When he was gone, Sebastian sat at Rose’s bedside and waited.
After a while, she stirred.
“Sebastian?”
“I’m here.”
“Stay,” she said, her eyes fluttering shut again.
He took her hand between his own. It felt alarmingly fragile.
“Yes,” he said.
…
Two nights later, long after Rose fell asleep, breathing deeply and evenly, Sebastian sat awake at her bedside.
The doctor had come by a second time earlier that day and pronounced her to be perfectly fit. The blister wound would scar, he added, but otherwise there was no lasting damage.
Rose had fallen asleep holding Sebastian’s hand. Now there was only one clear thought running through his head.
He must make her go.
She would resist. He had read love and tenderness in her fathomless eyes as though they were a book, and he knew that she thought herself in love with him. His scar, his damaged leg, his missing heart… By some miracle, none of it mattered to her.
But how could he allow himself to accept her love, when he had nothing to offer her but himself?
She deserved more than he could give her—a crippled body, a clockwork heart, a tarnished past. She deserved someone whole and unblemished. Someone human.
Tomorrow he would send her home. But tonight, he wanted to hold her, even if he wasn’t worthy.
He climbed carefully into the bed beside her and drew her into his arms. She made a sleepy sound and cuddled against him, her head resting against his chest and the clockwork heart that kept him alive. He had no desire to sleep. Instead, he lay awake in the moonlight and lingered over each memory as he had once lingered over his roses in the cool purple twilight.
He wasn’t worthy of her love. If he allowed her to stay, he would only destroy her as he had destroyed everything else in his life. Already he had nearly killed her, and the wound that he had given her would scar her forever.
Too soon, the first white light of dawn spilled through the curtains. It was time for him to go.
He disentangled himself from Rose’s arms, and she made a protesting sound in her sleep but didn’t waken. He bent and tucked the covers close around her before pressing a final kiss to her forehead.
Then he walked out of the room, shutting the door silently behind him. He didn’t look back at Rose’s sleeping form. Instead, he made his way down to the library and sat at his desk.
He addressed the letter to Louisa Verney Howard, keeping it short and succinct. When he was finished, he glanced at the clock. It was nearly seven, late enough that he could ring for Greaves.
When the old man appeared in the doorway, Sebastian handed him the envelope. Greaves glanced at it.
“Mr. Cavendish,” he said, “I believe you are making a mistake.”
“No. I’m not. See that this message is sent immediately. By telegram, not post.” He rose. “I’m going out.”
“Out?” Greaves took a small step back.
“Yes,” Sebastian said. “Out. Out of this cursed house. God knows it’s been long enough since I’ve gone outside.”
“What shall I tell Miss Verney if she asks after your whereabouts?” asked Greaves. His usual impassive voice was stiff with disapproval.
Sebastian moved past him and out the doorway. “Why should you tell her anything?”
…
When Rose woke, the room was empty, but she remembered Sebastian sitting by her bedside, holding her hand. She stretched in the warmth of the sunlight that had pooled on her bed, feeling lazy and content despite the pain of her small burn wound.
After three days of lying in bed, she was ready to be on her feet again, but she took her time getting up and dressed. By the time she finally made it downstairs, it was too late for breakfast, so she set out in search of Sebastian, wanting nothing more than to see him and kiss him and be in his arms once again.
But he was nowhere to be found. She looked everywhere, from the laboratory to the rose gardens and his bedchamber, and then every other room in the mansion.
He wasn’t in any of them.
Puzzled, she went to the kitchen and found the butler supervising half a dozen automatons.
“Good morning, Greaves.” She raised her voice slightly to be heard above the sound of the running sink and the clink of dishes placed into cupboards.
He bowed. “Miss Verney.”
“Do you know where Mr. Cavendish is? I have been looking everywhere for him.”
Greaves’s face was impassive. He turned back to the dishwashing machine.
“He has gone out,” he said.
“Gone… out?” echoed Rose, surprised. “Did he say where?”
In all the time she had been at Cavendish House, she had never known Sebastian to have gone out before. She had almost forgotten there was a world outside of Cavendish House. Of course Sebastian had every right to go where he wished, but she had become too well-accustomed to his presence over the last three months, and his unexpected absence left her slightly deflated.
“No, miss,” Greaves said.
“Will you let me know when he comes home?” she asked.
“If you wish.”
Rose went back to the laboratory, where Ashputtel was sunning himself in a window. She pulled his fat body into her lap and scratched his ears.
She had no doubt now Sebastian loved her. The way he watched her, the way he said her name, the way he touched her. He loved her. He hadn’t said the words, but she knew it with every pulse of the heart that still beat because of him.
He had saved her life, and he loved her. She hugged the knowledge close.
She was gazing out of the window, dreaming of the future, when a brown bouche drew up in front of the house, disgorging a man dressed in a black overcoat. He was too far away for her to see his face clearly. He paused for a moment, staring in evident astonishment at the house, before picking his way through the gates and up the walk toward the front door.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she found this very odd. She had lived in Cavendish House for nearly four months, and no one had ever called before. A friend of Sebastian? Probably not. He was studying the façade of the house as though he had never seen it before.
Five minutes later, Greaves appeared in the doorway of the laboratory.
“Someone to see you, Miss Verney,” he said.
“To see me?” She shot to her feet, sending Ashputtel spilling to the ground. Who could possibly be calling on her? Yet even as the question formed itself, she knew the answer.
“Mr. Wethersby-Pooley, Miss Verney,” Greaves said, looking more sphinx-like than ever.
George. George had found her. She put out a hand to steady herself.
“Shall I tell him that you are not at home?” asked Greaves.
“No,” Rose said. “No. I shall go down and see him.”
Numbly, as though in a trance, she followed Greaves down the five flights of stairs to the great receiving hall. Halfway down the final flight of shallow marble steps, she found herself staring into George Wethersby-Pooley’s long, be-spectacled face.
“Rose!” He peered anxiously through the thick lens of his glasses at her.
“George,” she said, sounding stupid even to herself. “What are you doing here?”
He beamed at her. “I’m here to fetch you home, of course.”
“Fetch me… home?”
“Yes, to New Haven, of course.” He looked at the shallow marble steps, the two-story gilt-framed mirror, the carved caryatids. “This is some place, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
George’s brows drew down at the corners. “I say, Rose, are you all right? You look a bit peaky. Haven’t been getting enough to eat, eh?”
“I’m fine,” Rose said automatically. “How did you know to come here?”
“Your sister received a telegram this morning from Cavendish,” George said. “Came to find me immediately and told me I was to bring you home
.”
For a moment Rose’s heart seemed to stop beating entirely as the enormity of Sebastian’s betrayal sank into her bones. He had written to Louisa. He had sent for George. You won’t let him take me away? she had asked, and he had said, Certainly not. I refuse to give up the best laboratory assistant I have ever had to someone named Poor George.
But he hadn’t meant what he said at all.
But why? Only minutes before she had been so sure that he loved her. And she wasn’t mistaken. She wasn’t. So why had Sebastian telegraphed Louisa?
George was still talking. “I was in the middle of some work on a splendid opah that Hastings brought back from the South Pacific last month, but, well. You know Louisa. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.” He shook his head, and she noticed his hat, an absurd crushed felt affair. Sebastian would never wear such a stupid hat.
George blundered on. “She’s been after me for months to come looking for you, but New York is a dashed big place, don’t you know, and you could be anywhere. But since Cavendish gave an address, I figured I could fetch you and be home in time for supper.”
“Yes,” Rose said. “Of course. Supper.”
He beamed at her again, evidently pleased by her comprehension of events. “Yes,” he said. “I was thinking that perhaps— Oh. I beg your pardon!”
The front door had swung open, admitting Sebastian, hatless and coatless, his hair and clothing damp with snow.
When he saw George standing in the foyer, he went still, one hand still on the door. “I see you received my telegraph.”
Rose’s last, lingering hope died. George hadn’t been mistaken. Sebastian had sent for him.
She reached out to grip the banister.
George was beaming. “Cavendish!” he exclaimed. “Haven’t seen you since Phillips, eh? Yes, indeed I did. Just here to fetch Miss Verney home now. There’s a two-fifteen train which we can make if we hurry.”
“By all means,” Sebastian said, bowing ironically. He didn’t look up at her.
Rose forced herself to speak. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, thin and tinny. “I wish to speak with you, Mr. Cavendish.”
“Of course, Miss Verney,” he said.
“Alone,” she said.
“Mr. Weathersby-Pooley wishes to catch the two-fifteen train,” he said. “That does not leave you very much time, I’m afraid.”
“Nevertheless, Mr. Weathersby-Pooley will have to wait. Greaves can bring him tea while we speak.”
For the first time that morning, Sebastian met her gaze. He looked at her the way he had the night she had first arrived: expressionless, cruel, sardonically amused.
“By all means,” he murmured.
George’s mouth curved anxiously downward. “But Rose, there really isn’t much time—”
“Take Mr. Weathersby-Pooley to the Green Drawing Room, Greaves,” Rose said, and George fell silent, though his mouth still opened and closed several times like a landed fish. She swept past him without looking at him. “Mr. Cavendish and I will speak in the gardens.”
…
Gravel crunched beneath Sebastian’s heavy boots as he followed Rose.
She didn’t turn to look at him.
“You promised,” she said in a low whisper, her voice vibrating with anger. “You promised you wouldn’t let George take me away.”
“It’s time for you to go home, Miss Verney,” he said.
My home is here, she wanted to say, but desire alone wasn’t enough to make it true. It was his home, and he hadn’t asked her to stay.
“Why?” she asked. “Why did you do it?”
He shrugged. “You were rather badly injured during our last experiment. I have no wish to play nursemaid to you again.”
He spoke lightly, but she understood immediately.
“You think it was your fault,” she said with dawning horror. “What happened with the teleportation device.”
He shook his head, not looking at her.
“Sebastian,” she said. “It was not your fault. It was my decision to use the device. You—you saved my life.”
“Your life wouldn’t have needed saving if the machine I built hadn’t been faulty,” he said.
“Sebastian—” she began, but broke off when he held up a hand.
When he spoke, the mockery was now gone from his voice. In its place was a weariness that frightened her. “This has all been—a dream. A beautiful dream, but nevertheless, merely a dream.”
“I love you,” she said. “I want to stay here. With you.”
“You don’t understand,” he said.
“Then explain it to me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “But I can’t… I can’t let you be with me. I’ll only destroy you. Like everything else.”
“What are you talking about?” she breathed, but even as she spoke, she already knew the answer.
“You nearly died because of me,” he said, and his voice was choked. “I almost killed you. It could happen again.”
She drew an uneven breath. “Even if that were true—which it most assuredly is not—do you not think that it was my choice? It’s my life and my risk to take. What if I believe that you are worth it?”
“Worth your life?” he said, and his voice rose on a shout.
“I could walk out this door and a carriage could run me over,” she said. “What then? Would you add me to the endless list of your dead that you carry in your heart?”
“What do you want from me, Rose?” he demanded in a low, fierce tone. “You want to stay here? You want to marry me? A bad-tempered, ugly cripple? Have you looked around you? Have you looked at me recently?”
“You imply that I’m too stupid to know my own mind,” Rose said, her anger rising. She crossed the space that separated them and shoved at him, hard. “Let me tell you, Sebastian. You are the stupid one here. You think I don’t know you? You think I don’t know that you’re bad-tempered and surly and could test a saint’s patience? I know you. I know you better than you know yourself. And I love you,” she said. “I love you.”
“I couldn’t—I couldn’t bear it if you should—if something should happen to you because of me. I couldn’t—I couldn’t survive it.”
“This isn’t only about you. Do you realize how selfish you are being? What about me?”
He shook his head, saying nothing.
“I want to hear you say it,” she said, in a low, fierce tone she didn’t recognize as her own. “Tell me you don’t love me. I would go away. I wouldn’t trouble you any longer.”
They stared at each other from across the gardens.
The snow fell faster now, gathering in drifts upon the glass of the skylight.
It was a moment before he spoke. Then he drew a ragged breath and turned away from her. “I love you,” he said. “I love you more than I have ever loved anyone in my entire life.”
His voice was weary. She felt no triumph. “But not more than your vanity,” she said. “Not more than your obsession with the past.”
He said nothing. She had never seen him look so defeated before.
“If I walk out of this house today,” she said, “I won’t be coming back.”
“I know,” he said.
For a brief moment, she shut her eyes, but when she opened them, they were dry and burning.
“You’re a coward, Sebastian Cavendish,” she said.
He flinched but didn’t look at her. “I’m sorry,” he said again.
She whirled around and fled, making her way blindly back up the stairs to her room. To her surprise, her eyes were dry, but her hands shook so badly that she couldn’t seem to unfasten the latch on her valise. It took her three tries. When she finally managed the task, she simply tossed her possessions inside the small case before forcing it shut again.
There was one last thing she needed to fetch. She made her way up to the laboratory on the fifth floor and gathered up the blueprints for the machine, folding them very carefully and sliding t
hem into the pockets of her coat.
She was ready.
She made her way down the front steps.
“All set to go?” George asked, beaming up at her, cheerful and oblivious.
“Yes,” Rose said.
“Excellent,” George said. “I have a steam coach waiting outside.”
Without waiting to take her arm, he turned and trotted out of the house. Rose stared blankly after him for a moment. She had to go with him. She couldn’t stay here.
She was starting down the steps when Greaves said, “Miss Verney.”
She turned. “Greaves, you’ll see to it that Ashputtel is taken care of, won’t you?”
“Miss Verney—”
She didn’t wait to hear what he would say. She climbed into the steam-coach beside George and didn’t turn her head to look back at Cavendish House.
Chapter Four
That night, Sebastian wandered through the house alone, a wild animal searching for the scent of someone who would never come back.
Rose was gone. He knew she was gone, had watched her climb into the steam-coach. He should be glad. It was what he had wanted, but some part of him still willed for it not to be true.
As he moved through the rooms, he realized for the first time that the ghosts of his past had been banished. He hadn’t wanted Cavendish House, had hated and despised it as the prison of his childhood. For years he had existed there because he hadn’t known what else he could do, where else he could go, with his clockwork heart and his damaged leg and the burden of his memories and his wealth.
But in the few months that she had been there, Rose had changed everything. She had transformed it into a place where he could be happy. She had given him back his home as a gift.
He came finally to the laboratory on the fifth floor. Ashputtel was sitting on the window seat, gazing out the window at the snowy streets outside.
“Do you miss her too?” he asked, picking up the cat.
Ashputtel mewled softly and nestled closer to him.
Still cradling the animal, he moved toward the teleportation device in the corner. This too she had given back to him: the joy of invention, of science, of discovery.
The only thing he could offer her was a life free of him and the taint of all he had done.
A Riveting Affair (Entangled Ever After) Page 8
