Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Delilah’s eyes sparked with disbelief. “Danger? At Eton College?” she scoffed, utterly dismissive. “Impossible.”
Sebastian understood he was toeing a narrow ledge. He would tip over and lose her if he didn’t explain himself. “One of them said, And she has no idea.”
Delilah’s brow gathered with disappointment. “That’s all?”
He’d done a much better job the thousand times he’d explained himself in his mind than he was doing in reality. “Then laughter.”
That wiped some of the scorn off her face. “What sort of laughter?” she asked, suspicious.
“The mean sort.”
“And you knew the she was me.”
Sebastian nodded, feeling the course correct itself. “They knew the lordling Windermere from India was female, and I knew that you didn’t know. Further, I knew one thing more.”
“What’s that?”
“They had a plan for you during that night’s performance.”
It only took a beat of time for Delilah to ask, “To expose me?”
“Aye.”
“And you decided to stop them.”
What next emerged from his mouth wouldn’t show him in the best light, but it was the truth, so it must be spoken. “I didn’t.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why is that?”
Since he was being honest… “I thought it would serve you right.”
She gasped. “You…you knave!”
Sebastian took the appellation in stride.
He likely deserved it. “Archie is a good friend, but you Windermeres—generally speaking—could stand to have your flaunting of Society’s conventions checked every so often.
In fact…” If he was proceeding with honesty, he might as well out with it.
“I decided to stay around for the performance, just to see it in person.”
She let that settle into the air before saying, at last, “But it was you, Ravensworth. You exposed me.” She wasn’t relenting on the point. “If I was about to receive what was coming to me, why did you interfere?”
A fair question—and the one that struck to the heart of the matter. “It was what they said next.” Sebastian still remembered how the blood had turned to ice in his veins. “Now, explain again how we undress her?”
As the words sank in, the outraged expression on Delilah’s face froze, and she paled. “Pardon?”
Sebastian didn’t need to repeat the words. “They decided that since you would be wearing a robe, it would be easy.” He would leave it at that.
“To undress me?” she asked, as if for confirmation of what her ears surely couldn’t be hearing.
“Yes.”
“On the stage?”
“Yes.”
“In front of an audience?”
“Yes.”
A slow beat of time ticked by as all the facts came together in Delilah’s mind. “Those scoundrels!” Her face brightened with a sudden idea. “Dorie claims to have some Romani blood. Perhaps she can be convinced to invoke a curse upon their heads and all their destined-to-be perfidious offspring.”
“No need,” said Sebastian. “I handled it.”
Delilah went stone still. “You…you handled it.”
“Once I decided that the only way anyone would be undressing you was over my dead body, it was easy to come up with a plan of my own.”
Sudden realization flew across Delilah’s face. “To expose me before they could.”
“Simple and effective.”
She exhaled a gusty, annoyed breath. “It didn’t occur to you to inform me of the plot and let me manage it?”
He’d expected that question. “I did try to find you, Delilah.”
Another realization passed behind her eyes. She really did have the most expressive face. “Ah.”
“Ah?”
“I was a bit nervous about my first real performance,” she began sheepishly. “So, I locked myself in the privy for three hours.”
“Surely, there were other ways to achieve privacy—less odiferous ones.” It had to be said.
“Not at a boys’ school when you’re a woman pretending to be a boy pretending to be a girl.”
“I can see how that would require complex maneuvering.”
“Unlike what people think, a proper jape is no simple endeavor. It requires planning and commitment. It’s not for the faint of heart.”
“No one could ever accuse your heart of faintness.”
It was what he liked best about her, in fact.
She had nerve.
She had heart.
Her eyes filled with a new intensity. “You must’ve known that I would be angry with you.”
“But you wouldn’t be humiliated.” That was the main point.
Her head canted. “Wasn’t that as much as a high-flying Windermere deserves every so often?”
“You didn’t deserve that.”
That seemed to take the wind out of her sails as she released a breathy, “Oh.”
He could stop here—he should stop here—but truths that wanted out had been too long pent up. “You possess a wildness, Delilah.”
She snorted. “All England, Scotland, and possibly Wales know that.”
“I have no desire to see it tamed.”
Her mouth snapped shut as a flood of emotions swept across her face.
“I like knowing it’s out in the world,” he continued.
“I had no idea.”
“You on that stage…” He couldn’t seem to stop revealing truths. “It was the most foolhardy thing I’ve ever seen.”
“That’s been publicly established,” she said, cool and dry as a wintry desert.
“But it was also one of the bravest.”
She blinked. “Bravest?”
“I’ve never known anyone with courage like yours. When you gave that speech from King Lear, I understood why you’d done it.”
“I had a bet with Archie that I was determined to win. And I was winning it, for the record, until very suddenly I wasn’t.”
Sebastian shook his head. “That wasn’t why you did it. That’s the excuse.”
“Then tell me why I did it, since you’re such an expert on me.”
“Performing is your passion, Delilah. You saw an opportunity to live that passion, and you seized it.” He spread his arms wide, indicating their surroundings. “Like being part of a traveling theater company. You’re not doing it because you’re a spoiled Windermere brat.”
“Thank you?” she said with a befuddled knit of her brow.
Even as a smile wanted release, he wouldn’t be distracted. “You’re here because you’re living your dream. I admire you, Delilah.”
Even as the beat of his heart accelerated, time did the opposite and slowed. The next words that wanted to fall from his mouth… Perhaps he shouldn’t speak them.
For there would be no returning from where they would lead.
But he couldn’t not speak them.
Not in the interest of truth.
“I’ve always admired you.”
In the exhalation of a slow breath, she seemed to be releasing something more. “You truly never were my nemesis.”
“Never.”
And tonight, on this secluded stretch of Norfolk beach beneath a moon that wasn’t quite full, he saw in her eyes that, finally, she believed him.
He wanted to reach out and pull her toward him, press his mouth to hers.
So, he didn’t.
Because he knew.
What existed between him and Delilah was combustible, and one touch of his lips to hers would be all the spark needed to create a wildfire that would blaze through and consume them both whole.
But within her eyes he didn’t sense caution, but rather the opposite.
Within her eyes he saw daring and wildness and…
Determination.
He wasn’t sure he could hold out against a daring, wild, and determined Delilah.
And though he should, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
Only a tense sliver of air separating her shoulder from Ravensworth’s, Delilah understood something true.
Everything she’d thought about this man these last few years was wrong.
Except for one thing.
He was, indeed, a frustratingly, breathtakingly arrogant man.
“After what happened, why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded. “Why are you only telling me now?”
His eyebrows drew together in a dumbfounded crease. “I didn’t think it would matter to you.”
“Wouldn’t matter?” Truly, this man… “What on earth can you possibly mean?”
“If it was me exposing you or a bunch of rotten lordlings.”
“Why is that?”
“Because the end result was the same. Your dream was shattered.”
She could hear in his voice, see in his eyes, how that idea wounded him—as a patron of the arts and, possibly, as a…friend.
“You knew that you would receive no thanks from me, and that my ire would be directed squarely at you. And yet…you protected me.”
A novel feeling stole through Delilah. She wasn’t the sort of lady who ever thought she needed much protecting.
In fact, she didn’t read romantic novels for that very reason.
But the fact was she’d been a lady very much in need of protection—and this man had given it to her with no expectation of receiving the slightest measure of gratitude.
She knew what she needed to say next. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me, Delilah.”
“Yes, I do.”
She’d been protected by this man, and she felt protected now.
She’d always viewed a man’s protection as a gilded cage—both alluring and costly, the price too high.
But with this man, it gave her a different feeling.
A feeling of security that somehow coexisted with her need for freedom. Strange and unexpected, that.
And she knew.
She had to have him.
Not to show her gratitude, like what happened between the lines of some of the racier novels that Juliet read on the sly. But simply because the pull of their magnets had become too forceful to ignore.
Her body absolutely needed to be touching his this very instant.
On a sudden wave of determination, she planted her palms square on his chest, using her momentum to shove him back and pin him to the ground. She grabbed his wrists and held them above his head, her face inches from his, her legs straddling his waist—the feel of him, right.
She knew him to be a solid, substantive man. But the substance of him now was so very real and immediate.
His golden gaze took her in evenly, even as his mouth curved into a knowing, arrogant smile.
A smile that once infuriated her.
A smile that now sparked lightning through her.
The presence of that smile told her all she needed to know—she sensed it with a womanly intuition she’d only discovered in the last few days.
She would get what she wanted from him tonight.
“What you did a few days ago,” she said into the intimate space between their mouths.
“Yes?” rasped against his throat.
“Could you do it again?”
“I could.”
She could hear a but in there. Denial. The man would deny her.
No.
He wouldn’t.
He couldn’t.
“The way I see it.” A change of tack was necessary.
“Yes?”
“You owe me a debt.”
A heavy beat of time passed as his gaze remained steady on hers, daring her to look away, to take back what she’d said. “That’s rather cheap of you, Delilah.”
“I’m not sure I care.”
“You might regret it on the morrow.”
She shook her head. “I regret nothing from this morning.”
He was waiting for her to say more.
“Nor do I regret what happened beneath the stage.”
She watched her words land on him and sink in. Until now, there had been a distance in his eyes, as if he wouldn’t let him himself fully believe what she was asking of him. Now, that distance faded, and in its place expanded belief and intensity.
“This won’t be that, Delilah. It will be more.”
A shiver traced through her, lighting up every nerve ending in its path, settling deep in her center where it became a heavy throb of carnal need. She was nearly breathless with it. “Is that a promise?”
“You’re being incorrigible.”
“I thought you admired my passion.”
“You’re twisting my words.”
She lowered over him until her mouth touched his ear. “Good,” she whispered. “I shall twist and twist until I’ve squeezed what I want from them.”
“And what is that?”
“You.”