the now empty pavilion where, in the evening, orchestras performed.
“Tell me, Annalee,” he called over as she slipped her arm from his and wandered off to the dais. “Where should I have taken you?”
She twirled her parasol as she went, its fabric and pearls and crystals dangling from the fringe, playing with the sun’s rays like a kaleidoscope, turning various shadows out upon the stone dance floor.
“Truthfully?”
He nodded, and drawn like the moth he’d always been where she was concerned, he drifted over.
Annalee immediately brought that frilly article to a stop. Snapping the parasol closed, she pressed the tip into the gravel and leaned over it. “I thought you would have taken me on a ride through Rotten Row, Wayland. Or a curricle ride through London. Or the theatre in the evening.”
“I intend for us to visit the theatre,” he felt compelled to add. Because she’d always loved it. He’d never been with her before, but had instead listened as she’d performed samples of the shows she’d seen, playing all the parts, until they’d both roared with laughter.
“That”—she pointed the end of her parasol at his chest—“that makes sense.”
“And what doesn’t make sense about this?” he asked, really trying to follow.
“We’re not”—Annalee glanced about and then, with her free hand, gestured to the paradise around them—“seen, Wayland.”
Of course. Because that was the whole purpose of their arrangement . . . or that was what she expected anyway.
“You like gardens,” he said quietly. Didn’t she? Or had that changed? She’d used to run barefoot through fields of wildflowers, twirling herself in circles, until she collapsed with dizzying laughter within those blooms.
“And the gardens at Hyde Park . . . where we would be seen?” she asked, drifting closer. Annalee of now was a driven woman who knew her mind and what she wanted in life . . . and what she wanted for this arrangement was the benefit it served in establishing respectability.
“Visiting Hyde Park at this hour wouldn’t be a place where you could . . . simply enjoy . . . this, Annalee.” And twisting the stem of a peony in slow, rhythmic circles back and forth, he freed the bloom and held it out before her.
Her eyes went as soft as they’d been when she was a young girl in the bloom of her innocence, and then she accepted the fragrant flower. Raising it to her nose, she inhaled deep. All the while, she watched him. “You’re still a romantic, Wayland Smith.”
He wasn’t. Not really. Only where this woman was concerned had he been one. Was she?
He knew there had been lovers. She’d all but freely admitted her association with Willoughby, a rake of the first order . . . but also a man who’d saved her, and . . . Wayland breathed deeply, containing the surge of jealousy that had rippled through his being when she shared about her past with the gentleman.
They continued on, deeper into the gardens, which lacked the meticulous tending shown the hedges and blooms in Kew Gardens and Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. Annalee stopped and, resting a hand on his sleeve, tugged free first one slipper, then the other. She handed the laces over to him as though it were the most natural thing in the world for him to carry her shoes. And there was an intimacy to Annalee’s surrendering them to his care.
“Would you have preferred Rotten Row?” he asked, needing to know.
“I prefer this,” she stated quietly. “I prefer this.” She paused beside a rosebush and, lowering her head, closed her eyes and inhaled.
He watched her as she did, captivated by the sight of her.
In this moment, the walls she’d built about herself since Peterloo, and the time that had separated them, had come down. She was not setting out to shock him. She was simply enjoying this . . . as he’d wanted for her.
Suddenly, she opened her eyes.
Over the top of that bush, their gazes locked, and it was as though the Earth ceased to spin and everything stood frozen in time. And he wanted that for this moment. So that they could block out the past and Peterloo and the present, where her family planned the vilest of futures for her. Where they could remain suspended in the empty gardens of Vauxhall.
But, of course, invariably life continued on . . . and Annalee glanced away.
“I’ve never been here at this hour,” she murmured, more to herself. Wandering off, she headed down a graveled path lined with unlit lights, and Wayland trailed at a slower pace behind her, allowing her that space she sought. “I confess to only coming in the evening.”
When the grounds bustled.
Suddenly, she glanced back. “Have you?”
“Evening or day?”
“Either?”
“Never,” he confessed, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “This is my first time.”
Surprise rounded her eyes. “Come, now.”
“Not much one for fireworks,” he said gruffly, and then he wanted to call it back. That reminder about . . . that day which neither of them needed reminders of.
Surprise gave way to a dawning understanding. “Ahh.”
Except, speaking of it also felt . . . right. Important in ways that he’d not considered. He’d resolved to forget everything he could about that August day—an impossible feat. He’d thought to not let it intrude on these moments with Annalee. But . . . mayhap it needed to be spoken aloud. For the both of them. Those pieces they’d begun to explore in the duke’s gardens . . . when she’d revealed the small parts she had about her love and need of those fountains that grounded her.
“I hate crowds,” he finally brought himself to say. “I hate ballrooms when they’re filled with people. I see Peterloo. If it weren’t for my mother and the need to ease her way in Polite Society, I’d likely avoid it all.”
“Yes, I . . . feel that way, too.”
“You?” he asked, sliding closer.
“With the exception about aiming to please my mother, that is.” She fastened that teasing part on, adding a wink. However, Annalee toyed with the handle of her parasol, her grip a white-knuckled one, indicating her disquiet. “I’ve surprised you.”
Every day. Then and now. He’d always been endlessly captivated by her for it. “Some,” he allowed.
She abruptly stopped fiddling with that article in her hand, lowering it so the tip touched the ground once more, and she stared down upon the graveled stones. “It . . . Peterloo? It is always there for me.” For him, too. Likely for every man, woman, and child who’d been dragged into the hell of that day. “But I’ve found the quiet worse,” Annalee murmured. “It’s when it is quiet and I’m alone that everything is loudest in my mind.”
And then it made sense. “It’s why you prefer the . . . the . . .” He stumbled, searching.
A small smile formed on her lips. “The wicked events I do?”
He gave a tight nod, even though she wasn’t looking at him. Even though she apparently didn’t require any clarification of what he’d really been intending to ask, but was too cowardly to put to words.