Secrets of a Viscount (5 page)

Chapter Seven

Sebastian groaned. Thinking of potential husbands was tough work. Not to mention, he felt extremely foolish sitting by the fire and flipping through the latest copy of
Debretts
like some debutante preparing for her first Season. He scowled and not for the first time threw a glance over his shoulder to make sure he was still alone.

His tired eyes scanned the lines on the page and his scowl deepened. Were there no decent gentleman who were unmarried?

Apparently not.

Married. Gambler. Drunk. Drunk. Married. Addict. Womanizer. Drunk. Married. Gambler. Card cheat. Terribly dull. Too young. Married. Mad. Gambler. Impoverished.

He turned the page and sighed.

Drunk. Married. Devil of a temper. Decrepit. Married. Habitual skirt chaser...and married. On his Grand Tour. Compulsive liar.
Sebastian blinked.  Sir Wallace Benedict. There wasn’t anything wrong with him, exactly. He was just...odd. Odd was acceptable. Compared to the other options, a little odd would be more than acceptable. He scratched Sir Wallace’s name down and continued looking. One name wasn’t enough.

Too young. Married. Married. In love with his hounds. Gambler. Obsessed with horse racing. Widower...with a brood. Married. Cad of the worst sort. Married. Betrothed.

He flipped the page.

Old. Drunk. Married. Married. Coward.
Perfect. Sir Michael Smythe. He was young and loyal, he’d rightfully earned his title as a knight, and had a decent amount to his name so he wouldn’t see marriage to Belle as merely a way to plump his coffers. Not to mention, he and Belle were already acquaintances. The report his man had sent Sebastian in Italy had indicated as much.

That gave him, or rather
her
, two choices. That would do, wouldn’t it?

No. Belle might not like these options. He needed as many as he could find.

Best to torture himself to find more now rather than have to repeat this torture another night.

He turned his eyes back to the page, but was saved from having to actually read it when he was interrupted by his friend.

“What brings you about?” Sebastian called to Giles by way of greeting.

Giles eased himself into a leather chair and slowly looked around the room, taking it all in. “You weren’t there.”

Sebastian sliced his hand through the air. “I had a more interesting engagement.” That was true enough. He’d joined Giles at White’s every afternoon since they’d come to London and to be frank, it was tedious. For a man who liked to travel and explore, sitting on one’s hind quarters reading a newspaper or playing cards was only entertaining for so long. Every day for the past week he’d tried to gain entrance to Belle’s and had been turned out. After he’d seen her there this morning, he didn’t want to have her disappear before he could tell her his plan, so he’d skipped his club and returned to speak to her, which is when he’d found her in the library.

“
Didn’t miss anything,” Giles said in his usual slow tone. “It was exactly the same as it was yesterday and the day before.”

“
And dare I suppose the day before that, too,” Sebastian suggested.

Giles nodded with vigor then sighed in aggravation as he moved around to get more comfortable.

“Would you care to test out my new settee?” Sebastian offered.

Giles shook his head. “Settled.” He dropped his inquisitive green eyes to where Sebastian still held open his copy of
Debretts
, prompting Sebastian to close it with a
snap
.

“
Don’t ask. You don’t really wish to know.”

Giles lifted a single brow.

Giles
. A little slow in speech and action at times, but nothing was
wrong
with him. He just required a patient bride. Belle was patient. She would complement him in other ways, too. She could be the chatterer of the relationship, allowing Giles to stand silent like he preferred. Neither seemed too keen on London or Society.

Their only problem might be the difference in their sizes.

Giles was built like a tower at an unimaginable four inches past six feet. By far the tallest person that Sebastian had ever seen; a good eight to ten inches taller than most. Sebastian himself felt dwarfed standing next to him and he was taller than average, too, being an inch shy of six feet. Belle’s five-foot-two inch body would look like a mere child in his presence as her nose would barely reach his sternum. He nearly snorted at the mental image.

“
Ahhhh, a blinding grin!” Giles teased, holding his hands up in front of his eyes and acting wounded.

“
Don’t worry, you’ll have a blinding smile of your own soon enough,” Sebastian informed him.

Giles slowly dropped his hands, his brows knitting in confusion. “Why?”

“I think I’ve found you a bride.”

“
No,” Giles clipped. His face lost all expression.

With the exception of when Giles asked him what a certain phrase meant that a prostitute was shouting out the window as they passed a brothel, they’d never spoken of women. Of course that probably had something to do with Sebastian not fully understanding the phrase, either. Giles, Sebastian assumed, had no interest in women because well, he just didn’t. Likely he never felt he’d need any kind of knowledge because people of both sexes seemed disinterested in him in general.

Sebastian’s disinterest in women wasn’t as innocent, however. He was interested. Undeniably so. He’d lain awake many nights trying to make his throbbing erection vanish while ignoring the sounds of lovers through the walls. But, blast it all, he couldn’t do a thing about it, he was still married!

She might not know they were still married, nor what he was doing and if he was in the arms of another, but he was married to her all the same and owed her that dignity even if he’d inadvertently stripped her of all others. He wouldn’t be married to her much longer, though, he reminded himself. Soon, he’d find her a husband then he could sign the annulment papers free of guilt, then after that...

“Did you ever find the cousin you were looking for?” Sebastian asked to change their topic of conversation and the mindless drifting of his thoughts.

Giles shook his head, still penetrating Sebastian with his steady stare.

“Do we need to go out tonight to look for her again?”

“
You won’t be going anywhere,” thundered the deep baritone voice of Thaddeus Knight.

Just as it did when he was a young boy running and playing with the man’s daughters, Mr. Knight’s voice made every hair on Sebastian’s body stand on end. Reluctantly, he pushed to his feet. “How may I help you this fine evening, Mr. Knight?”

“Stay away from my daughter,” his father-in-law blustered.

Sebastian let his eyes wander over the body of the man he’d been so fearful of as a boy. His ruddy cheeks and purple nose were still the same, if not a bit fattier. His hair had thinned and his grey eyes seemed colder than he’d remembered. Not that that was much. To Sebastian, Mr. Knight’s eyes had always reminded him of a powerful, unyielding storm. One that Sebastian had thought to defy only once: refusing to annul his marriage to Belle. He’d heeded the command to get out of the man’s home and never return, but he had stood his ground over where he put his signature. “Sorry, sir,” Sebastian said as calmly as he could. “I can’t stay away from her. She is my wife after all.”

The older man let out a string of vile curses under breath. “Dissolve your marriage and find another.”

“
No.”

Mr. Knight’s breathing grew labored and raspy, his jaw set and his eyes narrowing to slits.
“Why not?”
he shouted.

If he were a boy, even one of nineteen still, Mr. Knight’s tone and stance would have startled him and made him uneasy. Instead, he stood his ground. “I have no reason to discuss the state of my marriage with you, therefore, I won’t. So if there is anything else I can do for you...”

“Give her the annulment, you blackguard,” Mr. Knight demanded, crossing his arms.

Sebastian ignored his statement, sat down and opened
Debretts
as if he had a genuine interest in reading that claptrap again.

Not one to be ignored, Mr. Knight yanked the book from Sebastian’s hands. “You listen to me, you filthy cad. You
will
annul your marriage and set my daughter free.”

“
And just why do you care?” Sebastian countered, not breaking eye contact with the older man.

“
She’s my daughter. I want what’s best for her.”

“
As do I,” Sebastian said softly.

“
You’re
not what’s best for her,” her father raged with a sneer.

Sebastian shrugged. “I know.”

Mr. Knight blinked at him, seemingly stupefied. “Then what are you doing?”

Without a word, Sebastian reached forward and plucked his copy of
Debretts
from Mr. Knight’s loose grasp. “Finding her a new husband.”

Chapter Eight

“No.”

Sebastian looked at his father-in-law and shrugged. “I don’t see why you have a problem with it.”

“Because you think to just foist my daughter off on some bounder so you can be free of her.”

“
Isn’t that what you just asked me to do? Sign the papers so she could be free of me?”

“
Your insolence is intolerable,” Mr. Knight snapped. “I just want you to free her, not pass her from one demon to another.”

Sebastian grinned. He didn’t realize he had such a reputation. Undeserved, of course, but he wouldn’t argue. “I have no idea what I’ve done to deserve such high disrespect from you, nor do I care to know. However, what I do wonder is why you even care who she marries. Obviously you thought I wasn’t good enough for her for some reason or another—not that I have wish to convince you otherwise. But, from what I recollect, you sent her off to live in the country as a companion—forgotten. It was only due to my mother’s passing and her gaining a fortune that she is now in London and it’s not even you who she is staying with. It seems to me that you’ve disowned her. So what does it matter who her husband is?”

“It is due to her impulsiveness that she married you. That I cannot change. Nor can I begin to repair the amount of damage that was caused to her reputation after that unfortunate event. But I can try my best to ensure she doesn’t end up with another cold-hearted husband who doesn’t want her.”

Sebastian felt every one of those words like a blow to the jaw. It was no secret that he’d never been overly fond of Belle. She was an acceptable playmate, but he certainly didn’t desire her like a wife. As he’d all but told her, he could have initiated intimacies with Rachel if he’d married her instead. But Belle? The feeling just wasn’t there. Not that they were actually there with Rachel, but he surely would have had an easier time closing his eyes and pretending she was someone else. So docile and quiet, she likely wouldn’t have noticed or cared since he’d rescued her from Lord Yourke.

“Mr. Knight, I won’t argue with your ascertainment of my feelings for Belle. We are just friends. I will also agree that it was partially her impulsiveness that led to our marriage. However, I cannot in good conscience annul this marriage and throw her to the wolves again. I must first secure for her a good match.”

“
I don’t give a damn about your conscience, Sebastian. Annul the damn marriage.”

“
I can’t.”

“
Why? Are you afraid that Rachel won’t wish to marry you when she realizes you’ve been married to her sister all of this time and you’re hoping that if you secure Belle a good match that she’ll be more inclined to rekindle the relationship?”

“
She’s already married,” he said tightly. Not that he gave a hang one way or the other.

“
And widowed.”

Sebastian stared at the man.

“Don’t think that I haven’t learned that you were supposed to be stealing away with Rachel until Belle got in the way.”

“
Let me make this clear now so we don’t have to have this discussion again, I have no interest in throwing Belle over to marry Rachel.”
Nor did I truly wish to marry Rachel back then, either.
But there was no reason to say that. That would just be cruel.

“
Then prove yourself. Annul your sham of a marriage and let Belle be free of you to marry who she pleases.”

“
Tell me, sir,” Sebastian said, steepling his hands in front of his chin. “Why is it that she doesn’t know that we’re still married anyway? Were you hoping to keep her bounded off into the country where she could never learn the truth of it?”

“
No,” he snapped. “I wanted her to get married. And your father wants an heir. That’s why we—” He broke off, but it didn’t matter, he’d said enough to confirm all of Sebastian’s suspicions.

“
Do not worry yourself, Mr. Knight. Belle will make a good match this Season I guarantee it.”

“
What reason do you have to even care?”

Sebastian shrugged. “It’s quite simple, really. We’re friends. I was there when this scandal was created and I...er...wasn’t there when she had to bear it. I’d like very much to be a friend to her now and help her make a good match.”

“What qualifies you to know what a good match for my daughter is?”

“
What qualifies you?” Sebastian challenged. “Belle was of an age where she could have come out before the whole Gretna Green incident, but she’d never mentioned to me that she was going to London. And believe me, I spent enough time in her company that if you’d planned to take her, she’d have said something.”

Mr. Knight’s nostrils flared. “There wasn’t a reason to. Rachel was betrothed to my second cousin, Lord Yourke. Belle was too young...and spirited. She wouldn’t have had a successful Season, I assure you.”

“Well then, we are in perfect agreement, Mr. Knight. I shall make it my duty to see to it that Belle has a successful Season—”

“
That is not your right,” Mr. Knight shouted.

“
I am her husband,” Sebastian declared, jabbing a finger at his chest for emphasis. “My involvement in her affairs trumps yours and I assure you she will be happy with her match at the end of the Season.” He stood and ushered a red-faced Mr. Knight to the door. “Now that we have that settled, if there isn’t anything else I can do for you, I shall bid you farewell.”

Mr. Knight looked at him as if he might like to rip Sebastian’s head straight from his shoulders.

Sebastian kept his calm and offered the man a smile.

His father-in-law bristled, then marched out of the room.

Sighing with relief, Sebastian flopped down in his chair.

“
I don’t want her.”

Sebastian snapped his eyes open. He’d quite forgotten that Giles was still in the room with him. Sebastian shifted and tried to act affronted, though he knew if he’d seen that display and knew he’d be doomed to a life with that ogre for a father-in-law, he wouldn’t be too thrilled at the prospect of marriage, either.  “Why not?” he asked with a forced smile.

Giles shook his head slowly. “She’s yours.”

***

The following morning, Sebastian shoved his list of three names into his breast pocket and started for the townhouse where Belle was staying only three blocks from him. The weather was warm, so he decided to walk.

Nearing the red brick front of the small townhouse Mrs. Finch was renting for their Season, he briefly considered using the window again, but thought to act civilized and try the door this time. If, however, she’d told her butler not to let him in, he
would
use the window. She could count on that.

“
Good morning, my lord,” Mrs. Finch, Belle’s chaperone greeted him in loud tones after he was shown into the drawing room with no protest at all at the door.

“
It’s good to see you again, Mrs. Finch,” he said loudly before taking a seat on the world’s most uncomfortable settee on the opposite side of the room.

“
Lovely weather, isn’t it?”

To oblige her, Sebastian made a show of looking out the window then nodded. “Indeed.”

It was hard to tell what Mrs. Finch thought of him. He was titled and reasonably wealthy, after all; but there was the minor issue of his past scandal involving Belle and the fact that Mrs. Finch had probably heard some very unfavorable things about him over the years with Belle as her companion.

He was spared from having to speculate further on the disconcerting topic when Belle practically floated into the room wearing a lavender morning gown with darker purple lace sewn around the cuffs of her sleeves. Her skirt was so voluptuous he’d have believed her if she said she’d stuffed a cloud under the fabric.

He immediately stood and greeted her, noticing how her smile didn’t quite meet her eyes. She was still apprehensive around him, it would seem. Not that he could blame her entirely. He couldn’t, but he’d have to ignore it.

He waited while she took her seat then resumed his.

“I’ve come up with a list of three names,” he murmured without preamble just low enough to evade Mrs. Finch’s hearing.

She lifted a single, dark eyebrow. “Possible names for your firstborn?”

“No. Potential husbands for you.”

Her face went red and she cast a quick, not-so-discreet look to Mrs. Finch who seemed to just smile and nod. “Must we discuss this now?”

“Why not?”

Keeping her head tilted where Mrs. Finch couldn’t see her expression, Belle cut her eyes toward her chaperone.

“She can’t hear me clear over here.”

“
You don’t know that.”

He shrugged, then looked in Mrs. Finch’s direction. Then, in his usual tone said, “Say, do you like to eat pickled pigs feet?”

Belle looked like she was trying to keep a straight face, and the left corner of her lips twitched slightly when Mrs. Finch nodded and said, “Of course, dear.”

“
All right,” she said in a hushed whisper.

Sebastian straightened. “All right your choices are—”

“Pardon me a minute. My choices?” She crossed her arms. “I didn’t realize it would be you and your infinite wisdom that would pick my husband.”

“
Of course it is.” Sebastian shot her a grin, then seeing as how her lips were still pursed, he cleared his throat and said, “Belle, I looked through
Debretts
last night and of the dozens of names I found, only a handful were suitable. I think it’s best we stick to one who is already suitable instead of you trying to reform one.”

She quirked a brow. “Are you saying I couldn’t?”

“Not at all. I just don’t think one of the ones who need to reform would be worth your time.”

Silence engulfed them.

Had he just complimented her? Moreover, had he meant it? He shook his head to clear the thought. Belle was his friend. He was supposed to think highly of her. There was nothing more to it than that.

“
Anyway,” he continued, “the three I think would suit you are: Sir Wallace Benedict, Sir Michael Smythe and Giles Goddard.”

“
No. No. And no.”

“
Why not?”

She looked at him as if he were the stupidest man in existence. “Sir Wallace Benedict has been jilted thrice and is rumored to still be madly in love with the first lady to do so, only agreeing to marry the other two because they’d each trapped him then abandoned him. My life is exciting enough already, I don’t need that kind of excitement to add to it.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “I had no idea your life was so exciting.”

“
I’d wager there’s quite a lot of things about me you don’t know,” she returned.

“
All right, so you’re not so interested in a thrice-jilted baronet. What’s wrong with Sir Michael Smythe? He was knighted just last year for his bravery.”

Belle cocked her head to the side. “I do wonder how you’d know that, seeing as how you haven’t even been in this country for at least five years.”

He shrugged. “News does travel to the continent. It might be delayed, but it still reaches there.” Especially when one has paid people to keep him apprised of what all was happening in England. He’d paid extra for any information available about Belle, but she didn’t need to know that. “So what is it about him that disqualifies him from your list of potential husbands?”

A light patch of pink stained each of her cheeks. “He’s...he’s...he’s...”

“Yes, he’s a he,” Sebastian agreed, making a rolling motion with his hand.

Her blush grew deeper. “Actually,
he
is not what
he
seems.”

Sebastian made his eyes flare wide and turned his head to the side. “Is he really a she?”

She swatted at his arm. “No. Stop that.”

“
Then what’s the problem? Everything I’ve ever heard about him has been very positive.”

“
Then you haven’t heard everything,” she said flatly.

He stared at her. “Does that mean you don’t believe everything that you read?”
Especially the articles regarding yourself?

“
You of all people should know I don’t read gossip articles,” she said in a tone that would suggest she was trying to sound off-handed. Unfortunately for her, he’d spent too much time in her presence growing up that he heard the edge she tried to hide.

“
So then are you telling me you’ve seen him do something...er...less-than-gentlemanly that would suggest he’s not a good husband for you?”

She dropped her gaze to the floor. “Can we please just cross him off the list?”

A dull ache that Sebastian couldn’t name formed in his chest. “Belle, did he do something to you?” The room began to spin around him as he waited for his answer. If Sir Michael Smythe did anything at all to her, Sebastian would destroy him. Then, himself. It was his responsibility to protect Belle. He was her husband still. That hadn’t changed because he was commanded out of their house and blackmailed out of England. “Belle, tell me now, what did that man do that makes him an unsuitable husband?” He no longer cared if Mrs. Finch could hear their conversation. He needed to know.