What must that be like, to share everything with a woman? Not just your purse and your body, but your whole heart and mind too? All those shoddy, unfit, patched up parts you kept from the world, the way a poor man keeps his holed stockings hidden behind the carefully polished leather of his shoes.
Mrs Ardingly would be a redoubtable friend.
“Well?”
That was Tom, prompting him to play. The boy held his cards with greater avidity than Sebastian had seen in Watier’s when men’s entire fortunes were at stake.
“Don’t worry, sprat, I’ll win all those coins back.”
“It’s a penny a trick.”
“I believe I’m good for it.”
His father chuckled. A startling sound. Sebastian’s head jerked towards it, but he mustn’t stare…
He kept his attention on his cards, and they started to play.
An hour later, when his father started to get fractious and distracted, Sebastian helped him up the stairs. To distract the boy and stop him begging the earl to stay for another game, he told him there was a present waiting for him in the hall. The boy ran off, and Sebastian took his father’s arm on his.
“I’m all right, I’m all right,” the man protested.
“I know you are.”
Mrs Ardingly had tactfully quit the table and gone to admire her aunt’s handiwork. Sebastian escorted his father to hisbedroom, talking of nothing much—the book he’d bought, who he’d dined with last night, the works at Woodhaven.
He was conscious of the letter tucked inside his coat, the folded paper thick against his chest. Was this the right time? Would there ever be a right time?
He supposed he was a coward. Or maybe he didn’t want to break the spell of this last hour. There was that stupid hope again, whispering in his brain. But his father’s hands were already shaking. Cards and company couldn’t fix this.
He handed his father over to his valet’s care. One last squeeze of the man’s arm, and then he went back down the stairs, packing away sentiment and the tightness in his throat with every step. The letter crinkled. He would put it in his study and then return to the ladies.
His mood shifted at that, eager to latch onto pleasanter thoughts. He went down the last stair, turned the corner towards his study, but there was a figure in the hallway, coming towards him.
He smiled wide. “Mrs Ardingly.”
Finally. Alone. The two of them.
Euphoria caught him in its grinning eddy. He took her elbow and pulled her into the nearest room, closing the door behind them with his other hand.
Her lips were parted in surprise, her eyes darted past him to the door, to the floor, to the space beyond his shoulder. Her focus settled on his hand where it still held her arm. Her lips flattened in disapproval.
Fake. Feigned. Not the whole truth of what she felt. The flush on her cheeks wasn’t anger. Neither was the rise and fall of her chest.
“This is my punishment, I suppose,” she said, “for seeking you out. I only wanted to know how your father was.”
“I know.” His thumb shifted on her arm. The smallest stroke. “But it has been a very long time since we were alone.”
Her eyes flashed to his, anger a transparent glass below which he saw much.
“We have no need to be alone.”
“Don’t we?”
No answer. She fixed her attention on the floor by his feet, standing very, very still. But he could feel the thump of her heart through the hold he had on her.
“My father sometimes has good days.” He would speak of this. It would keep her here longer. “In the past, there have been weeks where he has promised me he is entirely better. He never is. It never lasts.”
She gave a small nod, her stance softening now she was on safer ground.
