Page 6 of Miss Kimble Bites Back

“If I had good reason, I might consider it,” he assured her, sitting down again and crossing one leg over the other as he faced the fire, unconcerned about who he’d offended tonight. That woman had been whispering about him, just like everyone else tended to do. “The innocent ought not be allowed to wander alone into a dragon’s den. And I ought never to have come.”

“Of course, you should attend my ball, Sebastian. I swear you’ll never come out from the cloud of scandal and marry well the way you are going,” Esme huffed, settling back to study him as if he was something she could fix.

“My dear, whoever said I wanted to be married?” he said. “I enjoy my diversions immensely.”

“Seducing proper young ladies is not a diversion. Finding a wife should be your goal this season.”

Sebastian shook his head. “Your husband may have met his match in you, but that does not mean the rest of us need to. Women are capricious, stubborn, and close-minded. I’ve enough to deal with at home as it is.”

“Gabby is none of those things.”

“Gabby?”

“Miss Gabriella Kimble,” Esme pointed toward the door. “The girl you just frightened half to death. She’s my cousin Bennett’s ward.”

Gabby. Well, at least he had a name to match the silly pair of lips espousing to admire Viscount Brookes. Gabby. Small in stature, but in her eyes, he’d glimpsed a firebrand willing but not quite ready to come out and play.

He should like to see her turn that temper toward that frivolous fop, Brookes, to see what he might make of her. Brookes would probably run rather than stand up to the challenge of taking on a passionate woman like that. She was ripe to be seduced, too.

But Brookes was undoubtedly leading her on, as he did all the other ladies of society. He would never return her feelings. His greatest love was reserved solely for himself.

But because Brookes was so handsome and attentive, the ladies of society just loved him to smile for them, even Esme. He thrived on admiration. It pained him that so few realized. “Poor Gabby.”

“Hardly. She has the wits and intelligence to match even you, I suspect. If not for the loss of her parents, I might never have met her.”

Sebastian refused to offer the required sympathy for a poor orphan and scoffed. “She’s an idiot, too, if she’s set her heart on Viscount Brookes.”

Esme’s face fell. “I have faith that it is merely a passing infatuation with his good looks.”

“Foolish girl,” he complained, and then shifted in discomfort. He was already dealing with the results of one foolish infatuation at home and that was enough trouble. “She’ll learn the error of her ways in the end. They all do.”

“Let’s hope it is sooner rather than later, and about you too,” Esme murmured.

“I hardly care what she or anyone thinks of me,” he insisted.

Esme winced. “How is Cordelia today?”

“The same. My sister keeps to herself and even prepares her own fire rather than let a servant into her rooms to do the task. If I wish to eat in her company, I am forced to dine in her chambers now, too,” he complained.

“She’s getting worse,” Esme said softly.

“It seems so,” Sebastian answered, and then tipped his head up to look at the ceiling rather than face the countess’ pity. He lowered his face eventually and thumped his fist on the arm of the chair. “At least she stopped barricading her door against everyone. Once the London servants learned to leave her be, she’s slowly settled down.”

“What will you do?”

“If I listen to the so-called experts I consulted, they offered two solutions for her condition—send for a physician to bleed her extensively or commit her to Bedlam.”

“And you won’t do either, I know.” Esme worried her lip. “She needs to meet more people.”

“Hardly possible when she runs and hides from anyone who visits my town house or the estate,” he warned. “Even you couldn’t get an audience with her still today, and she’s known you forever.”

“If only she had met someone to marry in her first season this might all have been avoided.” Esme made an unhappy face. At the time of her last call, they had only just arrived in London, and it had gone badly. Cordelia had mumbled and put Sebastian between them and then claimed fatigue so she could flee to her chambers to rest. She stayed there for three days straight, refusing to see all callers.

She’d been miserable about a return to London, but then she would not allow Sebastian to leave her behind either. He’d thought that was a positive sign at the time of their departure from his country estate. Now, though, he knew a change of scenery had done her no favors, or him either.

“Perhaps if you married, a wife might offer her a more stable companionship,” Esme suggested, gently. “She’d eventually become accustomed to the woman always being around and might not worry so much about any visitors.”

“Making a marriage will solve nothing and could make things ten times worse,” Sebastian warned. “Stop trying to inflict a wife on me. I’ve no time for more than a casual dalliance these days.”