“Yes, the dinner. Of course, both Augusta and I will be inattendance.”
Bancroft gave a nod. “I will say that some of the fellows may hound you to…well, join the club, so to speak.”
“I am already backing Greeling for you, even though we both find him loathsome. Is that not enough?”
Evidently, it was not.
“Come on, Brightwater,” Bancroft shot back. “You spent our whole youth outrunning your father’s shadow, and the past few months cleaning up his mess. Without him to spite, what are you going to do with your life? Manage the damned estate up north?”
His words stung, though Sebastian remained composed. Always best not to let Bancroft know that he’d gotten to him.
“I think I am owed a time to simply be happy and enjoy my life, aren’t I?”
“Being lovestruck is not a vocation.”
“It is when you’re on your honeymoon.”
Bancroft scoffed. “Once this little oddity has passed, you will need to find something to do in this world. By backing Greeling, you are already opening the door to his good graces. That is all it takes to start a career. Do not let my offer pass you by.”
There were many things that Bancroft could have said which would have incensed Sebastian less, and therefore garnered his favor more. But hearing Augusta referred to as his ‘little oddity’ sparked a fire in Sebastian that could do little but grow.
“I will be at the dinner, Bancroft, and I am backing your candidate. If you would like for that to change, then by all means, please keep talking about my wife that way.”
The simmering anger beneath his words did the trick, forBancroft straightened and looked, if not humbled, then at least deflated somewhat.
“I see. Well, I suppose I shall see you at dinner. Hopefully you join the rest of us down here on earth soon and realize that honeymoons do not last forever.”
With that, his friend was gone, leaving Sebastian with a gnawing sense of dread sitting heavy in his chest.
Chapter Nineteen
Bancroft did not begrudge his friend for falling in love. Every man was liable to make mistakes.
He did, however, vow to be the one to bring his friend to reality once again. It was in Brightwater’s best interests to join the Tories, to make a respectable name for himself. The man was a viscount, for God’s sake.
In the meantime, Bancroft would ensure that some woman did not allow that name to become muddled with the affairs of the heart. He simply did not know how to accomplish it. Somewhere along the way, Brightwater had failed to see his wife for what she was - a means to an end.
No, he now saw her with the vignette of a man in love, wherein the object of his affection was the only thing worth looking at in the entire world. He no longer laughed at the name ‘Piglet’ or noticed Miss Browning’s (no, Lady Brightwater’s) downcast expressions. The man was not seeing the world as it was.
As Bancroft’s carriage strode down a side alley, attempting to thwart traffic, the most curious bit of good fortune fell upon him. He looked out his window in contemplation, and there, exiting the home of Lord Wallingford, was the Lady Brightwater herself. She walked next to a man, well-dressed but certainly common.
My wife is visiting Miss Greene today.
And it was odd. Was it not? That she would not be where she’d said she was. That she was with someone whom Bancroft did not recognize - and he recognized everyone in theton.
He sat back in his seat, feeling the beginning of a lot of questions with answers that might, if he was smart, accomplish his goals quite nicely.
Chapter Twenty
“You look lovely.”
Augusta did not believe that she would ever tire of hearing her husband say those words. As she walked down the stairs of their townhome that Friday evening, her hair freshly coiled and the silk of her new dress shining under lamplight, she felt positively radiant under Sebastian’s gaze.
“Is it too much for tonight?” she asked as she reached the base of the stairs. “I am unsure what one is supposed to wear to dinner with the Tories.”
Sebastian smiled at her with such warmth and good humor that she wondered if she had accidentally said something funny. “You need not think of it as dinner with the Tories. Simply think of it as dinner with friends. And for that, you look perfect.”
He, as always, appeared nearly too good to look at. He had always been handsome, but having become intimate with the lazy curl of his blond hair, with the half-smile that he gave when he found her amusing, Augusta sometimes found herself having to look away. She did exactly that now, clearing her throat as she pretended to straighten her skirts.
