Sebastian forced a smile to his friend and sipped the offered drink. “Did I look sour? I feel nothing like it.”
“Hmmm,” Delacourt murmured softly. For a moment they simply stood in companionable silence and then the earl sighed. “Marianne is making another splash.”
Sebastian looked toward her and tried to pretend like he hadn’t noticed her. “Is she? Oh, yes, I suppose she has been dancing all night.”
“Never the same partner twice and never against the wall as usual,” Delacourt said. “It seems her lot is changing. I should be happy for her, and I am.”
Now Sebastian faced him. “But?”
Delacourt was quiet for a long moment, his expression long as he tracked his sister. “It’s been so long for her that I fear she’ll settle. She asked about Lanford tonight. And if the way he watches her is any indication, the man seems to have a valid interest in her. I must believe he’ll approach me with a request to court her at some point. And she’ll likely agree.”
Sebastian found his breath coming shorter, like he couldn’t draw full air into suddenly aching lungs. “I see,” he choked out. “What are your thoughts on that?”
“He seems fine enough, I suppose.” Delacourt shrugged, as if resigned. “And I understand her desire to wed, to have a family, even if I think the man isn’t matched to her wit by half.”
Sebastian found he was nodding, like a children’s toy on a spring. He couldn’t stop as he looked across the room and found Marianne standing with a small group of ladies from the shire…and the very man who was the topic of Delacourt’s conversation with Sebastian. Lanford stood at her side, smiling down at her as she spoke.
Sebastian wanted to vomit suddenly and he turned away. “Excuse me, Delacourt, I need a bit of air.”
He strode away without waiting for his friend’s response and shoved through the crowd, unable to see or hear anything around him over the rush of blood to his ears and the throb of his pulse through every tingling limb of his body.
He burst onto the terrace and gasped in a lungful of cool night air, but it changed nothing. The pressure in his chest still loomed, tension blooming through him that he didn’t want to identify or name. He had no right to his feelings, not when he’d made clear to Marianne that there could be nothing between them.
And yet they were there despite that. Those feelings overwhelmed him, seemed to touch every inch of him just as she had the night before. There was jealousy, there was pain, but mostly there was grief. He grieved for something he had never had, or at least claimed he didn’t want.
There was a burst of laughter from farther down the large terrace and he glanced down to find a small group of people standing together, drinking their punch and chatting. He resented their ease, that they didn’t know he felt like he was being picked apart at poorly stitched seams.
He turned away from them so they wouldn’t call out and force him to join their group and hustled down into the darkness away from the ballroom lights that filtered onto the terrace. There was a parlor attached to this same wide terrace and he prayed the door would be unlatched as he reached it.
To his great relief, it was, and he slipped inside into the chamber. The fires weren’t lit in here, so the only light came from the beams of moonlight outside. He was just as happy. He didn’t want the world to be bright when he felt this way. He just wanted to hide. Hide from his feelings, hide from himself.
He crossed to the darkened fireplace and leaned both hands on the mantel, sucking in deep breaths as he tried to calm himself. But his mind kept spinning back to what Delacourt had said in the ballroom. That Lanford, despite what he’d told Sebastian earlier in the day, was still interested in a courtship with Marianne.
And that she would allow it. Of course, it would lead to marriage if she did. Eventually she might consider what she’d done with Sebastian as merely a lark. Or worse, a regret. His stomach turned with that thought.
“Sebastian?”
He froze, his head still bent, at the sound of Marianne’s voice coming from the same terrace door he’d just entered. Was he imagining her in this moment of great upset? Or was she really here? Had she followed him?
Which was worse?
He slowly lifted his head and looked across to the doors. She was standing there, gently pulling them shut behind her so that they would be alone.
He shook his head. “Why are you here, Marianne?” he asked, and hated that his voice was so rough.
“I saw you leave the ballroom,” she said after a small hesitation. “You looked upset so I followed.”
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.
She stepped toward him and he almost groaned but somehow managed to keep the reaction in check. “We’re still friends, aren’t we? I still care for you.”
He choked out a pained laugh. “Despite it all, eh? Well, I doubt I’ve acted in a way that deserves it. I promise you, I’m well, Marianne. You should return to the party. You were clearly enjoying yourself and I’d never take that away from you.”
She stared at him. He couldn’t see her expression clearly in the shadows of the room, but he felt her compassion nonetheless. So often she had showered him with that over the years. Never pity. Always gentle acceptance and kindness and…and care.
She stepped closer again and reached out to take his hand. She had stripped off her gloves at some point and he rarely wore them himself, so her soft skin brushed his just as it had the night before. “I cannot bear seeing you so troubled, Sebastian,” she whispered. “Please won’t you tell me what brought this on?”
He smelled her in the darkness, that lemony essence that had begun to drive him wild. He wanted to drown in it in this moment. To forget that she might give herself to someone else. That it was his own fault if she did.
