A Passion for Pleasure(4)

Now the distance had closed. He stood before her close enough to touch. Though he could not be over thirty years of age, he seemed older, diminished somehow. Had he…fallen?

An ache pierced Clara’s heart. Sebastian Hall had always been disheveled, but in a rather appealing fashion suited to his artistic profession.

I’ve no time to fuss, his manner had proclaimed. I’ve got magic to weave.

And he had, with kaleidoscope threads and fairy-dust needles. At dinner parties and concerts, Mr. Hall spun music through the air and made Clara’s blood echo with notes that had never before moved her.

Not until Sebastian Hall had brought them to life. Sleeves pushed up to his elbows, hair tumbling across his forehead, he’d played the piano with a restless energy that could in no way be contained by the polish of formality.

But now? Now he was just…messy. At least three days’ worth of whiskers roughened his jaw, and his clothes looked as if he’d slept in them for even longer than that. Dark circles ringed his eyes. He appeared hollowed out, like a gourd or shell devoid of its essence.

Clara tilted her head to the side and frowned. Although Mr. Hall’s eyes were shot through with blood, they contained a sharpness that overindulgence would have blunted. And his movements—they were tense, restless, none of his edges smeared by the taint of spirits.

She stepped a little closer to him. Her nose twitched. No rank smell of ale or brandy wafted from his person. Only…

She breathed deeper.

Ahh.

Crisp night air. Wood smoke. The rich, faintly bitter scent of coffee. Clara inhaled again, the scent of him sliding deep into her blood and warming a place that had long been frozen over.

“Miss Whitmore?”

His deep voice, threaded with cracks yet still resonant, broke into her brief reverie. Such a pleasure to hear his voice wrap around her former name, evoking the golden days when she had been young, when William and their mother had been alive and sunshine-yellow dandelions colored the hills of Dorset like strokes of paint.

She lifted her gaze to find Mr. Hall watching her, his eyes dark and hooded. Her face warmed.

“Sir, are you…are you ill?” she asked.

The frank question didn’t appear to disconcert him. Instead, a vague smile curved his mouth—a smile in which any trace of humor surrendered to wickedness. A faint power crackled around him, as if attempting to break through his crust of lassitude.

“Ill?” he repeated. “Yes, Miss Whitmore, I am ill indeed.”

“Oh, I—”

He took a step forward, his hands flexing at his sides. She stepped back. Her heart thumped a restive beat. She glanced at the door, suddenly wishing Tom would hurry and arrive.

“I am ill behaved,” Mr. Hall said, his advance so deliberate that Clara had the panicked thought that she would have nowhere to go should he keep moving toward her. Should he reach out and touch her. Her skin prickled with sudden yearning for the act that she had once imagined in her youthful dreams.

She swallowed hard and tried to suppress the memories, reminding herself that she could no longer afford such girlish fancies.

“Ill considered,” Mr. Hall continued. Another step. Two. “Ill content. Ill at ease. Ill favored. Ill fated—”

“Ill bred?” Clara snapped, forcing her spine to stiffen in denial of her unforeseen anticipation.

Sebastian stopped. Then he chuckled, humor creasing his eyes. An unwelcome fascination rose in Clara’s chest as the sound of his deep, rumbling laugh settled alongside the delicious mixture of scents that she knew, even now, she would forever associate with him.

“Ill bred,” he repeated, his head cocked to the side. A lock of hair fell across his forehead. “The second son of an earl oughtn’t be ill bred, but that’s a fair assessment. My elder brother received a more thorough education in social graces.” Amusement still glimmered in his expression. “Though I don’t suppose he’s done that education much justice himself.”

Clara had little idea what he was talking about, though she did recall that his elder brother had recently wed. She also knew the Earl of Rushton had petitioned for a divorce from his wife several years ago. Rumors whispered at the edges of her mind, but back then Clara had been too ensnared in her own marriage to be concerned about a scandal involving an earl.

She realized that she’d backed up clear across the room to the stage. Sebastian stopped inches from her, close enough that she could see how the unfastened buttons of his collar revealed an inverted triangle of his skin, the vulnerable hollow of his throat where his pulse tapped.