Once a Wallflower, At Last His Love (Scandalous Seasons #6)(94)

With his friend’s words trailing after him, he wound his way through the club, ignoring the greetings shouted at him. He made his way out into the quiet, dark London streets and stared at the occasional carriage as it rattled along. Then, in feeling closer to her just for the letter tucked against his chest, he touched a hand to the front of his jacket. From across the street, his driver hopped down from the top of his box and pulled the door open. Sebastian strode over to the black, lacquer carriage and climbed inside. The servant closed the door behind him. A moment later, the conveyance rocked forward.

With Waxham’s words and warning dancing around his mind, he withdrew Hermione’s note once more, and unfolding it, read.

Dearest Sebastian,

By now, you’ve already learned the truth about the woman you married. I am not the good, honorable lady you deserved as your duchess. If you believe nothing else, please believe my impulsive actions at Lady Brookfield’s, though unpardonable, were not driven for a love of your title.

I love you. I miss you. You owe me nothing, as you’ve already given me everything, but I’d ask you to come home and listen to me.

Ever yours,

Hermione

He again folded the page then stuffed it inside his jacket and yanking back the red, velvet curtain, he stared out at the passing streets. Having had a month to set aside his embarrassment at having been trapped in marriage by a woman he’d come to care for—nay love—he could at last meet Hermione and attempt some semblance of a companionable relationship.

Liar. He wanted more than that cold, emotionless entanglement.

As the familiar row of townhouses in the fashionable Grosvenor Square district pulled into focus, he let the curtain flutter back into place. His carriage pulled to the front of Sebastian’s townhouse and rocked to a slow, steady halt.

….come home…

Sebastian didn’t wait for the driver but shoved open the carriage door. He leapt from the carriage then strode forward, hating this foolish eagerness that filled him at the prospect of seeing Hermione once again.

The butler pulled the door open. “Your Grace,” he drawled and it may as well have been ten o’clock in the morning and not ten o’clock in the evening as casually as the servant greeted his long absent employer.

“Have you seen…?” His words trailed off as Carmichael glowered at him and then all but sprinted from the quiet foyer with a speed born of men many years his junior. Sebastian frowned and started for his office. His boot steps echoed noisily upon the white, marble floors and he continued down the empty corridors.

The flicker of a candle’s glow peeked out from the slight space at the base of the door. He touched the handle, only… Now that he was here, he didn’t know what he’d say to Hermione. So much had come between them, was there even a possibility of repairing a broken marriage or restoring a shattered trust?

Still, for that, he needed to see her. Wanted to see her.

Sebastian pressed the handle and stepped inside. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dimly lit space. He glanced about the room in search of his wife. And started. His gaze collided with a frowning child with piercing blue eyes—seated behind his desk. “Hullo,” he said tentatively. She may as well have been a daughter of Hermione. He balled his hands into fists at the idea of sweet, smiling babes who bore a resemblance to his wife and the sudden hungering for that child with her.

“What do you want?” The angry little voice called from across the room. The insolent girl remained seated in his desk chair, looking impossibly small in its familiar folds.

He took a step forward. “Forgive me—”

If looks could kill, the young girl would have smote him with the fire in her eyes. “It’s not my forgiveness you should beg for.”

The spirited child would surely be the bane of some poor future husband’s existence. He folded his arms across his chest. “A pleasure to meet again, Miss Rogers—”

She snorted cutting into his polite greeting. “I imagine if it was such a pleasure you’d have not abandoned my sister.”

It was not every day the powerful Duke of Mallen was shamed…by a child, no less.

Addie hopped up from her seat. His seat. And came around the desk, unaware of how her innocent charge gutted him. She ran her thumb over her lips and then, in a very Hermione-like way did a slow, steady circle about him. “Hmm,” she said, a wholly unimpressed glint in her young eyes. “You seem far more brooding than the last time we met.” She looked him up and down, the way eerily reminiscent of his first meeting with Hermione once upon a lifetime ago. “You don’t appear very duke-like.”

It was his lot to have his life graced with insolent women not at all possessed of a suitable deference for the title. “I beg your pardon?” he blinked as just then a niggling of doubt crept in. Would a lady who’d never fawned over him truly have desired the role of duchess above all else?

“Well.” Addie began to tick off on her fingers. “You’re all rumpled. That’s not at all duke-like.” His valet would agree on that regard. “Your office is entirely too cheerful.”

Sebastian glanced around with a critical eye at the Chippendale furniture, the leather sofa and wing-backed chairs, the wide mahogany desk. “Cheerful?”

At his interruption of her very important list, she pursed her lips. “You need more of those ornate gold lions.”