Bombshell

by Sarah MacLean

  But this was not the kind of scab she felt comfortable discussing with her sisters any longer. Five years earlier—three years earlier—she might have told them everything. Might have disclosed every thought and every desire and every frustration she had with Caleb. But that was before, when there had still been a possibility that she’d walk their path.

  Now, however, if she were to say anything about Caleb Calhoun and how he’d nearly had her in a servants’ closet after she’d broken into the Viscount Coleford’s desk during a dinner party, they would surely ask questions.

  Which, if she were being honest, would not be entirely out of line. But she wasn’t interested in answering them. Not today, and possibly not ever.

  Her sisters loved her, but they didn’t understand her.

  And she wasn’t sure they ever would.

  Flashing a bright smile—the one made famous by the girls London used to call The Dangerous Daughters for how they threatened to steal hearts and titles—she said, “Perfectly well.”

  Before Sophie could probe, little Rose, Seline’s daughter, a few months younger than Lorna and inseparable from her cousin, who’d spent the last thirty minutes removing all of Sesily’s hairpins and then reinserting them so that they “were better,” said in a voice full of awe, “You look beautiful.”

  The forced smile became real. Truly there were few things that puffed one up more than children’s compliments. “Thank you very much, my sweet girl. I shall take that compliment, because it speaks to Lorna’s superior talent with kohl and rouge, and to your own skill for hair, but I wonder, am I not also clever?”

  The girls were distracted by adding additional red powder to her cheeks.

  Seraphina, Duchess of Haven and mistress of the house in which the Talbot sisters had congregated, laughed from the far end of the room, where she returned a haphazard pile of books to a low shelf. “Girls, tell your aunt Sesily that she is clever,” she said, standing up with more effort than appeared healthy.

  “You’re clever,” the girls said in unison.

  “It’s not the same if you have to be told to say it, my loves.”

  Seraphina waddled toward her, big as a house, though Sesily knew better than to say such a thing after becoming an aunt nine previous times. The fruits of those many accomplishments were sprinkled about the library appearing very much like the Duke and Duchess of Haven had been delivered parcels of children that morning instead of the ordinary household goods.

  Nine children: three belonging to Sophie and her marquess husband; two girls, wise beyond their years, belonging to Seline and Mr. Mark Landry, London’s greatest horsebreeder; three boys under four belonging to Seleste and her husband, the Earl of Clare; and little Oliver, son to Sera and the Duke of Haven, one and a half, and his mother about to deliver another.

  “Tell me something,” Sesily said to the room at large. “Have the four of you been drinking some kind of tincture or tonic from the local midwife? Perhaps an incorrect dosage? How are you all so damned fertile?”

  “What’s fertile?” asked Adam, Seleste’s eldest, from his place by the fire, where he and his middle brother were stacking books and toppling them to the ground.

  “Nothing,” his mother replied.

  “Ask your father,” Sesily said at the same time, flashing a grin at her sister. “Clare will love it.”

  “Oh, no doubt,” Seleste agreed. The earl would absolutely not love it, but it would give him and Seleste something to argue about, which was their favorite pastime, and the act that had no doubt preceded the conception of each of their three sons.

  Sesily grimaced at the prospect of another nephew. “There’s no danger that the copious amounts of children in this room are . . . catching . . . is there?”

  “Sometimes it does feel that way,” Sophie said with a sigh, leaning back on the settee. “Best steer clear of Sera.”

  “Ten under five feels like some kind of biblical plague is all I’m saying,” Sesily said. “Have we been so badly behaved that this might be punishment?”

  “The aristocracy would surely think so,” Seline replied, summoning a laugh from all assembled.

  “Well, either way,” Sesily said, “you’re lucky you have a battalion of nursemaids. And one very clever aunt.”

  “Ah, very clever, now,” Sera said, toddling her little boy over the carpet.

  “Give him.” Sesily waved her sister over.

  He barreled into her arms. “Now, what’s your name, then?”

  “That’s Oliver!” Lorna answered.

  Oliver blinked up at Sesily, entranced by her paint. No one would blame him.

  “Is it?” Sesily teased. “There are just so many of you, it’s difficult to keep you all straight. Indeed, it would be much easier if I only saw you in batches of two or three.”

  “Us first!” Rose demanded.

  “Clearly. And Oliver can stay.” She bopped the child on the nose with an enormous powder puff, and was rewarded with a delighted giggle.

  “And me!” Adam shouted from his book stacking.

  “Who are you again?” Sesily asked.

  “I’m Adam!” He wasn’t amused.

  “And are you new?”

  “No!”

  “I could swear we’ve never met.”

  He looked to his mother. “Mama, Aunt Sesily is being difficult.”

  “Imagine that,” Seleste replied, pouring herself a cup of tea from the service in the corner of the room before looking to Sesily. “Are you quite finished riling them up? They do perfectly well on their own.”

  “I’m just doing my part. It’s almost as though you shouldn’t have had so many that they outnumber you,” Sesily retorted, looking back to her minuscule ladies’ maids and whispering, “So. Many. Babies.”

  The pair nodded with all seriousness.

  “And they get everything,” Rose replied.

  “Tell me more.”

  “Papa bought Sissy a pony the other day. I didn’t get one.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Rose,” Seline said from a distance. “Your sister is half your size and did not have a pony. You’ve three ponies, because your father gives you everything you ask, whenever you ask for it.” Also because her father was one of the richest men in Britain and provided horseflesh to the entirety of Mayfair.

  “Not when I asked for a new pony, he didn’t,” Rose said matter-of-factly before returning her short attention span to Lorna’s work.

  “Lord deliver me from spoiled children,” Seline said to the ceiling.

  “I’m not spoiled!” Lorna proclaimed with the braggadocio of someone who absolutely was, running a stick of kohl well past Sesily’s eyelid. “Ash gets everything.”

  “I beg your pardon, young lady,” Sophie said, warning in her tone. “What does your brother get that you do not?”

  Lorna looked directly at her mother and said, “A title.”

  Sesily chuckled in the dead silence that fell. “A palpable hit, Lorna-roo.”

  “That’s enough out of you, Sesily Talbot.” Sophie came off the couch, setting the baby to her hip.

  Sesily looked to her nieces. “I’m in trouble now.”

  They giggled.

  “You are. For rousing this rabble.” Sophie crouched next to them. “You are very right, Lorna. You don’t get a title. And that is not at all fair.”

  Lorna’s gaze narrowed. Good girl, thought Sesily. That will serve you well in the future. “Because I’m a girl.”

  “Because you are a girl. And it’s terrible, and if we could, your father and I would give you all titles. We’d give you kingdoms.” Lord knew the Marquess of Eversley would burn down Parliament if he thought it would get his girls treated with equity.

  Sophie pushed on. “But look at all of us.” She waved to the collection of women in the room. “Your aunt Seraphina and I both own businesses, your aunt Seline rides horses like she was born one, your aunt Seleste speaks more languages than most people can name. And we don’t have titles,
but we have ourselves, and we have each other. And that’s better than any title, if you ask me.”

  Lorna was no longer listening, but Sesily was, and the words struck her more forcefully than she’d expected, tightening her throat. “That’s a very good answer to a very difficult question,” she said to Sophie.

  Sophie smiled. “I have had practice.”

  “I am impressed.”

  “What about Aunt Sesily?” Lorna asked.

  Everyone seemed to still in the wake of the unexpected question, and Sesily couldn’t help but wait in the silence, wishing the little girl hadn’t pointed out that Sophie had forgotten Sesily in her lovely list of her sisters’ attributes.

  Except Sophie, her youngest sister, who’d always been the one to surprise them, did not hesitate. “Aunt Sesily loves with her whole heart.” The words sizzled through Sesily, tingling at the back of her throat. And then Sophie leaned in and said, softly, “And she keeps secrets better than anyone.”

  Sesily blinked and let out a little laugh that might have been called watery by someone who wished to be rude. “That’s true, as a matter of fact.”

  Sophie looked to her and winked.

  “You have always been my favorite sister,” Sesily said.

  “I know,” said Sophie, happily, before plucking the stick of kohl from Lorna’s hands. “That is enough now. Your aunt is going to have to return to the world eventually, and any more of this might become permanent.”

  Lorna’s little face fell.

  “Well, if your mother insists we are through, I am going to find a looking glass.”

  “And Lorna,” Sophie said, “is going to find a washbasin.”

  In swooped one of the many nursemaids at hand and Lorna was whisked away, calling back, “Don’t wash it off until Papa sees!”

  Sesily turned her attention on her sister. “Do you think King would enjoy his daughter’s masterpiece?”

  Sophie’s lips twitched. “I think he would send her directly to an artists’ academy.”

  “In France.”

  “Nowhere else would do.”

  “Well, I won’t wash it off, but I would like to see it.” She turned to Oliver. “What do you think?” He reached out with the now rather gummy powder puff and powdered her chin. She shook her head. “Everyone in this whole family has a critique.”

  Propping him on her hip, she made for the hallway, where she found Seraphina speaking to the butler. Oliver, too, found his mother, reaching for her and making sounds that threatened to become unpleasant, so Sesily did what any intelligent aunt would do and headed for the parent in question.

  “. . . prepare a room for him, in case he decides to stay,” Sera said, turning to catch a lunging Oliver. “Oof!”

  “In case who decides to stay?” Sesily asked as the butler hurried off to do the duchess’s bidding. But she knew the answer. It settled like a stone in her chest.

  “Caleb,” Sera said, distractedly, plucking the powder puff from her son’s hand, one hand stroking over her midsection. “Have you let him eat this? It’s . . . wet.”

  “He hasn’t exactly ingested it,” Sesily replied, trying to calm the rush of—whatever it was that was coursing through her. She didn’t want to name it. She didn’t like it well enough to name it. Instead, she redirected the conversation. “What’s he doing here?”

  “Oliver?”

  “Sera. Pay attention. Caleb.”

  “I invited him,” Sera said, as though it were perfectly normal. Which it wasn’t.

  Sesily’s eyes went wide. She could name this feeling, despite loathing it. It was betrayal. “Why?”

  “I thought he might enjoy himself,” Sera said. “He likes the country. In Boston he has a large home on the water.”

  She didn’t want to think about his home. She didn’t want to think about him. “How nice for him.”

  Sera shook her head. “Sesily, what—”

  “And who is running the tavern?”

  Sera looked at her as though she’d gone mad. “Fetu. And our very competent staff.”

  “And if you have Fetu and a competent staff, tell me, why must Caleb be in England at all?”

  Sera blinked, opened her mouth to reply, then closed it, confusion flashing in her brown eyes before it was chased away with something else. Suspicion. “Well. So much for being immune to your charms.”

  Sesily’s brows snapped together. “What?”

  “You and Caleb.”

  “What about us?” Sesily said, brazening it through.

  Sera knew better. She tilted her head and said, “Sesily.” And before Sesily could deny it. Or admit it. Or take a moment to find an additional possibility, her sister added, “How was it?”

  Sesily’s cheeks were instantly aflame.

  “How was what?”

  Sesily closed her eyes, grateful that her back was to him. Highley Manor was one of the largest estates in all of England, with more than one hundred and twenty rooms. And of course the man had arrived at the top of two flights of stairs, in the second-floor hallway, outside the manor’s library at that precise moment, as though the whole thing were written in a novel. Dammit.

  “Nothing,” Sesily began, desperate for her sister not to say anything to make it worse.

  No luck there.

  “How were you,” Sera said, rounding on him, babe in arms. “It’s clear that you and Sesily have . . .”

  “Have what?”

  “It’s also clear that you’ve hurt her, and I find I don’t care for that,” Sera added, ignoring his question. “On the continuum of annoyance, I’m not quite at furious older brother, but I’m most definitely at annoyed friend and business partner. Shall we give it time?”

  “Sera—” They both said it. At the same time.

  Sesily sighed and turned to face the man she’d last seen in the shadows of the closet where he’d spent the better part of an hour kissing various parts of her body.

  Preparing for the absolute worst, she said, “Hello, Caleb.”

  His gaze found hers, deadly serious, and he stiffened with . . . regret.

  Once, during her first season, Sesily had been in a ladies’ retiring room fixing a stocking ribbon and eavesdropping, and she’d heard a young lady wish that the ground would open up and swallow her whole, so riddled she was with embarrassment.

  At the time, Sesily had thought the woman dramatic.

  No longer.

  She looked to the floor and cursed the sturdiness of the marble there.

  And then, matters got worse.

  Because instead of returning the greeting, Caleb said, “What happened to your face?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  She looked like she’d been attacked by a mad painter.

  Covered in paint and rouge and what appeared to be eye kohl applied all around her eyes, out to her temples and above her eyebrows, her hair in wild disarray, pinned haphazardly and looking like at any moment it would all tumble down around her shoulders and tease at the edges of her perfectly fitted rose silk dress.

  She looked all the ways women were told they should not look. Disheveled and untamed. An absolute mess.

  Anyone would have asked her what happened to her face.

  But when he gave voice to the question and it had landed in the foyer between him and Sesily and her sister, it struck Caleb that perhaps he should not have asked that particular thing in quite that particular way.

  Because he found that however wild the paint on her face, however much her hair appeared to have been the result of a lady’s maid who was part cyclone, he didn’t like the way she responded to the question, too harsh, with too much of an edge.

  He didn’t like her closing herself off.

  Even though he absolutely deserved it, and the biting tone in which she replied, “Have you never seen such a face, American? It’s all the rage in Mayfair.”

  He couldn’t help himself. “You know, I have recently been surprised by the things I’ve seen painted on faces in Mayfair.�
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  A slight flare of her nostrils was the only sign Sesily caught the reference to what she’d done to the Earl of Totting in the Duchess of Trevescan’s gardens, though Caleb would not have been surprised if she’d found a way to flay him for it, if only her sister hadn’t decided to come for him first.

  “Caleb Calhoun, you American menace!” Sera came toward Caleb, his godson in arms, and Caleb did his best to ignore the thread of guilt that coursed through him, instead focusing on the little boy, who clapped his hands. “You made me a promise.”

  He’d made one to himself, as well.

  He resisted the thought, instead reaching into his pocket and extracting a paper sack of apple candies, procured from a sweet shop in St. James’s before he’d driven out. He opened the sack and offered them to Sera. “I brought sweets.”

  She narrowed her gaze on him. “That is a paltry offering.”

  “Sera,” he said, firmly. “Nothing happened.”

  Sesily made a sound from behind her, and Caleb realized that, too, might have been the wrong thing to say, considering she was right there. He looked to her. Had she told her sister they’d—

  “He’s right,” Sesily said. Adding, “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “It may not be my business, per se,” Sera insisted, swinging round toward Sesily, placing Oliver within striking distance of the sweets. Caleb reached into the bag and extracted a lolly. He needed as many friends here as possible. Sera looked back. “Excuse me, don’t bribe my child.”

  Oliver popped the candy into his mouth.

  “I don’t see how it is your business at all, Sera,” Sesily said. “I am a grown woman of thirty years with my own home, my own funds, and absolutely no need of protection. And whatever I do or do not do with”—she offered a dismissive hand in Caleb’s direction—“whomever . . . is my business and mine alone.”

  Whomever?

  He didn’t care for that.

  “Mine, as well, I hope,” he said.

  Both Talbot sisters turned wide eyes on him.

  “So . . . something did happen,” Sera said, triumphantly, as though she was London’s greatest detective.