Romancing the Countess

I read the Romeo and Juliet sonnet you gave me every day. I fear the paper is now stained with my tears. I will forever be yours as well, “in longest night, or in the shortest day,” “in heaven, in earth, or else in hell.”

She continued looking at the sky as he approached. For some reason, Sebastian found this annoying. Though they were in the middle of the countryside, she was out in the middle of the night, with only a lamp and presumably no weapon aside from the heavy brass telescope sitting nearby. He could have been anyone.

Leah lowered her head, nodded, and pointed to a nearby rosebush. “I might smell like roses again,” she warned him. When he didn’t respond, she returned her gaze to the sky and said, “I found Orion. And Hydra. Cassiopeia. Aries.”

Sebastian was silent, entranced by the pale skin of her throat and the movement of her lips as she looked up, as though she were waiting for a kiss to be dropped from the heavens.

She met his gaze and gave a halfhearted smile. “Did you decide that I was lonely, my lord? Is that why you’re here?”

“Why are you here?” she repeated. He noticed she shifted away, pressing as far as she could into the corner of the bench.

“Are you lonely?” he countered. There was something about witnessing Leah pull her invisible armor about herself that made him not want to push as hard. The frustration of a moment before subsided in her presence. He wanted to draw her out, little by little; he wouldn’t accuse or force her to tell him, for suddenly he desired Leah’s trust just as much as he sought to understand her.

“Not at the moment, but thank you.” Her voice was distant, courteous, the most polite it had ever been when addressed to him.

He ignored the hint and stayed. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said. Turning toward her, he set his back against the arm of the bench and studied her profile. Then he tilted his head back toward the sky. “You said you found Cassiopeia?”

They sat together for a long time, silently searching out the stars. Sebastian waited, listening to the leaves on the rosebushes rustle together beneath a slight wind. He found the constellations Hydra and Orion, and was looking for Aries when she finally spoke.

“The ninth of April last year. That’s when I found them together.” She said it slowly, each syllable precise, almost as if she were reciting the words.

“You never told me what happened,” Sebastian said, returning his gaze to her. He paused. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

Her hand reached out toward the telescope, and she began tracing her fingers over the cabriole legs. Up and down. Up and down. “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t learned the truth until the carriage accident, like you did. I would have liked to be angry, too. I would probably have been able to grieve, then, for his death. But I spent most of my tears a year ago, in those first few weeks of April.”

She sighed, the sound forlorn, a piercing contrast to her stalwart attempt at keeping her voice devoid of any emotion.

“Leah . . .” he began, apologetically. He had no right to cause her this pain, no matter how much everything about her pulled and tugged at him with a visceral desire to reveal her deepest secrets.

She waved him off. “Yes, I was lonely. I wasn’t able to cry in front of anyone—they would have asked questions. And I stayed away from Ian . . . as much as I could.”

She shook her head. “I found them together. They both saw me. There was no use for a confrontation.” Her fingers paused on the telescope. “I didn’t want anyone to know. Not my family—especially my mother, who believed she’d made the perfect match for me. Not any friends or acquaintances I had, who were mostly his friends and acquaintances, in any case. They all envied me, believing I was the most fortunate woman alive to marry the Ian George. And you—”

Taking a deep breath, she reached up and fiddled with the scope. Sebastian watched her hand, slender and small, surprisingly graceful.

“Perhaps I should have told you, but I was ashamed. Back then, it was easy to blame myself. I must have done something wrong, I thought. I was boring, too plain, or”—she cast a sideways glance at him from beneath her lashes, then looked away again, folding her hands in her lap—“as you suggested, I didn’t satisfy him in our . . . marital relations.”

Sebastian cleared his throat, silently willing her to continue. Apart from his remaining guilt for having ever said such a thing, he was beginning to find it difficult to think of Ian and Leah as lovers. In fact, it was easier to picture Ian and Angela together, so much time had he spent torturing himself with his own imagination. But Ian and Leah . . . they were too different. She was dark while he was blond, short while he was tall, quiet while he was outspoken. How could anyone have ever thought they belonged together?

“Although I was surrounded by people—servants, Ian, all of London society—I was completely alone. I had no one to confide in, no one to talk to about how awful it was. Then Ian tried to speak to me about it, and it became even worse. He forced me to have a conversation, when I wanted nothing more than to be left alone, to pretend that I never cared about him.”

“Tell me,” Sebastian urged, thinking perhaps Ian had threatened her, yelled at her, hit her. After all, if he hadn’t known Ian well enough to realize that he would betray him with Angela, then it was possible he was capable of even worse. Sebastian felt a sudden impulse to examine Leah himself and search for bruises, even though they would have all faded by now.

She began to speak again, this time faster, her tone almost blithe. “For an entire year I never spoke a word of their affair to anyone. Until the accident, and then there was you. But, of course, you didn’t want to speak of it. You wanted to hide it from everyone.”

“I do,” she said. “I don’t blame you. After all, I didn’t want anyone to know because of my own shame.”

Her hand was soft and warm against his lips, the scent of soap fainter. Sebastian was tempted to close his eyes and hold his hand against hers, press a kiss to her palm. Instead, he nodded silently, and she pulled her arm away.

“I was about to say that I didn’t want to be alone anymore. Not after the carriage accident. I know you’re still angry, but I’ve spent the past year and more of my life being wretched because of them. You’re right in saying that I could go boating or do anything else I wished by myself, but I don’t want to. And if the only way that I can be happy and not be alone is to pretend to still be in love with Ian and carry out some farce of a celebration in his memory, then so be it.”

She tilted her head up again, toward the stars, her mouth parting as she breathed. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and he could see the quick pulse of her heartbeat at her throat, made visible by the light cast from the lamp at her feet.

Her lashes lowered, avoiding his gaze, and he thought that single motion was to be her answer. He prepared to ask again. But then she lifted her eyes to his, and her lips curved into a small, mocking smile. “Not when I’m with you.”

There was nothing alluring or seductive about her tone; indeed, it sounded more like a reluctant admission, as if she didn’t want him to be the one to ease her loneliness. Yet all the same, Sebastian found himself leaning nearer, unable to keep his distance, his hand reaching out to stroke her unbound hair.

God, it was soft. Like water running through his fingers, unbelievably fine and silken. He drew it away from her face, then watched it tumble like a waterfall against her cheek and throat.

She made a sound, something hushed and tentative, as if she pleaded with him. To stop, or to continue? Sebastian looked in her eyes and found her gaze wary, worried. But then her eyelashes fell, her lids closing. It was all the permission he needed.

He held his hand against the side of her face, feeling the delicate edge of her jaw beneath his palm. For a long moment he remained still, absorbing the heat of her cheek in contrast to the coolness of her throat, reveling in the lush texture of her skin.

Then his thumb stole across to the corner of her mouth, and as soon as he brushed against the bold, lavish swell of her upper lip, he could feel his blood begin to quicken with desire. Unable to stop himself, he toyed with her mouth. Rubbing the pad of his thumb over it until her lips parted, drawing the lower lip down, touching his thumb against the hot, velvet pink tip of her tongue.

And when she flicked her tongue against the edge of his thumb—not one, but two small, hesitant licks—with her eyes still closed and her hands clasped tightly on her lap, Sebastian could do nothing but draw his thumb away and wait for her eyes to open, wait for her to acknowledge him and admit she wanted more.

After a moment, her lashes lifted finally. Sebastian held her gaze as he bent forward, his hand gently tilting her chin up, and kissed her.

Leah stiffened as soon as Sebastian’s lips touched hers. A kiss—that was more than a simple caress, more than the experimental tongue play with his hand. She’d known he meant to kiss her when she opened her eyes to find his bright and burning, the green depths betraying his intent. And she’d allowed him to lean over her, thinking—mistakenly—that she wanted this.

His mouth moved across hers, slowly at first; then he began to try to tease her lips apart. Nipping at the corners of her mouth, pulling her lower lip between his teeth, using his tongue as a means of persuasion.

And it was too much. Although she tried, she couldn’t return his kiss. She sat there, her eyes open, waiting for it to be over. Just as she’d done again and again, night after night, with Ian.

But he continued kissing her, and his fingers began stroking the side of her throat, and oh God it felt good, but now she was suffocating in his embrace, unable to escape.

Leah shoved him away and lurched to her feet, knocking the lamp over in her panic. The light extinguished, leaving them alone with only the night and the shadows created by the moon and stars overhead.

Swallowing, she stooped to retrieve the lamp, her fingers fumbling over the ground for the iron handle. It took a moment, quite a few agonizing silent moments as her fingernails scraped over the soil and rock, but soon she grasped it and straightened, hugging it close to her side.

Her feet urged her to turn and flee, but she couldn’t. She stared at him through the darkness, unable to see his expression. “Why did you kiss me?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper. Don’t tell me that you want me; don’t tell me that you desire me. Please don’t lie to me.

“I’m not certain what you mean.” Now his voice was cold and distant. Once again, they were nothing more than passing acquaintances, their only common ground the affair of their spouses.

“You’re angry with Ian and Angela,” she said quietly. “Did you hope to take your vengeance by using me? By betraying them just as they betrayed—”

“Tell me,” she insisted, feeling rather foolish for staying when it was clear he wanted her to go. When she wanted so much to leave. “You asked why I held the house party, why I was lonely. And I told you. Do I not deserve to know why you kissed me?” She hesitated, then repeated, “Was it for revenge, my lord?”

He leaned back and crossed his ankle over his knee—shadows merging, shaping, separating. “Yes,” he said finally, his voice low and careless. “I did it because I was angry. I kissed you for revenge.”

Leah nodded and edged toward the telescope, scooping it beneath her other arm. “Don’t touch me again.”

“Thank you.” Leah moved onto the garden path. “Good night, Lord Wriothesly,” she said, then quickly made her way to the house, the telescope swinging awkwardly against her leg and tangling in her skirt with each step.