Practically Wicked (3 page)

“Gladly.”

He pressed his lips together in thought before asking, “Is it because I’m the viscount?”

“No, it is because I have no interest in being a member of either the demimonde or the beau monde. Or being married to either.” There was a short hesitation before she spoke again. “I want the cottage in the countryside.”

“Do you? Truly?” He’d never have guessed it. No one who had caught a glimpse of Miss Rees in her exquisite gowns and sparkling jewels, or listened to Mrs. Wrayburn wax lovingly on about her daughter’s adorable demands for exquisite gowns and sparkling jewels, would have entertained the idea for even a moment. Miss Rees was more of an enigma than any of them had realized. “Fascinating. What else do you want?”

“From my life, do you mean?” One dark brow winged up. “Why on earth would I share my dreams with you?’

“You just told me of the cottage,” he reminded her. “And I’m not out to have your secrets. Merely your interests. It’s a way to pass the time. Unless you’d care to sit here in silence?”

“I don’t…” She trailed off, looked away, and was quiet for so long, Max thought perhaps she had chosen to sit in silence after all. Which was all the same to him. There were worse ways to spend the evening than sitting quietly with Miss Anna Rees. He liked looking at her—the high plane of her cheekbones, the soft curve of her jaw. He wanted to reach out and trace the outline of her ear, maybe draw his finger down the length of her pale neck.

“I want a hound,” Miss Rees said suddenly, and even with the layers of drink blurring his senses, he instantly recognized the twin notes of uncertainty and determination in her voice. It took him a moment more, however, to push through those layers and remember what they’d been talking about.

“A hound. Right. You want a hound. Like your mother’s pug?”

“No, not a lapdog. A
hound
,” she emphasized with a hint of excitement. “I want a sturdy sort of dog I can stroll with through a forest or have run beside me when I ride. Something not apt to disappear into a well or be trampled under a carriage.”

He was suddenly reminded of the Newfoundland he’d had as a boy. Brutus. A hulking, slobbering beast of a thing. “I
adored
that dog.”

“I’m sorry?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. Won’t your mother purchase a dog for you?”

“A town house is no place for a large animal,” she said quietly and began to trace a narrow scratch in the wood of the table with a long, elegant finger.

“Not some dogs, certainly. But something like one of those spotted coach hounds. They’d be happy chasing you and your mother through Hyde Park.” He couldn’t recall having ever seen the lady at the park, but surely she went out for fresh air now and again.

“I’ll wait for a cottage.”

“Why should you?” When she refused to answer, he dipped his head to catch her eye. “Your mother won’t purchase one for you, will she?”

“It is her home,” she said by way of answer and went back to tracing the scratch.

“I see,” he said carefully, straightening. Perhaps Mrs. Wrayburn and her daughter were not as close as Mrs. Wrayburn had led others to believe. “I think…You’re not at all what you seem, are you?”

Her eyes drifted up from the table. “Beg your pardon?”

“Am I slurring?” he asked and smacked his lips experimentally.

“Considerably, but it’s the yawning that renders you unintelligible.”

“Ah.” He closed his eyes briefly and discovered the room still spun around him but at a more reasonable speed than before. “God, I am tired.”

“Is there no one I could fetch to take you home?”

The few friends he would trust inside his home were not the sort of men who attended parties thrown by Mrs. Wrayburn. He opened his eyes and gave her what he hoped was a wink but, under the circumstances, might well have been a slow blink. “No one whose company I should enjoy so much as yours. Are you quite certain you won’t marry me?”

“Yes.”

“Pity,” he replied and meant it. Once his position as Lord Dane became public knowledge, the freedom he’d enjoyed as a less-than-desirable match would disappear. No one was interested in marrying the dissolute younger brother of a perfectly healthy viscount. But a dissolute viscount…that was another matter. He was to be prime game for the unwed ladies of the respectable set until he chose a bride. What fun it would be to disappoint them all by eloping with the lovely, fascinating, and entirely unsuitable Miss Rees. “If you should change your mind—”

“I’ll not.”

“But if you should, I promise you that cottage in the country.”

A small smile curved her lips. “And the hound?”

“And the hound.”

“And why would you do that, Lord Dane?”

“Everyone should have at least a piece of what they want.” And the longer he sat there, staring into Miss Rees’s fae eyes, the more he realized that what he wanted most at the moment was her. “I like the way you smile. It’s tremendously sweet. And that little eyetooth, there on the right. It’s a bit crooked. I find that beguiling.”

“Beg your pardon?”

He realized he was yawning again. “Beguiling. Your tooth is beguiling.”

“An entire ballroom of charmers just like yourself, did you say? I’d no idea what delights I was missing.”

Suddenly, he didn’t like the idea of her mingling with other gentlemen. Particularly not the sort of gentlemen to be found downstairs. “I may have exaggerated the allure of the ballroom. You’re far better off up here.”

“I have always suspected.”

“You’re best off in my company.” He wanted to prove it, but it seemed too much of a challenge at present. “I shall call on you tomorrow.”

“You may have other duties to attend to tomorrow, my lord.”

“Right. Next week, then. I’ll call on you next week.”

She made a humming noise in the back of her throat that he easily recognized as the sound of a woman humoring a man. His sister had been fond of employing it when they’d been younger and he would air his intent to defy their father.

“Got round to it eventually,” he heard himself mumble.

“What was that?”

“I’ll get round to it,” he stated more clearly. “After this business with my brother.”

Another noise, this time accompanied by a patronizing smile and slight inclination of the head. It mattered little to his mind. Next week would be soon enough to prove himself. Just now, he was too exhausted to even think about attempting to prove something. And too drunk. And much, much too angry at his brother for
his
last attempt at trying to prove something to someone.

“Do you know how he died, Miss Rees? My brother?”

She shook her head.

“A duel. A damned duel. And not even over a woman. Some ridiculous puppy accused him of cheating during a game of cards, and my idiot brother called him out. He’s left a wife and four daughters alone, and the estate to a ne’er-do-well. And they’ll say he died with honor…Or defending his honor, I’ve forgotten which. At any rate, honor will be bandied about like a child’s ball while the puppy abandons his ailing mother to run off to the continent, my nieces wail into their pillows, and the Dane estate crumbles into ruin.” He tried lifting his hand for a toast before realizing he hadn’t a glass, or the energy to lift it.

“To honor,” he muttered.

“Lives are ruined in less savory pursuits than honor.”

“No.” He sighed and leaned back in his tiny chair. His head was so damnably heavy. “No, I don’t think they are.”

“Haven’t you honor?” Miss Rees asked quietly.

He allowed his tired eyes to close, just for a moment, and sighed heavily. “To be honest, Miss Rees…I don’t much care.”

 
 
Chapter 2

It was a little known fact that Miss Anna Rees was unaware of her true age.

According to Mrs. Wrayburn, her only daughter would turn nineteen come April. However, Anna clearly recalled repeating the ages of seven and nine, and her fifteenth year had been celebrated three times—twice in the summer and once in the fall. At best guess, she was near to four-and-twenty and her birthday fell somewhere between July and November.

Once, she had inquired after her true birthday only to be told by her mother that a date of birth was of no consequence. What mattered was how old one appeared.

“And I cannot appear a young woman if I have a daughter grown,” Mrs. Wrayburn had said. “Be a darling and play along.”

Anna had outwardly conceded, inwardly doubted they were fooling anyone, and secretly wondered if her mother had simply forgotten the date.

It hardly signified now, she thought. At one-and-twenty or four-and-twenty, she was an adult. And not just any sort of adult, but one possibly teetering on the verge of becoming an Old Maid. Worse, an old maid that was at once both the most disreputable old maid in all of Christendom, and the dullest.

Here she was, a grown woman living in Anover House, where the most notorious of the demimonde’s widows threw the most depraved parties in all of London, and yet she’d not engaged in a conversation of any length with a gentleman before tonight. She’d scarcely conversed with anyone other than her mother, her governess, and her mother’s staff.

Her experiences with society were very much as Mr. Dane described them—sporadic in nature and brief of duration. She had been to the theater twice in her life and had spent both evenings hidden away in a box. So well hidden, in fact, that she’d not been able to see but half the stage. She’d never been to someone else’s ball or been invited to a dinner party. At her mother’s gatherings, she was dressed in finery and made to stand for a half hour or so on a private, second-level balcony in the ballroom. This was the limited extent of her participation at Anover House, and her loathing of it knew no bounds.

Lord, how she hated being on that balcony, hated standing there alone and silent while the crowd looked her over like a curiosity in a museum. Some chose to stare openly, some glanced at her in passing on their way to the terrace or refreshment table, still others pretended complete indifference, but took surreptitious peaks from behind fans or over shoulders.

It seemed everyone was whispering.

And all the while, Mrs. Wrayburn could be heard in the crowd below, exclaiming over her daughter’s attributes like a doting parent. “La, isn’t she simply beautiful? Isn’t my darling girl the most exquisite of gems?”

Anna knew herself to be reasonably pretty, not beautiful. But thanks to her clever mother, she was unattainable, and there was nothing more captivating, more alluring than that.

Occasionally, if a guest of great consequence requested an introduction, or if her mother was simply feeling generous and playful, a short visit to the balcony was permitted. Bows and curtsies were exchanged, along with a few pleasantries if the guest was a woman, but any attempt to engage Anna in a true conversation was immediately thwarted, particularly if the guest was a gentleman.

Despite her mother’s penchant for providing excuses that painted Anna in an unflattering light—
My darling girl has quite insisted on remaining apart from the festivities tonight. You will forgive her eccentricities, I’m sure
—Anna had been content with the interference in the past. She had no interest in becoming acquainted with her mother’s gentlemen friends.

At least, not until now.

Anna studied the man before her. She’d never have imagined it could be so pleasant spending time with a gentleman. It was foolish, of course, to be taken in by the questionable charm of an inebriated libertine, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.

She was fascinated by Max Dane. And not simply because he was handsome, though that detail had not escaped her notice. He seemed such a contradiction to her, at once both playful and dangerous.

His mischievous charm delighted her. His deep-set, hazel eyes held the unmistakable light of humor, and the loose curl in his tousled hair of rich brown lent him an endearingly boyish look. Though she imagined he’d not be pleased to hear it, there was something about the man that struck her as being just a little bit adorable.

But Max Dane was no boy. It was difficult to assess his height while he was sitting, but he was larger than her uncommonly tall governess, Mrs. Culpepper, which would put him at a minimum of six feet. And while he might appear harmless enough in his slouched and disheveled state, there was no mistaking the wide breadth of his shoulders and outline of muscle beneath his formal evening attire.

Max Dane was a man grown.

Anna leaned a little closer and watched the flickering candlelight cast moving shadows across his handsome face.

This man was unattainable in every sense of the word. And she did so find him captivating.

She wondered what he would say if she told him that tonight was shaping up to be the single most exciting, enchanting night of her life. Probably, he would call her a callous fool, as it was also the night he was grieving the loss of his brother.

Poor boy.

Without thought, she leaned forward and brushed a lock of his hair from his forehead. She’d never known a loss such as his.