Once a Wallflower, At Last His Love (Scandalous Seasons #6)(8)

A dull heat climbed up his neck. He finished the contents of his glass and set it down hard—away from his lists. “We should be leaving.” Now. Before, with a mother’s intuitiveness, she pried a bit more about the pages he’d left in plain sight. The last thing he wanted this evening was to discuss the items contained within those sheets. Particularly with his mother.

She sighed, fiddling with her gloves. “Indeed, you are correct.” But still she did not move.

He propped a hip on the edge of his desk and discreetly slid his ledger over the first exposed sheet. “Lady Denley’s?” he asked, remarkably ill on discourse. This whole subterfuge business was better suited for those brooding, gloomy dukes of which he’d never been accused of being.

“Yes.” Still, she remained.

Sebastian shifted on the desk, angling toward the other visible and damning page. “I daresay Emmaline will be there.” Though that was no longer a certainty. With her daughter Regan, his sister and her husband had become quite domestic. A pang of envy struck.

“Undoubtedly,” she said wryly.

He slid another ledger atop the list. A momentary relief filled him at the protection of the exposing thoughts contained upon those carefully written pages. “We should take our leave.”

“Yes.” She paused. “You did mention that now. Twice.”

“Did I?”

“You did.”

By the lingering look she gave him, there was more she intended to say. She opened and closed her mouth several times and he braced for the eventual mention of his ducal responsibilities. Responsibilities he was, and had been, very aware of since he’d been a boy in the schoolroom with stern tutors. He’d been more fortunate than most first-born nobles with scheming mamas. His mother had never been the scheming type—not in the matter of marriage, anyway.

She wandered away from his desk and he expected she’d make her way to the front of the room, but she strolled over to the sideboard. Wordlessly, she trailed her fingertips upon the smooth, mahogany surface, her gaze fixed upon the bottles. She picked up a single decanter. Her shoulders went taut; the bottle trembled in her hands.

And he knew. Just as he’d known long ago by the shattered glass, the screams, and then the flurry of servants.

“Do you know,” her words so faintly spoken barely reached his ears. “I sometimes think I’m the only one who still marks his passing.”

Of course she remembered. How foolish to believe a woman who’d so loved her husband should fail to note the date of his death. He fell silent, discomfited by her uncharacteristic show of sadness and more. A deep-seeded guilt dug at him, for the traitorous thoughts he’d had of his father. “You’re not,” he said gruffly. “I think of him.”

She stroked the bottle of brandy almost reverently, a link to that dark day of her past. “I know,” she said and turned back to him with a sad smile. “Of course it would be foolish to think you or Emmaline wouldn’t think of him with some fondness.”

Again guilt settled hard in his belly for the resentment he still carried for lessons imparted and expectations instilled. He cleared his throat, uncomfortable revisiting that moment, in this office, on this day outside the privacy of his own thoughts.

His mother returned her attention to the bottle. “But then, that is how love is,” she said softly. “When you love someone you see only them and you cannot imagine in losing that person, that anyone should suffer in the way you yourself are suffering?” She picked her head up. “Does that make sense?”

Sebastian managed a terse nod.

Mother gave her head a shake. “You are right.” She set the bottle down. “We should be going.” With a sigh, she sailed to the front of the room, breaking the pall of sadness. She paused at the entrance, looking back. “Oh, and Sebastian?”

He inclined his head.

“If you’d rather no one see whatever words were on those very important pages, I suggest you place them in a more secure place. Now, shall we? I’d wager there is at least one marriageable lady who’ll earn your notice.” She gave a wink and then took her leave.

A wry grin tugged at his lips. Unlikely. The singularly interesting lady he’d courted, a woman he could have imagined something more with, had gone and wed his best friend. Deuced rotten luck, that. Shoving aside regretful musings of Miss Sophie Winters, now the Countess of Waxham, he took care to follow his mother’s advice. He lifted one ledger and freed the poorly hidden list and then hesitated and ultimately, shoving back the last page to reveal those quite humbling, rather humiliating three words, with a glaring line slashed through them.

Fall in love.

There was greater chance of his carriage taking flight over the Thames than such being accomplished at the wholly uninteresting dull affair in Lady Denley’s ballroom.





C





hapter 3

A fortnight after her sister’s masterful plan, Hermione was forced to acknowledge the now obvious truth: it was a good deal more difficult finding a dark, brooding duke at the height of a London Season than she’d ever believed.

It was particularly difficult when a lady found herself relegated to the role of forgotten wallflower. That was rather redundant. Still, for all the bothersome business of being the most unsought young lady on the fringe of notice, there were a good many benefits to being that forgotten wallflower.