Chapter Four

Sebastian had remembered the story about the three duchesses. They had begun as three beautiful but poor girls from a village no one had heard of, brought to London by their ambitious mother. There had been some relative with connections, one who was willing to help place the girls before the most eligible gentlemen.

It had caused a riot. Eligible—and ineligible—gentlemen had scrambled for the sisters’ attentions, but the mother had been very specific in her requirements. She had wanted dukes for her daughters, and dukes she had secured.

Winstanton had been old even then, but that hadn’t stopped Catherine marrying him. There had been gossip, but Seb had been on the fringes of the whole thing, twenty-one years old and with no plans to find a wife. There were too many pretty women arrayed before him, and too many opportunities to indulge himself in the pleasures of the flesh. He’d lost himself in all London had to offer, filling his mind with so many sights and sounds that there was no room for the past that haunted him.

These days, he knew Catherine’s sister, Sophia, quite well. Their paths crossed often enough in London. She made him think of a cut gemstone. Beautiful but hard and cold, and with her secrets well hidden behind the sparkly surface. Unlike Catherine, who sat beside him now, who seemed... softer somehow. She had the same cool restraint as her sister, but there was a tranquillity to her. Seb supposed Catherine might be on the hunt for her next husband rather than a few sweaty hours in his bed, but if she was... well, that husband would not be Sebastian, the most confirmed bachelor in England.

She was beautiful, though—his sideways glance showed him her creamy skin, the perfect curve of her cheek, and the way her long dark lashes lay upon it. Desire stirred and his cock filled. Hell, it was already sitting up and taking notice. The memory of her half-naked body made him want to groan aloud.

I am in dire need of your expertise.

He couldn’t be mistaking her meaning, could he? No, this was a game he was too well versed in to be mistaken. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. He glanced at her again and found she was looking at him. Those liquescent dark eyes searched his, a little uncertain, and then dropped to his mouth.

Oh, yes, Seb knew that look. He curved his lips into a lazy smile, and her gaze jumped back to his eyes and widened. She was a novice when it came to the art of seduction, and right now she seemed to be both anxious and attracted to him in equal measure. Well, it was his job to persuade her that spending some time with him, naked, was to both their advantages.

Just then the piping voice of a child cut through the clink of cutlery and the low murmur of voices. “Mama, why can’t we leave now?”

The family were seated behind him at the larger table, but he could hear them perfectly. “Because of the snow,” the father replied patiently, despite it being a question he had probably heard several times already that morning. “It is too deep on the roads, and therefore it is unsafe to drive. We might go the wrong way, or tip into a ditch. Then what would we do, Benny?”

“We could walk!”

The couple laughed in fond delight.

Instinctively Sebastian smiled too, only to find those dark eyes still watching him. She appeared to be trying to understand him better, and he wasn’t sure he liked that. What was there to understand? They would fuck and then go their separate ways. And yet... he supposed he should make the effort at polite conversation.

“Do you have children?” he asked, buttering a slice of toast.

She looked down at her plate. “I have a son.” When she met his eyes again there was pain in them. Something about her son did not make her happy.

“And do you have children?” she asked, obviously keen to move the subject away from herself. The next moment her cheeks flushed in mortification. “I’m so sorry, that was an inappropriate question. You are a bachelor, are you not?”

“Yes, I am single, and no, I don’t have children.” Albury, the house and the estate, would finish with him. He heard again his father’s voice during that last, bitter argument.

“You will inherit Albury when I am dead, but I do not want to see you ever again.”

“My mother—”

“Your mother is dead and you killed her. I warned you never to let her drive the gig, but you didn’t listen to me. I want you to leave this house and never return, do you understand? I wish to God it wasyou who’d died and not her.”

Sebastian cleared his throat. He was weary of mulling over the past. What he needed was a distraction, and that distraction was seated right beside him. Her hands rested in her lap beneath the table, and he could see her fingers twisting in the napkin. He reached to cover them, his much larger hand closing over her cool, agitated fingers. She startled and then stilled.

“We have an assignation. Yes or no?” Seb whispered. It was always best to be perfectly clear.

She looked about the room, and once she was certain they were not being observed, she turned to him. “Yes,” she whispered.

Her gaze dropped, her lashes sweeping down to brush her pale skin. Oh God, were they freckles? There was a light dusting of them across the bridge of her nose. Why had he not noticed them before? Sebastian’s cock swelled embarrassingly—he had a particular weakness for women with freckles.

Catherine swallowed, the tip of her tongue licking over her lips, and Sebastian’s desire increased another notch.

“My room is the first one at the top of the stairs,” he said quietly, and rose to his feet. A quick glance assured him that no one else had noticed their exchange—not that it mattered to him, but he suspected Catherine would not like it. The parents were smiling at their child, and the older man and his niece seemed to be in the middle of an argument.

“Now?” she gasped. “But . . . it’s daylight.”

Sebastian grinned. She was adorable. “So it is, Duchess.” He gave her one last, meaningful look and left the room.

Dodds was upstairs, folding his clothing. He frowned as he noticed a loose button. “It’s been snowing again,” he grumbled to Seb. “No sign of it clearing either. We’re stuck here for the foreseeable future.”

“You should look at this as a chance to broaden your horizons. The world doesn’t begin and end with the City of London.”

Dodds was a Londoner through and through and always let his master know it. “I’ve seen more snow since we left Mayfair than I’ve seen before in my whole life,” he grumbled.

“May I suggest you find that pretty maid you were talking about and share your complaints with her? I am about to have company.”

Dodds stared and then grinned. “The devil you are! All right, I’m going.” He was out of the door in a flash, and Seb huffed a laugh. He and his manservant had been together for a very long time. They had met one night when young Seb, the worse for drink, had tried to enter a club, and Dodds, at the door, had told him to go home and sleep it off. Seb had not been long in the capitol then and was probably in danger of overdoing it. They began to talk, and found they had a lot in common. Dodds had also been thrown out of home by his father and been forced to make his own way—he’d had barely two shillings to rub together before he took to the boxing circuit. When Seb went back the next day and offered him a job, he took it, and now Seb could not imagine life without him.

With Dodds gone there was nothing to do but wait, and Seb lacked patience. Restlessly, he took the two steps necessary to reach the window, drawn despite himself by the bleak forest with slivers of icicles adorning the bare branches. Again, it reminded him of Albury House. He dreaded walking through that door and back into his past. For twelve years it had been as if he did not exist. As if he had ceased to be. Exiled to London by a father who could not forgive him.

The earl could not know that his son’s life in London, once so exciting, had grown stale and tedious. The endless round of pleasures no longer called to him and hadn’t for some time. When he found his funds dwindling, and having sworn to never ask his father for anything ever, he began to invest in various businesses and found he had a talent for choosing the successful ones. He now had a tidy sum tucked away in his bank account.

He had no plans to marry. He had seen what happened when one lost the person one loved. He had felt the remorse and regret, had his heart torn apart, and been forced to live far away from his home and what remained of his family. He never wanted to inflict that pain on someone else.

And if his father died? He had yet to decide what he would do then. He tried to imagine taking over the estate, filling his time with farming and ledgers. He had been brought up to be the heir, and with a bit of effort he could probably remember those lessons his father had instilled in him. Back when he still loved him. Before he abandoned him. London society would laugh at the idea of Sebastian turning his back on his carefree existence to become a country gentleman, but they did not know him. Very few people did know the man behind the veneer that was Seb’s way of protecting himself against further hurt.

Just as his thoughts began to grow too gloomy, there was a tap on the door, and his spirits lifted. A beautiful woman was offering him a distraction, and Sebastian was more than eager to accept. Pleasure was a great diversion. At least for an hour or two.