A Passion for Pleasure(77)
Sebastian sighed. “I should never have agreed to help you find those bloody plans.”
“If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have met Clara,” Darius replied mildly.
Sebastian lifted his head to meet his brother’s keen gaze. It was an odd sentiment coming from a man ruled by his head rather than his heart.
“Neither would I have put the earldom in jeopardy,” he said. “Again.”
Darius shrugged, as if that matter were of no more consequence than a fly in the jam jar. “The earldom is locked tight and secure.”
“For now.”
“Bear in mind that Fairfax has his own sphere, which I’m certain he wishes to keep free of rumor,” Darius said. “A peer who cast his own daughter from his estate and is effectively holding his grandson hostage while battling back creditors and potential foreclosures…imagine what polite society might have to say about such circumstances.”
“I’d tell a reporter to print it in the Morning Post if I thought Andrew would emerge unscathed,” Sebastian said. “As long as Fairfax has the boy, he has the whiphand.”
“You don’t have to print it in the papers to use the threat as leverage,” Darius pointed out. “Who else knows about this?”
“Findlay. Some of it, at any rate. I’ve an appointment at the bank later this morning.”
“I’ll come along,” Darius said. “Fairfax’s weakness is your advantage. He needs money. You have money now. And if you dangle it before him, he might very well stumble over his own feet in his haste to seize it.”
One could hope, Sebastian thought.
Chapter Sixteen
If it weren’t for the gauze of clouds veiling the afternoon sun, the scene would be a repeat of the previous day’s. Pedestrians strolled into Belgrave Square Garden, birds splashed in a puddle, a boy rolled a hoop along one of the pathways. The meat-pie vendor was stationed at his stand, casting glances at Clara in between doling out his fragrant pies. Andrew and his tutor rounded the corner at half past three, taking the same path they’d walked yesterday.
Concealed within the cab’s interior, Clara again watched her son until he had vanished from her sights.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would take him and run.
She instructed the driver to return to Mount Street. After leaving her at Blake’s Museum that morning, Sebastian and his brother had gone to an appointment with the expectation that they would return before tea.
Well enough. Time for her to pack a few remaining articles while spooling her torment into a tight, unyielding ball.
Practical. Ruthless. Determined.
She could not afford sentiments of love and regret. She could not think about never seeing Sebastian again. She could not envision how this whole plan might ricochet to hurt him. All she could do was move forward and pray Sebastian didn’t shatter her brittle façade.
Clara spent the next hour readying herself for tea, shaping her appearance with care in order to conceal any trace of distress. She dressed in an emerald-green gown that fell in sweeping folds around her legs and summoned a maid to fix her hair into a smooth chignon laced with green ribbons. She pinched her cheeks in the hopes that the extra color would conceal the tension darkening her eyes.
Male voices rumbled from the foyer. Clara smoothed her skirts and turned, pressing a hand to her belly to try to quell the riot of anxiety. She forced expression to slide from her features like water washing over a rock as she descended the stairs to greet the brothers.
A tiny curl of softness eased past her defenses when she saw them, deep in conversation as they removed their greatcoats and hats. Like two sides of the same coin with their black hair and snapping dark eyes, those Slavic cheekbones arching down to hard-edged jaws. But Darius was a foil to his elder brother, striking in the precision of his appearance, the crisp dark morning coat and waistcoat deterring wrinkles rather than attracting them the way Sebastian’s did.
And Darius lacked Sebastian’s vital energy, the restless impulses that vibrated from his very bones, his essential compulsion, impervious to rumor or scandal, to live and do and be.
Only Sebastian possessed those qualities. Only Sebastian had a mouth curved at that beautiful angle. Only he had that single lock of hair determined to flop over his forehead no matter how often he pushed it back. Only his eyes contained that beguiling mixture of warmth and wickedness that made Clara’s blood run like hot, thick honey.