“’Tis a lovely gown. Ye’ll look like sunshine amidst the miserable clouds outside.”
“Er, thank you.”
Sebastian rested his forehead against the door with his eyes squeezed tight. He had no idea how long he stayed like that.
“You may enter, Your Grace.” Rebecca’s voice broke through the coiled tension sprung throughout his body, and he jerked as if he’d been prodded with a bolt of lightning. “I am decent.”
’Tis a shame—Sebastian ruthlessly cut the thought. He slowly pulled the door back and stepped through the arch into the main chamber, catching his first sight of Lady Rebecca Thatcher. ‘Decent’ was not the word that came to mind. Decadent. Delicious. Desirous… Fiery sunshine in the depths of moonless night.
“Your Grace?”
A small cough erupted. “We should get something to eat,” he choked out, unable to keep from staring at her skin’s flush from her bath set off by the brilliant hue of her gown. The gown he’d plucked from her valise. Someone should have taken a musket to his chest. Surely, the floor was saturated with his blood.
“I should look in on Serena,” she said sweeping by him, felling him almost to his knees in lavender.
There was no response left within him to voice. He could only step aside and inhale the devastating fragrance that tempted him to drop to his knees and worship her very Amazonian grandness.
Hopefully, the bathwater had chilled to ice by now.
Fourteen
Rebecca had decided she couldn’t risk leaving Serena alone in the suite for a supper downstairs. So Sebastian had accommodated her and ordered up roasted pheasant, boiled potatoes and fresh peas set up on a table next to the windows. The sheeting rain created an uncomfortable sense of intimacy. Keeping her gaze from straying to the bed proved more difficult than one of her staunch constitution. It was a blasted albatross around her neck. Gabby’s words going through her head didn’t do anything to ease her tension.Conjugal relations are painful.Rebecca picked up her wine and sipped. “Did Serena give you any trouble?”
“Certainly not,” he said, looking affronted by any such notion.
She used her fork, pushing the food around her plate. “Has her fever abated?”
“Not by much, I’m afraid. We are likely stranded for another day.”
Rebecca grimaced, worry for Serena and Gabby crawling through her. She was going to need the duke’s assistance to save her friend from self-destruction. She took a breath and looked up. “You should continue on to London, Your Grace. There is no need for you to remain here with Serena and I.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He meant it. Blast the saints. He wouldn’t leave them there. It would be a matter of his precious honor.
Rebecca pushed away her plate, her appetite completed abated now, considering the situation. She’d never, in all the years of hers and Gabby’s friendship, broken her friend’s confidence. But Gabby was impulsive and headstrong. She’d always acted before thinking. And in this one instance, to save her friend, Rebecca feared she had no other option. She would have to tell Ryleigh, at the least, the partial truth.
“We shall leave as soon as your maid is capable of traveling,” he said, breaking into her self-recriminating tirade.
Rebecca leaned in and gripped his hand across the table. “Your Grace, listen to me carefully. You must get to Gab—Gabriella. I’m afraid she is going to do something most regretful.”
His eyes fell to their hands, and she snatched hers back, her face aflame. “Forgive my forwardness,” she said, mortified she’d touched him.
“What happened to calling me Sebastian, my lady?”
“W-what?”
He inclined his head toward her lace covered fingers. “Gloves. And, it being just the two of us.”
She lowered her hands to her lap and out of his sight, unable to speak. Her scar had never bothered her before. The fact that it did now aggravated and annoyed her.
The message in his expression was quite clear.One pair of flimsy, if delicate, lace cannot save you from me.Did he realize she wore no stockings? She hadn’t seen the need being confined to the chamber. The duke was in no danger from her despite his constant accusations. She did not wish to marry. There was no benefit in the constitution for women as far as she could tell.
“What is the all-fire need to reach my sister?” Impatience and irritation rippled over his face.
She blinked, horrified that her thoughts could go so far astray.
“She’s meeting Huntley…” His eyes narrowed and a long pause ensued. “Isn’tshe?”
Rebecca set her bearing, straightened her spine. Giving Ryleigh a leg up was not in her capability at the moment. Besides, she was here to help her friend, not sabotage her. “Is that what Gabs said in her note to you?”
