by Sara Bennett
Sebastian stared at him. “She knows?”
“I have consulted with her and she has already consented. She wants a child as much as I do, and she sees you as a means to an end.” He laughed softly. “You need not fear that when it is over she will cling to you and become hysterical. My wife is as pragmatic as I am about these matters.”
Sebastian sat down, not sure his legs would hold him. She had consented? He rubbed a hand over his face and felt his sense of the ridiculous rising to the fore.
“So you have no problem with me taking your wife to bed for however long it takes to get her with child?” he burst out.
“None whatsoever.” He spoke with a seriousness that Sebastian had only heard during their meetings before a battle. “Come, what do you say, my friend?”
It took a little longer to convince him, but by the time he left Sebastian was convinced. He knew, in his heart, that he was fighting against his own inclinations by saying no. It might be insane, and yet . . . he found himself smiling as he walked away.
The first meeting took place at a friend’s house. He wasn’t sure how Richmond had wangled it, but the place was empty apart from a skeleton crew of servants who were near enough to invisible.
Sebastian had insisted he meet with Lavinia first. Patrick might tell him she was willing but he wanted to make absolutely certain of it before they took the next step. And perhaps, too, he wanted to test his theory about the Ice Maiden. Was she really so unmoved by taking another man to her bed? By taking him to her bed?
Sebastian was not inexperienced in the bedroom. He was thirty-three and a man of the world, but this wasn’t some casual encounter. Once he had Lavinia Richmond in his arms, there would be no going back, they could never undo what they had done. At least he couldn’t. Every time he looked at her he would think about their moments together.
She was waiting for him in a small, private sitting room, her dark hair swept up, a few unruly curls brushing her cheek. Looking at her it occurred to him that he’d been tempted to twine those curls about his fingers more than once. At dinner one evening, he had found himself admiring the pale cream of her skin, the way her dark lashes swept down as she smiled at something Patrick said. And then, as now, her eyes darted to his, briefly, as if she was fully aware of his scrutiny and wasn’t sure what to do about it.
She puzzled him and fascinated him, he admitted it.
Sebastian was eager to discover what lay beneath Lavinia Richmond’s serene and unruffled surface. Because there was something more than chilly ice, he was sure of that. His fingers itched to unpin her inky hair and allow it to fall in heavy waves about her shoulders, to twine his fingers in those silky strands as he lay above her and drove deep into her body.
Startled, he realised he was hard with desire. Already.
Her eyes had grown wide, seeing him standing there. Just for a moment her face was unguarded, her eyes open and full of emotion. And in that brief moment he saw it all. He saw her. The wariness and the doubt, the longing and the desire. Before her lashes swept down as if she needed to protect herself. He watched her fold her hands together in her lap, and then she was looking at him again and now there was nothing in her face but cool enquiry.
“Captain Longhurst.”
“Lavinia,” he said, deliberately using her first name, and came to a stop before her. She stood up, elegant and beautiful, and he took her hand and bowed over it. Her fingers trembled slightly in his and he tightened his grip on them, and then placed his lips against her skin, lingering.
Yes, she was trembling, and he was an oaf to make things more difficult.
“Captain,” she said, her voice as polite as ever. “I wish to thank you for agreeing . . . for your understanding.” She removed her hand from his, tucking it inside the other one at her waist.
“I need to ask you,” he said, choosing his words. “Is this really what you want?”
“Yes, it is.” Her mouth tilted in an amused smile. “Did you think Patrick had coerced me? You should know him better than that.”
“I suppose I do.”
She gave him an intent look. “Did Patrick tell you? He is physically incapable of fathering a child.”
This wasn’t exactly what Patrick had confessed to him but it made sense. “I see.”
“You were our first choice, but if you refuse then Patrick will find someone else.”
He looked away. It was an effort to speak. “I’m not refusing,” he said. The thought of this woman with another man made his heart pound and his throat dry. His reaction surprised him—he knew he was drawn to her but to this extent?
“Then we have a bargain,” she said, and when he looked at her again he found she was smiling. It was the sort of smile one might give to a stranger or a distant acquaintance.
Suddenly Sebastian knew he wanted more from her than politeness and chilly friendship. He wanted her to turn to molten fire in his arms, to hear her voice calling out his name, to feel her quiver and shake with passion. Was that wrong of him? He no longer cared. His friend was using him to make a child on his wife—why couldn’t he get something from this bargain too?
She was collecting her reticule from the sofa, and as she turned he took her in his arms. She stiffened in surprise, eyes widening as they met his, and he almost changed his mind. What if she took fright and told him she didn’t want to go through with it? But then he threw caution to the winds and kissed her.
Her lips were soft, slightly parted with surprise, and he ran the tip of his tongue along the gap, tasting her. She melted, that was the only word for it. Her fingers folded into his jacket, hanging on as if she needed his support to stay upright.
Desire gripped him and he knew how easy it would be to let himself do all the things he wanted to her. Right here and right now. And then she was struggling, pushing him away, and her face was flushed and her eyes glittering with anger.
Not so icy now.
“You forget yourself, Captain Longhurst,” she said in a voice that was slightly breathless. “There is to be no sentiment to this bargain of ours.”
Did she think she would lie in the bed in darkness and he would delicately lift her nightdress and do the deed and then walk away? He gave an angry laugh.
“I am not a manikin to perform for you. A man needs to desire the woman he is with, to feel passion for her and her for him. If you are expecting otherwise then perhaps you should choose someone else.”
It wasn’t true. At the moment he would take her any way he could have her, he was so hot for her. He was taking a risk and he wondered if she would back out. His frustration made him clench his hands into fists at his sides.
She was staring at him, her lips a little swollen from his kiss, and that nearly undid him again. And then she sighed and with relief he knew he’d won. “No, of course not. I understand.” She glanced up at him again, and there was a certain curiosity in her gaze. A tentativeness he had never seen there before. “So you will require me to kiss you? To touch you?”
“I will. I will require you to do those things and more, Lavinia.”
She nodded and her gaze locked with his. “Then it shall be as you wish. Goodbye Captain Longhurst.”
He stood there after she had gone, his heart still thumping, wondering what he thought he was doing playing these games with Patrick’s wife. He was travelling down a road that might end in disaster, in fact it probably would.
And yet he couldn’t seem to help himself.
Three
Autumn 1816, Monkstead House, Mockingbird Square
Sebastian Longhurst nodded his thanks as his horse was brought to him. The bay gelding whickered in greeting. The animal had served him well but was getting old now, although he had no intention of replacing it. In his opinion loyalty and trust were to be valued.
There was a bitter taste in his mouth. He asked himself why he was surprised. What had he expected? For Lavinia to fall upon him, sobbing and begging his forgiveness? It wasn’t going to happen; it was never going to happen.
Any faint and foolish hope he might have had vanished as soon as he’d met her eyes over the threshold of Monkstead’s library.
She hadn’t wanted to speak to him. Indeed she had been hiding in the hope he would go away and leave her alone. Hard to believe they had once been lovers and he had thought her the most perfect woman he had ever met or would ever meet. Now, when he remembered what he had done for her sake on the field of Waterloo, he felt cold and hurt. Cheated and empty.
He set his horse to a trot across Mockingbird Square, blind to the elegant Georgian town houses and the autumn colours of the trees in the garden. Currently he was living with his brother and family in a far less fashionable area of London but at least it gave him somewhere to call home while he considered his future.
Once he’d believed his future would be with Lavinia, but now he saw that had always been a foolish dream. He needed to put her behind him once and for all. Move on. It felt as if he’d been asleep for the past year, waiting while his injuries healed and she was in mourning, but now he’d awoken. This outcome might not be the one he had hoped for, but he was still young and vigorous. He had his life ahead of him.
By the time he reached his brother’s house he had managed to talk himself into a more cheerful state of mind. It would never do to let his sister-in-law and two nieces see him down in the dumps.
“Uncle Seb!” the shouts were deafening.
“Girls!” His smile was no longer forced, he was just happy to see them and bask in their worship of their favourite uncle.
“Did you see her?” his sister-in-law Megan came forward, shooing her daughters back to their studies. Her eyes narrowed. Megan didn’t like Lavinia, despite never having met her, and wasn’t averse to letting him know it. She’d told him several times that she thought him far too good for the likes of Lady Richmond.
“Don’t worry Megan, I’m not marrying her.”
Megan flushed and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Sebastian, was I that obvious? I just . . .” she sighed. “I wish you could forget her as easily as she has forgotten you. Not once did she visit you in the hospital when you were recovering. Not once.”
“That’s in the past.” He forced another smile, this one not quite so successfully.
She patted his arm but obligingly changed the subject. “Mark has gone out. Business. He said he needed to talk with you when he returned.”
“I have nowhere in particular to be.”
Megan’s smile was sympathetic and Sebastian couldn’t wait to escape from it. He didn’t want sympathy, he didn’t want to think about Lavinia, he just wanted to close his eyes and feel glad to be alive.
After Waterloo the doctors had been amazed that he lived at all. His injuries had been severe and for a time he lay in a limbo between life and death—his head still bore terrible scars, though hidden now beneath his hair, where his skull had been opened and the slivers of broken bone pressing upon his brain removed. The surgeon who treated him had wrought a miracle, but if his will hadn’t been strong he would never have survived and made a full recovery.
Thoughts of Lavinia had contributed to that strong will. His longing for her and his son. He’d asked for her in the hospital. In his confused and weakened state he could only think that the reason she hadn’t come to see him was because she didn’t know he was injured.
It wasn’t until his brother Mark came to see him, that he finally learned the truth.
“She’s left for the county. In mourning for her husband. Devastated, so they say.”
Devastated. Sebastian wanted to believe it, to use Lavinia’s mourning as an excuse for her not visiting him. But as time had passed and the letters he sent her were returned unopened, he could no longer pretend.
She had a son, and that son was not Patrick’s. Was she afraid Sebastian would tell? He couldn’t believe she didn’t know him better than that. He’d only seen the baby once, before he hastily left England to join the battle against Napoleon, the recently escaped French emperor.
That moment was etched into his memory. Her dark eyes had held his and he’d seen the depth of her feelings for him. Thought he’d seen, he reminded himself. Now he knew it had been nothing but self-delusion. Another lie he’d told himself.
“Uncle Seb!” the high pitched voices of his nieces brought him back from the past. Determined not to go there again, he concentrated on their antics and waited until his brother came home. Once the girls were banished to the nursery for supper and bed, peace reigned once more.
“Megan says it was as she expected and Lady Richmond snubbed you,” were Mark’s first words.
He and Sebastian were twins, although you’d never know it. Mark always said he’d inherited the brains and Sebastian the brawn, but that wasn’t entirely true. Mark had a good head for business and Sebastian for strategy. Physically, Sebastian had a bigger frame, and looked good in his uniform, while Mark was more slender and some inches shorter. Sebastian’s hair was a dark brown and Mark’s almost black. The only thing they had in common were eyes of an intense ocean blue.
Mark was waiting for his answer, eyebrow cocked.
“She hid in the library,” Sebastian admitted.
“And?”
“I waited until she came out. I wanted to be sure . . .” He groaned. “She didn’t want to speak to me. I know, I know, I’m a fool, but I just needed to see it for myself. To make certain there was no chance of a misunderstanding.”
Mark frowned. “And your son?”
“I didn’t see him. I didn’t ask to.”
Mark hesitated before he spoke again. “Although I’m relieved you’re being so calm about it, that child is yours, and he’s heir to Patrick’s wealth. You may not want to walk away just yet.”
Surprised, Sebastian tried to read his brother’s expression. “Why? What is it?”
Mark wasn’t to be rushed. “First things first,” he said with a grin. “Will you join me in the business?”
Sebastian wasn’t entirely surprised by the offer. Mark, and Megan, had been hinting at it even before he left the army, and he had been privately considering his response. He had to find something to keep him occupied, make a new life, and Mark seemed eager to have him aboard.
“I gratefully accept,” he said.
“That’s settled then,” his brother clapped him on the back. “I am planning to expand by opening another office on the continent, and even as far away as America. You’d be surprised how fashionable our colonial cousins are.”
“You know I get sea sick?” Mark owned two ships which he used for importing luxuries for the English gentry. Their father had left the business in dire straits and Mark had spent years rebuilding it into a successful and profitable concern. Now he was working on expanding and taking Longhurst Enterprises to the world.
Mark snorted a laugh. “You won’t be sailing. You’d be of better use bringing us new customers and dealing with our enemies. Smooching and knocking heads together is your job, brother. You’re good at that.”
Sebastian laughed despite himself. “Smooching, I can try. Knocking heads together I can definitely do, although I’m more used to running a sword through my enemies. I take it you wouldn’t want that?”
Mark grimaced. “You may need to be more subtle than that, brother.” He looked away and suddenly he was sombre.
Sebastian frowned. “Tell me what’s wrong?”
Just then Megan entered the room, her face full of expectation. “Are we celebrating?” she asked, looking from one to the other.
“Open the champagne, wife!” Mark cried.
It was only after they had had their celebratory sip and Megan had left the room to see about dinner, that Mark returned to their previous topic. His smile faded and his eyes grew serious. Sebastian felt his heart quicken.
“For God’s sake tell me,” he gritted.
Mark learned forward. “I would understand if you walked away from Lavinia, but the boy is your son, Sebastian. For now you might have to swallow your ire and act in
his best interests, no matter how much you might wish to wash your hands of the mother.”
“Tell me,” Sebastian said again.
Four
Autumn 1816, the West End
Lavinia had forgotten just how much she enjoyed the theatre.
Losing herself in a world that was completely made-up, forgetting her own troubles in laughter and sometimes tears, was just what she needed. During the past year her life had been so quiet, sequestered away in the country, coming to terms with her widowhood and motherhood, and trying to forget the man she had loved so passionately.
Her recent re-entry into Society—at her mother’s insistence—had been a little overwhelming at first. It helped that she had a new friend to accompany her. Miss Margaret Willoughby was from the north of England and was staying with her cousin Olivia Maclean, although there were rumours that she would be returning home soon to the vicarage where she was born.
Margaret was kind and generous, and she had a surprisingly wicked sense of humour. She was the ideal companion, not least because she made Lavinia smile, and Lavinia needed all the smiles she could get at the moment. She had pushed Sebastian Longhurst from her mind during daylight hours, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there at night. Sharing her head and her bed. She could only hope that, with time, he would fade away for good.
A vain hope, she knew, when her son looked at her with his father’s eyes.
She and Margaret settled into their seats in the box her brother had hired. Martin didn’t like the theatre nearly as much as his sister did, but he liked to be ‘seen’. Lavinia’s family had once been wealthy and important, and if her brother was to be believed, they would be again. Martin had been coming with them tonight but then sent a last minute note to say he couldn’t make it. Lavinia had felt a guilty sense of relief. He would only have asked her questions about Sebastian, and remind her that she had acted entirely appropriately in removing herself from his orbit. That she had her son to think of and his inheritance.