Chapter Twelve

“How are you feeling, Duchess?”

Seb was putting the finishing touches on the snowman, but now he turned his attention to the doorway of the inn. Anthea had been watching them for some time, laughing and making comments, while Querol shook his head in his own grumpy fashion. Now Catherine had come to stand beside them.

“A duchess should be addressed as ‘Your Grace’,” Querol reminded Anthea in that fault-finding voice.

She ignored him, leaning in conspiratorially to Catherine. “You don’t mind, do you, duck?”

“Duchess is a perfectly acceptable form of address,” Catherine agreed. “Really, Mr. Querol, I do not mind.”

Querol said nothing, but Anthea gave Catherine a look, up and down. Although Seb couldn’t see the twinkle in the woman’s eye, he was sure it was there. “We heard you was ill with a cold and were lying in, Duchess.”

Catherine stumbled through her reply. “I... yes, I thought I did, but perhaps I just needed the lie in, because I’m better now.” Her gaze flicked to Seb, and their eyes met for a brief moment.

He smiled. Anthea would be a fool not to realize what was going on between the two of them, and Seb did not think she was a fool. As if to prove it, she assumed a fake sober expression and said, “I always say there’s nothing like sleep if you are feeling under the weather. And if you can find someone to share it with, then all the better.”

Catherine flushed and now didn’t seem to know where to look. Seb decided it was time to save her. “Duchess!” he called out. “Have you seen our dashing creation? Master Fotheringham wants him to have a name, but we are yet to agree.”

The little boy was crouched at the base of the snowman, giving him a last pat, but he looked up now. “You can call me Benny,” he said with a put-upon sigh. “We’re friends now, aren’t we, Sebastian?”

“I hope so,” Seb replied agreeably. “We wouldn’t want to fall out. We’d have to share this fellow between us then. Slice him down the middle.”

Benny shot him a doubtful look and then ran a reflective gaze over the snowman. “I want his head,” he said determinedly.

Catherine laughed. There was something light-hearted in their interaction with the child, and he liked it. Seb watched her walk around the snowman, inspecting him from all angles. They had found some horseshoes for eyes and a pinecone for a nose. There had been an old straw hat in the stables they’d purloined, and a tatty scarf from the same place to wrap around his neck.

“What about Benjamin for a name?” Seb suggested.

“That’s my name!” Benny giggled. “And he doesn’t look like me at all!”

“Hmm,” Catherine tapped a fingertip against her chin in careful consideration. “What about Mr. Frosty? Flurry the Snowman? I know, Blizzard!”

Benny doubled over with laughter. Seb didn’t think the names were particularly funny, but Catherine obviously understood children better than he. They were still tossing silly names back and forth, with Benny giggling, when Arnold Rose called out to them.

“Dinner is served!”

The Fotheringhams, who had appeared with the innkeeper, hurried over to brush the snow off their son. Benny wriggled and complained at leaving his snowy friend, only to be reminded of how hungry he would be if he didn’t eat. With a game of “guess what is for dinner” they persuaded him inside the inn, and the Querols followed. Leaving Seb alone with Catherine.

She was still smiling from the exchange with Benny. Seb pointed out that the base of the snowman was beginning to turn to sludge. “I think that’s a good sign for the road north.”

She didn’t seem to hear him, and when she spoke it was to tease him. “You left me sleeping. I may still have been there if I hadn’t heard you and Benny playing.” Her dark eyes shone, and she looked particularly beautiful with her cheeks flushed from the cold.

There was that nuisance ache in his chest again. To give himself time to recover, Seb removed his many caped coat and shook it, melting snow falling from the folds. Beneath the coat he was in his shirtsleeves. When Benny had confronted him outside Catherine’s room and reminded him of his promise, the child had been too impatient for him to do more than fetch his coat. Now he shivered as he slipped the coat back on, appreciative of its thick warmth.

“Maggie came to tidy the room and you were so deeply asleep it seemed a shame to wake you. The story about you having a cold was her suggestion. Everyone was most concerned, but here you are, hale and hearty and as good as new.”

“Better than new, surely?” she said, her gaze on his.

He smiled a little helplessly. She had that effect on him. He opened his mouth to say the first words that came into his head—I’m better than new, too—but bit them back. They weren’t appropriate, not when this was just a light-hearted, temporary thing. But the moment dragged on, and he couldn’t seem to look away from her and the perfect picture she made against the grey sky and snow-covered ground. And yet she wasn’t perfect, was she? She was human, the same as he was, with faults and imperfections. Like that sprinkling of freckles across her nose which made him want to kiss each and every one of them. Indeed he had done so yesterday, giving in to the impulse and scattering kisses upon her face like stars as she lay in his arms.

Perhaps she saw something in his eyes, or she didn’t want him to see what was in hers, because she looked away, and went back to staring at the snowman. “You seemed to be enjoying yourself with Benny.” Her voice was almost tender, and he supposed she was thinking of her son. “Children can be a joy.”

“Benny’s a rascal,” he said, wrapping his coat tighter about him. His feet were numb and they needed to go inside, but he was reluctant to break this moment. “He has his parents wound around his little finger, despite their valiant efforts to keep him in line. And he seems to know just how far he can push them and always stops short of getting himself a scold.”

“He feels safe. Not all children are lucky enough to have two parents who love them.”

“Love doesn’t last,” he retorted, sounding harsh. His own childhood had been pleasant enough, and he had believed himself loved, until his mother was killed. How could his father have ordered him out of his home like that? Imagining Benny in his place, Sebastian didn’t think he would be cruel enough to do such a thing. Deny his own child.

“Maybe it isn’t meant to.”

He looked at Catherine, forgetting for a moment what they had been talking about. Right. Love. Seb pulled himself together. “Maybe not. Seems a shame though, doesn’t it? What is the point of all those famous lovers throughout history, pining and longing? If what they were feeling was just a waste of time?”

She shook her head at him, but she was smiling. “You are not a romantic, I gather?”

“I don’t see the sense in it. Love brings grief, and grief is far worse.”

She looked at him a little longer, and he waited to hear what she would say to that. Her smile was gone, and the sudden seriousness in her expression should have warned him that he was not going to enjoy whatever it was.

“I’m sorry about your mother,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry that happened to you, Sebastian. But you shouldn’t allow it to dictate the rest of your life. Painful things happen, but like the snowstorm that brought us here, they will eventually pass. Right now you are refusing to see the opportunities for love, for happiness, all around you. You need to open your eyes and your heart, or you will die a very lonely and miserable man, and that would be such a shame.”

His heart was beating faster than he liked, and he wanted to swallow the lump in his throat. This wasn’t good. She was encroaching on an area of his life that he never spoke about and tried not to think about. All very well for her to give him advice, but what did she know about his pain and suffering? And then he remembered that she did know. Catherine was a woman who had lived through a miserable marriage, to a man who was incapable of love. And yet here she was, telling him he could still live a life with love.

“Open my heart?” he scoffed, because otherwise he might do something idiotic, like fling his arms around her and sob on her shoulder. “I prefer to think with my cock, Catherine. It has served me well. Or are you complaining about that, too?”

She bit her lip. Had he shocked her? He’d done his best so that she would stop talking. “I am very glad for you then,” she said at last in a wooden voice. “I hope you and your cock will be very happy together.”

Ah, he had hurt her. Probably made her reassess her impression of him. Good. He didn’t want her to think he was worth saving. And he certainly did not want her to think he and she could ever be a couple, because he suspected she was. Physical intimacy sometimes had that effect, but it was an illusion.

Catherine needed someone who would be devoted to her. A man to stand by her side and give her children, hold her hand when she was sad, and kiss her in their bed in the darkness. And love her. Yes, she needed a man who would love her.

And that could not be Seb. Could it?

An image flashed into his head, like a painting hanging on a wall in a happy home. Himself, smiling, standing beside her, their hands joined, Albury House in the background. It was pretty but it was a lie. It would never happen, and he wasn’t about to fool himself into believing it could.

“Faster!” His mother’s voice filled his head almost to bursting. “We need to go faster, Seb! Pretend we are escaping from a dragon and he is right behind us, his hot breath on our heels!”

She was always full of stories and games, the wilder the better, and Seb loved her for it. It balanced out the times she lay in her bed and told him dark clouds were circling her. When she was like she was today she made his life bright and alive, a counter to his father’s more serious role. But Seb was also his father’s son, and he had learned her erratic instants needed to be moderated. If he hadn’t come with her today who knew what she might have decided to do?

“Not too fast, Mother,” he warned. “This isn’t called a ‘suicide gig’ for nothing.”

She dismissed his warning. “We can’t let the dragon get us,” she said. “Here, let me take the reins. You are too slow, Seb. You must learn to fly.”

The horrific sound of the gig overturning, the scream of the horses and then his mother’s cries. And then nothing. At that moment the world stopped for Seb, and it never really started again.

Afterward Seb had blamed himself. He promised he would never inflict such hurt upon another, or allow it to destroy him, and therefore he would be alone. He would encase his heart in iron and no one would be allowed inside.

Yet here he was now, looking at Catherine, and thinking impossible thoughts. Of home and hearth and holding her in his arms all night. Of children who looked like him and her, and laughter and joy every day for the rest of his life. He wanted to double over and scream. He wanted...

“Sir?”

Dodds’ voice shook him out of the madness. With its grip loosened, he was finally able to return to himself. The man he had become since he arrived in London. Cool and shallow and focussed only on pleasure.

He looked up, aware his appearance must be rather dreadful from the expression on Dodds’ face, although to his credit he quickly hid it. “Yes, Dodds? What is it?”

“I asked if you were having dinner in the parlor or if you’d prefer another private feast?” Dodds’ lips twitched as if the thought amused him.

Sebastian ignored it. “The parlor will do, Dodds.”

He heard a rustle of skirts as Catherine walked past him and into the inn. She paused in the shadows beyond the doorway, and he wondered what she was thinking. Had she seen his raw anguish? The cracks in his mask? He did not show that part of himself to anyone, and the fear that she had seen made him feel unbearably vulnerable. To his relief she did not say anything, moving farther into the inn, until she was lost in the shadows.

He certainly wasn’t going after her. In fact, it would do them both good if he absented himself for a while. Reminded her that they were strangers, soon to be parted. “On second thoughts,” he said calmly to Dodds, “I’ll check on our horses before I eat.”

Dodds raised an eyebrow. “I’ve already checked on them, sir. They are being well looked after but I think they are raring to get going. Unlike me,” he added in a mutter.

“We must not lose sight of the reason we are here,” Seb said.

“Ah, yes. Sir.”

Seb didn’t take any notice of the doubtful reply and made his way toward the stables. Dodds called out again, asking about the meal, but Seb ignored him and kept walking.

He would spend a moment alone with the horses. It was what he needed. A chance to sort through his uncomfortable feelings and gather his thoughts. To repair the damage Catherine had done to his carefully constructed veneer. She may not have seen as much as he feared, but he thought she probably had. She was remarkably perceptive and that was all the more reason for him to distance himself from her. They had had their bed sport, but it was over, and once they left the inn he would not think of her. And he hoped she would not think of him.