‘If you had accepted Balard, he might have issued the challenge,’ Julian said.
‘And if you had refused him this morning, we would not be in this situation at all,’ she snapped. ‘I am tired of having to bear the blame of your meddling in my life.’
‘I told Balard the decision was yours,’ he said, surprised.
‘Just as you have been telling me who you favour and who you don’t, as if your opinion would make any real difference in who I loved.’
‘What is there not to love about thirty thousand a year, a handsome face and a reputation as pure as snow? And what does love have to do with marriage? It is not as if Portia loved me when we married.’
‘But you loved me,’ his wife said with a warning smile.
‘I was mad with lust for you,’ he corrected. ‘That is not the same thing at all. It was not until after I married you that I fell in love.’ He smiled then, and for a moment, Cassie’s sin was forgotten.
‘Well, I feel neither love nor lust,’ Cassie announced, snapping her fingers to regain his attention. ‘And I do not feel either of those things directed towards me from Mr Balard. I doubt he is shedding tears at the loss of me, nor will either of us be losing any sleep.’
‘All right,’ Julian said, taking a deep breath to control his temper. ‘Then who would you rather marry?’
A few hours ago, she’d known exactly who her husband must be. But she’d been wrong. If not Sebastian? ‘No one,’ she said, feeling both sad and relieved that the Season was over for her. ‘Marriage does not suit me. I mean to die a spinster.’
By the look he was giving her, Julian’s anger had been replaced with confusion. ‘After all that I have spent on gowns and parties and the ball? It was all for naught?’
Portia interrupted. ‘You are not seriously complaining about that now? At this time?’ She gave him a look that, even in the dark of the carriage, seemed to sizzle in the air.
He took a breath before turning back to Cassie. ‘Of course not. I do not begrudge a penny. It was meant to help you make a decision. I simply had not expected it to be that one.’ He took another breath and continued cautiously, ‘It just surprisesme that you are giving up on marriage after so little time. I understand that you do not love the first man who offered. But perhaps there will be another.’
A week ago, she’d have agreed with him, just to keep the peace. But things had changed.Shehad changed. The thought of marrying another man while Sebastian walked the earth made her heart ache in a way she could not describe.
And then, she remembered that he could be dead by the time the sun rose.
It would not free her. She would not be a spinster. She would be a widow and grieve him until the end of her days. But there had to be something she could do to prevent the worst from happening. ‘I am resolute,’ she said. ‘I will not marry. I will go back to the Fisks, just as you wish. People in London will forget all about me. So, really, you needn’t bother with dueling over a thing that matters to no one but me.’
Julian shook his head. ‘It matters to me. To Society, as well. Westbridge is a menace to all decent women. This is not his first mistake, and it is proof that he is getting worse, not better. An example must be made.’
It was probably true. If he’d used her expected engagement to cover the possible consequences of their tryst, there was no depth to which he would not sink. He could not be allowed to do it again with some other naive girl. ‘You’re sure you will win,’ she said, swallowing unshed tears. ‘Because I could not bear it if you were hurt because of me.’
‘He suggested pistols,’ Julian said. ‘We both know he is a poor marksman. It was as close as we will come to an apology.’
‘Perhaps, just a small wound, as a warning,’ she suggested.
Her brother’s expression was grim. ‘He’s already gotten a warning from me and learned nothing by it. Now he must be stopped for good.’
The carriage arrived at the Septon townhouse, and he helped her down, giving her hand a squeeze as he did so. ‘Whatever happens, know that my feelings for you have not changed. You are still my sister, and I want what is best for you. Now go inside and get some sleep.’ Then, he turned back to help Portia, so she did as he suggested.
Sebastian lay in the bed of his Soho flat, waiting out the hours until dawn. His wet clothes were drying on a chair by the fire and he was naked and shivering, staring at his reflection in the mirror above. Until tonight, the views provided by it had been an erotic novelty.
But he had never been alone here before. There was no beautiful woman to reassure him, and he was free to catalogue his own flaws. Tonight, stripped of clothing and confidence, he was not some invincible scion of English nobility. He was small, an insignificant thing with pale white skin and a puckered scar on one shoulder to remind him of his previous mistakes. A single prawn in the great sea of humanity and not a handsome and wealthy peer of the realm: a gift to all womankind.
He was going to die. Unlike last year, he did not particularly want to. But he deserved to. This time, the perfect woman was not going to appear at his bedside like an avatar of benediction, forgive his sins and devote her life to him. Such women came for men with a sterling character and he had no good qualities.
There was the title, of course, and all the things that attached to it. But he had always viewed that as an accident of birth. Cassandra Fisk was not the sort of woman to be impressed by a coronet.
She wanted, no, she deserved a good man. He was the antithesis of the husband God intended for her. The fact that he’d reduced her to a lascivious sot after such a shortacquaintance was proof of that. She might have come to her senses and married Balard if he’d had sense of his own and stayed away from her tonight.
But he’d had to see her. And thus it would always be, as long as he lived. But in a few hours, he would meet Septon. Then, they would both be free.
One thing rankled. He could not leave her assuming that he had seduced her with the intent of abandoning her. He had done plenty of things that were wrong, but even he was not that bad.
He sat up, got out of bed and wandered through the rooms, searching cupboards and drawers, wishing that he’d made a greater effort to outfit the apartment for any use but entertaining woman. When he’d almost given up hope, he found some writing paper, a blunt quill and a half a bottle of ink in a pantry closet.
