Christian.
Who nodded. “I traveled back to London with him afterward. By the time we reached town, I got the impression he’d shut the door on the last traitor and all his works.”
“That meshes,” Tristan said, “with whispers I’ve been hearing over the last weeks that he’s expected to retire within the next month.”
“He’d mentioned that he was tying up loose ends,” Christian said. “There can’t be that many more left.”
Charles raised his brows high. “Which leads to a very interesting question-once he retires, will we finally be able to learn who he is?”
They all considered that.
“Unless he becomes a hermit,” Tony said, “presumably we’ll run into him as his real self-Royce Whoever-he-is, Lord Whatever.”
“Curiosity is my besetting sin,” Charles quipped. “I can’t wait to fill in the blanks.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Jack Warnefleet raised his glass.
They all did, then Jack glanced around their circle. “We seem to have made a habit of this, gathering at each other’s weddings. As I recall, last time”-he nodded at Deverell-“at your nuptials, we all watched Gervase walk away, summoned back to his castle, and wondered what had called him back.” With an expansive gesture, Jack indicated the rest of the room. “Now we know, and here we are, dancing at his wedding.”
“This time, however”-Charles picked up the thread-“there’s only one of us left to wonder about.” He turned to Christian. And smiled. “You.”
Christian laughed, entirely unruffled, but then, Gervase thought, he was the least ruffleable of them all.
He made them a mock bow. “I’m desolated to report, gentlemen, that despite considerable reconnoitering, I’ve as yet failed to discover any lady over whom I feel compelled to make plans. Much as I salute your endeavors and their exemplary success, as the last member of the Bastion Club unwed, I find myself in no great hurry to change my status. Aside from all else, you have between you set the bar exceedingly high, and I wouldn’t want to let the side, as it were, down. I clearly need to polish my brass, as well as my address.”
They didn’t let it rest, of course, but teased and ribbed in a lighthearted, good-natured way. Christian, of them all, was the last man one would attempt to pressure-wasted effort. While he laughed and turned their comments aside with practiced ease, his stance didn’t waver in the least.
In the end, Christian himself pointed out, “As both the oldest and the most senior peer in the group, my path to finding the perfect wife was always destined to be the least straightforward.”
They all looked at him, trying to see past the comment, all sensing that it hid some deeper meaning. Whatever it was, none of them could fathom it.
Predictably, it was Charles who put their collective riposte into words. He fixed Christian with a wide-eyed look. “Whoever said falling in love was straightforward?”
Christian returned to London two days later. As he often did, he sought refuge at the Bastion Club. It was midafternoon when he climbed the stairs to the club’s library. Closing the door, he crossed to the tantalus, poured himself a brandy, then settled in one of the comfortable armchairs by the hearth. And sipped. And thought.
There was no other member staying at the club; he was the last one unwed, with no lady waiting at home, at the huge house in Grosvenor Square.
He thought back to Gervase’s wedding, to their gathering there, revisited the others’ words, the advice they’d jokingly offered him; he smiled as he recalled, but then Charles’s last words replayed in his mind and his smile faded.
Charles and the others had misinterpreted his earlier comment. He hadn’t suggested that him falling in love would not be straightforward-he’d stated that for him, finding the perfect wife was not destined to be straightforward. As it wasn’t, for one very simple reason.
Whoever said falling in love was straightforward?
In that, he could prove Charles wrong. For him, falling in love had been the easiest, most straightforward and natural thing in the world. As he recalled. What, in his case, made matters anything but straightforward was the difficulty he faced in marrying the lady in question.
Not least because she was already wed.
Closing his eyes, he let his head fall back against the chair. A parade of memories flickered past his mind’s eye-all the things that had happened, all the things he couldn’t change.
In the distance, he heard the front doorbell peal; one part of his mind tracked Gasthorpe’s footsteps as he went to answer the door…but then the past dragged him back, wrapped him in soft arms and the wreathing scent of jasmine.
He was recalled to the present by a tap on the door, followed by Gasthorpe.
Christian opened his eyes.
The majordomo closed the door, then faced him. “A lady has called, my lord, asking to see you. She gave no name, but offered this note.”
Christian beckoned. As Gasthorpe neared, he idly wondered who in all the ton wished to converse with him, and about what-and how any lady had known to run him to earth there. His staff in Grosvenor Square knew better than to reveal his whereabouts, not to just anyone. He lifted the folded parchment from Gasthorpe’s silver salver.
The sight of the script rocked him.
For a moment, he simply stared, then reaction rushed through him, jerking him free of all lethargy with a resounding mental slap.
His fingers shifted, fingertips tracing his name, not the one from long ago but the title he’d since acquired.
Even before he unfolded the note, the scent of jasmine reached him.
No figment of imagination or memory.
He fumbled, nearly dropped the note. His fingertips burned.
Drawing in a deep breath, slowing his movements, steadying them and himself, he smoothed out the note.
He read the few lines within.
Then he leaned back in the chair, his gaze rising, fixing unseeing on the hearth.
He didn’t know what he felt; emotions careened through him, a jumble of reactions impossible to dissect. He breathed deeply, pulling air past the constriction in his chest; gradually a cool tension, an inward steeling, flowed through him.
Fate moved in inscrutable, damnably mysterious ways.
Gasthorpe cleared his throat. “My lord?”
Christian heard himself say over the pounding in his chest, “I’ll join the lady in a moment, Gasthorpe. Tell her to wait.”
About the Author
New York Times bestselling author STEPHANIE LAURENS specializes in writing historical romances set in Regency England. Beyond Seduction is her thirtieth such work, and her sixth in a group of novels about the members of the exclusive Bastion Club, first introduced in her novel The Lady Chosen. Readers can write to Stephanie c/o The Publicity Department, Avon Books, HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022-5299, or via e-mail toslaurens@vicnet.net.au.
For information on Stephanie’s books, including updates on the Bastion Club and Cynster novels yet to come, visit Stephanie’s website atwww.stephanielaurens.com.
