A Study In Seduction (38 page)

Sebastian struggled to make his brain work as he looked at her round, pretty face, her curly brown hair pulled into an untidy knot. A streak of grease or oil smudged her cheek. She looked like a thousand other ordinary women—a shopkeeper’s daughter, a clerk, a schoolteacher, a milliner’s apprentice.

Except for her eyes. And a tiny black birthmark punctuating the corner of her smooth left eyebrow, like the dot of a question mark.

“Does your father reside in Dorset still?” Sebastian asked.

“No, I’m afraid that property has been long abandoned.” Her eyes flickered downward, shading her expression. She shifted the head to her other arm. “So, Mr. Hall, I’ve continued to hear great things about you over the years. You were at Weimar last summer, were you not?”

The admiring, bright pink note in her voice clawed at
him. His fingers flexed, a movement that caused tension to creep up his arm and into the rest of his body.

“Yes.” His voice sounded thin, stretched.

Clara blinked, a slight frown tipping her mouth again. Her eyes were really the strangest shade—a trick of the light, surely. No one had eyes that color. He certainly didn’t recall having noticed them when she was his student. He didn’t even recall having noticed
her.

Discomfort pinched Sebastian’s chest. He wouldn’t have noticed her back then. Not when women had flocked to him with bright smiles and hot whispers. Among such birds of paradise, Clara Whitmore—even with her unusual eyes—would have been a plain brown sparrow.

She still is
, he told himself.

He straightened his shoulders, glancing at the waxen head with an unspoken question.

“My uncle is debuting an automaton tomorrow evening at Lady Rossmore’s ball,” Clara explained. “Well, I’m debuting it on his behalf, as he was called out of town rather suddenly.”

A surge of comprehension rolled through Sebastian as the pieces began locking together in his blurred mind.

“Then you are Mr. Granville Blake’s niece,” he said. “I’d expected… that is, Lady Rossmore said he might be here.”

“He’d intended to be, but owing to the circumstances, I’m to carry out his duties.” Clara touched the automaton’s head, drawing Sebastian’s gaze to her long fingers. “This is Millicent, the Musical Lady. Part of her anyhow. She plays four tunes on the piano.”

“How”—
ridiculous—
“interesting.” Though he’d heard Granville Blake dabbled in all sorts of mechanical toys
and automata, Sebastian was interested in only one of the man’s many projects.

And now he apparently had to be interested in the man’s niece as well.

“You oughtn’t be here alone,” he told her. “Especially at this hour.”

“We’ve permission to set things up,” she replied. “This is the only opportunity we have to assemble Millicent and her piano. And I’m not alone. My uncle’s assistant Tom is just outside loading the remaining crates.” She glanced behind him to the piano resting beside the stage. “Will you be performing at the ball?”

His jaw tensed. If Lady Rossmore had not told him Mr. Granville Blake would be in attendance, Sebastian would have spent the following evening wreathed in the smoke and noise of the Eagle Tavern.

“I will be in attendance,” he said, “but not performing.”

“Oh. Well, I do apologize for the interruption. I didn’t even know anyone else would be here. Once Millicent is assembled, we’ll leave you to your work.”

Work.
The piano was all the evidence she needed to assume he’d been working.

He was about to respond with a sharp tone—though he had no idea what he’d say—when a needle of rational thought pierced the fog in his brain.

At the very least, he needed to be civil to Clara Whitmore if he wanted to learn more about her uncle’s projects.

Or perhaps he should be more than civil. Women had always responded to his attentions. Even if now those attentions were corroded with neglect, Miss Whitmore didn’t appear the sort who had much to judge them—or him—by.

“Would you care for a currant muffin?” She opened the basket. “I thought I’d better bring something to eat since I don’t know how long Tom and I will be here. I’ve also got apples and shortbread…”

She kept talking. He stopped listening.

Instead he stared at the curve of her cheek, the graceful slope of her neck, revealed by her half-turned head. He watched the movement of her lips—a lovely, full mouth she had—and the way her thick eyelashes swept like feathers to her cheekbones.

She looked up to find him watching her. The hint of a flush spread across her pale skin. With a sudden desire to see that flush darken, Sebastian let his gaze wander from her slender throat down across the curves of her body, her tapered waist, the flare of her hips beneath her full skirt. Then he followed the path back to her face.

There. Color bloomed on her cheeks. Her teeth sank into her lush lower lip. Consternation glinted in her lavender eyes. He wondered what she’d look like with her hair unpinned, if it would be long and tangled and thick.

“I… er… I should get to work,” Clara went on, ducking her head. “Tom will be in momentarily, and there’s a great deal to do. Please, take a muffin, if you’d like.”

Sebastian rolled his shoulders back. A cracking noise split through his neck as he stretched. He realized for the first time that day he’d almost forgotten the headache pressing against his skull.

“Thank you.” Again he experienced that wicked urge to provoke a reaction. “I’m not hungry. Not for food.”

Her lips parted on a silent little gasp, as if she wasn’t certain whether to be offended by his suggestive tone or to ignore it altogether. Expressing offense, of course,
meant she’d have to reveal that she had recognized the implications of his words.

She gave a nonchalant shrug and shifted, then held Millicent’s head out to him. “If you please, sir—”

“I please, Miss Whitmore.” His voice dropped an octave. “Often and well.”

He was drunk. Or recently had been.

That didn’t explain why Clara’s heart beat like an overworked clock, or why the rough undercurrent of Mr. Hall’s words heated her skin, but at least it explained
him.

She tried to breathe evenly. She couldn’t recall ever having had
this
reaction to him. She remembered him leaning over her shoulder as he demonstrated the position of his fingers on the piano keys. She remembered the assured tone of his voice as he spoke of quarter notes and major scales… but he’d been distant then, a brilliant pianist, a dashing young man who attracted beautiful women, who would keep company with kings and emperors.

Now the distance had closed. He stood before her close enough to touch. He had aged, diminished somehow. Had he… fallen?

A tiny ache pierced Clara’s heart. Sebastian Hall had always been disheveled, but in a rather appealing fashion suited to his artistic profession.

I’ve no time to fuss
, his manner had proclaimed.
I’ve got magic to weave.

And he had, with kaleidoscope threads and fairy-dust needles. At dinner parties and concerts, Mr. Hall spun music through the air and made Clara’s blood echo with notes that had never before moved her.

Not until Sebastian Hall had brought them to life.
Sleeves pushed up to his elbows, hair tumbling across his forehead, he’d played the piano with a restless energy that could in no way be contained by the polish of formality.

But now? Now he was just… messy. At least three days’ worth of whiskers roughened his jaw, and his clothes looked as if he’d slept in them for even longer than that. Dark circles ringed his eyes. He appeared hollowed out, like a gourd long past Allhallows Eve.

Clara tilted her head and frowned. Although Mr. Hall’s eyes were bloodshot, they contained a sharpness that overindulgence would have blunted. And his movements—they were tense, restless, none of his edges smeared by the taint of alcohol.

She stepped a little closer to him. Her nose twitched. No rank smell of ale or brandy wafted from his person. Only…

She breathed deeper.

Ahh.

Crisp night air. Wood smoke. The rich, faintly bitter scent of coffee. Clara inhaled again, the scent of him sliding deep into her blood and warming a place that had long been frozen over.

“Miss Whitmore?”

His deep voice, threaded with cracks yet still resonant, broke into her brief reverie. Such a pleasure to hear his voice wrap around her former name, evoking the golden days when she had been young, when William and their mother had been alive and sunshine-yellow dandelions colored the hills of Dorset like strokes of paint.

She lifted her gaze to find Mr. Hall watching her, his eyes dark and hooded. Her face warmed.

“Sir, are you… are you ill?” she asked.

The frank question didn’t appear to disconcert him. Instead a vague smile curved his mouth—a smile in which any trace of humor surrendered to wickedness. A faint power crackled around him, as if attempting to break through his crust of lassitude.

“Ill?” he repeated. “Yes, Miss Whitmore, I am ill indeed.”

“Oh, I—”

He took a step forward, his hands flexing at his sides. She stepped back. Her heart thumped a restive beat. She glanced at the door, suddenly wishing Tom would hurry and arrive.

“I am ill behaved,” Mr. Hall said, his advance so deliberate that Clara had the panicked thought that she would have nowhere to go should he keep moving toward her. Should he reach out and touch her.

“Ill considered,” Mr. Hall continued. Another step. Two. “Ill content. Ill at ease. Ill-favored. Ill-
fated—”

“Ill-bred?” Clara snapped.

Sebastian stopped. Then he chuckled, humor creasing his eyes. An unwelcome fascination rose in Clara’s chest as the sound of his deep, rumbling laugh settled alongside the delicious mixture of scents that she knew, even now, she would forever associate with him.

“Ill-bred,” he repeated, his head cocking to the side. “The second son of an earl oughtn’t be ill-bred, but that’s a fair assessment. My elder brother received a more thorough education in social graces.” Amusement still glimmered in his expression. “Though I don’t suppose he’s done that education much justice himself.”

Clara had no idea what he was talking about. She did know that she’d backed up clear across the room to the stage. He stopped inches from her, close enough that
she could see how the unfastened buttons of his collar revealed an inverted triangle of his skin, the vulnerable hollow of his throat where his pulse tapped.

A prickle skimmed up her bare arms, tingling and delicious.

Sebastian kept looking at her, then reached into his pocket and removed a silk handkerchief. “May I?”

She shook her head, not certain what he was asking. “I beg your pardon?”

“You have”—he gestured to her cheek—“dirt or grease.”

Before she could turn away, the cloth touched her face. She startled, more from the sensation than the sheer intimacy of the act. Sebastian Hall’s fingers were warm, light and gentle against her face.

He moved closer, a crease of concentration appearing between his dark eyebrows as he wiped the marks from her face with the soft handkerchief. Clara’s breath tangled in the middle of her chest. She stared at the column of his throat, bronze against the pure white of his collar, the coarse stubble roughening the underside of his chin.

She didn’t dare raise her gaze high enough to look at his mouth, though she wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to. The urge made her fingers curl tight into her palms, made a strange yearning stretch through her chest.

The muscles of his throat worked as he swallowed, his hand falling to his side. He stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket.

With his attention turned away from her, Clara noticed the weariness etched into the corners of his eyes, the brackets around his mouth, the faintly desperate expression in his eyes that had nothing to do with alcohol and everything to do with fatigue.

Fatigue. That was it. Sebastian Hall was bone-deep exhausted.

He met her gaze.

No. The man was exhausted past his bones and right into his soul.

Before she could speak, Sebastian stepped back, turning toward the front of the room. Tom pushed open the doors and maneuvered a trolley loaded with four crates. He glanced up, his face red with exertion. “Almost done, miss.”

Clara hurried to meet him. They conferred briefly about how best to organize the various parts of the machine; then Clara turned back to the stage. Sebastian Hall was gone.