“A nobleman,” Sebastian said softly.
“Yes. He was dashing. Cultured voice. Green velvet coat, and a front lock like Byron.”
Sebastian scoffed.
“Indeed. He charmed me on the spot,” she said. “He asked me to dance, and I was enamored with his urbane sophistication and his front lock at the end of the second reel.”
“He seduced you,” Sebastian said grimly.
“I made it shockingly easy for him,” she said. “He was unlike any of the young men I had ever encountered. He dazzled. He asked my opinion on literature and politics, which made me feel terribly important. You see, the village was a very small place, and after Mama’s passing, my father never went to a town again, but I hadn’t grasped how restless that had made me until I met William. Something in me just . . . burst.”
“A London lothario with his eye on debauching a vicar’s daughter? You stood little chance at seventeen, sweeting.”
“But I knew it was wrong,” she said. “Every girl knows it’s wrong.”
“And he knew it was wrong,” he replied. “Did he offer for you?”
She gave a hollow laugh. “He certainly said everything that made it sound like it. Asked me to elope to America with him, where he wanted to make his own fortune, away from his father. Well, he did go to America when autumn came. He didn’t even leave me a letter.”
There was a small, terse pause.
“You loved him,” he said, and his voice was cold enough to make her shiver.
“I thought I did,” she said. “He had wooed me wonderfully.”
He had said that he loved her. It had thrilled her so to hear it, but she’d waited to say it back and when she finally had, it had felt sacred, an oath whispered into his ear as he lay on her, damp and panting. A week and a few couplings later, he had walked out of her life.
She cringed. It had taken days for it to dawn on her that it hadn’t been a mistake, that he had left Kent, had left her, without as much as a good-bye. She had been nothing but a pleasant footnote in a rich man’s summer.
“What happened then?” Sebastian sounded suspicious.
She closed her eyes. “The worst.”
“Word got out?”
She looked at him bleakly. “I found I was increasing.”
He turned ghostly pale. “Where,” he asked, “where is the child?”
She shook her head. “It never came to be. I lost it soon after my father sent me to Yorkshire, to his aunt. Aunt May.” And Aunt May had implied she ought to be glad to have lost the babe. She should have. Instead, she had already come to love the little one. But her body had failed them . . . she had failed everyone.
Sebastian’s lips moved against her hair, and she realized she was clinging to him, trembling uncontrollably, unable to stop the words from pouring out.
“My father first dragged me all the way to London after I finally confessed. He was convinced the viscount would force William to do right by me. Of course, his lordship said that I was a strumpet who had tried and failed to hook a rich lordling, and that he had no use for a peasant grandchild.”
There was a pause. When Sebastian spoke again, his voice was dangerously soft. “Will you tell me his name?”
By Hades, no. “He said what most men in his position would have said.”
“Not most—” Sebastian began, and then he fell abruptly silent. “Damn,” he said, “I believe I accused you of something along those lines when we first met at Claremont.”
“You did.”
He exhaled sharply. “That explains it. You know, I had the impression you wanted to slap me. I thought you must be utterly mad.”
“Oh, I was mad. I felt as though I stood in his lordship’s study all over again.”
He sat up and stared down at her. “Tell me his name.”
“I’d rather not. He was horrid, but he was not the one who destroyed my life. I did.”
“Destroyed?” He frowned. “You are anything but. I’ve never known a woman as valiant as you.”
She blinked rapidly at the velvet canopy. “I wasn’t the only one affected. My father . . . the look in his eyes when I told him—”
It was as though she had switched off the light in him, whatever had remained after her mother’s death anyway.
“I don’t think he forgave me before he died,” she said hoarsely. “We were informed after it had happened; the coroner said it was sudden, that it was his heart. But, Sebastian, he was never good at taking care of himself; he needed me for that. He probably hadn’t even noticed he was unwell, and had I been there . . .”
“No,” Sebastian said, and then she was in his arms, surrounded by heat, and strength, and certainty. “He was a grown man,” she heard him say. “You made your choices; he made his. Don’t take on other people’s crosses. The only person you can control is yourself.”
“But I didn’t,” she whispered against his chest, “I didn’t control myself.”
And she had lost, how she had lost. Her virtue, on a dusty stable floor. Her babe, her father’s respect, and then, after laying her father to rest, there had been the news that Aunt May, tough northerner though she was, had succumbed to her perpetual cough. And yet once again, she now found herself naked in the arms of a nobleman.
She strained against Sebastian’s arms, and he let her up.
“I was foolish and impulsive,” she said. “I’m surprised to find you of all people so forgiving about it.”
He was silent for a long moment. “It’s not my forgiveness you need,” he said, “nor mine to give.”
He drew back the counterpane and tugged the covers loose.
She let him arrange her as he wished, her back to his chest, his nose against her nape, both his arms and the blanket snug around her. Trapping her well and truly. She was beyond caring; exhaustion was drawing her under like quicksand, and her eyelids drooped.
His lips brushed against her ear. “These wild depths in you, they call to me,” he murmured.
His arm around her waist grew heavy, and she knew he had fallen asleep. Like a man who hadn’t slept in nearly a full day, and had loved a woman twice in a row.
Behind her closed eyes, her mind spun in lazy circles, round and round.
The night had not turned out as she had expected. Lovers were expected to bring each other a pleasant time, but she had also nearly brought him her tears. And he had listened graciously, as a friend would, and there hadn’t been a hint of judgment in his eyes.