Page 76 of A Stolen Heart

“I must apologize to you.”

“What?” Alexandra gaped at him. That was the last thing she had expected him to say.

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “A rare event, I grant you, but you needn’t look quite so astonished. I admit when I am wrong.”

“Rare as that is?” Alexandra said lightly, and Sebastian’s smile grew larger.

“Yes. Rare as that is. I would like to say that it was only out of my concern for the Countess, but, to be truthful, I allowed certain mistakes in my past to color my thinking. I too easily believed Lady Ursula when she questioned your motives in being friendly to me. When I saw you meeting someone outside Exmoor’s house, it fanned the flames of my suspicion. I did not give you the benefit of the doubt, and when you would not explain why you were there, I believed the worst. I can see now that I have wronged you. I cannot expect you to forgive me, for I have said some unforgivable things, but—”

Alexandra was not sure how she would have answered him, for her heart seemed suddenly to be in her throat and her thoughts were a scattered mess, but she was not to find out, for at that moment, a low, melodious woman’s voice interrupted them.

“Hallo, Thorpe. Such a surprise to see you here.”

Sebastian stiffened and slowly turned. Alexandra, with some irritation, turned, too. Lady Pencross stood a few feet from them. Alexandra cast a sideways glance at Sebastian to see how he was taking this meeting with his former love.

His face betrayed nothing except a certain wariness. “Lady Pencross. I must say, I am even more surprised to find you at such an event. I would have thought you had little interest in scientific advances.”

The woman shrugged and made a charming moue of distaste. “Duncan assured me that it would be fascinating. I shall have to take him to task for that later.”

“I’m sure,” Sebastian commented dryly. He sketched a small bow in her direction. “If you will excuse us, we were on our way to—”

“That suits me perfectly,” Lady Pencross interjected smoothly. “I was about to take a stroll myself.” She shifted her parasol to the other shoulder and drew closer to Sebastian.

Alexandra sighed inwardly. The woman had made it socially difficult to do anything except allow her to walk with them. Sebastian, however, seemed to have few qualms about committing social solecisms.

“I did not ask you to accompany us,” he said bluntly.

Lady Pencross stiffened at the blatant insult, and her eyes flashed. But she quickly brought her expression under control and said in her silky voice, “Still mad at me, Sebastian?” She smiled in a slow, sensual way. “Fourteen years is a long time to keep a flame going.”

“Madam,” Sebastian began in a clipped voice, “the only feeling I have for you is profound indifference.”

He turned and started away, but Lady Pencross grabbed Alexandra’s arm and jerked her back. Her eyes blazed into Alexandra’s. “Do you think that you can catch him? Don’t be naïve. He’s toying with you, as he has toyed with every woman he’s been with since me. I am the only woman Sebastian ever loved—or ever will love. If I wanted him back, he’d come—just like that!” She snapped her fingers contemptuously.

Sebastian made an angry noise and started toward Lady Pencross, but Alexandra spoke quickly, forestalling him. “I should not brag if I were you, my lady, about the fact that you threw away a man who loved you because you preferred money. You made your choice long ago, and you can’t get back what you despised. If you think that you could ever get a man like Lord Thorpe back after what you did to him, you obviously do not know him, no matter how many times you were in his bed. Now, good day, my lady, and I would suggest that you not humiliate yourself by following us any farther.”

Alexandra glanced significantly at the people in the carriages around them, who had fallen silent and were avidly watching the scene before them. Sebastian, who had been looking thunderous, had to smile at the look on Lady Pencross’s face as she realized that a large number of her acquaintances had witnessed Alexandra giving her a set down. Embarrassment quickly turned to rage, however, and she glared at Alexandra in a way that would have made a lesser woman quail.

“You will be sorry for this,” she hissed and stalked to her carriage.

“I appear to have made an enemy,” Alexandra said lightly as she turned to Sebastian. They resumed walking. “It seems to be a habit of mine.”

“She is not a pleasant enemy to have.”

“I suspected as much. However, I’m too occupied with my present enemy to worry overmuch about her.”

They walked to the end of the line of balloons, where a blue-and-white-striped one lay. Two men worked busily at filling it, while a third man, with a wild shock of white hair and a beard, spent his time shouting directions. There were few spectators this far down.

“I presume someone must have informed you of my youthful infatuation with Barbara,” Sebastian commented, looking at the balloon rather than at her.

“Something of it.”

“Funny, how easy it is to fool oneself into believing that a person is one way or another just because you want them to be. I never saw her selfishness or her mean spirit until the end. I told her about my plan, that we would run away to India, escape her husband and my family and all of disapproving Society. We would live in blissful love.” A smile twisted his lips. “She told me that blissful love would purchase no dresses or jewelry for her, and that she would rather die than leave the social rounds of London for the wilds of India. The only women there, she said, were the dowdy wives of soldiers and merchants. I could not believe it at first. I argued with her. I believed, foolishly, that she was simply nervous and scared at the prospect of breaking with her past life. So I assured her that our love would make up for whatever discomforts we might have.”

He paused. “She told me that it had been no grand love that had made her cuckold her husband, as I had thought. It had been merely an affair with a boy who took her fancy—an affair in a string of others. I didn’t believe it. I raged at her. That is when she told me that she was growing tired of me, even without the dreadful prospect of going to India. She had, it seemed, already found a lover to replace me.”

“Sebastian! Oh, no!”

He nodded and turned toward her, his mouth twisting into a cynical smile. “The man who replaced me was the Earl of Exmoor.”