She didn’t think for one second that he’d ever intentionally hurt anyone.
No. She suspected anyone he’d hurt had been an accidental casualty. She imagined a line of heartbroken young ladies stretched from here to wherever it was he was last stationed. “When will you be returning to your regiment?”
His easy expression faltered, a hint of something dark and brooding there and gone before she could fully understand it.
“You are planning to return, are you not?” she asked.
“That is the plan.”
“Ah.” That one meaningless word had become her default answer when she knew not what to say. He led her over to a pretty gray mare that was munching on hay. She whinnied in greeting as they drew near.
“So, this friendship,” she finally said when they’d sufficiently warmed the mare up to Sally’s smell and Sebastian had given orders to ready the horse for a short ride.
He turned to her with a small smile of amusement. “What about it?”
“Is this a one-sided confidence then?” she asked. Her gaze met his in challenge.
He looked away with a huff of amusement. “What is it you wish to know?”
She crossed her arms. “What is going on with your father?”
“Ah, now if only we had a lifetime together for me to fill you in on all the peculiarities that make up my father.”
She rolled her eyes at his teasing but it was impossible not to laugh. “Very well. Allow me to be more specific. What is going between you and your father?”
“Oh that,” he said.
“Yes that.”
“It’s simple, really. My brother has always been the good, dutiful heir, and I the reckless, unreliable, underachiever.” He shrugged, but there was no hiding the pain in his eyes no matter how lightly he spoke. “It really is quite common, or so I hear. No deep, dark secrets to be found in our family, I’m afraid.”
“Hmm.” She folded her arms as she watched him, his gaze roaming over everything in the stable but her. “Was it his idea or yours to join the army?”
“Mine,” he said shortly. “He never truly approved, but he’d been resigned to it. But after my mother died, he had a change of heart on the matter. Now he doesn’t want either of us out of his sight, or out from under his control.”
“I see,” she murmured.
“Now he’s hoping to use his alleged ill health to ruin the one good thing I’ve found in life.”
Her eyes widened and her lips parted. This truly was a new side of the smiling charmer she’d come to know. The sight of him like this—so genuine, so raw, so vulnerable—it made her heart ache in her chest. “Surely, if he knows you’re happy there—”
“He doesn’t believe that I’ve changed, you see,” he interrupted shortly. “He doesn’t understand…” He shook his head in frustration. “He still sees me as a child. But the army, it can change a man. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’ve experienced it firsthand. The order, the structure, the responsibility that comes with managing a group of men. Their lives, safety, and well-being mine to look after.” The look he gave her was searching, nearly desperate.
Her mouth was dry as she nodded quickly in understanding.
“Do you believe me?” He winced slightly after he asked and she could practically see his regret at letting her see so very much.
She took a step closer. “Yes, of course. I’ve seen it too. With my father’s men. Even with my sisters and I. There is something transformative about being a part of something bigger than oneself. Something more important.”
He nodded eagerly. “Yes. Exactly right. But my father just won’t see that.”
Sally’s mind raced with the memory of the way the earl had spoken of her father, of the way her father admired him. Surely that mutual respect would not have been the case if the earl had no notion of the military’s importance. “Have you…” She hesitated, finally reaching a hand out to touch his arm as if that might gentle her words. “Have you tried to make him see?”
His brows drew down in irritation but his gaze fell to her hand on his arm as if transfixed by the sight of it.
Sally wasn’t sure whether to rip her hand away or move closer still. She was torn in two with indecision and warring instincts.
“It’s useless to talk to him,” he muttered.
For a moment she knew what he must have been like as a little boy. Stubborn. Proud. Reckless.
She nearly laughed as she realized those were the very words Minerva and her father had long used to describe her. “Sebastian, you are so quick to laugh, so easy to adapt and put others at ease.”
He glanced up from beneath his lowered brows and the intensity of his gaze held her rooted in place.
She wet her lips and his gaze dropped to follow the movement. Oh heavens. The cold air felt as though it couldn’t fill her lungs fast enough. It certainly wasn’t reaching her brain. “However—” The protest came out far too loud and they both jerked back, her hand dropping. “However,” she said again, at a far more acceptable volume. “Something tells me that your father does not see beyond that. And that perhaps you have not tried to show him more.”
He stared at her in silence until she winced. “I am making a mess of this, aren’t I?” She shook her head. “It isn’t my place. I shouldn’t intervene. It’s just that there is so much more to you than you let on and—”
He cut her off with a kiss. One moment she was talking and the next his lips were on hers and—
Home. That was the only thought to break the surface. Everything else was chaos. Sensation upon sensation as her lips clung to his, warm and
