After gazing out the carriage window a moment, Pippa turned back, expression serious. “I must confess to being uncertain about you. Perhaps I’m too protective of Seb. Maybe I’m too quick to cast judgment.” She grinned again, but it was lopsided and rueful. “It seems I have many lessons to learn.”
For the first time in their half a day together, Kitty sensed insecurity in the young woman’s tone.
“Do you think I’ll know how to be a duke’s sister? My desire to protect him is second only to my wish to never embarrass Sebastian.”
Pippa had no mother, no one to guide or shepherd her through what Kitty knew could be a daunting gamut of social judgments and competitive games. But she still held to her initial impression. With a bit more polish and a bit less naiveté, Sebastian’s sister could become one of society’s jewels.
“You couldn’t. Anyone can see your brother adores you, trusts you, and with good reason.”
That made Pippa smile, her narrow cheeks plumping round. “I think it’s clear he adores you.”
Kitty instantly noticed the confines of the carriage, the doors trapping them inside, the impossibility of escape without flinging herself into a row of busy afternoon traffic. Had it been so hot in the carriage a moment before? A trickle of perspiration slid down her neck, and she reached to lower the window. The fixture wouldn’t budge.
She wanted Pippa’s words to be true. The sentiment was precisely what she most yearned to hear, and yet her immediate thought was to refute the notion. To escape the very contemplation that Sebastian felt about her as she did for him, as if some part of her nature repulsed any possibility of grasping her own happiness.
“We are very fond of each other.” She tried not to squeak but all the air had drained out of the enclosed space.
“Fond of each other? Surely it’s more than that. I see the way he looks at you and you at him.”
Was there a special way he looked at her? As if he was here with them in the carriage, Kitty saw his gray blue gaze searching her own. She swallowed and her throat felt raw.
What nonsense. Men’s gazes had been following her for years. Men and women looked at each other. She’d even caught Pippa exchanging glances with Hattie’s Oliver now and then.
“I honestly never thought Seb would consider giving his heart again,” Pippa said quietly as she ran her fingers around the edges of one of the velvet flowers on her new hat. Then, pushing the hat aside, she shifted in her seat and folded her arms, pressing her lips together, as if determined not to let another word escape.
“Was Sebastian . . . married before?” The notion of Sebastian’s wariness to risk his heart piqued Kitty’s curiosity.
“No! Absolutely not.” Pippa lifted a hand to bite her fingernail before seeming to realize the error of etiquette, and pressed her palm against her thigh. “But he was engaged once. It ended badly. I mean to say, they called it off.”
Kat knew instantly who Seb had once intended to marry.
“Lady Naughton.”
Pippa’s eyes went round. “You already knew?”
“I suspected.” Deep under her skin, in her heart, wherever intuition resided, she’d known. “When were they engaged?”
“Many, many years ago, when I was still a child. It must be ten years ago now, at least.”
How had it been? Who’d broken whose heart? Why did they end the engagement? At Lady Stamford’s ball, she’d assumed Sebastian had rejected Lady Naughton. She’d never forget the displeasure on the woman’s face when she caught them together in the garden.
Had he loved her? He’d certainly been unwilling to discuss any romance with Lady Naughton. His secret, Kitty had called her, and Sebastian never denied it.
Why couldn’t he speak as honestly of his connection with the woman as he did everything else? And why had he been walking in Hyde Park with the lady’s son?
The boy looked younger than ten years old. Kitty guessed him a few years younger than Violet. Could Archie be Sebastian’s son?
Kitty needed to move and stretch, to be free of her carriage-shaped cage. She slid her foot forward and encountered a hatbox, and then another. In her excitement, Pippa had taken out more of her purchases to study their details and try them on again.
“Perhaps we should put all of these away, Pippa. We’re almost there.”
“I wonder what Sebastian will say about my sudden taste for fashionable hats.”
“Would you mind if I spoke to him alone for a bit when we arrive?” However much she dreaded the answers, Kitty had to know the details of his relationship with Lady Naughton and her son.
“Actually, my aunt invited me to join her at the opera this evening. I hoped I might convince you and Seb to join us.” Pippa busied herself with resealing her hats in their boxes as she spoke, and then stilled. “Unless . . . please tell me what I’ve said hasn’t made you doubt Sebastian. I couldn’t bear to see him endure what he did before.”
“Our situation doesn’t compare, Pippa.” Kitty’s throat closed around the admission, and the pressure reached down to grip her heart. “Our engagement has less to do with romance than practicality.”
Pippa ducked her head and pinched the edge of her skirt between her fingers. After taking a deep breath, she leaned forward to catch Kitty’s gaze.
“It may have started as a ploy, but hasn’t it grown into more? Do you truly intend to end the engagement?”
“I have no intention of ending our engagement.” At least for now.
Plans had been made for Hattie’s wedding. A joint wedding gown final fitting was scheduled for tomorrow. Whatever her feelings for Sebastian, she couldn’t let their plan fall apart yet.
When the carriage stopped in front of Wrexford House, Kitty almost balked. After stepping onto the pavement and out into the cool evening air, the desire to turn and start the relatively short walk back home made her legs vibrate. Why question him about the matter of Lady Naughton at all? They weren’t truly engaged. His past was his own. He’d keep his secrets, and she’d keep hers. They’d agreed on that from the start.
And yet . . . if the boy was Sebastian’s son, and Lady Naughton was prepared to risk her own ruin by exposing the fact, that scandal would ripple out to affect everyone associated with him. His sisters would suffer snubs from polite society. Oliver’s career might even suffer the connection, and that would touch Hattie. Scandal had a way of seeping out and staining everyone nearby, even those innocent of any wrongdoing.
Father wouldn’t allow any connection with Wrexford or his family if the child’s paternity became public. Sebastian wouldn’t be the first aristocrat to father a child out of wedlock, but he hadn’t even been a nobleman for a year. Hypocrisy required much less effort than humility. Kitty feared the condemnation would be greater for Sebastian because he had just assumed the title, only to tarnish it in the eyes of those who claimed to hold themselves to a higher standard.
“Are you coming in, Kitty?”
Pippa stood on the threshold, urging her into the town house’s brightly lit entryway. The space was illuminated so well, she could see Sebastian lurking at the end of the hall, gazing at her as anxiously as his sister. But whereas Pippa wore her usual open expression with a grin curving her mouth, Sebastian appeared as grim as when she’d left him standing in Hyde Park.
Alone but for one governess and a clever child who might be his illegitimate son.
Kitty willed her body forward and was shocked when her legs obeyed. With a promise of a future outing, she thanked Pippa for joining her hat shopping jaunt. Regardless of the fact she hadn’t selected a single new hat for herself, she’d enjoyed their time together.
“I take it you two won’t be joining Aunt Augusta and me at the theater.” Pippa glanced between them before gathering a couple of her hatboxes and heading upstairs.
Despite how his solemn expression increased her desi
re to turn and avoid a confrontation altogether, Kitty approached Sebastian.
“May I join you in your study?”
He frowned, as if he’d expected her to say something else entirely. Without answering, he turned and began trudging back toward the room where he’d last kissed her.
Afternoon light transformed the room, brightening the wallpaper, lifting the ceiling and extending the walls. The space loomed larger and much less intimate, especially when Sebastian positioned himself in the corner, the farthest point in the room from where she stood.
Her breath caught as she watched him. She’d never seen his broad shoulders sag so decidedly, nor found his mouth so firmly set. Divots of displeasure drew down each corner. He’d crossed his legs at the ankles and clasped his arms across his chest as he leaned against the wall. It felt as if a door had been shut to her. She realized in that moment how open he’d been before, how much he’d let her in.
Her pulse picked up, fluttering at her throat and thrashing in her ears when she tipped her gaze up to meet his.
“Have you come to end it?” He stared down at his feet.
Her breath whooshed out and drawing in the next brought pain, a little stab of despair deep in the center of her chest. She pressed a palm to the spot.
Then it was true. No denial, no explanation. Simply the assumption she would turn her back on him.
Hurt and anger welled up, twisting the pain into a sour knot in the pit of her stomach. He assumed the worst of her, that she was judgmental and hypocritical like all the rest. That she would dismiss him as swiftly as her father.
He seemed uninterested in putting up a fight or defending himself.
“Is ending it what you’re hoping I’ll do?”
“Do my hopes matter to you now?”
Even as he waited for her answer, he refused to look at her. Turning his body toward the window, he gazed at the curtains as if he could see the same patch of London sky where they’d sought far-off constellations together. Where he’d stood behind her and touched her as if he could do nothing else, as if he found her irresistible. And then kissed as no man ever had.
After so many suitors, assumptions had been made. Most men believed she would allow a stolen kiss, but she hadn’t. She guarded her kisses as fiercely as she guarded her choice of a husband. She never intended to give herself away easily. Before Sebastian, she doubted the possibility of giving herself to any man at all.
So, yes, what he wanted mattered. She was just beginning to reach out and grasp what she wanted, but she had to know Sebastian’s wishes were the same.
“What you want matters most of all. I need to know.”
He glanced back at her. “Ask me whatever you wish to know. I’ll answer any question you put to me.”
So he always had. Every question except the one about his past relationship with Lady Naughton. She wanted to know about the boy, but she also feared his answers. Not the facts, but the feelings. Did he still love Alecia Naughton?
“My first question, the most important one to me, is to know what you want, Sebastian.”
She meant who he wanted, of course, but couldn’t bring herself to speak so baldly. As she stood waiting, heat rushing up her neck and onto her cheeks, she prayed he’d sense her meaning.
If he loved her, all the rest could come after. She would face the rest with him. Scandal, rumor, condemnation. Come what may, she could face it if she could have him for her own and give herself to him.
Emerging from the dimly lit corner, Sebastian stalked toward her, a zinnia gold glow from the window burnishing the right half of his body and face.
He was only a footstep away, but Kat willed herself to wait, not to reach for him as everything in her wished to do. But her body betrayed her and she swayed forward, only her corset holding her upright.
Uncrossing his arms, Sebastian reached for her, offering her his hand and seeking hers.
She took his hand immediately, forming her fingers around his firm reassuring grasp.
“I want this,” he whispered. “To touch you.” He stepped forward and slid his free hand down, curving around her waist. “To hold you.”
The pulse fluttering at her neck began to travel, into her throat, down into her chest, and then lower.
“And I want this.” He bent his head but didn’t take her lips. Just skimming his mouth across her cheek, he sought her ear, nuzzling her there before dipping lower to place a kiss on the sensitive flesh of her neck. Then he tasted her, flicking his tongue against her skin.
The pulsing sensation in her belly shot to the apex of her thighs, making her legs go jelly soft. If he hadn’t been holding her, she feared she might have done something ridiculous, like faint or swoon. She’d never fainted and hated the notion of such an outward display of weakness, of losing control.
“Tell me.” He spoke against the skin of her neck, his low voice resounding in breath and heat against her body.
He was asking her to confess what she suspected he already knew. She hadn’t been able to deny it to herself, not with any success. Surely he’d read it in her eyes, in her responses to him, even before she’d admitted the feelings to herself.
“Tell me what you want, Kat.”
She wanted to give her yes to the one man who’d never actually proposed.
“I want you.”
The rest, words she’d never said to any man, welled up, but he kissed her and she forgot words. She forgot to think and worry over how she looked or how she behaved. Only Sebastian, the taste of him, the warmth of his body, the sound of his breath and little murmurs of pleasure rumbling in his chest—nothing more existed for a moment. And she wanted to feel more than think, love more than worry.
He groaned when she turned bold and pressed her breasts into his chest, lifting onto her toes and clasping his head in her hands to deepen their kiss, to dart her tongue out and dance with his, as he’d taught her. Then, bolder still, she reached up to tug at the top button of his shirt. She loved that he dressed casually at home and wasn’t wearing a necktie, that a few slipped buttons brought her fingers in contact with his skin and the fine hairs at the top of his chest.
He lifted his head when she slid the third button free.
“Kat.” The nickname he’d chosen for her never sounded as seductive as when he rasped it in hot gusting breath against her skin. If he meant to stop her or say something sensible, it was far too late. She’d been ladylike for twenty-three years, made choices to please others, to avoid her father’s wrath and being snubbed by her watchful friends. This moment was hers, hers and Sebastian’s, and she wished to live it to the full.
“Are you thinking too much?” she asked as she explored the warm muscled contours of his chest with her fingers.
Last time he’d kissed her, he’d insisted on trying not to think. An excellent philosophy she’d decided to embrace wholeheartedly. At least for tonight. At least for this moment. Thinking had never brought her this sort of pleasure, this sense of rightness, this feeling that she had found the part of herself she’d always been seeking.
“Probably. You?”
“As a wise man once said to me, I’m trying not to think.”
She paused in unbuttoning him and put a hand on the rounded muscle of his upper arms, then trailed her palms down, pressing until he released her. Then she slid her palms down to catch each of his hands in hers. Never breaking his gaze, she brushed a kiss over the knuckles of one of his hands and then the other.
He swallowed before his beautifully carved mouth went slack, opening slightly, as he watched her.
When she raised her head, she guided his hands to the buttons at her neckline.
“Kat?”
“Please, Sebastian. I want you to see me.”
Lifting a hand to her cheek, he cupped her face and drew her in for a lingering kiss.
She h
adn’t thought her heart could beat any faster, but as he stroked her face and tasted her again and again, it rattled wildly against her ribs.
He broke the kiss and tipped his head, assessing her. “I do see you, and you’re exquisite.”
His eyes skimmed her hair, eyes, and mouth, but those were the parts of her body she’d been praised for all her life. She could take no pride in having inherited her mother’s blond hair or her grandmother’s green eyes. If her face was pleasing, it had been a matter of good fortune and no effort of her own. Nor had she chosen the shapes and shades of the rest of her body, but she had a choice about who could see her, naked and unadorned.
She chose Sebastian. She suspected she’d been waiting her whole life to choose Sebastian.
“I want you to see all of me.” Every inch of what his eye could see, and, yes, in time the rest of her too. The flaws beneath her skin, the imperfections of her heart, the too-busy whirl of her thoughts. With Sebastian, she might risk being exposed as her true self.
Her words ignited him and he reached up to slip the buttons at her neck, fumbling over the tiny rounded pearls, and then proceeding to the larger buttons hidden under a row of lace down her front. Each press of his fingers, kneading into her chest as he worked her free of the gown’s bodice, pulled her tauter, every nerve in her body focused on the movement of his hands. Then he skimmed the tops of her breasts as he grasped her ribbon-edged corset, pressing each half together, forcing it momentarily tighter, stealing her breath, to slip one hook, then the next, and the next. The backs of his hands brushed her nipples and Kat couldn’t hold back a moan as his touch reverberated down her body to the tips of her toes.
“So many layers to get to you.”
“Am I not worth the effort?”
“You are, Kat. You’re worth every effort.”
Caressing her cheek, he leaned in for another kiss but stiffened at a soft scratching sound against his study door.
“Aunt Augusta’s carriage has arrived and we’re off to the theater.” Pippa’s voice rang through the closed door, and both of them stilled like guilty children caught making mischief.
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