The brief flare of light in Antoinette’s eyes dimmed. “He was, without a doubt, the handsomest man in Sussex. And now he’s the handsomest widower in Sussex, though much good that will do me. When I admired the cut of his gib, so to speak, he told me, quite kindly, that if he had a penchant for golden-haired women, he’d find me irresistible. It was a very respectful letdown, but a letdown nonetheless.”
“That’s a strange thing to say since Dorothea was golden-haired.” Fanny glanced up from her needlework to add, “Poor Dorothea. How sad that the doctor could only save the babe who, of course, would be a year now. Time flies! And how much can change in a year, for Mr Wells did once have a reputation for being the most faithful of husbands.” Resting the needle threaded with lilac silk on its hardanger backing, she added thoughtfully, “I wonder what could have happened for him to have changed so.”
“Perhaps I could find out.” Antoinette’s vivacity had returned. “The gossip sheets were filled with his exploits with Lady Banks and then Mrs Compton for months. But all that was some time ago so no doubt he’s missing feminine company. Perhaps Mr Wells is just the antidote I need—"
“No, Antoinette!” Fanny admonished her. “Give the man some peace. Until the duel, and then Mrs Compton naming him as the father of her unborn child, Mr Wells had a reputation as a man of honour and integrity. Undoubtedly, he fell into bad company after Dorothea died--”
“Yes, that must have been wonderfully refreshing for him and I’m sure that I—”
Fanny wagged her finger at her sister. “No, Antoinette! I do not suggest you tempt him with whatever you might have up your sleeve. If you invite him when Lady Indigo is here you will still have to entertain her at unfashionable hours around the clock.”
“Can’t you entertain her and I’ll entertain Mr Wells?”
“No! Lady Indigo is your guest—or, rather, Quamby’s—and I think it’s time you lived up to your responsibilities. But I have a better idea than the schemes you obviously are cooking up. Tell me, what do you enjoy more than furthering your own amours?”
Antoinette looked at her blankly.
“Matchmaking!” Fanny supplied. “Why don’t you invite Mr Wells and some worthy, unmarried young lady here? The kind of young lady who would drag him out of the doldrums, or bad company, or whatever it is that is the source of his troubles.”
“Oh, I don’t think he’s been in the doldrums for one minute since poor Dorothea died! God rest her soul, of course! Anyone could see he and Dorothea were patently unsuited.” Antoinette studied the half-moons of her right hand. “Do you know that when I asked him at his wife’s funeral what he intended to do now, he told me he was leaving for France the next day as he had to…” she nibbled her fingernail as she recalled the conversation, “find someone.”
“What? A woman? I don’t think so,” Fanny remarked.
“Yes, a woman! He said he was off to search the length and breadth of England to find his brown-haired girl.”
“Well, obviously he didn’t find her.” Fanny wrinkled her brow in thought. “But he certainly couldn’t have been too brokenhearted considering those scandals he courted on his return!” Changing the thread from lilac to lavender, she added, “Or maybe it was because he was brokenhearted. Anyway, if his actions this past year are anything to go by, Sebastian Wells needs a steadying influence: a sweet young woman to take as his wife and to keep him in good order. And you can help him do that, Antoinette. Why, you’d enjoy it!”
Antoinette sank onto the chaise longue by the window and tucked her legs beneath her. “Matchmaking? It would certainly be better than having to assist old Lady Indigo into her seat, and turning a blind eye to the old crone dribbling into her porridge each morning,” she agreed. “And you promise you’d stay here with me at Quamby House?”
Fanny smiled. “I wouldn’t miss your famous Yuletide celebrations for anything. Besides, the townhouse renovations are taking longer than we’d expected so it would suit Fenton and me very well. And I’ve just had a marvelous thought. Do you remember that young lady who scandalized everyone by reneging on her understanding with Lord Yarrowby for no better reason than she now thought him dreary?”
“Miss Arabella Reeves?”
“That’s right! Well, her aunt, Lady March, was telling me that Arabella was such an obedient girl until four months ago when she attended some ramshackle house party where her head was turned by someone quite unsuitable—”
“She sounds like a girl after my own heart,” Antoinette interrupted, and Fanny was glad to see her sister’s peevish look replaced by the sparkling vivacity most often whipped up by intrigue.
“And who was this unsuitable gentleman?” Antoinette asked, but Fanny could only shake her head and say, “I have no idea. But Lady March has been accommodating Arabella these past two months since she ran away from her father’s house, and keeping as close an eye on her as she is able.” She sighed. “Though I don’t know how successfully, for there is no telling how inventive a highly strung young lady can be when her heart is set on someone entirely unsuitable. Unsuitable in that old Mr Reeves won’t consent to the match for his heart has been set on Yarrowby for his daughter these past five years. And now poor Lady March has been unwell, laid low with an inflammation of the lung—”
“Then it is settled!”
“What is?”
“We shall invite both handsome, widowed Mr Wells who is looking for a second wife, and Miss Reeves, who is searching for someone more exciting than dreary Lord Yarrowby to marry—”
“Though I would hardly call Lord Yarrowby dull,” Fanny corrected her. “He’s a steady, steadfast young man who would make a flighty girl like Arabella the perfect husband if only—”
“If only he loved her for herself, and she loved him. But clearly he does not.” Antoinette rose, throwing her arms wide as she contemplated the room. “And we shall have boughs of holly and mistletoe strung across the mantelpiece and from wall to wall. You will help me with the decorations, won’t you, Fanny darling?”
Relieved that her sister was warming to the idea with such enthusiasm, Fanny set aside her embroidery to stand beside Antoinette. “Yes, let’s arrange for the mistletoe to be collected and the invitations to go out, right now, don’t you agree? The season for making merry and matching hearts is upon us. And the sooner we find a wife for handsome Sebastian Wells, the more likely we are to save him from any more sin and vice and all the other evils that are so contrary to his true nature.”
Antoinette stopped her sister with a frown. “Why Fanny, you talk like vice is a bad thing. Goodness! I don’t think life would be tolerable without it.”
“But dearest, it’s not vice if it’s sanctioned by your husband,” Fanny tried to explain. “And it doesn’t make everyone as happy as you. Certainly not those who have always been exemplified by upstanding reputations and pristine consciences…like Mr Wells.”
Antoinette continued to gaze around the room, clearly more invested in how it might look lit up with a thousand wax candles reflected upon dozens of glittering ballgowns, rather than how her sister’s words reflected on herself. “We shall send out the invitations today!” she declared. “And Mr Wells and Miss Reeves will be the first people that we invite!” She turned shining eyes toward her sister, all trace of her earlier despondency now replaced by the prospect ahead of her: of uniting two worthy hearts.
For her own entertainment, of course.
“Oh Fanny, I am so looking forward to saving handsome Sebastian Wells from himself, and flighty Miss Reeves from a marriage not of her choosing.”
Chapter 2
Sebastian Wells contemplated the billiard cue in his right hand, poised over the green baize table. If he pocketed this one, he’d be five hundred pounds plumper in the pocket. It was a fabulous sum that would keep him in coats and cognac for a considerable time—if he didn’t lose the same sum at the gaming table the following week. Not that he was in need of funds.
“Just get it over with,
” his opponent muttered.
He glanced across the table, offering a disdainful arch of his right eyebrow to indicate his indifference to the lad’s suffering.
The boy shouldn’t wager what he couldn’t afford to lose. Sebastian never had. Of course, Sebastian had never been kept short, but he could also exercise self-discipline when required. It was the mark of a gentleman, and this lad, judging by the desperate look in his eyes and the telltale grayness of his linen, was one of society’s hopefuls.
“In good time.”
He watched the boy’s Adam’s apple make the arduous journey up and back down his throat. If Mr Barnacle—from memory that was his name, or something similar—only knew how the desperation of an opponent fed Sebastian’s addiction to winning, he might learn to temper his bodily reactions.
Carefully, Sebastian drew back the cue, lowering his upper body so that he could make the direct line between the billiard ball and where it must go. He felt the exhilaration of success and power surge through him as the tip made contact with its target with a satisfying click.
Then he stood back to observe the perfection of his stellar hit.
Who didn’t enjoy winning? Or watching the vanquished squirm? It was in his competitive nature, and one could not change one’s nature for all that Dorothea had tried.
Poor Dorothea.
He felt regret but little else, and with a sigh, turned to face the boy who owed him a very large sum. In his opponent’s eyes, he saw the devastation masked bravely; but damp lashes rose up as young Barnacle handed over a handful of notes amidst the loud cheering and clapping of those ranged around the room.
Ah, but victory was sweet, was it not?
Sebastian didn’t bother to hide his gloating as he accepted the congratulations of the well-dressed rabble who crowded about him in the seedy confines of his favorite gambling haunt.
What else in life was worth expending effort upon more than winning?
After the last four years of misery, nothing gave him greater satisfaction.
His hands curled over the notes though he didn’t look at them. They were meaningless in the great scheme of things.
Meaningless, like everything else, he realized with a pang.
He’d thought Dorothea’s death had released him to find what he wanted. He’d searched and made inquiries the length and breadth of the British Isles for…
He swallowed down the lump of pain and disappointment. A year had passed since Dorothea had died and finally freed him to be with the girl he loved.
But...where was she?
Since returning from France where he’d followed yet another disappointing lead, gambling and winning were the first vices he’d tumbled into. And he was good at it.
Better at it, certainly, than helping maidens in distress.
Or should that be matrons in distress? Well, that’s what he’d thought he’d been doing.
Self-disgust squeezed his entrails, but he was not about to take relief in kindness to his opponent. Society hadn’t shown him any quarter after Lady Banks had set him up for a prize fool. As for Mrs Compton, he knew what he should do, but…
“I’ll have the remaining hundred paid by the end of the week, Mr Wells.”
Sebastian set down his cue and reached for his drink; the dry notes still crumpled in his hand as he peered more closely at the youthful, unformed features of the lad quaking before him. His vanquished opponent was even younger than Sebastian had pegged him.
“What? You wagered more than you have to give to me now?”
“I can get it by...by Friday.”
“Friday?” Sebastian stared at the notes young Barnacle had handed over, and another surge of disgust and disillusionment welled up his gullet like bile. The lad’s linen was not the snowy white that indicated privilege. Lord knew what a loss like this would mean to him when, to Sebastian, it would mean...nothing.
Yes, nothing.
Dorothea had decried gambling as if it were devil’s play and Sebastian, fettered by honor, had curbed his natural impulses during his years with her to be what he’d promised to be: honorable and faithful.
Not for Dorothea’s sake, either, he reminded himself grimly.
Yet look where that had got him?
Idling his life away in the pursuit of pleasure because that’s what he thought he’d missed most during his cloistered years of dreary devotion.
His palms began to itch while his bleary vision took in the trembling mouth of the boy who was too young to be here yet old enough to know better.
He should be taught a lesson. It was only right that Sebastian claim his winnings and let the lad suffer his fate.
With a sigh, he raised his arm to better consider what he held in the palm of his hand—a tidy sum for himself, perhaps; but the boy’s future, also—frowning as he pondered what to do.
“I know I should have had the blunt on me now, but...but I can have it by...Thursday if you can’t wait ‘til Friday.”
“Thursday!” Sebastian thrust the notes back to the boy. “If not now, then forget it! You should be in leading strings, not getting your nose bloodied in places like this.”
He barely heard young Barnacle’s incoherent gratitude for Mowbray, an erstwhile friend and lowlife frequenter of dens of iniquity like this, for all that he was set to inherit an earldom, was throwing his arm about Sebastian’s shoulders and saying with too much familiarity, “Barbara told me to tell you her husband is away in the country next week. He’s completely forgiven her now he knows it wasn’t Dendridge in her bed. So, you have carte blanche to see her. And—” he touched the side of his nose – “no obligations. She promises!”
Sebastian blinked to clear his head. Barbara. Mrs Compton. A right mull of matters he’d made there and only himself to blame. “Please send Barbara my regrets.” He knew he was slurring and that he made unattractive company.
Mowbray was taking his role as apparent broker with great seriousness. “My cousin is no danger to you, Wells. Her husband has agreed to take her back and,” Mowbray’s leer was sickening, “let her take her pleasure where it pleases her.”
An image of Barbara’s creamy limbs spread in abandon for both their pleasure was not a comfort right now. Lord, if Sebastian had only known what he was getting himself into when he’d thought he was playing the good Samaritan.
He shook his head. “Send Barbara my best wishes. He turned toward the door for the smell of ale, sweat, and greed was suddenly overwhelming. “I’ve decided to accept an invitation to spend a week in Somerset.”
“Good God! The country—when you could kick up a lark here?”
“Precisely.” It came as a sudden illumination that if Sebastian had not found what he had been looking for, at least he knew what he wasn’t looking for. The noise, the commotion, the excitement, the ambition. These things weren’t for him, though Dorothea might have been wrong about so much else regarding her husband’s character.
He put his hand to his neckcloth, now limp and no doubt soiled with a night of dissipation. It was time to clean himself up, if for no one else but himself. “Sorry to disappoint, Mowbray. Truth is, I’m fagged to death with kicking up a lark.”
Chapter 3
Moldering in the country four days later, Sebastian felt no niggling doubts as to the wisdom of taking himself away from London revels.
If he felt slightly redeemed at having discarded the idea that winning at all costs was a laudable object, then expending the minimum of effort as he lounged on Lady Quamby’s sofa came a close second as the penultimate state of being.
His hostesses—the two former Miss Brightwells who’d scandalized society with the means by which they’d made their rags-to-riches marriages—were like exotic birds of paradise; one dark, the other golden-haired, and both dressed in gowns that showed off their bounteous assets.
The younger Miss Brightwell was a bewitching little minx. Sebastian had been very aware of her interest when they'd rubbed shoulders while taking the foul waters of o
ne of Dorothea’s favorite spa towns some years earlier. There had been fireworks, he recalled. In the literal sense, though. Not with Lady Quamby, for all that she’d put herself forward as willing.
No, Lady Quamby’s golden curls were too reminiscent of those belonging to his late wife.
It was the elder Lady Fenton who drew his interest; and though she may have had a couple of years on him, her supine form with its slender lines and pert bosom were immensely appealing. But it was the sheen of her raven hair that most drew him in. There was something about dark, glossy tresses that touched him as nothing else could.
In the twelve months since his wife’s death, he’d found himself drawn to every woman crowned with such hair, only to be disappointed.
None of them belonged to the girl for whom he was searching.
Lady Fenton must have been aware of his silent study for her mouth turned up in the sweetest of smiles. And if either Sebastian or she were interested, nothing would come of it. Her devotion to her husband was legendary. There’d be no diversion there. She was not like her sister.
With a sigh, he returned his attention to Miss Arabella Reeves, who'd just been expounding on the virtues of the waltz over the quadrille. Clearly, Miss Reeves had been invited here as his special entertainment. Though why either of them had been invited to spend a short sojourn to incorporate Lady Quamby's prior Christmas Ball was a mystery. Certainly, Sebastian knew Lord Fenton on account of the fact they shared a godmother.
Have Yourself a Merry Little Scandal: a Christmas collection of Historical Romance (Have Yourself a Merry Little... Book 1) Page 60
