by Lisa Campell
Now the dark walls of the room swam vaguely, and instead of coming up with anger, Eliza laughed softly. “What’s it to you?” she asked. “We’re going to sleep in separate rooms tonight, like we always do.”
He rolled his blue eyes. “I should have seen that coming. Yes, that’s exactly what we’re going to do, darling, and you won’t make me feel a smidgen of guilt about it.”
She sat back in her chair, fiddling with the stem of her empty wine glass. She hungered for him—the wine had only increased her lust for him.
Scenes from the night of her debutante ball played on the backdrop of Eliza’s mind with stunning clarity. She could see the star-dusted night sky as if she’d beheld it only yesterday. She thought she could feel the Earl of Wyhurst moving up behind her, coiled, a snake ready to strike.
She felt angry—he had taken everything from her. Her reputation, her chance at having a husband who saw to all of her needs—and even her first kiss.
“Tell me about your first kiss,” she said to Sebastian. Her attention returned to the present moment, she examined him searchingly. “Surely it was nothing like mine.”
Sebastian chuckled. “I don’t think I’ll choose to answer that.” He reached for a half empty bottle and poured himself a little. Eliza was charming even when she was drunk, but that was a road to the past he was unwilling to travel.
“Did you know I had never been kissed before Lord Wyhurst did it?” She was only half speaking to him. Her hazy eyes had wandered away from his face, toward the edge of the flickering pool of candlelight. “I had such fanciful, magical dreams about that moment as a child, woven from stories I heard you tell.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You weren’t supposed to be listening to those.”
She flashed a hint of a mischievous grin. “No. But I wanted to be around Matthew. And you.” Her words dropped off into a well of silence which extended for minutes. Husband and wife sat in the flickering shadows of their dining room as the maid cleared plates and glasses from the tabletop around them. The wine bottle disappeared. Eliza didn’t miss it.
“I think he must have done away with some part of me that night,” she continued suddenly. Her voice was subdued. “Maybe that’s why I couldn’t stop feeling so awfully sad.”
“I’m sorry.” Sebastian seemed as though he had misgivings about taking her hand in his during this vulnerable moment, in case it sent her the wrong message about his intentions. But he did so anyway. “For what it’s worth, I have never believed him. That’s why you’re here now, with me. Matthew was wrong to assume the worst of you.”
His touch brought Eliza a little bit back to herself, intoxicating her in a different way. Her smile now was rueful and tragic. “Seb, I’m here now because Matthew made you take me in, didn’t he? You did this for him, not for me.” Her voice broke on the last word.
Sebastian didn’t answer for a long time. Nor did he let go of her hand. Eliza watched him contemplate the sleek, dark wood of the table. She regretted every word that had come out of her mouth. The moment the house had emptied, she should have gone to bed. Instead, she had forced Seb into a corner he had made every attempt to avoid. And she had no one but herself to blame.
Eventually, he drew in a deep breath and lifted his eyes to her face. “No, Eliza. If you must know, I have done precious little for Matthew in recent memory. I was at the ball for you. And I was at our wedding for you. Not your brother. For you.”
Her slender hand went slack beneath his fingers. She blinked, eyes wide and glowing in the dying flames. Sebastian regarded her with an expression she was hopeless to read in her current state. Then he rose from his chair, crossed over to her side of the table, leaned down, and pressed his mouth to hers.
Eliza gasped, then she leaned into the glorious passion of his kiss. The warmth of his lips, of his body so close to hers, radiated down to her toes. As Sebastian’s arms embraced her, she forgot all other things. All sensations faded in the shadow of his brilliant light. He had never held her before, and now Eliza wished he would never let her go. Her burden of worries, her nervousness, her unassuaged fears, all melted away as if they had never even existed.
Chapter Eight
Later, Sebastian would describe that first kiss as a prolonged instance of weakness that led ultimately to a dead end. They had stared at each other without a word in the aftermath, each too startled to react beyond the initial collision. Naked lust burned in Eliza’s eyes. She tasted like wine, and she was more tempting than anything as she caught her breath in front of him, a lock of her hair tumbling out her bun, framing her cheeks.
Clearly, she had expected him to sweep her up in his arms and carry her off to bed. Sebastian had to admit that the thought crossed his mind even after they had parted without so much as another touch. He’d lain awake in his half empty bed for what had seemed like hours, imagining the expression on her face if he turned up at her bedroom door and asked to come inside.
He hadn’t, of course. No matter the strength of her allure, and no matter his regret over leaving her longing for him, Sebastian held firm. His affection for Eliza had only deepened, and though he was coming to terms with the idea that it was a trend that might continue indefinitely, he still could not permit her as his lover. There was so much—too much—she could never understand. And to enlighten her would only cause her pain
That aloofness, he suspected, she would find some way to blame on Matthew, as if her brother had instructed Sebastian explicitly never to touch her. But the real reason had nothing to do with the Baron of Colchester. In fact, Matthew didn’t know a thing about it—because Sebastian had never told him. And he doubted that he ever would.
As popular and in-demand as the Marquess of Dain often was, few knew much more than his good looks and his unconventional opinions regarding matrimony. Only his closest friends had ever seen a hint of the strife that had plagued his childhood, and yet it was the very reason Eliza had come to know him so well.
He had been a familiar face at the Colchester family home because he frequently could not return to his own. His only sibling, a sister, suffered from an affliction the parade of doctors typically termed hysteria, though the episodes Sebastian had witnessed seemed to him to slant more darkly than that single word implied.
Lady Teresa Campden did not speak as much as she screamed, terrifying, panic-filled sounds that drove sleep far from her younger brother’s room at night. Sebastian had seen his share of early, bleak dawns as he huddled in bed and listened to his sister suffer. More than once, he’d come upon his beleaguered mother crying in the hall outside her daughter’s room, a shape so broken down and worn he hardly recognized her.
“Send him to Lord and Lady Colchester,” his father would say, at least once a week. “Seeing this won’t do him any good.”
His mother sobbed that she wanted her Sebastian to remember Teresa as something other than a tortured figure writhing in the confines of a bed. On days when Teresa’s bedroom was quiet, their mother sometimes led him gingerly to the doorway for a peek at the sibling he grew up barely knowing. She reminded him of a drawing of a ghost he had seen in a book of fables, her long dark hair spread like a black halo around her face on the pillow.
Usually, Teresa was asleep for these surreptitious visits, but on occasion, her huge pale eyes would flicker instantly to his face. He was frightened of her as a very young child, especially when she reached out toward him from her sickbed. Her papery skin stretched thin over pronounced bones. But there was real warmth in her smile.
“Look at what a lovely child you are,” she’d whisper. “Don’t be afraid. I love you very much.” As he got older and began to understand, the distance between him and the bed lessened. In the evenings after he returned from Matthew’s house, Sebastian headed straight for his sister’s room so that he might sit on the edge of her mattress and tell her about the world.
His parents learned to enjoy the connection their children shared, but Seb learned from a very early age that not e
veryone viewed people like Teresa in the same way. Time and again, he endured ruthless mocking from the other children who knew about her condition. He listened to them chant their wishes for her death and warn him that someday he would lose his mind as well.
“You and your whole family!” the kids jeered. “All off to the sanitarium!”
As it happened, Teresa wasn’t the only one struggling with those kinds of demons. Their uncle hadn’t had the privilege of parents willing to support him in his illness, and he whiled away his hours in a rest home in the countryside. Seb’s mother went on monthly visits, and she always came back looking older. The lines on her face appeared to have deepened, her skin grown pale and drawn.
Once, when he was older, Sebastian made the choice to accompany her. “Oh, sweetheart,” his mother had said, “are you sure?” Right away, he had known he would see nothing good when they arrived. But he had been firm in his convictions, and so she brought him on the long, boring ride through the country, to a sprawling plot of land enclosed by a thick iron fence.
The first thing young Sebastian had seen was a homemade sign tacked hastily to the gate with the word IMBECILES scrawled in large, cruel letters. His mother winced as her gaze passed over it. She hurried him down the walk, toward a plain, stone-fronted building. “Come now,” she told him nervously. “Be quick. We mustn’t leave your uncle waiting.”
Sebastian’s uncle could not have cared either way. He had a vacant, unseeing stare most often focused on a blank spot over the heads of his visitors. On the day of Seb’s visit, he was more or less catatonic, having just been sedated, according to the nurses. Sebastian recalled the singular emotion he had experienced as he watched his mother talk to and care for her brother. He had expected anger in himself, perhaps apprehension or anxiety.
Instead, all he felt was an overwhelming sorrow. Had he not been such a naturally stoic child, and had he not borne witness to the tragedy of his sister’s life, he might have cried. But he stood there looking on, and when they left for home, the images stayed in his mind’s eye for a long, long time.
There was only one thing to take away from that somber day. His mother had escaped that hell herself, only to pass it on to her daughter. Now Sebastian was the one who’d escaped. Did that mean his children were next to be born into a tormented world?
The notion had dogged him for over half his life. By the time he reached adulthood, he had made his decision. There would be no wife, no children, no family. Sebastian refused to be responsible for the horrible burden of suffering he had seen laid upon his sister’s back. Nor would he risk subjecting his son or daughter to the empty life his uncle led, those clouded eyes staring at nothing.
It was a controversial path to take in high-society London, and it brought its own brand of grief into his life. He had robbed his mother of her chance at seeing grandbabies from either of her offspring, an experience he had no doubt she would have treasured. He had been prepared to forsake the majority of the ton’s favor—and was soundly disgusted to learn that his looks, his sex, and his inherent title more than made up for whatever indiscretions he could think to commit.
At the end of it all, he did have a beautiful, loving wife who slept in a different room, in a different bed. Would she ever forgive him for what probably felt like the greatest of all insults? She had none of the context behind his actions, only the effects. Part of Sebastian wanted to make her understand. She deserved that much, didn’t she?
What good would that knowledge do? What if it simply increased her misery? Eliza had been so starry-eyed over her debut, he was absolutely positive she’d expected someday to become a mother at least once, if not several times. How crushing to know that a dream was dead before it ever got a chance to live.
Eliza had already been crushed once in her young life. Sebastian couldn’t rightly say if she would be able to handle another great loss. It seemed prudent not to test her limits. For now, the great secrets would be kept, and husband and wife would spend all their nights apart. Myriad emotions swirled below the surface of his outward sympathy for her—wild desire, admiration, lust that sometimes teetered on the edge of love. Sebastian didn’t mind her persistent search for affection. On the contrary, it was enjoyable to know that a lady he had always admired from afar returned his interests.
That being said, they could not have another encounter. He’d lost control in a dangerous way, stepped too close to the edge of a chasm filled with swirling emotion. Were he to tip off of that cliff and fall, he’d be consumed for sure. A sensation very like the heady, sweet clutches of love already threatened to rear its seductive head.
In fact, he wanted her quite badly. He thought of her often, naked among his bedsheets, her pale skin illuminated by stray moonbeams. Eliza was the sort of lady about whom all sonnets were made. In another lifetime, she would have been a dream.
He had, however, learned firsthand that carelessness on any level came with heavy consequences. Neither his body, nor hers could be trusted not to betray them, even if they took every available precaution. The worst had happened to Sebastian early in his younger, wilder days, when London was still new and exciting.
Matthew knew about the girl. Eliza did not. An actress, Sebastian had met her during the course of a ball at the assembly rooms, drawn in by her long, golden hair and her willowy figure. She’d worn a clinging dress that made all the society ladies whisper to each other in shock and envy. Of course, Sebastian had to take her home. That was the kind of gentleman he’d been then. And she had proven herself to be that kind of girl.
The affair was short and stormy, lasting no more than a couple of months. Nonetheless, the smallest window of time was all it took. He remembered with agonizing clarity the night she told him that she was with child. She was scared of everything, she said. Scared of what her family would say, scared of his reaction.
Sebastian was terrified. All he thought about for hours was his sister and uncle, trapped in the hell of their own broken minds. To bring another poor soul into the world was an unthinkable sin. That was what he told his paramour. Her sobs sometimes still echoed in his head.
That night, they parted on tense, uncertain terms. He had no way of knowing it was the last time he’d ever see or speak to her. A week after the revelation of her pregnancy, news of her death raced through the ton like wildfire. She had taken a miscalculated dose of diachylon.
Everyone knew what the cause of death had meant. She was pregnant, and she did not want to be. What they did not know was the real identity of the unborn child’s father.
That was a weight Sebastian carried on his own, one he fully expected to bear in silence for the rest of his life. The lingering pain, the doubt, the guilt of that experience was something he never wanted anyone to endure, least of all Eliza. She was too young and too naïve. She did not yet know the dangers of the world she coveted so much.
Sebastian was only protecting her.
If he had his way, he’d buy his wife a separate house and court her chastely until the day they died. Plenty of longing glances, fleeting touches, shared smiles in public spaces. But no unsupervised time together, and absolutely no touching. Then they’d be able to keep each other safe—from feelings, from heartache, and from the horror he had felt each time he had witnessed such abject, needless suffering.
Chapter Nine
The kiss threw Eliza into turmoil, filled her with a fever that would not be quenched. She was rather ashamed that she’d been so inebriated during their first embrace, and she hoped fervently that her embarrassing condition had not discouraged possible future advances. Unfortunately, that appeared to be precisely what had occurred.
Sebastian, so briefly passionate that evening in the dining room, backed off completely afterward. Where he had once been always friendly, if not amorous, he became distant and aloof. The traces of intimacy they had previously enjoyed disappeared altogether. Eliza found herself once again spending most of her time in her bedroom, despondent over the sudden catastrop
hic collapse of her marriage.
“Does he think I am not happy with him?” she asked Judith over tea. “Outside of the bed chamber, nothing could be further from the truth.” Her cheeks reddened. “Sebastian is the gentleman I would have chosen for myself if I had the chance. We have been entwined by fate, and yet he hurts me so.”
“Oh, darling, he doesn’t mean to.” Judith hugged her sister-in-law. “Seb is a wild soul, Eliza. He requires taming by a patient hand. No woman or lady has ever been able to hold him down for long. It’s not surprising that he might chafe against the bit.”
“He thinks he made a mistake by asking for my hand,” Eliza mumbled miserably. “I can see it when he looks at me, if he ever does. He acts as though I might have the plague!”