Romancing the Countess

Leah closed her eyes. He might as well have been touching her, for the way his nearness affected her. If she had thought his words dangerous, the scent of him, the heat from his body was even more so.

It curled inside her, creating a longing she’d rather ignore. It wasn’t desire or a physical craving. It wasn’t lust but something more, something that she feared had to do only with Sebastian. She’d thought she’d experienced it before with Ian, but now, now that Sebastian stood before her, she realized that it had only been a glimpse of a shadow.

“Leah.” He said her name, and she breathed it in, the sound filling her, expanding her lungs, warming her hands and her feet and everything in between.

Without opening her eyes, she rose to her tiptoes and leaned forward. Her lips found the side of his neck, the warm skin above his cravat, his racing pulse. He stiffened.

She kept her eyes closed—perhaps if she didn’t open them, she wouldn’t have to admit to what she was doing—and lifted her chin, her mouth grazing over his jaw, across his cheek, settling like a whisper on his lips.

He exhaled harshly, his arms leaving the wall beside her to crush her against him. It was like the force of a tide, surrounding her and pulling her under, a sweet, heady rush.

Yes, this is what she wanted. To open her mouth, to touch her tongue to his. Here there was no fear, no weakness. It was only Sebastian and the comfort of his touch, the realization of his desire for her that left her legs shaking and filled her head with a wild, dizzying rush. With a soft, pleased sound, she slid her arms up over his chest, her hands gripping his shoulders. Before she could link her hands around his neck, he broke free, lurching back. His chest heaved as he held their hands between them, his gaze tormented, wild, bewildered.

She tugged her hands from his grip and rubbed her arms. “I . . .” She wanted him. She knew that without a doubt. Sebastian. She wanted him to continue talking in that voice, the one that made her come undone, that made her feel as if she were something to be worshiped, a siren who made him lost control. She wanted to hear him laugh, to share his smiles, to soften her heart while he played with Henry. She wanted to stare into his eyes and realize, without trying to deceive herself that it was something else, that he told the truth when he said he desired her.

She wanted Sebastian. But did she want this? Could she handle giving him everything; could she risk not knowing whether she would ever gain it back?

He took another step back, his gaze shuttered, then pivoted and strode to the window. “Then go,” he said. “Go right now, before I make the mistake again of testing my own strength.”

She faltered, unable to move. Lifting her arm, she opened her mouth and reached toward him, but he had turned around. Ignoring her. Whirling, she did as he asked. She fled.

From that day forward, Sebastian determined to treat Leah as simply another member of his household. She would be a wife, but only as she’d wanted: one that shared his name but not his bed, someone to be a mother to Henry but who was free to come and go about the grounds as she pleased.

If they were ever in the same room alone, Sebastian found a reason to summon a servant or leave to see to some sort of business. Often the business entailed hours of staring down at ledgers his steward submitted to him while thinking about Leah, or pretending to read a book in his bedchamber while thinking about Leah, or half listening to James during one of his regular visits while thinking about Leah.

Perhaps if it was only desire that kept him tied to her, it would have been easier to dismiss this obsession. But it was more than the lush curve of her upper lip and the slender sway of her hips. It was the humor in her eyes as she discussed politics with him and James over dinner, the intelligent arguments she made when she was certain she was right, and then after she won a discussion, the easy manner in which she turned the conversation back to Sebastian as if she wanted to know what he would say next.

Angela, too, had been intelligent and kind. But if he tried to compare her to Leah, he could see now that Angela had always let him win their discussions; her kindness had actually been a means of placating him, her laughter meant more for his satisfaction that her own enjoyment.

Like Angela, Leah also had an air about her that she was trying to contain herself, to be as others expected. But where Angela had maintained that mask perfectly, Leah’s continually slipped. More and more, her polite smiles were turning into grins, her sedate strolls into strides.

One day when frost layered the grass, he caught her dancing in the fields with Henry although she had said they were to go pick the late-blooming flowers.

Leah held Henry to her chest, one arm about his waist while her other hand clasped his, keeping a flower tucked inside his fist. As Sebastian strolled nearer, he could hear her humming a waltz as she danced across the field which served as their imaginary dance floor.

“I’m not sure. I believe it’s a chrysanthemum, although we’d do better to ask the gardener. I know plenty about roses, but not much else.”

Then she swung him in a tight circle—once, twice, three times as Henry let his head fall back and giggled at the autumn sky.

That made her laugh, and the sight of them together, hearing his son’s laughter tangled with hers—if Sebastian wasn’t certain he loved her before, there was no way he could deny it now.

Sebastian stopped a few feet away, hiding in the shadow of a large oak. Leah stopped spinning, and they weaved back and forth for a moment as she seemed to catch her balance.

“Yes, a few more flowers.” Leah put him down, and took the flower he gave her from his hand before he bent to pick more. She crouched beside him, her hand brushing across his hair before settling at his back. Their voices were too low now; only murmurs came to Sebastian’s ears as they studied the flowers and the grass.

Pushing away from the tree, Sebastian clasped his hands behind his back and walked forward. “Do you mind if I join you?” he asked, deliberately focusing his gaze on Henry.

“Ah. A spider is it? I thought we were looking at flowers.” Sebastian glanced at Leah with a rueful twist of his mouth, telling himself not to notice how her face seemed to brighten at his presence, too.

She shook her head and stood to her feet, a hint of a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “Apparently spiders are much more interesting than flowers, my lord. Eight legs? And they crawl? What little boy wouldn’t be fascinated?”

Leah withheld her sigh and forced herself to smile wider. Sebastian wasn’t rude or unfriendly. He was simply . . . aloof. Distant. She could tell he struggled with it—probably didn’t want her to feel lonely, no doubt—but for all the times that he invited her opinion on something or flirted with her, there were an equal number of times that he allowed his gaze to drift away from hers when they were talking until they both fell silent, or found a reason to excuse himself from her presence when only a few minutes had passed in the same room together.

Therefore, as they were accustomed lately, instead of looking at each other they turned their gazes and looked at Henry.

Henry, who kept trying to get the spider to walk onto a blade of grass. Finally, ingeniously—he was Sebastian’s son, after all—he plucked another blade of grass and scooped the spider up with the two together. “Look, Papa,” he urged.

Sebastian bent down and put his hand on his chin, studying the small insect which scrabbled back and forth, from one edge to another. Then he gasped. “Look at its eyes!” he exclaimed.

Henry leaned forward, nearly dropping the grass in an attempt to bring the blades closer to his face. “He has four eyes!” he said, then looked at his father, his own blue eyes wide with wonder.

Henry nodded even before returning his gaze to the spider, and Leah smiled. How he loved Sebastian, and Sebastian adored him.

Leah had never realized that her dreams of having a child had been unfinished. Now, with Sebastian there, she understood that Ian had always been an addendum to those dreams, not an inherent part of them. But Sebastian—she couldn’t imagine Sebastian not being here, not as part of the picture. She could have been the outsider, but he’d brought her into his family, to have the life she’d dreamed of having. She was now a mother and perhaps—one day, a day she couldn’t foresee, but had hope it would come to pass—she would truly be a wife to Sebastian as well.

Sebastian and Henry studied the spider for a few moments longer. Then Sebastian stood and Henry hurriedly laid the blades of grass and the spider on the ground and lifted up his arms, his hands clenching and unclenching.

With a growl, Sebastian swooped him up and over his shoulders. Sebastian looked at Leah, pretending to ignore Henry’s giggles as he hung upside down over his back. “What say you, my lady? Shall we return to the house?”

Leah bent and picked another flower, then stepped near to Sebastian. Meeting his gaze, she placed the flower in the buttonhole below his cravat. She stepped back, gave him a tentative smile. “Yes, let’s go home.”