So that she could have this day that their parents would have never approved of. Another cloud of tears blurred her vision. “I love you.”
Jeremy sucked a breath in through his teeth. “And I you, little sister.”
“Come on!” Harlow shouted, her child’s voice echoing around the empty museum.
Doffing his hat, he nudged Annalee gently in the arm. “Run along before she brings down the ceiling with her shouts.”
Annalee laughed, and kissing him on his cheek, she hurried off to join Wayland and her sister. She slid her fingers onto his sleeve. “Thank you.”
“It was nothing.”
“No, you’re right,” she said as they walked with their steps in perfect synchrony. “It is everything.” Annalee squeezed his arm lightly. “Everything, Wayland.”
“I was doing some scouting before you arrived,” Harlow said on Annalee’s other side. “And we want to go there.” She pointed up the center staircase. “For the Captain Cook exhibit.” Tugging her arm loose, she rushed on ahead, leading the way as though she were in fact a formal tour operator, and not as though it was her first time in this museum.
Annalee and Wayland followed close behind the happily chattering little girl.
“Some people, you know, think that the most interesting fact about Captain Cook was that he was a mapmaker.” Glancing back at Annalee and Wayland as she walked, Harlow pulled a face. “Borrring.” Her sister redirected her focus forward. “No. The most interesting things about him . . . are invariably the things no one talks about. His run-ins with Britain’s enemies at sea. Do you know, an entire squadddron of Spanish vessels detained his ships, but released him? And do you know why?” Harlow asked, her voice more animated than Annalee . . . ever recalled.
“Wh—”
Harlow interrupted Annalee’s response. “Because they realized Cook was in command. He was that respected.” She stopped suddenly and rubbed her fingers together; a wicked glimmer lit her eyes. “And his death. Do you know he was bludgeoned to death by the very king whom he gifted a sword to? Tossed a blade right into his back”—the little girl skipped on ahead, examining the exhibit as she provided that gruesome lesson about Cook’s final fate—“and then clubbed him over and over, and he did . . .” Skipping off to a display of weaponry, Harlow continued prattling on.
Moisture dampened Annalee’s palms, and her belly roiled. Her sister’s cheer-filled voice, perfectly juxtaposed with that grisly telling, all mixed in her mind with another blood-filled day.
The little boy wailing as a soldier’s blade missed the older resister beside him, cutting down the child instead . . . those terror-filled eyes instantly frozen in that moment of his greatest suffering. Unable to tamp down a little moan, Annalee stumbled.
Wayland caught her shoulder and then took her hand, his strong and warm and steadying. He held her eyes. “All right?” he silently mouthed.
She fought to get air into her lungs.
A drink. She needed a drink.
Wayland brought his mouth close to her ear and his breath was warm, soothing against her cheek. A hint of coffee . . .
Think of your conversation at Jeremy’s betrothal. How he enjoys coffee . . . anything but—it was futile.
The report of gunshots thundered in her mind, mixing with the jumbled shouts and cries.
Annalee brought her hands up to her head.
“Annalee, you’re here.”
Wayland.
It was Wayland’s voice, calling through the chaos.
“I’m here.”
He was here.
“We’re in the museum,” he said with a quiet firmness that managed to penetrate her rapidly escalating panic. “Where are we?”
She was with Wayland . . . and Harlow. Harlow, who hadn’t been present at Peterloo. She’d been a babe. Annalee focused on breathing. “The Royal Museum.”
He touched his brow to hers, that physical contact, his touch. His touching her cemented her more in the now. “That’s right.” His voice, it came soft and filled with a gentle praise.
The horrors receded as she focused on him, Wayland’s face and presence proving a lifeline.
And then the present came rushing back to meet her. Annalee sucked in a great big gasp of air.
As with the return to reality, came the rush of shame, coursing through her.
She pressed her eyes closed. This was the part of herself she despised. Gone was the innocent girl he’d fallen in love with, and in her place, this person who didn’t even have complete control of her wits. And she wanted to leave. She wanted to run and hide from all her weaknesses.
Nay, that wasn’t true. You want to go back to the moment when you were nothing more than a lady in a museum, meeting your suitor . . .
But all that had been fake. A carefully orchestrated plan laid out by a man who wasn’t a suitor, who wasn’t a lover. Who was nothing more than a friend helping her try to present something she would never again be to the world—a normal lady.
Except—
“Annaleee!” her sister cried, gesturing wildly at a glass case. “Look at this! It is a ring . . . made out of a shark’s tooth!”
This day was about Harlow, and seeing Harlow. Plastering on a smile for Harlow’s benefit, Annalee waved back. “Amazing!” She rushed over, grateful to put some distance between her and Wayland. Wayland, who was studying her with serious eyes and concern, and damn it, she didn’t want that from him. Not now. Not ever. Annalee didn’t want to be an object of his damned pity. His or anyone else’s. But from him, it was worse. With him, she was reminded of all the ways she’d changed, and the fact that he felt guilt for those changes. That remorse he carried, that he’d expressed so vividly in those letters, was almost worse than the pity.
Annalee kept close to her sister’s side, listening as Harlow shared all the beloved facts she knew about Cook and his treasures, and sharing in the young girl’s excitement for new details she’d not previously learned.
As Harlow pulled away, heading for a feather headdress helmet, Annalee meandered more slowly behind her. Putting space between herself and the military weapons now commanding all of her sister’s attentions, Annalee considered the small carvings of turtle figures and the far duller but safer fishing hooks.
Leaning over the case, she glanced at Wayland’s image reflected in that glass as he joined her.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m having a splendid time, Wayland,” she said, devoting all her focus to a necklace of beige, brown, white, and black stones. “Again, I cannot thank you—”
“That wasn’t what I was referring to, Annalee.”
“Oh.”
Her skin prickled hot under the somberness of his statement and the stare he’d trained upon her. She didn’t need to see it in the crystal panes protecting the artifacts. She felt it on her person like a physical touch.
“You’re referring to what happened earlier,” she said. She should have trusted he wouldn’t let her earlier breakdown go without a discussion. Annalee caught the inside of her cheek between her teeth. He would not. That hadn’t been the manner of man Wayland had been. He’d worry. About her. After her. She’d known that years ago. And she’d not wanted his concern then, and she wanted it even less now. “Yes, well, that happens sometimes.” She spoke with a breeziness at odds with the pounding of her heart. “As I mentioned when we spoke at Jeremy’s betrothal ball.” She’d not wanted to discuss it with Wayland then, and she didn’t wish to now.