Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

S ebastian had never been one to lounge in bed with a lover, and yet the idea of letting Marianne go and departing her room felt unbearable. She was curled so beautifully into his side, so warm and perfect in his arms. He wanted to sleep here next to her. He wanted to wake up in a few hours and roll over to pleasure her all over again.

He stared at her ceiling, the plaster swirled into the shapes of stars, and tried to meter both his breathing and these odd thoughts.

She clenched a fist against his bare chest and he felt her look at him. When he forced himself to do the same, he found her expression relaxed and sated and she smiled at him as if everything they'd done was perfectly right.

It most definitely wasn't.

"I never imagined," she whispered, her fingers now tracing little patterns on his chest that somehow lit his body on fire all over again.

"So you don't regret it?" he asked as he caught the hand that was so arousing him and lifted it to kiss her knuckles gently.

She sat up and turned toward him. "Never," she said with feeling. "And I want you to understand something, Sebastian."

He drew a shaky breath. "What is that?"

"I have no expectations because of this. As you said, it was a night stolen in time, a gift for me, and I hope not too much of a chore for you."

His eyes widened. "Do you think that was a chore ?" He shook his head. "Great Lord, Marianne, I haven't had to practice so much control in years so I wouldn't come five seconds after entering a woman. I promise you, that was only a pleasure for me."

He had said the words and they were true, but they felt entirely vulnerable. Still, when she smiled he didn't particularly care. He didn't want her to think so low of herself, he didn't want her to believe he'd made love to her out of pity.

"Good. Then we both benefitted." She relaxed back on her pillows with a satisfied sigh. He rolled to his side and watched her for a moment, memorizing how she looked when she was still lazy and content with orgasm.

" This is what I meant when I said to you that I was no gentleman," he said slowly.

She glanced at him with a blush. "Because I was untouched."

He nodded. "I've taken something that many men value greatly. And I've damaged your standing on the marriage mart."

She laughed, but there was something hollow to it. "Sebastian, I haven't had standing on the marriage mart in years. There is nothing to damage." She sighed. "After Claudia's death, I realized the value in living . Not just existing from wall to wall at endless boring balls, but living ."

He frowned as he thought of the list he'd discovered earlier. The one that was still lying on the dressing table across the room. She didn't know he'd found it. For now, he intended to keep it that way. But that didn't mean he couldn't probe a little with that new knowledge.

"I suppose it must have felt like Claudia left things undone before her sudden death," he said carefully.

Her breath became a little shallower, a little shakier. "Yes. I know she felt that way. You wouldn't understand, as you've always been so golden, but for an unmarried lady, especially one who is so firmly on the shelf as Claudia was or I am, life often feels like a waiting game. We aren't allowed to be…to be too much . To be truly free. We're expected to wait quietly and politely for a husband to arrive. Perhaps after we gift him with an heir and a spare we'll be granted some ability to try new things, but it's all within reason and only with permission."

He had never considered that. His own life was nothing but freedom. Perhaps too much, considering he'd just ruined his best friend's maiden sister. His own friend.

"That must be frustrating," he said softly, taking her hand and folding her fingers in between his gently.

She shivered. "Yes."

"And is that why you've been so much more…daring as of late?"

"I suppose there's no hiding from you now, is there?" she said with a little laugh. "You've seen me naked."

"I've very much enjoyed that," he teased so that her mood would lighten.

"Because you are a rake," she teased back. Then her laughter faded. "But yes. I suppose I do feel obligated to live a little more now. For her. But also for me."

He nodded. "That I do understand," he said, and stared up at her ceiling again. "Living someone else's life."

"Do you?" she asked.

He let out his breath slowly as his mind turned to thoughts. Dark thoughts. Painful thoughts he often pushed away. But perhaps if he shared them that would make him even more of her ally in this quest of hers to complete her friend's list. At least he could protect her if she did.

But would he be able to protect himself if he spoke of the painful memories that wracked him? Would he give too much of himself and never be able to get that portion back from her?

"Sebastian?" she said softly, and her fingers traced his jawline with such gentleness that he couldn't help but close his eyes and lean into the pressure of her hand. It was soothing somehow. Healing.

"Did you know I had a younger brother?"

He heard her breath catch and turned his head to look at her. She shook her head. "No."

"George," he said, and then corrected himself. "Georgie, I called him. He was two years younger. My mother and father despised each other down to their very cores, and as soon as the earl had his heir and spare my mother separated herself from us. She went to London, lived her own life, and I doubt had even a thought for us."

Marianne winced. "I had no idea."

"Yes, I make it so that no one does," he said softly, watching the firelight play off her face. "I'm very careful to do so."

Understanding dawned over her face and her hand came to rest on his bare chest again. "Were you close to your brother?"

"Oh yes. You know how our father was, so mean tempered and cruel. He had no interest in either of us, really, and left us to be raised by servants and the woods around the estate. And Georgie and I loved to run and race and play." He could picture his brother now, dark blond hair so like Sebastian's own being ruffled in the wind, little pudgy legs working so hard to keep up with his older brother. Sebastian had always tried to slow himself down so George wouldn't get lost.

His eyes stung at the memory and he blinked away the sensation so he could continue, "When he was six and I was eight, we were playing out at the little lake on the country estate. We'd been trying to build a boat all summer and it was not going well. But we still valiantly tried to row it out. Then…"

He trailed off and squeezed his eyes shut as images bombarded him.

"Sebastian, it's all right," she said gently, and he realized he was breathing heavily. "I'm here."

He caught her hand and held it for a long moment, trying to focus on the softness of her fingers in his. "We took on water," he whispered at last. "It started to sink. We were laughing at first but…but then his trouser leg got caught on one of the nails I hadn't fully pounded into the wood and he—he couldn't get loose. I couldn't get him loose. I kept diving down, I kept tugging him, but I wasn't strong enough and he—he—he?—"

"He drowned," she said softly.

He sucked in a sharp, harsh breath at those two words. "Yes."

Suddenly her arms came around him, pulling him close. He rested his head on her shoulder, trying to get control of the emotions that pressed down on him, threatening to crush him. This was why he never spoke of that moment to anyone. It stole his control. It made him weak to feel these feelings all over again, like he was still at the lake, like he was still watching his brother die under the water.

"I almost drowned too," he said at last. "But I managed to get to shore. My father was so angry at me."

"Not grieved?" she whispered.

He shook his head. "He kept saying that I stole his spare. That I ruined the order of things. Otherwise he gave not a damn about his lost son. He made the servants go out to retrieve his body and forced me to watch from the shore as punishment while he went to some ball like nothing had happened."

"He went to a ball?"

His lips pursed with heated hatred. "He said that once the truth was out about the death, he wouldn't be allowed to attend anything while he moved through the prescribed mourning period. He didn't want to miss one last chance to carouse."

He felt a drop of water hit his shoulder and looked up to find that tears were streaming down Marianne's face. Tears for him. The ones he forced himself not to shed.

"Oh Sebastian, that is terrible. I'm so dreadfully sorry you and your brother were treated with such callous disregard. You didn't deserve that," she said, her fingers brushing over his face.

He froze. Didn't deserve that. No, he hadn't. Georgie hadn't. Sebastian had never allowed that fleeting thought to develop in his mind beyond a flutter, because when it did, the anger that followed was wild. He'd had to keep it in check during his childhood when he was too small to battle his cruel father.

And as an adult, he had always worked not to be like the man who raised him. He didn't want to be cruel. He chose flighty, he chose rakish, he chose anything but serious so that he wouldn't spiral into the depths he feared he wouldn't escape.

But her words reminded him of the desperate unfairness of his childhood. Of his loss and how alone he'd been in it.

"Were you allowed any time to grieve?" she asked gently.

"Of course not," he choked out. "I wore a black band for exactly the three months that Society expects, but I wasn't allowed to speak about Georgie to anyone, nor was anyone allowed to talk to me about him."

"That is dreadful. Monstrous!"

He shrugged even though there was nothing dismissive about how he felt over this topic. "I tell you this not to obtain your pity, but because I do understand the idea of living for another person."

"Yes, I can see how you would," she said. "And I can also understand even more deeply now why your relationship to Finn is so important to you."

"Yes, Finn." Sebastian rubbed a hand over his face and stared at the ceiling. He'd known exactly the consequences he might face by spending this night with Marianne. If Delacourt discovered it, there might be pistols at dawn, not just an end to their friendship.

"He met you in school," she said softly. "What were you both? Ten?"

"Yes," he said. "And immediately we were drawn to each other. I suppose with your own wretched parents, we must have recognized kindred spirits in that. We'd only been friends a few months when my mother died. I wasn't allowed to attend her services—my father's doing. And I…I admit I collapsed. Your brother held me up. That solidified our bond."

"He became your brother," she said.

"He did. He is."

They both were quiet for a moment, lost in thought in the quiet of the room. Then she leaned over and pressed a brief kiss to his lips before she slipped from the bed and began hunting around for her shift amongst their tangled clothing on the floor.

"I would never threaten that, you know," she said as she found the item and tugged it over her head, covering herself. "I would never do anything to take him from you. He won't find out about this. It will be our secret."

He stared at her, standing in the firelight, so beautiful with her hair tangled around her shoulders, in the flimsiest of fabrics. Her expression was only kindness and understanding, acceptance of the limitations he would force on this joining.

Why couldn't he feel the same acceptance? Why did her gentle release of him from obligation make him frustrated rather than relieved?

He pushed the troubling thoughts aside and got to his feet too. Once he had dressed in his trousers, he faced her. "You are too good, Marianne. Too sweet."

Her lips thinned as if that wasn't a compliment. Still, she shrugged. "I do try. Now will you help me dress?"

He wrinkled his brow. "Dress?"

"Yes. I'm going to fix myself and then call for my maid. I'll tell her I was reading late into the night and dozed off. She'll help me undress and it will be like any other night. She'll never know that it was, in fact, so magical and wondrous."

He nodded slowly. "That's very clever, not that I would expect less. Yes, I'll help you."

He did so, trying not to note every brush of his fingers as he fastened her dress, not to get lost as he watched her put her stockings on and tie the ribbons he'd loosened with his teeth as she writhed above him.

At last she was fixed and he dressed, too, feeling her watch him from the corner of her eye from time to time.

"You know," he said as he fastened his waistcoat and shrugged on his jacket. "If you want to try living some more, I'm happy to continue helping you."

She tilted her head. "Are you?"

He nodded and thought of her list. "You said you wanted to return to a hell. Please let me escort you if you insist on doing that. I'll keep you far safer that that twat Lanford did."

She shook her head. "Lanford. Do you think he'll spread the word of this night?"

"No. He'd be a fool to do so and risk your brother's wrath. But I'll talk to him again tomorrow and ensure it."

"You would do that to protect me?" she asked, staring up at him with those brown eyes soft and filled with emotions he didn't want to define for fear he'd melt back into her.

"Of course. And myself," he said, turning away as if all this was nothing. "Delacourt would be furious if he knew you snuck out and I didn't inform him."

He moved through the antechamber and to the door that led to the hallway and she followed him. There they both stopped and she smiled up at him. She was so beautiful in that moment that he almost forgot how to breathe as he stared at her. It set him on his heels, took him off center and he had to physically force himself to return.

"Thank you again, Sebastian. I'll never forget this night."

He cupped her cheek, stroking his thumb over the softness there and sighed. "No, I don't think I will either."

He leaned in and kissed her. It would be the last time he'd do this. It had to be. So he savored it. Savored how she leaned up into him, how she shivered as her hands gripped his forearms to steady herself. Savored her taste and the way her tongue traced his.

Then he stepped away because he had to. Walked away because he had to. And feared he had left something very important behind with her. Something he hadn't realized was so deep a part of himself. Something he had to forget as he made his way back to his own chamber and what he knew would be a long and sleepless night.