Virtuous Scoundrel (The Regency Romp Trilogy Book 2)

by Maggie Fenton

  Astrid patted her aunt’s gnarled hand with patient forbearance.

  Katherine threw her biscuit aside, her stomach churning as thoughts of all of Sebastian’s former conquests paraded through her mind. The shock of the morning’s aborted seduction was at last wearing off. Even if he’d not interfered with Rosamund, Sebastian was doubtless guilty of countless other indiscretions. Dear Lord. She had almost become one of their number. As if she’d learned nothing from her nightmare with Johann. As if she could have fallen for another false declaration of love given in the heat of passion.

  Well, she’d not be taken in by another silver-tongued reprobate, as much as her body wished otherwise. She did not want a rake, no matter Aunt Anabel’s insistence on the matter.

  When she finally turned her attention back to her friends, she found that Aunt Anabel and her wicked tongue had thankfully passed out in her teacup again. Astrid, however, looked halfway to bursting once more, as if she had even more salacious gossip to reveal.

  Katherine wasn’t sure she could stomach any more at the moment.

  “What is it?” she asked with a weary sigh, knowing she’d probably regret asking.

  “I’m not supposed to tell you,” Astrid began, as if the constraint was an excruciating burden. “Cyril made me swear.”

  Katherine’s interest was piqued despite herself. Things were serious indeed when Astrid began bandying about her husband’s first name. “Well, don’t do yourself an injury, Astrid,” she said dryly. “You know I won’t tell anyone else.”

  “It’s just that it seems that he is. Virtuous,” Astrid said in a rush.

  “What?” Katherine asked, something worse than nausea unfurling in her gut as her beleaguered brain slowly made sense of Astrid’s words.

  “Sebastian. It seems that he has no real conquests. None at all. His entire reputation is an elaborate Banbury tale.”

  “What absolute rot,” Katherine breathed.

  “Not rot, apparently,” Astrid said blithely, oblivious to her distress, biting into yet another biscuit. “Cyril told me all about it . . . or rather most of it. As much as I could persuade from him. Enough to convince me it must be the truth.”

  “The truth?” Katherine bit out. Bile burned its way up her throat, choking her. It was hard to breathe, hard to think past Astrid’s ridiculous assertions.

  “That Sebastian Sherbrook is a virgin!” Astrid spoke the last word in a theatrical whisper.

  Katherine couldn’t help the incredulous noise that emerged from her lips.

  Aunt Anabel’s hearing seemed to be more acute in her dotage than Katherine had assumed. She jumped up from her seat, her pompadour nearly tumbling all the way to the floor, startling Mongrel out of Astrid’s lap. She raised her quizzing glass to her eye and peered around the room in confusion. “Virgin? Where?” she asked excitedly, swaying a bit on her feet. “Ain’t seen one of them in years, gel.”

  Astrid urged her aunt back down into her seat and righted her wig for her. “There are no virgins here, Auntie,” she assured her.

  When Aunt Anabel had at last settled down into her seat once more with a disappointed huff, Astrid turned back to Katherine and continued. “He’s as green as I was before Montford took me up in the hayloft at Rylestone and . . .”

  “Astrid!” Katherine said sharply, setting her teacup down with a clatter. Astrid was as incorrigible as her aunt. The last thing Katherine needed was Astrid’s vivid recounting of her defloration. Again. She knew entirely too much about her friend’s intimate activities with her husband. “Please!”

  Astrid only looked a little bit abashed. “Well. Apparently it is very true about Sebastian. Something horrid to do with his uncle and mother that quite turned him off the idea, poor fellow.”

  Aunt Anabel shook her head and tutted. “That boy, a virgin! It is a shame for all womankind, in my opinion,” she declared.

  Astrid nodded her vociferous agreement. “I know. He’s so bloody gorgeous. He wouldn’t even need to try in bed, a woman could simply look at him and . . .”

  “Astrid!” she cried again.

  Astrid gave a very Gallic shrug despite hailing from Yorkshire. “Well, he is. A spade is a spade. Not that I’m interested, because Montford.” She said her husband’s title as if it were explanation enough, patting her burgeoning belly.

  “I’d be damned interested if I were forty years younger,” Aunt Anabel muttered. “Though I’d like to do a lot bloody more than look at him.”

  “Auntie!” Astrid scolded, trying and failing to contain her smirk.

  Katherine hardly heard anything past the word gorgeous, her thoughts tumbling in a thousand different directions.

  “He’s thirty-two,” she murmured dumbly.

  “Thirty-three,” Astrid corrected.

  “It’s impossible.”

  “Improbable, but not impossible,” Astrid corrected again. “Even in this city. But it is totally fixable.”

  “What?”

  “Well, if anyone can get him interested enough to dip his wick, it would be you.”

  Dip his . . .

  Katherine choked on air.

  She had to find different friends.

  “I think he has a tendre for you, Katherine,” Astrid continued. “Montford says . . .”

  “Stop!” she cried, rising from her seat. Enough was enough. “Stop speaking this ridiculous tripe. I don’t believe it!” She couldn’t, though Sebastian had been very interested not six hours ago. She was not about to share this information with her friend, however. It would just encourage her.

  No telling what it would do to Aunt Anabel.

  Astrid, shocked into silence by her unexpected outburst, gaped at her, half a biscuit forgotten in her hand. But the silence did not last long. “What do you not believe? Sebastian’s virtue or his tendre for you?”

  Katherine clutched her head with both hands, barely restraining a scream. “Either. Both!”

  Astrid tossed aside her biscuit, a wounded look passing over her face at Katherine’s behavior. “Well.”

  Katherine knew she was being unforgivably rude, but she was far past the tipping point. This was just too much. It was horrid enough to have thought Sebastian a promiscuous bounder. It was even worse, though, to entertain the idea, however ludicrous, of a virtuous Sebastian. A virginal Sebastian.

  She couldn’t believe it, not after he’d nearly succeeded in getting under her skirts this very morning.

  But it would explain the tentative kissing. And it would explain Montford’s unshakeable faith in Sebastian’s innocence when it came to Rosamund Blanchard, a faith she had never understood despite their close friendship.

  It couldn’t be true. Sebastian’s resemblance to Johann Klemmer had always been what kept her impossible feelings at bay—had made it that much easier to pull away from his arms that morning before she could do something she’d regret.

  But if his reputation were nothing more than a work of smoke and mirrors, then there would be nothing holding her back.

  Nothing, but at the same time everything. For if he was indeed simply a misunderstood, virtuous scoundrel (for he’d always be a bit of a scoundrel, regardless of the state of his wick), then he deserved better than her.

  Suddenly, with a little cry of dismay, Astrid rose from her seat and wrapped her arms around Katherine as far as her belly would allow.

  “Why on earth are you crying?” Astrid asked as she rubbed soothing circles against her back.

  Katherine hadn’t even realized that she was.

  “And why on earth are you crying, Auntie?” Astrid asked her aunt over Katherine’s shoulder. The old relic was indeed sobbing into her teacup along with Katherine, her lead paint dripping down her cheeks. It looked as if her whole face were melting. It was horrifying.

  “I just realized it was dear, lovely Sebastian who’s t
he virgin,” Aunt Anabel sniffed. “I am mourning womankind’s loss. Lud, what has your generation become? Empire waists and virginal rakes and Almack’s. It is tragic, gel, tragic, and if I were forty years younger . . .”

  Katherine groaned and covered her ears so she would not have to hear how Aunt Anabel finished that sentence. Again.

  Chapter Eleven

  In Which the Bad French Melodrama Rears Its Ugly Head Yet Again, for Which the Author Apologizes in Advance

  AFTER A SLEEPLESS night spent alternately reeling from Katherine’s rebuff and plotting a way into her good graces, Sebastian emerged from his early morning toilette in the possession of a tentative course of action and relatively high spirits, all things considered. Seduction had clearly been premature, so he’d pull back on the reins a bit and go with good old-fashioned romance, even though that word shot a shudder of dread straight through his jaded soul.

  She had not believed his declaration of love, believed him still to be little more than a philandering cad, and certainly not suitable material for a serious relationship. But that was his fault, wasn’t it? For years he had cultivated just such a black reputation, had never bothered to refute the erroneous gossip—had, in fact, shielded himself behind the lies. He’d been a coward through and through, but his virtue had been like an albatross around his neck, too shameful in its origin to ever be something he could truly be proud of. He’d always preferred the ridiculous fiction.

  Until now. First the Blanchard affair had nearly cost him his life, and now . . . now this. This dreadful misunderstanding of his character that threatened to take away all that made his life worth living.

  But all was not lost. She’d not kicked him out on his arse yet, an auspicious sign. And she had responded to his ham-fisted seduction, even initiated some of it before coming to her senses. He had a chance.

  He didn’t look half bad as he studied his reflection in the mirror, armed to the teeth in his brocade and buckskins. Crick had scrubbed him raw in the bath, shaved his face, and trimmed up his Brutus cut until his curls had achieved just the right air of whimsy. He’d dressed him in his favorite jacket of blue silk brocade and spent an hour tying his cravat until it was perfect in its artful dishevelment. Sebastian looked very nearly presentable.

  Aside from the two black eyes, swollen jawline, and split lip.

  Well, he had looked better. But his appearance was not about to stop him from his errands. A plague couldn’t have stopped him.

  He was out the door by daybreak, Mongrel the only other resident of the household awake to notice his departure. She had not been happy about it, judging from her barking, but he was off in a phaeton Crick had nicked from Montford’s stables before Mongrel had aroused suspicion.

  His early start, however, had rather overshot the mark, as he discovered when he arrived on New Bond Street to find all of the shops aside from the florist’s still closed. After loitering behind a bucket full of towering, exotic gladiolus fronds until the shopkeeper began sending pointed looks in his direction, he ordered his bouquet of red hothouse tulips, which Crick had assured him meant “perfect love” in the so-called language of flowers (though how Crick had come by such knowledge was an unfathomable mystery), and exited onto the street, which was finally coming alive.

  He could already see a few strolling matrons eyeing his bruises and whispering behind their hands by the time he stepped into Mori & Laverne, but he wasn’t about to start giving a damn after thirty-odd years of indifference to wagging tongues. The only opinion he cared about was Katherine’s. And he hoped the rare edition of Beethoven’s D major sonata for four hands he’d found at the music shop would go a long way toward softening her heart in his favor.

  It was approaching the noon hour by the time he arrived back at Bruton Street, girded for battle with his offerings for the household goddess. Even with his armor, however, his palms were sweating and his heart was pounding. By the time Bentley had led him to the door to the music room, from which emerged the percussive, opening chords of the Opus 106, he felt lightheaded with apprehension. Those did not sound like happy chords, which made him even more nervous, his stomach sinking before he’d even entered the room.

  He tried to gauge the mood of the household by studying Bentley’s face, but the damned butler was as impassive as ever.

  He clutched the bouquet so hard something squashed, and he reluctantly loosened his perfect cravat before he could choke on his own anxiety.

  Wooing, it seemed, was not for the faint of heart.

  He knocked on the door briskly before he could lose his resolve and was answered by a chorus of barks and the crash of a B-flat chord gone horribly awry. He winced and waited, and after a long moment in which he could hear her getting the dogs (i.e., Penny) under control, he heard a terse, “Come.”

  She doubtless was expecting one of her servants, for she looked shocked to see him enter. Definitely less than pleased. Her pale skin flooded with color, and she stood abruptly from the pianoforte’s stool, her eyes looking everywhere in the room but at him.

  The sour feeling in his stomach deepened. He was expecting some awkwardness, but not this . . . this horror.

  He gave her his most proper bow—as proper as he could manage, considering his cracked ribs—then straightened and wiped one sweaty palm on his buckskins.

  As she made no move to acknowledge him further, he proceeded into the room and thrust the bouquet at her, feeling like a twelve-year-old lad in short pants. She stared at the red tulips for an interminably long time, lost, as if at first she couldn’t figure out what they were. But when she did, a veil came over her face, as frosty as the silver of her gown. She took them from him tentatively, but it was as if she had been asked to take hold of a snake. Or something equally unpleasant.

  She didn’t even bother to smell them before tossing them on the lid of the pianoforte.

  He cleared his throat. “They mean—”

  “I know what they mean,” she interrupted. So cool. So abrupt.

  The last of his hopes for the interview began to fade away. He presented her with the package, which she also took with reluctance. She returned to the pianoforte stool and sat down warily. She began to work the knots in the twine and peel back the brown paper packaging with painstaking precision, never once meeting his eyes. When it was just halfway open and she had seen the contents, she stopped. Dropped her arms to her side. Stared down at the title with an expression he could not interpret.

  She looked . . . dismayed, perhaps, though that seemed too tame a description.

  “What are you doing?” she finally said into the uncomfortable silence.

  He balled his hands into fists at his side, not liking her cold tone. This was not the response he was aiming for.

  “I would have thought it obvious,” he returned.

  “Not to me,” she said, putting aside the half-opened package with a carelessness that had him clenching his fists even tighter. She was calling his bluff in this bizarre duel of theirs, then. He could feel the heat blooming in his cheeks, anger beginning to overtake his hurt.

  “Katie, I . . .”

  “Don’t call me that,” she retorted, touching her temple as if he’d given her a headache.

  No, he had not counted on this at all. This black, ominous moment. Not after this past week.

  It was several long moments before he could make his voice work past the angry lump in his throat. “I wanted to court you properly,” he said slowly, lamely. “As you deserve. I was told red tulips were a fairly clear declaration of intent.”

  She made an impatient sound and refused to so much as glance toward the flowers.

  “And the sonata . . .” he started.

  “I already have the piece,” she said over him, with a strange, brittle hardness to her voice. “A . . . friend gave it to me long ago, and I have no need of another copy. It is a poor piece anyway.”
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  Well.

  She was being inexplicably vicious with him, each irritated word landing like a fresh blow to his already bruised flesh. He wondered why he simply did not walk away, since she was making her aversion to his advances more than clear.

  But it seemed some twisted, self-loathing part of him was unwilling to give up, despite the abuse.

  Perhaps it was precisely because of those advances that she was so intractable. He should have known that such prosaic offerings like red tulips and piano duets (how obvious could he be?) would not be welcome. He might as well have penned some horrid, hackneyed love poem about her emerald eyes. It would have probably offended her less.

  That would teach him to take romantic advice from his valet. Bloody language of flowers his arse.

  But he’d simply had no point of reference. No other idea how to proceed. Affairs of the heart were decidedly not his area.

  “I don’t know how to do this, Katherine,” he bit out in frustration. “But I am trying. I don’t know what it will take to change your poor opinion of me, but I want to. I want you to know I am sincere in my regard for you. In my intentions . . .”

  “Apparently, the father of Miss Blanchard’s child was Colonel Firth,” Katherine interrupted, apropos of nothing, as far as he could tell. But the assertion brought him up short.

  “Well, that is not surprising,” he said, rolling his eyes, wondering where this was leading. “No wonder I am suddenly back in society’s good graces, according to the Times.”

  “So you never seduced her,” Katherine continued, as if he had not spoken.

  “We’ve been over that,” he gritted out. “Perhaps you’ll believe me now.”

  “You’ve never seduced any woman.”

  All of the heat left Sebastian’s body in an instant. He could feel the blood draining out of his head, sending him reeling. He braced himself against the arm of a chair. Whatever his expression told her, it was not good, for she rose so quickly from the piano stool that Penny yelped in distress from her divan, jumped down, and hid beneath it. Katherine ignored the dog and crossed to a window, back to him and shoulders tense.