Hurrying down the path toward the river’s edge, Beatrice clenched her fists, trying by force of will to stop trembling. She did not know if she shook with anger, fear or hurt; it was all the same to her. Emotion caught her up and carried her away, a flood smashing through the barriers she had built to protect her heart. Her hard-won control was gone.
“Oh God, what shall I do?” she whispered.
She had tried to make peace between them, but Sebastian had wanted none of it, throwing her effort to ease his fury back in her face. If he would not make peace with her, she could see no help for them. They would live and die at odds.
When Thomas had died, she had felt as if the walls of her prison had fallen down, releasing her from darkness into the light of day. She had not cared how she would live the rest of her life, only glad she would never again wait with one ear cocked for the sound of his curses, one eye open for his oncoming fist. Then, just as she was ready to begin considering the rest of her life, John had come home and this new disaster had overtaken her.
“Beatrice!” Sebastian shouted.
She knew she ought to turn—no doubt he would be angry if she did not—but she could not make herself stop and face him. Not while she fought to calm her turbulent soul.
“Beatrice!”
A few of the men working in the beds along the riverbank straightened and stared. Behind her, she heard swift footsteps on the path. A hand grabbed her arm and swung her around.
“Beatrice, did—”
She flinched, head jerking back, muscles tensing as she braced herself, arm flying up to protect her face. It happened so quickly, she did not have time to stop herself.
Sebastian’s fingers on her arm loosened but did not let go. “Beatrice!”
She lowered her arm, her cheeks hot. Why had she reacted so? She knew Thomas was dead, his senseless blows in the grave with him. She had nothing to fear while in her father’s house, so why had she revealed so much to Sebastian?
“Did you think I would strike you?”
Her heart slammed against her ribs, her breath shallow. She could not speak of this, not to Sebastian. I will master myself.
“No, I did not,” she gasped, unable to catch her breath. All the air in England, sweet and foul alike, would not be enough to fill her.
“I do not believe you,” he said, drawing his brows together.
Her head spun.
“You flinched. I saw it,” he said gently.
Darkness swirled before her eyes. In the dimness she saw Sebastian’s lips move and heard his voice, but she understood nothing. I am going to swoon, she thought, and grabbed Sebastian’s sleeve to slow her fall.
Serpent-quick, his free arm shot around her waist, dragging her against him to support her weight. “Breathe slowly,” he said.
She rested against his strength, aware of his forearm pressing against the small of her back, his legs and hips pushing her skirt and underskirt against her. The feel of him ought to dismay her. Instead her breath calmed, the whirling blackness in her head cleared; her heart quieted. And all her tumult settled into something warm and dark.
For a moment she rested against him.
“Beatrice.” Sebastian’s voice was low, soft against her ears like the touch of velvet.
She looked up and met his eyes. The garden around her, the murmuring river at its edge, the chatter of the workmen, her father’s booming laugh all faded, obscured by the darkened blue of Sebastian’s eyes. His arm shifted, pulling her more tightly against him. Surely he could feel her tremble. Curiously she did not mind.
“Why did you flinch?”
“I—” Her voice deserted her and she could not catch her breath. How could she have forgotten how long and curly his eyelashes were or how gold their ends? “I did—” She could not tell him she had not heard him. Through her stiff skirts the strength in his long legs was unmistakable. This moment had to end; she wanted it to last forever. Longing stirred, strangely welcome. “I did not see you clearly.”
He looked at her for a long moment as if waiting for her to say more, to offer further explanation. She thought, I shall tell him everything, everything about Thomas, but her lips would not part, the words clogged somewhere in her throat. Sebastian despised her; how could she leave her soul naked to his scorn?
“I see,” he said, and released her. When he stepped away, it was like being thrust out of a warm, well-lit room into the dark, cold night. She clasped her hands at her waist. Worse, it was like stepping into the night because she feared what would befall her in the room. If she had not lied, he would still hold her. What a fool she was.
“I misspoke when I told you I despise you,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.
She looked away. “Why should you not despise me, Sebastian? I did not lie to you when I said I despise myself.” If she could not tell him about Thomas, she could confess this much.
Silence answered her. She looked up to find Sebastian staring down at her through narrowed eyes. She waited for him to speak or to look away. He did neither, watching her as if trying to value what he saw.
Goaded by his silence and the pressure of his stare, she cried, “Do you not believe me?”
He looked at her for a moment longer and shook his head. “No. I believe you. But I do not know why.”
“How should I not scorn myself?” she cried. “I have done things that shame me.”
“You said yourself you have done penance for your sins,” he said irritably, unfolding his arms and planting fists on hips. He was tall and strong, his shoulders broad against the sunny summer sky.
Longing stirred again, making her aware of her body, her skin suddenly alive to the brush of sleeves and skirts, the constraint of her pair-of-bodies, the breeze lifting the lappets of her hood to tickle the back of her neck. And her distress, the moil of emotion churning in her heart, only heightened her awareness, made its tooth sharper. If he had not held her, would she feel this now? It did not matter.
“I am still ashamed,” she said. The more shamed now because she had not let George Conyers handle and caress and kiss her out of desire for him. No, wearying of Thomas’s accusations of infidelity, she had finally given in to the impulse to be as black as her husband painted her, to taste the pleasure of sin since she got no pleasure from goodness. In the end, she had not found pleasure anywhere.
“I cannot help you,” Sebastian said.
“I do not ask it of you.”
“My lady Manners!” An usher trotted along the path toward her, a square of white in his hand. Joining them, he bowed and offered her the square. “This arrived for you.”
Beatrice took it and turned it over, revealing the crest pressed into the wax sealing it closed. The Manners arms. The last time she had seen the ring that made this mark, it had been on Thomas’s hand. She shivered. Oh, for the day when she would be shut of the whole house of Manners.
“What is it?” Sebastian asked.
“A letter from my stepson by the look of it,” she said, and broke the seal.
Unlike her sister, she did not read easily, so it took her a few minutes to understand what the letter said. Even after reading it a second time, she could not believe the contents. The strutting lickspittle thought to deny her right to her own things. Anger, banked but not dead, flared up. Surely he would not dare.
She held the letter out to Sebastian. “Please, if you will, read this and tell me what it says.” Her voice was milder than she had thought it would be. So all the hard lessons Thomas had taught her were not lost; she could sound placid as a milch cow while resentment and annoyance curdled beneath her breastbone.
He took the letter and quickly scanned it. “It says the jewels you demand belong to the Manners family. You have no valid claim on them.”
I will flay him for this.
She took a deep calming breath. “That is what I feared it said.”
I will crush his bones to powder.
She was a mere woman, unable to harm anyone, schooled to meekness and submission, but at the moment, as fury swelled her heart, she thought she might have the strength to tear a man in two.
“What jewels does he mean?”
“Baubles my lord gave me. Nothing from the Manners hoard. He was very clear when he gave them to me that they were mine.”
Some of her anger must have revealed itself, for Sebastian stepped back, spreading his hands in a placating gesture. It stung.
“Do they matter so much? Do you value gauds so highly?”
No, she wanted to say. I hate every stone, every ounce of gold. But I wept whole oceans and endured more than I dreamed I ever should for them. I deserve to keep what is mine.
“I will not allow a puffed-up popinjay, a preening bladder stuffed with bombast, to steal what is mine. I will not stand idly by while a thief who dares to sign himself my loving son robs me.” She clamped her mouth shut, afraid of what her flash of anger would provoke in Sebastian, yet unable to regret a single spoken word. Let him beat me, I do not care.
“Do you think I shall give you nothing?” he said, frowning. “Do you think me so poor?”
I think you will not give me anything because I am the last woman you would choose. Summoning the skill to smother her temper, a skill honed before Thomas’s greater provocation, she took a deep breath, ribs straining against the confines of her pair-of-bodies, and let it out silently. Sebastian must never know how she had to gather her patience, just as Thomas had never known.
“My lord, this is a relic of my past. I did not mean to disturb you with it.”
He scowled at her. “Do not turn a soft face to me, Beatrice. Do you think I cannot buy you gauds to make up for the ones you lose?”
Thomas had said and done far crueler things, yet he had never made her as angry as she was now. “Do you wish me to speak plainly?”
He folded his arms across his chest again and she thought of a fortress drawing up its bridge, lowering the portcullis, defending itself. “I do.”
She folded her hands at her waist and straightened her back. If he struck her, he would not knock her down. “I have no doubt you have wealth enough and more to replace the poor things I claim. But all your wealth will not undo theft.”
“Is it disdain for theft that makes you so wroth?” he asked. “Or is it greed?”
She spread her hands, holding them with their backs uppermost so he could see that the only ring she wore was her wedding band. “Are these the hands of a greedy woman?” She pressed her hands to her bare neck. “Are there chains about my neck set with pearls and rubies? Is this the guise of greed? Is my hood bedecked? Oh, yes, I am a greedy woman. Do you not fear for your strongboxes when I come into your home?”
“Your tone ill becomes an obedient wife.”
“You are right, Sebastian. But you have not yet claimed me.”
He stepped closer, so close he leaned right over her as if to overawe her. If that was indeed his intent, it nearly succeeded. Something, stubborn pride, a determination not to cower again, kept her spine straight and her head lifted. She met his eyes, refusing meekness while inside something quivered as if in fear. But it did not feel like fear.
“Shall I claim you?” he asked. “Will that still your tongue?”
“You bade me speak plainly. If you do not desire plain speech, do not give me leave to speak it.”
“Shall I claim you, Beatrice? Answer me truly.”
The fountain of courage and pert words inside her ran dry. She stared up into his eyes, dark between his glinting golden lashes, exhilarated and terrified. But not terrified of him. Terrified of something she saw burning in the depths of his eyes. Yes, she thought. No. I do not know.
“You promised to claim me at Michaelmas. Is that not soon enough?” Her voice, low and with a rough whisper in its depths, did not sound of her own, nor did it seem to come from her throat. She sounded as if she spoke from the depths of her flesh.
Sebastian licked his lips. “No,” he whispered, “it is not.” He swallowed and stepped back, his mouth drawn in a tight, thin line. “Do not start this with me, Beatrice. You will not make a fool of me.” He stepped back again. “I must go. I do not think I shall see you again before you return to Wednesfield. Ask your father for the terms of your dowry if you wish to know them.”
“Where do you go?” she asked. It was a question she should not have asked—it was not her place—yet she could not let him go yet.
He frowned. “Do you dare question me?”
If I say yes, he will be very angry and rightfully so. If I say no, I will lie. She stared at him. That was a fool’s question, my dread lord.
When she did not answer, he sighed, the frown fading, his tension dissipating. He looked as weary as she felt, yet in his eyes, she saw the same sparkle she felt to the ends of her fingers and toes. How is this? How shall I feel this now, with him? And how long shall he feel it too?
“You are addled and now I am addled, too,” he said and for the first time in years there was nothing but rueful amusement in the tone he used with her. “I go to visit my uncle Isham in Kent. I will not be able to go there and come back in time to join you on the journey home.”
Without his anger and scorn to anchor her, she was adrift. How could she answer him when she no longer knew how he would respond? “God be with you, my lord.”
His gaze traveled over her face and down her body, as tangible as if it had been his hand. Her mouth went dry.
“Until we meet again, my lady.”