Once a Wallflower, At Last His Love (Scandalous Seasons #6)(92)

She stood there long after he’d taken his leave. Her heart stirred with the first hint of hope since her husband’s departure from her life. Sebastian deserved honesty when she’d been anything but from their first meeting. Perhaps if he knew what had driven her, if he could not wholly forgive mayhap he might accept and allow them to move forward. Only then could she have the hope of trying to teach him to feel whatever it is he’d once felt for her.

Hermione strode over to the desk. She sat down in Sebastian’s wide, leather chair and began to write… The most important words she’d ever attempted to put to page.

Dearest Sebastian…





C





hapter 25

Seated at his private table at the back of White’s, Sebastian fiddled with the edges of the ivory velum note in his hands. He’d read and re-read the same handful of lines. They were all but committed to memory.

Dearest Sebastian…

She wanted to see him. Begged to speak with him. Where had these words been thirty days ago? He threw the envelope down and reached for his brandy. But goddamn it, after one month he ached to see her. For all the brandies he’d drunk and the nights spent away from her, he’d not been able to purge the memory of Hermione and her tart tongue, or the memory of her kiss, from his mind.

“I daresay I’ve never seen a more brooding, menacing figure than you,” someone drawled in a wry voice.

Sebastian glanced up. The last thing he desired was the company of anyone.

Alas, his friend, the Earl of Waxham, either ignored or failed to care for his lack of enthusiasm. “Hardly your affable self,” Waxham continued, more bothersome than a true fly.

“What do you want?”

His friend shrugged. “Isn’t one permitted to take a drink with his friend?”

Since Waxham had wed last year, he was never far from his wife. Therefore, Sebastian hardly believed this was a mere social call. Envy twisted, hard and vicious inside. How very close he’d come to knowing that in his own life. “That is hardly an answer to my question.”

Waxham inclined his head. “Ah, yes, of course, the ducal confidence that any and all questions posed will be immediately answered.”

Do you also make it your business to read other people’s private notes…?

Sebastian jerked his chin toward the table and Waxham claimed the open seat. But Hermione in all her spirited pride slipped into his memory, as she invariably did and a longing slammed into him so swift and powerful it was like a physical force.

Wordlessly, he shoved the half-empty bottle of brandy across the mahogany surface. A servant rushed forward with a glass and set it down before the earl who waved off the young man and proceeded to pour himself a brandy.

Sebastian stared into his own empty glass. After Hermione had orchestrated her ruin, he’d believed everything about her to be false. Only…a lady hunting the title of duchess would not have spoken with such candidness. Instead, she would have fawned and preened like all other title-grasping misses. Yet, Hermione had not. Why? With an impatient sound, he thrust aside the questions and swiped the bottle of brandy. He splashed several more fingerfuls into his glass and took another long swallow.

Waxham arched an eyebrow. “Nothing to say?”

He leaned forward so quick, liquid droplets splashed the table. “What would you have me say?” he hissed. That he’d been a lovelorn fool? That he’d held onto a foolish dream of love for himself, fastidiously avoiding scheming misses, only to be trapped by the one lady who had and always would hold his heart?

The other man propped his elbows on the edge of the table. “Oh, I don’t know, perhaps an explanation as to why you’ve gone out of your way to avoid your best friend.” He waved a hand up and down his person. “That would be me. Particularly considering the hastiness of your nuptials more than a month ago. Or, why that same friend,” he motioned to Sebastian. “That would be you, should believe I wouldn’t be concerned for your well-being.”

Sebastian took a long swallow, and then stared into the amber depths. “I don’t require your concern.” He paused and felt the first stirrings of guilt. “And, you needn’t be offended by a lack of invitation to the blessed event. Everything with Miss Rogers,” now his Duchess of Mallen, “was a lie.”

I love you. I need you to know that… As though he could ever again believe her words.

“What are you on about?”

The duke tossed back his drink. He really rather preferred not to bandy about his shame, even to his friend by recounting just how easily he’d been duped by his deceitful wife.

“Mallen?”

“A lie,” he said on an explosive whisper. He looked around to gauge whether anyone had observed his uncharacteristic outburst. “A lie,” he repeated more carefully. “The young lady coordinated our meetings.” He remembered the gripping terror as she’d dove away from his horse’s massive hooves and gripped the edge of the table, stricken once again by the depths she’d gone to put herself in his path. Quite literally and figuratively. “She wanted the title of duchess,” he said tiredly. He grabbed the bottle once more.

His friend remained silent so long, he wondered if he’d failed to hear that last hushed piece. A frown played about the other man’s lips. He shook his head. “Impossible.”