by Sarah Zettel
A flash of fresh movement caught my eye, and I turned toward it, my heart fluttering like my fan. But it was not my betrothed. Lady Clarenda Newbank had left Olivia behind and was now headed straight for me like a white, gold, and exceedingly peeved galleon. Olivia trailed the charging peeress, a look of uncharacteristic panic on her face.
“Peggy Fitzroy, you sly thing!” Lady Clarenda tapped me on the shoulder with her fan in that friendly way of hers. There’d only be a slight bruise later. “Is it true what I hear? You, betrothed to Sebastian Sandford?”
I hid my face behind my own fan to cover the fact that I couldn’t muster the appropriate blush. “It hasn’t been announced yet.” I glowered at Olivia. She waved her fan helplessly back, which I took to mean that Lady Clarenda had already heard.
“You must be delighted!” Lady Clarenda said, loud enough to turn all the heads that had up until this moment been ignoring me. “And so surprised!”
I dipped my eyes and wished with all my heart that Lady Clarenda would shut her great, painted mouth.
Of course, she did not. “You must, indeed, wonder what Mr. Sandford thought when he heard what sort of prize he was getting.” She smiled, showing all her perfect teeth. “But I wouldn’t worry. I’m sure everyone understands you’re only an orphan and not a—” She laid her dainty hand against her lips. “Oh, dear. I’ve spoken quite out of turn, haven’t I?”
My hand was lowering my fan. I couldn’t stop it. The blood rose to my cheeks, but not from any emotion remotely related to maiden’s delicate blush.
“Lud, Clarenda, have you seen Lucy DeLancy’s new hair?” Olivia tried valiantly. “Has she told you—”
Lady Clarenda didn’t so much as glance at her. “How thoughtless of me to go repeating baseless rumor!” she went on, just in case someone in that room wasn’t yet paying attention. “After all, the whole world knows you were born well before your father deserted your mother.”
“The whole world knows it, as you say,” I hissed back. “Just as they know your little walk with Lord Gunderson at the Mayday fete was perfectly innocent. Tell me, did you ever find the fan you lost? I heard he looked for it in all sorts of unlikely places.”
Olivia was signaling “Don’t.” Olivia was signaling “Stop.” But a terrible recklessness took hold as I watched Clarenda Newbank turn paper white and all her primped and powdered friends gaped wide-eyed at her. “Of course, I’m sure that has nothing to do with why you’ve had no offers yet. Neither could it be because of the walk you took with Jamie Finnmore at the Winstons’ garden party last summer. Was it your handkerchief you’d lost that time? Oh, no, I recall now, it was a ring. The kerchief was when you went walking with Sir Adam—”
Crack! The blow fell hard against my cheek and snapped my head back.
“You little brat!” Lady Clarenda lowered the fan she’d used against me. “How dare you?”
Oddly, I didn’t feel anything. Even more oddly, I smiled. “Because everybody already knows what I am, Lady Clarenda. Now they know the same about you.”
I wrenched myself and all my skirts around, and marched out the French doors. A sharp, stinging sensation spread across my cheek. At the same time, my hands began to shake. I’d just insulted Lady Clarenda Newbank at her own birthday party. If we’d been boys and drawn swords on each other, it could not have been more ruinous. I tottered down the terrace’s curving steps to the garden. I was never going to live this down. Never. Barbados? I would need to go to the Antipodes to escape this night.
“Here! With me!” A hand grabbed mine. A young man’s hand. He took off at a run and dragged me, stumbling, after him.
Was I being rescued or abducted? I actually didn’t much care, so long as he stopped soon and let me breathe. My stays were cutting off my air, and the shadows swam past my eyes. “Please . . .” I panted.
The youth responded by dragging me around the corner of a brick and glass outbuilding. I hadn’t enough breath left in me to do more than squeak as he started into the narrow space between its wall and the towering hedge. So I did the only other thing I could think of. I brought my fan down hard on his knuckles.
“Ow!” He came to a startled halt and turned to stare at me.
Now that I had a moment to examine him, my abductor proved to be tall and young. Only a couple of years older than I, to judge by his thin frame and smooth chin. His pale coat was cut tight enough to show lean shoulders and well-made arms. His wig was of the latest style, with a plain ribbon tying its short queue in back, and only one small patch decorated his strong-boned face. But his most arresting feature was his eyes. Even in what dim light reached us from the house, I could see they were shockingly bright blue.
“Sir, you are too forward!” Hoops swaying gracelessly, I retreated, straight into the aforementioned, and very sloppily trimmed, hedge. “And we have not been introduced!”
“I am terribly sorry.” My abductor plastered a woebegone look on his face, but his startling blue eyes glittered with suppressed mischief. “I’ve not made my bow, have I?” He did so right there, with great flourish. “The Honorable Sebastian Sandford, at your service.”
CHAPTER FOUR
IN WHICH THE UNEXPECTED MEETING PROVES TO HAVE SEVERE AND UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCES, AND OUR HEROINE FINDS A PRATICAL USE FOR HER FAN.
This time, I truly am going to faint. These words formed themselves in a distant and entirely calm part of my mind. At that same time, my body seemed intent on producing a string of embarrassing little hiccoughs as it attempted to draw enough breath to keep me from falling prostrate to the ground and—not incidentally—quite ruining my made-over skirts.
The Honorable Sebastian Sandford folded his arms, crossed one leg over the other, and leaned casually against the greenhouse window. “Do let me know when you’ve recovered, Miss Fitzroy.”
The lazy words proved to have a most extraordinary effect. Knees and hands at once ceased their undignified trembling. Back and body straightened themselves within the cage of my corset.
“I am perfectly well, thank you, Mr. Sandford.”
“Not perfectly, if I may say so.” Mr. Sandford pulled a lace-edged handkerchief from his sleeve. “You’re cut.” He smiled as he stepped up to me, put his hand under my chin, and gently began to dab at my smarting cheek.
Whatever indignation I felt was entirely banished by the sudden intrusion of complete bewilderment. Separately, all things made sense. Sebastian’s hand under my chin was warm. His eyes were blue. His brow, beneath the line of his tidy wig, was wide and clear. His mouth was inclined to smile. It was the details that threatened to overwhelm: how one corner of his mouth tipped softly upward, how his long, thick lashes curved as he half closed those blue eyes to concentrate on his task. The soft, persistent pattering of the linen against my face. The crook of his strong finger under my chin and the way in which he guided my head to turn slightly to the left so he could minister to another portion of my wounded cheek.
I had fallen madly in love once or twice when younger, so I recognized where this internal disorder sprang from. At least, most of it. Surely, I’d never felt my heart thundering in quite this fashion, or fallen to noticing such tiny details as the freckle at the corner of his jaw or how the shadows traced the sharp line of his chin. The muscle and motion of his throat as he swallowed. All these things combined carried me into a state of near-complete paralysis alternating with the need to shiver.
“No, it will not do.” Sebastian stepped back and, as if I had not enough confusion to contend with, he frowned. “We must have some water. Come on, in here.” He grabbed my hand again, this time to lead me the rest of the way around the greenhouse, to its door, which he opened and walked straight through.
There were, of course, a thousand witty and sophisticated protests I could have advanced to this. Probably they should include some fluttering of my own eyelashes, to show he was not the only one in possession of this inexplicably attractive feature. Of course, the protest that actually reached my lips ha
d nothing in common with any of these.
“You’ll spoil my makeup.”
“I’m afraid Lady Clarenda already saw to that.”
The Newbanks’ greenhouse seemed a typical example of its kind, with benches along the walls and down the center covered with pots, sacks of soil, and tools of the gardener’s trade. It was warm and still. Scents of earth and greenery filled the close air. I could not help but notice how the potted seedlings that stood on shelves in the many windows made an effective curtain between us and any other party guest who might happen to be passing outside.
“We really should be getting back,” I murmured. I couldn’t hear any sounds at all from the house or the party. The only light came from the moon shining pale above the garden wall.
“Just as soon as we’ve cleaned you up.” Sebastian stripped off his gloves and then dipped his handkerchief in a bucket of water some thoughtful gardener had left on a bench. “I’d rather my betrothed did not enter a ballroom looking as though she’d been in a brawl.” He caught my chin again and applied the cold, damp kerchief, but somehow his touch failed to exert the same fascination as previously. “You know, this will go faster if you hold still.”
But I didn’t want to hold still. It was too quiet here with just Sebastian and myself behind the screening plants in this narrow aisle between the greenhouse workbenches. He was the man to whom I was betrothed. His strong hands, smiling mouth, fair hair, and fine eyes were points very much in his favor, as were the lace handkerchief and the concern he exhibited for my welfare. None of this made up for the fact that after all I had just said about Lady Clarenda going walking with assorted youths under dubious circumstances, here I was, without even a flimsy excuse.
“That’s enough. Thank you.” I pushed his hand away. The changeability that had taken hold of my mind was as discomforting as anything that had happened yet.
Sebastian sighed and shook out his bedraggled kerchief. “Look here, Miss Fitzroy . . . Margaret . . . I apologize, but I came to the party tonight with the express hope of seeing you.” Really, it was most unfair of the moonlight to have settled into his eyes. “And after that scene you played with Lady Clarenda, I found I very much wanted to meet you properly. In private, if I could.” His smile was rueful this time. If the shadows hadn’t been so thick, would I have seen him blush? “We’re betrothed, after all. It can’t be wondered at that a man would want some conversation with his bride-to-be.”
“I wanted to meet you as well,” I said. “And I’m sorry about Lady Clarenda. I promise I don’t normally behave so.” Outside my own thoughts, I added silently.
“Don’t be sorry.” Sebastian smiled. “I enjoyed it. One doesn’t get to meet many girls with spirit on the town.”
My fingers, as unsettled as the rest of me, twiddled with my fan, folding it and unfolding it. “Perhaps that’s because we’re told if we show our spirit, no one will want us.”
“Ridiculous.” Sebastian laid his bared hand on my glove. “No man seeing you tonight could fail to find you anything but magnificent.” His voice was low, and the sincerity of it ran through me like a current of heat. No one had ever called me magnificent, especially not a handsome young man who could capture the moonlight in his eyes.
His hand was under my chin again, lifting it. He was bending down. He was going to kiss me. He was very close now. I could feel his breath against my skin.
My hand acted on its own. It shoved up between us and snapped my fan open. Sebastian pulled back just in time to keep the sandalwood staves from tweaking his nose.
I started to stammer some apology, but it died before it could be fully formed. The change that came over Sebastian’s handsome face was as sudden as any alteration my thoughts had undergone. His charming smile vanished, replaced by indignation and something far nastier.
“You’ve a taste for comedy, Margaret. Well. Such a scene needs two players.”
Sebastian twisted my mother’s fan clean out of my fingers and slipped away between the benches while I was still gawking.
I am ashamed to admit it, but I shrieked, “Give that back!”
Sebastian’s grin showed his teeth now, and there was nothing of good humor left in it. “Say please.” He held my fan high overhead with one long arm, putting it as far out of my reach as the moon.
“I won’t! Stop being childish!”
“I’m being childish?” He arched his brows. “You’re the one stamping your foot.”
If this was an attempt to put me out of my current humor, it failed miserably. “That fan was my mother’s, and you will give it back!”
“I’ll give it back, but you must pay a forfeit for being so careless with it.”
“What forfeit?”
“You know what I want, Margaret Fitzroy. A kiss.”
“No. It’s not . . . it wouldn’t be—”
“Wouldn’t be, what? Oh, come, Margaret. Or perhaps I should call you Peggy. That’s what my sister Rosamund said your friends call you. Mayn’t I be one of those friends?” The words were spoken coaxingly, with the former sweetness creeping back in. But the effect was quite spoiled by the fact that he did not lower my fan a single inch.
“My friends do not steal my things.”
“Oh, very well. If not a kiss, then let me hear you say my name. Say ‘Please, Sebastian.’”
I did not like this game. I did not like the light in his eyes as he played or how he showed no sign of bringing my mother’s fan down closer. Cold disquiet spread within me, but I also realized I’d only make myself ridiculous by jumping up to try for it. I gritted my teeth and tried to console myself with the fact that he had dropped his insistence that I give him a kiss.
“Please, Sebastian.”
“There. Was that so very hard?” He smiled his brilliant smile, but this time it failed to set off any tremors in my bosom. He did, however, lower the fan enough for me to snatch away. “You’ll find I’m a very easy man to keep in humor.” Sebastian moved forward another step. I felt a bench pressing against my back, signaling I was cut off from further retreat, so I slid sideways.
“I’m going back now,” I said, I hoped stoutly. “Olivia will be wondering where I’ve gotten to.” Reminding Sebastian I was not friendless felt very important just then.
Impatience flickered across his face. As if to make up for that, he broadened his smile and softened his voice. “There’s really no hurry. I’m not some stranger. I’m your betrothed. We can be as private as we choose, and no one will think anything wrong in it.”
He moved forward again, sure-footed on the packed earth floor. The greenhouse’s warmth had grown oppressive, as had the silence. Newbank house and its crowd of party guests seemed a thousand miles away.
“We may be betrothed, but we are still strangers.” I was fighting for calm. I would not be able to make him see any kind of reason if I gave way to the panic rising in my throat. “I know nothing about you.”
“Well, you’ll never learn if you keep cringing and mewling. You did say you wanted to meet me, didn’t you?”
“This is not what I meant.”
“But it is what I mean.”
Sebastian lunged forward again. I tried to dodge, but my skirt and hoop caught on the corner of the nearest bench. All at once, Sebastian had hold of my wrists. He was grinning again, and the fresh light in his eyes had nothing at all to do with the moon.
“Now, now, none of that.” Sebastian forced my hands down to my sides. “I only want to see more of this vaunted spirit of yours.”
He yanked me forward to seize me around the waist and fasten his mouth over mine. It was hot and sickeningly soft, not to mention sloppy wet. His tongue shoved and stabbed at my teeth. In one breath, I was repulsed. In the next, I was horrified. In the third, I did the only thing I could think of.
I bit down. Hard.
It produced a taste of salt and copper, along with a most prodigious oath. Sebastian jerked backward, but he did not let go, and my heart shrank to a tight ball withi
n me. Blood trickled down his chin, making an inky line against his white skin. “You’ll learn to mind your manners with me!”
I don’t know what he did next, but the world spun, and I was flat on my back, struggling for breath. Sebastian dropped down, trapping my skirts beneath his knees, pinning me under boning and damask. Then he was flat on top of me, his sloppy mouth slipping and sliding over mine. One hand pressed my wrists over my head while the other dug hard between my legs. Panic seized me. I couldn’t even roll away because of the ridiculous hoops. And despite all my layers of satin and cambric, Sebastian found what he was looking for, and pinched. I screamed, but that just let his tongue stab into my mouth. I couldn’t breathe. Sebastian scrabbled at my skirts. I was going to faint, and if I fainted he’d . . . merciful God . . . if I fainted, he’d . . . he’d—
Sebastian reared back. His Adam’s apple bobbed vigorously in his white throat as he laughed. I felt his hot hands and the cold air. I also felt my fan in my fingers. He’d had to let go of one hand to get at my skirts and stuff his fingers between my bare thighs. There was no thought or plan in me, just the elemental force that is sheer desperation.
I jammed my mother’s fan straight into the hollow of his throat.
Sebastian made an odd choking noise. At another time, I probably would have found the way his eyes bulged in their sockets most amusing. As it was, all that concerned me was that he had fallen back to the point where I could yank my skirts out from under his knees and scramble away.
“Oh, dear,” said a new voice behind us. “Dear, dear, dear.”
CHAPTER FIVE
IN WHICH THERE IS AN UNCOMFORTABLE ESCAPE, AND AN EXTRAORDINARY ASSERTION IS MADE.
“I seem to be intruding. It was unintentional, I do assure you. Yes. I do assure you.”