She stopped then, her neck hot and her lips pursed, and turned on her heel to face him. “Evidently so, my lord.”
“What is he to you?”
Lord, she could strangle him right now. “An excellent friend in a time of need.”
His eyes assessed her with the same concerned gaze that she so often gave her patients. He was, she knew, looking at her coloring for signs of ill health. She also knew that melancholics often did not appear to be in ill health, because she had trained to be a damned alienist, and he had not.
Once he found whatever information he was so clearly seeking, his face hardened again. “We need to speak.”
Indeed, they did. And truly, she did not know when next she would feel well enough to leave her bed and face him. Now was as good a time as any.
“Fine. You may speak.”
“I’d prefer if it was in my study.”
Augusta sighed, already exhausted by this exchange. “Then let us go to your study.”
“I…alright, then.”
He must have expected a fight from her, but she had none to give just then. Ergo, he turned and led her back down the stairs and into his study. She noted the whisky on his desk, half-drank, with two empty glasses next to it.
She hadn’t spent much time in here these past weeks, mostly popping in to tell him something or give him a midday kiss while he did his work. Now, she saw that it was a masculine, imposing room, with large carvings in the woodwork and heavy, dark drapery. She found that she did not like it.
Sebastian walked over to his large desk and stood behind it, as though it were a shield of some kind. He inhaled, readyinghimself to speak, only to lose momentum and sigh it away.
She knew that she could have eased some of his agony by speaking first. She refrained.
“Words cannot express how sorry I am.”
She cocked her head, immediately disliking his phrasing. It felt as though he was trying to get out of apologizing while also looking contrite. Another trick. “Oh, can they not?”
Sebastian, to his credit, did not flinch at her mocking tone. “If such words exist, I have not found them. If I am honest, I cannot fully articulate my apologies in my own mind, let alone express them to another. You will, therefore, have to imagine the depth of my regret.”
Ah, yes. Another thing that she would have to do for him. “I imagine this is all quite embarrassing for you.”
“It is more than embarrassing,” he said, defensive. “It is crushing.” Leaning in, he planted his hands on the desk as if to hold himself up and looked at her, his blue eyes piercing. “Augusta, I feel the greatest shame for what has been done to you. I never…never thought it would end like this.”
If Sebastian were a lesser man, he might have hung his head. Instead, he continued to stare into her eyes with a kind of anguish that made her want to look away.
“Shame never got anyone anywhere,” she said coldly. “So you can stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
The hypocrisy of her words was not lost on her.
“Perhaps I deserve that,” Sebastian said. It was only at that moment that he finally did hang his head, his hair covering over his features which were, could she have seen them, likely shameful.
But Augusta had been taken for a fool once already. She wouldnot allow his act to ensnare her again. Whatever pain he was feeling, it was not from her rescinding her love. It was from the shame of being caught and the difficulty of living with someone who was not pleased with him. Sebastian had been liked his entire life. Now, he had to remain attached to the one person who wanted nothing to do with him.
No, she would not forgive him, nor would she sympathize with his poetic words of remorse. Instead, she cleared her throat and got straight to business.
“Well, best to get this all out in the open now, so that we might move forward. We are, the both of us, trapped in a loveless marriage.”
Sebastian’s head snapped up to look at her. Unbridled fury playing in his eyes. When he finally spoke, it was with the tense, low timbre of one about to commit murder.
“You may say a great many things about us and what I have done. But you will never again say that this marriage has been loveless as though it were so obvious a fact. I may not have loved you before our vows, but I have greatly loved you since. I believe I love you more so now for the wanting of your company.”
She would not bend. She would use this pain as an opportunity to get what she wanted. “Instead of continuing your charade, it would be best for the both of us if we approached our future with some practicality.”
“I cannot think of anything more practical than loving my wife.”
