Chapter 28 #3
Bloody hell.
He could scarcely remember it. More unsettling was the realization that since Darcy had entered his life, he had not once thought of Lavinia. Or any other woman.
Not once.
For a man who had spent years moving easily from one willing beauty to another, the discovery should have been absurd.
Instead, Sebastian sat very still as its significance settled over him.
He had not restrained himself from other women.
He had not consciously chosen fidelity because temptation presented itself and he nobly resisted.
There simply had been no temptation. There had only been Darcy as herself and as Red. She’d occupied his thoughts so completely that somewhere along the way, every other woman had simply ceased to register.
“Raine.” Lavinia reached him at last, her smile turning intimate.
“Lady Lavinia.”
Her smile widened. “How very long it has been.”
She lifted one finger toward his cheek with the easy familiarity of a former lover. Sebastian caught it gently before she could touch him and lowered her hand between them.
Her brows rose in surprise. His mouth quirked in a self-deprecating smile as he recognized the instinct behind the gesture. He remembered all too well the intensity of Darcy’s possessiveness, the unmistakable expectation that while he was hers, no other woman would have liberties with him.
Bloody hell.
It was damn near laughable. Three weeks had passed, and still he behaved as though Darcy had some claim upon him. As though nothing had ended. As though he had not been the one to end it.
When the devil would this madness loosen its hold upon him?
Lavinia’s brows rose, amusement mingling with surprise.
“My apologies,” Sebastian said, summoning the easy charm that had extricated him from far more compromising situations.
He lifted her hand and bowed over it without allowing his lips to touch her glove.
“It appears I am exceedingly poor company tonight, and you deserve a gentleman capable of appreciating the considerable temptation before him.”
“Lord Raine refusing temptation?” Her smile turned wicked. “How alarming.”
“Quite. I intend to consult a physician at the earliest opportunity.”
Her laughter followed him as he walked away.
Sebastian crossed the crowded room and stepped through the French doors onto the balcony. The cooler night air met him at once, blessedly free of perfume, laughter, and the low hum of seduction within. He withdrew a cheroot and rolled it between his fingers but made no move to light it.
A shadow shifted near the balustrade.
Templeton emerged from the darkness and came to stand beside him. Without a word, he held out a tinderbox.
Sebastian accepted the offer, struck a light, and drew upon the cheroot until the end glowed.
“I saw that,” Templeton said quietly.
“I had not realized my movements required an audience.”
“Ordinarily they do not. Refusing Lady Lavinia, however, is sufficiently extraordinary to merit observation.” Templeton leaned one shoulder against the stone balustrade.
“Her charms are exquisite, and she is notoriously selective with them. Bedford offered to install her as his mistress, or so I am told, and she refused him. The poor fool has been making a spectacle of himself ever since, trying to persuade her to reconsider and becoming damned near rabid with jealousy whenever she selects another lover.”
Sebastian made a noncommittal sound and drew again upon his cheroot.
Templeton was silent for a moment. “Yet I suspect Lavinia’s particular drama is not what sent you fleeing onto a balcony.”
Sebastian gave him a flat look. “I did not flee.”
“Naturally.” Templeton’s expression remained deceptively mild. “Is it that lady?”
Sebastian said nothing.
“Red?” Templeton asked with a lift of a brow.
Sebastian’s gut tightened. He took another slow draw from the cheroot before answering with studied indifference. “Whatever peculiar malady has plagued me of late will pass soon enough.”
Templeton regarded him for several seconds. Something complicated entered his silver-gray eyes, but to his credit, he did not press. Instead, he nodded once and shifted the conversation with admirable ease.
“Then perhaps you might turn your diseased mind toward something useful. Radbourne has secured two more gentlemen willing to support the motion we discussed. If we mean to see it brought before the Commons, we ought to settle precisely what we are asking our friends there to champion.”
Sebastian welcomed the change and answered with considerably more attention than he had given anything else that evening. Within minutes they were deep in discussion, debating wording, objections, and which members of the Commons might be persuaded to lend their support.
It should have occupied him completely.
It nearly did. Yet somewhere beneath questions of Parliament and strategy, beneath the smoke curling into the darkness and Templeton’s measured arguments, Darcy remained at the edges of Sebastian’s thoughts.
As she had been for three damned weeks.