Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
W hite’s, as always, was obnoxiously busy. Sebastian strode through the filled tables and hazes of cigar smoke until he saw his friend.
Former friend, he corrected himself. He did not have friends any longer.
Except he knew even to himself that such a claim was false.
“Sebastian!” Luke rose as he spotted him, a grin upon his face, and Sebastian was transported back in time to when they were both mere boys, navigating the world until Luke left and that had been the end of everything.
Or, well, so Sebastian had thought. So he had intended .
“Sit,” Luke offered, waving to his seat. “Drink?”
“Please.”
Luke poured him a brandy and passed it across the table. “I ordered food for us both already. If anything displeases you, I’m certain you can make enough of a fuss to make up for it.”
“I don’t enjoy throwing my weight around, you know,” Sebastian said dryly.
“Perhaps not, but I enjoy watching the fallout.” The corners of Luke’s eyes creased as he smiled, but the smile quickly fell away. “I have something to say and something to ask. Which would you prefer came first?”
“Does it matter?”
Servants brought heaped dishes to the table, removing lids and allowing steam to billow into the air. Duck and potatoes and beef pie and a bowl of quails’ eggs to the side.
“I suppose not,” Luke said. “So let me start with the first. I’m sorry for the way I left as a boy. Truth was, it was the devil of a situation, and I felt embarrassed confessing it to anyone. Even you. So I didn’t, and I have regretted it ever since.” He contemplated his spoon. “My uncle was to be hanged for killing a man. He lost all his land, and we lost a great deal of our investments out there.” He sighed. “We went to fight for his freedom, of course, and ultimately failed, but in truth, my father insisted we make the journey to recoup what little we could of his inheritance. Cold-blooded to say the least.” He gave a wry smile as he piled his plate high. “I felt ashamed to be his son. Ashamed to be my uncle’s nephew. Uncomfortable and unpleasant time, and the heat . Never visit the tropics, Sebastian. It’s not worth the mosquitoes.” He shuddered. “But I brought you here to offer an explanation and an apology.”
Sebastian sat back in his chair, his head reeling. “You didn’t want to tell me because of the murder?”
Luke raised his brows. “You must admit it’s a little close to home. I didn’t want to upset you, or destroy our friendship in any further more tangible way. Of course, irony has it that I did so anyway. But I would like to be your friend, Sebastian. In truth, as accepted by you as it is by me. So will you give me that chance?”
Sebastian stared at the hand Luke offered to him. The first word on his lips was a refusal, but that was a habit ingrained in him from long years of being alone.
Would it not be better to finally put that side of him aside?
“Very well,” he said, accepting Luke’s hand. “My friend.”
“Excellent.” Luke dropped his hand and stabbed a piece of meat with his fork. “So now, explain to me what you were doing with Lady Lydia?”
“Excuse me?”
“At the ball. Do you know what people were saying about the two of you?” Luke scoffed. “And Eleanor?”
The warmth in Sebastian’s chest faded, replaced by a burgeoning anger. “Nothing happened. And no one has a right to discuss my wife or myself, including you.”
“You just said we were friends.”
“That doesn’t make all of my mistakes your business.”
“So you admit to making a mistake?” Luke pinched his nose. “You should speak to Eleanor before she wholly misunderstands the situation.”
Sebastian’s jaw snapped shut, but although he wanted to rant and rage at Luke, he knew his friend was right. “I spoke to Lady Lydia explaining the situation and how there is no situation between us.”
“Does Eleanor know that?”
“She ought to! I’ve never once brought her up. Lydia is in my past.”
Luke looked at him steadily, mouth twisting to one side. “Better you had both discussed it, Sebastian, so she knew. All the ton knows you courted Lydia back in the day—I don’t doubt she also knows that. Maybe you never brought her up to Eleanor because you never thought about it, but you ought to have done after the ball. What happened between you?”
“It was late. We went to bed. Eleanor slept in the carriage ride home.” An unusual occurrence, but when he had danced with her later, she had seemed lively. Almost too lively, so he had assumed the best. “Then this morning, I dressed and rode out to dine with you. We haven’t had a chance to speak so far today.”
“Well, perhaps you’ll have a chance to speak when you arrive home again.” Luke shook his head. “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
“So do I, my friend,” Sebastian huffed, noting Luke’s obvious delight at the phrase, and trying not to reflect too much on it.
Once they finished their dinner, Sebastian rode home filled with thoughts of Eleanor. How foolish he had been to ever think she might seek an annulment. Of everyone in his life, she was the only one who had ever stayed and fought for him, no matter what he threw at her.
And he loved her.
The thought hit him like an avalanche, almost unseating him from his horse. Meeting with Luke had changed something, unlocked part of the man he had been before this all.
He loved Eleanor. His wife. More than he had once ever imagined loving another person, never mind someone he had chosen to bind himself to. The prospect alarmed him, and he pressed a hand to his beating heart, which had been hers for longer than he cared to admit.
Before he had taken her physically.
Perhaps when she’d held her mouse cupped in her hands and looked at him as though she trusted him, even when he had given her no reason to. It was then he’d been lost. Not out of desire, but because his defenses could not stand up against such an act of vulnerability.
And yet.
When he imagined saying the words to her, he could not quite do it. His mouth closed, turning into sand. Every part of his body revolted against the idea. Once she knew, she would have power over him.
Everyone he had ever loved had left him.
Lydia, the only other lady he had ever loved, had taken his love and snuffed it out. She had stomped on his heart and returned the bruised and bloody pulp.
Eleanor, he was sure, would not do the same.
All he needed was more time. Just a little more.
On the road leading back to his home, he encountered Lydia herself riding with a maid in tow. At the sight of him, she pulled up her mare.
“Lydia,” he said, startled. “What are you doing so far from home? Surely your mother didn’t allow you to ride out all this way by yourself?”
“I’m not by myself,” she said, gesturing at her maid. “You were not at home.”
“You called with the intention of seeing me?”
“We had some unfinished business at the ball last night.”
His hands tightened on the reins. “No, Lydia. I don’t think we did.”
“You know as well as I do that there is still something between us.” Her lashes lowered, and once, he might have fallen at her feet for a chance to kiss her and make her his. Now, he felt nothing but irritation. “And your wife doesn’t value you the way she ought. When she heard that I was looking for you, she said I was welcome to you.” Her brows rose. “Hardly the words of a wife besotted with her husband, I would say.”
His heart gave a violent clench. “She doesn’t need to love me—that doesn’t change the fact we’re married.”
Lydia pouted. “You are going to hold something I said in my youth and folly over my head now? We could have something beautiful, Sebastian.”
“As tempting as you make the offer seem,” he said dryly, “I’ll have to decline.”
“All for the sake of her?”
“Yes.” He clicked his tongue, urging his horse onward again. “I’m afraid so. Don’t do this again, Lydia. You should know better than to seek me out in this way. People are going to talk, and it is not my reputation that you should worry about.”
A stubborn expression flickered across her lovely face, but before she could protest, he dug his heels in his horse and galloped away. Yet, despite his certainty that he had made the correct choice—he would always choose his wife—he could not get the comment she had made to Lydia from his mind.
If he loved her, he did not think he could bear it if she did not love him in return.