Lord Sebastian's Wife

“You are not coming home.” She did not need to ask, not when she already knew the answer.

Ceci’s lashes lifted, revealing sadness and excitement mingled. “If the queen gives me leave, I shall return to my post as maid of honor.”

“Why?” Why do you go? Why do you leave me when I need you? “For the family’s benefit? We do not need it. For love of the life at Court? You do not love Court, I have seen it in your face.” She was bereft, betrayed, wanting to hold Ceci to her with both hands and angry at the knowledge that nothing could hold her sister back.

Ceci released Beatrice and sat back on her heels. “No,” she said softly. “I do not love Court.” She sighed. “I do not want to leave you at all, but there are things…people…one man I must face before I do anything else.”

“Who? Who must you see? And why?” Who is so important you can abandon me? Beatrice pushed the thought aside. I will not feel sorry for myself. Pity, from whatever source, was worthless.

Ceci swallowed. “I loved a man.” She picked up the comb and ran her fingertip along its teeth, the faint rattle of her fingertip’s passage loud. “I thought he loved me.” She laid the comb in her lap. “I need to know the truth. I need to know how he feels.”

“Who is he?” Rumors returned to her, tales half heard because no one would tell her outright. Disbelief spread silence through her mind. “Not the Duke of—”

“Do not say his name!” Ceci cried, reaching up to put her fingers over Beatrice’s mouth. “I cannot listen to it.”

“There were rumors—” Beatrice said against her sister’s hand.

Ceci nodded. “There is some truth to them.” Her hand dropped away. “If he does not love me, I must know. And the only way is to see him again.”

Her sister’s courage stole the breath from Beatrice’s throat. To confront the man she loved simply to know with certainty that he no longer loved her. The one time circumstance had demanded like courage from Beatrice, she had fled behind the barrier of pride, afraid to risk a little wound, a little pain. Ceci’s risk seemed so much greater.

“And if he does love you?” she asked. She had to know, as if the knowledge might answer some question she had not faced, resolve some dilemma she had not acknowledged. “You cannot marry him.”

“I know I cannot marry him. But if he loves me, I will know all I have done has not been a mistake.” Ceci’s eyes were unfocused, as if she gazed on memory and no longer saw the narrow, candlelit bedchamber.

“What did you do?” What could her good, clever sister have done that the knowledge a man loved her would transmute mistakes?

Ceci’s attention returned and as it did, something in her face closed. “Turn. Let me comb your hair.”

Beatrice turned her back on her sister. Even if the look on Ceci’s face had not warned her, she would never pry into another’s secrets. Too many fingers had poked at hers.

Yellow candlelight and gray shadows bounced off the flaws in the wall before her. The patterns of illumination and obscurity shifted as the candle flame bobbed, jerked by the drafts creeping underneath the door. Almost speaking to the play of light and dark before her, Beatrice said, “It will not be the same at Wednesfield without you.”

Common sense reminded her she had not needed Ceci in years, so it should not matter that her sister would not be at the castle. Yet the forlorn voice she thought she had quelled asked, Who will be my companion now?

“It was not the same when you left,” Ceci replied. She lifted Beatrice’s hair off her neck a moment before the comb resumed its gentle tug. “I shall return when you marry Sebastian.”

Beatrice nodded. What shall I do until then?

Chapter Five

“M ichaelmas?” Sebastian asked, certain he had misheard the earl. Surely Lord Wednesfield could not expect him to wait almost two months to claim Beatrice. “I do not see the need to put the wedding off.”

The earl’s stare reminded Sebastian of the days of his boyhood when the earl had treated him almost as one of his own sons, teaching him how to be a gentleman and landowner even as he taught his sons Jasper and John. That same expression had been the earl’s response to foolish questions; seeing it now, Sebastian frowned. What was wrong with what he had just said? There could be no reason to delay the wedding.

The earl shook his head, the stare turning to a look of disgust. “No, there is no need. It does not matter that when your son is born men will count on their fingers and say the boy is of Thomas Manners’s getting. So long as you claim him, what does it matter that men call him bastard behind his back?”

The earl’s quiet, thoughtful tone annoyed Sebastian, all the more so because he deserved the earl’s scorn. He had made foolish assumptions. Still, two months? “Why so long, my lord? Beatrice has been a widow for over a fortnight.”

“Are you so eager?” the earl asked, his eyebrows lifting.

Something the dark depths of the earl’s eyes made Sebastian wary, wary enough to hold his tongue. “No, my lord, I am surprised. But I see your point. Michaelmas it is.”

The earl smiled. “That was simple enough, lad.” The smile deepened. “I do not think the rest will pass so easily.” He raised his mug of ale to his mouth and drank deeply.

The apprehension tightening Sebastian’s muscles eased. The drink was an old trick of the earl’s, meant to make the man on the other side of the table believe he was gathering his thoughts when, in truth, he had already carefully considered everything he meant to say. Affection and admiration, so much a part of his relationship with the earl he could not remember a time when he had not felt them, surged through Sebastian.

The earl lowered the mug and sighed, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “It is not right of me to criticize the dead, nor should I speak ill of his father to any man.”

What had this to do with Beatrice and him, with their marriage? Sebastian said nothing, waiting for the earl’s apparently idle remarks to become his opening move.

“I have told you this a hundred times—land is the only wealth.”

A hundred times? The earl had said that to him a thousand times. Every time his father had sold another farm, another parcel of acreage, he had heard the earl’s words in his mind. And faced with what his father had left of Benbury, he had recalled the earl’s words with bitter regret. If land was the only wealth, Lord Lionel Benbury had left his son nearly destitute. Thank God and the saints for his shrewd uncle Henry Isham.

“So when your father came to me to offer me the manor at Herron, I tried to persuade him not to sell it. He would not listen to me, Sebastian, so in the end I bought the land from him. I thought that if I had it, someday you might be able to buy it back from me.”

“Perhaps, my lord.”

He had been born at Herron, snug and sweet in the center of its fields; it had been the manor he had loved best, mourned the most when it was sold. Fat when his father had lost it, Herron had surely grown fatter with the earl’s management, putting it far beyond the reach of his purse for some time to come.

“I do not think Herron was the only land your father sold. Forgive me, but your father was a fool.”

He was, my lord. Sebastian could not say it, however true it might be.

“I cannot restore everything he sold, but this I can do. Herron is Beatrice’s dowry.”

“Herron, my lord?” Had he heard aright? His heart pounded heavily against his breastbone.

“There is one condition,” the earl said, “and on that I will not yield. Herron will revert to me or my heirs if Beatrice dies childless.”

“My lord, how is this? Your daughter may well be barren. It is certain she bore her late lord no children.” God help him if she were—he could not afford a childless wife.

The earl scowled at him. “You married her out of hand some years ago, Benbury. Do you dare to complain of her dowry now? I owe you nothing.”

Sebastian spread his hands. “Then give me nothing. At least then all I have shall be mine, not liable to be snatched away because my wife cannot bear a son.”

“I said Beatrice must bear you a child, not a son.” The earl held his scowl for a moment more. “Blessed Jes?, Herron can be yours by midsummer next year if you do your work well.”

He wanted Herron more than he could say, yet he feared to take it. How could he hold it? How could he bear to let it go?

I would rather have half its worth in gold, my lord, or a quarter’s worth, than have that land slip through my fingers once more.

He could not say that to the earl.

“Very well, my lord. Herron Manor is Beatrice’s dowry. I think it a far too generous dowry, but I am not fool enough to quarrel with you. You have my gratitude.”

The earl snorted. “Never tell a man he has given you too much. He might believe you.” He glanced at Sebastian. “Now, as to Beatrice’s dower property, I think a jointure would be proper.”