He gave a dark laugh. “Nothing less than the complete abolition of all physical punishment against all children everywhere.”
His uncle’s eyes widened, and then he burst out laughing, much like Sebastian had done. But it no longer seemed funny.
“Just wait ’til Handley hears this,” said the major. “I daresay he’s in sore need of that two thousand.”
“I hardly feel the wager can stand when it was made in ignorance of the true stakes.”
His uncle pulled a face. “Back out? You? Don’t be a disgrace, Cote. I taught you better than that.”
For a moment, Sebastian looked at him, conscious in a way he hadn’t been in years of the variouslessonshis uncle had given him. Thanks to Mrs Ardingly, he couldn’t help but remember that a great many of them had involved a birch rod. Or worse.
“I’ll teach you what your father’s too weak to. I’ll make you a man, boy. You’ll never end up as pathetic as him…”
Well. That was true. He was nothing like his father and was grateful for it.
He rolled a shoulder as he eyed the major, aware of a thin, silvery scar there. As a young lieutenant, Jonathan Tait had once beaten him with his sheathed sword. He’d been drunk, and gone too far, and apologised in the morning. But the scar remained.
“He’d been flogged so roughly the weals still hadn’t faded three months later…”
Try fifteen years, Mrs Ardingly. Andmyonly crime was to refuse a whore.
“Of course I’m not going to back down on a wager,” he said.
“Aye.” The major smiled, that mocking glint back in his eye. “A gentleman can’t.” Even with his sister made a countess and his own self-made worth on the battlefield, the foundry owner’s son had his own lingering scar. “AndSebastian Thornecan’t be seen to lose one.”
“Quite.”
“So then, what are you going to do about it? How does the high and mighty Sebastian Thorne win an unwinnable wager?”
Sebastian shrugged, looking both ways down the street this time before stepping into it.
“I have absolutely no idea. But I’ll win it. You taught me that, Uncle. I do not lose.”
It was the sixth time Sebastian had made a morning call to the marquess’s home at Grosvenor Square. On the third of those visits, he’d asked for the Lady Frances Elston’s hand, and her father, the marquess, had promptly given it.
That Lady Frances hadn’t acquiesced quite so promptly was mildly annoying but unsurprising. A lady on the verge of becoming engaged was a far more interesting social object than one already and irrevocably betrothed—no one was likely to jilthim—and he could hardly blame the lady for milking the situation for all it was worth. After all, her social nous was one of many reasons he’d selected her.
A marquess’s daughter, the family wealthy, the father sensible and well respected, even if not brilliant himself. Lady Frances had been proclaimed a diamond on her debut and had shone bright ever since. Now four-and-twenty and with all her schoolgirl naivety worn away, she was an established leader offashionable society—clever, astute, politically aware, and ready to make him a perfect wife.
A porter bowed him into the house. A bewigged and liveried footman led him up the stairs.
Silver was clearly Lady Frances’s latest theme. The footman’s livery was new—silver froggings on pale blue, his powdered wig with a slivery-gleam. And Sebastian spied two men hard at work in Lady Frances’s morning room as they passed, papering the walls with blue-and-silver paper. So he wasn’t surprised when the footman led him to the Blue Gallery and announced him with a bow.
“The Viscount Cotereigh for The Lady Frances Elston.”
The Blue Gallery, unlike the West, was floored in pale marble and held many marble plinths, on which stood marble statues. The long drapes were pale blue, brocaded with silver, and the three great mirrors which broke up the artwork on the walls were bordered in silver too. Where else would Lady Frances be found when her heart was set on silver and blue?
She was seated in a window seat, halfway down the long room. In a nod to propriety, her mother sat distantly on a small sofa—blue, of course—that had been arranged in the farthest corner. Sebastian could hardly have been certain without field glasses, but the marchioness was probably occupied with some sewing, no doubt blue and silver. If they happened to shout, she might even have been able to hear them.
He approached Lady Frances where she awaited him, smiling. Her slim figure was swathed in a generous column of silver satin, very wide at the hem, which was ornamented with many blue ribbons and another blue ribbon around the high waist. A cluster of silver stones twinkled from its centre, just beneath a bosom seemingly dusted with silver. In her fair hair more diamonds twinkled, and a blue ribbon bound behind her ringlets. Theblue suited her colouring. The silver only just. Her golden hair needed to be paler for that.
“Hints of Marie Antoinette,” he said, pressing her extended fingers with a smile. “Is it due a comeback, do you think? Those old French Court fashions? Please don’t make buckled shoes the thing. I don’t think I could stand it.”
“For gentlemen? No! But can a lady have too many jewels?”
“Absolutely. This amount”—he nodded to her as he sat on the padded window seat—“is at the limit of good taste. And I suspect you’re one of the few women who could pull off the look in daylight. But if it were a ball, the room dim and candlelit…” He reached out and touched her earlobe, taking it gently between his finger and thumb. “Diamonds here.” He trailed a finger down her chest. “And here.”
He touched her, he knew, to stake a claim. But also perhaps in the way one examines a horse: running one’s hands down its legs, picking up its hooves. Checking not only for imperfections, but for temperament—how it responded to being handled.
