Quite without meaning to, his eyes sank shut and a breath ran out of him. His forehead dropped to the wood of the door. It was cold and hard and unyielding, and it anchored him against her touch.
“It was your uncle who beat you. Major Tait.”
So it wasn’t his father she wanted to speak of. No, she’d got a clue to her favourite subject, and so of course she would unravel him with that. He let out a hollow laugh without otherwise moving at all.
“Him and others. Don’t forget my schoolmasters.”
“But the major took no charge of your education.”
His eyes opened a crack. Polished mahogany met his stare, blurred into meaningless browns by the close distance. “On the contrary. He played by far the largest role.”
He turned, bringing them face to face. Chest to chest. Here again, by the Willow Room door.
He took her hand, and she went tense all over, but if she was going to be unwise enough to touch him in the first place…
Studying her fingers, he lightly pressed each one in turn, as though testing each different size. “My uncle,” he said, “made me exactly who I am. And I am very grateful.”
A pursed mouth and unimpressed blue eyes asked,Really?
He smiled, thin as a knife blade. “I happen to like who I am, Mrs Ardingly.”
Her scepticism only deepened. As did his smile. Slowly, he ran his finger down between two of hers, to the sensitive skin at the base between them. She looked away, focusing all her attention on the door by his arm.
“Your father isn’t well. I’m hardly going to judge you for that.”
“My father is a mad drunk.”
“He seems to be sadly grieving. I believe he spoke of your mother.”
“Ah, but which one? The dead, or the living? He grieves them both.”
She glanced back at him, the question obviously occurring to her for the first time. “Where is your stepmother? Major Tait’s sister?”
“In Ireland. With her lover. In Vienna before that, with a different one. In Yorkshire, for a while, with a groom. Nowthatwas embarrassing.”
He traced his way down between her other fingers as he talked, outlining her whole hand in turn. She was entirely still,but she watched the path of his touch, her muscles tight, ready to snatch away at any moment.
He held tight. He was going to enjoy this hand, now he had it. Turning it over, he stroked the lines of her palm. Sparks ran up his fingers, his wrist ached with them; they joined the clamouring in his blood, a stupid, brainless riot.
But even as his hunger grew, he hungered just as much for this palm softly against his cheek; for another chance to close his eyes and let out a breath.
“He must have loved his first wife, your mother, very much.”
“Madly.” He meant that word.Madness.“And now you see the result. He can’t get past it.”
A different sort of stillness snapped into her bones. He glanced up at her face—yes, she saw the parallels too. She still grieved that boy, didn’t she? Alfred of the moonlight sailing.
“He remarried for two reasons,” Sebastian said, letting her come to her own reflections. He wasn’t about to go poking through the shards of her sorrow. “One, to provide me with a mother. A dismal failure, as you see. And two, because despite having an heir, he felt he ought to have a spare. There are fables enough about greed that I don’t need to tell you the lesson learned there. I don’t believe she ever let him so much as touch her. She bought a title and a substantial income and had no more need of him.”
“But her brother stayed.”
“Her brother found our houses comfortable, our cellars good, our stables full. Her brother found close association with the earl and his family to be beneficial to his social aspirations. And, if he was welcome in our house, then clearly his sister’s infidelities were of no importance to my father—if the husband tolerates them, then society does too.”
“But was he? Welcome?”
“My father was drunk and broken. And I was seven years old. In the street cant of young Tom, we were pigeons, ripe for the plucking.”
“But you tolerate the man. You are known to be close.”
