A half smile came to Brianna’s lips. “You do know your mind, little sister.”
The door opened and Sebastian walked in, holding a bowl with steam rising from the top.
His look immediately finding Brianna, relief flashed through his brown eyes. He walked across the room, setting the bowl on the bedside table. He turned to Lily. “I want to get some broth into her belly before the physician makes it up here. Can you find a maid to fill the bath?”
Lily stood from the bed. “For you or for Bree?”
Sebastian looked down at himself, giving the question consideration. His nose wrinkled. “Both of us, I suppose.”
Lily nodded. “Excellent choice.” She stepped around Sebastian with a smirk on her face, going to the door.
Shaking his head, Sebastian grabbed the chair by the bed and settled it close to the head of the bed. “Do you think you can sit up?”
“Yes.”
Sebastian slid an arm underneath her shoulders and lifted her, settling a stack of pillows behind her before leaning her back on them.
His face next to hers, Brianna’s hand went to the dark gruff of a beard along his jaw. “This is new. Lily says you have not been sleeping.”
He sighed, sitting down onto the chair and grabbing the bowl of broth. “Having a shave was the very last thing I have been worried about, Bree.”
She smiled. “I like it. It is rugged.”
“Then I will keep it around for a while, just for you.”
He fingered the spoon in the bowl, stirring it. Steam still wafted up from the liquid.
“Seb, I see that Lily is safe. But Harry—”
“Harry is safe, Bree. Do you not trust me?”
Brianna could hear the note of warning in his voice. “I do. Of course I do. But that does not stop my worry, Seb.”
“No. You are already tired, Bree. I can see that. You need to sleep.”
“Yes, but—”
“Bree, all I want at the moment is to get this broth into you. See that the physician looks at you and your leg. Give you a bath. Take a bath myself. And then collapse next to you on this bed knowing full well that you are going to wake up and smile at me.”
He stuck a pinky into the broth, testing the temperature.
“We will discuss at length any and everything you can imagine up when our heads have been re-attached properly.” He nudged a spoonful of broth into her mouth. “Give me that, Bree? Just that?”
The warm broth slid down her throat, warming her chest. A deep breath, and she nodded. “I am under your control, Seb.”
{ Chapter 21 • Earl of Destiny }
“This is a surprise.”
Brianna looked up to see Sebastian coming in the door, a smile wide on his face.
It had taken two days of sleeping, eating more and more, and copious amounts of tea before Brianna had managed to move her body in a half normal way.
She couldn’t help her own inordinately proud smile as she watched him come across the room. “I know. All by myself I made it over here.” She patted the sidearm of the fat chair by the fireplace. “But I have been winded for the last ten minutes for my effort.”
“At this pace, you should be back on Moonlight in a month.”
“It had better be sooner than that.”
Sebastian eased himself onto the sidearm of the chair facing her, his long legs casual in front of him. His left arm landed on his lap.
Brianna hid a cringe. She could see Sebastian’s arm still panged him with pain during random movements, even though he hid it well.
“That will suit Moonlight just fine. She has been antsy for you. Wynne took her out yesterday, but she said Moonlight just slumped through the ride, pouting.”
“Is it wrong that that makes me slightly happy?”
Sebastian chuckled. “Yes. Wrong. But understandable. And the same goes for Moonlight. That horse is as loyal as they come—you always say that about her, and it is true. Maybe tomorrow I can carry you down to the gardens and have her brought up from the stables. It might put a spring in her step.”
“Maybe.” Brianna pointed to his left arm, still wrapped tight with strips of white linen from his wrist upward. The bandaging disappeared under the rolled-up sleeve of his shirt, and Brianna wondered just how far up the dressing went. “But you are not carrying me anywhere on that arm.”
He glanced down. “It is doing well.”
“Well enough for me to look at it?”
“There is no need for you to see it, Bree. The physician has attended to it.”
Her left eyebrow arched. “You have been poking and prodding at my leg for days, Seb, and yet you will not let me look at your arm?”
He shrugged. “No.”
“I will see it eventually. If not the scabs, the scars.”
“Maybe.”
Her head tilted, her eyes twinkling. “Do you have plans to never be naked with me again?”
He smirked, chuckling. “Far from it, my wife. And well played. But I do not want any extra worry upon your mind. You need to concentrate on your own healing, not on mine.”
“And I will concentrate much better once I do not have to worry on your healing.”
Silent to the argument, he moved to bend down in front of her, balancing on his heels as he slid her robe and shift up her leg, exposing her thigh. “Aside from the winding, did your leg suffer the stroll over here well enough?”
Brianna sighed. It was hard to argue with him when he was being this attentive to her. “It did. It swelled a bit with the movement, but at the same time, it also felt good to have a bit of weight on my leg.”
She leaned forward, her palm running along his smooth cheek. “And you had the scruff shaved off.”
Satisfied with his inspection of her thigh, Sebastian pulled down her robe and looked up to her, rubbing his jaw. “I had to before you thought me a derelict.”
“Does this mean your head has been re-attached properly? That you are going to stop avoiding my questions?”
Sebastian groaned, pushing up from the floor and moving backward to sit on the chair opposite Brianna. “Now?”
She nodded.
He looked to the low fire, grumbling something nonsensical under his breath. When his gaze swung back to Brianna, somberness had set into his brown eyes, darkening them. “Go ahead—no, wait.”
Sebastian got up, moving to a side table holding a decanter of brandy and several glasses. He poured himself a full glass and then came back to Brianna, sinking heavy into the chair. His free hand flipped into the air as he took a healthy swallow. “There. I am ready. What is it you need to know, Bree?”
“Harry. Where is he?”
Sebastian didn’t flinch from the question. “He is with my mother.”
“Your mother?” Shock sent Brianna’s eyes wide.
“Yes. Both he and Frannie are with her at Callish Hall. They are my mother’s ‘destitute cousins from Cornwall’ that she has generously taken into her home. That is the story they have all committed to living.”
“Is it believable?”
“My mother has distant cousins all over England. It makes sense, and no one has questioned the story. That is how we will know them—distant cousins—at least until we are assured all threats to Harry have been removed. Which depends upon, of course, how his uncle’s trial goes. Or until Harry comes of age and can accept the title and whatever danger comes with it. Until then they are very well protected at Callish Hall, Bree.”
“It is…” Her arms crossed over her belly as she slumped back in the chair, shaking her head.
“What?”
“It is perfect.” Her words were in awe. “Perfect and it will work for a length of time. Why would you not tell me, Seb? I would not have fought you on it—not once I knew where they were. I was furious at you for moving them without telling me, but I would not have fought you. I am not so stubborn that I would not have recognized the good sense of it.”
He looked taken aback for a moment. “Than
k you, for that, I think.”
Her eyebrows arched at him. “But you were never going to tell me, were you?”
“No. I was not about to tell you where I moved them until Gregory was found.” His voice went hard as he leaned forward in the chair, his forearms balancing on his thighs as he clasped the glass between his palms, rolling it back and forth. “As much as you were going to hate me for it, Bree, I was not about to have you burdened with the knowledge of their whereabouts. Nor was I going to allow you to continue to place yourself in danger.”
He sat straight, staring at her as he took a sip of brandy. “I make no apology for it, Bree.”
Her eyes closed and her chin dropped to her chest. Loose brown locks slipped in front of her forehead, tickling her eyebrows. After all their time. After everything. Her words slipped out, soft in defeat. “You do not trust me.”
“It has nothing to do with trust, Bree. It has to do with you being my wife. It has to do with the fact that I swore I would keep you safe.”
He rose from the chair, standing in front of her. Her eyes still downcast, she could see his fingers straining around the rim of the brandy glass.
“It has to do with my heart, my life that I did not want destroyed. My life with you. My life that I almost lost regardless, Bree. But I am still here. Not running. Still fighting to keep this life mine. To keep you mine. I will do anything to keep you safe, Bree. Even have you hate me, if that is what it takes.”
“I do not hate you, Seb.” Her eyes rose to him, tears slipping to her cheeks. “I could never. I love you. All of me.”
“All of you?”
“All of me. You have banished that part that hesitated. You said you would, and you did, Seb. You have done everything you swore to me you would. And I…I…” She drew a shuddered breath, her words failing her.
Sebastian dropped to his knees in front of her, setting the glass down so his hands could capture her face. “You what, Bree?”
“I give you everything, Seb. Everything I am. Even my need for control. It is yours.”
His hands tightened along her jaw, his voice rough. “I never wanted control, Bree. Only you. You were all I ever wanted. Your heart and your mind.”
He pulled her forward, his lips meeting hers hard, promising her their life together, promising lust they had no right to entertain at the moment. But it still curled her toes and she had to stop herself from wanton thoughts.
All in due time. Patience.
He pulled away, the heat clear in his brown eyes. “And lest I be remiss in saying so, your body is pretty important to me as well.”
She laughed. “You kiss me like that, and I do not think you remiss at all. Seb, all of those things—all of them—I happily give to you.” Her head tilted, smirk on her face. “But it still gives me margin to…supervise things?”
Sebastian chuckled. “Supervise? That is your new word for it?”
“Kinder, gentler—do you not think?”
“I do, my wife. I do.”
{ Epilogue • Earl of Destiny }
Brianna smoothed the skirt of the pretty peach gown she had borrowed from Lily. She had wanted to look bright, her best, and had realized earlier in the day that her wardrobe sadly consisted of blacks, browns and greys. Lily had been more than happy to hold Brianna captive in her room, making her try on eight dresses to find what Lily finally determined was the perfect one.
Her silk slippers crunched on the smooth gravel of the circular drive outside the main gate to Notlund, grinding the rocks in place. The air was crisp, fall almost in the wind, and Brianna’s eyes swept over the wide rolling hill surrounding the castle, eventually settling on the main drive up from the forest.
“You are anxious, my wife?” Sebastian’s arm went along her back to curl around her waist, pulling her tight to him. “Harry will be beyond ecstatic to see you.”
“It is not Harry I am anxious about.”
“My mother?”
“Yes. I do want to make the best impression I can upon her.”
Sebastian’s lips went to the top of her head. “She will adore you.”
“But the break between you two—you said it was still tenuous, the bridge you have erected to her.”
“My mother can very well tell the difference between how I disappointed her, and the woman that is pushing her son to mend the break.”
Brianna looked up at him, his warm brown eyes settling her nerves. “You never told me. How was it that you convinced your mother to take in Harry and Frannie and keep them safe?”
“I did not?”
“No, you did not. You distract me too easily, my husband.”
He gave her a wicked smile, the devil dancing in it. “And you love how I distract you.” His hand slid down, cupping her backside.
“I do.” She laughed, grabbing his hand and pulling it up to set it firmly about her waist. “But it is not in good form to get me riled while we are waiting for, of all people, your mother. And you are distracting me again. So tell me, after the direness of your relationship with your mother, I am curious as to what magic you worked with her.”
“Magic?”
“I need to know how you managed it, mending the break, lest you use the same magic on me someday.”
He wrapped his arms fully about her, spinning her to him as he kissed her forehead. “This particular magic will never work on you, Bree.”
“No?”
“I offered her something I could never physically give you.”
Confusion crossed Brianna’s brow. “What could that possibly be?”
“I merely promised her grandchildren if she did this favor for us.”
“You promised her grandchildren?” Brianna slapped her hands on his chest. “Grandchildren that have yet to be created?”
“Yes. So she can love and spoil them. She has been waiting for that very thing for years. She loves babes.” He tightened his hold, lifting Brianna from the gravel, as his lips went to her neck. “And as we were, and are, working quite enthusiastically on the mission, I did not think the promise too far off.”
Brianna leaned away from him, her mouth pulling to the side. “You realize that puts even more pressure on me in meeting her?”
“Pressure is one thing I have never known you not to handle, my wife.” He set her down, swatting her backside through her skirts just as the carriage appeared from the trees.
Brianna resettled herself, hoping the flush in her cheeks would abate in the next seconds. Her heart instantly swelled when she saw Harry, laughing, poke his head out of the side of the closed carriage. Someone was holding him—it looked like Frannie’s hands—and he waved with glee, his whole arm flopping up and down and bringing his torso to teetering out of the carriage.
Pure happiness washed over Brianna, and she grabbed Sebastian’s arm, leaning into him. “Thank you for this. For everything. For banishing every worry from my life.”
“Just to see that smile on your face, my wife, is reward enough for me.” Sebastian looked up from her, nodding in the direction of the carriage. “And that little boy—if he only knew all you have done for him.”
“And all you have done for him,” Brianna said. “Did your mother tell him we are accompanying them back to Callish Hall after the wedding?”
“I do not know. But I do know she has become anxious for us to settle in there.”
“I honestly cannot wait. I love Notlund, but the wedding preparations have been enough to drive anyone to bedlam.” Brianna waved back at Harry, still flailing his arm about outside the carriage.
“Is Lily ready for tomorrow?”
“I believe so. Your mother, Harry and Frannie are the last guests to arrive.”
“And are you still worried about her?”
“I have tried to not be. Even though Mr. Flemming never discovered definitively what Newdale’s business was in those brothels, I am attempting to give Newdale healthy leeway. I have only been questioning the decision not to hire another runner to investigate—M
r. Flemming is still moving slowly after his injury.”
“The man appreciates your loyalty to him, Bree. Especially for how guilty he felt, not guarding against Gregory following him to you.”
“He could not have known what was to happen.” Brianna shrugged. “And he paid for it dearly as well. That scar across his forehead is atrocious.”
She took a deep breath, giving a shake to her shoulders. “But I do not want to dwell. Lily made the decision to marry Newdale, and I am trying my hardest to respect that.” She looked up at her husband out of the corner of her eye. “That said, I may need you to take my mind into a different direction.”
His eyebrow cocked. “Distraction?”
“That should work. Distraction as only you can do.”
Sebastian chuckled, his hand going to the small of her back, fingers slipping downward.
The carriage stopped before them, and Brianna set her face to innocence.
One last swipe to smooth the front of her skirt, and she stepped forth.
~~~
“Lily will be ripe to put me on a spit and roast me when I get back up to the castle, Seb.” The lantern in his hand glowed, swinging with their gait, and Brianna’s mouth pursed. “You promised her it would only be five minutes, but now we are down at the stables. She will think I chose to sneak off with you for fun instead of walking her through every step tonight.”
“Your sister can well handle her own steps, Bree. She is just nervous, as anyone would be the eve before they are to be married.”
Brianna glanced up at his dimly lit profile as they crunched out of the trail from the woods. “Were you nervous?”
“No.” Sebastian smirked, winking at her.
She rolled her eyes, shaking her head.
“Believe me, Bree, this is important. I would not drag you down here and take you away from the festivities if it did not warrant it. It is more important than your sister’s need for someone to hold her hand.”
Brianna scanned the stables and the fields beyond. Still. Everything seemed still and peaceful in the low light of the cloud-covered moon. “Seb, is something wrong with Moonlight and you have not told me?”
Lord of Fates: A Complete Historical Regency Romance Series (3-Book Box Set) Page 52
