Louisa was not prepared for the way her chest squeezed at the sight, and she turned away abruptly, nearly colliding with the footman who had just arrived to offer the ladies some wine. She happily accepted a glass and quickly put it to her lips to avoid conversation with anyone else.
She’d only taken one sip, however, when Viv’s voice sounded in her head, reminding her of her duty. Not for the first time did Louisa wish she’d had a sister who didn’t care about her quite so much.
Louisa turned back, her practiced smile already on her face, to find Sebastian still deep in conversation with the earl and the poor countess still standing mutely to the side.
“Do you know Viscountess Raynham?” Louisa offered in an attempt to coax the girl out.
She smiled sweetly, and color immediately infused her cheeks. Louisa racked her mind to remember when the Earl of Bannerbridge had wed, but she couldn’t recall. This girl was likely younger than Louisa, and she was already starting a family of her own.
Louisa took an overlarge gulp of wine and swallowed hard, steeling herself against the way her emotions rocked back and forth within her.
“The viscount and viscountess are acquaintances of my husband.” Even her voice was soft and mild, and Louisa pitched forward just to hear her.
Except the woman said nothing else, and Louisa was left to conjure another polite question to draw her out.
“Well, that’s lovely. How are you and the earl finding the season? I hear there’s to be a new production of The Magic Flute at the Royal this year.”
Louisa did not care for opera, but Viv had reminded her time and again it was an honored tradition of the ton, and it would do well for Louisa to at least be knowledgeable.
The countess gave no reaction to this question, and Louisa sipped her wine, letting the silence wash over them. She quieted Viv’s voice in her head. After all, she had tried.
She glanced at Sebastian out of the corner of her eye, but it appeared he would not be surfacing soon from whatever deep discussion he and Bannerbridge were having, so she surveyed the room to see if there was someone else with whom to converse. Only to lock gazes with the viscountess herself.
“I do apologize for needing to step out. Poor Hamill had misplaced his snuffbox. You know how men are, dears.” This last bit was directed at the Countess Bannerbridge while Louisa got the end of the sentence, which was mostly a cold press of lips in a disdainful smile. “If it isn’t my daughter-in-law, the new duchess.”
Louisa curtsied as was appropriate while her lips moved automatically into a smile.
“Viscountess. Thank you for your kind invitation this evening.”
The viscountess showed her teeth now as she said, “I should have thought I wouldn’t be required to send an invitation to my son in hopes of seeing him.”
“Well, perhaps then you should have been more present in his younger years for him to feel a stronger connection with you.”
The words were out before she could stop them, and vaguely, she was aware of Sebastian’s voice ceasing from somewhere behind her.
“Mother.” His tone held no note of remonstration toward Louisa but was merely directed at the viscountess, who still focused her icy stare on Louisa.
Louisa casually took a sip of her wine, willing her traitorous lips to behave. It appeared she would simply be cursed with an impulsive nature and wayward tongue.
“Sebastian.” The word was cold as snow and while she spoke to Sebastian, she kept her eyes riveted on Louisa. “Your wife seems to think I was a poor mother.”
“Yes.”
The single word drew the viscountess’s gaze away from Louisa and up to her son. Her icy features cracked into a look of astonishment as her lips parted and her eyes narrowed at her son’s response. Obviously the woman thought he would assuage her upset when, in fact, he’d done little more than acknowledge that the slight had occurred.
“I trust you are well,” Sebastian said politely as he ignored his mother’s expression.
Louisa took another sip of wine, willing her stomach to settle. They had only to get through this evening and then perhaps she would not be required to attend functions at this woman’s home again. Hadn’t Sebastian himself said he wished for them to lead separate lives? Perhaps this was a boon in disguise. Louisa would fulfill her duties as a newly married duchess and then she could slip blissfully into obscurity.
Alone and untouched, pining for a husband who couldn’t love her.
“I am.” The viscountess sniffed. “Sebastian, I think perhaps you should teach your wife her place. She seems to have forgotten it.”
The woman spoke as if they were alone and not surrounded by the woman’s very dinner guests, members of the peerage and, likely, people she wished to impress. But perhaps that was just it. Louisa suspected that Viscountess Raynham enjoyed reminding people that they were below her.
Except…
“Do you mean my place as a duchess? Because the last I checked, a duchess outranks a viscountess.” Louisa became aware suddenly of the quiet that descended in the drawing room, and she willed herself not to flush at the attention. While she had no issue defending that which required it, she did rather wish to do so without drawing attention to herself.
Viscountess Raynham’s mouth opened on a silent word before she cleared her throat. “You should do something about her, Sebastian. If you’re not careful, she’ll become as wayward as your father.”
Louisa wanted nothing more than to look at Sebastian’s face, but she couldn’t see him from where he stood slightly behind her without turning, and that would give an advantage to the viscountess she wasn’t willing to concede. So she stood there and stared down this woman who had so succinctly constructed self-isolating behaviors in her only son.
Louisa could not at all be surprised. If she had been raised by this woman, she would have adopted some manners that would likely have been far worse than shutting people out.
“Are you not aware that it’s unlucky to speak of the dead?” Louisa took the last swallow of wine and bestowed a sardonic smile on her mother-in-law. “You just might be haunted by their ghost.”
The viscountess’s gaze turned deadly, and the woman took the smallest step closer to Louisa. Even though the woman’s shoulders stooped slightly with age, she was still a good two inches taller than Louisa, and she likely thought to use her height to her advantage. Except the woman didn’t realize what it meant to grow up with Viv as an older sister.
Louisa didn’t back down. Not at all. She stood her ground, standing perfectly erect between this horrible woman and Sebastian.
“Tell me, dear.” The viscountess’s voice dripped with polite derision. “Does your mother’s ghost haunt you?”
Had the woman said anything else, Louisa would have been ready. But not that. Not her mother. The cold, menacing finger of guilt racked its way down her spine, and she feared at any moment her knees might give way and she would crumple to the ground in a heap of embarrassment and ridicule.
But she couldn’t do that. She had to protect Sebastian.
“Yes.” Louisa spoke the single word clearly and with enough power to be heard across the room. “She haunts me because I loved her.”
She could not have been more accurate or deadly had she used a dagger to stab Viscountess Raynham.
The woman’s eyes flashed with anger at the reminder of her damaged relationship with her son and the implication that she wouldn’t haunt him with her memory when she was gone. But as Louisa knew only too well, sometimes the truth was far deadlier than any weapon.
The viscountess flexed her hands into fists, and Louisa readied herself for the next volley, but it never came. At just that moment, the Raynham butler announced dinner, and the viscountess was forced by propriety to lead her guests into the dining room.
Decorum dictated that Sebastian and Louisa enter after their hosts, and with sixteen pairs of eyes watching them closely, she had no time to do more than whisper to her husband.
/> “I’m sorry.” She kept her voice low as the other guests assembled behind them.
Sebastian said nothing as he led her into dinner.
* * *
When they stepped through the door of Waverly House what seemed an eternity later, the silence of the slumbering household was a welcome balm against his irritated nerves. Milton silently took their things, and by the time, Sebastian had shed his gloves Louisa was already heading up the stairs.
Once more she had been quiet in the carriage ride, and he was man enough to admit the silence was beginning to grate. After a year of intermittent exposure to the force that was Louisa, her quiet attitude toward their marriage was like an alarm bell being rung consistently in his ear. It was enough to drive a lesser man mad.
He watched her now, fistfuls of skirt in each hand as she methodically took the stairs, and he wondered if denying himself the very thing he wanted was just as bad as giving in to his temptations.
He had thought he wanted this kind of separation, a parting of their lives so he could live comfortably in the distance between them. He hadn’t counted on the way it dampened her spirit, nor the way he would long to see her smile again, to hear her laugh, to kiss her. It was supposed to have been easy, but this wasn’t easy at all.
Tonight he had witnessed that fire that now hid beneath her quiet exterior. The way she had stood up to his mother even when the viscountess chose to deliver such a cutting remark as to mention Louisa’s poor, deceased mother. It was cruel by any measure, but unfortunately, quite usual when it came to Sebastian’s mother. She had no standards by which she lived, and just as his father was known to say, his mother fell prey to whatever method devised the end she desired.
Why she would want to cut down Louisa he wasn’t sure. Likely because Louisa wasn’t able to go along with the polished exterior his mother had perfected over the years: doting mother and devoted wife. She was neither of those things if one knew her truly, but she was damned good at pretending otherwise. It had never bothered him before. He was too good at packaging up his mother and pushing her to the side so she could no longer interfere in his life.
But Louisa seemed to draw his mother out no matter how carefully he packaged her away, and he was forced to consider his real feelings toward her. He had always simply dismissed her as it was easier than confronting her and involved far fewer theatrics on her part. Tonight, however, had had a different effect on him.
He didn’t like her attacking Louisa. It was as if a primal anger had surged through him at the first gambit his mother had laid down. He should have known Louisa would be more than prepared for such a battle of words, but it left him feeling unsettled. Louisa should not be expected to face such animosity and outright hostility should they need to interact with his mother in a social setting. Whether he liked it or not, he would need to address the matter soon.
Not tonight, though. Tonight he wanted nothing but a fire and a glass of scotch.
He found both in his rooms, and after dismissing his valet, he sank into his favored chair and let the warmth of the fire seduce him into a lulled state as the scotch warmed his insides. He sipped at it, feeling not at all the lure of its tantalizing effects the way he once did.
He wanted something much more powerful.
He recalled what Dax had said about Louisa fixing things, and while he had waited for some evidence of this nature, all he found was the fact that the house seemed to be the focus of her intentions. It bothered him little as he rarely spent time in the house outside his study and his rooms, and the rest he hardly noticed. She could do with it what she liked.
But was she expending her energy on the house to avoid him?
He didn’t like how the thought rankled nor that his immediate response was that he’d welcome her attentions.
How, after eight years, was it possible for him to consider another avenue, another way to safeguard himself from the mistakes his father had made?
If he were objective, Sebastian must consider his mother’s role in his father’s death for surely she had played a part. Theirs had been an arranged marriage, and as a child, he was inordinately aware of the tension between his parents. It wasn’t hatred, nothing so vile as that. It was a quiet distaste. His father avoided his mother just as she did him, and Sebastian did not miss that fact. Could his father have longed for someone else?
What had Louisa said earlier that night? Didn’t her sister Jo find herself in the same position, longing for someone she couldn’t have? What he knew of the girl seemed sound, and she didn’t appear as though she would do anything irrational. But then, people tended to appear rational until the very moment they weren’t.
He’d nearly thought himself into a downward spiral by the time the soft knock came on the door.
His first instinct was to pretend he was asleep. He knew he was tired, exhausted really, and his guard was feeling the effects of his dizzying thoughts. But he couldn’t refuse Louisa any more than he could banish the memories of his father.
“Come in.”
The door opened with a soft swish, and he did all he could not to look at her. That damn virginal dressing gown haunted him, and he needn’t look at it that night.
“I came to apologize.”
Now he did look at her.
She was dressed much as he feared she would be, her body wrapped in snowy white satin, her golden hair plaited along one shoulder.
“Apologize?”
She pressed a hand to her forehead, so unusual a gesture for her it had him turning fully in his chair to face her. Propriety would have dictated he stand to receive her, but he found himself so entranced by her he forgot himself entirely.
“Yes, I shouldn’t have acted the way I did. I’m terribly sorry. Jo upset me earlier, and I just wasn’t myself this evening.”
“I saw nothing wrong with your behavior. If anything, it is my mother who should apologize, but she will not because she’s a narcissist. She likely enjoyed setting you down.”
Her frown held a degree of self-deprecation. “Be that as it may, I promised I would act the part of the perfect duchess, and tonight I failed to uphold my end of the agreement. I only came to give you my apologies.”
“I never asked you to play such a role.” He wasn’t sure why her words poked him more than they normally would, but there was something about this night that had his nerves raw and sensitive.
Her expression closed and a line appeared between her brows. “Be that as it may, I hold myself to a certain standard, and I failed to meet it this evening. I will strive to repair whatever damage I have caused on our next outing.”
She turned, and he realized she was leaving. For some strange reason, he stood.
“Why do you feel you’ve caused damage and to what?”
He had never seen her appear so defeated. He couldn’t help but recall the way she had barged into his rooms on their wedding night. It seemed like an eternity ago and yet it could have been yesterday. So quickly and so swiftly was he able to extinguish her fire, and he had never realized what power he’d held over her.
But he couldn’t help wondering—was it because he held such power over her or the fact that he’d robbed her of the possibility of love?
He should tell her to find a lover, find someone who could address her needs, but even as the thought entered his mind, he felt a cold rage seep into his bones, and he knew he’d never let another man touch her.
He could not have it both ways, he knew. It would be unfair to Louisa, and it would only serve to drive him mad. He had to do something, but he didn’t know what. He was afraid of what might happen if he let himself go, but he was also afraid of what would happen if he didn’t.
Her sigh was loud in the quiet room. “To the title and your reputation. What I do reflects poorly on you now. Surely, you understand that.”
“You’re assuming I care what other people think of me.”
She met his gaze suddenly. “Do you not?”
“I wouldn’t have
cultivated a reputation as the Beastly Duke if I did, would I?”
She worried her lower lip, and he wanted to grab her then and kiss her, forcing away the phantoms that tormented her. He didn’t give a damn what society thought of him or the title. It only rankled him that his mother had cut Louisa so.
“I disrespected your mother, Sebastian. She maligned your father, and I couldn’t stand for it, but I shouldn’t have taken my retribution there. It only served to harm you, and I’m sorry for that.”
He recalled his mother’s remark regarding Louisa’s behavior in comparison to his father’s, but as his mother had spent so little time actually in his father’s company, he’d come to dismiss her statements regarding his character. He’d nearly forgotten the remark entirely, so consumed was he by how she’d treated Louisa.
But apparently, that was what had triggered Louisa’s response. She had come to his defense against his own mother because she thought his father maligned. The thought upset something inside of him, and he didn’t like how it wore down the walls he’d erected, the rules he’d established to safeguard his objectivity.
She needed to leave, or he was going to do something entirely stupid.
“You mustn’t apologize for defending my father’s name. Not to me anyway. I should think, though, my father would tell you you’re wasting your time trying to stop my mother’s sharp tongue.”
For the first time, Louisa’s shoulders straightened, and her chin went up. “But somebody must try.”
That was when he realized Dax was right. Louisa did fix things. Standing there in her billowy dressing gown, her hair loosely braided and carelessly tossed over one shoulder, she looked like he imagined a Viking queen would look, soft and snowy and dangerous as ice.
And that’s when he realized what was happening. By telling her he couldn’t love her, by showing her how adamant he was not to change, she was abiding by his wishes, and it was killing her. Her quietness, her one-word answers to his questions—she couldn’t go on like this because he was stopping her from being who she was. He had robbed her of her spirit.
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