One Week Later
Sebastian poured a couple of fingers of whiskey, contemplating the blaze in the hearth. It was raining again. He hated the rain. Why couldn’t it have rained a week ago? Stranding Rebecca in London to give him a moment to think. The minute he’d received her note releasing him from his obligation to marry her, he’d rushed over to Rivers house, only to learn from her father that she’d confessed all and had returned to Exford. Rather than Rivers demanding that Sebastian go after Rebecca to talk sense into her, the earl speared him a look of pity and shook his head.
Sebastian couldn’t decide if he was relieved or angry with her. That wasn’t quite true. He was angry. It was a fire in his gut.
He rolled his glass between his palms. Now the fool girl would be known as a jilt. He wasn’t angry, he decided, he was furious. Rebecca Thatcher still had no sense of decorum. Let her live her life rusticating in the country. With her desertion, he was likely saved from a life of chaos.
He pulled the handwritten license from his pocket and studied the archbishop’s elegant script. She preferred to rusticate in the country than marrying him. How the devil was he supposed to get the rock permanently lodged in his chest dislodged? He rubbed a palm over the ache. Chaos wasn’t so bad. Not if you were with someone you loved. Love. Did he love her?
In his mind, he saw Rebecca shoving a huge man in the mud, defending a child and a mangy dog. Her shoulders thrown back, chastising his cousin for believing he’d turned out his young son because of a speech impediment. Her knife flying through the air, pinning a man to the floor to save Sebastian’s sorry neck.
Yes. Yes, he loved her.
Surely she knew how he felt. That he wished to marry her, wanted to create a home with her, longed to have children with her. This was innate knowledge women were born with. A fundamental part of being a woman. Everyone knew that. It was the way of the world—
His hand stilled on his glass. What if it wasn’t? She was different from other women. She and he possessed something special, unique. She had to know that, damn it.
Sebastian leaned forward and slammed back his whiskey. What he needed was to see her.
A commotion sounded in the foyer, but he couldn’t garner any interest. He would know if Rebecca had changed her mind. If she had chosen to storm the keep, nothing could keep her out.
The door to his study flung against the wall and his heart lurched in anticipation.
“Sebastian? Where are you?”
He fell back against the chair. “Ah, Gabriella. It’s you.”
Gabriella’s voice rang out. “Heavens, what are you doing sitting here in the dark?”
“I was”—wallowing in—“enjoying my solitude.”
His sister stalked over, stood in front of him with her hands planted on her hips. “I just heard the news. What did you do to her?”
There was no use pretending he didn’t know who or what she meant. “She’s been gone a week, my dear.” His heart thudded hard enough to bruise his ribs. “I did nothing to her. She did it to herself. She likely realized she was not duchess material.” Saying the words aloud scraped against his throat. It took every ounce of his well-honed control to keep the emotion from his tone.
“Not duchess material.” She snorted. “Don’t tell me you are still holding our childhood antics against her.”
He grasped her reasons with both hands. “The woman is a reckless hoyden with no care for her own person.”
The fire reflected her pity-filled eyes, resembling Rivers’ same when the man informed Sebastian his daughter had departed for Exford.
He hurled his glass at the fire. It crashed against the hearth, sending shards flying. “I suppose you are here to tell me she didn’t attempt to entrap me into marriage at your come-out seven years ago.” He knew the minute the words came out of his mouth, even were it true, he didn’t care. He was an idiot to let her go. And an imbecile in not going after her.
Rather than shocking Gabriella, her peal of laughter reverberated against the walls. “That’s your reason?” she demanded when she gasped for breath.
Sebastian didn’t care if it was true or not. He’d vowed not to force Rebecca into marrying him, and she’d chosen to take him up on it, but he wasn’t about to tell his sister that.
“Oh, Seb.” She grabbed his hand. “Rebecca didn’t throw herself at you all those years ago. Her Aunt Isolde insisted on her having a debut ball and I insisted she share with me. I thought you two would be perfect for one another. Don’t you understand?”
Spots edged his vision. “What are you talking about? I was there,” he choked out in a stilted tone.
“I pushed her. She was mortified. She almost didn’t forgive me.” She squeezed his hand. “Rebecca made me promise never to tell you.”
“And yet you’re telling me now.”
“It slipped out,” she said without an ounce of remorse.
Sebastian rose from his chair and stalked the length of the room unable to sit any longer. “You know where that scar on the inside of Rebecca's arm came from, don't you?”
He turned in time to see guilt and regret slash Gabriella’s features.
“Tell me,” he demanded.
She stared into the fire. Her shoulders slumped forward. “I-I…”
He strolled back to her, watching her face carefully. “It had to do with that time I took you out of school, didn't it? Something to do with the stable boy.” He reached back into his memory. “Where was Rebecca? She wasn't at your side. Up to that point, the two of you had always stood together.”
Her defiance reared its head. “I told you at the time it wasn't Rebecca’s idea, that it was mine.” Gabriella’s eyes glittered with anger and self-recrimination, if he had to put a name to it. “She tried to talk me out of my stupidity. But I was too stubborn, too hardheaded to listen.” Tears spilled over her lashes, but she didn’t seem to realize it. She sucked in a deep breath. “That degenerate pinned me down, determined to have his way with”—her fingers clenched into fists at her side—“a prime article, he called me.”
Sebastian felt sick. He didn’t want to know but he had to. “What happened?” he asked without inflection.
“Oh, I fought, but Rebecca came flying at him with tack she’d filched from a hook in the stable. She took a swing at him. It barely fazed him. He grabbed a-a rake,” she whispered. “He got in a good hit of his own. A couple, I think.”
Sebastian flinched.
“By the time you arrived to take me home, her father had already whisked her away.” Gabriella broke. The tears streamed down her face.
He pulled her in his arms and hugged her to him. “That’s enough, darling.”
“Oh, but it’s not, Seb,” she whispered. “They wanted to amputate her arm, but the earl refused. He said it would break her spirit. He knew she’d rather be dead.” She shuddered and he hugged harder. “I thank God every day for the friend He bestowed me.”
Sebastian’s insides shattered. “A warrior.”
Gabriella stepped out of his hold, her arms wrapped about herself, seeming not to have heard him. “She did everything for me,” she said fiercely.
“And what did you do for her?” He wasn’t blind. His sister and Rebecca’s bond was unbreakable.
Staring back into the fire, she lifted her shoulders. “Nothing so heroic. I told her stories.”
That confused him. “Stories?”
“Of Rose, Claire, Antonia… you.” A small smile tipped her lips “Mostly, told out of frustration, but Rebecca loved them. I suspect it was because she was an only child. No mother, no siblings.”
And Sebastian had denied Rebecca even the joy of visits with her friend. He was a selfish brute. He’d never despised himself more than in that moment.
Gabriella turned from facing the fire, looking at him, her cheeks tear-streaked. “It isn’t just that she needs you, you know. You need her too.”
“I'm an arrogant beast.” He tugged her into his arms again, hugging her. “I suspect she already knows that.”
She barked out a laugh that trembled with emotion. “You’ll get no argument from me on that front.”
A long silence followed. “I love her,” he said softly. He let her go, picked up the bottle of whiskey, and looked about for his glass. Then caught the reflection of the shards littering the hearth and set the bottle back down.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, breaking the silence.
He shoved a hand through his hair. “The only thing I can do. Go after her.” He looked over at this most precious of all his sisters. “What of Huntley? Are you all right? Do you wish to go accompany me?”
Her spine went whip-cord straight. “Certainly not. I know my duty. You were right when you said I was married now. I have no options at this juncture but to work things out with my husband. We are bound together. Besides, he… he needs me as much as you need Rebecca.”
Sebastian leaned in and kissed her forehead. “I’m so very proud of you.”
A wistful smile touched her face. “You’ve never said that before.”
“An egregious oversight on my part.” He stepped back. “I have to get to her.”
“You’d best hurry then. I believe she’s planning an extended excursion to Scotland.”
Rebecca paced the length of the parlor at Exford, her skin crawling with nerves that felt like pricked pins. Gabriela had grown up. Her friend no longer needed her. Whatever Gab’s issues with Huntley would soon be worked out between him. Her friend had never been so happy to see her husband. The reunion had leveled a stab of jealousy that had Rebecca quickly hugging her friend with a hurried goodbye. It left Rebecca feeling at loose ends and with the inability to justify marrying because of her feelings for Sebastian. Her vision of life with a man who—yes, liked her, but—didn’t love her was unbearable. The thought of living in such a situation suffocated her.
The fire in the hearth blazed hot as a desert sun, it stole the very oxygen in the chamber. She couldn’t breathe. She spun around, studying the old building that was her home. In places, it appeared ready to fall around their ears, while in other areas, was as sturdy as the Tower of London and would last forever. She took in the shabby but comfortable furnishings, rubbing her hands over her arms.
She barked out a bitter laugh that felt ridiculously close to tears. She was a stranger in her own home, nothing fit any longer. Had she changed so much?
She held out her arm and considered the harsh red slash that no respectable girl on the marriage mart would dare harbor. On Rebecca, it was just another scar to go with the many others on her twenty-five-year-old form, but one that would never be as deep as the one now etched in her heart where Ryleigh was concerned.
The Duke of Ryleigh needed someone more appropriate than her. He’d made that clear enough. Rebecca was not duchess material. A duchess could not kill a rabbit from thirty yards out, skin then could cook it over an open flame. Not one she’d built herself. A duchess did not sleep out in the open under the stars.
Their fate was sealed. The response to her note, relinquishing him from his honorable proposal, had been a polite Thank you for your consideration of my current station in society. She should be gratified that he'd responded at all. Unfortunately, she was not given to smug self-righteousness. It just left her with the infuriating notion that she’d indeed proved so disposable, so replaceable. It solidified everything she’d believed of his feelings of her. Of everything men felt of women. If a woman expired, it was a matter of the man of the species plucking the next appropriate broodmare in line for duchess-hood. She was nothing to him.
Her own skin felt raw. Why couldn’t she get the feel of his hands on her arms out of her mind? The taste of his kiss off her lips. The scent of his masculinity from assaulting her senses and out of her head, or the sound of his voice whispering against her neck in the depths of a rainy night.
The room grew more stifling and she burned with a need to feel the cold air against her. Anything to freeze away the memories. Each minute that ticked by, her restlessness grew more frantic and asphyxiating.
Serena should be almost finished with packing for their sojourn to Scotland. Rebecca paced to the window and back. Swiped the perspiration from her forehead. They would leave in the morning, she decided. She hadn’t yet informed Serena.
Rebecca hadn’t been able to force herself to suffer her maid’s long-winded discourse for Rebecca’s happily ever after. Even that thought choked breath from her. The Highlands were the perfect anecdote for Rebecca’s ailment. Painting pictures of the brilliantly hued grasses and icy lakes was no longer enough. Rebecca wanted to lose herself in the actual hills.
Such solid plans should have gifted her relief of freedom, not burdened her with the weight of a slab of iron bearing down on her chest.
She’d never be able to stand by and watch Sebastian marry one of the stolid debutantes who would fit his carefully crafted world so easily like a kid glove. Papa would understand her need to flee.
“My lady?”
She glanced over. Serena stood in the arch. “You wished to see me?”
“Yes.” She forced herself to breathe deeply. “We shall leave for Scotland in the morning at first light.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes, tomorrow. Whether the packing is completed or not. There will be no further delays.”
Her mouth gaped. “B-but…” she stammered.
It scraped over Rebecca. “Go! Even if it takes all night.”
She turned and fled.
For once, Rebecca had no compulsion or drive to help. She was too restless, too keyed up. The cut on her arm tingled. The walls were closing in. She flew out the parlor to the entryway, snatched her father's greatcoat she’d worn since her return home on her nightly sojourns off the hook and sweeping it about her shoulders. There was no one in the hall and she quietly let herself out.
While a long trip to Scotland by carriage was not appealing, being relegated to Exford for the rest of her natural life couldn’t be borne. She gasped for breath in the cool, damp night air. Perhaps she’d find some strapping Scot who could make her feel as she had the one night spent beneath Sebastian’s unholy ministrations.
A moan of pure agony came from deep, deep within. The thought of anyone doing what he’d accomplished with his mouth, tongue, fingers, and heat shook her to her core. Even now, thoughts of that night had dew pooling between her legs, leaving her with an urge to press her hand against herself to ease the ache. Maybe she should have run from him. Maybe living with a man you… you… a man who liked you wouldn’t be the torture she envisioned.
A burst of wind stirred the trees, causing her eyes to water. She dashed to a trail at the side of the house in the direction of the cliffs overlooking Bristol Channel. Just as she had every night since her return home, plagued by the same fretful edginess that pillaged her usually sound acumen.
She knew the staff worried over her. But what was she to do? She couldn’t walk the ruins of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene’s again. She felt their harsh judgment too keenly. Nor could she endure another night of wandering the heavily wooded forest. She’d familiarized herself with the many ponds that serviced the land so often of late, she was tempted to drown herself. She strode briskly through the heavy air. She hadn’t taken the time to bother with a torch. She glanced up. Fast-moving clouds moved across a silvery moon. It would be raining by morning, making a trip to Scotland even more unappealing. She kept up the steady pace, wending her way to the cliffs where the cold breeze would blast her full in the face. That was what she craved.
If—no, when—the rains came she’d be able to take cover in one of the shallow caves. Perhaps she would strip off her clothes and let the rain beat away this horrid turbulence roaring through her.
The greatcoat whipped against her in the heightened wind, uncaring of the dagger she kept stuffed in the pocket, banging periodically against her knee. She could defend herself if need be. She was in worse danger from her heart breaking than one of a physical nature.
But chastising herself for relinquishing Sebastian due to pride did her no good. What was done was done. He was probably basking in his narrowed escape. The mile long hike and brisk wind coming off the channel was bracing. Lifted her spirits if only for a moment. Love would never break her, she promised herself, swiping away sudden tears trekking down her face.
Rebecca was a survivor, and no one could ever steal that from her.