Chapter Fifteen
Maddie hadn’t meant to vanish the next day for luncheon.
But after a morning surrounded by stolen glances and shared laughter, and none of it hers, she’d quietly excused herself and slipped away from all the loving couples.
It was all rather silly, really. All her friends in love, so she ought to feel thrilled for them.
Instead, she felt… displaced. Like a supporting character in someone else’s grand romance.
And then there was Sebastian. Temptation on legs.
Tall legs. Temptation that she didn’t know how to approach.
Which was why she had decided to take her luncheon in the conservatory, nestled on a small table beneath an overgrown tangle of ferns and flowering vines—in the hopes of clearing her head a bit. Think. Process.
However, she never imagined she’d be followed. By the very man that tempted her beyond all reason.
She stared at him.
He stared back with a grin.
She poked a fork at her cold cucumber sandwich and gave a long-suffering sigh.
Get a grip, Madeleine. How could I fall in love with a man with sneezed on me?
Well…
He did also save you from allergies.
And he has an impossibly good bone structure.
She glanced at the fern brushing against her elbow. “Is it right to fall in love so quickly, though? Is it love if it’s quick?”
The fern offered no comment, though one leaf did sway suggestively. So yes? No?
Urgh!
She picked at her sandwich and looked over at the little fountain in the corner. Its steady trickle was far calmer than the mess in her head.
She didn’t resent her friends. Of course not. She was thrilled for them. Deliriously, outrageously thrilled. Especially for Ashley and Thomas, who now couldn’t seem to be in the same room without blushing or smiling like fools. It was… beautiful.
And nauseating.
But mostly beautiful.
Still. Everyone seemed to have paired off in tidy little duets.
Everyone except her. Even Sebastian—who had no business being as charming or as witty or as entirely distracting as he was—had become something of a problem.
But only because… She wanted to seduce him but couldn’t.
She couldn’t just seduce a man. She had to think of the future or her mother…
Not that he’d done anything inappropriate.
Not yet.
Oh no. Worse.
He’d smiled at her.
He’d listened to her.
He’d held her gaze just a beat longer than necessary, and now she was ruined.
Entirely. Thoroughly. Hopelessly ruined. And not in the way of ruined, ruined. Just her heart.
What did she desire? Other than him shirtless in a pond?
Oh, heavens. Just the thought of such a sight… She fanned herself with her napkin. Even her thoughts had become unladylike.
She used to be such a reasonable person. Measured. Steady. The sort of girl who color-coded her potions. Now she was debating her feelings with a fern and contemplating her moral downfall over a cucumber sandwich.
It was entirely Sebastian’s fault.
Everything about him seemed designed to unravel her. His lazy smiles, the sharp cut of his jaw, the way his voice dipped low when he was amused, like he was sharing some private joke with her and only her.
Stop. Stop it.
Maddie pressed her palms to her cheeks, which were now burning.
What she desired most was clarity. That was sensible, wasn’t it?
To understand her own mind.
To know whether this flutter in her belly meant something real—or was simply the result of one too many sleepless nights spent imagining how it might feel to be kissed by a man who looked at her like she wasn’t a background character in his life, but the whole blooming story.
Not just in the hallway yesterday, or when he’d reached out and wiped the foam from her mouth, though her heart had nearly launched itself into the nearest flowerpot then, but this morning, at breakfast, when someone mentioned music and she’d laughed at something ridiculous.
He hadn’t even smiled back. He’d just watched her, like the laugh was a song only he could hear.
She hadn’t eaten much after that.
Desire, it turned out, wasn’t all smolder and lust and swooning against marble balustrades. It was sticky and inconvenient and lodged right behind her ribs like a pinch that refused to leave.
Worse, it made her uncertain. It made her reckless.
What if he kissed her? What if she let him?
What if she wanted him to?
Maddie stared at the fern again.
“I’m not being dramatic,” she told it, mostly because no one else was around to disagree. “I’m simply trying to understand myself.”
The fern rustled in a breeze that did not exist, which felt vaguely judgmental.
Maddie dropped her fork with a sigh and pressed her forehead to the table. “I’m going mad. Full, bonnet-on-backwards mad.”
She stayed like that for a moment, breathing in the scent of moss and old wood polish, before lifting her head again.
A new plan. That’s what she needed.
She would march right up to Sebastian and ask him something perfectly reasonable. Something like—
What does desire mean to you?
No. Too forward.
Do you believe in love at first sneeze?
Absolutely not. Not even she did.
“Ugh,” she groaned, letting her forehead thunk back down.
Footsteps approached, and Maddie turned her head to the side, heart leaping as two legs entered her view.
Her gaze trailed up those legs.
And there he was.
Sebastian.
Grinning like a wolf who’d just located a stray lamb.
Her pulse decided to throw a party of its own. With violins. And wine. And some form of undignified dancing. Could one heart flutter so much?
“How did you find me?”
“I saw you weren’t at luncheon.”
“So you hunted me down,” she accused, before she could stop herself.
Sebastian had the good grace to look mildly abashed. “Well. Yes. But in the least creepy way possible.”
“There’s a scale?”
“I believe so. Somewhere between sweeping all the hall and chambers and making a few enquiries.”
He was still grinning, though it had softened into something more amused than roguish. His shirt collar was slightly crooked. His coat hung open. His hair, unruly at the best of times, looked like it had been at war with a stiff breeze and lost.
He looked… unfairly edible.
“Why did you come looking for me?” Maddie asked, smoothing her skirts for no reason whatsoever. “I mean—did someone send you?”
“Do I look like an errand boy?”
“Yes,” she said instantly. “A tall, dangerous one with impeccable boots.”
He gestured to a chair next to hers. “May I?”
“No. This is a private luncheon. I’m in the middle of consulting with the flora about my dramatic spinsterhood.”
He glanced at the fern. “Does it have strong opinions?”
“It thinks I should ravish you and get it over with.”
He paused.
She flushed.
“I was joking.”
“Were you?”
“Yes.”
“How disappointing.”
“Sebastian.”
He grinned and pulled out the chair anyway, settling in. “I thought you might appreciate the company.”
“I was appreciating solitude.”
He poured himself a cup of her tea.
“Highly sacred, very necessary solitude.”
He added sugar.
“Which is now entirely ruined by your big, beautiful head.”
Sebastian took a sip and sighed, utterly at peace. “Yes, but you’re smiling again.”
“I always smile.”
“You didn’t smile when I entered. You looked rather… head in the table.”
Her face heated.
He reached across the table and nudged her untouched sandwich. “This yours?”
“I don’t see anyone else here.”
“May I?”
He wanted to eat her half-eaten sandwich? “I—”
He took a bite.
Maddie’s breath hitched. How could such a thing be so sensual? “You are the worst sort of guest.”
His grin widened. “I am the best.”
They sat in silence for a moment—her pulse rioting, his foot brushing hers beneath the table. The light from the windows caught the edge of his cheekbone. She looked away too quickly.
Sebastian leaned in, voice gentling. “What’s bothering you? Perhaps I can help?”
Help? Saints! He was the last man that could help her and the only man. “It’s… a feminine thing.”
He cocked his head. “I can still help.”
She swallowed hard. His closeness. The smell. His eyes. It was all too much.
“It’s nothing, truly. I was just… processing. That’s what the plants are for, right?”
“They do seem terribly wise.”
She eyed the fern. “More than some men.”
Sebastian leaned back, smile still intact. “Then perhaps I ought to earn my keep and offer some wisdom of my own.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. For instance…” His eyes seemed to blaze. “You are perfect as you are, so never try to strive to be perfect or for a moment to be perfect, a life, a future. Perfect is right now.”
And just like that, her heart was no longer hosting a party. It was hosting a revolution.
A very inconvenient one.
With torches and declarations and possibly even fireworks.
All because of him.
Temptation on legs.
Tall legs.
And the one man who just might see the heroine in her before she saw it in herself.
*
Sebastian tried not to stare at her mouth.
He failed. It was the way she’d said it, so offhand, like it meant nothing.
And yet somehow, it struck him like a lightning bolt to the chest. A perfectly ordinary, teasing response, delivered in that soft voice of hers, threaded with wit and something he hadn’t quite learned how to name.
She was brilliant.
And entirely unguarded in this moment. Maddie, sitting there with crumbs on her skirt and a fern leaf tangled in her hair, all around her, really, was more captivating than any finely powdered debutante in a Mayfair ballroom. She wasn’t performing, wasn’t posturing. She was simply being.
He wanted to reach out and tuck that stray curl behind her ear. Not because it was in the way, but because it wasn’t. Because it was wildly, wonderfully out of place—just like her.
He shifted in his seat, the warmth of the conservatory pressing around him. Her scent drifted over, sweet and something earthy. He doubted she even knew how distracting she was. Which only made it worse.
Or better.
Depending on how much longer he could resist touching her.