Practically Wicked (11 page)

“I’ve no reason to trust you either,” he returned coldly. “I don’t even have reason to like you.”

Those words stung, even if the sentiment did not come as a surprise. “You liked my company well enough at Anover House,” she reminded him.

He lifted a shoulder. “I am what is referred to as an amiable drunk. After a few too many glasses, I like
everyone
.”

His accentuation of “everyone” was not lost on her. Nor was his meaning.

For titled men like Lord Dane, there were gentlemen and ladies of good breeding, and then there was everyone else. And
that
, Anna realized with a sinking heart, was likely at the heart of his belligerence toward her. It wasn’t just that she might be lying, but that she didn’t have the right to keep company with the Haverstons, regardless of whether she was telling the truth or not.

A woman like her was good enough to toy about with at Anover House, but she had no business pretending to be a lady at Caldwell Manor.

It was a similar argument to the one she’d presented to Lord Engsly not two hours earlier. But pointing out that there were those who held her in contempt, and it was therefore unwise for her to stay at Caldwell, was a far cry from being informed that she was, indeed, contemptible and therefore had no right to be at Caldwell.

Evidently, Max’s proclamation four years ago of having no care for honor had not been mere hyperbole.

“Well, then…” Angry, disgusted, and frustrated because both emotions were tainted with a hint of shame, she walked to a nearby sideboard and grabbed the largest, fullest decanter she saw. Resisting the urge to hurl it at his head, she carried it back and set it before him on the table. “If you must be sotted to withstand my presence here, then I suggest you have at it. I am not leaving.”

He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes ever so slightly, as if she were some vaguely interesting species of bug. “Is that a spark of temper I see, Ice Maiden?”

She waited a pointed beat before responding.

“If you like,” she replied, and with a regal lift on her chin, she spun on her heel and glided out of the room.

Devil take the library. She would keep herself occupied contemplating all the ways she could make Max Dane pay for his boorish behavior.

Between gleaning what little information he could about Miss Rees from the staff, and distracting Lucien from the worry of having a new sister, Max was too occupied for the remainder of the evening to spare much thought for his behavior in the billiards room. He remained quite confident in his handling of the situation…Until the rest of the house found its way to bed.

There was, Max mused as he sat in his chambers, something about the dark isolation of night that forced a man’s thoughts unhappily inward.

No doubt the phenomenon did much to contribute to the popularity of imbibing spirits as an evening pastime. He considered indulging in that pastime, but ultimately decided that the only thing worse than facing one’s possible failings while sitting alone in the dark was facing them while drinking alone in the dark.

And so he was regrettably sober when he began to reconsider his treatment of Anna. After much time spent scowling at the dark walnut of his door and copious amounts of pacing, Max arrived at the conclusion that he was not handling things as well as he might.

As well as he
ought
.

Because, really, he ought not be acting so much like a mad man.

It bothered him not one whit that he wasn’t comporting himself as a gentleman. It bothered him quite a bit, however, that he had failed to comport himself as a rational adult.

He thought he’d passed the age when emotion could unduly influence behavior. In fact, he could remember the last time he’d lost control to anger. At nine, he’d hurled a vase at Reginald’s head for an offense now long forgotten. It may have had something to do with a broken toy, or possibly over sweetmeats. At any rate, an offense had been committed and a vase had been hurled. Max’s punishment had been two lashes for the broken vase and ten lashings for endangering the heir apparent, whose head, incidentally—and much to Max’s immediate regret—had escaped breakage.

It wasn’t the first or last lashing he’d receive, but it had been the worst. One would think he’d not have forgotten the lesson.

Yet here he was, allowing resentment and suspicion to undermine control and common sense. All because of a rejection he’d received four years ago.

It was absurd, baffling, and not a little embarrassing.

Anna Rees was not the first woman to have declined his attentions. True, she was the only one to have seemingly encouraged those attentions for the sole purpose of spurning them, but even that didn’t explain his severe reaction to her.

He wasn’t sure he could explain it, except to say that everything was, and had been, different with Anna.

It had
felt
different when they’d been in the nursery, and not merely because he’d been drunk (which, in fact, had not been so very different), and it had felt different when he’d woken the next morning.

It had seemed bigger somehow, better, more significant.

The week following his brother’s death had been a morass of misery. Reginald had been a self-important brat of a boy and a pompous, selfish coward of a man. Max could say without guilt or shame that he’d neither liked nor respected his brother past the age of ten. But he had loved him. Just as Anna had intuitively known, he had loved him. The loss of Reginald, and the monstrous stupidity surrounding his death, had throbbed like an open wound.

Filling his mind with the lovely Miss Anna Rees had been a welcomed balm, a necessary distraction. He’d thought of her face, her soft voice and low laughter, that long dark braid, and the way her lips had moved against his. He’d lost himself in the memory of her.

He’d even made plans—long-term plans, which was most definitely different. He would buy Anna that hound, and the cottage if she still wanted it after seeing McMullin Hall. She’d need to choose between special license or elopement. There was no purpose in waiting for the banns to be read, and forgoing marriage altogether was not an option. Any children they might have would be legitimate. Any questions of fidelity would be…Well, there would be no questions, that was the point.

By the time his last, unavoidable responsibility had been filled, he was near to climbing the walls, wanting to see Anna again.
His
Anna, as he had come to think of her. And bugger the rules of mourning. He’d looked forward to visiting a woman before, but he’d never felt like such an excited schoolboy, not even when he’d been an excitable schoolboy.

He’d all but bloody run to Anover House.

And when she’d refused him, refused even to speak with him, it had wounded more than his pride. It had destroyed a dream. A ridiculous dream constructed out of grief and erected on the foundation of a drunken memory, but a dream nonetheless.

In the dark of his chambers, Max ran a hand down his face.

It had become obvious very quickly that he had built the encounter into more than it was. He should have considered that he’d not just misinterpreted the situation but her intentions as well. Perhaps she’d not meant for things to progress as far as they had in the nursery and had simply regretted her impetuous behavior afterward.

She ought to have expressed her change of heart or disinterest in him in person rather than having him turned away at the door, but…it had been four years ago. They had been young and foolish…Younger and more foolish, at any rate. One might imagine they had altered for the better in the time since. He liked to think, the last twelve hours notwithstanding, he had. Perhaps she had as well.

It was possible that the wounded pride of four years ago, and a long-held sense of obligation to the Haverstons, who’d been more like brothers to him than friends, had made him a touch…imperious.

Or maybe Anna was a manipulative adventuress. Either way, he wasn’t helping himself, or Lucien, by conducting open warfare with the woman.

Which meant they would need to cry pax.

Which meant, Max realized with a long, long look at the brandy bottle, he would need to apologize.

 
 
Chapter 7

Anna rose as the first hints of sunlight peeked around the edges of her light blue drapes. Grabbing her wrap from the foot of the bed, she stayed seated on the mattress for several moments, blinking in the semidarkness.

It was a strange sensation indeed, waking up in an unfamiliar room. There was something a little bit eerie about it, and a great deal exciting. She’d not spent a night of her adult life outside of Anover House. Now here she was, miles from London in the guest chambers of a marquess.

She wanted to explore, both the feeling and her surroundings, and after only the briefest hesitation, she denounced her plan to remain isolated in her chambers as both impractical and unacceptable.

She had more pride than that. She wasn’t above removing herself from an unpleasant situation, mind you, but there was a difference between remaining above a fray and hiding from it. Max Dane would not intimidate her into hiding.

Anna slipped from the bed and set about dressing herself while her mind wrestled with how to deal with Max moving forward. As planned, she’d spent no small amount of time and energy the night before envisioning all manner of punishments for him. It hadn’t been as rewarding as she’d hoped, but it had been preferable to dwelling on the other, less easily managed emotions that boiled just below the anger.

The level of animosity exhibited by Max had been unexpected and unwelcomed, but equally disquieting was how deeply his words had cut.

Anna had faced derision in the past. She’d seen it on the faces of many of her mother’s guests. Disdain, ridicule, scorn, and even envy, these were no strangers to her. But while being the focus of such unpleasantness had never lost the power to cut, neither had it ever wounded quite like Max’s behavior the night before.

She feared disappointment might be the cause. She may have decided long ago that it was best Max had not returned to Anover House for her (and given how deeply his behavior had wounded, she conceded the possibility that she’d not been entirely reconciled with that decision), but it had never occurred to her that his reason for doing so was simple, awful contempt. She felt like twice the fool now. How could she have been so blind to the man’s true nature? To think of the time and energy she’d spent pining for him, imagining him as something he wasn’t.

Anna paused in the buttoning of her gown and gave herself a mental shake. There was nothing to be gained by chastising herself. She’d misjudged a man’s character, that was all. She was not the first woman to have done so and she would not be the last.

According to her mother, to ascribe any character to a man was to grossly misjudge his character, but Anna liked to think that saying had less to do with reality and more to do with her mother’s penchant for hyperbole.

Anna put on a new pair of leather half boots she’d had made before leaving Anover House. The use of funds had been difficult, but necessary. One could not expect to reside in a country cottage without a single pair of leather boots.

And that was what she needed to concentrate on now—her cottage, her thousand pounds, and the man who currently controlled both.

Lord Engsly seemed to be the sort of man Madame failed to take into consideration when pronouncing all men lacking by design—a perfectly decent gentleman. Slightly high-handed in the way he’d maneuvered her into staying on at Caldwell, but decent all the same…Perhaps more than decent, now that she thought on it. It wasn’t every peer of the realm who would invite his father’s bastard into his home.

Without the exhaustion and nerves and frustration of the day before clouding her perspective, Anna began to see Engsly and her current circumstances in a new light.

She was a welcomed guest in a magnificent country estate. This was a dream come to life for many people. It wasn’t her dream, but she’d be a true fool (and an ungrateful one to boot) to make it into an onus.

What had Mrs. Culpepper said as they’d left London?

What adventure awaits us, my dear. Let us make the most of it.

And so she would, Anna thought as she snatched up her bonnet, trimmed in pale blue to match her dress, and left her chambers. She would do whatever it took to make the best of things, with or without the approval of Max Dane.

Anna felt a renewed sense of hope and purpose as she made her way downstairs. There was, in her opinion, no better time of day than dawn.

At Anover House, she loved the hour around sunrise for its stillness. Her mother and any houseguests never rose before noon, and the staff, being required to spend a good portion of their nights at work for Mrs. Wrayburn’s parties, were rarely expected to be up again before first light.

Often, Anna was the only person awake in the house. Sometimes it seemed as if she were the only person in residence, as if Anover House belonged to her and she could roam its halls and rooms as she pleased. For an hour or two a day, she could almost convince herself that she was free.