Olivia glanced around before spotting him. “Oh, you sly thing. I had no notion you knew he would be here. Is that why you were so amenable to us walking together?”
“No, I had no idea that he would be riding here.”
“You should see him,” Olivia urged, tugging at her arm. “Speak with him.Flirtwith him.”
“But I don’t know how to flirt,” Eleanor protested as Olivia dragged her closer. “I am not a natural-born flirt. I would rather do nice things for him and bring him around to my presence that way.”
“That will never work! Gentlemen like the Duke are immune to nice gestures. He would live in the same house as you for a thousand years and never notice a single thing you did for him, except to find something wrong with it. But hewillnotice you flirting. Just think how he reacted when he saw you dancing with another gentleman. Go,go.”
Eleanor stumbled forward, but before she reached Sebastian’s side, another gentleman came out from nowhere, a wide smile on his face.
“Sebastian, old friend,” said Luke, the man from her wedding breakfast. “I had not thought to see you out riding. What are you doing here?”
“I,” he said, his voice crisp, “am avoiding my wife. The question is, what areyoudoing here?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Sebastian scowled down into Luke’s face, wondering how a simple ride in the park might have come to this. When he had left the library, in which he had taken refuge should Eleanor find an excuse to invade his study, he had seen the flowers everywhere, and known he would need to escape.
The flowers had been pretty, recently cut from the garden, which had survived, by some miracle, the endless supply of gardeners tending to it. He had known immediately that Eleanor had placed them there, either as a means to apologize or infuriate him.
Either way, he had known he would need to avoid her before he lost his mind and did something he could never take back, like drag her to bed and have his way with her.
She, he knew, would delight in it. And he would too, until he came to terms with what that would mean for the future of their marriage, and thus the rest of his life. And so he had ordered hishorse to be saddled and ridden into town, determined to return at least in part to his old life.
Only then he had come face to face with Luke, someone else he had been determined to avoid.
“Why are you here?” he asked again.
“For the same reason as you, no doubt. To promenade and take in the town, just as we used to do,” Luke laughed. “Walk with me. Save the scowl for another day. It has no place here.”
It became more of an effort to maintain the expression, but he did so. “I beg to differ.”
“Then, by all means, continue to glower at the world,” Luke said cheerfully. “No doubt it deserves it.” He turned, stiffening, then doffing his hat, and gave a deep bow. “Your Grace! I had not known you were right behind me. How excellent to see you here, too.”
His stomach sinking, Sebastian turned on his horse to see Eleanor standing stock still, staring at him with such dismay in her expression that he almost wished he could take the words back. He did not know what was happening to him. Why, in God’s name, did he care what she thought? His goal had always been to push her away; he ought to be rejoicing now that he had taken one step closer.
“Good day, sir,” she said finally, looking back at Luke. She gave a tentative little smile that made Sebastian want to rage inside. “How pleasant to see you here.” The lady beside Eleanor nudged her soundly in the ribs. “Ah. Allow me to introduce you to my friend, Miss Olivia Ashby.”
The simpering girl beside Eleanor dipped into a curtsy, but Sebastian barely spared her a glance. He was too busy looking at his wife. Her flushed cheeks, the sparkle in her eye, and—yes, damn him, he saw it—the hope that lingered there too.
Perhaps she had not intended this visit. The surprise on her face when she had approached him said that much, but she certainly did not think this was the disaster he did.
After all, she was not the one going out of her way to avoid him.
“Olivia,” Eleanor said. “This is my husband’s friend, the Earl of Greycliff.”
“How do you do,” Miss Ashby chirped, and to Sebastian’s dismay, Luke held out his arm to her as though he anticipated the four of them walking together. Yet given they were in such a public place, and given he had an audience, Sebastian could hardly snub them all. Not if he wished to keep his inheritance intact, and convince all the executors that he was indeed playing into his father’s hand.
“I had not expected to see you here,” Eleanor murmured as she fell into step beside him.
“I often come here,” he said shortly.
“Oh? Then perhaps we can come together sometimes. If I had known you enjoyed riding and promenading, I would have suggested it.”
The prospect of promenading with a wife who looked so fresh and pretty in the summer sun was not an altogether unappealing one, though he should not have been thinking it. He ought to be despising her for finding him, not thinking about the softness of the skin at the hollow of her neck, or the way her lips had tasted against his.
All these were things it would have been better for him not to know.
