Chapter 3
Chapter Three
North Norfolk, A few weeks later
Sebastian propped a shoulder against a caravan wheel and turned the pasty in his hand every which way as he considered its solid, savory density and heft.
He’d never been much of a pasty man.
But after a few weeks of subsisting almost exclusively on the food, he was beginning to come around to its charms.
The other men taking their midday tea—Soppitt the head carpenter, Mattie the lad who handled the horses, Bran the farrier, and a man known simply as Fix-All—surely held no such observations. For these men, pasties were an ordinary, filling, tasty bit of midday sustenance.
Of course, as Sebastian tucked into the pasty he understood he’d never had the opportunity to view the reliable pasty in the way of these men. Not as the Duke of Ravensworth, anyway.
For the Duke of Ravensworth, every meal was a production. Meals held a cadence and a flow—a structure carefully choreographed by servants intent on keeping their positions in a duke’s household through excellence of service and fare.
But, here, with the Albion Players, meals were simple and plain. In fact, he’d already developed a preference for this mode of eating. How many hours of his day as a duke did he waste filling his gullet? Somewhere between three to six, depending on his social calendar.
Too many.
He popped the last of the pasty into his mouth. Mutton, potato, and onion. A man didn’t need much more than that.
He dusted the crumbs off his hands before wiping the remaining grease on his trousers. Something else the Duke of Ravensworth would never do.
He was rather taking to being Seb.
“Seb,” came a voice.
Soppitt—the man Sebastian reckoned was his gaffer—jutted his black-stubbled chin, indicating a wagon at the opposite end of camp. “Now you’re all finished up, fetch us that pile of timbers,” he said. “And after that, you’ll be repairin’ the trap door on the stage, won’t you?”
Sebastian gave a grunt in the affirmative.
He tried not to speak much, hence the grunting. And, actually, he’d found that a man needn’t do much more than grunt to get his point across. In fact, a man could easily grunt his way through an entire conversation.
He knew because he’d been doing it these last few weeks.
He pushed off the caravan wheel and set to his task. It was a novel and slightly strange experience—this being told what to do, then doing it.
He began hauling the timbers, one by one, while the other men watched, making idle chit-chat and finishing their midday meal. This was yet another aspect he didn’t mind about being a working man—the physical toil and sweat.
In the course of a duke’s day, one found little opportunity to sweat. A duke had to seek it out. Horse riding…boxing… Those were good, sweaty pursuits. A good, long tup. Another good, sweaty pursuit.
In truth, it had been too long since he’d had one of those.
Not that there was any shortage of possibilities roaming the camp. He’d received no fewer than eight invitations from five different actresses to join her in her caravan bunk.
He’d always been aware of his effect on the opposite sex and had always assumed a sizeable part of his allure was his very large…
dukedom. Other parts of him were large, too—he’d been informed on more than one occasion—but a dukedom trumped any parts of him having to do with being a flesh-and-blood man.
He’d long accepted this as the way of the world, but here with the Albion Players, he was simply Seb.
Of course, there was one actress who he wouldn’t mind if she sent an inviting—or even civil—glance in his direction, but she’d entirely stopped acknowledging his existence.
Lilah.
He liked that name for her.
It called to mind the Lady Delilah he’d known before The Eton Incident. A softer Delilah… A Delilah who had been friendly with him… A Delilah whose eye had occasionally directed a flicker of interest his way.
But that was Before. And for the last three years, they’d been living in the After, where she couldn’t stand the sight of him.
Good deeds could certainly bring their own punishment.
Right.
He lifted another timber off the stack and for the hundredth time questioned exactly why he was here.
And for the hundredth time, the answer followed in an instant.
Keeping Delilah safe.
Again.
His task completed, satisfied sweat dripping down the sides of his face and the hollow of his spine, he rejoined the men, none of whom had shifted an inch in the last half hour. Life in a theater company moved at a different pace than what Sebastian was accustomed to.
“More than full of himself, that one,” muttered Bran, just loud enough for the group to hear as an actor passed by. The man did possess a rather haughty angle to his dimpled chin.
The men, to a one, nodded their agreement.
Actors. A favorite subject of mild disdain amongst the men who kept the company running, if not in a smooth gallop, then at a serviceable limp, at least.
“And that Bliss…” began Fix-All.
Groans sounded around.
“If she summons me to her bunk again, like she’s Queen Anne, I’ll have to tell her what’s what.”
“And what’s that?” asked Mattie, flashing a grin.
“It ain’t the bed that got lumps in it, but her arse!”
This provoked more than a few guffaws.
Bran shrugged a shoulder. “I happen to like an arse with a few lumps in it. More cushion for the—”
“High of spirits, them actors,” continued Fix-All, not one to be put off a subject. “Still, when Bliss did that scene as Lady Jane up there, it did bring an old bead of moisture to the eye.”
Sebastian suspected Fix-All would be finding himself in Bliss’s bunk tonight, after all.
Though a divide existed between the actors and the working men, each harbored a respect and admiration for one another’s place in their special world. Neither could exist without the other.
A figure clambered up onto the stage, a sheaf of papers in her hand. Tall… willowy… cropped blonde curls…
Lilah.
Quiet descended as the men watched her pace the boards, her brow furrowed in concentration, her mouth moving silently as she went over her lines.
“And her?” Sebastian found himself asking.
Bran nodded. “That one’s all right.”
“Lovely as a sunrise, she is,” offered Mattie.
“But not puffed up with it,” added Soppitt.
Fix-All nodded pensively and tapped a forefinger to his chin in the pose of a philosopher. “A looker like that usually demands the lead. But not this one. She knows her place in the pecking order and respects it.”
“I reckon she won’t be happy with the bit parts for long,” said Soppitt. “She’s too…” he trailed into silence.
She’s too…
That summed up Delilah perfectly.
She was too everything.
“Anyone know where she came from?” asked Sebastian. It was time he knew the story she’d told.
Heads shook all around. “A mystery, that one,” said Mattie, with no small amount of longing in his voice.
“I have a theory, meself,” said Fix-All, lifting his brow meaningfully. “A high-born bastard.”
The theory provoked a round of affirmative grunts.
“What makes you think that?” asked Sebastian.
“The way she talks and carries herself.” Fix-All was clearly pleased at being asked to expand on his theory. “Like a lady. Tries to cover it up, though.”
Soppitt’s eye narrowed on Sebastian. “She talks a little like you, come to think on it.”
“Yeah, well…” Sebastian trailed. Then he grunted, and that was the end of it.
Soppitt jutted his chin toward the stage. “The trap door isn’t about to fix itself.”
Sebastian nodded, even as he inhaled a snort.
The Duke of Ravensworth didn’t take too kindly to commands.
But as Seb, well, he was able to shrug it off, because the work was only pretense, as far as he was concerned.
The true reason he was here was currently pacing the boards, muttering to herself like a bedlamite.
He caught the very instant she registered his presence—not because she acknowledged him, but the opposite.
Tension squared her shoulders, and she kept her gaze determinedly averted.
He let his tools fall to the stage with a solid clank.
Not even the flicker of a glance. That was how closely she was keeping the periphery of her eye on him.
“Lilah,” he said.
She acted like she hadn’t heard him and turned, presenting him her back.
“You’ll need to keep to that side of the stage while I repair the trap door.”
She continued muttering to herself as if she hadn’t heard him. But the tips of her ears betrayed her. They’d gone bright red. He suspected her cheeks had, too.
Arms crossed over his chest, he stared down at the gaping hole where the trap door should’ve been closed. Now, how to repair a trap door?
Right.
It wasn’t anything a hammer, some nails, and the rusty spring Soppitt had placed in his hand couldn’t fix.
He tossed Delilah one last glance before jumping into the gaping square hole.
The stage now level with his chest, he considered the job before him.
Nails had wormed loose from hinges that had rusted and curled from years of exposure to the elements and overuse.
He considered the hammer, nails, and spring in his hand.
He discarded the spring as useless. The solution was to employ a few cross boards and hammer the door shut until new hinges could be procured.
The Duke of Ravensworth decided it so.
The aristocrat in him wasn’t buried so deeply, after all.
One last glance toward Delilah, who was intently keeping to her end of the stage, and Sebastian dropped to his knees and set about his task, through layers of cobwebs and much to the annoyance of a feral orange tabby cat who dashed away, but not before sending a few well-directed hisses his way.
But just as Delilah’s person wasn’t too far away, neither were thoughts of her.
He admired the seriousness with which she approached the craft of acting. Every evening, he’d watched her tread the boards. Though her parts were small, she never gave the same performance twice, acting intuitively, playing off the other actors and even the audience.
The fact was she shouldn’t have been born a lady. If she hadn’t been, she would currently be reigning supreme over the finest stages of England and the Continent.
A stray wicked thought wormed in. That Delilah would’ve been in need of a patron. It wasn’t that he wanted to collect her like a possession. But that Delilah might’ve been nice to him… Perhaps tossed a smile his way every so often… Given him a chance to…
He shouldn’t finish the thought.
It decided to finish itself.
Seduce her.
He’d never been free to seduce Lady Delilah Windermere.
But Lilah…
Well, she was an altogether different person.
Or she could be.
His forearm planted against the trap door above his head, holding it in place, he pinched a nail between forefinger and thumb and hammered it in place. One nail down, about forty to go if this fix was going to withstand two hours of stomping feet every night.
Right.
Truth told, he should reconsider this plan to travel with the company for the remainder of the summer. As he’d gotten to know the Albion Players, he saw that Delilah was perfectly safe here.
Further, he’d never seen her like this. She’d always been confident, but this Delilah—Lilah—was different. She not only knew what she was about, but she was capable. She didn’t need her family name to thrive—and she certainly didn’t need him to tell her what was good for her.
He hammered a nail in place, then another, and another.
It was only when he took a rest from all the hammering—an activity that was surprisingly settling for the mind—that he realized he wasn’t the one causing all the racket.
Heels drummed on the boards near him… heels that advanced with a light, efficient click-clack…
heels that didn’t slow as they approached the half-secured trap door.
Sebastian was considering the possibility that he should move when a booted heel came down on the trap door, then the other.
It was on the third step that the rickety contraption gave way, allowing him the split of a second to react as a body dropped into the hole.
Though he was on his knees, his arms reactively shot out even as one of those booted heels planted itself in the center of his chest and kicked, knocking the wind out of him and shoving him onto his arse.
But gravity wasn’t finished as the body continued its descent, crashing down on him as its landing cushion.
Next thing he knew, he was flat on his back, a pair of long, slender legs straddling his chest, a woman’s skirts flung over his face.
His hands instinctively grabbed the woman’s waist to steady her.
Except these weren’t just any woman’s skirts flung over his head.
They were Delilah’s skirts.
Which made these Delilah’s long, slender legs straddling him.
Delilah’s womanly scent he was inhaling.
His cock went from still and unbothered to full and ready in an instant.
Frantic hands began shoving skirts aside. Over the hem, wide, startled azure eyes stared down into his.
Delilah’s eyes.
Both speechless, their gazes remained locked…his hands clutching her waist…her cunny close enough to his face that all it would take for him to have a taste of her would be to pull her a few inches closer…
She swallowed, and his eyes followed the undulation of her elegant throat.
Here they were…
Not Ravensworth and Lady Delilah.
But Seb and Lilah.
Staring into each other’s eyes longer than was strictly necessary.
And he wanted her with a ferocity he’d never once let himself experience.
Because he’d always known if he ever allowed himself to want her…
He would pursue her with the single-minded intensity that he pursued everything.
He wouldn’t stop until he’d had her.