Chapter 5 #2
"Have you." Tristan settled into the chair with his drink, entirely too pleased with himself. "Because you have now mentioned her twice, unprompted, in the space of a single conversation I had not yet steered toward her at all."
"You asked after her directly not a minute ago."
"I asked after the woman in purple. You are the one who has since supplied her disposition, her manners, and a full accounting of your opinion on both, none of which I requested." Tristan's grin widened, insufferable. "That is a great deal of detail for a woman who means nothing to you, Sebastian."
"It is precisely the amount of detail required to answer your question thoroughly."
"Mm." Tristan did not look remotely convinced, and made no effort to disguise it. "Nathaniel wagers she'll have three proposals inside the fortnight, purely on the strength of everyone wanting to know the woman capable of besting four dukes at once."
"Then Nathaniel is welcome to lose his money on it, as he generally does."
"Perhaps you ought to make it four proposals." Tristan lifted his glass in mock salute. "Save the poor woman the trouble of choosing and spare yourself further sleepless nights composing arguments you insist you are not thinking about."
"I am not marrying anyone, Tristan. I would have thought a decade of hearing me say so might have settled the matter by now."
"It has settled nothing. It has simply made the eventual capitulation more entertaining to watch.
" Tristan swirled his drink, considering him over the rim of the glass like he found the moment genuinely diverting rather than merely provoking.
"Though I confess, I begin to wonder whether any woman alive could actually satisfy your particular requirements, should you ever trouble yourself to marry.
You are exacting in scholarship, exacting in estate management, and considerably more exacting still in the bedroom.
You would have her on her knees at dawn and bent over the bed by dusk, begging to be used again.
Few ladies possess the stamina or the willingness to endure such relentless use.
That is rather a great deal to ask of one unfortunate duchess. "
"That is a dramatic way of putting it."
"Given how thoroughly Lady Ashbourne complained of it." Tristan's grin turned wicked.
Sebastian shrugged. "She was perfectly satisfied until I declined to become emotionally attached to her."
"She did not complain about the lack of satisfaction."
"No."
"Quite the opposite, as I recall."
Sebastian gave him a flat look.
Tristan grinned and swirled his drink. "She said you were the most demanding man she had ever encountered. You were dreadfully particular about how you wanted her, exactly how long, exactly where a woman's hands ought to be and where they ought not. She was absolutely ravaged."
"She had a limited range of experience." His mouth twitched. "Tristan, I decline to discuss Lady Ashbourne further with you."
"You never decline to discuss anything with me, which is rather the entire foundation of our friendship.
" Tristan set down his glass, and something more genuine crept into his voice beneath the teasing.
"I only mean, Sebastian, that a man so particular about everything else in his life is unlikely to settle for a wife chosen purely for convenience.
You would want someone capable of matching you.
Genuinely matching you, not merely tolerating you, which I begin to suspect is a considerably rarer creature than either of us has yet encountered. "
"I have no intention of marrying at all, matched or otherwise.
" Sebastian set his pen down properly this time, meeting Tristan's gaze across the desk.
"I have seen precisely what a wife does to a household, Tristan.
I watched my father's judgment corrode by degrees over the whole of his marriage, until there was nothing left of the man I am told he once was, only the shell of a title going through the motions his duchess required of him.
I have no wish to discover whether I would fare any better. "
He studied Sebastian for a moment, the teasing gone from his expression, and then gave a small nod. "Fair enough."
Sebastian picked up his pen again.
Tristan rose from the chair and straightened his waistcoat.
"I should stay and torment you further, but I have a lady waiting, and unlike you, I do not believe in disappointing women unnecessarily."
Sebastian glanced up. "With whom?"
"With Miss Eleanor Vane." Tristan's grin widened.
"I thought you had already met her."
"I did. She requires my company for a second time."
"Be gentle with her, she has a frail frame."
"I make no promises."
Tristan opened the door, then paused and looked back.
"And Sebastian?"
"What?"
"I will say, for a man so entirely uninterested in the woman in purple, you have spent a remarkable morning proving otherwise."
"Leave."
Tristan laughed and walked down the corridor.
And, with the faintest trace of amusement still at the corner of his mouth, Sebastian returned to his work.
Or attempted to. He read the opening paragraph of his latest paper twice. Then a third time.
The argument was sound. He had tested it against the principal sources, checked the translations himself, and revised the conclusion twice before allowing the draft onto his desk. There was nothing in it that required alteration. At least, there had not been yesterday.
Sebastian picked up his pen.
The evidence demonstrates that—
He stopped. the mysterious woman’s voice came back to him with irritating clarity.
You have not yet earned the right to know my name.
His jaw tightened. He crossed out three words.
The evidence would appear to demonstrate that—
He stared at the sentence. That was worse. He struck out would appear and restored the original wording, then sat back.
Ridiculous.
Had he mistaken the absence of women from certain institutions for evidence that they were incapable of succeeding within them? Sebastian frowned. He picked up his pen. The next hour passed in a series of increasingly irritating revisions.
One paragraph was removed entirely, though he could not have said whether he had removed it because it was weak or because he had suddenly become incapable of reading it without hearing that infuriating woman’s voice.
At last, he pushed the papers away. "This is absurd."
The room offered no answer. Sebastian leaned back in his chair and rubbed a hand across his jaw.
He had argued with men considerably more accomplished than himself. Professors had dismantled his conclusions in public lecture halls. He had defended papers before scholars who had spent forty years studying the same texts he had only begun to examine.
None of them had managed to leave him questioning the structure of his argument before he had even reached luncheon. And none of them had looked at him quite the way she had. He glanced toward the pages.
His eyes caught on the sentence he had changed for the fourth time. He picked up the pen again. For several seconds he simply stared at it.
Then, with a quiet curse, he threw it onto the desk. The sound seemed unnecessarily loud in the stillness. He gathered the papers into a neat stack, squared the edges with overt precision, and pushed them to the far side of the desk.
He would return to them later. When his mind was his own again.
Sebastian stood and crossed to the window.
London moved below him, indifferent and noisy, leaving him entirely incapable of understanding why a woman he had known for one evening had managed to disturb the settled order of thoughts he had spent years constructing.
He told himself that was precisely what irritated him.
Not her. Not her mouth. Not the memory of her eyes when she challenged him. Only the argument.