Lord Sebastian's Wife

“You flinched. I saw it,” he said gently.

Darkness swirled before her eyes. In the dimness she saw Sebastian’s lips move and heard his voice, but she understood nothing. I am going to swoon, she thought, and grabbed Sebastian’s sleeve to slow her fall.

Serpent-quick, his free arm shot around her waist, dragging her against him to support her weight. “Breathe slowly,” he said.

She rested against his strength, aware of his forearm pressing against the small of her back, his legs and hips pushing her skirt and underskirt against her. The feel of him ought to dismay her. Instead her breath calmed, the whirling blackness in her head cleared; her heart quieted. And all her tumult settled into something warm and dark.

For a moment she rested against him.

“Beatrice.” Sebastian’s voice was low, soft against her ears like the touch of velvet.

She looked up and met his eyes. The garden around her, the murmuring river at its edge, the chatter of the workmen, her father’s booming laugh all faded, obscured by the darkened blue of Sebastian’s eyes. His arm shifted, pulling her more tightly against him. Surely he could feel her tremble. Curiously she did not mind.

“Why did you flinch?”

“I—” Her voice deserted her and she could not catch her breath. How could she have forgotten how long and curly his eyelashes were or how gold their ends? “I did—” She could not tell him she had not heard him. Through her stiff skirts the strength in his long legs was unmistakable. This moment had to end; she wanted it to last forever. Longing stirred, strangely welcome. “I did not see you clearly.”

He looked at her for a long moment as if waiting for her to say more, to offer further explanation. She thought, I shall tell him everything, everything about Thomas. But her lips would not part, the words clogged somewhere in her throat. Sebastian despised her; how could she leave her soul naked to his scorn?

“I see,” he said, and released her. When he stepped away, it was like being thrust out of a warm, well-lit room into the dark, cold night. She clasped her hands at her waist. Worse, it was like stepping into the night because she feared what would befall her in the room. If she had not lied, he would still hold her. What a fool she was.

“I misspoke when I told you I despise you,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.

She looked away. “Why should you not despise me, Sebastian? I did not lie to you when I said I despise myself.” If she could not tell him about Thomas, she could confess this much.

Silence answered her. She looked up to find Sebastian staring down at her through narrowed eyes. She waited for him to speak or to look away. He did neither, watching her as if trying to value what he saw.

Goaded by his silence and the pressure of his stare, she cried, “Do you not believe me?”

He looked at her for a moment longer and shook his head. “No. I believe you. But I do not know why.”

“How should I not scorn myself?” she cried. “I have done things that shame me.”

“You said yourself you have done penance for your sins,” he said irritably, unfolding his arms and planting fists on hips. He was tall and strong, his shoulders broad against the sunny summer sky.

Longing stirred again, making her aware of her body, her skin suddenly alive to the brush of sleeves and skirts, the constraint of her pair-of-bodies, the breeze lifting the lappets of her hood to tickle the back of her neck. And her distress, the moil of emotion churning in her heart, only heightened her awareness, made its tooth sharper. If he had not held her, would she feel this now? It did not matter.

“I am still ashamed,” she said. The more shamed now because she had not let George Conyers handle and caress and kiss her out of desire for him. No, wearying of Thomas’s accusations of infidelity, she had finally given in to the impulse to be as black as her husband painted her, to taste the pleasure of sin since she got no pleasure from goodness. In the end, she had not found pleasure anywhere.

“I cannot help you,” Sebastian said.

“I do not ask it of you.”

“My lady Manners!” An usher trotted along the path toward her, a square of white in his hand. Joining them, he bowed and offered her the square. “This arrived for you.”

Beatrice took it and turned it over, revealing the crest pressed into the wax sealing it closed. The Manners arms. The last time she had seen the ring that made this mark, it had been on Thomas’s hand. She shivered. Oh, for the day when she would be shut of the whole house of Manners.

“What is it?” Sebastian asked.

“A letter from my stepson by the look of it,” she said, and broke the seal.

Unlike her sister, she did not read easily, so it took her a few minutes to understand what the letter said. Even after reading it a second time, she could not believe the contents. The strutting lickspittle thought to deny her right to her own things. Anger, banked but not dead, flared up. Surely he would not dare.

She held the letter out to Sebastian. “Please, if you will, read this and tell me what it says.” Her voice was milder than she had thought it would be. So all the hard lessons Thomas had taught her were not lost; she could sound placid as a milch cow while resentment and annoyance curdled beneath her breastbone.

He took the letter and quickly scanned it. “It says the jewels you demand belong to the Manners family. You have no valid claim on them.”

I will flay him for this.

She took a deep, calming breath. “That is what I feared it said.”

I will crush his bones to powder.

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