Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Fortunately for Sebastian, who had plenty of work to be getting along with, the seaside with a suitable beach was only a few hours’ drive away, perfectly reachable in a day’s trip. Thus, he bundled Aurelia in the carriage, praying the clear spring weather would hold.
In the sunshine, the weather was warm enough to make the air pleasant, and inside the carriage, he had piled plenty of blankets and heated bricks.
Aurelia laughed when he placed the blankets over her. “I am perfectly capable of tending to myself.”
So she was, and over the past couple of days, she had recovered considerably. Yet there was still a paleness to her cheeks he wasn’t comfortable with. Hopefully, the bracing sea air would do something for her, filling her lungs and bringing color to her cheeks, and hopefully a smile to her face.
He would endure it, because it was what would be best for her. And then they would return home.
Still, he couldn’t stop himself from fussing over her a little as they set off, until she eventually put a hand over his, giggling a little.
“It’s all right, Sebastian. I’m all right.
” She peered out of the window. “Isn’t the weather lovely this time of year?
” She smiled at the crocuses blooming on the verge, either wild or the work of some ambitious villager hoping to pretty the road.
The journey didn’t take long, or so it felt.
Aurelia told him a little about her childhood, and he told her a little about his.
His father had been a good man, and before he’d died, had taught Sebastian a great deal about running an estate.
His mother had been a beautiful woman, a diamond of the first water, and his father had adored her.
Unlike his marriage with Catherine, theirs had been a union filled with mutual love and respect.
No doubt that had been the reason he had thought—or hoped—his marriage would be similarly successful.
By the time they stopped, he had revealed more about himself than he had ever intended, and he felt as though he knew Aurelia better, too—though he didn’t yet know if that was a good thing.
The more he learned, the more he sympathized with her.
Objectively, he had known she did not have an easy life; that was another reason he had chosen her for his wife.
But there was a difference, it transpired, between knowing of this and hearing about the particulars. The nights when her uncle and mother argued about what they would do with her, the bastard child of a gentleman who would never publicly acknowledge her or send money for her.
What prospects existed for such a child?
“My mother could never have predicted I would become a duchess,” she chimed, far more sunnily than she had any right to, given the circumstances. He handed her down from the carriage, and she sucked in a deep breath of briny wind. “Ah, isn’t this wonderful?”
Sebastian looked at the beach spread before them.
They were not the only visitors, especially given London was so very close, but he was able to disregard them and look past, to the lines of rocks leading down the sandy beach to the sea.
Under the clouds, it appeared almost gray, but there was still beauty to its restless, rolling motion.
When he saw the sea, he felt similarly restless and unsettled. He wanted to bathe in its beauty and never see it again.
Aurelia looked up at him, resting a hand on his arm. “Do you hate it here?”
“No. Not in the slightest. Come on, let’s get you down on the sand.”
She laughed as he carried her down a set of steps hewn into the rock for this very purpose, her arms wrapping around his nape. “I’m not an invalid, Sebastian, and I am perfectly capable of walking down these few steps.”
“I would rather not risk you falling for everyone to see.”
“Ah,” she teased, brushing down her dress. “So this is because you would rather not subject yourself to any gossip.”
“I would rather not subject you to any gossip. I’m afraid it’s a little too late for me.”
Her small hand curled into the crook of his arm, and she squeezed him, just a little. “I don’t believe that. You know, London doesn’t discuss you half as often as you suppose it to. I, for one, had never heard the rumors. It took Lady Mary Ann telling me them, if you recall.”
He led her slowly down the pebbles, his feet sinking into sand as they approached the sea, foam frilly at the edge of the waves like lace. “Then you were sheltered.”
“No one is giving us any attention. You see? We could be anyone.” She pulled her bonnet from her head, which had been in imminent danger of being blown off, and flung her arm to the side, ribbons fluttering in the air. “We are the Duke and Duchess of Ravenhall!”
“Hush!” he pressed, dropping her gently to her feet, but at the grin across her face, he couldn’t help a small smile of his own falling into place. “They’ll hear you.”
“Who will? Does it matter?” She leaned her head back, hurling the words at the sky. “We are impervious to criticism! Take your best shot!”
He spun her around, and she came to him so easily it knocked the air from his lungs.
Just the warm collision of her body against his, all soft curves and wine-bright laughter.
God, she was flushed and sparkling, looking up at him like he’d hung the moon.
The sea frothed as the waves teased near their feet, and seagulls wheeled overhead.
Just as he had hoped, her face was flushed with color, and her eyes sparkled.
She was, without doubt, the most beautiful lady he had ever met.
Nothing like Catherine, with her prim blonde beauty he had always likened to an angel. There was nothing angelic about Aurelia’s mischievous eyes or the unholy plumpness of her mouth. No, that spoke of sin—the kind of which he was desperate for a taste.
“People are staring,” he murmured.
“How would you know?” she whispered back. “All you are looking at is me.”
Not an argument he had any power against, although he had been stared at enough to know when it was happening. With effort, he righted her and replaced her hand in his arm. “We should promenade, and hope everyone here forgets what happened.”
“Or they will report back to London at large, and everyone will know that you are married to a lady who is not ashamed to be with you.” She patted his hand.
“After all, I am the bastard child of a gentleman, remember? Unacknowledged by my father, and brought up as a lady with no prospects. I’m accustomed to the world passing judgment and finding me wanting. ”
“And yet you shout your defiance into the wind?”
“Better that than giving up.”
They had only made it a few more paces before a young lady almost dashed up to them from where she was walking beside a man in a chair. At the sight of her, Aurelia smiled, and Sebastian was able to deduce this must be one of her friends.
“Duchess!” the lady chimed as she approached, dipping into a very slight curtsy. “Fancy seeing you here!”
“I could say the same about you, my lady,” Aurelia replied, half laughing.
“Call me Mary Ann, do.” The girl turned sharp blue eyes on him. She was pretty, in a passing way—the type a gentleman might appreciate if he stopped to look, but that would not inspire him to stop and look with any particular haste.
“This is Sebastian,” Aurelia beamed, her hand returning to his arm. “My husband, the Duke of Ravenhall.”
The lady sank into a curtsy. Lady Mary Ann, he ascertained. The only lady in the village who had deigned to call on him, although he did not know her family. Perhaps he ought to have investigated if she was to be his wife’s new friend.
“Your Grace,” she greeted.
“Sebastian, you must recall I told you about my friend, Lady Mary Ann.”
“Charmed,” he offered, bowing over her hand with as much grace as he could muster for a breezy day at the beach.
Lady Mary Ann merely giggled, clapping a hand over her mouth to stem the sound.
“The pleasure is all mine, Your Grace. Come, do me the honor of meeting my father.” She gestured at the man in the chair, and Sebastian frowned, surprised despite himself that anyone would go out of their way to introduce him to someone.
And, when he approached the man in the chair, he found himself both delighted and surprised once again to find the elderly gentleman there so amenable to making his acquaintance.
“Your Grace,” he smiled, holding out a gnarled hand. “You must forgive me for not attending your dinner the other week. If I had not been in my current position, I have no doubt I would have been in attendance.”
Aurelia laughed, obviously charmed by him, and Sebastian was hardly less so.
Perhaps the man had not heard the rumors surrounding him.
But his daughter evidently had, given the fact that she relayed those rumors to Aurelia.
Had she merely not discussed them with her father?
It seemed unlikely if they lived together; in a small village, what else was there to talk about but village gossip?
And his reputation was a step above village gossip.
The man’s watery eyes passed to him, and Sebastian knew immediately that the rumors had not escaped him. He had just, for whatever reason that eluded Sebastian, decided to ignore them or put them aside.
“As it is, it is an honor to finally meet you, Your Grace,” he said to Sebastian.
“This is my father,” Lady Mary Ann supplied. “The Right Honorable, The Earl of Ware. Father, this is His Grace, The Duke of Ravenhall.”
Were he a younger man, he could have made a great deal of jokes surrounding the title, and by the expression on Lady Mary Ann’s face, she was expecting him.
The Earl of Where?!
Sebastian didn’t make them. He clicked his heels together and executed a crisp bow, as though they were meeting in a drawing room rather than on this blustery beach. “It is an honor,” Sebastian declared. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance.”
“The pleasure is all mine,” said Lord Ware, and if all social interactions could be like this, Sebastian reflected that they would not be so bad after all.
“He is just as handsome as I thought he might be,” Mary Ann whispered to Aurelia in a rush the second they were out of earshot. “I have been positively dying to tell you ever since we encountered you. What a funny thing it is to both be here today.”
“We came for the bracing sea breeze,” Aurelia said wryly. Although she had to admit, she was feeling stronger for the trip. How much of that strength came from seeing Sebastian walking beside Lord Ware’s chair and speaking animatedly, she didn’t know.
When had his well-being mattered so much to her?
Knowing that there was at least someone in his vicinity who would not treat him with disgust and disrespect made such a difference to Aurelia’s heart.
How grateful she was.
“Papa likes him,” Mary Ann added dismissively. “He doesn’t get out much, but he’s had the curate for dinner, and the vile things that man said about the duke—”
“Tell me,” Aurelia coaxed, suddenly agog to know the latest gossip.
“Well, he doesn’t attend church, you know, so that makes him a degenerate by sheer circumstance.
You should have heard Papa, Aurelia—he informed the curate that as he rarely attended church, he must also be a degenerate.
” She giggled. “I have never seen a man so flustered in my life. He didn’t know what to say.
“Although Papa informs me he was somewhat of a poor example until he met Mother, and she set him on the straight and narrow. She’s dead now, God rest her soul, but he says he is too old and tired to deviate from the path of goodness she put him on.
And he has me, and I would kick up such a fuss if he were to do anything so very terrible.
“But the curate didn’t know any of that, he merely knew he had insulted an earl, and he was very apologetic.
Papa has a reason not to attend church—it gets very troublesome for his chair—and he went as far as to say that if the curate had a more welcoming environment for the duke, perhaps he would consider attending. ”
When Aurelia had been living with the Duchess of Fenwick, they had all traipsed to church on a Sunday morning, mostly to see and be seen, and Aurelia had hated every second. There was next to no piousness in sight, and yet the duchess was openly venerated for her devotion to the Lord.
“Attending church is not the only sign that one might be a good person,” she said, stubbornly. “And, indeed, these days, I would suggest it is far from the best sign.”
“Yes, one cannot have a face like that and be a bad man. I simply won’t allow it.” Mary Ann sighed and rested her head against Aurelia’s shoulder. “I pray I find a husband like that.”
“Rumors and all?”
“What do I care for rumors? They only matter if they’re true.” Mary Ann raised her head to look directly at Aurelia. “And are they true?”
“No,” Aurelia answered confidently for the first time. “They are absolutely not.”
“Well, then. What do you care about them?”
“I don’t,” Aurelia replied, and realized, with a start, it was true.