Chapter 25

CHAPTER 25

“ Y ou’ve been absent all day,” Allan pointed out as he joined Seth on the upstairs balcony. “Don’t tell me you’ve been out here all this time.”

“I wasn’t aware you were looking for me,” Seth said.

“I wasn’t, especially, but I did have an eye out for you,” Allan said. “You’re my closest friend, you know. And I’m your only friend.”

“You’re not my only friend.”

“Oh, yes, I am. Unless we’re counting Lady Lavinia as a friend of yours now?”

Seth turned quickly to look at Allan. “Why are we talking about her?”

“Seth, let’s be serious for a moment,” Allan said. “I know you better than anyone. I worked hard for it. I spent a lot of time convincing you to open up to me. I’d say I’m still the person you share the most with about your life—am I wrong?”

“You’re not wrong,” Seth admitted. “You know how I feel about opening up to other people. You know how I felt about opening up to you for the longest time.”

“Oh, I know, believe me,” Allan said. “If I hadn’t been so determined that the two of us ought to be friends, it would never have happened!”

“You’re probably right,” Seth allowed. “But what does that have to do with anything that’s happening now, with Lady Lavinia?”

“It means that I can see what’s going on more clearly than anyone else can,” Allan said. “I think I can see it more clearly than you can see it yourself, Seth.”

“Well, since you see so clearly, maybe you should explain it to me,” Seth suggested. “I haven’t even seen her today, so I don’t know how you can possibly accuse me of having feelings for her again.”

“It’s not an accusation,” Allan said. “If you have feelings for her, there’s nothing wrong with that, and you might as well just own up to it! Why would you deny yourself that happiness?”

“What happiness? What happiness do you think would come of something like that?”

Allan sighed. “I know your childhood was unhappy,” he said. “You’ve told me what it was like. I know that your parents didn’t care for one another.”

“That’s right. They didn’t. We were hardly a family at all.”

“And you know that not all families are like that.”

“Really?” Seth turned to face his friend directly. “Because your family was like that, weren’t they? Your mother and father didn’t have a good relationship either. You can stand there and tell me that what happened in my household wasn’t the normal way of things, and that I shouldn’t worry things would be like that if I got married. But you know that your own family was just the same!”

“And yet, you see me here, looking for love,” Allan said. “Looking for marriage and family. Unafraid to face those things. What do you think that means?”

“It means you’re delusional,” Seth said. “I don’t mean to be critical. You are my friend. But I’ve thought it for a long time—you’re not realistic when it comes to your expectations about the future, Allan. You have the idea that your life will be different from the life you grew up with, and there’s simply no reason for you to believe that’s the case. I can’t understand why you do.”

“I believe my upbringing served me as a warning,” Allan said. “I believe watching my parents showed me what I didn’t want out of life. Now that it’s my turn to start a family, I can think of all the things they did wrong and use them as a guide. I won’t take any of the wrong turns my parents did.”

“Things are rarely under our control like that,” Seth said. “It’s all very well for you to say that you can anticipate these disasters and avoid them, but do you really think you can? I would have thought it would be impossible.”

“Of course it isn’t impossible,” Allan said. “Some people have happy marriages, Seth. It does happen.”

“It’s too much of a gamble,” Seth said. “Even if I did have feelings for Lady Lavinia, as you suggest—and I am certainly not saying I do—I wouldn’t be prepared to risk my future happiness. I’m not going to marry. I’ve told you that many times, and you never seem to believe me.”

“I know,” Allan said. “Even now, I think there’s a chance you’ll change your mind.”

“What is it to you?” Seth asked. “Why do you care if I marry or not? I’d have thought you would give up on all this after the first time I told you it wasn’t going to happen. But you’re almost as persistent as my mother.”

“I’m not as persistent as your mother,” Allan said. “But maybe I do think she has a point, Seth. She cares about you. You don’t want to hear what she has to say, but?—”

“She has no authority to tell me what to do with my life,” Seth said.

“No, she doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean her advice is bad. It’s the same advice I would give you if I thought you would take it.”

“That I should just get married, and never mind to whom? Never mind how I feel about it?”

“No, I didn’t say that,” Allan said patiently. “But I do think you should at least consider marriage—especially now that you’ve met a lady who means something to you. Seth, I know you like you’re my own brother. I care for you like a brother. I want to see you happy, and that’s not something I’m going to give up on. I think you’ll be happy if you allow yourself to find love, and maybe—just maybe—this young lady is the person you’re meant to find it with.”

“I don’t think you believe all that,” Seth said. “I think you want to get married?—”

“I do.”

“And I think you want me to get married along with you, so you don’t have to worry about moving into this new stage of your life on your own. I think you want us to have wives and children at the same time.”

“Certainly I would like that,” Allan said. “I’m not going to stand here and pretend I wouldn’t. But, Seth, you know me better than that. If I honestly believed that you couldn’t be happy in that life, I wouldn’t be arguing for it.”

Seth sighed and stared out at the horizon.

“She’s lovely,” Allan said gently. “I can see why you admire her, you know.”

“I never said I admired her.”

Allan ignored that. “You admire her because she’s beautiful, of course, but also because she’s unafraid to be who she is. I see how unusual she is. I hear what people say about her—that she’s strange and awkward—and she’s not afraid to stop being that person.

“You like that about her, I think. You’ve finally met someone who challenges you instead of simply trying to be what they think a duke would desire so that she can secure a good marriage. If it was me she had expressed an interest in, I would be flattered as well.”

“Now you truly don’t know what you’re talking about,” Seth said. “She hasn’t expressed an interest in me.”

But his mind traveled back to last night’s kiss.

It was true that he had been the one to initiate it, but then, she certainly hadn’t pulled away. She hadn’t done anything to end it. In fact, Seth had been left with the impression that if he hadn’t ended things when he had, she would have allowed them to go on for quite a while unchecked.

Allan was right. For whatever reason—he wasn’t going to try to guess at her motives—she had expressed interest in him.

And there was the fact that she had openly admitted to feeling nervous around him. Seth had spent so much time contemplating that fact that it hadn’t occurred to him to consider that he felt nervous around her as well. But he did.

And that was a strange thing, because he almost never felt ill at ease around ladies. Sometimes they bored him, and sometimes they irritated him, but it was very uncommon for him to feel like this—as if every moment was alive with the possibility that things might go either very right or very wrong between the two of them. As if every little thing he said or did mattered , because there was something he wanted—something he hoped for out of every exchange.

That was how he felt around Lady Lavinia. He actually cared how each of their exchanges went. He wanted her to think highly of him.

Why? Why did he want that? What possible difference could her opinion make?

He didn’t know the answer, but he couldn’t deny what he felt.

He looked over at Allan. Was it possible that his friend was right? Did he have real feelings for Lady Lavinia? He didn’t want to believe it—but how else to explain the fact that he had kissed her? That had been a terrible idea. He still hadn’t permitted himself to truly examine what had been going through his mind at that moment.

Maybe he was afraid of what he was going to find.

“None of this is real,” he said, feeling as though he was grasping at straws.

“What do you mean? None of what is real?”

“Everything you’re talking about. People believe they have these feelings for one another, but it never lasts,” he said. “That’s why so many people marry claiming it’s for love. But it isn’t. It doesn’t have anything to do with love. It’s a momentary attraction, that’s all, and it takes a fool to allow himself to be hoodwinked by it.”

“You don’t think your feelings for her are real?”

“I think it’s like you said. I think she’s beautiful, and she stands out to me because she’s so different from all the other ladies of the ton . Of course she caught my eye. It would be odd if she hadn’t. I’m surprised more gentlemen haven’t noticed her,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we ought to pursue courtship, much less marriage.”

“Feelings like this are the reason people marry, Seth.”

“People are fools, Allan. Look at my parents. Look at yours.” He backed away from the balcony railing. “You know, I’m glad you came and found me,” he said. “I think I needed to hear these things. You’ve done me a great service—helped me to remember what’s important to me in life.”

“I wish you would consider what was best for you.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing. It’s just that you and I disagree on what’s best,” Seth said. “In fact, if I thought I could persuade you to run from marriage, I would be doing exactly that.

“The idea of you tying yourself to some lady for the rest of your life, shackling yourself to unhappiness the way our parents did…I can’t believe it’s something you’re willing to accept for yourself. All I know is that I would never put myself in that position. I know that I never will, no matter how many beautiful ladies I meet.”

“I’m sure you’re in love with her,” Allan said sadly. “I wish there was something I could do to make you see it—to change your mind.”

“You can’t,” Seth said firmly. “I understand you’re trying to help me, but this is of no help to me. You’ve done all you can, I promise you—I won’t be talked into this. There is no chance I would ever choose marriage for myself, not after having seen all the ways it can go wrong. The risk is too great.”

“The reward can be great, too.” Allan said. “I wish I could make you see that. But I see that you’re determined. Very well. I’ll abandon the subject. I can tell that’s what you want.”

“It is,” Seth said, grateful that this would be an end to it.