“I don’t care. Go to sleep.”
He left the room before the boy could protest further, hardly caring whether he slept or not, so long as he didn’t have to look at him. The boy would drive him mad. Already had done.
“This is the urchin you rescued, is it? This the boy half of town thinks must be your bastard?”
That’s what people thought, was it? Let them. It was a rumour that did him more credit than harm—he was apparently a man who recognised his obligations. In reality, he’d taken care to sire none, but he’d hardly abandon them if he did. That was a shoddy, ill-bred business.
As was being late to meet one’s friends.
Running a hand through his hair, he went to his room to hurriedly change. His shirt was clammy with sweat—anger, confrontation, fear. That last was old and came from deep inside his pores whenever he faced his uncle down. It stank of shame and rusted blood.
He reset himself with his valet’s help. New shirt, new neckcloth, hair tidied once more. Eyes met him in the looking glass, something savage thrashing deep inside them, an animal trapped in a well. He breathed it away. In, out. Chin up. Calm.
Down in the hall, he took up hat and gloves and left to spend the day like a rational person.
Business talk was all right, and a moment in Hatchard’s. Friends in Bond Street were fine, and something to eat, a little something to drink, they did him good. Dinner, sometime later, he got through. But the theatre…no. Alas, he apologised, he’d promised himself elsewhere.
He went home.
It was quiet in the library, the small fire a whisper in the grate. Times like this, most men probably appreciated a dog on the rug, a benign, unjudgemental presence.
He got Mrs Ardingly instead.
Joshua came to tell him, expression pensive as he stepped around the door. And Sebastian knew, even before the man announced her name.
He wasn’t surprised—not even that she came late, and alone. He wasn’t surprised at all that she came.
He’d been waiting, he realised, as soon as she stepped into the library, Joshua closing the door behind her with an expressionless face that said a great deal.
He’d known she would come. As though this was the necessary bookend to the morning they’d had. All the things left unsaid. All the things they’d left undone.
Of course, he was a gentleman, so he stood as she came closer to the fire, though she wouldn’t quite look at him, not dressed as he was, in his shirt, bootless, coatless, neckcloth cast aside.
But if one chose to call alone on gentlemen at late hours… He would not apologise.
He did bow, though, and she came to a stop just before the fire, a yard or so from where he stood by his chair. There was only the light of the fire and two candles on the mantel. She was all shadow and form and the rustle of skirts. She’d brought in the smell of the night with her, and something sweet, but very faint. Her soap or scent.
“I came…I came to see if Tom was all right.”
“A few more cuts and bruises to add to his collection, but otherwise unharmed.”
“That’s good.”
“Indeed. So I suppose you can go now.”
She jerked, startled by his rudeness. But even in the dim light she could see the smile that edged his mouth, just as surely as he could see her indignant blush.
“Or shall we talk about why else you came?” He moved closer as he spoke, just close enough to take hold of her hand and bring them back to that interrupted moment in the Willow Room. “You came for the boy, yes. And you came to ask about this hellish bruise on my arm. And you came to ask about my uncle, and to work out whether I need rescuing. I don’t.” He tugged gently on her hand, drawing her closer. “But I’m still glad you came.”
A pause. She moved a little nearer at his insistence, coming slowly, unevenly, like spooling snarling wool. “How is your arm?”
“I’ll be stoic and say it doesn’t bother me at all.”
“That seems to be your style.”
He smiled, drawing her closer, closer. There was so much doubt in the way she moved. But still she came.
“And your uncle? What happened with him?”
