For her own entertainment, of course.
“Oh Fanny, I am so looking forward to saving handsome Sebastian Wells from himself, and flighty Miss Reeves from a marriage not of her choosing.”
Chapter 2
Sebastian Wells contemplated the billiard cue in his right hand, poised over the green baize table. If he pocketed this one, he’d be five hundred pounds plumper in the pocket. It was a fabulous sum that would keep him in coats and cognac for a considerable time—if he didn’t lose the same sum at the gaming table the following week. Not that he was in need of funds.
“Just get it over with,” his opponent muttered.
He glanced across the table, offering a disdainful arch of his right eyebrow to indicate his indifference to the lad’s suffering.
The boy shouldn’t wager what he couldn’t afford to lose. Sebastian never had. Of course, Sebastian had never been kept short, but he could also exercise self-discipline when required. It was the mark of a gentleman, and this lad, judging by the desperate look in his eyes and the telltale grayness of his linen, was one of society’s hopefuls.
“In good time.”
He watched the boy’s Adam’s apple make the arduous journey up and back down his throat. If Mr Barnacle—from memory that was his name, or something similar—only knew how the desperation of an opponent fed Sebastian’s addiction to winning, he might learn to temper his bodily reactions.
Carefully, Sebastian drew back the cue, lowering his upper body so that he could make the direct line between the billiard ball and where it must go. He felt the exhilaration of success and power surge through him as the tip made contact with its target with a satisfying click.
Then he stood back to observe the perfection of his stellar hit.
Who didn’t enjoy winning? Or watching the vanquished squirm? It was in his competitive nature, and one could not change one’s nature for all that Dorothea had tried.
Poor Dorothea.
He felt regret but little else, and with a sigh, turned to face the boy who owed him a very large sum. In his opponent’s eyes, he saw the devastation masked bravely; but damp lashes rose up as young Barnacle handed over a handful of notes amidst the loud cheering and clapping of those ranged around the room.
Ah, but victory was sweet, was it not?
Sebastian didn’t bother to hide his gloating as he accepted the congratulations of the well-dressed rabble who crowded about him in the seedy confines of his favorite gambling haunt.
What else in life was worth expending effort upon more than winning?
After the last four years of misery, nothing gave him greater satisfaction.
His hands curled over the notes though he didn’t look at them. They were meaningless in the great scheme of things.
Meaningless, like everything else, he realized with a pang.
He’d thought Dorothea’s death had released him to find what he wanted. He’d searched and made inquiries the length and breadth of the British Isles for…
He swallowed down the lump of pain and disappointment. A year had passed since Dorothea had died and finally freed him to be with the girl he loved.
But...where was she?
Since returning from France where he’d followed yet another disappointing lead, gambling and winning were the first vices he’d tumbled into. And he was good at it.
Better at it, certainly, than helping maidens in distress.
Or should that be matrons in distress? Well, that’s what he’d thought he’d been doing.
Self-disgust squeezed his entrails, but he was not about to take relief in kindness to his opponent. Society hadn’t shown him any quarter after Lady Banks had set him up for a prize fool. As for Mrs Compton, he knew what he should do, but…
“I’ll have the remaining hundred paid by the end of the week, Mr Wells.”
Sebastian set down his cue and reached for his drink; the dry notes still crumpled in his hand as he peered more closely at the youthful, unformed features of the lad quaking before him. His vanquished opponent was even younger than Sebastian had pegged him.
“What? You wagered more than you have to give to me now?”
“I can get it by...by Friday.”
“Friday?” Sebastian stared at the notes young Barnacle had handed over, and another surge of disgust and disillusionment welled up his gullet like bile. The lad’s linen was not the snowy white that indicated privilege. Lord knew what a loss like this would mean to him when, to Sebastian, it would mean...nothing.
Yes, nothing.
Dorothea had decried gambling as if it were devil’s play and Sebastian, fettered by honor, had curbed his natural impulses during his years with her to be what he’d promised to be: honorable and faithful.
Not for Dorothea’s sake, either, he reminded himself grimly.
Yet look where that had got him?
Idling his life away in the pursuit of pleasure because that’s what he thought he’d missed most during his cloistered years of dreary devotion.
His palms began to itch while his bleary vision took in the trembling mouth of the boy who was too young to be here yet old enough to know better.
He should be taught a lesson. It was only right that Sebastian claim his winnings and let the lad suffer his fate.
With a sigh, he raised his arm to better consider what he held in the palm of his hand—a tidy sum for himself, perhaps; but the boy’s future, also—frowning as he pondered what to do.
“I know I should have had the blunt on me now, but...but I can have it by...Thursday if you can’t wait ‘til Friday.”
“Thursday!” Sebastian thrust the notes back to the boy. “If not now, then forget it! You should be in leading strings, not getting your nose bloodied in places like this.”
He barely heard young Barnacle’s incoherent gratitude for Mowbray, an erstwhile friend and lowlife frequenter of dens of iniquity like this, for all that he was set to inherit an earldom, was throwing his arm about Sebastian’s shoulders and saying with too much familiarity, “Barbara told me to tell you her husband is away in the country next week. He’s completely forgiven her now he knows it wasn’t Dendridge in her bed. So, you have carte blanche to see her. And—” he touched the side of his nose – “no obligations. She promises!”
Sebastian blinked to clear his head. Barbara. Mrs Compton. A right mull of matters he’d made there and only himself to blame. “Please send Barbara my regrets.” He knew he was slurring and that he made unattractive company.
Mowbray was taking his role as apparent broker with great seriousness. “My cousin is no danger to you, Wells. Her husband has agreed to take her back and,” Mowbray’s leer was sickening, “let her take her pleasure where it pleases her.”
An image of Barbara’s creamy limbs spread in abandon for both their pleasure was not a comfort right now. Lord, if Sebastian had only known what he was getting himself into when he’d thought he was playing the good Samaritan.
He shook his head. “Send Barbara my best wishes. He turned toward the door for the smell of ale, sweat, and greed was suddenly overwhelming. “I’ve decided to accept an invitation to spend a week in Somerset.”
“Good God! The country—when you could kick up a lark here?”
“Precisely.” It came as a sudden illumination that if Sebastian had not found what he had been looking for, at least he knew what he wasn’t looking for. The noise, the commotion, the excitement, the ambition. These things weren’t for him, though Dorothea might have been wrong about so much else regarding her husband’s character.