by Megan Bryce
“You don’t know her.” George narrowed his eyes. “Do you? No. Don’t tell me.”
Sebastian leaned his elbows on the desk and stared at his steepled fingers. He didn’t look at George when he said, “That’s all it would take, is it? Tell you I slept with her.”
“You haven’t.”
“Are you certain?”
George thought and thought. Because if his brother had slept with Elinor, then yes, that’s all it would take.
But he knew Sebastian hadn’t.
“She’s not to your taste. And you are not to hers.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know you. And I know her. And perhaps it’s not the most flattering picture of a woman that I want to tie myself to, but sleeping with you wouldn’t accomplish anything.”
“You’re right, that’s not very flattering.”
“I think it best to find out the faults early on in a relationship, not ten years in.”
Sebastian raised an eyebrow and George said, “Which is why I would like you to invite Elinor to dinner.”
“She’s not welcome. You’re not marrying her.”
George said nothing. Didn’t know what to say to make his brother see, to make his brother into a different sort of person.
Sebastian said, “What of Miss Westin?”
George couldn’t imagine how much worse that conversation was going to go so he pushed it out of mind.
“One step at a time.”
“I appreciate that you chose me first,” Sebastian said, not sounding appreciative at all.
George looked down at his knee, wiped at a spot that had appeared sometime during the night.
“I would like to bring Elinor to dinner. I would like you to get to know her. I think you would like her.”
“She can’t have children, George! So what if I do find I like her?”
“Would it be so bad, Sebastian? Would the inevitable be so bad when it’s going to happen anyway?”
Sebastian shook his head, looking like he thought George was suddenly talking in Hindostanee.
“Yes! Because right now, it’s not inevitable. Right now, it’s a choice.”
Choice. The fates asking him to choose.
He already had.
But he knew his brother wouldn’t see that. Would think that there was still a choice to be made until he stood in front of the vicar.
Sebastian had thought the same of India. Had thought that George would change his mind and there was still a choice up until the ship sailed.
There hadn’t been. Nothing would have kept him from that boat eight years ago once he’d decided.
And last night, he’d known looking at Lord Westin that he would marry the widow.
He rose, meeting Sebastian’s angry eyes. “If it feels like your crew is mutinying Sebastian, perhaps you should consider that you are on the wrong course. That where you want us to go is not in our best interest. And perhaps it’s not in yours, either.”
“Wrong course? Best interest? The right course is the one that insures the survival of this house, this name, this legacy.”
George shook his head, knowing they would never see eye to eye on this. Knowing that his brother– a man who had given his life to this house, his title, and their father’s legacy– couldn’t believe otherwise.
The only thing George could do was figure out what he wanted to give his life to. And what price he was willing to pay for that choice.
Megan BryceTo Wed The Widow
Twelve
Sebastian watched George walk out the door and thought again that his crew was mutinying.
George married to the widow. A woman married five times before. A woman who couldn’t have children.
His wife angry with him, furious.
Perhaps you should consider that you are on the wrong course.
The wrong course? That implied there was more than one, and Sebastian had never entertained the thought that there could be.
Because if he let himself wonder for even a moment what the point of it was, he’d start questioning what the point of anything was.
He stepped back quickly from that great, gaping black hole of unknown threatening to swallow him.
He was right. This was right. And whatever sacrifice was required was worth it.
He clung to the thought that George hadn’t asked yet. Perhaps the widow would turn him down.
And then Sebastian choked on his own laughter. The widow wouldn’t turn George down.
A light knock on the door stopped Sebastian’s laughter and he called out hopefully, rising to meet whoever was on the other side. Had George returned? Come back to tell him it was all a joke, that of course George knew he couldn’t marry the widow.
Sebastian stomach tightened into a ball of dread when it was Flora who pushed the door in, when it was Flora who had knocked on his library door.
He looked at her wild dress that now drooped tiredly and said, horrified, “Are you just getting home?”
“Yes.”
That was all she said. Yes.
Where had she been? Who had she been with?
“Flora–”
“You’re done with me, right Sebastian? Then it doesn’t matter.”
His mouth fell open, his heart stopped beating.
He fell into his chair, speechless, and she looked at him a long, quiet minute.
When she turned around to leave, he jumped from his chair, searching for any topic that would keep her there with him. Keep him wondering who she’d been with.
“George is going to ask the widow to marry him.”
She stopped and nodded. “He loves her.”
Sebastian sighed. “He doesn’t. It’s infatuation.”
“It isn’t. If you’d only look, you could see the difference between Miss Westin and Lady Haywood. There is one, Sebastian.”
He could see a glimmer of his old Flora in her calm and rational answer even if it disagreed with his assessment and he smiled at her.
“The difference is one will give us a male heir and the other won’t.”
She didn’t smile back at him. She flinched.
“And that is everything, isn’t it?”
She turned again to leave.
“Flora.”
She didn’t stop, just said over her shoulder, “If you want your brother happy, you will let him choose.”
She closed the door behind her and Sebastian stood stock still.
Two people had walked out on him today.
Mutiny.
Perhaps you should consider that you are on the wrong course, he thought. And then slammed his fist onto his desk.
George had decided that he couldn’t see Miss Westin in rumpled and stained clothing so he’d gone home for a change of clothing, and once there had decided that he really did need his wits about him and chose to spend the rest of the day asleep.
He woke missing Elinor and headed to her townhouse. Too late to see Miss Westin anyway, he would call on her in the morning.
He wasn’t looking forward to it but a promise had been implied. And he felt he owed it to her to be the first to break the news of his engagement to Elinor. He didn’t want Miss Westin to hear it from anyone else first.
There was a skip to his step and a smile on his face when Jones let him in, and George knew he’d made the right choice.
He was greeted at the drawing room door by three happy dogs and he put Anala down among them to jump and yip excitedly.
Elinor watched him pat each dog and say hello to them and said, “I wasn’t sure to expect you tonight. When you didn’t come last night, I assumed you’d finally asked for Miss Westin.”
He shook his head. “No. And I won’t be.”
She sat down with a thump and whispered, “That’s what St. Clair told me.”
He stopped greeting the dogs to come toward her, searching her face. “He came to visit you?”
When she nodded, he said, “I’m sorry,” and she smiled.
“He came to beg me not to marry you.”
George fell to his knees in front of her and said again, “I’m sorry. He’ll come around, Elinor. My brother, too.”
She ran her fingers through his hair. “You are entirely too optimistic.”
“A man has to be optimistic when he asks a woman to marry him.”
Elinor looked into his eyes and stopped playing with his hair. “It does seem like it would help.”
“He has to think that she won’t let him suffer for very long before she gives him an answer.”
She sat back in her seat. “I said I wouldn’t marry any man unless I was breeding.”
Sinclair had to admit this was not how he thought this conversation would go.
“And I told you I couldn’t marry you unless the countess was breeding. Things change.”
She said quickly, “I think you should go ask for Miss Westin.”
That stopped him and he sat back on his heels. “What? Why?”
She looked over at the dogs playing and George said, “What did St. Clair say to you? Wait, no, let me guess.”
“It’s only partly what he said…because it seems likely that I may…never…”
She took a deep breath, unable to say the words. That there might never be children, and George said, “I don’t care, Elinor.”
She whispered, “You should. It hurts, George. Hurts more than you think it will.”
He stopped breathing when she said his name, didn’t move. When her eyes met his, he said softly, “Time to call the solicitors.”
“I did say that, didn’t I? Things change.”
George pushed himself from the floor to sit next to her on the sofa. He tucked her into his side and leaned back, watching Anala pick a spot between two mammoth dogs.
“Tell me what’s changed.”
He didn’t think she knew. Didn’t think she would recognize love when it knelt at her feet, but she snorted and there was disdain in her voice when she said, “You don’t think I can see? St. Clair knew.”
George laughed. “I do love you.”
“I know.”
“And?”
She turned her face to his. He felt her breath on his face, saw the wild and frightened knowledge in her eyes.
She whispered, “George.”
He put his lips against her and murmured again, “Time to call the solicitors.”
He slid his hand up her leg, around her back, and she flinched.
Sinclair froze, then pulled back slowly.
No emotion betrayed Elinor’s face as she said, “I know it’s hard to believe but St. Clair wasn’t my worst visitor today.”
“Your brother,” he said and there was relief in his voice because he didn’t have to go murder his friend.
“Retribution bit him,” she said and this time there was emotion. Retribution lifted his head, shaking Anala off and coming to put his head in Elinor’s lap.
George said, “Good.”
She nodded like she wasn’t completely sure. “Something…is broken inside him. Something has always been a little broken inside him. My father was not a gentle man.”
“Did your father break you?”
She took a long time answering. Just sat and petted her dogs head. She finally looked at him, her eyes sad and shuttered, and she said, “He tried.”
“Trying isn’t succeeding.”
“Some days it felt like it. When my father died, Alan got worse. And then, Marcus. He loved Marcus.” She tipped her head to Sinclair. “The Italian Stallion.”
“Of course.”
“Everyone loved Marcus. I did, too. Eventually.”
“But not when you married him?”
She smiled at Sinclair like he was a preposterous little child. “Apparently, I don’t marry men I love.”
“You will.”
“You are entirely too optimistic.”
He’d never thought so before. But then again he’d never been in love before.
“And you are entirely too stubborn.”
She laughed. “Yes. That’s not going to change, George.”
He smiled, basking in the sound of his name on her lips. Some things could change.
“Then we’ll wait. And see what happens.”
Funny that as soon as she entertained the idea that there might never be a child, George was the one who wouldn’t give up hope. A child, a hint of a child, and he’d whisk her to Scotland. Solicitors be damned.
He pulled her onto his lap, careful of her bruises. “Say it again.”
She said, “George,” and he could hear everything he needed to hear in that word.
“Elinor.” And then because he’d been saying her name for ages and it didn’t mean the same thing at all, said, “Love.”
“Oh, George.”
The earl knocked on the widow’s door early. He’d gone to his brother’s quarters and been told he hadn’t been home yet.
Sebastian guessed he could have gone to the club, tried to find his brother there.
He hadn’t bothered.
When the widow’s man servant opened the door, Sebastian said, “My brother is here. Tell him the earl needs him posthaste.”
Her servant was well trained at least, and merely nodded and escorted him to the drawing room before shutting the door behind him.
The earl sat, figuring his brother wouldn’t rush down no matter the message.
When the door opened ten minutes later, it wasn’t George.
Lady Haywood said, “He says he’s not coming down.”
“Go back up and tell him there is a situation at one of my estates. We will leave as soon as he has packed.”
She sat, and Sebastian wondered when his authority had become useless. Flora, George, the widow. No one listened to him.
“You will have to do better than that, my lord. A situation with tenants, sheep? A few details will help sell the story.”
“I’m an earl. I don’t have to sell a story.”
“You’re not an earl to George. You’re his brother.”
Sebastian blew out a breath. “Go get him, Lady Haywood. Or I will get him myself.”
She shook her head as if disappointed in him and that only enraged him further.
He stared into her soul and growled, “I could destroy you.”
He should have known she didn’t have a soul because all she did was blink and cock her head at him. Then she smiled.
“I think someone in your position could.”
“But not me?”
She shook her head in answer.
His nostrils flared and he thought by gad he would destroy her. Would wipe that satisfied smile off her face if it was the last thing he did.
She said, “You are too much like your brother.”
The door opened again and Sebastian turned to glare at the brother he was nothing like but it was only a servant with the tea tray.
When the woman finally left, he said, “And just how am I like him? I assure you I am not so gullible that I can be taken in by a pretty face and blond hair.”
Lady Haywood poured and stirred and handed him a cup. “Do you really think him gullible? And isn’t it so interesting that those closest to us are the ones who know us the least.”
“I know you, Lady Haywood.”
“Perhaps. And perhaps you do see me clearer than George, at least. But I see you just as clearly, and like him, you are a good man. You wouldn’t destroy someone who didn’t deserve it.”
He laughed and surprised himself. “I don’t think that argument will sway me. A widow aiming for her sixth husband with my brother.”
She cleared her throat. “Husbands are overrated.”
“You would know.”
“Yes, I would. And I assure you they are as inconvenient and irritating as they appear to be. And while I can guess that you won’t believe me, I’m not…I am not looking for a sixth.”
“You’re right, I don’t believe you.”
She nodded and sipped. And s
aid nothing more.
They sat in silence until their cups were empty and then she set hers down gently and rose.
She studied him, then shook her head.
“Really, my lord, you will only make him more set upon this course than he already is. Because he is not gullible, or stupid, or happy being led where others want him to go. He came back all the way from India not because you told him to, but because you needed him. He would do anything for those he loves.”
“Do not make the mistake that this infatuation with you is love. That he would sacrifice for you like he would and should for his family.”
She whispered, “Don’t make the mistake that he doesn’t. That he cares one jot that I am the widow or who my relations are or whether I can give him an heir.”
Sebastian all but jumped from his chair. “You do not know him!”
She stood her ground. “He is an open book. I suggest you take the next opportunity to look. At your countess, too, although she is not nearly so easy to see through.”
A red rage filled his vision and he balled his fists. George had always been a mystery to Sebastian but he’d thought he’d known who his wife was. Having the widow confirm that he didn’t made him want to smash everything in this room, the blasted woman included.
And then she was across the room, her hand on the knob and saying, “I will send George down. Perhaps you can have a realistic emergency manufactured by the time he’s ready.”
“Stay away from the countess.”
She stopped, not turning around.
“She loves you, you know?”
“How do you know?”
“I’m her friend.”
“No. You don’t have friends. You have victims and marks.”
She laughed, still facing the door. “You must have known my father.”
“Knew him and didn’t like him.”
She nodded. “No one did. He didn’t care.”
“The apple does not fall far from the tree.”
“I agree it is a worrisome thought. Not many do like me, and I don’t care too much about it. Still, I do hope that I am not like him.”
She opened the door and was halfway through it when she paused. “You won’t ask for my advice, won’t welcome when I give it to you.”
How dare she. Give advice to an earl of the realm?