A Wicked Lord at the Wedding (11 page)

It was a man he’d never seen before—one who stared back at him in a surprise so genuinely awkward that for an instant Sebastien felt himself to be the encroacher, and not the other way around.

Sebastien folded his arms, shifting into an aggressive stance. The two men appraised each other in a silence that turned so cold it could only herald a killing frost. Nothing could survive a chill this deadly except suspicion. Love would wither. It was the sort of hoarfrost that would strip everything from the vine, leaving only thorns that pierced trust and destroyed all but the strongest instincts.

“Who are you?” he demanded, straightening another inch to stare down the uninvited man.

“Nathan Bellisant,” the younger gentleman answered, his voice uneven. “I should not have disturbed you at this hour. I—I’m a friend—of your—”

“Wife. My wife.”

“Yes.”

“We’ve been married for years.”

Sebastien struggled to place his name. Bellisant? He was reedy, with fair, bedraggled hair, a thin face, the sensitive eyes and delicate hands of an artist or musician.

There was nothing intimidating about him on the
surface. Sebastien could knock him down with a flick of his wrist, which didn’t make him any more inclined to invite him in for a cozy tête-à-tête.

In fact, it brought out an anger he hadn’t known he could feel.

Arrogant upstart. Usurper. How dare you knock at my wife’s door and—how often have you done so in the past?

Bellisant also appeared at a loss for words, a coy inconsistency in a man who had been banging to be let in a minute ago.

Sebastien wondered if he was simply embarrassed at finding himself face to face with Eleanor’s long-absent husband. Or if he had been unaware that a husband existed. His expression suggested he might well be staring at a ghost.

I’m not dead
. But he was bolted to the ground by all-too human instincts, possessiveness, and a fury, a shock that ran deep.

How stupid could he be? He should have realized that someone would have tried to take his place.

But that didn’t mean he’d concede to a rival so early in his return. He wouldn’t concede at all.

The rival seemed anxious to suddenly explain himself. “I assume you’re Lord Boscastle. I’m—it’s an honor to finally meet you. I wish I had made a better first impression.”

Bellisant’s unwieldly charm only worsened Sebastien’s mood. One could not afford to fall under a competitor’s spell, although it never hurt to analyze the enemy’s appeal.

“You have the advantage of me, sir.” Sebastien could turn the tables and play the same innocuous role. “You have been invited here for some purpose that has slipped my memory?”

Bellisant vigorously shook his head. “The fault is entirely mine. Creature of night impulse that I am, I happened to be driving home when I noticed the light in your drawing room. I have a book I borrowed from Lady Boscastle. I’ve been meaning to return it for some time.”

Lady Boscastle. Sebastian would wager all his worth that Bellisant would not have used her title had she, and not her husband, opened the door.

He stared out into the street at a parked, single-horse-drawn phaeton. Not a grand vehicle.

But then neither was Bellisant dressed in particularly fashionable attire. His fox-trimmed cape and brown riding boots had seen better days, which meant he did not feel the need to impress on his appearance alone.

“You could have left it on the doorstep,” he said bluntly.

“I should have thought of that.”

Sebastien grunted.

Eleanor had always been more impressed by skill and character than by social standing. If Sebastian had not answered the door, would a servant have recognized Bellisant and discreetly admitted him into the house?

Why wasn’t the bloody dog barking now? Sebastien’s dog. Didn’t it recognize a danger to his
master at the door? His own instincts surely did.

“I shall give her the book,” he said, one hand extended, the other already closing the door.

“Let me get it first.” Bellisant ran back to the phaeton before Sebastien could accuse him of using the book as an excuse.

Obviously that’s what it was. He scowled when Bellisant returned with the book moments later, his smile remorseful. He seemed to be an easy man to like, Sebastien thought, unless he happened to like your wife.

“Thank you, Lord Boscastle.” Bellisant eased down the steps on his worn heels. “I do apologize again for intruding.”

Intruding.

Sebastien realized in annoyance that his dog was trying to push around him to sniff at Bellisant’s elegant hands. A man could not call another an intruder when it seemed he might have been invited to enter.

Perhaps
he
was the intruder tonight. He thought back to what he and Eleanor had done and wondered if he’d been so desperate for her that he’d taken the passion she’d meant to give another man.

“Little shit,” he shouted as Bellisant jumped up onto his phaeton. Sebastien watched him drive away, knowing this was not the first time he had come to the house, wishing that he’d made certain it was Bellisant’s last visit instead of benignly taking a book at the door.

Did his wife see something in this offhandedly attractive
person? He tried to picture the two of them reading books together, sitting in the upstairs drawing room on a rainy night—how did Bellisant know the candlelight came from a private, second-floor retreat? How intimately did he know this house … Sebastien’s wife?

He stopped at the bottom of the staircase, looking down. His dog wasn’t growling at him or making any attempt whatsoever to prevent him from going back upstairs.

He stretched out his hand. “Have we come to an understanding?”

The dog licked his wrist, then proceeded to climb the stairs, nails clicking on the wood. Not a rejection, but not exactly acceptance, either. It was more an expression of sympathy.

Well, nothing was the way he’d left it.

Now that he’d proven himself to the Crown, he had to impress his wife.

He glanced up.

And his dog.

She listened to the subtle sounds of the night. Hoofbeats slowed in the street. Teg began to bark. She smiled reluctantly. Sebastien must have answered the door. It was probably Will coming back, wanting a brandy and praise for his pyrotechnic feat at the masquerade. He’d gotten in the habit of stopping by at the oddest hours.

A sudden hush came over the house. She wondered if Sebastien had gone out for the night. He’d
left the wardrobe doors open, a sure invitation for moths if ever there was one.

She slipped out of bed. He hadn’t closed the bottom drawer—that’s why the cupboard wouldn’t shut properly. And he’d been—oh, he
had
seen the christening gown.

She hadn’t let herself look in this drawer for years. After her miscarriage, she had not been able to give the gown away, although she wouldn’t use it even if she had another baby. It belonged to the child she would never have. She closed the drawer carefully, wondering if Sebastien had understood what he’d found.

An hour or two later she heard him moving about the room again, the splash of water from the washstand in the dressing closet. It was early morning. Was he only now coming to bed? Should she pretend to be asleep?

She could not deny how much she had missed the amorous delights that marriage allowed. In fact, she was fairly burning in anticipation of their next bout together. Judging by their recent encounter, he intended to make up for lost time. She kept her eyes closed, counting to one hundred.

The bedroom door opened and quietly closed. She waited, breathing unevenly until too many moments of silence went by. She sat up, searching the room for her husband’s virile form.

“Sebastien?” she whispered, her gaze narrowing in vexation. “What are you doing?”

No answer, and she knew why.

The rogue was gone again. Desire and disappointment clashed inside her.

She flung back the covers and felt something hard against her hip. She looked down in the half-light at a book. Had he planned to read in bed while she was asleep?

Curious as to what literary work would engross him, she unwedged the slender volume from her backside, frowning in recognition. It was the book on the death of Apollo that she had lent to her friend Sir Nathan Bellisant. A folded scrap of vellum had been placed on the first page.

It took her a moment to recognize the quote from Spenser, a writer whom she and Nathan both admired, copied in Nathan’s flamboyant script. Nathan was a painter, an artist who lived in a world of his own fancy.

Gestures such as this were commonplace among his circle of acquaintances. It wasn’t the first note of this nature that he had given her. She would have thought nothing of it had it not been passed to her from her husband.

Who clearly had read more into it than Eleanor herself would ever have acknowledged.

Sebastien had walked to the St. George Street residence of Mrs. Isabella Sampson and recovered the incriminating letter from her escritoire before the chambermaid stirred the first coals. He returned home as the sun rose.

The mission took the dangerous edge off his temper. The knowledge that he had pulled off another Masquer coup, a minor victory certain to vex his wife, gave him an admittedly petty sense of satisfaction.

He was home. They’d slept together. But nothing was the same. She had made love to him, yes, but she hadn’t said that she still loved him.

He thought of her winsome smile, of her fire-dark hair that dropped like a curtain over her voluptuous curves.

He thought of the welcome she’d given him, of all the times he’d blithely disappeared from her life, and how he had never really noticed that on each return, she’d become less of a vulnerable wife and
more of a force to be dealt with—on terms he had not expected.

Suspicions of infidelity. Letters from a would-be mistress who’d hoped to ally herself to a great man like Wellington. How the devil had he fallen into this female imbroglio? It was beyond male dignity. He was an officer, not a lady-in-intrigue.

And there was no question in his mind how it had happened.

He was so deeply in love with Eleanor that he would stand in the wings of her Drury Lane drama, awaiting his opportunity to play her hero again. Stealing gossipy letters from a sleeping woman was a far cry from jumping off a hill into a cart with a grenade in his teeth. He’d confronted true villains in the dirty missions he’d carried off, tracking criminals without conscience. The most ominous character the Masquer could expect to encounter was a frightened butler.

Or a sneaky spouse.

Take this precise moment, for example.

He was creeping back to his house through the back gate when he spotted Eleanor’s cloaked figure in the shimmering mist. He considered hiding to observe her, but then she noticed him and came to a halt.

Who was catching whom?

He waved at her.

She folded her arms. Soft wisps of hair curled around her oval face. “There you are,” she muttered.

He strolled toward her, remembering how much she had loved this garden when she had first seen it. He hadn’t paid much attention to house hold matters, but she had taken pleasure in growing roses and medicinal herbs.

Now it was autumn.

The branches of the horse chestnut tree on which she had hoped to hang a swing for their children had gone bare. In fact, everything in the garden looked half-dead, forsaken. Hell, was he still paying the gardeners for this unmaintained mess?

“So,” he said quietly. “Has the early rat caught the cat on her way out, or on her way in?”

She stared meaningfully at the black mask that dangled from his fingers. Her eyes locked with his. She gave a small smile of acknowledgment. She knew exactly where he had been. It was her whereabouts during his absence, the details of her life without him, that presented the mystery.

“I should ask you the same question,” she said, lifting her cloak in one hand. “However, you needn’t bother with an answer. It’s my own fault for not realizing what you were up to.”