Page 29 of How to Start a Scandal

Chapter Nine

As expected, the patronesses granted Seth a voucher into Almack’s. He sat across from his mother and sister on the carriage ride, as dandified as he would allow Bennet to make him. The valet would have worked meticulously for hours if Seth had let him. Which Seth did not.

Caroline’s fingers restlessly smoothed over her dress. Then fidgeted with her reticule. Then patted over her hair to ensure it was perfect. That done, she crossed her ankles, first one way, then the other.

‘Heavens, Caroline,’ their mother exclaimed. ‘What vexes you, child?’

Seth’s sister cast him a helpless expression.

He gave Lady Dalton his best bored look. ‘Maybe it’s another tedious assembly at Almack’s.’

He’d said it in an attempt to pull their mother’s attention from Caroline and, judging from the Countess’s pinched lips, it had worked.

‘Attending Almack’s is what earls do,’ she said firmly.

‘I’m well aware of that, Mother.’ He gave her a tight smile.

Caroline tilted her head in a silent plea, clearly not wanting them to fight. Seth swallowed down his next retort, for whatever good it might do him. Especially when his mother’s mood was ostensibly peevish.

At that moment, the carriage drew to a hard stop. Lady Dalton spilled out of her seat with a shriek and crashed into the unoccupied space beside Seth.

Seth grasped her arm and helped haul her upright once more. ‘Mother, are you injured?’

She popped up with a sniff and immediately brushed her hands over her coiffure. ‘I am unhurt, despite your new coachman’s efforts.’ She jerked herself from Seth’s grasp. ‘You must hire another one. This armless friend of yours won’t do.’

‘He has one arm,’ Seth retorted. ‘He is learning to work around the injury and will be competent in time.’

‘Competent in time?’ Lady Dalton repeated, her tone snide. ‘“In time” isn’t good enough.’

Seth frowned. ‘He lost his arm for you, Mother.’

The Countess rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t be so theatrical, Dalton.’

Seth’s heart thundered in his chest. ‘It was for you and every other citizen of England. He made sure you could keep your fine home on Grosvenor Street, and your gowns with all their frippery and all the freedoms you take for granted every day of your life.’

Seth should stop. He knew he should, but the rage inside him went white hot and took control. ‘While you were sipping tea and shopping on Bond Street, men were fighting. Dying.’

Caroline put a hand to his sleeve. ‘Seth, please.’

He ignored her. ‘Do you know that I almost died, too? There was a cannon aimed right at me, primed to snuff out an English officer. One of my men shoved me from its path and took the full impact of the cannon shot. Do you know what the blast of a cannonball does to a human body?’

‘Don’t be vulgar,’ Lady Dalton snapped.

‘It’s not vulgar, it’s reality.’ Seth narrowed his eyes. ‘Men explode when they’re hit like that. In pieces, fragmented into nothing. It happened right in front of my eyes, even as I realised it should have been me.’ The memory was too vivid in his mind. The horror too great.

Suddenly, he was on the wet ground of Mont-Saint-Jean with the cannonball moving in slow motion towards Brent, connecting with his body in a violent collision of gunpowder and gore.

‘I could taste his blood in my mouth,’ Seth whispered, more to himself.

‘Seth.’ Caroline’s sharp cry snapped him from his trance.

He jerked his attention to the present.

Caroline gaped at him with large eyes, bright with tears. ‘Please. Stop.’ She blinked and one ran down her cheek.

He turned to his mother whose face was entirely leached of colour.

Too far. He’d gone too far. Damn it.