The compliment had an immediate effect on Sir Timothy, who almost visibly puffed up. ‘Well.’ Torn between pride and a sneaking suspicion that he had been manipulated, he nodded, shook his head, and nodded again before shaking Sebastian’s hand. ‘Well,’ he said again, ‘it’s been most interesting talking to you. And—er...’ He nodded at Caro. ‘Good day.’
* * *
Sebastian gratefully closed the parlour door behind his guest and let out a sigh.
‘I am so sorry,’ Caro said. ‘I had no idea he was here or I would have stayed well out of his way.’
Sebastian took her hands in his. ‘He may be a pompous prig but I believe him when he says he will not blab.’
Caro shook her head. ‘Perhaps not, but it is only a matter of time before word gets out.’
‘Does it bother you so much?’
Caro frowned. In truth, she had been taken aback at how strongly the conclusions Sir Timothy leapt to had affected her. ‘The other things—the things that were printed in the scandal sheets, they were not true,’ she said.
‘Nor is it true that you are my mistress.’
‘No, but my being here—Sebastian, it isn’t right. The truth is, I do not think I am cut out for notoriety. Seeing Sir Timothy’s reaction to my presence here brought that uncomfortable fact home to roost.’
‘Does your being here feel wrong?’
She was forced to laugh. ‘Sophistry.’
He did not smile. ‘You cannot possibly be worried about my reputation.’
‘Once a rake?’ She lifted his hand to her lips and pressed a quick kiss to his fingers. ‘I sometimes think you use that as a convenient cloak to mask who you really are. Sir Timothy might not talk, but you know it is inevitable that who I am and my presence here will become common knowledge regardless.’
He ran his hand lightly over her hair. ‘Foolish Caro, there is really no need to worry about my reputation. I don’t give a damn.’
‘But you obviously do give a damn about your estates, and in order to do your best by them—Sebastian, you can’t live the life of an outcast for ever.’
‘Caro, if living a respectable life means cultivating Sir Timothy the matter will not arise. I will die of boredom before I am forty. In fact, if you had not come into the parlour as you did, I suspect I would even now be slowly desiccating while he propounded his theories.’
‘I require strong, hearty men,’ Caro said, laughing. ‘Cressie suspected as much with regard to his proclivities. Perhaps that is why he was so particularly intent on ignoring me.’
‘I doubt Sir Timothy would have been interested if you’d rolled about the hearth naked.’
‘Sebastian! I have no intentions of rolling around naked on your hearth.’
‘That is a pity, for unlike Sir Timothy, it is a sight which would interest me greatly. Don’t you think you could try it,’ he teased, ‘just in order to prove to yourself that you can behave outrageously if you wish?’
He slid his hand down the curve of her spine. Her unease receded, replaced by a shiver of desire. ‘If we are to talk of the outrageous,’ Caro said, ‘I must mention Sir Timothy’s beard.’
‘I have no desire at all to talk about Sir Timothy. Let us talk instead of you.’
‘But I have no interesting personal quirks to discuss.’
Sebastian grinned. ‘What about your penchant for pink?’
‘What penchant for pink?’
‘You told me once that it is your favourite colour. You told me that you never wear it, for it clashes with your hair, but I know you lied about that.’
‘How do you know?’ she demanded, flustered.
‘Because you wear pink stockings. At least you used to, when I knew you in London.’
‘That is a most improper thing to say. You should not have been looking at my stockings.’
Sebastian’s smile turned wolfish. ‘I was looking at your ankles, not your stockings. Something which any man, gentleman or not, would do, given the opportunity. You have very beautiful ankles. Am I right about your predilection for pink, or is it a habit you have broken?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, you are incorrigible.’ She held out her foot, lifting just enough of her gown to expose a slim ankle sheathed in a pink stocking. ‘There, are you satisfied now?’
She remembered, suddenly, that she had been wearing pink stockings that night, when they had met at the theatre. In fact at one point she was wearing nothing but pink stockings. Their gazes locked, and she knew he was recalling exactly the same thing. Her hands untying the strings which held her pantalettes. His palms cupping the curve of her bottom as he slid them down, his fingers trailing over her thighs, the way he had gasped when she wriggled, brushing against the solid heft of his erection, her pink-stockinged legs curling around his waist.
She should not be thinking such things. Caro licked her lips, and Sebastian ran his thumb along her mouth. His eyes were riveted on hers. His fingers fluttered over her jaw, trailing down her throat to her collar bone, to the scooped neck of her gown. His palm brushed her breast. Her nipple responded immediately, peaking against her chemise.
‘Remember?’ he murmured.
His words broke the spell. Caro twisted free of him. ‘It would be better if we did not.’
Another memory, of the vicious words he had thrown at her, of the confusion and hurt she had felt when he left her that night, made her flinch.
‘Oblivion,’ Sebastian said, obviously still attuned to her thoughts. ‘I said some terribly hurtful things. I was very angry.’
‘I never did quite understand why.’
He threw himself down on one of the chairs by the empty grate. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were married before things got out of hand?’
‘I don’t know.’ Caro began to distractedly tidy the desk, stacking books and papers anyhow. ‘I suppose I just wanted to forget that I was married, even for a little while. I wanted exactly what you said, oblivion.’
‘But you returned to your husband and you stayed with him for another two years.’
‘Duty is a very difficult habit to break, especially when it has been inculcated in one.’ Caro sank on to the seat opposite him. ‘I knew after seeing you at the theatre that night that my marriage was over. I would not have allowed myself to become so—so carried away—elsewise. But it is one thing to think such things, quite another to act upon them when the consequences are so very dreadful.’
‘He hurt you. Don’t deny it, Caro, I saw the evidence with my own eyes that night.’
She looked at her twisted ring finger. ‘One of his few enduring gifts,’ she admitted quietly. ‘It wasn’t often and it was never life-threatening, and I could never understand what triggered it. But that’s not the only reason I left.’
Sebastian’s brow quirked. ‘So Rider did not cast you out as he claimed. To quit the marital home, with the law of the land and the weight of the world against you, you must have been desperate indeed. What happened, Caro?’ he asked.
His tone was gentle, obviously afraid that she may be simply unable to answer him, but she discovered that for some reason she was finally ready to talk about it. ‘I left because I no longer cared for him, and I knew that whatever happened, even if I ever conceived the child he so longed for, it would not change things between us. In fact, the very thought of bringing a child into that relationship appalled me. To put it simply, I left because I realised I deserved better, and so did he.’
‘He deserves to be whipped by the cart’s tail,’ Sebastian said viciously.
‘No. I didn’t make him any more happy than he made me.’
‘You didn’t beat him for failing to do so, however.’
‘That is—you know, I hadn’t thought of that.’
Sebastian swore. ‘Think about it now. He deserve
s to be thrashed for what he did to you.’
‘Do you really think there is going to be trouble if there is a poor harvest?’
He accepted the abrupt change of subject after a brief silence.
‘The signs are all there, my bailiff tells me. The workhouses will be full at the end of the year, and believe me, the workhouse is not a place to spend the winter. I visited the local one, my father was on the board. It was appalling.’
‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘Do? I doubt the good ladies and gentlemen of the board will allow me to do anything.’
‘Can’t you take up your seat in the House then, influence things there?’
‘What, would you have me a reformer?’
‘Why not? You must do something with your time, and since you claim you are already hugely unpopular, why not make yourself even more so and do some good at the same time?’
Sebastian burst into hearty laughter. ‘You always did see things from a decidedly different perspective, Caro.’
She dropped a mock curtsy. ‘Thank you, I think. If you opened up the Hall you could employ an army of servants. You said yourself that times are hard in the countryside. Don’t you have an obligation to employ as many people as possible?’
‘I don’t want to open up the house, and I don’t want to be waited on hand and foot by an army of servants in powdered wigs and livery.’
‘Then don’t have them wear powdered wigs and livery. This is your home, Sebastian, you may run it any way you see fit.’
‘I am doing so.’
Caro laughed. He was so stubborn, but she had noticed how uncomfortable he had looked when Sir Timothy eyed the shabby little parlour with such disdain. ‘Of course you are,’ she said, ‘if you choose to hide away here, that is no one’s business but your own.’ Without allowing him time to react to this barbed remark, she immediately changed tack. ‘Do you know, in all the years I lived at Killellan, I never once was inside Crag Hall. My sisters and I used to spin such tales about this place. We called your father the Marquis of Ardhellow.’
‘So you told me,’ Sebastian said shortly.
Caro touched his arm, looking up at him with fluttering lashes. ‘I would very much like to see around the house, Sebastian. Perhaps viewing it with a fresh pair of eyes might help to change your mind about the Hall.’
‘I planned to sell the place when I inherited,’ he admitted, surprising her. ‘It’s not entailed.’
‘But you could not bring yourself to do so?’
‘Perhaps in time—no. No,’ he sighed, ‘I don’t think I will ever sell. I don’t think I want to.’
‘Then what is to be done, for you can hardly spend the rest of your life in this parlour.’
She knew she was treading a fine line. She longed to say more, but she bit her tongue, knowing that beyond a certain point he would dig his heels in.
And her silence was rewarded. Sebastian pulled off the neckcloth he had obviously donned to receive Sir Timothy, and held out his hand to her. ‘So, you would like to see the Marquis of Ardhellow’s lair? Come then, let us see how well your girlish imagination matched reality before I think better of it.’
Chapter Seven
They started in the picture gallery, a long room leading directly off the Romanesque reception hall. The gallery was located in one of the original sections of the house, with a Jacobean ceiling and a polished wooded floor of dark oak, which now echoed with their footsteps. ‘My father, as you know,’ Sebastian said, pausing in front of a large portrait in a gilt frame. The marquis was standing in full heraldic robes, under which he wore a full-skirted coat and breeches of gold brocade. Behind him, through the window, could be seen the formal gardens stretching towards the first of the estate farms. On the table before him was a sheaf of paper depicting the family tree. He wore a grey wig, the curls tightly rolled. His narrow mouth was unsmiling. His eyes were pale blue.
‘He looks just as I remember him,’ Caro said with a shiver. ‘Cold. Intimidating. The Marquis of Ardhellow. You could never inherit that particular title.’
‘I confess I had assumed that I had.’
‘Oh no,’ Caro said, ‘you are not nearly old enough. My sisters and I decided that the Marquis of Ardhellow was at least a hundred years old. His skin is as pale and dry as parchment. He has to stay cooped up indoors else he would crumple and turn to dust in the sunshine. You, on the other hand, are positively tanned.’ She touched Sebastian’s cheek. Her fingers were cool on his skin. ‘And as usual,’ she said, running her thumb over his jaw, ‘you need to shave. And you need to learn to dress like a gentleman too,’ she said, touching the open neck of his shirt. ‘Ardhellow now—well, just look at him.’ She frowned, staring intently at the portrait. ‘You will never be Ardhellow. I find it difficult to think of you even as Ardhallow. You really look nothing like your father.’
‘I thank God that I do not resemble him in any way.’ He led the way out of the gallery through a door and into the Tribune, the square room which acted as the central axis for the piano nobile and all the state rooms. Above their heads was the trussed gallery, and above that, the domed roof soared. Caro was looking up in astonishment. The dome had apparently been designed to emulate the interior of the dome of St Paul’s. Sebastian had always thought it unnecessarily ostentatious. ‘I know, it’s dammed pretentious,’ he said.
She looked at him in astonishment. ‘Perhaps, but there’s no denying it’s absolutely beautiful. It makes one feel quite dizzy, looking up at it, all those different tiers of plasterwork, like stairs climbing towards heaven.’
Caro’s expression was rapt. As she examined the dome, he in turn examined her. The long line of her throat. The hollows at the base of her neck. The fall of her hair down her back as she tilted her head to look up. Her hair was darker in colour now than it had been two years ago, six years ago, ten years ago. Burnished copper. He remembered it loose, trailing over the creaminess of her skin in the firelight. Fire and earth. They had always been the elements he associated with her.
Dragging his eyes away, Sebastian looked up at the dome. He still thought it far too overwrought, but Caro was right, it was also beautiful and actually perfectly fitting for the house itself, which was more palace than hall. ‘My father loved this place,’ he said. ‘The original building was a much more modest manor house, dating back to the seventeenth century. It has been a tradition for every earl to find some way of adding to it, to put his own mark on the place.’
‘What was your father’s contribution?’
‘The library. I do not intend to keep up the tradition.’
‘You don’t feel you have the moral right to this house, is that it? Because your father hated you. Because you hated him.’
‘It is not a question of morals,’ he said, ‘I simply think it’s far too big for one person.’
‘Yet you can’t bring yourself to sell it. Whatever it is that came between you and your father, it started here, in this house. And now it belongs to you, you don’t feel entitled to it. That much is obvious,’ Caro continued inexorably. ‘What I don’t understand is why.’
‘And what I don’t understand is why you think I’d want to discuss it with you or anyone else,’ Sebastian snapped.
He regretted his outburst immediately. He rubbed a weary hand over his eyes. He had camped out in the old kitchen wing the first day he arrived back to find his father not only dead but already buried. Aside from the necessary papers, which he had the lawyer remove from Lord Ardhallow’s desk, and a selection of favourite books from the library, almost the first thing he had done, as the new lord and master, was to order the closing up of every state room—and there were many. Not once had he felt inclined to visit them, far less inhabit them. Mrs Keith had orders not to clean them. It had seemed like a good idea, to throw open the doors and shutters, t
o prove to Caro and more importantly himself, that he was not afraid of ghosts. But it was a far more painful experience than he had expected, and they had barely started. ‘It has nothing to do with whether I feel entitled to live here or not, I have simply never wanted to.’
‘Perhaps we should abandon this tour, I did not intend it to be detrimental.’
‘I am perfectly capable of opening a few shutters without falling into a melancholy. I’m doing this for you, Caro. You asked me to and I am obliging you. What more do you want from me?’
‘I want you to do it for yourself! To rid yourself of this—what did you call it?—mausoleum full of ghosts.’
Had he said that? Surely he would not have said anything so melodramatic.
‘Yes, those were your exact words, more or less,’ Caro said, as if she had read his mind. She glared at him, refusing to back down. ‘Now, do you wish to carry on or not?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! Pick a door.’
* * *
Caro swivelled round, looking at each door in turn. The Tribune was perfectly symmetrical. Two huge stone fireplaces carved with all sorts of mythological creatures faced each other from either end of the room. There were eight huge pedimented doors, two in every corner, all exactly the same, giving her no clue as to what lay behind them. ‘That one,’ she said, taking Sebastian’s hand and leading the way with a confidence she did not feel.
Through a gloomy ante-chamber which was almost in darkness, she could just about make out a set of double doors which she flung open, enjoying the sense of theatre. Light seeped in through the cracks in the shutters. She could make out shapes, mounds of furniture huddled in holland covers, but was too afraid of bumping into one of them and knocking something over to move from the doorway. Sebastian however, strode towards the windows without hesitation, and wrenched back the shutters of one long window.
Rumors That Ruined a Lady Page 13