“With any luck, someone else will make a scene in the second act, and they’ll forget all about you. I’ll tell everyone you’ve taken ill, and then—” Louisa’s eyes filled with alarm.
“What?”
She shook her head. “I shall just have to make certain that Mr. Grey remains for the entire performance. If he departs early as well, everyone will assume you’ve gone off together.”
The blood drained from Annabel’s face.
Louisa gave her head a shake. “I can do it. Don’t worry.”
“Are you sure?” Because Annabel wasn’t. Louisa was not known for her assertiveness.
“No, I can,” Louisa said, sounding as if she were convincing herself as much as Annabel. “He’s actually much easier to talk to than most men.”
“I’d noticed,” Annabel said weakly.
Louisa sighed. “Yes, I expect you had. Very well, you must go home, and I will go…”
Annabel waited.
“I will go with you,” Louisa finished decisively. “That’s a much better idea.”
Annabel could only blink.
“If I go with you, no one will suspect anything, even if Mr. Grey departs as well.” Louisa gave her a sheepish shrug. “It’s an advantage of a sterling reputation.”
Before Annabel could inquire as to what that said abouther reputation, Louisa cut in with: “You’re an unknown quantity. But me…No one ever suspects me of anything.”
“Are you saying that they should?” Annabel asked carefully.
“No.” Louisa shook her head, almost wistfully. “I never do anything wrong.”
But as they made their way from their curtained hideaway, Annabel could have sworn she heard Louisa whisper, “Sadly.”
Three hours later Sebastian walked into his club, still rather annoyed by how the evening had turned out. Miss Winslow, he was told, had taken ill during the intermission and departed with Lady Louisa, who had insisted upon accompanying her.
Not that Sebastian believed a word of it. Miss Winslow had been such a picture of health, the only way she could have taken ill was if she’d been attacked by a leper in the stairwell.
The Ladies Cosgrove and Wimbledon, freed of their duties as chaperones, had departed as well, leaving their guests alone in the box. Olivia immediately moved to the front row, setting a program on the chair next to her for Harry, who had gone off to the lobby.
Sebastian had remained for the second act, mostly because Olivia had insisted upon it. He’d been all prepared to go home and write (the leper in the stairwell had given him all sorts of ideas), but she had positively yanked him into the seat next to her and hissed, “If you depart everyone will think you’ve left with Miss Winslow, and I will not allow you to ruin the poor girl in her first season.”
“She left with Lady Louisa,” he protested. “Am I really thought so reckless that I’d engage in amenage a trois with that?”
“That?”
“You know what I mean,” he said with a scowl.
“Everyone will think it a ruse,” Olivia explained. “Lady Louisa’s reputation may be unimpeachable, but yours is not, and the way you were carrying on with Miss Winslow during the first act…”
“I wastalking with her.”
“What are you talking about?” It was Harry, returned from the lobby, needing to get past them to his seat.
“Nothing,” they both snapped, adjusting their legs to let him by.
Harry’s brows rose, but he merely yawned. “Where did everyone go?” he asked, sitting down.
“Miss Winslow took ill,” Olivia told him, “and Lady Louisa accompanied her home. The two aunts departed as well.”
Harry gave a shrug, since he was generally more interested in the opera than gossip, and picked up his program.
Sebastian turned to Olivia, who had resumed her glare. “Are you still scolding me?”
“You should have known better,” Olivia said in a hushed voice.
Sebastian glanced over at Harry. He was immersed in the libretto, seemingly oblivious to the conversation.
Which, knowing Harry, meant he heard every word.
Sebastian decided he didn’t care. “Since when have you become Miss Winslow’s champion?” he asked.
“I’m not,” she said, shrugging her elegant shoulders. “But it is obvious she is new to town and in need of guidance. I applaud Lady Louisa for taking her home.”
“How do you know Lady Louisa took her home?”
“Oh, Sebastian,” she said, giving him an impatient look. “How can you even ask?”
And that was the end of it. Until he arrived at the club.
Which was when all hell broke loose.
Chapter Eleven
You bastard!”
Sebastian was normally an observant fellow, blessed with quick reflexes and a healthy sense of self-preservation, but his mind had been uncharacteristically stuck on a single topic—the curve of Miss Winslow’s lips—and he had not been paying much attention to his surroundings as he entered the club.
Thus he had not seen his uncle.
Or his uncle’s fist.
“What the hell?”
The force of the blow slammed Sebastian into a wall, which led his shoulder to be only slightly less painful than his eye, which was probably already turning black.
“Since the moment you were born,” his uncle seethed, “I have known you to be without morals or discipline, butthis —”
This? Whatthis ?
“This,” his uncle continued, his voice shaking with fury, “is beneath even you.”
Since the moment I was born, Seb thought with something that was almost exasperation.Since the moment I was born . Well, his uncle was right about that, at least. Back to his earliest memories, his uncle had been angry and hard, always insulting, always finding new ways to make a boy feel small. Sebastian had later realized that the rancor was inevitable. Newbury had never liked Sebastian’s father, who had been but eleven months his junior. Adolphus Grey had been taller, more athletic, and better-looking than his older brother. Probably smarter, too, although Sebastian had to admit, his father had never been one for books.
As for Seb’s mother, Lord Newbury had thought her appallingly beneath the family.
Sebastian, he considered the spawn of the devil.
Seb had learned to live with it. And occasionally live up to it. Really, he hadn’t much cared. His uncle was a nuisance, rather like a pesky, albeit large, insect. The strategy was the same: avoid,
