Katherine found nothing discreet about the woman next to her or indeed the scores of other people around her whispering the same on-dit. And there was nothing discreet about the way she craned her neck to get a look at the object of everyone’s current titillation. She couldn’t help herself. She was curious. How could she not be? He was, after all, her nephew.
Sort of.
Then the crowd parted, and she saw him. He was strolling into the room with a rumpled-looking man who was wearing what appeared to be an oriental dressing gown, who she later discovered was his boon companion, the Viscount Marlowe. Again, the description was not quite right, for Sherbrook did not stroll so much as prowl, like some sleek, elegant jungle cat in search of his prey. He was wild.
Wild, uncivilized.
And so utterly beautiful that it hurt, physically hurt, to look at him. She felt the pain of his beauty as surely as if someone had punched her in the gut. Tall and whipcord lean, with flawless pale olive skin betraying his French blood, he wore his night-black hair unfashionably long, the gleaming curls brushing his starched white cravat. His jacket and snug inexpressibles were as black as his hair, and so was his waistcoat, though when he moved, the candlelight flickered over the fabrics, revealing a hidden pattern of swirls and diamonds inlaid in the silk.
Cascades of white Belgian lace poured out of his sleeves, and his cravat was knotted with an arrogant carelessness, held in place by an enormous sapphire pendant set in gold. Five gold chains and watch fobs crisscrossed his waistcoat, and every one of his fingers was encircled with jeweled rings. He was a study in excess, gilded and polished to such an extreme that he seemed to radiate light rather than merely reflect it.
But it was his face that made Katherine’s stomach clench. It was classically perfect, except for his lips and his eyes, which were both overlarge. The former added a sensuousness that was missing from Greek art, and the latter made her wonder why God had wasted such singular beauty upon a mere mortal. His eyes, set above rapier-sharp cheekbones, were blue, as blue as the sapphire in his cravat, and thrice as brilliant. They seemed to take in their surroundings with cold precision, and find those surroundings lacking.
He surveyed the room as he moved in that graceful, feline way of his, one beautiful kohl-black brow arched, looking supremely bored. He stopped at the edge of the room, murmured something to his companion, the edges of his excessive lips curling ever so slightly with scorn. His companion bellowed out a laugh and snatched two champagne flutes from a passing waiter, shoving one into Sherbrook’s bejeweled hand.
Sherbrook raised the glass to his lips and paused. He looked over the top of an enormous signet ring adorning his index finger, straight into her eyes.
She did not know what to do. She felt like she had been caught in an illicit act, her pulse racing, her palms beginning to sweat so much she could barely keep a grip on her glass.
She spun around and tried to focus on Miss Ellen Bermundsy’s performance on the pianoforte, aware that somewhere behind her lurked a demon in black embroidered silk. She nearly jumped when the applause began and Miss Bermundsy left her stool, graciously receiving her congratulations for a rather lackluster performance of Haydn. Then Katherine was being pushed toward the pianoforte by the duchess herself, and she had no choice but to sit down, for her knees were feeling inconveniently gelatinous. She rarely played in public and had no intention of obliging the duchess on this occasion, but she was too shaken to keep to her resolve. It was most vexing. She found herself launching into Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata, the final rondo movement that was, to her mind, one of the most glorious pieces of music ever written.
Somehow it seemed appropriate, though a bit overwrought. But she played it well enough, and could lose herself in the music. It had always been her refuge. Johann had not taken that from her at least. However, on this particular night, she could not recover her composure. Something had happened when she’d stared into Mr. Sherbrook’s eyes. It had only been a second in time, but it had been enough to undo four years’ worth of rigid self-control.
When she was through and she glanced up from her hands, breathing hard, she nearly fell off her stool.
Because he was standing right there next to her shoulder. Looming. Those intense blue eyes bored down into her very soul, it seemed.
She stood, and the stool scraped across the parquet floor. It was as if everyone else in the room had ceased to exist. She backed up a step from him, because he seemed so near to her, even though he was a good five feet away.
He was even more beautiful up close. She didn’t think it possible.
And he was taller than she. Not by much. An inch or two at most. She had the wild thought that if she were to approach him, stand so close to him that no space was left between them, his lips—his perfect, lush lips—would touch her right between her eyebrows.
She stopped breathing altogether.
But then the duchess was by her side, and the trance that had held her was broken, for the duchess, seeing Mr. Sherbrook’s approach, had decided it was her place to make introductions. And the moment her name was spoken, a veil passed over Mr. Sherbrook’s eyes, and his beautiful jaw hardened into icy contempt.
He gave her the cut direct.
The duchess had gasped. Katherine had just stared at his rigid back as he strode across the room, through the crowd, and out of the ballroom altogether.
She had not seen him again for years.
BUT HERE HE was, alone with her in Montford’s drawing room, seven years, six months, two weeks, and one day since the Delacourt musicale . . . not that she was counting. Not that she remembered in excruciating detail every single one of their encounters since that day. And certainly not that he still had the ability to render her utterly insensible merely by breathing air.
Though he did.
He was a scoundrel, she reminded herself. He was an unprincipled devil, who had evidently bedded nearly half of the female population of London and despoiled the virtuous Miss Blanchard as his pièce de résistance. To seduce a young, respectable lady, desert her in a foreign clime, and then refuse to marry her—indeed, to choose a dawn appointment over the wedded state—took a unique sort of rogue. Granted, Katherine knew the young woman in question and had judged her to be flighty, grasping, and even a touch unstable. If Katherine were in the possession of a brother, or any unmarried male relative, she’d not wish Miss Rosamund Blanchard on him. But the marquess was not her relative, not really, and she had no affection for him. As far as she was concerned, he deserved Miss Blanchard. His sins had finally caught up with him and bit him in the . . .
Well, she’d not start using vulgarities in her thoughts, even if the subject of said thoughts were vulgarity personified.
He was no better than Johann Klemmer, another charmer who had once seduced a young woman, then abandoned her to her fate. And she didn’t know why she was still so surprised at anything Sebastian did.
But he was staring at her again, with that perplexed, almost haunted look. It was a look that made her hope that he was better than what he was, a look he no doubt used with great success when seducing women to his will. It was enough to make her scream, really scream, as she had wanted to do for seven long years. She hated the weakness in her that made her susceptible to him—that had made her susceptible to Johann. She was no better than the hordes of females panting over his boot heels.
She stiffened her spine and forced herself to look away from his mesmerizing eyes. She was not like other females. She knew his kind only too well. She would never be taken in again by a man.
He swept her a mocking bow. “It is good to see you too, Auntie.” He paused, and cocked his head to one side as he studied her with his usual expression of cynical amusement. “And I am quite well. Thank you for asking.”
She felt more in control of the situation now that they were back to their normal roles, she the disapproving, puritan Eng
lishwoman, he the rakish devil determined to ruffle her. Aside from the smoldering looks he occasionally shot in her direction—whatever those were about—she had never observed a serious thought, word, or deed emerge from his person.
Warily, she crossed the room and perched upon the end of a chair, trying to ignore him.
He kept staring at her until she was certain the duke’s drawing room was the hottest place on earth, then abruptly turned and prowled over to the pianoforte. The cascade of lace spilling from his sleeve rustled as he played a scale with his left hand. Up his bejeweled fingers went, from a low D, past middle C, then on toward the higher registers. He played the harmonic minor, with fluid ease.
She’d heard him play once before this day, when she’d traveled to Yorkshire with Araminta to check on the duke and heard someone playing the Waldstein in Rylestone Hall with a mastery that had made her own efforts seem amateur. When she had discovered that he had been responsible for making such a glorious noise, she had wondered whether that particular choice in repertoire had been more than a coincidence. It was, of course, the same piece she had played at the musicale all those years ago, and she’d wondered if he too had remembered.
His fingers began to descend, and he paused when he reached the G below middle C. He repeated the note, louder, then again. He looked at her over his shoulder and caught her staring at him.
“Do you hear that?” he asked.
She didn’t realize she had risen from her seat and crossed the room until she was a few feet from him, as if she’d been hypnotized by a simple scale.
He played the G again, then all the notes around it.
“It’s flat,” she commented.
He nodded, and his brow creased in consternation. “It offends the ear,” he murmured. He opened the stool’s top and extracted a tool from it, and then she watched his lean form bend over the top of the instrument and study the strings. He reached inside with the tool in one hand, while he played the G over and over again with his other. The sight of his firm, perfect backside pressed taut against his buckskins was not distracting at all.
She walked around the side of the pianoforte, away from said backside, trailing her fingers over the gorgeous rosewood surface. It was the most beautiful and unusual pianoforte she’d ever seen, and she’d coveted it from the moment it had appeared in the duke’s household.
Satisfied he’d tuned the note, he put aside the tool and played a resounding chord. He smiled at her.
“Perfect,” he said.
Indeed.
She tried not to smile back, though it was an exercise in fortitude. She cleared her throat and girded herself mentally to try to make small talk. “It’s a lovely instrument, don’t you think?”
“Oh, yes. The loveliest.”
“It is a travesty that it should belong to the two most tone-deaf people in London.”
“It would be a travesty if she did. But she doesn’t. She belongs to me. Montford took care of her in my absence.” He ran his fingertip over the top of the music stand, a languorous stroke that made her skin prickle. Blast him. “She is my most treasured possession,” he continued, not taking his eyes off her.
Perhaps attempting small talk had been a mistake. “Yet you left her.” Her voice sounded odd, strangled.
His smile faded. “I’ll never leave her again, if she’ll forgive me.”
He held her eyes for an eternity, as if he were trying to silently communicate something to her. Which was an absurd notion on her part. Nevertheless, the drawing room, rumored to be one of the largest in London, suddenly seemed too small. She took in an unsteady breath and abruptly turned away. She made her legs work, all the way back to her chair. “Then you plan to stay in England?”
“I did. But I did not expect the homecoming I received.”
“Did you not?” Her tone was as dry as dust.
He narrowed his eyes and moved closer to her. “No. Though it seems everyone else in London did. Tried, sentenced, and hanged by the righteous arbiters of decorum before I so much as stepped off the docks.”
She knew she was setting herself up for an argument, but she couldn’t stop herself. He provoked her like no other. “You think that this is a matter of decorum? I should have thought it one of morality and ethics.”
His easy smile vanished. “Ah, but you see, that is exactly the problem.”
“What is the problem?”
“That you should have thought at all on the matter. That the good citizens of this fair city should have taken it upon themselves to pronounce judgment on a matter that is none of their concern.”
“You are right,” she said, back rigid with affront. “Though being right won’t help you.”
He gave an odd, humorless laugh. “No, it won’t. Nor does my innocence.”
“Your innocence? Then you deny the matter?”
He walked closer to her, and the unexpected heat in his eyes made her draw back. He was really furious.
“The matter? Can you not say it, Aunt Katherine? That I have been accused of seducing Rosamund Blanchard? Filling her belly with a child?”
She looked away from him, refusing to be baited by his coarse words. “As you say, it is none of my concern.”
“That doesn’t stop you from having your opinion on the matter.” He all but spat out the last word. “What is it, I wonder? That I should do the honorable thing and marry the chit?”
She hated his tone, the bitterness and anger of it, which all seemed unfairly directed at her. No doubt Johann had said similar words once upon a time while he’d extorted a fortune from her father. Resentment surged up inside of her, making her tongue caustic. “That would be the honorable thing, would it not?”
“And as everyone knows, I am without honor,” he said flatly. He shook his head in resignation and ran an impatient hand through his inky curls. “I was hoping to see you today, Aunt Katie.”
Her brow furrowed at the name. “So you could provoke me?”
“So I could discuss family business.”
“You want to know how rich you are, do you?” she retorted.
He snorted. “I doubt my loving uncle left me a farthing.”
“He left you everything,” she said shortly.
His reaction certainly wasn’t what she expected. What she expected was satisfaction, perhaps a touch of glee tinged with malice, to know he’d inherited a fortune from a man he had hated. Instead, he looked . . . nauseated. Angry.
“Everything?” he managed to say.
“Everything aside from my widow’s portion.” Which had been modest at best, hardly enough to support her. The late marquess had not been as smart with his investments as he’d led the world to believe. She had her grandmother’s inheritance to live off of, however. Certainly there’d been no funds forthcoming from her sire, who had barely managed to look at her since she was fifteen.
Sebastian seemed even more appalled at this. She could not understand his reaction. “You are a rich man, Sebastian. You’ve the title and the fortune. Was this not what you wanted?” She could not keep the venom out of her voice.
His eyes narrowed. “I never wanted either,” he bit out.
She arched an eyebrow in polite disbelief.
“And this is what you think of me?” he demanded, voice hoarse with emotion. “I never wanted that man’s money. I would have sooner cut off my hands than accept a farthing from him.”
She finally had to look away from him, troubled by the cloud of dark emotions swirling in his eyes. She shivered. Sebastian Sherbrook was not supposed to feel so deeply. He was insouciant. Sarcastic. Scornful at most. Not whatever this was.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
She returned her gaze to him. His hands were clenched by his sides, as if to contain some impending violence, and the only thing his eyes seemed to be silently conveying to her anymore was hi
s contempt. “Thank you?”
“Yes. Thank you for making it so easy to despise you.”
She exhaled in a rush, his words landing like a punch to the gut. They shouldn’t hurt her. He shouldn’t hurt her, no matter what he might say.
He pulled at the lace on his sleeves and strode back to the pianoforte. He sat at the stool and launched into the third movement of the Waldstein with exaggerated ease.
Her throat closed up with poorly concealed emotion. Not a coincidence, then. All the years she had spent wondering if he remembered their first meeting, if he thought of her when he played this piece, and she at last had her answer. Oh, he definitely remembered. She hated the thrill she felt deep inside of her, alongside the dismay. And she hated that he somehow knew how playing this piece would affect her. He’d done it to upset her.
Well, he had succeeded admirably.
For the second time in the space of a few minutes, she crossed the room before even she knew what she was about and stood over him. She was not an emotional woman. But something about this man made her insane.
“Stop.”
He turned his head and gave her a look of mock surprise. His fingers continued to move across the keys. “Does my playing offend? But I thought this one of your favorites.”
“I want you to stop.”
“But I’m just coming to the good part.” His right hand began trilling, his left hand swooped upward in a rapid swell, as loud as the instrument would allow. The sound was glorious, and it tore out her heart. He was an even better player than Johann had been.
And that thought was enough to push her over the edge.
She took a step forward and reached out, blind to anything but her need for the music to end. She grasped his left hand and jerked it from the keys rather roughly.
She heard his swift intake of breath, as if she’d hurt him, and felt the muscles under her hand tense.
He rose so quickly from his seat that the stool skidded back with a terrible groan.
Unconsciously, she backed up a step and released him.
Virtuous Scoundrel (The Regency Romp Trilogy Book 2) Page 6