Chapter 29
THE HOUSE WAS QUIET as Sebastian moved through it. God, he missed Giles. Every room in this house reminded him of his friend. He missed his father, too, for that matter, the father he used to have before he had lost his love and respect.
He’d briefly sat next to Douglas’s bed late last night, when thoughts of Margaret sleeping so close drove him out of her room for a while.
He’d noted the gray hair blending with the black.
Natural enough. Denton had more gray, which was unnatural at his age.
What the hell could have caused it? Stupid question.
He was married to Juliette. She could cause anyone to go prematurely gray.
His father should have remarried. Watching him through the window the other night, he’d found him a damn lonely man.
He had a younger son he’d never been all that proud of, a daughter-in-law he didn’t like, a mother who wouldn’t talk to him, a best friend who had severed their relationship, and an older son he considered dead who wasn’t dead.
He had no one he could talk to anymore about anything that mattered. At least Sebastian had John.
Why had his father never married again? Didn’t want to bring a gentle lady into a house of strife?
Or maybe he did want to. He recalled the brief story Margaret had told him.
She had suggested that Douglas marry her and then laughed, but maybe she hadn’t really been joking.
Maybe Douglas had given her reason to believe he was interested...
The thought disturbed him for a moment, until he recalled that Denton also seemed to be enamored of Margaret, and that thought thoroughly infuriated him. She’d lived in this house for four years. What exactly had happened here during that time?
It didn’t take but a moment for him to doubt that his father’s feelings had run in that direction.
Douglas wasn’t too old for her, but he would have seen it as taking advantage of his ward, since she might have been obliged to agree out of gratitude.
He was too honorable to have done that. But Denton, married to an adulteress whom he fought with constantly, had he sought solace in his father’s beautiful ward? Well, he couldn’t have her ...
He went upstairs and found Margaret’s room completely dark. He swiped one of the lamps from out in the corridor and placed it on the table in the room. He approached her bed. She was sleeping, or trying to give him that impression. Bloody hell.
He removed his coat, tossed it over the nearest chair, but then noticed the blue material already piled on the seat of it.
He fingered it, lifted it, and raised a brow.
Glancing at Margaret again, he almost laughed when he saw what she chose to wear to bed instead.
That was a message if he’d ever seen one, about as loud a no as he’d ever heard. He approached her bed anyway.
What had caused her blushes tonight at dinner, then? He could have sworn she was going to take him up on his offer. Had she been remembering their kiss? Had she been feeling nothing more than simple embarrassment?
He was having a deuced hard time figuring out the lady.
She had professed to dislike him right up front, yet she dealt with him in a straightforward manner.
He’d seen no sign of any real dislike. And any anger she’d displayed had been temporary and induced by him at the time.
It had had nothing to do with the past. Perhaps she’d said she disliked him because she thought she ought to feel that way?
She was attracted to him—he’d sensed it more than once—yet she fought it.
Because of her sister? Margaret was logical about most things, but about that she wasn’t.
Silly reasoning. He could accept the blame when it was his.
But he had doubts that Eleanor had run away for the assumed reasons.
He’d studied her letter briefly, long enough to decipher a name in it: Juliette.
Everything, it seemed, pointed back to Juliette.
And their “marriage” had been at Margaret’s suggestion.
She’d come up with the idea damned quickly, too.
He could make more out of that, though he probably shouldn’t.
Everything she did or agreed to do stemmed from her desire to “save” Douglas, after all.
And she had every confidence that Sebastian would see to that.
He sat down on the edge of her bed for a moment, just a moment.
She wouldn’t know, was sleeping soundly.
But even in sleep, she had a profound and immediate effect on his body.
Once again he felt the lust for her that had tormented him last night.
He groaned. Apparently he couldn’t get this close to her and not want her.
It was happening every bloody time now since he’d first tasted her.
He needed to get this lust out of the way, and soon, so he could concentrate on the job he was there to do.
She continued to sleep, curled in a ball, buried deep under her covers, her long hair spread out on the pillow behind her.
Even in the dim light that reached across the room, the brown of her hair gleamed with golden streaks.
He wanted to gather it in his hands, rub it against his face.
That wouldn’t suffice, when he wanted to do a hell of a lot more than that.
He should take himself off to the cold bathroom where she’d no doubt arranged bedding for him. And spend another painful night thinking of her warm, lush body? He didn’t move. He’d be a cad to take advantage of her. He bloody well knew that. The old Sebastian wouldn’t have, but The Raven would....