by Ashley March
Leah curled her legs beneath her skirts and leaned back against a cushion. Apart from the flower garden, this was one of the loveliest places at Linley Park in the evening. On the crest of the hill, one could look out over the lake and see the moon and stars reflected on its silvered surface. And while the smoke and fog clouded the sky in London, out here the air was so piercingly clear that it ached in one’s lungs and made it possible to believe that every single star was visible to the naked eye, with no need for a man-made instrument.
Nearby, she could hear Lord and Lady Elliot debating good-naturedly the name of the constellation formed by a cluster of stars which hung like a brilliant white sapphire over the lake. Leah took a sip of her champagne and sighed quietly.
This was what she’d wanted. This was the reason why she’d decided to host the house party. Shared pleasure in the things that made her happy; company to ease her loneliness without intruding upon any other emotion. The simplicity of amusement for amusement’s sake, and the freedom to choose who she would be in the future while yet still clothed in the black regrets and memories of her dead husband.
After a while Mr. Dunlop and Mrs. Thompson sat down, and Baron Cooper-Giles and Miss Pettigrew moved to the telescope.
A large shape sat down beside her. Now that her eyes were accustomed to the darkness, she could see it was Lord Wriothesly.
“I’m glad to see you’re feeling better,” he said, moving a cushion so he could recline and stretch out his legs. Lowering his voice, he added, “Although next time I would advise you to lock your door.”
Leah gave him a mocking smile. “What an excellent idea. However, I assure you that if I had any reason to believe someone would enter uninvited, it would have been locked.”
He nodded and looked up at the sky, giving her the impression that he wasn’t quite paying attention to her. “I think this is the best idea so far,” he said. “When I was a boy, my father would take me out into the garden and have me point out the constellations. He wanted to make sure I was attending to my lessons.”
A moment passed, and then he chuckled. “Of course, each time I would have to recite them in different languages. Latin, French, Italian. I was a very well-rounded little astronomer.”
Leah looked at him. “I’m sure you—”
She entirely forgot the words she’d meant to say. The lamplight at the side cast a golden glow over his features, and though she shouldn’t have found him appealing, the wistful expression on his face as he stared up at the sky made her breath catch in her throat. Then it seemed only natural for her gaze to trace over the line of his jaw and down his neck, over the long, lean planes of his torso.
“This is actually something Ian would have enjoyed, you know,” he said, and Leah looked upward just as he turned toward her with a crook of his lips.
She shifted away, darting a glance toward Miss Pettigrew and the baron. “Yes, I know. That’s precisely why I chose to do it.”
“Hmm.” The sound was partial consideration, partial disbelief.
Leah sat up. Even having moved a few inches away from him, their positions beside each other on the cushions was too close, too . . . disconcerting. She waited a few more moments, and although he didn’t say anything else, it was still too much.
She stood and went to the telescope, leaving the earl behind without a word.
Lord Cooper-Giles was adjusting the eyepieces. “There, have another try.”
Miss Pettigrew bent over, peering through the lens. “Oh, there it is. I can see Orion now.” Glancing up, she spied Leah. “Here, Mrs. George, you should look, too. Quickly, lest I lose the angle.”
Leah stepped forward as Miss Pettigrew moved aside. “Thank you,” she murmured absently, then stooped to look through the telescope. “Oh, yes, I see it,” she said. In truth, her eyes refused to focus on any pattern. Even though she had no reason to believe he was staring at her, still she imagined Wriothesly watching every movement she made. She swung the scope in an arc, searching for any likely shape or form which she could name as a constellation. But as the minutes lapsed and the scope moved in every direction the mount would allow, her mind refused to make sense of the images she saw. All she was aware of was the presence of Wriothesly nearby, and the thought that he might or might not be presently looking at her. Silently cursing, Leah straightened and gestured for Miss Pettigrew to take the telescope.
Once again, the Earl of Wriothesly had managed to ruin one of her most-treasured amusements.
Sebastian sat in a chair before the hearth in his bedchamber. The constellation viewing had ended a few hours ago, and he should have been asleep in his bed like everyone else.
And he had tried. He’d undressed and climbed beneath the sheets. He had even closed his eyes and measured his breathing until it reached a slow, even pace. But nothing could induce him to fall asleep when images of Leah continued teasing his mind.
The fact that she’d nearly all but run away from him during the evening’s entertainment should have set him at ease. If nothing else, it told him that she neither wanted nor welcomed his friendship, nor anything else beyond a polite acquaintance. But though he should have been content with her reaction and allowed it to distract his own wayward attraction to her, he found he wanted nothing more than to pursue.
He wanted to investigate her vulnerabilities, to understand the mystery of Leah George that kept him fascinated when by all rights he should dismiss her as nothing more than a source of aggravation. He wanted to get close enough to see through every layer, then satisfy his curiosity and walk away.
He shouldn’t be sitting here, dwelling on the sweet curve of her mouth. And his attraction to her shouldn’t make him question whether the woman he’d loved for more than three years had only been a beautiful facade that he’d invented to match his own desires.
The chair toppled over as Sebastian stood. Scrubbing his hands over his face and then into his hair, he strode from one side of the room to the other.
He’d loved Angela, not some caricatured ideal his imagination had conjured. He knew it with every breath he breathed, every beat of his heart, with all the certainty of his own existence. He had loved her, and if he had known about the affair, he would have done everything he could to make Angela choose him. If he’d known, he would have won her back, no matter the cost, and she wouldn’t now be dead. Nor Ian, either. And he, Angela, and Henry would be together again, with Ian and Leah somewhere hundreds of miles away.
Sebastian swung around, sweat beginning to bead on his brow from the humidity of the summer evening. Moving toward the window, he braced his forehead against the pane, but it was hardly cooler than the bedchamber. With a low curse, he found the lock on the window and started to push it open, when a sight below in the flower garden arrested his attention.
Leah, sitting on a bench, the telescope perched beside her on a low table. The moon and the starlight limned her features as her head lay tilted back, the hood of her cloak open to reveal the sweep of her unbound hair.
Sebastian pivoted away from the window, his mouth set in a grim line. Damn the consequences. This would end now.
Chapter 10
I read the Romeo and Juliet sonnet you gave me every day. I fear the paper is now stained with my tears. I will forever be yours as well, “in longest night, or in the shortest day,” “in heaven, in earth, or else in hell.”
She continued looking at the sky as he approached. For some reason, Sebastian found this annoying. Though they were in the middle of the countryside, she was out in the middle of the night, with only a lamp and presumably no weapon aside from the heavy brass telescope sitting nearby. He could have been anyone.
He halted a foot away from the bench, directly opposite from her, and waited for her to acknowledge him.
Leah lowered her head, nodded, and pointed to a nearby rosebush. “I might smell like roses again,” she warned him. When he didn’t respond, she returned her gaze to the sky and said, “I found Orion. And Hydra. Cassiopeia. Ar
ies.”
“I know why you decided to host the house party.”
“Do you? And what conclusion have you drawn?”
Sebastian was silent, entranced by the pale skin of her throat and the movement of her lips as she looked up, as though she were waiting for a kiss to be dropped from the heavens.
She met his gaze and gave a halfhearted smile. “Did you decide that I was lonely, my lord? Is that why you’re here?”
Sebastian sat down beside her.
“Why are you here?” she repeated. He noticed she shifted away, pressing as far as she could into the corner of the bench.
“Are you lonely?” he countered. There was something about witnessing Leah pull her invisible armor about herself that made him not want to push as hard. The frustration of a moment before subsided in her presence. He wanted to draw her out, little by little; he wouldn’t accuse or force her to tell him, for suddenly he desired Leah’s trust just as much as he sought to understand her.
“Not at the moment, but thank you.” Her voice was distant, courteous, the most polite it had ever been when addressed to him.
He ignored the hint and stayed. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said. Turning toward her, he set his back against the arm of the bench and studied her profile. Then he tilted his head back toward the sky. “You said you found Cassiopeia?”
Her arm lifted into his vision, one slender finger guiding his gaze. “There, to the left,” she said.
“Ah. Now I see.”
They sat together for a long time, silently searching out the stars. Sebastian waited, listening to the leaves on the rosebushes rustle together beneath a slight wind. He found the constellations Hydra and Orion, and was looking for Aries when she finally spoke.
“The ninth of April last year. That’s when I found them together.” She said it slowly, each syllable precise, almost as if she were reciting the words.
“You never told me what happened,” Sebastian said, returning his gaze to her. He paused. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
Her hand reached out toward the telescope, and she began tracing her fingers over the cabriole legs. Up and down. Up and down. “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t learned the truth until the carriage accident, like you did. I would have liked to be angry, too. I would probably have been able to grieve, then, for his death. But I spent most of my tears a year ago, in those first few weeks of April.”
She sighed, the sound forlorn, a piercing contrast to her stalwart attempt at keeping her voice devoid of any emotion.
“Leah . . .” he began, apologetically. He had no right to cause her this pain, no matter how much everything about her pulled and tugged at him with a visceral desire to reveal her deepest secrets.
She waved him off. “Yes, I was lonely. I wasn’t able to cry in front of anyone—they would have asked questions. And I stayed away from Ian . . . as much as I could.”
“Did you confront him?”
She shook her head. “I found them together. They both saw me. There was no use for a confrontation.” Her fingers paused on the telescope. “I didn’t want anyone to know. Not my family—especially my mother, who believed she’d made the perfect match for me. Not any friends or acquaintances I had, who were mostly his friends and acquaintances, in any case. They all envied me, believing I was the most fortunate woman alive to marry the Ian George. And you—”
Taking a deep breath, she reached up and fiddled with the scope. Sebastian watched her hand, slender and small, surprisingly graceful.
“Perhaps I should have told you, but I was ashamed. Back then, it was easy to blame myself. I must have done something wrong, I thought. I was boring, too plain, or”—she cast a sideways glance at him from beneath her lashes, then looked away again, folding her hands in her lap—“as you suggested, I didn’t satisfy him in our . . . marital relations.”
Sebastian cleared his throat, silently willing her to continue. Apart from his remaining guilt for having ever said such a thing, he was beginning to find it difficult to think of Ian and Leah as lovers. In fact, it was easier to picture Ian and Angela together, so much time had he spent torturing himself with his own imagination. But Ian and Leah . . . they were too different. She was dark while he was blond, short while he was tall, quiet while he was outspoken. How could anyone have ever thought they belonged together?
“Although I was surrounded by people—servants, Ian, all of London society—I was completely alone. I had no one to confide in, no one to talk to about how awful it was. Then Ian tried to speak to me about it, and it became even worse. He forced me to have a conversation, when I wanted nothing more than to be left alone, to pretend that I never cared about him.”
She became silent, then opened her mouth, then closed it once again.
“Tell me,” Sebastian urged, thinking perhaps Ian had threatened her, yelled at her, hit her. After all, if he hadn’t known Ian well enough to realize that he would betray him with Angela, then it was possible he was capable of even worse. Sebastian felt a sudden impulse to examine Leah himself and search for bruises, even though they would have all faded by now.
But she refused to answer. “No, there’s no need to tell you everything.”
“At least tell me if he hurt you.”
She swung her head toward him, her eyes wide. “No. Ian would never . . . No, nothing like that.”
Sebastian swallowed, releasing a long breath.
She began to speak again, this time faster, her tone almost blithe. “For an entire year I never spoke a word of their affair to anyone. Until the accident, and then there was you. But, of course, you didn’t want to speak of it. You wanted to hide it from everyone.”
“Surely you understand my reasoning.”
“I do,” she said. “I don’t blame you. After all, I didn’t want anyone to know because of my own shame.”
“I’m not ashamed, Leah. I—”
She turned to him, covered his mouth with her hand. “Would you like me to finish?”
Her hand was soft and warm against his lips, the scent of soap fainter. Sebastian was tempted to close his eyes and hold his hand against hers, press a kiss to her palm. Instead, he nodded silently, and she pulled her arm away.
“I was about to say that I didn’t want to be alone anymore. Not after the carriage accident. I know you’re still angry, but I’ve spent the past year and more of my life being wretched because of them. You’re right in saying that I could go boating or do anything else I wished by myself, but I don’t want to. And if the only way that I can be happy and not be alone is to pretend to still be in love with Ian and carry out some farce of a celebration in his memory, then so be it.”
She tilted her head up again, toward the stars, her mouth parting as she breathed. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and he could see the quick pulse of her heartbeat at her throat, made visible by the light cast from the lamp at her feet.
“And did you achieve what you wanted?” he asked.
She rolled her head toward him silently, an unspoken question.
“Now that you’re hosting the party, do you still feel alone?”
Her lashes lowered, avoiding his gaze, and he thought that single motion was to be her answer. He prepared to ask again. But then she lifted her eyes to his, and her lips curved into a small, mocking smile. “Not when I’m with you.”
There was nothing alluring or seductive about her tone; indeed, it sounded more like a reluctant admission, as if she didn’t want him to be the one to ease her loneliness. Yet all the same, Sebastian found himself leaning nearer, unable to keep his distance, his hand reaching out to stroke her unbound hair.
God, it was soft. Like water running through his fingers, unbelievably fine and silken. He drew it away from her face, then watched it tumble like a waterfall against her cheek and throat.
She made a sound, something hushed and tentative, as if she pleaded with him. To stop, or to continue? Sebastian looked in her eyes and found her gaze wary, worried. But then her eyelashes fe
ll, her lids closing. It was all the permission he needed.
He held his hand against the side of her face, feeling the delicate edge of her jaw beneath his palm. For a long moment he remained still, absorbing the heat of her cheek in contrast to the coolness of her throat, reveling in the lush texture of her skin.
Then his thumb stole across to the corner of her mouth, and as soon as he brushed against the bold, lavish swell of her upper lip, he could feel his blood begin to quicken with desire. Unable to stop himself, he toyed with her mouth. Rubbing the pad of his thumb over it until her lips parted, drawing the lower lip down, touching his thumb against the hot, velvet pink tip of her tongue.
And when she flicked her tongue against the edge of his thumb—not one, but two small, hesitant licks—with her eyes still closed and her hands clasped tightly on her lap, Sebastian could do nothing but draw his thumb away and wait for her eyes to open, wait for her to acknowledge him and admit she wanted more.
After a moment, her lashes lifted finally. Sebastian held her gaze as he bent forward, his hand gently tilting her chin up, and kissed her.
Leah stiffened as soon as Sebastian’s lips touched hers. A kiss—that was more than a simple caress, more than the experimental tongue play with his hand. She’d known he meant to kiss her when she opened her eyes to find his bright and burning, the green depths betraying his intent. And she’d allowed him to lean over her, thinking—mistakenly—that she wanted this.
His mouth moved across hers, slowly at first; then he began to try to tease her lips apart. Nipping at the corners of her mouth, pulling her lower lip between his teeth, using his tongue as a means of persuasion.
And it was too much. Although she tried, she couldn’t return his kiss. She sat there, her eyes open, waiting for it to be over. Just as she’d done again and again, night after night, with Ian.
