“Whipped is what you are,” Marlowe returned with a pout.
Montford’s smile transformed into a grin. “Wonderfully whipped, gentlemen. You should try it sometime.”
“I ain’t into that sort of thing,” Marlowe said moodily.
Montford rolled his eyes. “You know I’m not referring to actual whipping, or at least I hope you do. Your mind is a terrifying place, Marlowe. I’m referring to matrimony.”
“So was I,” Marlowe muttered. “Matrimony. No, indeed. Tried that once, and look where that ended me.”
Montford’s smile grew tight at the edges. “I meant matrimony to the right woman. Not that insipid, faithless harridan your family thrust upon you. My God, Marlowe, what were you thinking, marrying that woman?”
A strange, hard glint appeared in Marlowe’s green eyes that Sebastian had never seen before. Then again, a lot more than the size of Marlowe’s waistline had changed in his absence. Or perhaps being away for two years had given Sebastian a new perspective on his friend. When Marlowe had visited him in Italy last year, Sebastian had glimpsed the unhappiness that lurked beneath his friend’s thin veneer of lackadaisical dissolution. But that veneer seemed even thinner now.
The horrible idea that Marlowe had actually cared for the woman he had married and buried all those years ago flashed through his mind, but he dismissed it immediately. Marlowe had hated his wife as much as his wife had hated him. Nevertheless, Sebastian could tell this topic of conversation was bothering the viscount even more than it usually did.
“I weren’t thinking. What do you want me to say? But my experience with Caroline was enough to warn me off marriage for good. It ain’t for one such as me. But maybe . . .” He stole a glance in Sebastian’s direction.
Oh, no. Sebastian knew Marlowe too well not to know precisely what his friend was up to: deflecting attention away from himself and onto him. The viscount always did this in times of personal crisis. Bastard.
He scowled at Marlowe. “Maybe what?” he challenged.
Marlowe shrugged casually and finished his whiskey. Sebastian looked from Marlowe to Montford, and back again. The pair of them looked much too innocent.
He shook his head firmly. “Oh no, not me. I just fought an illegal duel so that I wouldn’t have to marry.”
“There are other fish in the pond,” Montford remarked with a devilish tilt of his lips.
“You’re cracked in the head. Both of you know that I can’t . . . I just can’t.” He half rose from his seat in agitation, before he remembered the baby in his arms. “I’ll never marry, and you both know this,” he insisted.
He had long ago vowed not to inflict himself and his limitations on any woman. His friends didn’t need to know that his mind had briefly changed on the subject after so many years. It would only confuse them. Besides, the Blanchards had more or less destroyed his only glimmer of hope on that front. Katherine would never even consider him now with this latest black mark against him.
Not that he wanted her to consider him.
“Of course,” Montford said with a slightly doubting edge to his voice that made Sebastian grit his teeth. Perhaps he was not as good at hiding his feelings as he’d thought.
“And even if I wanted to—which I don’t—who the devil would have me? This debacle with Blanchard has blackened my reputation beyond repair. I’m as ruined as a streetwalker in the Seven Dials.”
Montford blinked at Sebastian’s dark tone. “You’re truly upset, aren’t you?”
“Of course I’m upset. Damn it . . .” He winced at Montford’s warning glance in Amy’s direction. “I mean, dash it all! I’m tired of being considered the worst libertine this country has ever seen for no good reason. I came back here, hoping to God I’d stayed away long enough so that people would just . . . well, stop making such a fuss over me. But what do I find instead? An irate squire pointing a pistol at my heart. Hardly a promising start.”
Marlowe was gaping at him. “Don’t tell me you’re truly reforming.”
Sebastian scoffed. “Me? Reform? The world won’t let me do that. Nothing in my past will let me do that.”
“Stop blaming the world or the past,” Montford said softly. “You won’t let yourself be happy. No one’s stopping you, only yourself.”
Sebastian felt his spine stiffen. “You’re equating happiness with the marriage state. False logic.”
“To the right woman—”
He stood up all the way. It was time to leave. “Oh for the love of . . . there is no right woman for me. There never shall be.” Lies, all lies. “And I find this conversation most irritating.”
“If you drop my daughter, Sebastian, I shall cut off your head,” Montford said, striding over to him and attempting to pull the infant from Sebastian’s grasp.
She began to scream immediately. Sebastian snatched Amy back and bounced her up and down as he’d seen Montford do earlier. It hadn’t worked for Montford, but it worked for him.
“Maybe he’s found the right woman after all,” Marlowe said, observing the baby’s response to Sebastian. “Though she’s a tad young.”
Montford gave Marlowe a steely glare.
“It is rather difficult to make a dramatic exit carrying an infant,” Sebastian huffed, reluctantly returning to his seat.
Marlowe jumped to his feet and tried in vain to straighten his ill-fitting waistcoat around the bulge at his gut. “Then I’ll do it for you. Must get home. Have some business to attend to,” he lied. The traitor. He gave Sebastian a significant look. “See you later at White’s?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Sebastian murmured without enthusiasm.
Marlowe saluted the room at large and exited swiftly, as if afraid of pursuit.
“What is going on with him? He had only one whiskey,” Montford remarked when the viscount was gone. “I hope he’s not taken ill.”
“You drove him away with your talk of matrimony.” Sebastian stared ruefully down at the warm, pink armful that had prevented him from fleeing with his friend.
“He needs a wife,” Montford insisted stubbornly.
“What he needs is a governess,” Sebastian said.
“He has had nearly a dozen. The last one left without hair. The twins got their hands on a pot of glue.”
“Not a governess then. A drill sergeant.”
Montford grimaced. “The worst thing one could do would be to teach those twins of his anything about military strategy. I would be afraid for England.”
Sebastian gave a small bark of laughter. Amy attempted to imitate it. He looked down at the baby in amazement. She beamed up at him, bubbles of spit overflowing her lips. It was absolutely revolting.
“It is quite remarkable how much she’s taken to you,” Montford said. “She even cries most of the time when Astrid holds her. You do have a special way with women, Sebastian.”
“Miss Blanchard would certainly agree,” he muttered. “Sir Oliver threatened to take me to court.”
Montford sighed wearily and rubbed his temples. “On what grounds?”
“Sir Oliver said if he found no satisfaction on the dueling green, he’d sue me for breach of promise.”
“The devil you say. The man hasn’t an ounce of discretion.”
“Neither does his daughter,” he pointed out. “But I don’t think Sir Oliver is the one pulling the strings here. It’s the wife. She’s the one who toted her daughter to Italy. A schemer, that one.”
“You made no promises to the chit, did you?” Montford asked. “Signed no documents?”
Sebastian felt rather hurt, but he knew Montford had to ask. “Of course not. I didn’t even know the chit’s name until she began to stalk me. You do believe me, don’t you?” Sebastian asked.
Montford regarded him for a long moment before answering. “Yes, I believe you. But it doesn’t matter what
I believe, does it? They could make up as many lies and forge as many documents as they want to, and they would be believed over you, considering your reputation.”
“I should have never come home,” Sebastian murmured.
“Well, it is not a coincidence that Miss Blanchard began tossing your name out as the father of her child around the same time you inherited the title. I think the Blanchards are under the impression you are a rich man now.”
“If my dear uncle left me a farthing other than what was entailed, I shall be shocked,” he scoffed.
“You should look at the will,” Montford suggested. “Or better yet, ask Katherine. She’s sure to take tea with the duchess when they return.”
Sebastian held his breath and tried to school his face into an impassive line, but he could see from the duke’s arched eyebrow that he was not entirely successful. Montford knew better than anyone that Sebastian had very strong opinions regarding his late uncle’s wife. But Montford didn’t know precisely what those opinions were. Sebastian himself didn’t understand the intensity of emotion Lady Manwaring evoked in him.
He usually hated her kind; she was a formal, proper English gentlewoman with ice water running through her veins. And he had no respect for a woman who could attach herself to a man like his uncle just because of a title and the proper pedigree. He could think of no circumstances that excused such behavior, though it was done all the time. For some outrageous reason, he thought that Katherine should have known better, which was absurd, as he barely knew her. Yet it infuriated him that she had married his uncle, and that his uncle had had the nerve to marry her or any woman in his condition. And it infuriated him even more that he cared at all.
But there was something unnerving about Lady Manwaring. He had been struck dumb the moment he’d first seen her—or rather, heard her—at the pianoforte, playing the complicated third movement to Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata. It had been years and years ago, when he was still invited to the occasional respectable musicale. He’d attended out of the usual boredom, but he had not been bored listening to her. Or looking at her. She was an emotional player, she was a beautiful player, and she was, in a word, breathtaking. A marked contrast to the tightly controlled automaton she became while not behind a piano, he later learned.
Something had happened to him that night. Something had shifted inside. Sebastian did not believe in love at first sight. He had not thought until that moment he believed in love, romantic or otherwise, full stop. Not after what had happened to his mother. And to give himself some credit, he did not fall in love at first sight. It took from the time he first looked into those emerald green eyes and felt his heart stop, to the other side of his favorite Beethoven sonata, when his heart started to beat again. He was forever lost after that moment.
When he learned who she was just a few short, blissful moments after his profound epiphany, his heart, so newly put back together during the sonata, had shattered once more. And he had yet to recover. He was sure that her musicianship had been no coincidence. His uncle had always known just how to wound him most. It hadn’t been enough for his uncle to destroy Sebastian’s mother; he had to marry a woman he knew that Sebastian would have coveted, had his mother’s death not broken him so irreparably. Katherine was . . . perfect for him, dangerously so. She had, in just a handful of minutes playing the pianoforte, made him reconsider his self-imposed chastity, made him want for the first time in his life.
But surely that ten-minute lapse in good sense years ago had been brought on solely by her proficient rendition of the Beethoven. It was so rare one heard a decent performer among the ton that he’d lost his head when one had presented herself. His reaction had nothing to do with her emerald eyes. Or her delicate, long-fingered hands. Or the way her hair glinted platinum in the candlelight. Or the way her bottom lip trembled when she launched into the rumbling climax of the movement.
Nothing at all.
And he hated that his heart was racing just at the mere possibility of seeing her this afternoon. He’d no doubt do something embarrassing. Again. The last time he’d seen her had been in Yorkshire, when he’d raced into a burning castle to rescue a pig, all because he’d wanted to play her knight in shining armor. He’d nearly been caught in the flames and then run down by the ungrateful pig right in front of her for his trouble.
“I think not. I have no desire to see my dear lady aunt.” He was such a liar. “What I wish to see is my Broadwood.”
“Ah, yes.” Montford pulled a wry grin. “Stuck her in the drawing room. Hope you don’t mind. Thought she might earn her keep whilst we gave her a roof over her head.”
“How is she doing?” Sebastian asked with all the concern of an anxious parent. “May I see her?”
Montford rolled his eyes. “By all means. Let us proceed.”
They quit the library and strolled down the hall to the formal drawing room. Sebastian didn’t notice until they were inside that he had lost Amy’s pink blanket in transit, and that the baby now sat quite happily naked in his arms. The tart.
He stared down at Amy in consternation, glanced at his Broadwood—his baby—then at Montford. He itched to touch the keys, but he didn’t know how he could do so with the soft bundle of flesh in his hands. He attempted to hand the baby to its father, but Amy clung to him, wailing in protest.
“She really doesn’t like you very much, does she?” Sebastian observed.
Montford gave him his signature scowl.
Sebastian satisfied himself by walking over to his most beloved possession and inspecting her for dents, scuffs, cracks, and dust. She was a superb bit of craftsmanship, with rosewood boards gleaming in the sunlight, inlaid with mother-of-pearl fleur-de-lis. As a young buck on his first holiday to London down from Cambridge, he had spent his first big win at cards on the pianoforte, commissioning her design from the best English maker. The instrument had cost him every cent of his winnings—one hundred guineas—but she’d been worth it. He’d insisted on expanding the keyboard to an unholy six and a half octaves, and extended the length of the soundboard for added resonance. Sebastian had played on many keyboards, but none had his Broadwood’s magic touch or glorious sound.
He’d not lied to Sir Oliver. If she were a woman, he’d marry her, Katherine Carlisle bedamned. She was that perfect.
He flexed his left hand underneath Amy’s rump, feeling the unnatural pull of scar tissue around the old wound in his palm. It was a shame that he could no longer play like he used to. More than a shame.
He sat down on the stool and immediately regretted it. Amy seemed to find great delight in banging her fist down upon middle C and its neighbors. He replaced her chubby hand with his own and began playing the opening strains of a French bawdy song. She was immediately enraptured.
“What are you playing?” Montford demanded.
“Mozart,” he said with a grin.
“If that’s Mozart, then I’m the bloody archbishop,” Montford muttered.
“Want to hear the words?”
“Will my ears burn?”
“Most certainly.”
Montford looked down at his daughter with a torn expression. “Better not. She’s beginning to talk, you know.”
Sebastian raised an eyebrow at this dubious claim. If the babble out of Amy’s precious, dribbling lips was a language, then it was one with which he had no familiarity. “As it’s in French, I think we can safely assume she shall not be too corrupted.”
“All this talk of corruption around my daughter,” came a bright voice from the doorway, “makes me distinctly uneasy. Especially coming from you, Sebastian.”
Montford grinned like a fool as his wife trundled into the room. The duchess, short, flame-haired, freckled, and as rumpled as ever, was even more rounded than he remembered. Sebastian blinked at her midsection.
Well.
Montford had wasted no time in getting another br
at on her, it seemed. She was near to bursting at the seams and glowing with the same health and contentment as her husband. It was nauseating.
She cast her husband a cheeky look as she threw her bonnet toward a chair, missing it entirely, then focused her attention on Sebastian, who rose from the stool in greeting. The duchess’s eyes—one blue, one brown—widened at the sight her daughter presented in his arms.
“What the devil have you done to her?” she demanded in exasperation.
Sebastian was not certain whether Astrid was addressing Montford or himself, so he wisely chose not to answer.
As if he could have answered her. Katherine suddenly appeared behind the duchess, and all of the clever words on his tongue melted away, along with his wits.
She was as unlike the duchess as the moon was from the sun, their only similarity their abysmal taste in clothing. Neither of the ladies knew how to dress, which offended his well-honed sartorial sensibilities. Astrid always looked as if she had tumbled out of a dray cart, while Katherine had all the fashion sense of a nun. But even their terrible gowns did not hide their unique beauty.
Whereas Astrid was a ginger, voluptuous bundle of womanhood, Lady Manwaring was as tall as most men and somber, with hair the color of moonbeams. Astrid could not sit still and never failed to speak her mind. Katherine was always still, always quiet, like a moonlit winter night in the far north, with an acerbic wit that cut to the bone. Only her eyes ever gave her away—and only rarely.
It was one of those rare moments, because she looked directly at him as she first entered the room, and those emerald depths lit up. The light was fleeting, instantly quelled behind her usual hauteur, and he would have missed it if he hadn’t been looking so hard.
His heartbeat picked up entirely against his will. What she did to him.
Two years suddenly seemed like a lifetime to him, and he had to acknowledge to himself the true reason he’d come back to England. He’d come back for her, the only woman he’d ever wanted. Even though he hated her and she hated him. Even though she could never be his.
He stared at her like a bloody fool, in a tangle of emotions. Surely he did not love her—how could he? He barely knew her, and what little he did know of her was not to her credit—but he felt drawn toward her, as inexorably as the tide was drawn by the moon. He always had. He had the inexplicable idea that if he told her all of his darkest secrets, she would understand. Which was utter madness. She—perfect, untouchable, virtuous—could know nothing of the depths of his shame and despair. If he told her the least of his sins, she would turn away in disgust.
Virtuous Scoundrel (The Regency Romp Trilogy Book 2) Page 3
