Wayland dropped a bow. “My lady—”
“Oh, stop trying to turn me up sweet, Darling,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “Spare me your gentlemanly pomp and circumstance. I’m no lady.”
He repressed a smile. “May I caution you from going on about that in the presence of your mother? She would not take well to having you reject the title of a lady.”
The girl shrugged. “So?”
So.
Yes, with the spirit this one possessed, if there was an un-grey hair on the earl’s and countess’s heads after Annalee, they would go fully white by the time Lady Harlow Spencer reached her majority. As it was, the countess had struggled mightily with Annalee’s transformation into one of society’s most scandalous socialites—the family’s turmoil having only grown over the years since that transformation had begun. Guilt, a familiar sentiment where this family was concerned, swirled. “I was only advising you to be careful.” To help her.
Lady Harlow narrowed her eyes. “Are you challenging me, Darling?” she snapped, a warning there. Her small hand hovered about the hilt of her rapier.
“I wouldn’t dare think of challenging so fierce a warrior. Lovely scabbard,” he added, knowing the child well enough to shift tactics and get back in her good graces.
Instantly, the girl’s scowl faded, and a smile brightened her plump cheeks. “Annalee’s latest gift.”
His lips twitched. “Of course,” he said, before he could call back the words.
“You dare to insult my sister!” That truce he’d struck with Harlow proved short lived. In one fluid movement, she unsheathed her rapier and thrust the blade at his chest, touching the point to his person.
“I would never,” he said indignantly. Not solely because Annalee was his best friend’s sister, but because of the relationship they’d once had together. Either way, he’d tarried long enough. There was the matter of seeing to the task his friend had put to him. “If you will excuse me? I do have matters to see to.”
Apparently, neither his assurance of fealty to her beloved elder sister nor the pressing obligation he referenced did anything to sway the furious Harlow.
She shot her arm out sideways so that the tip of her rapier kissed the countess’s canary-yellow-painted wallpaper and effectively blocked him from walking past. “Halt, sir! What are you doing here? State your intentions.”
“Or you will run me through?” he asked with a proper amount of solemnity for his friend’s youngest sister.
The blade quivered as she pressed the tip slightly. “Argh, do I detect a note of sarcasm there, knave?”
“Am I to take that as a definite yes in the matter of running me through?” he countered.
“A very definite yes, Darling.”
And to emphasize that point, she applied another hint of pressure, enough to give the blade a greater bend.
“Duly noted,” he muttered under his breath. Apparently it had not been the correct degree of somberness, after all.
“You are looking for her, aren’t you?” she demanded, entirely too astute for a girl of her tender years. How much of this child’s transformation had been a product of the struggles their family had faced since Peterloo? His chest went tight. “Theyyyy sent you. Didn’t they? My terrible parents and faithless brother?” She spat that last word as though it were an epithet that had burnt her tongue.
And mature as she was, and appreciating honesty as she did, he gave her the truth. “I’m looking for your sister.”
Wary eyes met his. “Because of them?” she pressed, refusing to let him skate by without owning all the reasons for his presence here.
“Do you know Annalee and I were once close friends?”
I will love you until the day I die, Wayland Smith . . .
That whispering of long ago drifted into his consciousness.
Harlow moved her gaze over his face, as though she searched out the truth, indecision marching across her features.
In the end, she proved very much the cynic her sister had become.
The girl hardened her mouth. “Someone needs to defend Annalee from the likes of my parents.” She shifted her weapon and wagged the tip of the rapier around his nose as if she were contemplating slicing that slab of flesh clear off. He swallowed hard. Given her penchant for pirates and her threat of moments ago, perhaps she was a good deal closer to separating him from that appendage, after all. “Are you prepared to help Annalee?” And not Jeremy . . . or the earl or countess.
He hesitated.
Armed with an impeccable acuity for one so young, Harlow growled.
“It is your brother’s special night,” he said gently. “And he wants your sister there.”
“Annalee can do what she wants, when she wants.”
Was that, even now, where Annalee was? Off meeting someone? An unexpected jealousy sluiced through him.
“And anyway,” Harlow said, pulling him back from the black thoughts that had slipped in, “my brother only wants to make sure she doesn’t cause him and his bride any trouble.” Harlow’s heavily freckled face pulled, saying clearer than words just what she thought of her brother’s betrothed. In fairness, serene and quiet and calm where the Spencer sisters were a tempest, Lady Sophrona would have never met with the young girl’s approval. “Don’t make it something more honorable than it is, Darling.” She flashed another disapproving look his way before, thankfully, lowering her weapon and sheathing it at her waist. “I, however, never expected this betrayal from you.”
That was because she, like the rest of the world, had no idea the depth of betrayal he was capable of. The woman he’d failed. This family he’d subsequently failed.
He was a good deal more skilled at handling his own sister than he was Jeremy and Annalee’s thirteen-year-old spitfire of a sibling. Wayland brought his palms up slowly. “No betrayal.” Not this time anyway. “Your sister is missing, and your brother asked that I escort her back to the ball. It is nothing more than that. Can you tell me where she is?”
Harlow stared at him for a good long moment.
“And betray her and the good time she’s having to the likes of you, Darling?” She snorted. “I think not.” She hovered a hand around the holster of her rapier, and he eyed those little fingers warily, more than half expecting and fearing she intended to brandish that blade and off him, after all. “You want her? You find her yourself.”
The likes of you . . .
For the truth of it was, Harlow saw what the world did not.
His birthright had made him invisible to all except the Spencer family, and society had come to see him only when he’d been titled. Very few in society shunned him because of his roots. Most accepted him because of his newly minted rank and his connection to the Spencers. But all regarded him as proper and honorable, all the while failing to know of his earliest sins and scandals.
The ones that had irrevocably changed Annalee’s life.
As such, she was the last person he wished to be near . . . for so many reasons. But the fact remained: Jeremy had put the favor to him, and he could no sooner reject that plea for help than he could free himself of the guilt of the past.
Wayland held Harlow’s gaze with his own.
She gave him a wary look.