Virtuous Scoundrel (The Regency Romp Trilogy Book 2)

by Maggie Fenton

  She’d let them sort out the mess they’d made themselves, since she didn’t think she could stay here much longer without saying something she’d regret. She was angry at the lot of them, but more than anything, she was angry at herself for how blind she had been to Sebastian’s feelings.

  She had grossly underestimated his regard for her. She’d assumed his tendre for her would die a quick death after she had spurned his advances and he’d returned to his old life, but that didn’t seem to be the case. What he felt for her was clearly more than mere infatuation.

  He truly loved her.

  She had broken his heart as much as she had broken her own, and that realization was unbearable to her.

  She had brought the night’s events on herself, and all because she was too much of a coward. Too much of a coward to tell Sebastian the truth. Too much of a coward to risk his condemnation and admit her own love.

  Too much of a coward to truly see Sebastian.

  Well, she saw him now quite clearly, even though he was covered in cake. And she saw, alongside his love for her, his singular bravery. It was the one quality she had never doubted in him since their first meeting, the one quality she had always envied. No matter his secrets, Sebastian had never given a damn what the world thought of him, while it was all that Katherine had ever cared about. He’d always been brave, and never more so than when he had told her his mother’s story, laying his heart at her feet. Even the spectacle he’d made of himself tonight with Marlowe and the refreshment table took a unique sort of courage. She wished she could be half so brave.

  She was well and truly tired of being a coward.

  She would take the risk and give him her love, body and soul. And if he hated her, labeled her an irredeemable hypocrite, after she told him about her past, then at least she could say that she had not let fear conquer her. She could say that she had been brave at least once in her life.

  Anything had to be better than the anguish she’d caused the both of them because of her cowardice.

  But she had to admit that she’d never be brave enough to bare her soul in the midst of a crowded ballroom. Sebastian would just have to wait a little longer.

  Which, really, he rather deserved, considering the state of poor Marlowe’s nose.

  “I think I’ll go out for some air,” Katherine said.

  Astrid, fanning her unconscious husband with her skirts, looked as if she wished she could join her.

  “WELL, THIS IS deuced awkward,” the duke said to his wife from his sprawl on the floor, glaring at his two best friends, who were still lolling about in the remnants of the celebratory cake and trying to regain their footing in the slick morass. Marlowe propped himself against the upturned refreshment table, cake squelching beneath his backside, clutching a handkerchief to his gushing nose. One side of his face was completely masked in white-and-gold frosting.

  The Earl of Brinderley and his countess had managed to cordon off the circle of curious spectators behind them. Some of the guests had fled to other rooms or their carriages, but for most, the opportunity to witness such a glorious debacle featuring two of London’s most notorious peers—and the stoic Duke of Montford passed out in the refreshments—was too good to pass up.

  Astrid could already imagine the accounts that would be printed in the newspapers the next day, and she was worried on Katherine’s behalf. It would be nigh on impossible for Katherine to stay out of the scandal, as it was apparent to everyone in the ballroom who had ears and eyes that the fracas had been about her.

  And it was all Astrid’s fault.

  In her defense, she had not foreseen this.

  “Awkward?” she murmured to her husband. “This is a disaster.”

  He shifted his gaze up toward her, his expression one of fond exasperation beneath all of the cake. “’Twas your idea,” he reminded her.

  She had to concede that was true enough. “Yes, but I didn’t think this would happen.” She indicated the two men writhing in front of them with her hand.

  “Nor I,” Montford said with a sigh. “Though perhaps I should have, considering who we’re dealing with.”

  Sebastian flicked a dollop of cream filling off his eyebrow, slumping over in the muck, as he seemed to come back to his senses. “What’s happened now?”

  “What’s happened?” Marlowe cried out, his voice oddly muffled behind the handkerchief. “You broke my bloody nose, you pillock!”

  Sebastian dismissed Marlowe and searched the crowd, his mind clearly fixated on the marchioness. His angry gaze fastened on Astrid. “Where is she?”

  “She left. Idiot,” she couldn’t help but add at the end.

  “Left?” he cried, scrambling to his feet. “Where did she go?”

  “As far from you as possible, would be my guess,” Marlowe muttered. “Damn it, I’m pissing blood!” he bellowed.

  Shocked gasps at his crude language spread behind them.

  He ignored the commotion and glared up at Sebastian. “You’d no call to attack me, Sherry. Thought we was friends.”

  “I thought so too, until I learned you’ve been angling after Katie.”

  “I ain’t angling after the chit!” Marlowe cried. He pulled the handkerchief away, and blood continued to pour from his nostrils. He leaned back and touched the bridge of his nose, gasping from the pain. “I were only keeping an eye on her ’til you came to your senses. But I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. You ain’t got none of ’em left. Damn it, my face is broken!” he wailed.

  “I would suggest you lean forward, sir,” came a quiet voice to Astrid’s left. She turned her head and saw the small wallflower who had been fainted upon by Lady Blundersmith glaring at the lot of them as she fanned the fallen woman. “The bleeding will cease quicker if you put your head between your legs.”

  Marlowe eyed the chit suspiciously. “Head between my legs, you say? You some sort of sawbones or something?”

  The lady arched her brow, unamused. “Do I look like a doctor, my lord?” she deadpanned.

  Marlowe grunted, but he did as the lady had suggested.

  “Damned fine mess you’ve made, Sebastian,” Montford groused.

  Sebastian glared at him. “The lot of you set me up. Don’t think I won’t put a dent in that ducal nose of yours too for this.”

  That, Astrid thought, would be a great shame. She was rather fond of her husband’s nose.

  “You’ve quite gone mad, I say!” Marlowe stated from between his legs.

  Several other people around them seconded this assessment.

  Sebastian, still visibly simmering with his rage, climbed to his feet, reached into the pocket near his lapel, and pulled out a hunk of white cake.

  “Whatever possessed you, man?” the normally placid Earl of Brinderley finally burst out from the sidelines.

  The countess patted her husband’s arm, looking not at all inconvenienced by this turn of events. In fact, she looked ready to explode with laughter, especially when she looked at Marlowe’s prone and bloody figure. “I know what possessed him,” she said. “He’s in love.”

  Astrid heard her husband snort below her. She kicked him lightly in the ribs.

  “No, I’m not—” Sebastian began, blushing beneath his coating of whipped butter and sugarcane. “Like hell I’m—That is—I am—Oh, hell and the devil!” he finally burst out, throwing his arms wide and facing his audience belligerently. He attempted to stare down everyone in the ballroom. “She’s right. I am in love. In violent, horrible, miserable love. With Lady Manwaring.”

  A shocked silence descended over the room. No one was even whispering anymore.

  Astrid cleared her throat. “It’s good of you to inform us—that is, half of London. I’m sure the whole city shall know how miserably in love you are with Lady Manwaring—your former aunt—before dawn breaks. But don’t you think you should tell
. . . er, Lady Manwaring? She’d not like to learn of such a thing through the Times. Female pride and all.”

  Sebastian glowered at her, though there was something deep in those sapphire depths that looked like pain. “I have told her,” he said slowly, as if talking to an imbecile. “But she won’t have me.”

  Oh. Oh. Well, that certainly put a different complexion on things. The poor man sounded absolutely gutted. Astrid felt a slight twinge of self-reproach, but the bloody battlefield of her ballroom went a long way toward alleviating that slight twinge.

  Perhaps her plans had been a bit shortsighted in retrospect. But she had been so sure that whatever had been keeping the pair apart had to be Sebastian’s fault. In her experience, it was always the man’s fault.

  “Think the blood’s stopped,” Marlowe said gloomily, raising his head, peeking over his knees. “If anyone’s interested.”

  Sebastian sighed, offered Marlowe his hand, and helped him to his feet. The viscount received the assistance warily, then hobbled over to a chair to pout, ruining Astrid’s new upholstery with his cake-plastered backside.

  “Truly sorry,” Sebastian muttered to his friend, rather halfheartedly in Astrid’s opinion.

  Marlowe waved his bloody handkerchief in Sebastian’s direction, causing the duke to groan and avert his eyes. “Don’t know why you’re still lurking about. Astrid’s right, you know. You should really have another go with Lady M. It would be so much easier on the rest of us if you did. Kinder.” Marlowe sounded miffed. Astrid couldn’t blame him. But neither could she blame Sebastian for his overreaction, now that she knew the whole story.

  Sebastian sighed, tugged on his jacket, the seam at his shoulder ripping even more, and crossed the ballroom, leaving footprints of cake in his wake. The crowd parted for him once more as he stalked toward the exit, head held high.

  Astrid decided her work here was done, misguided though it had been. She didn’t know what Katherine could have been thinking by rejecting a man she so obviously adored, but she planned on having a nice long talk with her best friend on the subject at some point in the very near future.

  But at the moment, she needed to sort out her husband and attempt to salvage the night. She nodded to a footman, who hurried to the duke’s side and helped him to his feet. When her husband had recovered his equanimity, if not his pride, he batted away the hovering servant and offered Astrid his arm, as if they were embarking on an elegant stroll through St. James’s Park. They walked through the ballroom, past row upon row of stunned guests.

  “What a bloody cock-up!” she muttered to her husband as she watched the beleaguered wallflower attempt to haul the portly Lady Blundersmith to her feet.

  Montford had long since become inured to his wife’s bad language and only cringed slightly. “Let’s hope not. Perhaps things will sort themselves out.” His tone was doubtful, however.

  “Perhaps. But I think this incident is telling me something,” she mused.

  “What’s that?”

  “To keep my nose out of other people’s business.”

  He laughed. “Forgive me, my dear, if I don’t hold my breath on that one.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  In Which Our Hero Licks His Wounds, with the Help of Our Heroine

  SEBASTIAN STALKED OUT of Montford House with what little dignity was left to him—which was very little indeed, seeing how he was covered in cake and icing. But he would not be apologizing for any of his behavior, however dreadful it had been. Not tonight anyway.

  By the time he was halfway across the city, it was an effort to make his legs work at all, and it wasn’t just on account of the unpleasant chill in the air that his flimsy coat of icing was doing nothing to ward off. His anger was fizzling out, replaced by a steadily mounting anxiety. He felt as if a giant boulder was slowly settling its weight on his back—a giant boulder comprised entirely of his own stupidity. He’d broken his best friend’s nose and humiliated himself in the eyes of the ton. Worse, he’d humiliated Katherine and likely destroyed her reputation in the process.

  He’d made a cake of himself.

  Which was quite fitting, seeing as how he was decorated like one.

  And she would likely never forgive him.

  Not that he could blame her, precisely. He’d behaved like a total arse. Again.

  His damned heart started to beat faster just at the thought of her, and how she had looked tonight at the ball in those brief moments before he’d gone insane. So damned delicious in her silver dress, all pale, inviolable beauty. And now she was farther away than ever. Not only had he disgusted her with the sordid details of his past, he had likely infuriated her beyond all bearing by embarrassing her tonight. He could see no way forward with her, not even in terms of a casual friendship, though he supposed he could have never borne anything merely casual with her anyway. It would have been too painful.

  Venice it was, then, though it would feel like he was hacking off a limb to be so far away from her. He finally understood what Rosamund Blanchard must have felt toward him, this fixation of the mind, this suffocating burden of unrequited feelings. He finally understood the irrational lengths one might go to in order to have those feelings returned. Like faking a pregnancy. Or breaking a best friend’s nose at a ball.

  To think that he had anything in common with Rosamund was nauseating, however, so he was simply going to have to learn to live without a limb. He refused to turn into the wretched, desperate creature that Rosamund had become. He’d lived thirty-three years without Katherine. He could live thirty-three more.

  Maybe.

  Crick met him at the door to the flat, disapproval radiating from every pore of his being as he took in the state of Sebastian’s appearance. Crick settled on shaking his head in resignation, as if Sebastian had finally succeeded in exhausting him.

  “I doan even wanna know,” he muttered as he jerked off Sebastian’s new—and cake-splattered—Hessians. He eyed the stains in the leather balefully. “What is this?”

  Sebastian gingerly removed his ruined jacket and deposited it in Crick’s arms, much to his valet’s displeasure. He stared down at the icing coating his fingers, and for lack of a better option, wiped them clean on the sides of his waistcoat, which had managed to escape relatively unscathed from the brawl.

  “Cake, Crick. I am starting a new fashion. Edible accoutrements.”

  “Sounds naughty,” Crick muttered, sniffing the jacket suspiciously.

  Sebastian leveled his most judgmental stare on his manservant. “Naughty? I never want to see inside that brain of yours, Crick.”

  Crick shrugged. “Yer loss. I would draw you a bath, milord, considerin’ the state yer in, but there be a . . . person to see you.”

  Wonderful. “A person? What sort of person?” he demanded warily. What other bill had he failed to pay? What other grudge had he to settle? The last thing he needed was a creditor hounding him at this ungodly hour or another dawn appointment over some imagined slight.

  Being a gentleman was exhausting business.

  “A female sort.”

  Sebastian frowned. No female had ever visited him in his apartments, despite what the world no doubt assumed.

  “Well, why don’t you send her away,” he snipped.

  “She woan go.”

  “Throw her out.”

  “I hain’t layin’ ’ands on ’er like. A proper lady she is,” Crick said. He didn’t sound convinced of the latter, which made Sebastian shudder at the possibilities that awaited him beyond the door to the parlor.

  This just kept getting worse and worse. He could think of only one “proper” lady who would have the effrontery to call upon him at such an inconvenient hour. Which would be fitting punishment indeed, he supposed wearily, considering his ridiculous behavior tonight. But he thought Rosamund had been packed off to the Colonies. Surely it wasn’t her—though she ha
d tried, in the past, to invade his lodgings. He certainly wouldn’t put it past the chit to jump ship, swim the Atlantic, and stalk him to his doorstep, leaving Colonel Firth and the baby to their fate. She was a bedlamite, after all.

  And he wouldn’t put it past Crick to let her in, what with the valet’s miff over Polly. He knew when Crick was in the mood to teach him a lesson.

  Crick followed behind him as he marched across the narrow hallway to the small parlor, where he could hear someone plunking out random notes on his Broadwood. If it was indeed Rosamund touching his precious baby, he might have to get Crick to restrain him from breaking her nose.

  “You’ll not be wantin’ yer jacket, sir?” Crick asked archly, holding out the soiled garment to him by the tips of his fingers.

  “If she has the bollocks to come here at all, she can have the bollocks to see me without my feathers,” he muttered.

  “But I doan fink . . .”

  “Good, I don’t pay you to do that.”

  “You doan pay me at all, milord,” Crick grumbled.

  He sniffed. “I have a reputation to maintain. I am a bloody marquess, as you keep reminding me. And noblemen never pay their servants’ salaries. How de trop.”

  Crick furrowed his brow mightily and huffed. “One day I’ll leave yer sorry ’ide, if you hain’t careful.”

  “No you won’t,” Sebastian murmured, throwing open the door and stomping into the parlor, which was bare except for the Broadwood and a few scuffed chairs and a three-legged table that had remained free from the creditors’ greedy paws, preparing for a row. He’d scare Rosamund all the way to Timbuktu with a few of his own choice threats. He just wished he still wore his Hessians so that his stomping could have a more dramatic impact. Arguing in one’s stockinged feet left one at a distinct disadvantage.

  But it wasn’t Rosamund. It was the last woman he’d ever expected to see in his lodgings. His breath left his body. Katherine sat at the Broadwood, poking out a simple melody with her index finger, her back to him.