Chapter 14 #2
Sebastian’s brows drew together. “Misfortune?” he repeated the word slowly with disbelief. “You would saddle her with so ill-omened a name? That bodes dreadfully for my carpets and, I suspect, for my peace of mind.”
Margaret’s head snapped up, eyes wide. “Not misfortune, Your Grace—Miss Fortune. As in a lady. Of charm. And consequence.”
He stared at her for a beat, then let out a short laugh. “Ah. You will forgive me. I thought you meant to christen her a harbinger of disaster.”
“She is no such thing,” Margaret said, scooping the kitten closer. “She will bring nothing but delight.”
“Or fleas,” Sebastian said lightly, though there was the faintest curve at his mouth.
Margaret gave him a look. “If she does, I shall see they are all sent directly to you.”
The faintest smile tugged at his mouth as the kitten batted curiously at the silver buttons of his waistcoat. “Then she and I shall be at war before the week is out.”
“Only if you provoke her,” Margaret returned, lifting her chin. “And she strikes me as the forgiving sort.”
Sebastian’s lips twitched. “Forgiving? That beast has claws. One swipe at the draperies, and my mother’s portrait will come crashing down.”
“Then I shall instruct her to begin with your study,” she said sweetly. “You might find the walls improved.”
He laughed a low, unguarded sound and shook his head. “You and she make a formidable alliance, Your Grace.”
Margaret smiled, running a finger over the kitten’s silky head. “Miss Fortune,” she repeated softly. “A bit of trouble. A bit of luck.”
“And wholly yours,” Sebastian said, his voice losing some of its jest. “Heaven help the rest of us.”
Margaret looked up and found his eyes waiting. Something in her chest gave a quiet, traitorous leap.
He leaned in, eyes locked to hers, as the cat squirmed around their boots. “Miss Fortune,” he murmured. “Rather like someone else I know.”
Her lips curved faintly. “You flatter yourself, Your Grace.”
His brows lifted. “You might spare me that formality. It makes me feel as though we are strangers still.”
“I thought it proper,” she said, almost defensively.
“Proper, perhaps,” he allowed. “But hardly necessary when we are alone. You may call me Sebastian.”
She hesitated, tasting the name in her mind before letting it pass her lips. “Sebastian.”
He gave a small, approving nod. “Better. And far less exhausting.”
Between them, the black cat pounced again, ribbon caught at last, triumphant and content in the grass at their feet.
They found a weathered bench tucked beneath a low stone wall where the rose branches leaned close, catching Margaret’s sleeve now and then with soft insistence.
She sank to the seat first, gathering her skirts with deliberate care.
Miss Fortune prowled about their feet, tail flicking at drifting petals.
Sebastian settled beside her, not quite touching but close enough that the brushed edge of his coat sleeve seemed to carry its own warmth. For a moment, they both watched the cat curl up into a small patch of sun, content as a queen.
At last, it was Margaret who spoke, her gaze trained upon the buds beyond the wall.
“I kept a cat once,” she said, her voice quiet but clear as a hymn.
“When I was a girl. She would sleep curled behind my knees, under my pillow, or in my apron pocket if I’d let her.
I used to think I heard her purr long after she had gone. ”
Sebastian turned, studying the curve of her cheek, the way the sunlight caught a thread of hair that had slipped its pin. “Gone?”
“She vanished during the fire,” Margaret said simply, pressing her palms together until the knuckles whitened.
“It was the night our house burned, the night I lost my parents. No one saw her again. I refuse to believe the worst; instead, I used to imagine she escaped, and that she grew wild and clever and terribly free.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it. He was never certain how to speak such words, but this felt true enough.
Margaret gave a small, lopsided smile. “Thank you. It was a long time ago.”
Silence stretched. Not heavy, exactly, but thick enough that he felt his own heartbeat behind his ribs.
Sebastian studied her slender and pale hands against the pale silk of her dress. He wanted to say something that might ease the ache in her voice, but found nothing useful.
A breath passed between them before he replied. “I should have liked one myself,” he said, as though the words were being coaxed from a long-locked cabinet.
Margaret’s eyes found his, wide with gentle surprise. “You? With a kitten under your coat? I cannot quite picture it.”
He half-laughed, the sound low. “Aye. A boy should have a creature of his own, don’t you think? Something that doesn’t care if he wears the right coat or speaks the right Latin.”
Her mouth curved into a wondering tilt at the corner. “So why not?”
“My mother would have wept at the thought. She despised fur in the house.”
Margaret’s smile faded a fraction. Her hand drifted as if to settle on his, but she stopped short, thumbs stroking one another in a nervous rhythm. He did not move. He only watched her fingers.
He let out a soft huff of laughter, low and rueful. “Neither could my father, I daresay. He would have had the creature tossed out before it shed a single hair upon his immaculate floors.”
“He died when I was sixteen, though by then I had long ceased trying to win what he would not give. My mother carried on much the same—colder, perhaps, once there was no husband to keep her in check.”
She searched his face, the hard lines softened for a fleeting instant by old memory. “Your father was particular?”
A corner of his mouth twisted, though the jest felt thin on his tongue. “Particular is one word for it. He believed affection was a needless indulgence. A boy ought to be forged, not coddled.”
He chuckled bitterly. “There was no affection between him and my mother, either. Their union was a transaction, polished enough for the world, barren within our walls. I grew up in a house of duty and silence.” He paused, and he made a fist, flexing his hand once against his knee.
“Nothing I did was ever quite… sufficient.”
Margaret lowered her gaze, then placed her small hand over his, where it rested, palm warm through the leather. The contact startled him more than he let show, but he did not withdraw.
“Never once proud?” she asked softly.
His laugh was quiet, bitter at the edges. “Proud? He once commended me for reciting Cicero before some dreary dinner party and in the same breath, reminded me my accent was wanting. That was praise enough to last a lifetime, so he thought.”
Margaret’s thumb brushed a slow, brave arc over his knuckles. “A cruel man,” she murmured.
Sebastian’s reply was a mere whisper of breath. “He called it discipline. Duty. But never warmth.”
The wind lifted the rose boughs overhead, scattering petals across the path. Miss Fortune rolled onto her side, paws batting idly at a falling blossom.
Margaret said nothing for a moment, only watched the cat, her hand still upon his. Then, with quiet certainty. “You ought to have had warmth. Everyone ought.”
Sebastian’s throat worked around words that would not come. He turned his palm under hers, holding it properly now, as though it were the simplest thing in the world to do so.
“And yet here I am,” he said at last, attempting levity and failing it entirely. “A grown man forced to borrow his Duchess’s stray to learn how to be soft.”
Margaret’s lips curved, tremulous but true. “She is not only mine, you know. For now, she is ours.”
Something loosened at his ribs, as if a single knot had come undone after too many years pulled tight.
“A dangerous notion,” he said lightly, though the words lodged warm behind his teeth. He gave her hand a careful squeeze. “I shall make it my business to call upon Miss Fortune from time to time once we are established in separate households. It would never do for her to forget me entirely.”
Margaret had begun to draw her hand back, but he caught it once more, as if the moment might be stitched tighter by the faint pressure of his thumb against her knuckles. His eyes traced her face—quiet, steady, searching it out.
Then he cleared his throat, gaze shifting past her to the dusk gathering at the garden’s edge.
“In three days,” he said, voice careful but edged with wryness, “we shall have to return to London. Back to parlors and polished floors and my mother’s exacting gaze.”
Margaret’s brows arched, half a tease glimmering at the corner of her mouth. “And she will so adore our new companion, I suppose?”
His answering huff of laughter was dry as flint. “She will detest her on sight. Which, I confess, pleases me greatly. I may endure an afternoon’s tirade if only to watch her expression when Miss Fortune prances across her precious carpets.”
Margaret’s smile lingered, but his grew fainter. The air between them shifted, the warmth slipping to something more solemn.
He studied her properly then, the hush settling thick as the twilight. “She is… intense, my mother. Exacting in her affections if she offers them at all. I will do what I must to shield you from the worst of her sharpness, Margaret, but you ought to know what awaits.”
Her breath caught, only a fraction, but she did not flinch.
“I understand,” she said softly.
He gave her hand one final, careful press before letting it fall away. “Good. Then let her try, eh? Between you, me, and Miss Fortune, the old house shall never be quite the same.”
And though his grin returned, it could not quite chase the shadow from his eyes.