Chapter 3 #2
His youngest sister, Claire, stiffened, and met his gaze directly. The grim look in her eyes plunged a spear through his hardened heart. “What most people require when they wake in the morning.”
He started to rise. “I can help.”
“Don’t you dare.” Her voice was tight, filled with a quiet kind of fury that was born from being dealt an unfair hand. “I’ve already rung for my maid.”
“Is there anything I can do until she arrives?”
“No.” She averted her gaze, dismissing him as she reached for the cane propped next to her headboard.
She had several, but this was her favorite.
It was carved from rich mahogany and fitted with a brass handle, adorned by a relief of flowers and vines.
She gripped it firmly in one hand for balance and used the other to help move her legs, until she sat on the edge of the mattress.
A hoarse breath filled the air and she met his gaze once again, this time in a glare. “Get out. Go.”
“Claire…”
“I said I don’t need you.” As if realizing how brutal that sounded, she added a whispered, “I’ll see you downstairs when I’m ready.”
With a nod he got himself upright, then turned for the door which had just been pushed open by the maid Claire had summoned. A sturdy and capable woman, she wished Sebastian a hasty, “Good morning,” then went to help her mistress.
Sebastian left, his chest so tight he could hardly breathe. Claire’s bright smiles and sparkling laughter ought to be filling ballrooms. Instead, she’d been reduced to a cripple. Her cheerful optimism had lasted longer than his, though it had gradually faded as her disease had progressed.
The worst of it was he’d no idea what caused it and the promise of a cure…
He gritted his teeth, enraged once more by the way he’d been fooled. Had Doctor Ashburry and the nurse he’d been working with not been killed, he’d have ripped out their throats himself for the false hope they had provided. Lies. All of it. For the sole purpose of serving their own agenda.
A moderate gait brought him to the dining room. It was uncomfortably bright this morning. So much so, he was tempted to yank the curtains shut.
“Everything all right?” The question was posed by his other sister, Edwina. At four and twenty, she was two years older than Claire and in excellent health.
There was one more sibling. Sebastian’s brother, Ryan, but no one knew where he was or even if he still lived.
He’d walked out in a fury after their parents died, and had not been heard from since.
With Ryan cut off from the family funds, Sebastian had no wish to imagine what his brother might have done to get by.
Though he’d inquired after him, his questions remained unanswered.
Sebastian pulled out his usual chair and took his seat at the head of the table. He reached for the pot of coffee.
“You ought to sleep in your own room,” Edwina told him when it became clear that he wasn’t going to answer her question. “If I were Claire—”
“You’re not,” he said with a dark edge to his voice while he filled his cup.
“You needn’t say that as though you wish it were I who’d been cursed with her wretched affliction.”
He forced himself to take a calming breath and expelled the air slowly. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right. I hate what has happened to her as much as you do, but hovering over her won’t help.
She needs to be allowed to feel as though she can manage without us.
As though we trust her to do so. Even if it’s just an illusion.
Your choosing to sleep in that chair all the time has the opposite effect. ”
“It’s important she knows I’m there for her,” Sebastian muttered.
Edwina sighed and stayed quiet so long Sebastian believed the discussion was over. But then she said, “What you’re doing has more to do with you than it does with her. It’s about making you feel better and that isn’t fair.”
Sebastian stiffened. It was a curious thing to be chastised by one’s younger sister.
With five years between them, he ought to be wiser, but he was aware that emotion could cloud his judgement.
So rather than lashing out, as had been his first instinct, he gave a slow nod and turned his attention toward the food.
He was almost done eating by the time Claire arrived, her weak body supported by the cane.
Sebastian went to pull out her chair as he would for any other woman, but refrained from offering Claire additional assistance.
Instead, he pushed down hard on the instinct to rush to her side and lend an arm, allowing her to hobble toward the table alone.
A discreet nod from Edwina informed him he’d acted correctly, leaving him with the singular task of pushing the chair toward the table as Claire sat.
He returned to his own spot and poured himself another cup of coffee.
Claire began piling food onto her plate.
Eggs, bacon, sausages, and toast. In contrast to her body, her appetite remained healthy.
“A new season will be starting soon,” she said, stopping Sebastian’s heart dead in his chest.
Edwina sucked in an audible breath. Her hand, he noted, trembled slightly as she picked up her teacup. She sipped the liquid which must have gone cold by now. Anything to avoid having to comment.
He cleared his throat and pretended to focus on an article in the morning paper. “More debutantes and bachelors making fools of themselves. More scandals resulting in heartache and ruin. A waste, as usual.”
“I want Edwina to have her debut.”
A snort and a splutter exploded to Sebastian’s right as Edwina choked on the tea she’d been sipping. She coughed a few times before hoarsely saying, “I’m too old for that, dearest. Besides, I’d much rather stay here with you.”
She’d been adamant about that when she’d been younger, a duke’s sister with the world at her feet. She could have had any man she desired. Instead, she’d rattled off a list of threats she swore she’d follow through on unless Sebastian allowed her to stay by Claire’s side.
With the death of their parents still casting a shadow, added to Ryan’s disappearance and Claire’s sickness, Sebastian hadn’t bothered to argue. And now it was too late. The years had somehow come and gone and Edwina had lost her chance at the debut he knew she and Claire had once dreamed of.
A thud made him flinch and he saw that Claire had thrust her fork into a sausage.
She gripped the tool hard, her expression furious as she glared at them each in turn.
“You think only of yourselves. What you want. To hover over me at all hours, even when I sleep. To be forever by my side, without allowing me any peace. Well what about what I want? Does that matter to either of you, or is it so important for you to prove that you care, that I must contend with your show of pity forever?”
“You’re being unfair,” Sebastian snapped, unable to contain himself.
“Am I?” She started cutting the sausage into small pieces.
Once finished, she shoved her plate aside, rejecting the food with a grimace.
Her elbows found the top of the table, resting there as she dropped her head between her hands.
A tortured sigh followed before she quietly said, “How do you suppose I feel when I think of all you have denied yourself, Edwina, because of me?”
The anguish with which she spoke was so raw, Sebastian’s chest splintered. He couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t stand this.
“You’ll recover,” Edwina said. “When you do, we’ll go to London together for a joint debut.”
It was a wretched moment of clarity that forced Sebastian to acknowledge what he’d been refusing to see. Edwina’s denial, so similar to his own.
“That’s not going to happen,” Claire said, the strongest and most courageous of them all, even though it was she who’d been cursed. “I will get worse, not better. The cure Sebastian believed in was a lie. It doesn’t exist and it never will.”
Shame and rage ignited at the base of Sebastian’s skull.
Heat flashed across his skin. He’d been tricked, had unwittingly supplied Doctor Ashburry with the rare ingredients he’d said he’d needed in order to make the tincture that would help Claire recover.
Sebastian had made a devil’s bargain with Wycliff when supplies had run out and more were needed.
Had shot the St. Giles crime lord himself when he’d made an attempt at blackmail.
He’d sold his soul to the devil to save his sister and would do it again if given the chance. But it had been a wasted effort. Ashburry had only been serving his own agenda, so Sebastian wasn’t sorry to learn that he’d died. His only regret was that he’d not had the chance to kill him himself.
“Maybe…” Edwina began.
“Stop it,” Claire warned. She shook her head, then looked to Sebastian with steel in her eyes. “Take Edwina to London. Though the time may have passed for a formal debut, you can still introduce her to Society. Please, Sebastian. Give her the chance she deserves at a happy future.”
“And what if I refuse?” Edwina asked, a stubborn tilt to her chin.
Claire turned to her slowly. “Then I shall forever blame you for squandering the one thing I wanted but could not have.”
Edwina firmed her lips and for a second Sebastian feared the rising anger he spied in her tight expression would explode. But then she set her napkin aside and pushed back her chair. “I need some fresh air, so I think I’ll go for a ride.”
Pain tore across Claire’s face and Sebastian opened his mouth, ready to throw his own rage at Edwina.
“Don’t,” Claire said, her voice suddenly soft. She trailed Edwina with her gaze as she left the room then said, “We’re at each other’s throats enough as it is these days.”
“I’m sorry,” Sebastian said, and meant it.
He couldn’t recall what life had been like before their parents died, before Claire began growing weak, before Ryan ran off, or before his own heart had turned to lead.
Too many years had piled up between the adolescent he’d once been and the man he’d become.
Years that had changed him and hardened him so the trials he’d been forced to face wouldn’t crush him completely.
And as he sat there with the weight of loss bearing down upon him, he wondered if there would ever be a bright ending to all the pain his family had suffered. Perhaps one, he reasoned as he reached across the table and set his hand over Claire’s.
“I’ll convince her,” he promised. “Edwina will have the chance that you were denied.”