Chapter Two
“You will attend Lady Ditton’s ball this evening.”
The voice rang clear and commanding long before Sebastian raised his eyes.
His quill pen stilled mid-sentence, blotting the neat margin with ink.
He did not look up immediately, though the door had opened without ceremony.
His grandmother, the Dowager Duchess, Eleanor Trollope, did not wait to be announced.
Sebastian kept his gaze fixed upon the open journal, though his eyes kept drifting to the glass cabinet beyond, where his reflection wavered; burn-scarred skin drawn taut and livid across the left side of his face.
For one long, breath, he forced himself not to turn away.
He studied the twisted flesh until the sight grew untenable, then dropped his eyes to the paper.
C. A. Thornfield’s latest treatise lay open. A series of drawings adorned the page, delicate yet precise, their execution so faithful to life that he felt as though the living specimens themselves were pressed against the parchment.
His finger traced the edge of an illustration—a flowering stem dissected to reveal its structure. “Direct experience,” he murmured, though scarcely above his breath. “Not mere conjecture. Whoever you are, Thornfield, you must have touched and observed these things yourself.”
The thought unsettled him. Each new publication from the mysterious scholar revealed an intimacy with nature that surpassed his own. Where Sebastian’s notes lay scattered and unfinished, Thornfield’s pages possessed clarity, elegance, and brilliance.
He closed his hand over the paper, as though to hide it from Eleanor’s penetrating gaze.
“Did you hear me, Sebastian?” Her voice snapped through his thoughts.
Slowly, he set down the pen, aligning it with deliberate precision upon the blotter. His other hand gripped the edge of the desk, knuckles whitening with restrained force. When he finally raised his head, the movement was almost mechanical.
“I think not,” he said. His voice carried no heat, only a dangerous quiet, as though each word had been carefully weighed before release.
Eleanor did not so much as flinch. She moved across the room, her skirts whispering, and seated herself opposite him without waiting for an invitation. Her spine remained rigid, her chin lifted, her eyes, sharp and unflinching, fixed upon his scarred countenance.
“You think not?” she repeated, arching one silvery brow. “As though your presence in society were a matter of idle preference, like declining a dish at table. You bear the title of Duke of Thorenwood. Six years of isolation does not reflect well upon ducal responsibility.”
Sebastian’s jaw clenched. He pressed both scarred hands flat upon the polished wood.
“My appearance,” he said at last, each syllable ground out low, “renders social participation uncomfortable for all concerned, myself most of all. Society prefers its deformed duke to be absent, and I accommodate that.”
“You accommodate that?” Eleanor’s tone sliced through the air like a blade.
She leaned forward, her fingers tightening upon the head of her walking cane.
“You hide like some gothic specter while your cousin grows ever more comfortable in society’s regard.
Thomas may be charming, but he is no duke, Sebastian.
You are. And your obligations do not end with scientific scribbling on paper. ”
Sebastian’s breath caught short. The scars across his cheek ached, as though memory itself burned there afresh.
“Obligations?” His voice dropped to a growl.
“You speak as though I might appear in a ballroom and be received with welcoming, open arms. Children shrink from me in terror. Gentlemen avert their eyes. Ladies whisper behind their hands. Do you think I don’t know what people say about me?
My very presence clears rooms, Grandmother. It is unbearable.”
She dismissed the words with a sharp flick of her hand. “Frivolities. They will learn to accustom themselves. They only need to see more of you. Hiding away only fuels the fires of the rumour mill. Once they have seen you a few times, they will revise their opinion.”
“They will not,” he returned, his tone harsh. He rose from his chair in a sudden movement, tall and forbidding as his shadow fell across the desk. The journals fluttered in the draft of his motion. “They will never accustom themselves. Catherine’s revulsion saw to that.”
A silence passed between them, taut with unrest.
Eleanor’s eyes softened almost imperceptibly. “James Henderson was here only last week,” she said, her voice quieter now. “He asked after you.”
Sebastian’s breath caught. He turned away, his hand tightening upon the back of the chair. “James worries because he remembers the man I used to be. He remembers the smile that once opened doors, the face unmarked by fire. He does not see what stands before him now.”
“He sees a friend,” Eleanor said firmly. “He sees the same mind, the same courage, though you bury both deep beneath this morbid self-pity. He fears what such solitude is doing to you.”
Sebastian swallowed. His gaze fixed upon the window where the afternoon light glinted across the glass, cruelly reflecting his distorted profile once more.
I was not always this. Once, I was welcomed and admired. Once, I believed myself destined for a future unmarred by shame.
“Enough,” he muttered, turning sharply back to the desk. He gathered the scattered journals with brusque hands, stacking them as though order upon the surface might restore order within. “I have no interest in Lady Ditton’s assembly, nor in the bland members of society that will fill her rooms.”
“You will attend,” Eleanor said, her tone brooking no defiance.
“I will not.”
“You shall.”
The words met in the air, steel against steel.
For a long moment, neither yielded. His scarred fingers tightened around the arm of his chair.
Her eyes blazed with matriarchal command.
It was she who had raised him when his mother died; she who had steadied him when grief and rage had nearly consumed him after the war.
Yet in this, Sebastian felt his pride resist with all the force of a cornered beast.
“I am two and thirty years of age,” he said with cold precision. “I bear the title of duke. I will not be ordered about like a schoolboy.”
“You will be ordered about as long as you behave like one,” Eleanor retorted, rising to her feet with surprising swiftness for her years.
The tip of her cane struck the floor. “You mistake withdrawal for dignity. It is cowardice, Sebastian. Nothing more. And the only person who can overcome it is you. I appreciate it will be hard at first, but there is no time like the present to venture back into the world.”
His head snapped up, his gray eyes flashing with venom. “Cowardice?”
“Yes. Cowardice,” Eleanor repeated, unflinching. “I will not stand by while you consign yourself to the shadows like some penitent hermit. You owe more to your name, to your tenants, to your country, and to yourself.”
He drew in a breath that shuddered in his chest. “You are asking me for the impossible.”
“I only ask what is necessary for you to live a full life. You cannot hide away forever. Beauty is only skin deep, Sebastian. Show people that you are more than the hushed whispers and vicious rumours. Remind them of the man you truly are.”
The silence stretched. The weight of her command pressed against the walls.
At last, Sebastian turned his gaze back to the papers spread before him.
His hand hovered above Thornfield’s illustration once more, tracing the intricate lines.
Here is brilliance unmarred by flesh. Here is a mind that commands respect, no matter the vessel that contains it.
How different it might have been had he been left with his mind alone.
Eleanor’s voice cut through his thoughts once again. “The carriage will be readied at eight, and you will accompany me. You may wear black. It will suit the mood you so relish.”
Before he could reply, she swept from the room, the door closing with a decisive click behind her.
Sebastian remained standing, his hands braced upon the desk. His reflection caught once more in the glass of the cabinet; half man, half ruin.
“Monstrous,” Sebastian muttered into the empty room the moment the door closed behind his grandmother. His voice rasped with a bitterness sharpened by years of rehearsal. “That was the word she might as well have used.”
To appear among them again…to endure their stares, their whispers. It would be easier to face the field at war once more.
And yet, beneath the scorn and dread, a spark flickered. Thornfield’s pages lay beneath his palm, alive with discovery, demanding an audience.
If such brilliance may hide, then perhaps I too may stand revealed. If Thornfield dares the world, might I not do the same?
The thought unsettled him more than all his grandmother’s scolding words.
His hand rose, unsteady, until his fingertips pressed against the ridged flesh that dragged from temple to jaw. The mirror above the fireplace reflected every seam of ruin: the puckered skin, the warped angle of his mouth, the coarse texture that no physician’s balm had ever softened.
He leaned closer, until his scarred cheek nearly brushed the glass. Catherine’s voice came to him then clearly, as though she stood behind him. No woman of breeding should be expected to endure such revulsion.
The memory sliced deeper than war flames.
He saw her again as she had looked that day—golden curls gleaming beneath her bonnet, blue eyes once soft but now sharpened with contempt.
Her lips had curved, not in pity, but in open disgust. Before the assembled company, she had snapped the chain of their betrothal and cast the broken pieces at his feet.
Sebastian gripped the mantel until his knuckles blanched. “Better a musket ball through the heart,” he growled, “than to live with her words gnawing like vermin in the dark.”