Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Sebastian led Delilah across the manicured meadows and paths of Wimberley Hill, her hand nestled within his, anticipation roaring through him.
He had a place to show her.
A place she would love.
“This might be the prettiest estate in all England,” she said, her gaze casting about, enchantment curving her mouth.
“Aye,” agreed Sebastian.
From its willows that draped over the Avon to sectioned-off fields, not for the use of crops and cattle, but for gardens of every variety—formal, informal, herb, poison, even a hundred-year-old maze.
Grass-green open fields stretched long, too, with carefully placed ha-has dug into the sides of hills manicured by sheep whose function was purely ornamental.
In the distance stood the house itself: a whimsical, three-hundred-year-old structure with its multicolored and shaped bricks, Italianate decorative columns and shaped gables, arched doorways and windows, and plentiful chimneys, each decorated in a different brick pattern.
A horse and rider appeared over the short rise.
Turner, Wimberley Hill’s estate manager.
The man held a hand to his forehead before releasing it into a wave of greeting the instant he recognized Sebastian, who waved back—then waved the man on.
He didn’t want to spoil this day with Delilah by having to be a duke.
She’d noted the exchange, but didn’t comment on it. Instead, she said, “This must be your favorite estate.”
“It’s certainly my mother’s. I was born here.”
“So you spent summers here,” she said.
He nodded. “Mother made sure I wasn’t treated like a duke at Wimberley Hill. In London, or at the family seat, it was impossible. People naturally defer to a duke, even when he’s three years old. But, here, she ensured I could be a child.”
Delilah cut him an insightful glance. “For all your dukely privilege, that couldn’t have been easy.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps, but easier than many upbringings.” It had to be said. His association with the arts world had brought him into contact with people who faced genuine struggle in their lives. His was nothing to it.
Delilah took his meaning. “Sometimes, I forget how lucky I am to have my family, for all their quirks.”
He led her up the short rise of a hill, and his heart kicked into a gallop. The place he wanted to show her was just on the other side.
Once they topped the rise, Delilah came to a sudden stop at the sight spread below them. “What is this?” she murmured.
“I think you of all people would know.”
Her gaze, full of awe and befuddlement, swung to meet his.
“But a Roman amphitheater…” she trailed and began moving again, down the slope of the rows arranged in a semicircle of seating, toward the stage at the base.
She would want to stand on that stage and test its feel and sound. She wouldn’t be able not to.
He followed, slowly, allowing her the space to explore.
She met his gaze over her shoulder. “Why would you build this?”
He shrugged. “A whim.”
She reached the stage and pushed herself up onto its stone surface. She stared down at him, making him the recipient of the entirety of her attention. “You’re not a whimsical man.”
The true reason—the one he’d kept suppressed all this time—came to him.
For you.
Two simple words he couldn’t speak.
Not yet.
As Delilah prowled the stage from one end to the other, weaving in and out of columns constructed in the Greek Doric style, Sebastian joined her.
“The idea had been floating around in my mind for a while.” His mother and Turner thought he was becoming an eccentric when he’d shared the construction plans.
He’d shrugged off their lifted eyebrows and done as he’d pleased, as ever exercising a duke’s imperative.
“This estate doesn’t produce much by way of crops or cattle,” he explained. “It’s mostly ornamental.”
“So, you figured why not construct a Roman amphitheater?” She canted her head in curiosity. “To what end?”
Ah, she’d struck at the heart of the matter—what he hadn’t yet told anyone. “I have an idea for the amphitheater—and the entire estate, actually.”
She propped her shoulder against a column. “Which is?”
“A place for artists.”
“Pardon?”
“Where they could stay for intervals and do nothing but create.”
A beat of time passed. She was assessing him.
Not his person, but him. “I’ve never heard of such a place.
” She snorted and shook her head. “So, you truly aren’t involved in arts patronage for the opera singers?
” Her levity faded into utter seriousness.
“But, Sebastian, you’re no dilettante. You’re the genuine thing.
Your soul is in this idea.” She canted her head. “Why?”
“Early in my life—during my teen years—I saw that my social position afforded me the opportunity to support the arts. I always admired the freedom of those who could express themselves in a such a way.”
“But not everyone with talent has the freedom or opportunity to create,” she intuited.
“So, I thought Wimberley Hill could provide a sanctuary for those in need to create in a secure, wide-open space.”
A new light entered Delilah’s eyes. It looked suspiciously similar to the one when she’d called him sweet. “And you’ve found a place for yourself in the world of artists,” she said, earnest. “You’re a necessary part of it.”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t take that much credit for myself, but I do have the privilege of being involved in shaping that world and ensuring it continues on.”
She blinked as if seeing him for the first time.
And perhaps she was, for this was the first time he’d truly bared his soul to her.
“You’re on a mission, aren’t you?”
“Art shows a nation its soul,” he said. “And it allows a nation to express its soul. It matters as much as or more than military might. It shows us who we are and lights the way toward who we could be. It’s all there in the notes of an aria or the brushstrokes across a canvas or a line from the Bard. Art is intrinsic to our humanity.”
And he’d laid himself bare to Delilah.
It felt terrifying and good and right.
She walked to the end of the stage and sat, her legs swinging over the edge, as she faced the rise of empty seats. “I think it’s my turn to tell you something about myself.”
Sebastian understood her words as an invitation. To sit beside her. To know more of her than she’d yet revealed.
“I need to tell you what led to me being on stage that day.”
He didn’t need to ask what stage or which day. Eton. Still, he knew something of the details. “You and Archie had a bet, correct?”
“It did start that way,” she said, tentative. “Archie wanted to pull one over on Eton College, and as usual, I was the adoring, competitive baby sister seeking the approval of her older brother. We decided my stint at Eton as a Windermere cousin would last the length of the short summer term.”
“And Archie bet you wouldn’t succeed in the role.”
She nodded. “But here’s the thing. I did succeed. I was admitted and began attending classes as a shy little lordling.”
“A coup, to be sure.”
A dry laugh escaped her. “It was utterly exhilarating.” Then she exhaled a sigh. “It would’ve and should’ve succeeded, and I would’ve and should’ve won the bet without causing my family a load of scandal, but I made one crucial mistake.”
“Which was?”
She shook her head as if she herself couldn’t quite believe her past actions. “I signed up for the term-end play.”
And Sebastian understood. “Hubris.”
“We Windermeres are in no short supply,” she conceded. “I was so absolutely heady with having succeeded in my impersonation of a lad of thirteen years that the play seemed a natural extension of my role. I was the sort of lad who would act in the end-of-term play.”
Sebastian sensed a but.
“But that was simply a lie I told myself.” She let that truth sink in for a few seconds.
“The play was too much of a temptation—my one opportunity to perform on stage in front of an audience. Not an audience of family and friends, as I’d done since I could toddle about without falling over.
An audience of strangers. People who could judge my work honestly.
Any smiles and laughs would be genuine—any tears, too.
This was what I’d been craving since I first realized the stage was my passion. ”
“And an opportunity you might never have again.”
“I’m a lady, born and bred, and ladies don’t take to the stage.”
“Except as a novelty.”
“And I couldn’t reduce myself to that. I do have my pride.” She squared her shoulders, as if reliving the day. “I decided this was it.”
“And you came close.”
“So close,” she said, wistful. “Until you ruined everything.”
Though they sat nearly shoulder to shoulder, Sebastian felt an unbridgeable chasm open between them. “Delilah—”
Her crystalline azure eyes met his, stopping unformed words in his mouth. “And saved me.”
And like that, the space between them collapsed, as if the elements of his and her bodies had dissolved—any barriers between them gone.
He needed to touch her.
He needed to make her his.
It was in the black flare of his pupils that Delilah first intuited the shift in Sebastian’s intention.
She’d come to understand a few things about this man.
He knew what he wanted.
And he took what he wanted.
And in the taking, he gave.
A shiver of anticipation whizzed through her.
“Delilah, what do you want?”
“What?” she asked, filled with sudden nerves. She knew what he was asking. She also knew she wouldn’t get what she wanted if she played coy. She took a bracing sip of air and leapt. “To be utterly ravished.”
His eyes searched hers and must’ve found what he was looking for. “Who am I to deny a lady what she wants?” he spoke low, reaching out to cradle the back of her head, to pull her closer.
It was the look in his golden gaze. It had shifted into the dark and determined, the unknowable, yet…not.
Her body knew it.
Desire.
And she knew something more: why the ladies of the ton practically swooned when the Duke of Ravensworth so much as entered a room.
It wasn’t as simple as his dashing good looks and title.
It was that something else in his gaze—the dark and determined…
the unknowable. Women who had experienced something of life—something of men—went wild for Ravensworth.
And in this moment Delilah understood why.
In this moment she’d become one of them.
A woman absolutely mad for the Duke of Ravensworth.
He tugged her close, his breath now grazing across her mouth.
Her lips parted, and her eyelashes brushed the tops of her cheekbones in anticipation of that first touch.
Just as their lips met, she breathed a sigh into his mouth.
His tongue darted inside and immediately deepened the kiss, his other hand sliding around her waist and pulling her forward so it wasn’t only their lips that met, but their bodies, too.
This was no tentative kiss.
This kiss knew where it was going.
And, oh, how desperate she was to follow its lead.
His mouth never left hers as he shifted, turned, and landed on his feet in a smooth motion, parting her knees with one hand, and moving into the space between.
The faint voice of reason sounded within Delilah, and she tore her mouth from his. Cheeks flushed, panting, they stared at one another. The dark intention in his eyes hadn’t abated one bit. “Won’t we be seen?” She had to ask.
He looked utterly nonplussed. “Of course not.”
“But servants,” she protested, weakly. Her heart wasn’t invested in this protest. Still… “Your estate manager knows we’re here.”
“Precisely.”
“Precisely?”
“They know to stay away.”
“How can you be sure they will listen?”
A sardonic glint shone in his eyes. “Because I am Ravensworth.”
Seb was gone. Here—between her trembly legs, in fact—stood Ravensworth.
Direct and certain…
Entirely too arrogant…
Entirely too attractive.
Oh, how she desired this man—with all his dark intention and arrogance.
He angled his head and pressed his mouth to the space just behind her ear as he began bunching up her skirts.
“Don’t you want to make love on a stage?” he spoke against her skin.
The breath stuck in her lungs. The very idea… It felt so…transgressive. And yet… “Yes,” she near whimpered.
He angled back, the knowing glint in his eyes sending a streak of lust straight through her.
He brought his thumb to his mouth and gave it a long, slow lick.
Then he reached between their bodies, between her parted legs, and stroked the slick finger along her slit, all the while watching her reaction. “You like that, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes.”
He sank to the ground, so he now knelt before her as if she were his goddess and he naught more than a supplicant.
He slid her skirts further up her thighs, coarse fustian sliding across her skin.
Anticipation fizzed through her, slipping molten through her veins, sending goosebumps racing across her skin.
Wider, he pushed her knees apart. A cool wisp of air brushed across her exposed quim.
His irises became thin golden rings as his gaze lowered to the brazen, bare sight of her, sending a bolt of heat through her—the give and take of desire…
the way that give and take only enhanced it.
“Delilah, the sight of you…” His gaze flicked up to meet hers. “Shall I describe you to you?”
Oh, my.
She nodded.
“Pink,” he said and kissed her inner thigh, “and glistening”—another kiss…higher…closer—“and effulgent like a hothouse flower in bloom.”
Alongside lust and pleasure traced another feeling. One she couldn’t examine in this moment, but one that might keep her up nights in the future.
“Remember what I did with my fingers under the stage?”
“How could I forget?”
Truly.
“There’s another way.” Oh, the wickedness that shimmered off him. “It feels even better.”