None of the stories associated with her name were untrue. One witness or another could vouch for the veracity of every scandal she found herself part of.
Nor was she apologetic about a single one.
Following her near death at Peterloo, Annalee had opened her eyes to a new way of looking at the world—at the precarious middling between life and death. One went from blissfully innocent and contented one moment, to nearly trampled by a swarm of panicked people, all bent on survival.
Nay, at the end of the proverbial day, any person—man or woman—who cheated death as she had would stop and reevaluate . . . everything.
As they should. Otherwise, what was the purpose of one’s surviving?
Having witnessed and lived through what she had had led Annalee to carefully assess the world around her and, more specifically, a woman’s place in it.
Click.
From where she sat on her parents’ conservatory floor, tucked behind a table, a forgotten game of whist scattered across the tiles and a cheroot clenched between her teeth, she glanced up.
Annalee trained her ears on the still-invisible-to-her guest.
Silently cursing, she tamped her cheroot on the floor and wafted away the lingering smoke.
A small, familiar figure stepped out from behind the table.
“I thought you weren’t coming back,” Annalee greeted her younger sibling. Largely barred from seeing Harlow outside of the formal events their parents hosted and expected the whole family to attend, Annalee took every opportunity she did have to see the girl.
“I told you I would,” Harlow pointed out, removing the rapier from her scabbard and plopping herself down across from Annalee and the cards laid out between them.
The moon’s glow played off the bright shine of that beloved weapon her sister was never without.
As Harlow set the rapier down beside her, exchanging it for the cards she’d abandoned when she went off to see if anyone was looking for Annalee, and commenced with prattling on, Annalee’s gaze—of its own volition—was drawn to that flash of metal, her eyes locking briefly upon it. It should so work out that her youngest sibling’s fascination and one true love should happen to be . . . that thin-bladed weapon.
Laughter filtered around the conservatory, echoing in Annalee’s mind, the exuberant sound mingling and mixing with squeals and screams of the past.
“Isn’t that hilarious, Annalee?” Harlow was saying, and Annalee came jolting back to the moment. “Annalee?” Harlow repeated . . . this time questioningly.
Giving her head a slight shake to clear the cobwebs left by the past, Annalee laughed. “A search party, you say?” she said, picking up the few words she’d heard her sister speak. As a rule, Annalee didn’t pay too much attention to the rapier. She did, however, support her sister’s unconventional love of the thing. Because even loathing weapons as she did, Annalee appreciated far more that her sister was unique enough to have blazed her own way and found a love of something the world would not expect a lady to love.
Harlow’s eyes glimmered with a mischievous twinkle that may as well have been a mirror reflection of her own.
And just like that, Annalee’s demons fled. It was so easy, being with her sister, loyal and loving. There was also something peaceful in the way Harlow accepted Annalee for who she was. She never compared Annalee to the person whom she used to be. And mayhap that was why it felt so very comfortable being with the one person who didn’t remember Annalee from back then.
“Annnnd there’s more,” Harlow whispered conspiratorially, leaning in.
She mimicked the little girl’s enthusiasm. “More? Surely not!”
Harlow nodded excitedly. “Oh, yes!” Stretching out her legs, her sister crossed her ankles, warming to her story. “You’ll never guess who’s at the center of the search.”
“Mother.” Annalee paused. “Father.” Her stomach sank. “Jeremy.” Please, don’t let it be Jeremy. Jeremy, who should only be at the center of his betrothal ball with his Sophrona, and shouldn’t have to be worrying about—“Oomph.”
Harlow kicked the bottom of Annalee’s bare foot hard with the heel of her boot.
Annalee grunted. “What the hell was that . . . ?”
“Because you’re usually better at this. Mother and Father aren’t impressive guesses. They’re the obvious ones.”
“Yes, you’re right there,” she muttered, directing her focus back on the thirteen cards in her hands. She tossed down a jack of clubs, the highest suited trump card in her hand.
Harlow held up a finger. “I’ll allow Jeremy going about like a fogey in the middle of his betrothal ball would be reason to make him a more interesting guess.” She added her eight of clubs.
Winning the trick, Annalee collected the cards and added them to her pile. Considering the seven of diamonds revealed, she assessed her hand and paused. “Never say . . . Sophrona.”
Sophrona, Jeremy’s fiancée, who generally went out of her way to avoid Annalee. Well, as all good ladies did. She tossed down a queen of hearts.
“That is a better guess,” her sister allowed. She waggled her eyebrows. “But not the correct one.”
Her interest piqued, Annalee raised her gaze to Harlow, who was now intently studying her hand. She nudged her young sister in the foot in much the same way she had knocked Annalee’s, and the girl grunted. “You must tell . . . ?”
Haphazardly, Harlow threw down a jack of hearts. “Darling.”
The cards slipped from Annalee’s fingers, raining down about the makeshift gaming table they’d made of the floor, scattered faceup and facedown.
Her sister scrambled forward. “I know,” she said on a furious whisper. “The gall of him.” She paused. “I mean, it is interesting that proper Darling is missing the festivities, but all the more so that he’d betray you in this way.” Harlow’s eyes lit, and she hovered her little fingers over the hilt resting near her left hand. “Unforgivable.”
Annalee had accustomed herself to that weapon’s unfailing presence with her sister. But that, now coupled with mention of . . . Darling, as society had come to call him . . .
It was a newer name, not the one he’d gone by as a young man or boy, but rather one he had been gifted years later. It suited him. The darling of society, rescuer of innocents. A hero. Who’d happened upon a carriage overturned at Peterloo and rescued the occupants inside . . . while others had been battling for their own salvation on fields run red with blood and echoing with screams and—
Grabbing her champagne flute, Annalee downed the liquid in a long, slow swallow.
“Well?” her sister prodded.
“Wayland is merely looking out for Jeremy.” Wayland, because she was never going to call him by that silliest of titles or monikers . . . except when he was near. Then she’d do so just for the sole pleasure it gave her to tease him for it. “It is what friends do, Harlow.”
They stuck beside one another, through good times and bad. Through peril and peace.
And despite herself, a cynical smile curled her lips at the corners.
Harlow’s eyes bulged. “You’d . . . defend him?”
She shrugged, reaching for the half-empty bottle beside her. She added more of the bubbling brew to her flute. “Don’t have much of an opinion of the gentleman one way or another.”