That was what she needed to understand.
Summer was beautiful, but it was a finite amount of time.
He wanted forever…
Or nothing.
The thought did nothing to improve his mood. In fact, it only plunged him deeper into foul territory.
An approaching figure caught his eye, and he inwardly groaned.Lord Dankworth.A name to suit the man, if there ever was one. Sebastian composed his face for the coming conversation. It wouldn’t do to sneer at a guest—no matter how odious.
“Dankworth,” said Sebastian.
“Your Grace,” the man returned. “Do you recall our last conversation?” he asked, sidling closer in his particular greasy manner.
“I do.”
“And might you be of assistance to me with a certain, ahem,lady?”
The man lifted a suggestive eyebrow, and Sebastian’s sneer was provoked into being.
Dankworth had been seeking to become the patron of an opera singer—one with whom Sebastian had had a dalliance with a few years ago. When they’d mutually ended their arrangement, she’d gone on to become the toast of London and then on to Paris. Now, Dankworth wanted “his turn” with her—as if she were an object to be passed around. As if it were his right as a lord and man. The fact was she didn’t need Dankworth’s patronage—and Sebastian could only suppose she wouldn’t want the man as a lover, either.
Here was the seedy underbelly of arts patronage. Sebastian had always been vigilant to stay on the correct side of an admittedly blurry line, but many powerful men entered the arts world with the sole intent of procuring sexual favors.
The imbalance of power turned Sebastian’s stomach, and the full brunt of his increasingly foul mood focused on Dankworth. “Who do you take me for, Dankworth?” he asked, low, the question deceptively simple.
“The Duke of Ravensworth, of course,” he said on a laugh that wasn’t quite jolly. The gathering of his eyebrows suggested he sensed something amiss.
Sebastian nodded slowly. “Ah, for a moment there, it seemed you were taking me for a procurer of doxies for you.”
Dankworth’s mouth opened, then snapped shut, a crimson flush crawling up his neck and across his face. That was Dankworth silenced—and everyone within a ten-foot radius who had been gathering in to grab a word edgewise with the Duke of Ravensworth.
Sebastian wasn’t finished. “And to be clear, singers and actresses, painters and poets aren’t prostitutes. They are artists—many of them at an economic disadvantage. And grubby, grasping men like you know it, don’t you?” The circumference around Sebastian and Dankworth expanded, even as ears strained toward the conversation. “So, you use your money and influence as bait to lure them into your bed. You have no care for them as people or artists, only as flesh to be consumed for your own pleasure—and discarded as rubbish once you’ve had your fill.”
Dankworth cleared his throat and averted his gaze, clearly willing himself to be as far away from the Duke of Ravensworth as quickly as possible. The man muttered something unintelligible before scuttling away. Sebastian felt slightly winded from the vehemence of his short speech—and surprised at himself, too. He’d said aloud what he usually kept inside, and for good reason. His efforts to raise funds for the arts weren’t likely to attract much coin if he did.
But…perhaps it wasn’t only coin that mattered to the arts. Hadn’t his time with Ye Olde Albion Players taught him that much? The company lived on words and ideas and mutton-and-potato pasties and their art flourished. Perhaps the arts weren’t best served by a top-down endeavor. Perhaps the time had arrived for him to enter a new phase of his support.
Perhaps the time had arrived for him to stop acting like such a bloody duke about it.
Wimberley Hill.
There was his way forward with the arts. It wasn’t simply about constructing buildings for the glorification of art; it was also about creating environments where art could grow at its own pace, flourish, and enter the world in its own time.
A sudden frisson of energy sparked through the air, and all eyes flew toward the upper landing of the staircase. Sebastian knew before he looked that the Windermeres had arrived, for the crowd’s roar had dulled to a whispery murmur for five solid beats of time. No other arrival could elicit such a response.
Arrayed as a united front in the meager splendor that silk and diamonds could afford their stunning looks, the Windermeres radiated raw glamour, which, in turn, only begot theton’s rapt fascination. They were that arresting.
But one was missing.
No Delilah.
Disappointment washed through Sebastian. At ten in the evening, her siblings were already arriving at the farthest edge of fashionably late, though no one would think anything of it. They were the Windermeres. They held and exuded the special something that lit sparks in any room they entered.
Yet the one who sparkled the brightest wasn’t with them.
Sebastian might have to accept that summer was well and truly over.
