Practically Wicked (2 page)

There was a slight pause before she spoke. “And you are Mr. Maximilian Dane, the Disappointment of McMullin Hall.”

“Ah…
Not
,” he informed her with a quick jab of his finger at the ceiling, “
anymore
. At half past seven this morning, or somewhere…thereabouts, I became
Viscount
Dane…the Disappointment of McMullin Hall.”

“Oh.” Her tone softened as the meaning of his words set in. “Oh, I am sorry.”

“’S neither here nor there,” he assured her with a clumsy sweep of his hand. “Speaking of which…Where is here, love?”

“Anover House.”

“Yes, I know. Lovely party. Where in Anover House?”

“The nursery.”

“Ah. That would explain the miniature furniture, wouldn’t it?” He shifted a bit and grimaced when he caught the side of his ankle on the table leg. “Bit long in the tooth for the nursery, aren’t you?”

“It was the nearest room, my lord. You—”

“Don’t,”
he cut in sharply. “Don’t call me that. I’ve hours yet.”

“Hours?”

“Until everyone hears, until everyone knows I am Lord Dane.” He curled his lip in disgust. “Until I have to be a bloody viscount.”

“Very well. Mr. Dane, then. If you would—”

Something about the way she said his name sparked a memory.

“Mrs. Carring,” he said suddenly and made a failed effort at snapping his fingers. “
That’s
why I came upstairs.” The reasonably attractive and exceptionally accommodating widow Carring had invited him to her guest chambers. He’d stopped in the library for that last drink, something to further blur the face of his brother, and then…He’d become a bit turned around. He gave Miss Rees a quizzical look. “Came down the wrong hall, did I?”

“If you were after Mrs. Carring, yes. She is a floor below.”

“I climbed an extra set of steps?” Strange, he’d not have thought himself capable. His legs felt like pudding. “Huh. And how is it I came to be in your company?”

“I was in the hallway. You waved, tripped, and landed at my feet.”

He closed his eyes in thought, found it made the room spin unpleasantly, and let his gaze drift over Miss Rees’s face instead. He recalled now, smiling at the pretty lady, losing his feet, and finding them again with the lady’s assistance. She smelled sweet and flowery, like sugar biscuits and roses. “So, I did. What the devil did I trip on?”

“I couldn’t say,” Miss Rees replied and rose smoothly from her chair.

In a display of coordination that surprised him, he reached forward and took hold of her wrist without falling out of his seat. “Where are you going?”

“To ring for assistance.” She tugged at her wrist, but he held on with a gentle grasp. He liked the way the heat of her skin seeped through the cotton and warmed his palm.

“Don’t. I don’t want help. I don’t need it.” And the moment she rang for it, she’d leave. He wanted that least of all. The ballroom below was filled with ladies like the widow Carring—worldly women clad in silk, rubies, and the promise of sin-filled nights. But it was the prim little creature before him now who intrigued him. “You’ve a different sort of promise.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He shook his head, lightly so as not to lose it entirely. “Never mind. Don’t ring for help.”

“You cannot stay here in the nursery, my lord, and—”

“Mr. Dane,” he reminded her. “Why not? Are there children about?”

Surely not. Surely no one, not even the most depraved of Mrs. Wrayburn’s friends, would be so ridiculous as to bring a child to one of the woman’s parties.

“No, but—”

“Then we’ll stay. Sit,” he pressed again. He considered and rejected the idea of tugging her back onto her seat. His current level of coordination was unpredictable at best. He wasn’t looking to do the woman an injury. “Talk with me.”

“I can’t. It isn’t proper.”

He snorted a little in response. As far as good society was concerned, the words “proper” and “Anover House” were mutually exclusive. “What do we care for proper, you and I?”

“I care,” she replied, and he watched with fascination as her already rigid back straightened just a hair further. “My mother would most assuredly care.”

“Then she ought to have had the sense to move you out of the house by now.”

If he remembered correctly, rumor had it Mrs. Wrayburn had, in fact, tried to marry her daughter off on more than one occasion, but Miss Rees was content to stay as she was—a reclusive and spoiled young woman, and a burden on her overindulgent mother.

Well, the little darling could indulge someone else for a change.

“I want you to stay,” he informed her. “And now that I’m a viscount, I’m fairly certain you have to do as I say. Sit. Talk.”

Unless he was very much mistaken, her lips twitched with amusement. “No.”

This time, when she pulled at her wrist he had no choice but to grant her freedom or risk being yanked from his seat.

He squinted at her willowy arms. “Stronger than you look.”

That dubious compliment earned him a bland expression. “I daresay a kitten would give you trouble in your current condition, which is why I need to ring—”

“That’s insulting.” Quite possibly true, but nonetheless insulting. “Unless you are referring to one of those giant breeds of cats? Tigers and such? They have exceptionally large kittens.”

“Cubs, Mr. Dane. And no, I was not.”

“Then I’m insulted.” He made a show of slumping in his chair, but when that failed to lure out a smile, he tried another tack. “Before passing along your next barb, you might consider taking into account the sad,
sad
nature of events that has led to my weakened state.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He wondered if he was, perhaps, not expressing himself as clearly as he imagined. “There’s been a death in the family, you’ll recall.”

It was unforgivable to make mention of his brother’s passing in such a careless manner, and he might have felt a little guilty for it, were he not so damnably angry with his brother just now. And so gratified to see Miss Rees’s expression soften once again. And so stupendously drunk.

But softened or not, Miss Rees appeared implacable in her resolve to leave. “Please understand, Mr. Dane, I am most sorry for the loss of your father. However—”

Baffled, he straightened in his chair. “My father?”

“The gentleman from whom you’ve inherited the viscounty.”

“Ah, no. My elder brother, Reginald. My father shuffled off the mortal coil years ago.” He gave that additional thought. “Maybe only two. Strange, seems longer. And not long enough.” The viscount’s baritone voice had grown happily dim in his memory.

“I am truly sorry for the loss of your brother,” Miss Rees corrected patiently. “However, I cannot continue to keep company with you in here, like this. I may not come from good ton, but I am an unmarried young woman, and as a gentleman, you—”

“Good Lord, child, where did you acquire the impression I was a gentleman?”

“Very well,” she conceded. “As a
viscount
, you are expected, at the very least, to make a show of adhering to the strictures governing a gentleman’s behavior, and as such, you
must
respect my wish to not risk being seen in—”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he groaned, “just
go
.”

A lecture of what he
must
do
was the last thing he wanted to listen to at present. He’d done nothing but follow the mandates of others for the first three-and-twenty years of his life. It had been an appalling experience. He had discovered in the two years since that it was far better to be a disappointment than a pawn. Better still if he didn’t have to suffer through someone else’s long-winded opinion on the matter.

Miss Rees glanced at the bellpull, then back to him. “Will you allow me to ring for—?”

“No.” If he couldn’t sit with the pretty lady, he’d sit alone for a bit and find his own way back downstairs.

“As you like,” she murmured and turned and walked away with the flowing grace that had helped cement her nickname as the Ice Maiden.

“Like gliding on ice,” he mumbled. “’Snot natural.”

Giving no indication of having heard the comment, she reached the door, paused with her hand on the handle, and looked back with a pleading expression. “
Please
allow me to ring for assistance.”

“No.”

“But I—”

“No.”

A small crease formed between the dark arcs of her brows. “You can’t mean to—”

“Unaccustomed to hearing the word ‘no,’ aren’t you?”

Her lips thinned. “I ought to have left you in the hall.”

“Regrets are like mistresses,” he informed her.

“I…” Her hand dropped from the handle. “What?”

“Good men don’t have them.”

She blinked at that, then broke into a soft laughter that sent pleasant chills along his skin. “That is the most ridiculous adage I have ever heard.”

“I’m foxed,” he pointed out and shrugged. “I’m cleverer when…cleverer? Is it cleverer? Or is it more clever? Whichever. I’m brilliant when I’m sober.”

“And less inclined to announce it, one might hope.” With a resigned sigh, she reached for the door handle again, but this time, she locked the door and dropped the key in her pocket.

“You move like a queen,” he said quietly as she crossed the room and resumed her seat in front of him. “On ice skates. What did you just do?”

“I locked the door.”

“Yes, I know.” He was drunk, not blind. “Why?”

“To avoid another inebriated guest stumbling in upon us by accident.”

“You mean to stay?” he asked, not quite believing it.

Avoiding his gaze, she brushed a smoothing hand down the sleeve of one arm. “You won’t allow me to call for someone else.”

“And you aren’t willing to leave me sitting here all alone? That is…unexpected.” He leaned in for a closer inspection of her features. “Aren’t you supposed to be frigid and uncaring?”

She looked at him, her eyes narrowing just a hair. “Aren’t you supposed to be charming?”

He grinned at her, appreciating the sharp retort. “I’ll have you know, I could talk the devil out of his tail.”

“I’m not a devil, Mr. Dane.”

“No…I believe you might be an angel.”

“And I believe the reports of your charm have been grossly exaggerated.”

“It was trite, wasn’t it?” He propped his elbow on the table, rested his chin in his hand, and studied her features at leisure. “There
is
something…otherworldly about you. The eyes, I think. But they’re not angelic. They’re fae.”

“They’re merely sober.”

“Equally disconcerting. Why is it you never come downstairs with your mother? She throws wonderful parties. You’d enjoy yourself, I think.”

“I doubt it.”

“You’re enjoying yourself now, with me,” he pointed out. Reasonably, to his mind. “The ballroom is brimming with fellows just like myself.”

“Inebriated?”

“Yes,” he allowed. “Also, exciting and charming.”

She eyed him with frank curiosity. “Is that what you’re doing coming to parties like these? Dedicating your life to being exciting and charming?”

“I don’t dedicate myself to anything,” he assured her, lifting his chin from his hand. “Entirely too much work.”

“Being a member of the demimonde isn’t work? Drink and women and scandals.” She shook her head lightly. “Seems prodigiously taxing to me. Why do you do it?”

“Because I can,” he replied with a careless lift of one shoulder. “Because I’m not supposed to.”

She digested that quietly a moment before speaking. “A viscounty comes with many responsibilities, I imagine. Will you change your ways now?”

“I have changed my ways, sweet. That is how I landed here. And I must say, misshapen furniture notwithstanding, I rather like where I am at present.” He smiled at her and watched the faintest of blushes bloom on her cheeks. “How is it you knew of my nickname, but not that my brother was the viscount?”

To her credit, she merely blinked at the sudden change of subject. “When one spends little time outside one’s rooms, one gains information in bits and pieces. I encountered your name and reputation in passing.”

“Everything you do is in passing. A moment in the ballroom, a mere peek out of the opera box. I’ve never met the man to have spent more than thirty seconds in your company.”

A flicker of unease crossed her features, but it was gone almost the instant it arrived. “Do you mean to brag to your friends to have been the only one?”

“And be banished from your mother’s home?” He made a scoffing noise. “I’ll keep the accomplishment to myself, though it will cost me. You’re the subject of considerable speculation, you know.”

“Am I?” She digested that behind a shuttered expression. “One would think people would have something more compelling to discuss than a woman of whom they know nothing.”

“It’s the mystery of the thing,” he explained. “What will become of the spoiled, reclusive daughter of the notorious Mrs. Wrayburn? Will she follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a member of the demimonde, will she marry a tradesman with the fortune to keep her in silk and diamonds?”

“Perhaps I’m not as spoiled as people seem to think,” she countered softly. “Perhaps I’ll marry a pauper and reside in a cottage in the countryside.”

“And live off your dowry?” He considered that. “Do you have dowry?”

“You’d have to ask my mother.”

“Hardly matters,” he decided. “Who are you going to meet, peeking into ballrooms and parlors long enough to give us all a glimpse of your fae eyes and fine feathers, and hiding away upstairs for the rest of the night?”

“I don’t hide,” she replied, a whisper of defensiveness creeping into her voice. “And I’ve met you.”

“I hope you’re not expecting a proposal.”

Her lips curved. “You’re shortsighted to not consider the notion. You could do your duty to the viscounty and shock good society in one fell swoop.”

“That is an
excellent
point.” Leaning toward her, he offered a lovelorn expression. “Will you marry me, Miss Anna Rees?”

“No, Lord Dane. I will not.”

The quick rejection surprised him into sitting up. There wasn’t a single unmarried woman of his acquaintance who would refuse an offer, even a drunken one, from a peer. “You would turn down the opportunity to be a viscountess?’