“Did you know I had a younger brother?”
He heard her breath catch and turned his head to look at her. She shook her head. “No.”
“George,” he said, and then corrected himself. “Georgie, I called him. He was two years younger. My mother and father despised each other down to their very cores, and as soon as the earl had his heir and spare my mother separated herself from us. She went to London, lived her own life, and I doubt had even a thought for us.”
Marianne winced. “I had no idea.”
“Yes, I make it so that no one does,” he said softly, watching the firelight play off her face. “I’m very careful to do so.”
Understanding dawned over her face and her hand came to rest on his bare chest again. “Were you close to your brother?”
“Oh yes. You know how our father was, so mean tempered and cruel. He had no interest in either of us, really, and left us to be raised by servants and the woods around the estate. And Georgie and I loved to run and race and play.” He could picture his brother now, dark blond hair so like Sebastian’s own being ruffled in the wind, little pudgy legs working so hard to keep up with his older brother. Sebastian had always tried to slow himself down so George wouldn’t get lost.
His eyes stung at the memory and he blinked away the sensation so he could continue, “When he was six and I was eight, we were playing out at the little lake on the country estate. We’d been trying to build a boat all summer and it was not going well. But we still valiantly tried to row it out. Then…”
He trailed off and squeezed his eyes shut as images bombarded him.
“Sebastian, it’s all right,” she said gently, and he realized he was breathing heavily. “I’m here.”
He caught her hand and held it for a long moment, trying to focus on the softness of her fingers in his. “We took on water,” he whispered at last. “It started to sink. We were laughing at first but…but then his trouser leg got caught on one of the nails I hadn’t fully pounded into the wood and he—he couldn’t get loose. I couldn’t get him loose. I kept diving down, I kept tugging him, but I wasn’t strong enough and he—he—he?—”
“He drowned,” she said softly.
He sucked in a sharp, harsh breath at those two words. “Yes.”
Suddenly her arms came around him, pulling him close. He rested his head on her shoulder, trying to get control of the emotions that pressed down on him, threatening to crush him.Thiswas why he never spoke of that moment to anyone. It stole his control. It made him weak to feel these feelings all over again, like he was still at the lake, like he was still watching his brother die under the water.
“I almost drowned too,” he said at last. “But I managed to get to shore. My father was so angry at me.”
“Not grieved?” she whispered.
He shook his head. “He kept saying that I stole his spare. That I ruined the order of things. Otherwise he gave not a damn about his lost son. He made the servants go out to retrieve his body and forced me to watch from the shore as punishment whilehewent to some ball like nothing had happened.”
“He went to a ball?”
His lips pursed with heated hatred. “He said that once the truth was out about the death, he wouldn’t be allowed to attend anything while he moved through the prescribed mourning period. He didn’t want to miss one last chance to carouse.”
He felt a drop of water hit his shoulder and looked up to find that tears were streaming down Marianne’s face. Tears for him. The ones he forced himself not to shed.
“Oh Sebastian, that is terrible. I’m so dreadfully sorry you and your brother were treated with such callous disregard. You didn’t deserve that,” she said, her fingers brushing over his face.
He froze. Didn’t deserve that. No, he hadn’t. Georgie hadn’t. Sebastian had never allowed that fleeting thought to develop in his mind beyond a flutter, because when it did, the anger that followed was wild. He’d had to keep it in check during his childhood when he was too small to battle his cruel father.
And as an adult, he had always worked not to be like the man who raised him. He didn’t want to be cruel. He chose flighty, he chose rakish, he chose anything but serious so that he wouldn’t spiral into the depths he feared he wouldn’t escape.
But her words reminded him of the desperate unfairness of his childhood. Of his loss and how alone he’d been in it.
“Were you allowed any time to grieve?” she asked gently.
“Of course not,” he choked out. “I wore a black band for exactly the three months that Society expects, but I wasn’t allowed to speak about Georgie to anyone, nor was anyone allowed to talk to me about him.”
“That is dreadful. Monstrous!”
He shrugged even though there was nothing dismissive about how he felt over this topic. “I tell you this not to obtain your pity, but because Idounderstand the idea of living for another person.”
“Yes, I can see how you would,” she said. “And I can also understand even more deeply now why your relationship to Finn is so important to you.”
“Yes, Finn.” Sebastian rubbed a hand over his face and stared at the ceiling. He’d known exactly the consequences he might face by spending this night with Marianne. If Delacourt discovered it, there might be pistols at dawn, not just an end to their friendship.
