Chapter 14
SEBASTIAN BLENDED WELL WITH THE SHADOWS, a knack he’d developed long ago.
The moon was making only sporadic appearances through a bank of gray clouds that were moving rather rapidly overhead.
But he’d taken that into account when he’d decided to wear his dark gray greatcoat, which covered him from neck to boots, and was less discernible than his black one on nights when there were no shadows.
The air smelled and felt as if there were going to be a downpour at some point during the night, but not, he hoped, while he was skulking around the grounds of Edgewood.
His old home was still well lit at that hour of the evening. He had to be a masochist to come here and watch his family through the windows, knowing he was not welcome to join them.
He leaned against the tree he and Denton had often climbed as children.
One summer they’d dragged boards up there and put together a little hut.
It had been a nice hideaway until Denton had brought up one too many things to decorate it with, and the main branch supporting it had cracked.
They were lucky the limb had fallen slowly and had dropped them rather gently on the ground.
But it had frightened their father enough for him to forbid them to make another tree house.
That old tree was outside the dining room where his family was currently gathered. For once his expression wasn’t so inscrutable. Pain, regret, anger—they were all there for anyone to see, his guard completely gone as he stared at his father through the windows.
Douglas hadn’t changed greatly. He wore a half century of years very well.
His hair was still as pitch-black as Sebastian’s.
If there was any gray in it, it wasn’t noticeable at that distance.
His grandmother, Abigail, had changed a lot.
Her hair was snow-white now, her shoulders more bent than they used to be.
She still wore her hair in the old style. On her it looked good.
God, he’d missed that old woman. She’d been more than just their grandmother.
She’d been everything to them after their mother died when Sebastian was nine.
Proud, regal, but warm and loving. She didn’t look so warm and loving now.
She spoke readily with Denton, but no smiles crossed her lips.
And not one glance was directed toward the head of the table.
Douglas sat there alone. Abigail ate at the other end.
Denton kept her company there. He’d changed greatly as well.
He had begun looking dissipated before Sebastian had left.
He looked more so now, haggard, almost downtrodden.
Juliette hadn’t made an appearance yet, but they obviously hadn’t waited for her.
The distance between his father and his grandmother at that table was telling.
It was not a happy scene he was watching.
A tightness welled in his chest. So much he had to account for.
And so much more that he hadn’t even known he was responsible for.
His family was no longer a family, they were just people who lived in the same house. All of the warmth was gone.
The contrast was tearing him apart. He remembered other dinners so clearly.
Giles had been there more often than not, and even his father, Cecil, had been a regular guest. There had been laughter, revelry.
Abigail had often been teased mercilessly and she’d loved it.
And they’d all sat close together. The table had been smaller, and all the chairs had been filled.
There had never been a lull in the conversation, or in the laughter.
It had been a place you wanted to be, not a place to quickly escape from—as it seemed to be now.
Douglas left the table first. He said something to Denton in parting, but he barely even glanced at his mother.
Sebastian moved farther down the side of the house until he was outside Douglas’s study.
It was where his father usually retired for a few hours after dinner.
Cecil had always joined him there when he and Giles had come for dinner.
The two old friends never lacked for discourse, and their laughter frequently traveled through the large house.
The draperies hadn’t been closed in the room.
Several lamps had been lit earlier. Douglas entered the room and closed the door.
He poured a glass of brandy and brought the bottle and glass with him to his desk.
He sat down behind it and downed the entire glass, then poured another.
Alone there, unaware that he was being watched, he let his shoulders slump.
He lit a cigar, but he didn’t smoke it. He picked up a paper on his desk, but he didn’t read it.
His head dropped back against the chair.
It was apparent that he had become a man with nothing to look forward to, with nothing to hold his interest, no friends to share in the joys of life—no joys to share. He wasn’t just alone in that room, he was alone with himself.
The tightness increased in Sebastian’s chest. He’d done this to his father, made him a shell of the man he used to be. All these years and he hadn’t known that Douglas had become as empty inside as he was. They were so similar.
It was no wonder they’d all taken to Margaret while she lived with them. She’d probably brought life to the house with her incessant chatter.
A while later, Sebastian lay on his bed, arms crossed behind his head.
He hadn’t undressed, had known sleep would be a long time in coming that night and he’d probably have to fetch another bottle of brandy from downstairs to help it along.
He’d barely touched the first one, though, his thoughts so deep that he kept forgetting to drink it.
Dead. His father had told Timothy that he was dead.
Figuratively, of course, but even so, had a gravestone been put up for him?
He had assumed, once he came face-to-face with his father, that they’d have words.
Harsh ones, probably, but at least he would have an opportunity to express his concerns, or rather, Margaret’s concerns, and possibly work with Douglas to unravel the suspicions that had been raised.
That assumption had been made before he knew about his father’s estrangement from Cecil and his own mother, and that his enmity toward his eldest son had increased rather than dissipated with the passing years, to the point where Douglas wouldn’t even admit that Sebastian was still alive.
Dead. And he’d thought his own bitterness couldn’t be matched.
What he was looking at was an insurmountable wall.
He couldn’t break it. Margaret possibly could.
She’d been accepted into the bosom of his family.
She was close enough to Douglas that she’d gone above and beyond in her effort to “save” him, if he really needed saving.
Maybe he needed saving only from himself. Bloody hell.
Sebastian would have liked to blame his father for this current state of affairs, but he couldn’t. All of it, every reaction and result thereafter, could rest only on his own shoulders.
He snarled as he got back up, disgusted with himself for rehashing what couldn’t be changed. He went in search of Margaret. They needed to finalize a plan so he could quickly accomplish what she’d hired him for and return to France.
She had refused to have dinner with him that night, which was why he’d gone to Edgewood instead.
He wasn’t surprised. His behavior the previous night had been reprehensible.
Deliberately reprehensible, but still, he hadn’t needed to be quite so insulting to get her to maintain her distance.
She seemed to be having no trouble a’tall keeping her enmity high on her list of priorities without any help from him.
Perhaps it was the other way around. He needed a reason to keep his hands off of her.
There it was, the crux of the problem. She’d walked into the dining room last night looking so incredibly soft and enticing in her peach velvet gown, and his attraction to her had instantly turned into lusty desire.
She shouldn’t be able to tempt him like that.
Her dislike of him should have been enough to put him off, but instead it was having the opposite effect.
He rapped on her bedroom door. There was light coming from under it, indicating she hadn’t retired yet.
It was nearly a minute before she opened the door, though.
The fluffy white robe she was clutching close to her throat suggested she’d kept him waiting while she put it on.
Her hair floated loosely around it, very dark in the dim lamplight behind her.
She was looking too bloody soft again, turning his thoughts in an intimate direction.
Was she wearing anything under that robe?
“It’s rather late,” she said. “What do you want, Sebastian?”
Her curt, no-nonsense tone got his mind out from under her robe. “We need to discuss tomorrow’s agenda,” he told her.
“It can’t wait until the morning?”
“No. Waiting led to that unpleasant scene with Courtly today. I gathered from your splendid tirade afterward that you’d rather avoid any more like that.”
She made a tsking sound. “Very well, I’ll meet you in the parlor.”
“Don’t be absurd, Maggie. We’re married. Your servants won’t raise a brow if you invite me into your room. They’ll expect it, actually.”
“I told my housekeeper, Florence, about the marriage so she can turn away any well-wishing visitors tomorrow that we aren’t ready to deal with, but the rest of my servants aren’t aware of our supposed—”
“Yes, they are.”