A Duke For All Seasons (11 page)

    
“Arabella is a pawn in this. A courier only,” Sebastian said. “I’d stake my life on it.”

    
“You are. Depend upon it. May I remind you that the punishment for treason is still hanging, drawing and quartering?”

    
Sebastian glared at him. “Hear me out. It’s no good taking the letter to the authorities. They’d only warn the persons who’re being targeted and the assassin will simply go to ground. He’ll strike in another way at another time. We need a stratagem that will lull him into a sense of easy success, and in so doing, we’ll choose the ground we fight on.”
 

    
Neville listened without comment while Sebastian explained what he proposed to do in order to stop the assassin in his tracks. Then Lord Granger pulled on his cigar three times, cogitating on the possibilities and weighing the options. Finally, he met Sebastian’s gaze.

    
“It might work,” he admitted. “But it’s risky.”

    
Neville didn’t know the half of it yet. “There’s more,” Sebastian said. “I’m going to need your assistance.”

    
When he finished outlining the rest of his plan, Neville let out a low whistle.

    
“Will you help me?”

    
“Yes, of course,” Neville said, waving away the question. Then he fixed Sebastian with a penetrating glare. “Are you sure she’s worth it? You could lose everything.”

    
Sebastian didn’t bat an eyelash. If Arabella had lied to him, he’d lost everything already.

“Above all else, a gentleman should take pains to see that while the needs of his body are fully met in the relationship with his mistress, his heart is never engaged.”

~ A Gentlemen’s Guide to Keeping a Mistress

    
A venerable old manor house takes on a different character by night than it shows to the world by day. Every shadow is a ghost of time gone by, each low creak of settling foundations a complaint from the past. A wakeful person is not likely to feel solitary roaming the dark halls. Shades of previous occupants lurk around every corner.

    
But Sebastian wasn’t plagued by any of those late night spirits in his nocturnal wandering. The real woman in the silk-draped guest chamber so filled his imagination, there was no room for other fancies. He found himself standing outside Arabella’s door before he realized that was his destination.

    
He raised his hand to knock but then stopped himself. The 8
^th
Duke of Winterhaven didn’t need her permission to enter a room in his own home.

    
Besides, he was in no mood to accept rejection and he couldn’t be sure Arabella wouldn’t tell him no. Until they’d taken refuge in the hunting lodge, she’d seemed determined to make a damned virtue of refusing him.
  

    
He turned the knob and slipped into the chamber. Silent as a wraith, Sebastian moved to her bedside. He’d thought her stunning on stage. Silvered by moonlight, she was nothing short of ethereal, his very own faery queen.

    
“Bella.”

    
He hadn’t meant to say anything. Her name simply escaped his lips without his conscious volition, a single word tribute to his need of her.

    
Need.
All right, he’d admit it. She wanted him to need her and he did. He hoped she was satisfied.
 

    
She stirred and her eyes fluttered open. Wordlessly, she lifted her arms to him.

    
As Sebastian sank into them, a euphoric rush of emotions crowded his senses. He abhorred them.

    
Deucedly messy things, feelings.

    
They upset a fellow’s well-ordered life and threatened to unman him. That’s why he’d been so careful keep his under such tight restraint.
 

    
The reins slipped a bit as he let the sensations course through him unchecked. In all the years he’d lived in that manor house, he’d never felt at home. It was simply where he’d passed much of his childhood and later conducted the business of the estate, but there was no sense of belonging. If anything, it was more as if the place owned him.

    
As he buried his nose in Arabella’s hair and inhaled her scent, he finally knew what home was, what it ought to feel like—all warmth and acceptance.

    
But he couldn’t even convince her to stay with him for three pitifully short months. It confirmed what he’d always suspected.

    
There was something desperately wrong with him.

    
“I’m not a very good man,” he said, his voice passion-rough as he devoured her neck with kisses. “You’d do well to remember it.”

    
“Why do you say that?” She ran a hand over his head, smoothing his hair down.

    
It was like a benediction. Her touch encouraged him to open the firmly-barred door to his private pain, but he resisted.

    
“I’ve ordered my life solely for my own pleasure,” he confessed. “And I’ve been selfishly happy that way.”

    
She cupped his cheeks. “Have you been happy? Truly?”

    
Only momentarily,
he admitted to himself. He laid his head beside hers on the pillow. Perhaps what he took for happiness was just absence of pain. Now that he thought about it, he really didn’t have any true happiness with which to measure his life before Bella. In comparison to the brief, if tumultuous, time since he’d known her, those previous years were awash in shades of gray, dull and listless in his memory.

    
“Perhaps I wasn’t happy and didn’t realize it.”

    
He’d certainly never felt like this before, so bewildered and out of his depth.

    
The really nasty part about feelings was that he was never sure how to name them. He understood desire well enough. That was easy. It was an appetite, no different than a man’s craving for food or drink.

    
This wretched lump in his chest was indecipherable.
 

    
“Bella, I think. . . I need you.”

    
She seemed to melt in his arms. “Oh, Sebastian, I hope so because I need you too.”

    
Arabella kissed his closed eyelids, his temple, his earlobes. Her palms slipped under his shirt and smoothed over his shoulders. Desire flared in his groin but it didn’t diminish the strange glow in his chest. He ached for her, every bit of him longing to both serve and be served.
   

    
In a horizontal dance of agonizing slowness, they stripped off the clothing that separated them. Skin on skin, they rolled under the sheets, kissing and caressing, fondling and teasing.

    
He suckled her breasts and rubbed his stubbled cheeks in the sweet hollow between them. Her soft sighs of need and pleasure twisted around his heart, binding him to her more surely than any contract could.

    
But did she feel the same sense of connection?

    
She needed him. That was something. But all his mistresses had professed that, one way or another. What they really needed was his money, his protection, his prestige.

    
Had any of them ever needed him for himself?

    
The lump in his chest constricted painfully and he wondered if the sharp pang had anything to do with love. Women set great store by that sentiment. Had he ever inspired that most bumfuzzling of emotions in a woman’s heart?

    
Bella slid beneath the covers and trailed her lips over his chest. Then she moved downward. Animal heat flared in his groin as the blessed woman ran the tip of her tongue along his length.

    
Is this love?
he wondered. This offer of exquisite pleasure when he hadn’t even asked?

    
When she took him into her soft mouth, Sebastian decided he was doing far too much wondering.

    
It was time to simply feel.

*
   
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The rest of the week passed in pleasant, if more public, pursuits. The house party picnicked in the meadow, engaged in lawn bowling and archery, and enjoyed sparkling conversation over excellent evening meals. Each morning began with a convivial repast in the light-filled breakfast room.

    
And each night Sebastian joined Arabella in her chamber and stayed till the cock crowed the next morning.

    
She was becoming accustomed to the presence of his body beside her, often tangled up with hers in delightful ways, in deep relaxation. She wondered if she’d ever be able to sleep alone again.

    
Not that he lets me sleep much now,
Bella thought wryly as she passed the marmalade to Lady Moorcroft. She sneaked a glance at Sebastian at the head of the table.
 

    
The difference in him since the beginning of the week was striking. The frown line between his brows was nearly gone. He’d always been devilishly handsome.

    
Now he looked content.

    
Mr. Cobb entered without a salver of buttered eggs or a fresh pot of tea in his gloved hands. Instead concern was stamped on his usually imperturbable features. “I crave your pardon for the interruption, Your Grace, but a gentleman is here to see you on a matter of some urgency. He awaits your pleasure in the study.”

    
The butler handed Sebastian a note, which he unfolded and scanned quickly. The deep groove between Sebastian’s brows returned.

    
He glanced toward Bella, his expression bland and unreadable, but his dark eyes flashed a warning. “Miss St. George, accompany me, if you please.”

    
“Of course, Your Grace.” She rose and joined Sebastian in the corridor outside the breakfast room. “What’s this about?”

    
He offered her his arm. After she slipped her hand in the crook of his elbow, he covered it with his. “It concerns your daughter.”

    
Blackness gathered at the edges of Arabella’s vision for a heartbeat, but she forced herself to draw a deep breath to keep the encroaching darkness at bay.

    
“Steady on, Bella,” he whispered as they continued down the hall. “We’ll know more once my man has given us his report.”

    
She lengthened her stride to the farthest reach her column dress would allow, narrowly resisting the urge to hike up her skirt and run toward the study. Sebastian was remaining calm. She’d be no help to him, or to Lisette, if she went to pieces.

    
When they reached the study, they found Sebastian’s Bow Street runner pacing before the fire, twisting his cap in his hands. He was the scruffy, indistinct sort of chap one might find loitering at any corner in London and not remember seeing. But the deep rings beneath his eyes were dark as bruises and his mud-spattered boots bespoke a hard ride.