one who’ll love her and not feel the need to call her Lady Nuisance. That’s my advice.”
“Who needs love when you have a dukedom?”
Julian continued sketching without looking up. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
Sebastian rose and crossed to the window, summer sunlight washing over him. Solitude a vast plane upon which he stood, the roar of silence tremendous, and to his mind, never-ending. The sound of hooves striking the ground floated into the room, and he knew who he’d find when he gazed into the distance. Delaney galloped along the woodlands bordering his property, her hair an inky trail behind her, petite body curved into the saddle as if she’d been born to it. His groom appeared to be struggling to keep up, and her brother was nowhere in sight.
Of course, she was riding astride. In the country, away from the prying eyes of society, he’d have expected nothing less.
Julian stepped beside him, and they watched Delaney vault a hedge that would have destroyed an average rider. “She’s a whip, I’ll give her that. Neck-or-nothing with this one.”
Sebastian tapped his knuckle to the glass pane when his heart had settled into place but didn’t comment. She was interesting and interested. In everything around her. Old doors and rusty hinges, medieval fireplaces—and him.
She was curious. Probably as curious as he was about her.
And the heat they generated when they were together was very hard to ignore.
He exhaled hoarsely, his shoulders sliding low.
“I’m correct, aren’t I?” Julian smiled. Sebastian didn’t have to see the mocking lip curl to know it was there. “It’s never the ones you want to like, by the way. Two types of women, easily separated, before you fall. Once you do, you want everything, and I do mean everything, from the one. Ah, Fireball, haven’t you figured that out yet?”
As he stood there deliberating, Delaney cleared a fence with the poise of someone who’d been riding since they could walk. He’d rarely seen a woman astride unless she was atop him. Helpless to halt his reaction with that image spinning through his mind, his cock did an uneasy dance beneath buckskin. “Maybe you should take Miss Temple back to Harbingdon. Fifteen minutes by carriage. We can meet in your study tomorrow morning to determine—”
“Oh, no. I have to deal with Lady Nuisance. I’m not adding that hellion to my roster.” Julian nodded to the woman galloping into the distance. “Anyway, she’s well-chaperoned. Her brother and a host of servants, the guards you have posted. Finn and Victoria. Minnie. If you’re worried, just don’t find yourself alone with her. That’s what did me in with Piper.”
“Do I look worried?” he asked in an imperious tone that fooled no one, least of all the astute viscount, his oft partner in crime.
Julian waited too long to answer. “You’re going to be fine.”
When they both knew he wasn’t.
Chapter 8
The house was silent. Servants retired for the night. Guests tucked in their chambers. It was Sebastian’s favorite time, so peaceful his fingertips rarely felt the need to sizzle.
Dinner had been an uneventful affair. Half-of-the-Terrible-Two-missing uneventful. Case had apologized for his sister—ankle sprain from her ride, dining in her bedchamber—then proceeded to philander his way through the meal, a tittering, slightly foxed Kitty Hazelton attached like a barnacle to the pearly, adolescent underside of his conch.
He’d observed the couple flirting without a glimmer of emotion, thinking how young and possibly perfect they were for each other, except for the staggering discrepancy in social standing. And the fact that the lady randomly disappeared. While the lad was what they all wanted to be.
Normal.
As for Sebastian, he was, though he was loath to admit it, on the hunt. Restless, in the only of his six properties that comforted him, the only where he felt himself. Crossing through slivers of moonlight laid out in a patchwork design across the gallery’s floor, the shift and creak of a castle he was a little in love with—Delaney was correct—settling for the night around him. The walls were lined with portraits that had come with the house, no one he knew or cared for. A forlorn bunch he appreciated for the lack of knowledge, their histories his to assemble as he pleased. Appreciated as much as the studded oak door he’d pointed out to Julian and Piper upon their departure—much like Delaney had enthusiastically pointed it out to him. They’d packed a giggling Kitty into their carriage as he’d described it, right down to that rusty hinge,