Practically Wicked (34 page)

“Yes. And, before my break with my father, quite eager to please. I asked Lady Engsly for permission in secret.”

“Did Gideon know?”

“I hadn’t the heart to tell him. He so rarely defied his parents.” He tapped the end of the telescope. “Go on and try it. There’s not a better spot I know of to view the moon and stars on a clear night.”

Anna put the telescope up to her eye. She saw nothing but darkness at first and then…“Nor a better spot to see into that woman’s house.”

“What?”

She handed him the telescope. “See for yourself. Just off to the left there, through the space in the trees.”

He aimed the tool in the direction she pointed and looked. “You’re not supposed to be looking ahead of you. You’re…Good God, that’s Mrs. Mitchell’s cottage. You can see straight into the window.”

“Yes, I noticed.”

“Huh.” He lowered the telescope. “All those nights we spent out here and we never noticed. Mrs. Mitchell is a fortunate woman.”

She turned appalled eyes on him. “You’d have spied on her?”

“We were eleven-year-old boys. Of course we’d have spied on her. Particularly as it is Mrs. Mitchell. She’s something of a mystery in Codridgeton. Married once at the age of seventeen, widowed and childless at nineteen, she remains a lively, amiable, and very pretty woman at six-and-forty. But she’s never expressed even a sliver of interest in any of the men who’ve come calling on her. And there’s been no shortage.”

“How do you know this?”

“A man hears things, here and there.”

She accepted the telescope from him once again, and this time took care to aim it at the sky before looking through the eyepiece. After a bit of adjustment, the moon loomed large and brilliant (if still rather blurry) in her vision. “Amazing,” she whispered and made a note to ask Lucien to borrow the telescope another time.

As spectacular as the moon appeared when magnified, it could not hold her interest nearly so well as the man sitting before her. She lowered the telescope and set it aside. “Perhaps Mrs. Mitchell was madly in love with her husband and simply cannot fathom replacing him in her home and her heart.”

“It was an arranged marriage and he was thirty years her senior.”

That didn’t discount the possibility of love entirely, but it did seem less likely. “Maybe the men who call upon her are lacking in some way, or maybe she is faithful to another love from whom she is separate—a soldier in a distant land, or a diplomat. They might conduct their love affair by post.”

“Poor devil.”

“I think it rather sweet.” She smiled at the thought, then shrugged when another occurred to her. “Or it could be she prefers the company of a woman.”

“She has many female friends, certainly, but—”

“No, not that sort of company. The carnal sort.” She fought the urge to squirm when he silently lifted one dark brow. She should not have suggested such a thing? “I beg your pardon. It wasn’t my intention to offend. I assumed as a visitor to Anover House you were aware that such proclivities existed. I shouldn’t have—”

“Oh, I’m aware, and I’m not offended. Surprised, that’s what I am. I find you endlessly surprising.”

“I was raised in that house,” she reminded him.

Max set her plate before her on the blanket. “I thought you were sheltered from much of its doings.”

“I was sheltered from its guests. Not from the knowledge of what went on, what
goes
on, between them. My mother kept me removed but…well informed. She is of the opinion that nothing tempts curiosity like ignorance and nothing courts disaster like curiosity.”

“I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I find myself in agreement with your mother. Of course, it would have been wiser to have raised you outside the house, away from the need to educate you on rakes and libertines—”

“Like you?”

He shook his head lightly. “I’m no rake, sweetheart.”

“Of course you are.” She gave him a quizzical look. “Aren’t you? You told me you weren’t a gentleman.”

“By the standards of some, I am not,” he agreed easily. “But the fact that there are some rules I’ll not follow does not mean there are no rules to which I will adhere. I don’t mind disappointing the likes of my father’s old friends, but it shouldn’t follow that I am actively seeking to become an ogre. I’m not a despoiler of virgins. I don’t seduce married women or dally with respectable misses and—”

“Just women like me?”

He blinked at that but said nothing for a long time, and she realized he was choosing his next words with some care.

“I have nothing but the highest regard for you, the greatest respect,” he said at last. “I’m not certain what it is, exactly, that you are doing, but let me assure you…I am not dallying.”

What a wonderfully romantic thing to say, she thought, her heart beating a little faster. If it hadn’t been for the lack of privacy, she might have kissed him then and there. And it was on the tip of her tongue to say she wasn’t dallying either, but she bit the words back.

She spent every morning strolling through the countryside with him. She sought him out for company and conversation at every turn. She’d kissed him twice, and rather hoped to add to that number. Even now, she was sharing a picnic with him beneath the stars.

And she did all this knowing it was leading nowhere. She wasn’t a lady, and this wasn’t a courtship. Eventually, it would be time for her to go.

What was she doing, then, if not dallying with the man?

What were they both doing?

“That wasn’t meant to make you sad,” Max murmured.

Anna shook her head. She didn’t want to be sad, there was nothing to be gained by it. If her time with Max was limited, then it was all the more important she make the best use of every moment.

“I’m not sad,” she replied and almost believed the lie. “Merely thoughtful.”

She was lying.

Max knew that Anna would never be an easy woman to read, but he liked to think he was beginning to recognize the signs of certain moods. Certainly, there were some things she was no longer able to hide from him completely. And he knew she was lying.

He’d rather have known why. Why the devil would a sentimental confession from him make the woman sad?

That wasn’t at all flattering. Nor promising, considering he had other sentimental confessions planned for the night.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, hoping to draw her out.

“I was thinking of…Oh, all sorts of things. Mrs. Culpepper. My mother. It has been a trying few days.”

He murmured an agreement and tried to decipher if she was still lying or not, and what he might do about it either way.

“Have a slice of apple,” he suggested and felt like an idiot. Because, really, he ought to have been able to come up with something more helpful in the moment than fruit.

But she seemed to appreciate the effort. Smiling, she accepted the slice and took a small bite from the end. “Let’s speak of something cheerful. Tell me something I don’t know about you. Tell me about your nieces.”

He hesitated, still concerned, but ultimately decided that it was in his best interest to cheer her in whatever way she preferred. “I confess, I do not know them as well as I ought. My sister-in-law is not overly fond of me, and I find we are all happier if I do not force my attentions on the family for any length of time.”

“But you bought your niece a horse?”

He lifted a shoulder. “I am kept apprised of their interests.”

“By the dowager viscountess?”

“No, by the greatest viscount that never was.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“My cousin, Mr. William Dane. He runs the estate for me while I’m away, which is to say, he runs the estate. He came to me three years ago in hopes of borrowing the money to purchase a commission—the plight of a third son of a second son, I’m afraid. I’ve known William since infancy. He’s a good man, a fine leader with a head for business and a talent for diplomacy. I asked for his assistance in running the Dane estate and he gladly accepted.” He popped a grape in his mouth and spoke around the food. “My involvement became unnecessary some time ago.”

“He sounds a competent man.”

Max nodded. “The Dane family has never been so well off. The tenants and staff have never been as happy. Even my difficult sister-in-law cannot find fault with the man, and I assure you, Lady Dane could find fault with Everlasting Paradise. The viscounty should have gone to William.”

“What would you do, then?” she asked, reaching for her goblet of wine.

He watched her lips touch the rim as she took a sip. It was a small, simple act, but one he found incredibly sensual. “What do you mean?”

“If you hadn’t the responsibilities of a viscount, what would you do with yourself?”

“Exactly what I do with myself now, only more often. Drink, lounge about”—he winked at her—“seduce beautiful women.”

“Liar,” she accused on a laugh. “You’re not half as wicked as you would have people believe. You’ve already told me you’re not a rake or libertine. You’re certainly not lazy.”

“Know me so well, do you?” he asked and wondered what she would say if he told her that, while he may not go about seducing women indiscriminately, he was plenty eager to seduce her, specifically.

He could show her wicked. He was coming out of his skin with the want to show her how much fun it could be to be fully, unapologetically indecent.

Which was why, he thought with a quick glance at the group on the other blanket, he’d brought along half of Caldwell Manor as her chaperone.

“I believe I know enough that I might make a respectable guess at what you might do if you were truly free of all constraints,” Anna said. She took another sip of wine, then set down her goblet. “You wouldn’t return to a soldier’s life, I think. You resigned your commission before becoming Lord Dane. You haven’t the patience for politics. The church wouldn’t have you. I wonder…” She tilted her head. “What is it you do with yourself when you’re not thumbing your nose at the ton? When no one’s watching?”

His lips curled up slowly at her question, then he waggled his eyebrows in the most ridiculously suggestive manner he could manage.

Anna gasped, clearly caught between horror and amusement. “That is
not
what I meant.”

“I know.” He laughed. “But I do so appreciate that you knew what
I
meant. You really have had an unusual education. Was there nothing your mother left out?”

“How would I know if something was missing if she didn’t make me aware of its existence to start?”

She had a fair point. “Your own personal research? I imagine the library at Anover House wasn’t short on material of a…let us say explicit nature.”

“Oh, well, if everything there is to know about such things can be found in the books on the subject that my mother possesses, then, no, she didn’t leave anything out.”

“Does she possess a goodly number of books on the subject?”

“Oh, yes,” she assured him. “Stacks and stacks of them.”

“I should have spent more time in that library.”

She laughed and shook her head. “The best ones were kept separately as part of my mother’s private collection.”

“Dare I ask what makes a book one of the best?”

“Artwork,” she said succinctly.

He considered that. “As in the inclusion of, or the quality therein?”

“Well, quality is so subjective…”

“Indeed. What was the title of your favorite?”

It was impossible to tell in the dim light, but Max got the impression Anna blushed a little at the suggestion. “I’ll not tell you that.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted on a laugh. “I just don’t care for the idea of it. Knowing you’ll look at it knowing
I’ve
looked at it.”

“I already know you’ve looked at it,” he pointed out.

“Yes, but you don’t know what ‘it’ is.”

Well, now, this was interesting. “Are we speaking of a specific it? A favorite bit of artwork in a favorite book, is it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Near enough. What’s it a depiction of?” He laughed when she sniffed and turned her head. “It would’ve been titled, being in a book. What’s it called? Tell me.”

“Not for all the naughty artwork in England, milord.”

“What about France? The French have created some spectacular—”

“Yes,” she said coyly. “I know.”

The drawing Anna was thinking of wasn’t particularly wicked, not so far as drawings in Anover House went. It was a colored sketch of a young man and woman embracing in a sun-dappled garden.

Her embarrassment was not in the nudity portrayed…well, not all the embarrassment…it was in the sentiment. The couple were entwined in each other’s arms, lost in each other’s gaze, seemingly oblivious to the world around them.

For Anna, the picture was a sweet bit of ink and imagination that epitomized every silly romantic notion she’d ever had about falling in love. And it was that silly romanticism that embarrassed her. It was always a little uncomfortable to admit wanting something you knew you couldn’t have.

“I think we should return to our original topic,” she declared. “What it is you would do, were you free to do anything at all. I would guess—”

“You may guess all day and not land on the answer to that,” Max cut in. “So, let us strike a deal. I shall tell you what I would do, were I completely free, and you will tell me the name of this book with—”

“No.”

He sighed quite dramatically. “Very well. I’ll tell you what I would do, and you can tell me the same.”

It hardly seemed a fair trade, as he already knew that what she
would
do and what she was
going
to do were the same thing—purchase a cottage for herself. But if Max hadn’t thought of that, she wasn’t going to enlighten him. “Very well, you first.”

“It’s quite simple for me. I would be a man of business.”

She sent him a bland look as she reached for a bit of bread. “Oh, do be serious.”

“I assure you, I am in earnest.”

She took a second glance at his features and saw that there was no hint of teasing or humor on his face. Good heavens, he was serious. “But if business interests you, why leave the running of the Dane estate to your cousin?”