Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
From the outside, the house Curzon Street looked entirely ordinary. Inside it was anything but.
Spiced wine came round on trays that never seemed to empty. Somewhere past the hall a quartet played something too loose and warm for a ballroom, and a dozen conversations tangled over it.
Couples lingered in shadowed corners, their murmurs blending with the clink of glasses as flirtatious glances passed between them.
Through an open doorway Sebastian glimpsed a few painters’ easels, their models posed in languid repose under flickering candlelight, reclined on a chaises and divans.
Two of the artists were arguing cheerfully over the exact angle of a model’s wrist. Further down the corridor, a couple had stopped kissing long enough to lose the thread of whatever debate they'd been having about jealousy and picked it back up between kisses as though the two pursuits required the same breath.
A woman in emerald silk approached, her smile inviting. "Your Grace, the music calls for a turn about the room. Might you join me?"
He inclined his head. "Another time, perhaps. I am not much fun tonight."
"Sebastian." Julian appeared at his elbow with two glasses, handing one over without asking whether he wanted it. "You look like a man attending a funeral."
"I look like a man who has had a long day."
"You look like a man who has had a long day and brought it along with him." Julian studied him over the rim of his glass, the same unhurried attention he'd leveled at half the arguments Sebastian had ever lost to him. "Something happened with Miss Hartwell."
"Nothing happened."
"You have said that exact sentence to me twice this month, and both times it meant the opposite.
" Julian let it go, mercifully, and nodded toward a cluster of women near the hearth, one of whom had already noticed Sebastian and was making her way over.
"Brace yourself. Lady Ormond has been asking after you since you arrived. "
"Your Grace." Lady Ormond arrived exactly as predicted, clad in silk, rouged lips pouting, she rested a hand lightly on his sleeve. "I had begun to think you'd abandoned us for scholarship entirely."
"Merely delayed, my lady."
"Delayed is promising. I do hope you mean to make up for lost time.
The private alcoves offer finer company.
Would you care to explore?" Her fingers traced a slow line down his forearm, an invitation plain enough that a fortnight ago he'd have met it without a second thought.
Tonight he found himself watching the gesture from some small distance, as though it belonged to someone else's evening.
"Another time, perhaps."
Something flickered across her face, surprise more than offense, and she withdrew with good grace, drifting back toward the hearth in search of better fortune. Sebastian took a long swallow of his wine and found it did nothing at all to loosen the knot sitting behind his ribs.
It went on like that for the better part of an hour.
A widow with clever eyes, an actress he'd known two Seasons past, a young matron whose husband was conveniently occupied elsewhere in the house, each of them offered with easy warmth and each of them declined with a courtesy that cost him rather more effort than it should have.
Julian sat near the fireplace with Nathaniel and Tristan, each holding a glass, their conversation already well underway.
Tristan turned. "Finally."
Sebastian approached them. "I was not aware my absence had been noted."
"It was," Julian said. "Nathaniel has been forced to endure us without you."
Nathaniel glanced over. "I was doing perfectly well.”
Sebastian took the empty chair beside them.
"What are you arguing about?"
"We are not arguing," Nathaniel said.
Julian smiled.
"We are discussing."
Sebastian listened with half an ear.
It was familiar. Comfortable.
The three men had already settled into the rhythm they had developed years ago.
Which was the effortless exchange of opinions that required no invitation and no ceremony.
Sebastian knew when Tristan was about to provoke Nathaniel.
He knew when Julian was about to introduce some obscure philosophical principle simply to see whether the others would object.
Normally, he would have enjoyed it. Tonight, he found himself staring into his wine.
"The delight of pleasure, as I was saying gentlemen," Tristan murmured to the circle, his voice low and teasing, "comes not from haste but from the lingering caress that leaves a lady trembling for more."
Nathaniel gave a quiet laugh, turning his glass slowly between his fingers. "Indeed. Patience has always been underrated. A gentleman who is too eager to reach the conclusion has missed half the pleasure of the pursuit."
Julian nodded softly. "And when she yields that final surrender, arching against you with such sweet abandon—ah, that is the true art. Yet what of the man who demands more than mere yielding? One who seeks a partner to match his every command without falter."
Nathaniel raised an eyebrow. “That depends entirely upon the lady.”
Julian snapped his fingers. “Precisely.”
"You are becoming something of a legend tonight," Tristan muttered, moving into the chair beside Sebastian with undisguised delight as the others carried on in their discussion, "for entirely the wrong reasons."
"I am simply not in the mood."
"You are never not in the mood, Sebastian.
It is practically a founding principle of this house.
" Tristan gestured lazily at the room, the wine, the music, the general glorious chaos of it.
"And yet here you sit, having declined no fewer than three perfectly willing women, drinking rather more than usual and saying rather less.
I begin to suspect you have attended this evening only in body.
Your mind is off somewhere different, arguing, I'd wager, about the exact same subject it was arguing about this afternoon. "
"You know nothing of this afternoon."
"I know you came here looking for a distraction and have spent the whole evening failing spectacularly to find one, which tells me a great deal on its own." Tristan's grin gentled, some of the teasing falling away. "What did she say to you?"
Sebastian turned his glass slowly between his fingers, watching the candlelight catch and slide across the surface of the wine. "She saw something I have spent years making certain no one saw. And she did it in the space of a single conversation, without trying particularly hard."
"That does not sound like a woman to run from."
"I am not running."
"No," Tristan agreed, watching him with a look that had nothing of the earlier mischief. "You are sitting very still in the middle of a room built for forgetting, refusing every distraction on offer, thinking of nothing but her. I would call that worse than running, Sebastian. I would call it being caught.” His mouth curved slightly. “Though perhaps that’s what has you so unsettled. You’ve spent years enjoying the chase. I don’t believe you’ve ever considered what might happen when you met a woman you couldn’t outrun. "
Sebastian did not answer.
His eyes remained fixed upon the amber liquid as he kept turning the glass in his hand.
"And you, Sebastian?" Nathaniel tipped his glass towards him. "What do you say about this matter? Your tastes are known to run deep, surely you have a view on how best to draw forth that surrender."
Sebastian didn't answer.
Then Nathaniel repeated himself. "Sebastian?"
Sebastian blinked. His eyes moved to him.
"What?"
Julian smiled slightly. Nathaniel’s eyebrows rose.
"I asked what you think."
"About what?"
There was a pause.
"We were discussing whether pleasure is diminished when one knows precisely what the other person expects."
Julian lifted his glass. "I said anticipation is often more important than the act itself."
"Because you enjoy complications," Tristan said.
"Because anticipation gives the mind time to participate."
Julian considered that. "Then you believe pleasure is partly intellectual?"
"Of course it is."
Tristan gave a soft laugh.
"You would turn anything into an intellectual exercise."
"And you would turn everything into an excuse to avoid thinking."
"I think very well."
"When necessary."
Tristan placed a hand over his heart. "Wounded."
Sebastian's mouth moved faintly. It might have been the beginning of a smile, which Julian noticed.
"There. We have proof he is still alive."
Sebastian looked at him. "I heard that."
"Good. We were beginning to wonder."
Nathaniel continued as though the interruption had never occurred.
"The point remains. A person cannot separate the mind from the body entirely. Anticipation, curiosity, trust—these alter the experience."
"Trust?" Tristan repeated.
"Yes."
"You make it sound positively respectable."
"It is respectable."
"That depends upon who you ask."
Julian laughed. "I suspect society would prefer us to pretend desire arrives without thought, grows without reason, and disappears without consequence."
Nathaniel shrugged.
"Society prefers many convenient lies."
"Which is why," Tristan said, "we have this house."
He gestured toward the rooms beyond them.
"Here," he continued, "people may admit what they want without dressing it up as something else."
Sebastian looked briefly toward the doorway. A couple passed through it, laughing softly. Then his attention returned to the glass in his hand.
Julian's invitation arrived the following afternoon.
It was not delivered by a footman in the usual manner, nor did it bear the crest of his family.
Instead, it appeared among Amelia's correspondence without explanation—a small cream envelope, her name written across the front in an unmistakably masculine hand.
She turned it over twice before opening it.
Inside was a single sheet.
Miss Hartwell,
I suspect curiosity may be getting the better of you.
If it is, there is an evening gathering at a private house on Curzon Street tonight. Ours. The Circle's, in its truer form. It is not a society event in the ordinary sense, and I would not insult you by pretending otherwise.
You may come merely to observe. I will not pretend there is no risk in coming, should your presence become known. But within the house you will be perfectly safe. If at any moment you wish to leave, you shall leave. No one will expect, request, or compel your participation in anything.
If you decide to come, I will have a carriage waiting at the end of the mews at ten. Tell your maid you require nothing further for the evening, and she need know no more than that. I shall see that you return home safely.
—Julian Hawthorne
Amelia read it twice, the second time no less incredulously than the first. Her initial instinct was to burn it. The subsequent one was to hide it.
And yet… she couldn’t help but read it again, and this was far more troublesome.
She folded the letter carefully. It was absurd. Reckless. Possibly the most improper invitation she had ever received. Even so, she could not stop thinking about it or the man whose name Julian had not mentioned once.
Sebastian.
Since their last argument, she had tried to convince herself that she was angry with him.
It would have been much easier if she were.
Instead, she found herself remembering his expression when she had challenged him. The rare moments when his composure slipped. The way he listened when she spoke, even when he disagreed. The infuriating intelligence behind his arrogance.
And the way her pulse would run wild in his presence.
Amelia closed her eyes.
"Oh, this is a terrible idea."