Chapter 8 #2
Sebastian folded his sister’s letter along its neat crease and slid it back into the drawer where her letter had begun to collect like pressed flowers.
The familiar ache in his chest was eased.
This was his third letter since they traveled down to Bath.
His sister’s hand had grown lighter; the worry in her turns of phrase no longer evident upon the page.
His mother had not touched the pianoforte in more than five years.
Since her husband’s death, every small joy had seemed to leech away.
Sebastain smiled, imagining his mother playing again.
He could almost hear the tentative chords giving way to something nearer to her old confidence.
In the coming weeks, he would visit them in Bath for a few days.
If his mother would not return to London for the remainder of the season, so much the better.
It spared her the chance of encountering what must never be put before her.
Sebastian rose and crossed to the window of his study.
The garden below wore the fresh polish of last night’s rain.
Gravel walks curled between borders of lavender and rosemary; a pair of gardeners moved with quiet purpose along the yew, shears flashing, green clippings scattered like confetti at their feet.
Beyond the wall, wheels rattled, then faded. London breathed on, indifferent.
He set a hand against the sash and let the cold seep into his palm.
The image came without invitation: a small face tipped up and eyes the precise dark blue he saw in the glass each morning, wide with fright and doubt.
The youngest had looked at him as if judgment might fall from his mouth and make a ruin of her world in an instant.
That look twisted something tight and unfamiliar under his ribs.
Sebastian had told himself there was no profit in examining their lives.
Another household had known his father’s ease and laughter.
He had presumed they received what he and Cordelia had not, and that should have sharpened him against them.
Yet simple truths undermined easy conclusions.
Those girls stood on the wrong side of the parish register and would never be accepted by the circles where he moved with unthinking step.
They had not asked to be marked by the circumstances of their birth.
A walk in Hyde Park for these girls had become a council of war.
They had weighed the mere propriety of a walk in the park, knowing how the world named them—bastards, secrets to be kept—and how unforgiving it was to those it deemed did not belong.
He had seen hunger in their faces as phaetons and barouches rolled past and well-born girls rode by, neat as pictures, side-saddle.
Sebastian had then looked to Miss Whitley, and when their gazes collided, she steeled herself for the cut direct.
The flicker of shame and doubt in those amber-brown eyes made him halt and speak.
She thanked him, and the gratitude there was unfeigned.
He could not fathom a life in which a simple outing required a plan for enduring contempt.
Was it so deeply fixed in them that, even among strangers, they expected to be judged for a birth not of their own choosing?
We are not dirty secrets meant to be hidden away.
The child had straightened as if the words had set a brace across her narrow shoulders.
He returned to the desk, but the correspondence waiting there did not hold him.
Ledgers from Derbyshire, a draft from a committee chair for Monday’s debate on canal tariffs, a copy of the minutes from the Lords on the Corn Laws—necessary work, all of it.
He sat and took up the steward’s report, then set it down again.
Sebastian raked a hand through his hair. “Why the devil does their existence prick at me so?”
He had thought at first to be ruthless. He had very nearly been so. It would have been simple to lodge them in a house for a week and then remove them beyond his concern. The cleanest solution was often the coldest.
A knock cut cleanly through the quiet. His butler entered, presented two letters upon a tray, and bowed himself out. Sebastian glanced at the seals. One bore the mark of his man of affairs, Mr. Williams. He tore that one open first.
Your Lordship,
Mr. Peabody has quit both his office and his residence. Discreet enquiries reveal that he resigned his post and fled to Europe last night. It is further reported that he abandoned his wife and three children and departed in the company of an actress from Drury Lane.
Your faithful servant,
Williams.
“That damn wretch,” Sebastian murmured, voice low and lethal. The man’s flight was confession enough. Peabody had stolen what his father set aside. So, there had been provision for his issue. The crooked blackguard had merely diverted it and never imagined one day Sebastian would demand answers.
He would do his best to uncover whatever provisions his father had left them, ensure they received what was owed to them, and then wish them well in their lives.
That, at least, he was willing to do. His jaw flexed.
He forced a steady exhale and reached for the second letter.
Madam Rebecca. He broke the seal and quickly scanned the contents.
Raine,
I have invited Red to Aphrodite this evening to begin her first commissioned piece.
Lord Dunmore has agreed to pose with his current flame of the month, Emily.
He is preening already, convinced he will be immortalized as Adonis.
I trust Red’s steadiness far more than I trust Dunmore’s manners.
The man is a libertine in every sense, and Red’s lush figure will test his restraint, and his arrogance will allow him to believe that she could not possibly be immune to his charms. I promised Red safety while she worked.
She seemed comfortable with you by the end of her interview, and I hope you will accompany her as her protector while she paints him.
Rebecca.
Sebastian reread that last line, something taut and electric coiling inside him. The raw awareness he’d felt for the woman behind the mask slammed through him with the force of a storm breaking against stone. It surged so swiftly, so violently, he had to brace a hand upon the desk.
Bloody hell. These last few days, he had done his damnedest to excise the woman with the moniker Red from his thoughts.
He had told himself it was the novelty of the situation, the absurdity of being painted sprawled with his cock throbbing in his hands, the reason he’d been so attracted to her quick wit and figure.
Sebastian assured himself he would forget her and the encounter by morning.
He had been wrong.
Sebastian’s mind offered up the memory with obscene clarity: the lush curve of her mouth visible beneath the mask, the faint catch of her breath when she first saw him bared, the tremor she fought so fiercely to hide.
She had painted him with such reverent intensity that he had felt flayed open, seen in a way no lover ever managed.
And her hands—steady, capable, elegant—had moved with devotion over the canvas while his cock throbbed in his grip like a man starved.
A muscle jumped in his throat.
Worse—far worse—was the way she had invaded his sleep. Twice now he had dreamed of her, the mask gone, her hair unbound and spilling down her back, her eyes warm and wanting as she sank to her knees before him. Dreams so vivid he woke hard and hungry, cursing himself.
Sebastian dragged a hand through his hair.
He should refuse Rebecca’s request. He had no business thinking of Red, not with such heat, not with such fractured hunger that scraped along his nerves and made a mockery of his restraint.
Yet the moment he imagined another man—Dunmore, of all insolent bastards—pressing too close to her, whispering filth into that delicate ear, trying to coax her blush…
to seduce her into removing her clothes…
A dark, vicious curl of something possessive tightened in Sebastian’s gut.
Ridiculous. Yet, the answer formed instantly, without a whisper of doubt. He would go. And perhaps, in the quiet between strokes of her brush and the shadows cast by candlelight, he might finally discern what it was about the woman behind the mask that pulled at him with such maddening appeal.