Practically Wicked (7 page)

Max’s arrival at Caldwell Manor played out much as his arrivals always did. He was greeted with polite smiles and commendable efficiency from the staff, and promptly escorted into the small sitting room off the library, where Mrs. Webster, the housekeeper, offered refreshments. Ginger biscuits, his favorite. Max politely declined. The biscuits were brought, anyway.

It was a routine Max took pleasure in, despite its formality. He had been six the first time his family visited Caldwell Manor, and though much had changed over the years, there were some things on which he could always rely. He would always be welcomed, there would never be a shortage of ginger biscuits, and hell would freeze solid before Mrs. Webster took “no, thank you” for an answer.

Feeling more relaxed by the moment, Max tugged free an already loose cravat, leaned back in his third-favorite chair, and mused that
this
was why he would always agree to visit Caldwell, even when a summons came in the middle of the London season. He would come for the comfort of its routines and the consistency of its inhabitants.

“What the devil are you doing here?”

Max looked up to find Lucien Haverston, the Marquess of Engsly, standing in the doorway. He looked disheveled and wild-eyed, his dark hair sticking up in several places.

Max returned the greeting with a blank stare. “Well…this is new.”

“Why aren’t you in London?”

“Because I’m answering your summons.”

Black brows lowered on a handsome face that had broken the hearts of many a maiden. Or so Lucien had liked to claim in his youth. “What?”

“I was invited. You invited me. You insisted I visit, in fact. You said your wife would be in Scotland. I was spending too much time in London. You promised a bit of fishing, a little revelry with the lasses at the tavern, fine weather and clean country air—”

“Oh, hell, I
did
,” Lucien cut in with a groan. “Last month, was it?” He shook his head suddenly and waved his hand about as if to erase the thought. “Doesn’t matter. You have to go.”

“What? Why?”

“I have guests.”

“Yes,” Max returned pointedly. “Me.”

“You’re not a guest. You’re…you.” Lucien blinked at that statement, then began snapping his fingers repeatedly in the manner of someone slowly arriving at a solution to a particularly vexing dilemma. “You
are
you.” He stopped snapping to point. “You have to stay.”

Max rubbed the back of his hand under his chin. “Are you catching?”

“I’m not sick. I’m…I’m in need of a drink.”

Lucien spun about on his heel and marched across the room toward a set of crystal decanters on a fine old walnut sideboard, then stopped suddenly and whirled about with a blank expression. “I never promised revelry at the tavern.”

Max shrugged and stretched out his legs before him. “Can’t blame a man for trying.”

“Of course you can. My wife would.”

And Lucien would rather face the gallows than cause Lilly one moment’s consternation. The Marquess and Marchioness of Engsly were famously besotted with each other.

“Do you want one?” Lucien inquired, pouring from a decanter.

Max shook his head, and watched in fascination as his friend swallowed down a finger-full of spirits. Lucien had never been one for drink. He took wine at meals, the occasional brandy after dinner and ale during travel, that was all.

“Are you going to tell me what’s—?”

“My sister is coming.” Lucien blew out a hard breath after the drink. “Any minute now.”

“Winnefred? Brilliant.”

“No, not my brother’s wife.” Lucien flicked a longing glance at the brandy bottle but didn’t refill his glass. “My father’s daughter. My sister.”

Max straightened in the chair, intrigued and wary. “You don’t have a sister.”

“Apparently, I do.”

“I see.” He took a closer look at his friend’s face and for the first time noticed shadows beneath his eyes. Lucien wasn’t merely out of sorts. He was well and truly worried. “When did you learn of it?”

“A fortnight ago,” Lucien replied, setting down his glass. “She wrote to my solicitor in London. He verified her claim of proof. God, this is discomforting. Gideon and I have always known this sort of thing might happen, of course. Our father was a faithless bastard. It’s a miracle we’re not lousy with half siblings. But the reality of facing a sister…”

Was something his friend didn’t have to do alone, Max finished silently. “I’m happy to stay.”

Lucien bobbed his head and took a seat on the very edge of the settee across from Max. “Excellent. Excellent. She’s from your world. Your presence might well put her at ease.”

“We live in the same world, Lucien,” Max drawled. “I just know more interesting people. Who is this girl?”

“Miss Anna Rees. The daughter of Mrs. Rebecca Wrayburn.”

“Anna…” The name came out a little strangled. Max cleared his throat and tried again. “Anna Rees?
The
Miss Anna Rees?”

Oh, hell. Oh, holy hell.

The light of memory washed over Lucien’s worried face. “That’s right, didn’t you tell me that you know the girl personally?”

“No, I told you I’d met her.” Once it had become clear that Anna Rees wanted nothing to do with him, he saw no particular reason to keep secret the fact that they’d met. He’d also seen no particular reason to advertise the fact that she wanted nothing more to do with him, and had therefore limited his accounting of the evening to Lucien and Gideon.

“What is she like?” Lucien inquired.

“I don’t know. She’s…” She was Anna Rees. Beautiful, alluring, captivating. Cold and unattainable. Max shook his head and resisted the urge to shift in his seat. “I don’t know.”

He’d only imagined he’d known.

“Come on, man,” Lucien pressed. “You’re one of precious few people to have ever spoken with the girl.”

“My memory of the occasion is a bit foggy round the edges, for a contingent of reasons.”

“You were drunk?”

“It was four years ago. Naturally, I was drunk.” Max shrugged, unashamed and unrepentant. Many men went through a period of unruliness. His had come a mite later than some, that was all. He’d since tempered his drinking. The remainder of his habits continued to garner the disapproval of good society, but he no longer felt the need to drink himself into oblivion on a regular basis. “I was also grieving the unexpected acquisition of the viscounty.”

“Hell. How did that meeting proceed, exactly? You didn’t behave badly toward her, did you?”

“Do you know, I have wondered that very thing—” He grinned when Lucien’s face took on a dark cast. “Settle your feathers, Your Lordship. I was in no position to have taken advantage of the girl. I fell asleep in creation’s most uncomfortable chair. Little minx left me there.”

Just like the first time he’d mentioned the meeting to Lucien, Max wisely left out that he’d proposed to the woman in a drunken stupor. That he’d returned a week later, as she’d made him promise, only to be told by Mrs. Wrayburn that her daughter was not receiving visitors. That he’d returned again and again, and had written, twice, before finally accepting the fact that Miss Rees wanted nothing to do with him.

Lucien rose from his seat yet again and stabbed a finger at Max. “By God, if I hear a different story from her…Maybe you should leave.”

Max decided he wasn’t going anywhere. The last thing Lucien needed was more time alone with his worries. A bit of distraction, that’s what he needed. “You’re going to be unbearable as an older brother.”

“I’m already an older brother.”

“Not to a sister. It’s different.” He thought of his own sister, Beatrice. Often when he pictured her in his mind, he saw not the grown woman with a child of her own, but the mischievous little girl who used to follow him about the house, begging him to play at dolls or some equally inconvenient and embarrassingly female game, and generally having her way. It was near impossible to deny Beatrice anything…or should have been. “Trust me.”

“You’re right.” Lucien speared his fingers through his hair. “I know you’re right. What the devil do I know of sisters?”

“You’ve a sister-in-law,” Max pointed out.

Lucien sent him a bland look. “Have you met Freddie?”

The fiercely independent and oft times wild Winnefred was hardly representative of what some preferred to think of as the weaker sex.

“You have a wife,” he tried instead. “I should think that comparable on some level.”

“Well, it’s not. I don’t know what to do with the woman, what to say to her. Should I apologize? Should I have gone to her instead of insisting she come here? Do I embrace her? Do I welcome her to my home or to our home?” He swore under his breath and began to pace between the settee and the fireplace. “It should have been her home before now. It should have been available to her at the very least. Hell, I will need to apologize.”

Or she would, Max thought darkly, if he discovered she was playing the Haverstons false and turning his friend inside out in the process. “For pity’s sake, man, sit down. You’re making this into more than it is. You’ll have a conversation with the woman and she’ll be on her way.” And he could get down to the business of investigating her claim on the Haverstons. “You can manage that—”

“I invited her for a visit,” Lucien cut in. “Not a conversation.”

“You don’t mean to have her stay on at Caldwell.” By the look of Lucien’s expression, he did. Oh, bloody hell. “Lucien, you don’t know this woman. I’m not sure anyone knows this woman, not even her own mother.”

“I know enough. We share a bond. We share blood.”

“The blood of a faithless bastard,” he reminded Lucien. “And her mother, you’ll recall, is Mrs. Wrayburn. A woman many might call a faithless bitch, though I’ve yet to meet the man careless enough to do so within earshot—”

“You’ve never believed blood would out,” Lucien said, clearly taken aback, but not so much that he slowed his determination to wear a hole in the carpet.

“It doesn’t. It can’t. Blood doesn’t do much of anything.” And the mere claim of blood shouldn’t grant one unfettered access to Caldwell Manor.

“It makes family,” Lucien countered.

“No, it makes lineage.” Max shook his head and held up a hand to forestall further argument. A serious debate wasn’t going to help Lucien at present. “Just…be cautious in your dealings with Miss Rees.”

“Of course.”

There was no “of course” about it. “What proof did Miss Rees provide?”

“Correspondence between our father and her mother, along with a contract and a journal.”

“A contract?”

“She was his mistress. Naturally, there was a contract.” Lucien’s lips twisted. “And naturally, his lordship failed to fulfill his obligations.”

The sliver of unease and suspicion that had been working on Max’s skin began to grow at an exponential rate.

“And Miss Rees has requested you do so in his stead,” he guessed. “Those obligations amount to how much, exactly?”

“A thousand pounds or so.” Lucien dismissed the number with an impatient wave of the hand. “Immaterial, she’ll have whatever she needs. Settling the contract is not the purpose of having her visit. She’s my sister. I want to meet her.”

Max said nothing aloud, but he was swearing profusely in his head. Anna wasn’t coming to Caldwell Manor to meet with family, or even to collect that thousand pounds. She was after what Lucien’s reputation guaranteed—the very thing he had just agreed to provide…
whatever she needs
.

It was no secret the marquess and his brother had been actively making retributions for the financial crimes committed by their stepmother before her death. And it would be a fairly simple thing for a woman as diversely connected as Mrs. Wrayburn to find a competent forger in London.

Max debated how much opposition it was wise to put forward at present. Just a little to start, he decided. It was too late to rethink the invitation, but not too late to encourage that bit of caution once the woman arrived.

“You don’t find it peculiar that there’s been no mention of Miss Rees or Mrs. Wrayburn amongst your father’s papers?” he asked.

“I’ve not gone through them all. I’m not sure we’ve found them all. My stepmother made a mess of things before her departure. Boxes in the attic, in the cellar, even in the stable. Some things have been lost for good, I’m sure.” Lucien grimaced and shrugged. “To be honest, finding and reading my father’s personal letters has not been a priority.”

Max nodded in reluctant understanding. He’d just as soon not learn the contents of his father’s mail. He was, however, determined to learn of Anna’s intentions in attaching herself to the Haverstons.

“She’s here,” Lucien announced suddenly, his gaze riveted to the windows overlooking the front of the house.

Rising from his seat, Max saw the small black dot of a carriage that was slowly making its way down Caldwell’s long, winding drive. A spark of anticipation began to mingle with his unease and suspicion. There she was, he thought, Miss Anna Rees.

Bloody hell.

He’d not thought of the woman in years…not voluntarily. She did have a habit of sneaking into his mind at the oddest times. The smell of roses and baking biscuits had brought her to mind once or twice, and he’d caught himself staring at a terrier of some sort in Hyde Park a few months back and recalling her dream of owning a hound. And there’d been that brief and unexpected burst of fear two weeks back when he’d heard someone from Anover House had been injured in a fall from her horse. It passed mere seconds later when the injured party was revealed to be Mrs. Wrayburn, but in that moment before…

Max cut off his line of thought with a scowl. Clearly, he’d thought of her more often and more recently than he’d cared to admit.

“I cannot believe the Ice Maiden of Anover House might be your sister,” he murmured.

“Is,” Lucien corrected as he made a failed effort at flattening his hair with his hands. “
Is
my sister. And you’ll not call her that.”

“Everyone calls her that,” Max countered. He craned his neck to watch as key members of Caldwell staff began to line up on the portico. “And for good reason.”