Johann sighed, reached into his coat pocket, extracted a bundle of old letters tied with a blue ribbon, and handed it over.
Sebastian did not move except to narrow his eyes.
Johann blanched, reached into his other pocket, and produced another packet.
Satisfied, Sebastian turned back to her with an eyebrow raised. “Very prolific, my dear.”
“I was a fifteen-year-old girl,” she said in her defense, snatching up the letters and throwing them into the unlit grate.
Sebastian grinned and faced Johann one last time. “I have heard that a ship leaves for the Continent every morning at dawn. Perhaps you might consider being aboard by tomorrow?”
Johann glared at him, then turned to glare at her. He paled at whatever he saw written on her face, the fight finally going out of him completely, and stalked from the room with a parting, “This isn’t over!”
Sebastian tutted. “So tiresome. As if I haven’t heard that before,” he murmured. “We shall have to have Montford take care of him, my dear. He’ll be bound for Baltimore or some other god-awful colonial destination after His Grace is done with him.” He took her hand and gazed into her eyes, worry etched on his brow. “My dear, are you well?”
She squeezed his hand and smiled at him. “Very well,” she said. And it was the truth. Johann had well and truly lost the ability to wound her, and even if he’d done something nefarious with those ridiculous letters, she would have hardly cared. Sebastian’s unconditional acceptance of her had given her the courage to face all of her demons head-on and send them straight to hell where they belonged. She’d once thought loving him—and letting him love her in return—would end up being the greatest weakness of her life, but it had become her greatest strength.
But even if Johann had lost his power over her, having to deal with him had been very annoying. She hadn’t the patience to waste one more second of her life worrying about a wretch like him. Though . . .
“I would not have minded a dawn appointment,” she admitted. “I should have liked to shoot him.”
Sebastian grinned wolfishly. “How wonderfully bloodthirsty, my dear. Wellington would have loved you.”
“I shall give you a dawn appointment, if that is what you want, madame,” the duc said, doddering over to them with his wig still horribly askew, his wrinkled face red with apoplexy beneath the cracking layers of powder and rouge.
“Oh Lord, you’re still here,” Sebastian sighed.
Katherine couldn’t agree with him more. Now that Penny was safe and sound—if a bit miffed at Seamus—she just wanted Sebastian all to herself, so that she could finally show him how very much in favor she was of that long honeymoon on the Mediterranean.
“Though I shall engage your protector here, as I do not call out females,” the duc continued disapprovingly.
“Protector!” Sebastian exclaimed, his eyes dancing with delight. “My dear, you have been mistaken once more for a Cyprian! It is an impenetrable mystery how such an error continues to be made, considering your wardrobe.”
“I shall order nothing but red silk and lowered necklines from my modiste next time,” she said dryly. “Perhaps then I might be mistaken for an Almack’s patroness.”
“Red silk indeed! Never! I shall have you in gray bombazine or nothing!” he declared.
“The latter could be arranged, I am sure,” she returned.
Sebastian blushed down to his toes at her insinuation and cleared his throat. She’d actually rendered him speechless. It felt glorious.
The duc pounded his cane on the floor impatiently. “I shall not be ridiculed! Or ignored! That beast has taken advantage of my darling pug!” he cried, thrusting his cane in the direction of Seamus, who sprawled on his back in a sunspot by a bay window. Belle sat next to him, bathing his face with her tongue. The pug looked anything but taken advantage of.
Sebastian snorted in amusement.
“Agador! Belle!” the duc cried when he spied his pet’s mutiny.
Agador hopped into action and swooped Belle into his arms. She looked less than amused to be interrupted mid-flirt and nipped at Agador’s nose.
“She is of pristine lineage, named after my one true love, Anabel, a lady of impeccable breeding herself, lost to the Jacobin scourge!” the duc ranted. “And Belle’s great-great-grandmère was none other than Coco herself, the queen’s favorite. She is the last survivor of that royal line, and to have been imposed upon by a mongrel . . .”
“Seamus is a purebred Irish setter, sirrah!” Katherine exclaimed, affronted.
“Irish? Irish! Dieu!” he gasped, pressing the back of his bony hand to his temple and swaying on his feet. “I shall faint, Agador! My salts! My salts!”
Agador looked torn, glancing between his swooning uncle and the pug in his arms. He decided on aiding his uncle and set Belle free. She padded straight back to Seamus and resumed her grooming, much to Penny’s displeasure, who eyed the pug covetously from her lair.
Agador led the overwrought duc back to the chaise, dodging his flailing cane.
“At least he’s not Welsh,” Sebastian said.
Katherine elbowed him in the ribs yet again.
“What?” he pouted, rubbing his side.
“My grandmother was Welsh,” she retorted.
“I’m dreadfully sorry,” Sebastian said. “For your grandmother.”
She elbowed him, a bit harder this time, but he just grinned back at her, unrepentant. He seemed constitutionally unable to help himself. The scoundrel.
“Who is maligning the Welsh without me?” Astrid demanded as she waddled into the room from the front hall, shrugging out of her gloves and pelisse. From the sight of the nearly three-foot-tall white pompadour bobbing behind her, she’d brought Aunt Anabel along with her. “Ah, it is Sebastian. I should have guessed,” she said. “And who on earth was that strange foreign gentleman who passed us on the front walk?”
“He wasn’t a gentleman, Your Grace,” Sebastian said with a smooth bow of greeting. “Merely a tradesman selling stationery. Cheap, old stationery.”
“Using the front entrance too! Such impertinence!” Astrid replied, though she let her own servants run amok. “Which begs the question: Where is your staff, Katherine? Bentley was nowhere in sight to let us in.”
“He is arranging for a new rug,” she answered.
Astrid eyed the Aubusson. “What’s wrong with . . .”
“You don’t want to know.”
Astrid looked as if she would beg to differ, but she let the subject rest for the moment and helped her great-aunt trundle over toward the only chair in the room that could accommodate the width of her old-fashioned panniered gown.
“And it looks as if you have more company,” Astrid remarked, running her eyes over the duc and his nephew . . . then over the duc once more, lingering on his inverted wig.
“That is Monsoor le Duck,” said Sebastian, dry as dust, “and his nephew Agador. And he is here to set up a dawn appointment with us. Seamus has interfered with his pug, and he wishes to defend her honor.”
Astrid didn’t even bat an eyelash at the outrageous tale, since she was quite used to them. “Another duel, Sebastian, really?”
“I am merely standing second to the marchioness,” he said.
Astrid grinned, looking delighted at this unexpected twist. “How very interesting.”
“I told you I will not fight with a female!” the duc raged, rising up from the chaise again. Agador sighed in resignation and readied the salts once more. “And I am not a waterfowl. I am Guillaume-Hippolyte Aguilard de Robicheaux, eighth Duc de St. Aignan. And I will have my satisfaction!”
He punctuated his declarations with another dramatic thump of his cane and sucked in a rattling breath as if he planned on continuing.
“Billy?”
The duc stopped up short at the na
me and peered around the room. His rheumy eyes widened and his jaw dropped in shock at whatever he had discovered.
“Belle?” he whispered. The pug barked her response. He was not looking in his pet’s direction, however, but rather in the direction of Aunt Anabel, who had also risen from her seat and stood leaning on her cane, looking more alert than Katherine had ever seen her. Anabel wobbled forward a few steps, knocking her towering pompadour starboard-side and revealing an age-spotted strip of skin not covered in the old-fashioned powder that she, like the duc, seemed to favor.
“Billy!” she exclaimed again, bringing up her dangling quizzing glass to her eye for confirmation. “It is you, ain’t it? I thought you’d lost your head to the peasants back in ’89!”
“I’d thought you’d lost yours!” he spluttered.
“Lud, but it’s Auntie’s French aristocrat!” Astrid breathed in awe.
“Oh, Billy! Darling!” Aunt Anabel flung out her arms in welcome. Sebastian ducked out of the way of her floundering cane just in time to spare himself another black eye.
“Ma Belle!” the duc cried, tottering forward on his heels. Everyone else in the room caught their breath, but the pair of lovers managed to collapse into each other’s arms, not the carpet, their canes clashing and wigs colliding. Aunt Anabel’s tumbled to the floor, revealing the thin, faded red hair beneath.
Penny immediately pounced on the wig, shook it in her maw with a fearsome growl until it was dead, and then dragged it with her under the chaise longue to hoard.
Aunt Anabel, however, paid no heed to her fallen headpiece. All of her limited faculties were currently focused on the duc’s lips, which had attached themselves to her person, along with his arms and a rather surprisingly nimble, shockingly placed knee.
Sebastian gagged next to her and covered his eyes against the disturbing tableau.
Katherine followed suit, glad she had not yet eaten breakfast.
Sebastian wisely turned his back to the duc and his paramour before dropping his hand to look at Katherine. He waggled his brows. “On the bright side, at least we can sleep in tomorrow, as I am assuming the duel is off.”
“We?”
His grin was predatory. “Problem?”
“Not at all,” she said. She hazarded a quick glance toward the happy couple once more and grimaced. Astrid and Agador had at last interceded with their relatives, as it looked as if the duc had begun to list toward the floor, Aunt Anabel clutching on to his lapels for dear life. “But I do believe we are no longer needed here.”
“Oh?” he asked with a quirked brow.
“In fact, I have to show you this delightful duet I found the other day.”
A thud and several curses sounded behind him. They glanced at the tangle of bodies, silk skirts, clocked stockings, and canes now occupying the floor.
Penny emerged once more and snatched the pink wig from the duc’s head before scampering back to safety with her spoils.
“Right now?” Sebastian asked distractedly.
“In my bedchamber,” she clarified.
He spun back to her. “Oh. Oh.” He cleared his throat, his cheeks flushed, and he promptly forgot that there was anyone else in the room but her.
She smirked at him and swept out the door.
A moment later, he jumped over one of Monsoor le Duck’s discarded heels and stalked after her.
Sixty Minutes Later in the Lady’s “Budoor” . . .
THE BEDROOM DOOR was firmly locked against maids, valets, dogs, bewigged Frenchmen, and meddling duchesses. The floor was a battlefield strewn with gray bombazine, wrinkled white unmentionables, dew-spotted and tasseled Hessians, a rumpled Weston tailcoat, ripped nankeen pantaloons, a heap of gold watch fobs, and an unloaded pistol. Somehow, a half-unwound cravat still clung tenaciously to the neck of its otherwise naked owner, who lay sprawled on his stomach in a rumpled bed, loose-limbed and nearly insensate with pleasure.
Katherine lay beside him, tangled in the bedsheets, in a similar condition. When she had collected a bit of her wits, she took the liberty of lifting the dead weight of Sebastian’s arm, draping it over her shoulders, then tucking herself against his side. He came back to his senses enough to shift a little to better fit their bodies together, then collapsed again into his stupor.
She took the time to enjoy the rear view as he lolled next to her, as shameless in his indolence as the post-coital Seamus, all pale skin and sleek, lean muscles from the top of his shoulder blades to the heels of his feet. She ran a hand over the delicious curve of his backside just because she could.
Aunt Anabel had been right. He did have an arse to die for.
He let out a little moan at her fondling and snuggled up even closer to her, tucking his inky curls under her chin and mouthing lazily at her collarbone. He was rather like a dog. Or a puppy. A very tall, very sleepy puppy. It was a good thing she loved dogs.
“Ridiculous,” she muttered.
“Couldn’t’ve done it without you,” he mumbled, lifting up one arm before letting it flop down against the mattress, as if he’d lost the last of his strength from the effort.
“What are you talking about?” she inquired.
“What’re you talking about?” he mumbled back, lifting his head and peering blearily at her through a tumble of inky curls. He couldn’t be bothered to hold the position for long, however. He soon plopped his head where it had been and resumed his languid nuzzling. “I think you’ve broken me,” he finally admitted.
Katherine smiled smugly into the top of his head and gave his backside another little caress.
“I wonder if our houseguests have left yet,” she mused.
He huffed moodily against her breast. “How can you think? Did I fail to properly addle your wits?”
She patted his head. “No, you were all that was proper,” she replied.
He snorted. “Still, I need practice, my dear. Lots of practice to make it even more proper. Let me nap for a moment and I shall try again.”
She patted his head. “Your dedication is admirable, Sebastian. I believe you would have made a wonderful rake after all.”
He grunted and shifted them both to their sides so he could look at her squarely. His ridiculous cheekbones were still flushed and his enormous blue eyes still a bit wild from their exertions.
“If anyone of our acquaintance is a rake, it is dear Aunt Anabel,” he declared. “Though I thought her Frenchman had been a pirate.” He seemed to be as unfortunately well-versed in Aunt Anabel’s past paramours as she was. Aunt Anabel could be very chatty after her naps.
“The pirate was the one before the duc,” she clarified.
“Good on her, saucy minx,” Sebastian murmured approvingly.
“And after the butcher’s son,” she continued.
His eyes widened a bit. “Busy woman. But if you insist, I shall be your rake, my dear, since you seem so fond of the species.”
“I’d rather you were my husband,” she said, running her hands through his curls idly. “But I’m sure something can be arranged. I do like the love nest in Soho.”
Sebastian cast off his languor in the blink of an eye at the mention of that magic word and sat up, pulling her with him. He clutched her by the shoulders and waited until she met his eyes. It was a bit of a wait on his end, she had to admit, for even with the fading cuts and bruises covering his body, he was an exquisite specimen in the sunlight. She took her time cataloguing every inch of him and resolved to wrap him in cotton wool at her earliest opportunity to keep him safe from any future injury.
Finally she met his eyes, also exquisite, and tried to match his suddenly stern expression, even though inwardly she was grinning.
“Don’t toy with me, Katie. I don’t think my poor heart can take it. I am more fragile than I look.”
Indeed, he looked quite fragile to her. And perfect. And so very,
very dear. She couldn’t wait to lounge in bed, spoil him and love him every day for the rest of their lives together. But she couldn’t help but tease him just a little bit more. She’d never had someone to tease before, had never felt close enough to anyone—brave enough—to indulge in such a blithe intimacy. It was yet another gift he’d given her, and she was going to take full advantage of it.
“But I thought we’d already settled things this morning in the carriage,” she said disingenuously. “Are we not eloping to the Colonies?”
His beautiful sapphire eyes popped wide and his mouth worked wordlessly, caught between elation and dismay.
“Or we can pop off to France as Lady Blundersmith did,” she continued.
He blinked. “What?”
“She married her late sister’s husband years ago over there. It wasn’t even a fortnight’s scandal. Besides, I wouldn’t mind a Christmas honeymoon on the Mediterranean.”
His shoulders slumped with relief as her words settled in. “My heart nearly exploded. The Colonies, Katie!” he cried with a dramatic shudder. “I thought you were serious!”
“But you would have gone for me,” she said, smug.
“Of course. But I don’t think I could have flourished in such a wilderness, even for a visit. The Levant was bad enough. I need music shops, Katie, and a decent tailor.”
She patted his cheek. “You poor thing.”
He grabbed her hand and squeezed it earnestly, signaling an end to the teasing for both of them. “You still haven’t said the words, Katie. Are you going to marry me or not?”
“I’ve never heard of a man more desperate to be leg-shackled,” she declared with faux exasperation. “Of course I will marry you. You have taught me courage, Sebastian. And love. I’m never giving you up.”
And even those words, so sturdy, so final, seemed inadequate to express the depth of her love. What she felt for him was bone-deep and full of joy and forever. It was beyond words, so instead she leaned into him and kissed his cheek, putting everything she felt for him into that perfect, chaste little gesture.
His grin was blinding when she pulled away. He tumbled them both down to the bed and climbed on top of her, kissing her breathless.
Virtuous Scoundrel (The Regency Romp Trilogy Book 2) Page 26
