A challenge rang in her tone. Until this point, Gemma had appeared uninterested in their discussion, but now her lip curled in a look of disdain Sebastian recognised. She stared past Mrs. Whitton’s left shoulder and said nothing. Sebastian steered the conversation down other avenues, hoping Gemma would join in, or at least that they might retire gracefully soon.
When Gemma began to fidget with her riding gloves, Sebastian judged he had wasted enough time exchanging pleasantries. He held out his arm to her and made their excuses. Before they could leave, Mrs. Whitton fluttered her hands to detain him.
“If you mean to make an extended stay at Ware, you must call on us at Pilgrove, my lord. Mr. Whitton will make you most welcome.” She glanced at Gemma. “I daresay you simply pine for genteel company.”
“Do you indeed?” The grip on his arm tightened and Sebastian smiled, showing his teeth. “I fear I am fully engaged for the rest of my stay, ma’am.”
Mrs. Briggs’s brow furrowed. “But did you not say you were uncertain how long you would remain in the district, my lord?”
Sebastian let his smile widen, until the angry flush in Mrs. Whitton’s cheeks showed she understood him perfectly—that no matter how long he stayed at Ware he would not choose to call on her.
“Ah, yes,” he murmured. “So I did.”
AS soon as they cleared the village, Gemma spurred Tealeaf to a canter. Spying an open meadow, she veered off at a sharp angle and slowed her mount to jump the hedgerow that separated the meadow from the road. Picking up speed, she galloped Tealeaf along the flat, green ground, scattering a flurry of nervous sheep in her wake.
She heard Sebastian call out, and seconds later came the thunder of hooves behind her and more confused bleating. She did not bother to glance around; he would be with her soon enough. At that moment, she wanted to be alone and racing. She loosened the reins and let Tealeaf fly, the mare’s action so smooth Gemma barely felt her hooves touch the ground.
As she had predicted, Sebastian drew level with her. She held Tealeaf at a steady gallop and waited for him to surge ahead, but he matched his pace to hers.
“Pass me, confound you!” she muttered, but of course he did not hear. He did not seem interested in winning this race.
They cleared a low hedge together and her hat whipped off as they hit the ground, its pins ripping at her hair. For an instant, Gemma wondered what Matilda would say if she returned home in Sebastian’s company, bedraggled and without her hat, looking for all the world like a blowsy damsel who had been tumbled in a barn. She laughed, a wild, tearing sound borne away on the wind, but she slowed the mare’s pace and after a few hundred yards, reined in.
“What the devil was that about?” demanded Sebastian.
She wheeled Tealeaf and set off again at a sedate trot. “I must get my hat.”
Sebastian brought his horse into step with hers. When they reached the ditch below the hedge where her hat lay, he dismounted and threw his reins to her to hold while he retrieved it. He dusted the curly brimmed beaver with his handkerchief and gave it back.
Gemma thanked him and met his concerned gaze as she passed back his gelding’s reins. She looked away, resisting the urge to pour out her humiliation and resentment. The relief would only be temporary, and she despised people who wrung their hands over things that could not be mended.
As they moved off, Sebastian blew out an audible breath. “Do you mind telling me why you look like a thundercloud or must I endure these sulks for the rest of the journey home?”
“I am not sulking. I never sulk.”
He stared at her for a few moments, then shrugged. “As you say.”
They continued without speaking until they reached the narrow stream that bordered the Ware land.
Sebastian gestured towards it with his riding crop. “I’ll wager these beasts are thirsty after that ride. Shall we?”
Gemma assented and dismounted before Sebastian had a chance to help her. She let him take Tealeaf and sat down on a sunny spot while he watered the horses. He left them lipping the long grass at the stream bank and came to sit beside her.
With a contented sigh, he stretched out on his back, tipped his hat over his eyes, and looked for all the world as if he would fall asleep.
“Why did you do that?” Gemma burst out.
Only his lips moved. “Do what?”
“You know very well what I mean. You were unpardonably rude to Jenny Whitton just now.”
“She was unpardonably rude to you. She deserved a setdown, and I dealt her one as you seemed reluctant to do so.” He flicked up his hat brim and squinted at her. “Why should you suffer insolence from that woman?”
She smoothed the skirt of her riding habit and dropped her hands in her lap. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“What can you have done to inspire such malice?”
A bitter laugh escaped her. “I? I have done nothing.”
There was a pause. “I should have guessed. It’s your mama, isn’t it?”
His swift comprehension struck a blow to her stomach. Gemma pressed her lips together and shook her head.
He rolled onto his side and propped himself on one elbow, brow furrowed. “It is, isn’t it? Those cats turn up their noses at you because you’re Sybil Maitland’s daughter.”
He looked so troubled, and at the same time so boyish and dishevelled that she wanted to kiss him for his concern and cry her eyes out at the same time.
Instead, she focused on a solitary blade of grass bending and lifting in the breeze; listened to the soft, chattering rush of the stream, the sweet, desultory chirp of birds grown lazy in the summer heat. She tried her best to bring her turbulent emotions under control.
Her throat tightened with the effort. “You are mistaken.”
“Am I?”
He lay there watching her for the longest time, it seemed. She did not meet his gaze, but his regard surrounded her like some invisible force, pressing her to confide. She plucked at the blade of grass and resisted the urge to give in.
Pride was part of it, but that was not the only consideration that kept her silent. With Sebastian, she could imagine she was the girl she had been before she realised it did not matter what she did or how she lived her life, she would always bear her mother’s shame. She had never let women like Sarah Briggs and Jenny Whitton bother her, for they needed no excuse to belittle others and she was by no means their sole victim. She found it far more difficult to shrug off slights from good, respectable people who genuinely feared her corrupting influence. Usually she would not even notice Jenny and Sarah’s poisonous barbs.
But when they needled her in front of Sebastian, it was different. She could be herself with him because he believed she still was that carefree girl he knew years ago—not some sad little dab whose neighbours shunned her, not some feeble maiden who needed rescuing from dragons in jockey bonnets.
And what could he do to help her anyway? In a few days he would be gone, perhaps for another six years.
Perhaps for good.
Sebastian sat up and stretched out to clasp her hand, crushing the blade of grass between their joined palms.
“Come back to Laidley with me.”
Even through gloves, she felt his warmth. It spread through her body, enveloping her. “You think I am a coward, that I would run away?”
“No, but why should you stay?”
“Ware needs me.”
She realised how improper it was for him to keep her hand and tried to disengage herself, but he held it fast.
He looked down at their clasped fingers. Slowly, he said, “That is not the real reason you won’t come, is it?”
“What? Of course it is.”
He shook his head. “No, you are afraid and you are using Ware as an excuse. You are running away, but not from Ware. You are running away from life.”
She yanked her hand free and scrambled to her feet. “And what life is that? A shallow existence full of spoiled Society darlings like you?” She
brushed at her grassy skirts and started down the bank towards Tealeaf. In a flash, he followed and caught her elbow, spinning her to face him.
“It would be so easy for you to hide here and think you have a full life, wouldn’t it, Mistress Squire? You have the household and the estate and your charities, and no doubt you think you are blessed to have such purpose. But don’t forget, Gemma, there is more to human existence than that.”
He took her face between his hands and looked into her eyes. “You are so damned beautiful,” he breathed. “You deserve to be loved.”
She thought he might kiss her then, and suddenly it was too much. She gripped his wrists and wrenched his hands away, stumbling back a step as she threw them off. “You left me, Sebastian, remember? You only came back because Grandpapa summoned you. And now you think you can waltz in and turn my life upside down? If you cared so much about what happened to me, you wouldn’t have left!”
She broke off, appalled at what she had said, aghast at his ravaged expression.
They stared at each other, and Gemma turned cold in the sunshine. She had meant never to reproach him with this. Why had she done so now?
“I wrote to you,” he said at last.
“Yes, you did.” It had not been enough.
His gaze slid away from her and he stared into the distance. “The reason I stayed away from Ware had nothing to do with you.”
Strange, that hurt almost as much as if she had somehow caused his absence. She put her hand to her temple, then waved it dismissively. “Your brother died, and then your father, shortly afterwards. You were busy, first at Laidley, and later leading a fashionable life in town. I understand, there’s no need to explain.”
“That wasn’t it.”
She decided then that she must be a coward, because suddenly she was terrified of hearing his explanation. But the look on his face told her he needed to say it, so she made herself ask. “What, then?”
He gave her one of his old, sweet smiles, but after a moment the smile twisted and vanished. He gestured to the path that wound away from the stream and took her arm. As they walked, Gemma gleaned what comfort she could from his closeness. She had the strangest notion he was slipping away from her, in a sense that had nothing to do with the physical.
Sebastian paused to kick a rock out of Gemma’s path. He wanted to tell her everything, but it was scarcely the act of a gentleman to reveal the past he and Caroline shared. Particularly now she was the rector’s wife and eminently respectable.
Abruptly, he said, “Mrs. Vincent. How well do you know her?”
He sensed Gemma’s bewilderment at the apparent change of subject, but he did not look at her. He gazed into the distance, where the path ended in a quiet glade littered with bluebells.
“Not very well,” answered Gemma slowly. “I never had much to do with her until she married Mr. Vincent. I like her. She is . . .” Gemma frowned, searching for the word. “Comfortable. Easy to talk to. She does not disapprove of me like the others.”
Sebastian snorted and Gemma said, “You may scoff, but there is no escaping the fact that hereabouts I am considered quite beyond the pale. Mrs. Vincent treats me with the same kindness she shows to everyone.”
Kindness! Sebastian grimaced. Caroline had changed very much if that were the case. At least she was not a hypocrite. If his former mistress had dared to turn her back on Gemma like all those other sanctimonious females, he would take the utmost pleasure in making her regret it.
He looked down at Gemma, and all impulse to explain his sordid past flew away as she stared up at him, a curious mixture of innocence and sensual beauty.
That warm tingle of awareness he had felt in the church returned tenfold, without the accompanying sense of peace. Because it was there, no matter how determined she was to deny it, no matter how much that prissy aunt of hers tried to smother it in white muslin and dire warnings. Something beyond mere physical perfection; something elusive but powerful that must draw men to her like the moon draws the tide. By all accounts, her mother possessed this magnetism; he knew very little of Sybil Maitland, save that she was very lovely and she had abandoned her only child.
But he could understand why people associated Gemma so closely with her errant parent, and perhaps it also explained why other women of her class were so determined to despise her. Because she had it, too, this mysterious quality that made men forget propriety, obligations, even honour itself—a quality that incited them to think of sex whenever they looked at her.
As he was thinking of it now.
Five
SEBASTIAN realised they had halted amongst the bluebells and Gemma stood very, very close. Her hand slid up his arm. An innocent touch on her part. He knew it, but the breath caught in his throat and refused to reach his lungs.
“Tell me what troubles you so,” she whispered.
He watched, fascinated, as her mouth formed the words. Her lips were not red, but a more subtle shade, like the rosy blush on a peach—full and lush and ripe, with two, delicate, delicious peaks on the upper lip, and a small indent in the centre of the lower.
He raised a hand and brushed the tiny cleft with his thumb, his fingers curled under her chin. “I remember how you got that scar. Do you?”
Her eyes widened, but she did not shrink or protest at his touch.
“Yes.” Warm breath stole over his thumb. Her lips parted and closed against its tip as she spoke the word. His body tightened, aroused by the soft caress.
With light, controlled pressure he rolled his thumb downwards over the scar, pulling her lip into the mere hint of a pout to expose the moist, tempting flesh within. He ached to taste that flesh, to explore every inch of her mouth with his lips and teeth and tongue.
Why didn’t she stop him?
“Does it still hurt?” he heard himself say.
She swallowed, and her voice shook. “No, that was years ago.”
He tilted her chin until her gaze met his, and fell into those fathomless eyes. “But some wounds never quite heal, do they, Mistress Squire? And some heal, but the scars may still be tender when touched.”
Gemma’s eyes sparked and smoked, pulling him deeper. “Do you mean my scars or yours?”
The question caught him by surprise. He had thought her dazed, enraptured as he was, but she’d managed to disconcert him as she always did. Suddenly, he felt as if he were not the one in control, as if he teetered on the edge of something disastrous.
Desire, almost painful in its intensity, left him as swiftly as it had come. He broke their gaze, let the hand that grasped her chin fall to his side, and told himself his willful imagination had conjured the passion in Gemma’s eyes. She was his friend. She showed him a friend’s tender concern for his troubles, that was all.
“We should go home or your aunt will send out a search party.” His words came out clipped and harsh. He did not take her arm again, or even look at her, but started back along the path.
“Scovy, wait!”
He heard her call out, but strode along the cool, shade-dappled path until he reached the sunny spot where their horses grazed. What the devil was wrong with him? Without even trying, Gemma had tempted him to folly twice in twenty-four hours.
Lord help him if she ever set her mind to it.
He felt like a besotted schoolboy; as if he were reliving in agonising detail every last moment of his infatuation with Caroline. Only this time it was Gemma, and the stakes seemed infinitely higher than they had those many summers before.
It was this place. He was never himself at Ware. Once he quitted the warmth and sunshine, once he was back in the cold, relentless grip of Laidley—in his own milieu with his family and friends hedged about him—he would be his own man again, in control. He would know how to deal with Gemma.
Sebastian had untied the horses by the time she caught up with him. Though he knew a craven wish to mount his hunter and gallop away, he stood next to her mare and waited to throw her into the saddle.
Gemma said
nothing—so rare for a woman to know when it was not the time to speak—but as she set her boot in his clasped hands, she shot him a worried glance tinged with speculation. He ignored it and launched her upwards.
She had barely settled in the saddle before she was off, throwing a challenge over her shoulder to race. He vaulted onto his horse and shot through the trees in hot pursuit, glad he did not have to think again or talk to her for a while.
He won, of course.
Eyes shining, Gemma pulled up beside him and pinched her finger and thumb close together. “A mere hairs-breadth,” she panted. “I shall come about, never fear!”
It was her old catch-cry. Sebastian grinned as his hunter danced beneath him.
Gemma laughed back at him from sheer exhilaration. She knew perspiration sheened her face and her hair tangled down her shoulders, but for the moment she did not care to be a lady. There would be time enough for that when he was gone.
Their gazes caught and Gemma suffered the slight shock of awareness, the dart of heat through her centre that was becoming all too familiar to her now. Without another word, they turned into the arbour that led to the parterre garden at the east side of the house. They rode in a silence that should have been companionable. To Gemma, it seemed fraught with renewed tension.
She bent to stroke Tealeaf’s neck and shot Sebastian a covert glance. What on earth had that interlude in the blue-bell glade been about? She wanted to think they had returned to a semblance of their close friendship, but she could not deny her old playmate unsettled her in a new and powerful way. Every time he touched her, whether it was running his thumb over her lip with breathtaking intimacy or simply setting his hands under the sole of her boot, a cloying, sweet warmth stole through her body, melting her bones, dizzying her mind.
She had to admit it, if only to herself: She wanted more.
Sebastian muttered something under his breath. She followed his gaze and saw John Talbot in the distance, astride his tame chestnut, waiting patiently in the forecourt outside the Hall.
Gemma reined in. “Oh, bother! I forgot I was supposed to meet John.”
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