Practically Wicked (31 page)

He tried to wrap his head around the idea of that. The notion of ownership within a family was not uncommon, particularly when it came to men and their wives. Though they weren’t married, he could admit to feeling quite proprietary toward Anna and could admit, privately, he wouldn’t mind if she returned the sentiment. But this was clearly different, clearly uglier, and he couldn’t quite find the sense of it.

“She shared you with Mrs. Culpepper.”

Anna shook her head. “Madame paid Mrs. Culpepper to care for me. In her eyes, a governess could no more own the child she rears than a maid could own the silver she polishes. But a father, brothers, sister-in-laws…These are real threats.”

“That sort of rationale baffles me.”

“Yes, because it isn’t rational.” Anna’s gaze fell on the leather satchel and she sighed. “In truth, I don’t think she’s lying. I want her to be but…she was too smug. Usually, when she’s lying about something substantial, she becomes dramatic. Excessively dramatic,” she amended after Max gave her a dubious look. The Mrs. Wrayburn he remembered had always been dramatic. “She makes great sweeping gestures with her hands, and lifts her voice, and embellishes her stories with the most improbable details. The tsar sends her love letters, you know.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Mmm. On parchment with corners dipped in gold. There’s an estate and a hundred serfs waiting for her outside of Saint Petersburg, should she want them.”

“Charming.”

“Sometimes it’s two hundred. Sometimes it’s not stories she tells, but promises. My mother makes the most wild promises when her mood is high and she’s had too much wine at dinner. When I was younger, perhaps ten, she promised me a dowry.”

“The thousand pounds.”

“No. Five hundred.” She blinked at that, then laughed suddenly. “Good Lord, even in the lie she cheated me.”

“Anna—”

“She told me once that she didn’t look for ways to hurt me, and I believed it. I thought her meanness originated from selfishness, not an actual desire to harm.” She shook her head, her lips pressed tight. “I’m no longer sure that’s true.”

“I’m sorry,” Max murmured, feeling angry and helpless. “I wish I’d not been so easily thwarted four years ago. I wish I’d persisted and found a way to see you, take you away from Anover House. I should have—”

“Don’t be silly. You can’t blame anyone but my mother.” She blew out a short breath. “And I am likely overestimating and overstating her willingness to do harm.”

“I’m not convinced of that.”

“She’s not a good mother, not even a particularly good person, but neither is she a monster.”

He figured the best response to that was a noncommittal “hmmm.”

“I never went hungry, or cold. I never feared the back of her hand, or the possibility of being forced to entertain one of her gentleman friends.”

“The fact that she might have been worse doesn’t make her better by default.”

“Nor the fact that she may have been better, worse.”

Max squashed the urge to continue the argument. The last thing Anna needed right now was a debate on just how awful her mother truly was.

“You know her best,” he murmured.

“I’m not sure anyone knows—” She broke off and turned at the sound of light voices and footsteps hurrying down the hall past the library door.

“Lucien’s returned,” Max said and swore he heard Anna swallow. “He’ll work in his study a bit before dinner. It’s a good time to speak with him.”

She nodded but stayed where she was.

“Do you want me to come with you?” he tried.

“Yes. No. That is, I do. I would very much like your company. But it wouldn’t be right.”

She looked at him, her lovely gray eyes worried, but her lips curled into the faintest smiles. “You knew I’d never agree to keeping this secret from him.”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t really lie to him all the time, do you?”

“You’ve decided to give away your secrets. I’ve not agreed to give away mine.”

The smile grew, just a little. “Thank you,” she whispered. “For everything.”

Unsure of what else to do for her, he stepped close, slipped an arm around her waist, and pulled her in for a soft kiss.

There were other things he intended to do for her later, of course. Not all of her troubles would be solved after speaking with Lucien. And the anger roiling under his skin would not be appeased with inaction.

But right now, a moment more of comfort and distraction was all he could offer. Determined to make the most of it, he ran his hands slowly up her back, molding her to him, while he brushed his lips tenderly over hers, took small, careful tastes of her mouth, and otherwise walked that very fine line between stirring a gentle passion and courting a wild need.

All too soon, he felt the latter threaten to overtake them, and with a sigh of regret, he pulled away and pressed his lips to her forehead, then the warm skin of her cheeks.

“I’ll be here,” he whispered, “if you need me.”

 
 
Chapter 22

Anna walked to Lucien’s study with her heart in her throat.

She recalled the first time she’d learned the Marquess of Engsly was her brother, in the sitting room at Anover House, and she recalled the first time she’d seen Lucien standing on the portico, waiting for her. Both times, she had experienced a curious detachment from him, an inability to
feel
that he was her brother.

If he’d scorned her upon her arrival at Caldwell, it would have concerned her only in so far as what it meant for her chances of receiving a thousand pounds.

How drastically things had changed.

The idea of facing Lucien’s scorn, his censure, made her feel physically ill. His good opinion meant something to her now.
He
meant something to her.

Her pulse picked up as she reached the open door to his study and saw that she had caught him just as he was taking a seat behind his desk.

“Lucien? May I speak with you a moment?”

He glanced up, smiled, and gestured her inside with one hand while the other pulled impatiently at his cravat. “Yes, yes, of course. What might I do for you?”

Anna stepped inside and took up position behind a chair rather than in it. She found that curling her fingers into the upholstered back helped to steady her. Probably, she thought, there were ways one might ease into a sensitive topic, but damned if she could come up with anything at present.

“My mother has come to Codridgeton,” she heard herself say. “She is staying at the Bear’s Rest.”

Lucien slowly lowered his hand. His eyes turned sharp. “Is she? She made the trip to visit you, I presume?”

“No, not to visit, exactly. She…She came to…” She swallowed hard, tipped her chin up, and forced herself to finish. “She has informed me that I was mistaken in coming here. That I did so with false information.”

“False information,” Lucien repeated slowly. “You are not my sister?”

“What? Oh, no. That is, yes.
Yes
, I am your sister. I’m sorry, I should have made that clear immediately.” Her fingers curled deeper into the chair. “And I should not have come. Your father and my mother entered into a separate contract regarding my care, the terms of which your father satisfied.”

“My father did provide for your care?”

“Apparently, yes. I—”

“Huh,” Engsly cut in with some surprise. “I’d not have thought him capable of it…” He frowned at a spot on the desk for a second, then shrugged. “Well, there’s an end to that, then. I thank you for telling me of it. It is nice to hear something good about one’s father from time to time. Will you still be going to Menning with Lilly and Winnefred tomorrow, or would you prefer to postpone that for now and spend the day with your mother?”

The extended apology she had prepared died on her lips. “I…Beg your pardon?”

“The trip to Menning? Lilly and Freddie wished to show you the ruins of the old abbey?”

“I…” She opened her mouth. Closed it again and shook her head mutely.

“I could have sworn they spoke of it to you.”

“They did,” she managed at last. “I only…We’re not done with this…other business, are we?”

Lucien looked well and truly confused. “I’m sorry, I thought we were. Was there something else you wished to discuss?”

“…No?”

“I’ll take that as a yes. What’s troubling you about this?” His eyes narrowed a split second before they went wide and he sat up a little straighter in his chair. “Is it the thousand pounds? Because it’s still yours, if you need it. Or if you simply want it for that matter.”

“It is?”

“You’re my sister,” he said with the barest hint of impatience. “If you need a thousand pounds, you’ll have it.”

As simple as that? Surely not. Nothing was as simple as that. “Oh…All right?”

He studied her a moment more, then swore under his breath. “It
would
help you to have the thousand pounds, wouldn’t it? I apologize, I should have thought of it sooner. It has been a long time since I’ve been obligated to look to someone else for my own funds. I’ve forgotten the restraint that dependence puts on a person, and I’ve taken for granted the freedom in financial independence. I’ll have my man draw up the bank note tomorrow. Then you may cease worrying about your future quite so much and enjoy Caldwell a little more. Sound reasonable?”

A thousand pounds tomorrow, she could scarcely believe it. She’d come to him expecting his disappointment and fearing worse, and now here he was, offering her a thousand pounds. “Yes. No. I don’t understand. Am I to understand you want to pay money not owed to me
and
you wish for me to stay?”

“Haven’t we been through this?”

“Yes, but…When you invited me, you were under the impression your father died in debt—”

Anna broke off at the sight of Lucien rising from his chair, his face set in hard lines. He looked, she thought, as he pinned her with a hard stare, every inch a peer of the realm…and not the dissipated, ineffectual sort that frequented Anover House.

“I do not invite debts to Caldwell Manor,” Lucien informed her. “You are welcomed here because you are my sister. No contract, fulfilled, nullified, or anything in between will alter that. Are we clear on the matter?”

She nodded but barely found her voice. “Yes.”

“Are you certain? Because I’ve no interest in having this conversation again.”

“Yes. Yes, I’m certain.”

He nodded once, caught his hands behind his back. “Good. Now, I do not know your mother, only vaguely of her, but I am beginning to suspect, by the extent of your misgivings, that she did not bring this information to Codridgeton for the purpose of enlightening you or protecting you. Am I correct in this assumption?”

“Yes.”

“She’ll be gone by tomorrow.”

Anna came around the chair. A giddy relief was growing inside her by leaps and bounds, but it was not enough to squash her fear of anyone from Caldwell being thrown into the same room as her mother. “That won’t be necessary. I’ll send her off tomorrow.”

“Anna, I can’t—”

“Please. She’s my mother. It’s for me to do.”

“Is she a danger to you?”

“Only to my peace of mind,” she assured him.

He considered it, and her, for several long moments. “Very well, but you’ll take two footmen with you.”

“Yes, of course.” Just not into the inn itself. Whatever ugliness Madame might spew would not be allowed to land on
anyone
connected to the Haverstons.

“And you’ll inform me if she gives you any more trouble.”

“Yes,” she replied and prayed he’d not make her promise to anything specific. The odds of Mrs. Wrayburn agreeing to leave without making trouble in the form of the aforementioned ugliness were slim.

“Good. Then, as I believe I informed you earlier…There’s an end to that.”

Max considered and rejected the idea of asking Anna if she wished for direct assistance in dealing with her mother. There was every possibility she might say no, in which case she would be all the angrier that he had decided to assist anyway.

The woman needed to learn there was more to independence than trusting no one and doing everything for oneself. No one did everything for himself. A tailor didn’t weave his own cloth, a blacksmith didn’t mine his own ore.

And Anna would not be sending her own mother packing, which was why, immediately after he saw Anna leave the study arm in arm with Lucien, he left for Codridgeton on horseback.

Besides, begging permission was generally less successful than begging forgiveness.

And his mission tonight would be successful.

It was quick and easy work to learn which room belonged to Mrs. Wrayburn. The owner of the Bear’s Rest, Jim Alden, had known him since childhood; his wife had been particularly fond of Beatrice.

“Don’t need my help in finding it,” Jim grumbled inside the tavern. “Pair of gargoyles standing right outside the door. Mr. Ox and Jones, they calls themselves. I don’t like ’em. Where does she think she is, she needs protection like that? St. Giles? She’ll start rumors the Bear’s Rest ain’t safe—”