‘Oh, it must have been horrid, all that dreadful snow!’ the duchess cried, with a quick agreement from Lady Alnworth. ‘Surely there are far more amusing things going on right here in London.’
‘Perhaps we could speak more about your travels later, Miss Manning?’ Lord Sebastian whispered in her ear before she could move away.
He wanted to talk more to her? Mary could only nod, frozen with something terribly like excitement and—and pleasure. It was most frightening. He led her back to the group, and soon they were all deep in a conversation about the newest play at Covent Garden. But Mary was always much too aware of Lord Sebastian sitting across from her, of his warm laughter and emerald-green eyes. The way the duchess kept sliding her hand over his arm.
Mary knew she was going to have to be very careful indeed. One careless step and her cautious, contented life could come tumbling down—right into those strong arms.
‘That Lady Louisa Smythe is a rare beauty,’ Lord Paul Gilesworth said with a laugh. He gestured to the footman for a bottle of port as they settled into armchairs by the fireplace of their club in St James’s, after leaving Lady Alnworth’s tea. ‘Also a rare flirt, it seems. What do you all think?’
Nicholas Warren laughed. ‘I think her father guards her like a chest of gold. You’d have far better luck with Lady Alnworth herself, Gilesworth.’
‘Do you think so?’ Gilesworth said, his expression turning speculative. ‘Depends on what you want the fillies for, I suppose. Brood mare or racehorse? And what of the Duchess of Thwaite? She would be a bit of a challenge.’
Sebastian watched as the servants poured out the blood-red wine into fine cut-crystal goblets, half-listening as his friends debated the merits of various ladies in London. He felt as he had ever since he returned to England—distant from everything that went on around him, as if it was happening in a dream.
The concerns of London society, the concerns that had once been his as well, seemed as insubstantial and inconsequential as the bubbles in a glass of champagne. The beauties of various débutantes, who had lost what in which card games, who took which famous actress as his mistress—it all meant nothing at all after what he had seen. What he had done in battle.
He took a long drink of the fine, satin-smooth wine, and studied the faces of his old friends, as detached as if he looked at paintings in a gallery. Nicholas Warren was all right; a kind-hearted, harmless sort of chap, headed for the diplomatic service like Sebastian’s brother Henry. But Gilesworth and Lord James, who had seemed like such fun companions when they were at school, now had concerns that seemed no deeper than the cut of their coats and the legs of the dancing girls at Covent Garden. It was rather wearying.
Sebastian couldn’t help but remember the men he had seen fall in battle. Good, brave men, who lived to the fullest, yet died fearlessly for their country. He had drunk with them, too, sat up late into the night joking and laughing, gone searching for beautiful women to seek comfort in their arms for a few moments. Faced the deepest instants of life and death with them.
Yet somehow, it had felt so very different with his fellow officers. Life had taken on a rare, shining edge there on the eve of battle. A height of feeling he had never known.
And now those friends were gone, and Sebastian felt as if he had plunged into a dark tunnel where there was no point of light to guide him. Much to his shock, he was hailed as a hero here in London. Welcomed warmly into every drawing room, begged for his ‘stories’. Even his father, who had long bemoaned how ‘useless’ his youngest son was, such a wastrel, seemed proud.
It made Sebastian feel the greatest fraud and he was puzzled that no one else seemed to see it. He was alive and all those good men were dead in the gore of the battlefield.
Surely there was nothing right about that?
But no one here seemed to understand anything. They went on blithely with their lives as if nothing else mattered. As if the world outside their little island wasn’t exploding into pieces.
Sebastian no longer felt he belonged in London. No longer belonged in his own skin. Lord Sebastian Barrett—who was that? With his fellow officers, he had felt he found himself, his true self, at last. For so long, his whole life really, he had felt the tug between what he felt inside and what his family thought. Once he was in the Army, he could just—be. Here, there was only a cold numbness, that terrible distance. He found he would do anything, try anything, to be warm again.
The only time he had felt anything since he came home was when Miss Mary Manning had smiled up at him today in Lady Alnworth’s drawing room. Miss Manning wasn’t flashing and flirtatious like her friend Lady Louisa, to be sure, but there was such a quiet, dignified beauty to her. A solemn, deep perception in her grey eyes that he hadn’t found in anyone else in London. They all swirled on with their merriment, never stopping to look.
Yet Mary Manning seemed to look. Her very stillness seemed to be a refuge, no matter how brief. He had wanted to sit with her, talk to her more. Maybe even tell her something of what had happened to him.
But he remembered all too well that his father had declared Miss Manning would be a suitable bride for Sebastian’s brother Henry. The perfect, intellectual son, destined to carry on the Barretts’ great tradition in the diplomatic service. Sebastian had thought nothing of it when he heard his father and Henry talking about Mary Manning. After all, he did not know her and his thoughts and nightmares were still all of the battlefield. He didn’t care who his brother married. Surely they would be the perfect, dignified couple, a credit to the Barretts and to England.
It was obvious Henry cared little for Miss Manning beyond who her father was, the famous and well-respected Sir William Manning. That was how all their family’s marriages were conducted.
Yet now Sebastian had met Mary Manning. And she was most unexpected.
He took a deep drink of his wine, draining the glass. The footmen quickly refilled it. So, the brief moment of quiet Sebastian had found in Mary’s pale grey eyes had been all too brief. The desperate search for distraction went on.
He studied the faces of his friends again, sweet Nicholas Warren and Lord James who would always follow him anywhere. But Paul Gilesworth—he always knew where the most trouble was to be found. He revelled in it. He would surely know of something that would make Sebastian forget the great waste of his life for a time.
‘So, no Lady Louisa Smythe,’ Gilesworth was saying with a laugh. It seemed Sebastian had missed more of the listing of various ladies’ attributes. ‘She would surely be easy enough to lead astray, but the trouble with her father afterward wouldn’t be worth it. I for one have no intention of ending in parson’s mousetrap before I’m forty.’
‘But that’s the trouble with every young lady in London,’ Lord James said with a sigh. ‘Their papas are most vigilant.’
Gilesworth gave a sly laugh. ‘Not all of them, surely.’
‘For respectable young ladies, it must be,’ Nicholas said earnestly. ‘That is how it should be. But demi-reps...’
‘Where is the challenge in that? Or even in flirtatious young misses like Lady Louisa,’ Gilesworth said, his lips twisting.
A challenge. Surely that was what Sebastian needed now. He gestured for more wine as he turned that intriguing thought over in his head. Every day in the Army was a challenge. In London, there was only ever that numbness.
‘What do you mean, Gilesworth?’ Sebastian said. The others turned to him with startled looks on their faces, as if they had rather forgotten he was there. ‘What of a challenge could there be in London?’
Gilesworth’s eyes narrowed. He looked as if he had some scheme going in his mind, sharpening