by Nina Rowan
The frank question didn’t appear to disconcert him. Instead, a vague smile curved his mouth—a smile in which any trace of humor surrendered to wickedness. A faint power crackled around him, as if attempting to break through his crust of lassitude.
“Ill?” he repeated. “Yes, Miss Whitmore, I am ill indeed.”
“Oh, I—”
He took a step forward, his hands flexing at his sides. She stepped back. Her heart thumped a restive beat. She glanced at the door, suddenly wishing Tom would hurry and arrive.
“I am ill behaved,” Mr. Hall said, his advance so deliberate that Clara had the panicked thought that she would have nowhere to go should he keep moving toward her. Should he reach out and touch her. Her skin prickled with sudden yearning for the act that she had once imagined in her youthful dreams.
She swallowed hard and tried to suppress the memories, reminding herself that she could no longer afford such girlish fancies.
“Ill considered,” Mr. Hall continued. Another step. Two. “Ill content. Ill at ease. Ill favored. Ill fated—”
“Ill bred?” Clara snapped, forcing her spine to stiffen in denial of her unforeseen anticipation.
Sebastian stopped. Then he chuckled, humor creasing his eyes. An unwelcome fascination rose in Clara’s chest as the sound of his deep, rumbling laugh settled alongside the delicious mixture of scents that she knew, even now, she would forever associate with him.
“Ill bred,” he repeated, his head cocked to the side. A lock of hair fell across his forehead. “The second son of an earl oughtn’t be ill bred, but that’s a fair assessment. My elder brother received a more thorough education in social graces.” Amusement still glimmered in his expression. “Though I don’t suppose he’s done that education much justice himself.”
Clara had little idea what he was talking about, though she did recall that his elder brother had recently wed. She also knew the Earl of Rushton had petitioned for a divorce from his wife several years ago. Rumors whispered at the edges of her mind, but back then Clara had been too ensnared in her own marriage to be concerned about a scandal involving an earl.
She realized that she’d backed up clear across the room to the stage. Sebastian stopped inches from her, close enough that she could see how the unfastened buttons of his collar revealed an inverted triangle of his skin, the vulnerable hollow of his throat where his pulse tapped.
A prickle skimmed up her forearms, tingling and delicious.
Sebastian kept looking at her, then reached into his pocket and removed a silk handkerchief. “May I?”
She shook her head, not certain what he was asking. “I beg your pardon?”
“You have—” He gestured to her cheek. “Dirt or grease.”
Before she could turn away, the cloth touched her face. She startled, more from the sensation than the sheer intimacy of the act. Sebastian Hall’s fingers were warm, light, and gentle against her face. She wondered, with a suddenness that made her heart throb, what his fingers would feel like on her skin.
He moved closer, a crease of concentration appearing between his dark eyebrows as he wiped the marks from her face with the soft handkerchief. Clara’s breath tangled in the middle of her chest. She stared at the column of his throat, bronze against the pure white of his collar, the coarse stubble roughening the underside of his chin.
She didn’t dare raise her gaze high enough to look at his mouth, though she wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to. The urge made her fingers curl tight into her palms, made a strange yearning stretch through her chest.
The muscles of his throat worked as he swallowed, his hand falling to his side. He stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket.
With his attention turned away from her, Clara noticed the weariness etched into the corners of his eyes, the brackets around his mouth, the faintly desperate expression in his eyes that had nothing to do with drink and everything to do with fatigue.
Fatigue. That was it. Sebastian Hall was bone-deep exhausted.
He met her gaze.
No. The man was exhausted past his bones and right into his soul.
Why…?
Before she could speak, Sebastian stepped back, turning toward the front of the room. Tom pushed open the doors and maneuvered a trolley loaded with four crates. He glanced up, his face red with exertion. “Almost done.”
Clara hurried to meet him. They conferred briefly about how best to organize the various parts of the machine, then Clara turned back to the stage. Sebastian Hall was gone.
The evening following his encounter with Clara Whitmore, Sebastian stood in the crush of yet another ballroom. Voices rose around him like flocks of multicolored birds. Gentlemen and ladies in their finest evening clothes circled the dance floor, gaslights shining against expanses of silk and satin. A fire crackled in the massive hearth at one end of the room. Music wafted from the quartet seated near the windows.
Sebastian shifted his weight, resisting the urge to tug at the knot of his cravat. The music reached his ears in streams of pallid, muted colors. A drop of sweat trickled down his spine. Beside him, his father, the Earl of Rushton, leveled his dark gaze on the crowd like an archer seeking a bull’s-eye.
“Lord Smythe,” Rushton said, nodding to a lanky gentleman standing near the fire. “Recently appointed by Her Majesty as Ambassador to the Spanish Court. I believe his daughter has returned from a school in Paris. She might be present at Lady Rossmore’s charity ball. You are attending, yes?”
“Yes.” Sebastian thought of Clara, with her strange eyes and voice flowing with blue and gold. He would see her again at the ball six nights hence, but he hoped she would be at her uncle’s museum when he visited the following morning.
“Lord Smythe is also involved with a report on the defects of patent laws and suggestions for reform, both of which you ought to know about,” Rushton continued. He drew his eyebrows together, an expression that enhanced the severity of his features. “Since it seems you will be in London for some time now, you must focus on a worthwhile pursuit. I’m glad to see you’re finally coming to your senses about what is expected of you.”
Of course Rushton was glad. Music had never been a worthwhile pursuit, not in Rushton’s eyes. His father didn’t even know the truth of Sebastian’s resignation from the renowned Court of Weimar. No one did.
If Sebastian didn’t tell anyone, perhaps it wouldn’t be real.
Not that there was anyone to tell, even if he’d wanted to. Aside from Rushton, their entire family was away from London. Alexander and Lydia now lived in St. Petersburg not far from their younger brother Darius’s own residence on the Fontanka canal. Their sister Talia had gone to St. Petersburg to visit and assist Lydia, who was expecting a child in the spring. Nicholas was…well, no one ever knew exactly where Nicholas was.
Maybe Sebastian ought to find out. Nicholas would know of a good place to escape.
Sebastian flexed his fingers and took a step toward the refreshment table just as a gentleman and young woman approached.
“Miss Butler.” Rushton inclined his head toward the woman while his left hand fisted discreetly around the sleeve of Sebastian’s coat. “Lovely as ever.”
“Thank you, my lord.” Pretty as a tea cake in a blue lace gown, she encompassed them both with a smile.
Her father, Lord Dalling, beamed with pride. A rotund man with a mustache that curled at the ends like a swine’s tail, he favored Sebastian with an approving nod. “Pleasure to see you, Hall. Rushton here tells us you’re thinking of choosing a position with the Patent Office.”
Sebastian stifled a sigh and attempted to detach himself from his father’s subtle grip. Curious word, that. Choose. No, he wouldn’t choose any bloody such thing as a position with the Patent Office. He didn’t even know if he could carry out a clerk’s duties. Not if it meant needing to write a great deal, as he doubted his ability to hold a pen for any length of time.
“Sebastian might take a position as clerk for Lord Russell,” Rushton said.
“Important to make one’s way up, isn’t that right, Dalling?”
“Indeed, Rushton, indeed.”
“It’s a pleasure to see you here, Mr. Hall,” Miss Butler said, turning her blue gaze to him. “We missed you over the summer when you were on your grand tour.”
“Thank you, Miss Butler.” Sebastian returned her smile, feeling only a thin shadow of the pleasure he’d once experienced when a woman had looked at him with such a bright, admiring expression. “How is your mother?”
“Very well. Gone off for a stay in the country.”
“Champagne, Miss Butler?” Rushton lifted a hand toward a passing server. Actually, he lifted a finger, a quick gesture as if he were flicking aside an insect. A footman hurried toward them, balancing a tray of precariously perched flutes.
Rushton handed glasses to Miss Butler and Lord Dalling. Another bead of sweat rolled down Sebastian’s spine. He curved his right hand around the flute his father extended, trying to force his fingers to obey, though his little finger didn’t move at all. His teeth came together hard when a cramp seized his hand, freezing the rest of his fingers into a clawlike position.
He grasped the glass with his left hand and steadied a sudden tumble of anxiety.
No one knew. No one knew.
“Oh, a waltz,” Miss Butler remarked as the musicians began a new piece. “I do so love the waltz.”
Rushton shot him a pointed glance, which Sebastian recognized well. He looked at the couples circling the dance floor. He had always liked dancing. Last spring, he wouldn’t have hesitated to ask Miss Butler to accompany him onto the floor, and he’d have ensured they both enjoyed every step and turn.
But Sebastian hadn’t danced once in the past five months, and he couldn’t start again now. Not when he could no longer count on his ability to guide his partner with accuracy.
An awkward silence fell. Dalling cleared his throat. Miss Butler smiled again.
“Mr. Hall, aren’t you recently returned from Germany?” she asked, her heart-shaped face turned up like an open flower. “My father said you had a rather prestigious position at Weimar at the invitation of Monsieur Liszt himself.”
“I did, yes.”
“But left due to a quarrel with the musical committee?”
“They wanted to alter one of my operas. I objected.”
“Of course you did.” She giggled with delight, as if she would have expected no less of him. “Though I can’t imagine working at the Patent Office will be quite as thrilling as performing for the Court of Weimar.”
“No. Not quite.”
“Do you intend to return to performing, then?”
“One day.”
He intended to. Whether or not he could was another matter entirely.
Sebastian knew what rumor said about his resignation—he’d stormed away from the position as director of the court theater in a fiery pique over creative control of his work. The committee members had pleaded for him to return. He’d refused and fled to the home of the Grand Duchess Irina Pavlova, the woman who had recommended him to Liszt for the position in the first place, so that he could work in peace. And, of course, everyone thought she was his lover, the celebrated grand duchess a decade his senior.
None of it was true, but society loved tossing the romantic story about as if it were a balloon bouncing on currents of air.
That, Sebastian thought, was both his saving grace and his downfall. The gossip was friendly, amused, intrigued—nothing like the horrific shock that had followed his parents’ divorce after the countess had had an affair and deserted her family.
Rushton, however, now reestablishing himself both politically and socially almost three years after the scandal, would hasten to forestall the glare of any gossip, no matter how good-natured.
Lord Dalling and his daughter soon made their excuses and went to the refreshment table. Sebastian felt his father’s gaze, weighted with displeasure.
“Why did you not ask her to dance?” Rushton asked.
Sebastian didn’t respond.
“She is also an excellent prospect for marriage,” his father continued. “Well educated, respectable. Her father is purported to be the next Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. You would do quite well with her.” Rushton studied him, his eyes narrowing. “Or seek out Smythe’s daughter at Lady Rossmore’s ball. Unless you intend to be occupied with one of your performances?”
The mild note of condescension in his father’s voice grated against Sebastian’s nerves. “No.”
“Why did you go to all the trouble of having your piano delivered to the Society of Musicians?”
“The Society’s piano needs repairs, so I offered to loan them mine.” That was the truth, at least, though Sebastian couldn’t tell his father the actual reason he’d sought out Granville Blake at the Hanover Square rooms last night. Not without betraying the confidence of his brother Darius.
Do not tell anyone what you are looking for.
The sentence in Darius’s letter tangled through Sebastian’s brain. The order wouldn’t be difficult to follow, considering he had very little idea what he was looking for. He didn’t much care either. After his furtive visits to several doctors and then the expense of a surgery that had permanently damaged his finger, Sebastian cared only that Darius would compensate him enough to settle the remainder of his medical obligations.
He still felt his father’s gaze. Although Rushton’s staid expression often concealed his thoughts, the man possessed a stare that could peel one like an apple. Having been the recipient of that sharp look more times than he cared to remember, Sebastian attempted to deflect it by turning away.
Rushton grasped his arm. “What is the matter with you?”
“Something must be the matter because I don’t care to marry an insipid debutante?”
“You used to chase insipid debutantes,” Rushton snapped. “And since returning from Weimar, you’ve been sullen as a whipped dog. I refuse to have people talk about what a bad-mannered malingerer you’ve become.”
“You refuse to have people talk about anything,” Sebastian said, yanking his arm from his father’s grip. “You’ve become worse than Alexander, though at least he managed to avoid scandal.”
He braced himself for his father’s anger, but Rushton only shook his head.
“Alexander escaped scandal because of Lydia.”
“He wouldn’t have courted scandal if he hadn’t met Lydia,” Sebastian retorted, then swallowed hard against the shame filling his throat.
He’d been the one to encourage Alexander’s interest in the brilliant, beautiful mathematician—the rest of the world be damned. He’d known his brother needed someone like Lydia, and the fact that Alexander and Lydia had emerged from potential scandal unscathed—not to mention ridiculously happy—was more than a testament to the strength of their relationship. It was a goddamn miracle.
A strange tightness wound through Sebastian’s chest. He wanted to walk away from his father, but a cluster of people blocked the doorway of the ballroom. The musicians began a cotillion that sounded unpleasant and reedy. He flexed his hand, rubbing his thumb against his crooked finger and the scar that curled over his palm.
“Alexander found the right woman for him,” Rushton said. “A woman who made him better than he was, who made him a better man. I suggest you do the same.”
“As you did?” A red, caustic note colored Sebastian’s voice. He wished his father would flare with anger, give him an adversary against which to battle. Instead a dark emotion suffused Rushton’s eyes as he stared at the twirling couples on the dance floor.
“No,” he replied, his neck cording with tension. “Not as I did. Your mother didn’t care what people thought, and she didn’t care how her decisions affected others.”
He gave a bitter laugh and took a swallow of his drink. “Hell, in the end, she didn’t even care about her family, did she?”
Sebastian couldn’t disagree. No one had heard from the former Countess o
f Rushton, who had disgraced their family by having an affair with a Russian soldier. After Rushton divorced her, she had fled England and her children to live in sin with her lover. No one knew where she was now.
The woman was dead as far as Alexander was concerned. The earl hadn’t spoken of her in the years following the divorce, not until now. All traces of her were long gone from every property in Rushton’s domain. Talia no longer mentioned her. Nicholas…well, no one ever knew where his loyalties lay, except perhaps Darius, but the distance of oceans had long separated the twins.
Sebastian wondered if his brothers and sister thought of their mother anymore. Almost three years later, he was still twisting the thing around and around in his mind, like unraveling a knotted ball of twine. He would never have expected such betrayal from his mother, who had seemed both faultless and distant.
The countess—indeed, the earl as well—had left the rearing of their five children to nurses and governesses before sending the boys off to school. Nothing about the utter correctness of their upbringing and their parents’ marriage had prepared the Hall children for the consequences of their mother’s affair and the subsequent divorce.
Catherine, Countess of Rushton, had been possessed of a lovely perfection that one could gaze upon but never touch. She’d been like a window decorated with spangles and curls of ice, cold against one’s fingertips, impenetrable.
Except for when she played the piano.
“Find a woman who is the opposite of your mother,” Rushton said, “and you’ll begin your marriage on a far stronger foundation than I did.”
When Sebastian didn’t respond, Rushton stepped closer, his mouth compressing. “In fact, Bastian, I suggest you seriously consider my words. Do not think I’m averse to withholding your allowance, or indeed, even your inheritance, should you continue following this ignominious path on which you have embarked.”
Rushton turned and strode toward the card room. Sebastian smothered a flare of anger, hating that his father’s threat could affect him now. Five months ago, he’d have laughed and gone off to flirt with any woman, respectable or not, who happened to catch his eye. Nothing Rushton said would have altered his desire to live as he pleased.