Practically Wicked (24 page)

“I mean to pay him for his care of you.”

“What? I don’t need a physician.”

“Then I’ll have wasted his time and my money, but you’ll have no reason for complaint. Here…” He handed her a small brandy. “Drink this.”

She wrinkled her nose at the glass but expertly swallowed down the contents. “Oh,” she gasped. “Oh, that is dreadful. I simply do not understand the appeal.”

Max took the empty glass from her, set it aside. “You’re not a stranger to spirits.”

“No.” Drink, like carnal relations between men and women, had been part of the Anover House education, as provided by Mrs. Wrayburn. When Anna had reached her (estimated) teen years, she’d been given a sampling of spirits, instructions on how each should be served and imbibed, and then told that she could help herself in the future. Without curiosity or the lure of rebellion to tempt her—and having witnessed firsthand what too much drink could do to a person—Anna had kept her distance.

“I’d rather I was.” She made a face and reached for the tea someone had produced with remarkable speed. “Vile stuff, that.”

But it served its purpose, warming her from the inside and settling the worst of her nerves.

She glanced at Max, took in his slightly paled coloring and the hard set of his mouth, and wondered if he might benefit from a glass as well.

 
 
Chapter 15

Max wanted to drink the bottle, or at least from it, in great, long gulps.

But as that would render him even more useless in the current situation, he resisted the lure of oblivion and put his effort into caring for Anna. And into berating himself.

He had made it approximately twenty-one hours before seeking Anna out. At the time he’d thought himself weak and selfish for giving in to his desire to see her. Now he was trying to clear his mind of images of what might have happened had he not given in and sought her out.

Not that he’d been a particular help once he’d found her. Anna had been pulling the child toward her (albeit by the unlikely means of a stick) by the time he’d arrived. But he
could
have been helpful. If the child had been too heavy or too panicked and pulled them both under, he could have reached them in time to help. It was small comfort, but it was all he had.

Max grabbed another blanket and wrapped it around Anna’s shoulders.

He ought to have been there to start. What had he been thinking, letting her walk about the countryside alone? Hadn’t he been obligated to rescue her from Clover, then carry her back to the manor house the last time she’d gone exploring by herself?

She wasn’t one of the village lasses, accustomed to the unique perils of the countryside. The woman had never before been out of London. Hell, the woman had scarce been out of her house. She damn well shouldn’t have been out of this house without—

“Perhaps we
should
send for Mrs. Culpepper.”

Max blinked at the sound of Anna’s voice. Glancing down, he saw he had yet another blanket in his hands. “Am I…?” God, he hated to ask. “Fussing?”

“Oh, yes.” She nodded emphatically. “To be honest, I’ve never experienced the like, not even with Mrs. Culpepper. You do realize it’s warm outside?”

He looked at the blanket in his hand, the two she had on, the fire in the grate, and the steaming cup of tea in her hands.

“You were shivering,” he said defensively.

“Was I?”

Only a little, but he’d felt it when his arm had been around her, and he’d hated it. He absolutely loathed the idea of Anna being hurt or sick, in no small part because it terrified him.

“Shock can give a body chills,” he told her.

“I don’t feel chilled. I feel…Well, I do feel out of sorts as yet, but
not
”—she held up a hand as he stepped closer—“chilled.”

He studied her face closely. There was a warm, healthy color in her cheeks. But that didn’t stop him from wanting to wrap another blanket around her. “Elaborate on ‘out of sorts.’”

“It’s…I don’t know. I feel…disoriented, as if everything is moving faster than I am.” She grimaced and colored. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It does,” he assured her. “Go on.”

“And at the same time, I feel invigorated…wonderful, really, as if I could climb a mountain and not be winded at the top. It’s quite strange, and not entirely unpleasant.”

“Perfectly natural.” As a soldier, he’d experienced something similar after every battle. The mind wasn’t always able to convince the body that danger had passed. He set the last blanket aside. “You’ll be yourself again after a good rest.”

“Rest?” She looked stupefied by the very idea. “I couldn’t possibly.”

“You can try. We’ll get you upstairs, you can change, lie down, and…” He trailed off and fisted his hands, frustrated. Good God, what was
wrong
with him? When had he turned into a dithering, incompetent nursemaid? “Right. Of course you can’t rest.” Just as he couldn’t stop himself from reaching out to brush a damp lock of hair off her shoulder and straighten her blankets. “Have pity and distract me. Tell me why you were using a stick.”

“Beg your pardon?” She took a sip of her tea and he waited, almost patiently, for the words to sink into her racing mind. “Oh, the branch. I used it to reach Cassandra.”

“Five feet away?”

“The water grew very deep, very quickly.”

“And…you…?” His heart plummeted to his feet, and what hope he’d had of fully regaining his composure was lost. “Holy hell, you can’t swim, can you?”

“No, of course not.” She blinked and looked to him with a curious expression. “Unless the skill might be innate, like a dog?”

He shook his head, stunned and horrified.

“Well, then.” She grinned at him. “No, I can’t swim.”

A string of vulgar invectives spilled involuntarily from his mouth.

“Yes,” Anna chimed. “I said much the same. But only in my head, as there was a child involved.”

“You could have drowned. You might have died.”

“Oh, yes, I know.” She blew out a long breath and grinned again, like a woman deranged. “I was
most
terrified.”

No wonder she’d been shivering. No wonder she remained “out of sorts.”

“And that…pleases you?” Bloody hell, he wanted a drink from that brandy bottle. No, on second thought, what he wanted was to scoop Anna into his arms and onto his lap, wrap a dozen more blankets around her, and then drink the bottle of brandy while the reassuring heat of her seeped through to ease the painful knot in his chest.

“Not at the time, no. But now, yes.” She lifted her shoulders in a sheepish manner and said, “It isn’t courage if you’re not afraid,” as if that might provide some clarity.

He squeezed his eyes shut briefly, opened them again, and found himself no less confused. “…Sorry?”

“Courage is doing what is needed despite one’s fear. Without the fear, it’s merely…fearlessness.”

He wondered at his state of mind that he was beginning to follow her logic. “And it’s important to you, to be courageous?”

“I should think it would be important to everyone. But yes, I am relieved to know I am not a coward.”

He reached out to tuck a length of hair behind her ear and found the warmth of her skin as it brushed against his fingers immensely comforting. Not so comforting as the warmth of her in his lap would certainly be, but helpful nonetheless. “Why the devil would you think otherwise?”

“I didn’t. Not really. I simply…I didn’t know. One wonders how one might act in dire circumstances. I wondered quite a bit. But…I so rarely left Anover House…” She trailed off, shaking her head.

Max nodded, rubbed her shoulder soothingly. He couldn’t tell for certain if she was embarrassed or still battling shock, but he understood what she was trying to say. Much of how a person defined himself was through his interactions with the world. When that world was very small, it probably felt as if the opportunities for definition were very limited.

“You might have asked me,” he said, and with a quick glance over his shoulder to be certain they were alone for the moment, he leaned down to press his lips to her brow. It was even better than touching her cheek. “I could have told you how brave you are,” he whispered.

“Thank you.” She sighed and offered a smile that was both grateful and apologetic. “But it’s not the same.”

“No,” he agreed. “I know it’s not.”

There were some things about him he knew to be absolute truths. He enjoyed travel. He’d been a good officer. He’d been a poor brother. He was demonstrably bad at games of chance. If he’d not been allowed to leave McMullin Hall, he might never have known these, and a thousand other, things about himself.

Having never left Anover House, there were a thousand things Anna had yet to learn about herself.

Max withdrew his hand from her shoulder and turned to busy himself pouring a cup of tea he didn’t want. For the first time, he wondered if he should be considering pursuing Anna at any pace, or if that was tantamount to thinking of snatching a young miss straight out of the nursery, or catching a butterfly as it emerged from its cocoon.

His next thought was that he’d been reading too much mawkish poetry of late.

Butterflies, indeed.

Anna Rees was not a fragile curiosity, nor a child in need of coddling. In fact, in many ways she was better suited to navigate the world than some of the young ladies of the ton. She was clever, sensible, and perhaps most important, well educated. Life at Anover House had not left her a blank canvas. Her experiences there had been unusual, not less.

No, it wasn’t definition she lacked. The sort of woman she was, was clear and sharp as glass. What she needed was confidence. That would come—and sometimes go—with time, as it did for everyone. A person was constantly learning new things about himself, the good, the disappointing, and everything in between. Anna wasn’t alone in that.

She had learned something new about herself today and it had bolstered her confidence.

He had learned something new about himself today and it made him uneasy.

Apparently, he was capable of fussing. Evidently, he was incapable of going four-and-twenty hours without seeing Anna Rees. Clearly, he was less motivated by loyalty than he was by irrational fear, because when he was kicked out of the room two minutes later so that Anna might change into dry clothes, the first thing he did was go in search of Mrs. Culpepper. And then Lucien.

A little fussing, he reasoned, never hurt anyone. If Mrs. Culpepper and Lucien could fuss until Anna agreed to spend the remainder of the day with her feet up, all the better.

 
 
Chapter 16

The following afternoon, Anna made her way down a back stairwell, taking stock of her various aches and pains. Her legs were pleasantly sore from her morning walk. Her fingers stung lightly in the places where Hermia’s sharp little teeth had taken hold in play. Her sides and cheeks ached from smiling and laughing.

Anna was certain she’d done more smiling and laughing in the past few days than she typically did in a year, and almost all of it had been with Max.

He’d been waiting for her on the terrace again that morning. Only this time, rather than start them off on a stroll, he’d offered to teach her how to swim. Which she’d thought was quite funny, until she’d realized he was entirely serious.

Though it was a sweet thought, she ultimately declined the offer. She wanted to learn how to swim, but she wasn’t willing to take off her gown in front of Max (and anyone else who happened to wander by) and hop into the pond with nothing on but a thin chemise.

In fact, a rather intimate image had flashed through her mind at the time. Naturally, Max would have to remove some of his garments for swimming as well, and she’d had a surprisingly clear picture of what the man might look like with his muscled chest bared, and his tight breeches clinging to his powerful thighs…And she’d imagined how his eyes might darken when he looked at her in her thin, wet chemise. And, well, perhaps Max had some inkling of just how problematic that could all turn out to be, because he hadn’t pressed the matter when she’d declined, other than to extract a promise from her that she would ask Mrs. Culpepper for lessons with all due haste. Anna had no idea if Mrs. Culpepper had the first inkling of how to swim, but she’d promised all the same.