Once a Wallflower, At Last His Love (Scandalous Seasons #6)(70)

Hermione pressed her lids closed. What have I done?



Sebastian waved off his driver’s offer of assistance and stepped down from the carriage. He strode up to the handful of front steps and paused. His neck burned with the awareness that came from being watched. He stiffened and glanced up. Hermione stared down into the street, her gaze fixed on him. He straightened his shoulders and strode ahead.

The door opened almost instantly, signifying his presence was, of course, expected. The servant motioned him inside. Sebastian wordlessly entered. He handed his card to the young man. “The Duke of Mallen to see Sir Richard,” he said in clipped and impatient tones.

The servant took the card. He studied the name on the vellum, a frown on his lips, and then gave a curt nod. “If you’ll follow me, Your Grace.” He didn’t pause to see if Sebastian followed but started down the corridor.

The duke trailed behind the servant. He flicked his gaze over the cracked plaster walls, imperfections he’d once noted, imperfections that hadn’t mattered. She had mattered, and all the rest had been immaterial. He’d not required a lofty connection. Hermione would have sufficed for no other reason than because he wanted her. He took in the long-case clock at the opposite end of the hall with the cracked glass front. Perhaps, he should have paid a good deal more attention to those imperfections. They had represented a blaring warning to this family’s, and subsequently, Hermione’s financial circumstances. He fisted his hands. Still, for her betrayal he loathed the idea of her impoverished state.

The servant stopped beside a closed door and Sebastian forced back any sympathies. That weakness for the lady had blinded him once. For that, he’d be forever connected to the scheming Hermione. Fury blazed to life inside him once more, just as volatile as the evening she’d carried out her skilled plan.

The young man rapped once.

“Come in, come in,” a jovial voice boomed from the other side. Why would the baronet be anything but jolly? He’d caught one of the most revered titles in the kingdom. A growl worked its way up Sebastian’s throat.

The servant turned ashen and hastily yanked the door open. “H, his Grace, Th-the Duke of Mallen to see you, my lord.”

An older man with bushy white eyebrows glanced up from a stack of papers atop his desk. He eyed Sebastian from behind a thick cloud of smoke from the pipe clenched between his teeth. He pulled it from his mouth and motioned for Sebastian to enter.

Sebastian froze in the doorway. He scraped his gaze over this man who’d used his daughter to advance his own gains.

“Do come in!” The man smiled.

With slow, deliberate steps Sebastian made his way over to the desk of the man who’d coordinated his entrapment. How humbling to be taken down by this bumbling, pathetic excuse of a gentleman.

The older man’s smile withered and he seemed to belatedly realize his blatant disrespect. He shoved back his seat and stood. “Your Grace, a pleasure, quite a pleasure.”

He firmed his lips. He certainly imagined it was for the other man. Marriage between he and Hermione would line the greedy bastard’s empty pockets.

“Please, sit,” the baronet said and reclaimed his seat.

Sebastian eyed the weathered chair piled with books and ledgers.

“Er, forgive me.” Color slapped the baronet’s cheeks. “If you’d just set them aside.”

In the course of his life, not a single man, woman, or child had tasked him with moving things about. How ironic the baronet who’d snagged a duke for his daughter, should now give him orders. With stiff movements, Sebastian lifted the enormous stack. Arms filled, he arched an expectant eyebrow.

The older man gestured with his pipe. “Set it on the floor if you will.”

He set the stack down, and for the blinding rage and numb shock he’d felt since Hermione had uttered that desperate ‘forgive me’, he felt the faintest stirring of amusement at the farcical drama his life had become. If anyone were to see the Duke of Mallen in this ramshackle office, moving books to find his own seat, they’d have laughed at the mere sight of it.

The baronet continued to puff away on his pipe, quietly watching him.

Sebastian took the extended silence as an opportunity to look about the other man’s office. The faded curtains, the torn fabrics, the aged furniture again spoke volumes of the family’s financial circumstances. His gaze caught a painting just beyond the man’s desk. The ornate gold frame, perhaps the costliest object within the modest space, yet the canvas within was divided into four quadrants of four painted images, all better suited to a child’s work.

The baronet took another puff on his pipe and followed Sebastian’s stare. “Lovely, isn’t it?”

It was. For a child’s piece.

Apparently, the man didn’t require confirmation, for he stood and wandered over to the image. He gestured with the pipe. “My Hermie did this. Just a child,” he explained, never taking his gaze from the page. “I believe eleven, or so.” His mind stalled. Hermie? Ah, the man referred to his daughter, Sebastian’s soon-to-be-wife. He’d not even known that charming sobriquet belonged to the lady. Just another reminder of just how much a stranger Hermione Rogers was to him. “Never very gifted with watercolors or pastels,” the man said with no disappointment, rather instead a raw honesty. “She loved it, anyway.”