She silenced him with her kiss, taking his face between her hands, her fingers digging into his cheeks as she moved her mouth over his in desperate gulps. “Don’t,” she said, her voice rough, her breath warm against his face.
He knew she loved him. It shone in her eyes, was there with each trembling breath. And it struck him as the cruelest of ironies that if she had loved him less, she would have married him.
Wordlessly, she threaded her fingers through his, drawing him away from the window toward the warm embrace of her bed. And he went with her, because the shadows in the darkened street below were simply the trees moving in the wind, and it was hours still until dawn.
He had time. Time to convince her that she was wrong, that far from ruining his life by marrying him, she was the only thing that could save him. He still had time.
He told himself they had all the time in the world.
HIS SLEEP WAS OFTEN TROUBLED by dreams, haunting recurrent images of red-coated phalanxes of soldiers, their faces coated with dust, their lips tightly set as they marched toward death. Of stone walls battered and blackened by the howling shriek of artillery. A child’s cry. A woman’s scream. The buzzing stench of death. The remains of men and horses so dismembered as to become indistinguishable.
But that night he dreamed of Kat. She lay upon his bed, dressed in her bridal finery. The golden light of the bedside candle cast flickering shadows across the pale perfection of her features, the delicate flesh of her closed eyelids. He knelt beside her, the silken hangings of his bed whispering softly around him. Yet he knew no joy, only the pain of tears that swelled his throat but refused to fall.
Confused, he reached out to close his hand over hers, and then he understood. Because her hands were cold beneath his, and when he kissed her, her lips did not respond; her eyes did not open. Her eyes would never open again. And he knew then that her wedding finery had become her shroud.
He awoke with a jerk, his breath coming hard and fast, his heart pounding uncomfortably in his chest. Turning his head, he found her asleep beside him, her hair spilling dark and beautiful about a cheek flushed with life, her breath sweet against his face. And still he had to touch her, to feel her body warm beneath his hands.
In the hushed light of dawn she stirred, reaching for him even before her eyelids fluttered open. She skimmed her palms down his arms to his bare hips. He buried his face in her hair, breathed in the familiar scents of rose water and the sweet essence of this woman, and felt his love for her like a throbbing ache in his heart.
She was warm with sleep but softly pliant against him, murmuring gentle words as his hand found her breast. She wrapped one leg around him, sliding her foot up his calf in invitation. He rolled on top of her, her hand guiding him inside her.
He closed his eyes, trailed a line of kisses down her neck as he moved gently within her. She was warm and alive and in his arms, and still he knew a deep and abiding fear that would not be stilled.
Sebastian’s valet was an earnest, softly rounding man named Sedlow who had been in Sebastian’s employ for just over a year. The man was a genius at repairing the ravages a night on the town could wreak upon a gentleman’s coat, and could coax an enviable shine from top boots worn hard on the hunting field. But when Sebastian appeared later that morning with a brown-paper-wrapped package containing a pair of badly cut trousers and an old-fashioned greatcoat such as a Bow Street Runner might wear, Sedlow paled and recoiled with horror.
“
Pausing in the act of tying an unfashionably dark and coarse neckcloth, Sebastian glanced over at his valet. “They’re hardly rags. And I don’t intend to drop into White’s in this rig, if that’s what you fear.”
“But…someone could still see you.”
Sebastian raised one eyebrow. “Do you fear such a sighting might do irreparable damage to my reputation?”
Sedlow sniffed. “
“Ah. I see. It’s the repercussions on your reputation that trouble you.”
Sedlow started to open his mouth, then closed it.
“Wise,” said Sebastian, and shrugged into his badly tailored coat.
THE RAIN HAD BEGUN EARLY THAT MORNING, a steady downpour that brought with it a bite of North Sea air and made the unseasonable heat of the past few days seem like a dim, distorted memory. Hailing a hackney carriage on New Bond Street, Sebastian directed the jarvey toward Mount Street. Then, slumping in one corner, he watched the raindrops chase each other down the windowpane, and slowly allowed himself to sink into the personage he’d chosen to assume.
It was an actor’s trick, something Kat had taught him to do in those early, heady days when he’d just come down from Oxford and she was still only beginning to make her mark upon the stage. He’d perfected the technique in the army, where his very survival had at times depended upon his ability to submerge himself in a character until he wore the assumed posture and mannerisms as comfortably and effortlessly as an old coat.
By the time he arrived at the service entrance of the house on Mount Street, the Earl’s son was gone and he had become Mr. Simon Taylor, one of Bow Street’s finest.
IT OCCURRED TO SEBASTIAN that you could tell a great deal about a woman by the abigail she chose to employ. Some lady’s maids were haughty, affected creatures as fashion conscious and condescending as their mistresses. Some were cheerful, fresh-cheeked country women who’d served their mistresses since they were in the schoolroom, while others were timid and apologetic things, forever quivering in terror of being dismissed.
Lady Anglessey’s abigail was a thin, slight woman in her late twenties or early thirties named Tess Bishop. She had straw-colored hair and a sallow complexion, and at first glance one might easily take her for the meek, browbeaten variety of abigail. But her gray eyes were clear and intelligent, her step firm as she entered the housekeeper’s room Sebastian had commandeered for their interview.
She wore black, as befitted the servant of a household in mourning. It was Sunday, her day off, but she had an
