Page 94 of The Earl’s Forbidden Temptation

Templeton watched him, his amusement fading. “You look as though you have taken a beating, yet I see no opponent.”

Sebastian glanced at his hand. Three knuckles were split, and a thin line of blood had begun to creep over one finger. He flexed his hand against the protest of battered flesh, but pain could not hold his thoughts where he commanded them. They returned, as they always did, to Darcy. His heart wrenched with emotions and sensations he had never known, and yet she summoned them effortlessly. He saw again the rigid line of her body as she attempted to pass him at Aphrodite, the wounded depths of her eyes, and the composure that had fractured when he touched her.

Her anguish had torn through him long after she left. His fingers moved unconsciously to his wrist, where the faint impression of her teeth remained. The bruise had begun to fade, and he despised it for doing so.

“By God,” Templeton said quietly, “what occupies your thoughts? I have never seen you look so ravaged.”

Sebastian tipped his head back and pinched the bridge of his nose, as though he might stem the tide of longing by force. “I am thinking of Red.”

He wanted to find her, draw her into his arms, and swear that he would never again be the cause of her pain. The need pursued him through every hour of the day and followed him into sleep. Yet whenever he came near to yielding, he saw his mother’s stricken face. Her grief, humiliation, and years of silent devastation rose between him and Darcy like a wall he could not, in honor, pretend did not exist.

To court Darcy openly, as she deserved, would wound his mother anew. To preserve the distance he had imposed between them meant wounding Darcy and himself each day, grinding love and longing into ash and calling the destruction duty. The conflict left him suspended between the woman he desired and the mother he was bound to protect.

Duty had not restored his peace. It had left only a cold vacancy in his chest, one that neither society, pleasure, nor physical exhaustion could dispel. Sebastian had always been a man of resolution, one who acted without hesitation and did not look back upon his choices.

Darcy had made looking back inevitable.

Every kiss, every confidence, every shared moment of laughter, and every night she had trusted him with her body had formed a language between them. He had accepted all the intimacy of a courtship without ever granting it that honorable name. Darcy had not merely been his lover. She had become his companion, his equal, his friend, and the woman whose absence made every place he entered feel empty.

“Raine,” Templeton said more carefully, “what has happened?”

“I believe I have fallen in love with her.” The truth left Sebastian without drama, yet with a certainty he could no longer evade.

Templeton made a strangled sound. “It appears a most painful condition. Does she love you in return?”

A humorless laugh escaped Sebastian. “Perhaps. We spoke of desire with alarming frankness and not at all of affection.”

The word was absurdly inadequate beside the depth of what had passed between them.

“Do you hesitate to make an offer because Red’s birth is beneath yours?”

“There is nothing about her that is beneath me,” Sebastian said. “Red is Miss Darcy Whitley.”

“Bloody hell.” Templeton exhaled heavily and dragged his fingers through his hair. “Do not tell me your mother knows what your father did.”

“She does.”

“This is a damned tangle. What do you intend to do?”

“There is nothing to be done. Miss Whitley is no longer a part of my life. In time, this sense of loss will pass.”

Templeton’s expression made plain what he thought of that assertion.

Sebastian turned away. He had forced the words into the shape of certainty, but they gave him no relief. The ache within his chest sharpened, as if some treacherous part of him were determined to remind him, with every breath, precisely what he had cast aside.

Darcy sat near the window of her modest townhouse, late-afternoon light falling softly across the letter in her hands. She had read it so often that she no longer required the page, yet she continued to trace Agatha’s elegant script as though another reading might reveal some hidden promise within it.

My dearest Darcy,

I am giving a midnight ball on Friday next and most sincerely hope you will attend. It would give me great pleasure to see you, and I dare to think that an evening of dancing, laughter, and agreeable company may provide a welcome diversion from thoughts that have been permitted far too much authority.

Elizabeth will, of course, be present, as will several of our most cherished friends, including Lily, the Marchioness of Ambrose, and Penelope, the Countess of Bainbridge. I believe you will find them as warm in spirit as they are lively in conversation. We have already conspired upon what we consider a most promising plan to banish your present melancholy. You must therefore come, if only to discover what mischief we have devised on your behalf.

Pray do not disappoint me.

Yours most sincerely,

Agatha, Lady Radbourne