Page 98 of The Earl’s Forbidden Temptation

Understanding dawned across their faces.

Lily released a soft breath. “Then Lord Raine has been placed in a cruel position. His conduct suggests a man divided against himself, bound by duty upon one side and feeling upon the other.”

“If he loves Darcy, he must fight for her,” Elizabeth said, rare anger flashing in her eyes. “Honor does not demand that he surrender the woman he loves, nor does duty require him to punish an innocent woman for the sins of her parents.”

Agatha closed her hand warmly around Darcy’s. “Men such as Raine often believe they can master every feeling by refusing to name it. Sometimes they do not understand what they possess until it is threatened beyond retrieval.”

Darcy’s breath caught. “And how, precisely, do you intend to force such an understanding?”

Agatha’s smile deepened, touched with daring. “By placing you beyond his reach. By allowing him to believe, if only briefly, that he has truly lost you.”

A tremor moved through Darcy. “That seems a perilous course.”

“It is,” Agatha agreed. “Will you trust us enough to attempt it?”

Darcy ought to refuse. She had already endured Sebastian’s cold rejection and did not know whether she possessed the strength to survive it a second time. Yet as she looked upon the women who had welcomed her with such unguarded generosity, she could not deny the truth pressing insistently against reason.

She loved him. And if there remained even the smallest chance that he loved her enough to choose her openly, she could not turn from it without knowing. A tremulous smile touched her lips. “Yes.”

CHAPTER 32

Sebastian sprawled upon a chaise in one of Aphrodite’s most decadent chambers, his long body arranged in an attitude of careless ease that deceived no one who looked closely. Beneath the indolent sprawl of his limbs, tension held him rigid.

The chamber glowed like the interior of some forbidden jewel. Walls of deep claret were softened by panels of gilded silk, and dozens of candles burned within mirrored sconces, multiplying every flame until warm light trembled over polished mahogany, bare shoulders, and bowls of dark roses opened almost indecently wide.

Low chairs and fainting couches curved through the room in intimate groupings, heaped with cushions of crimson velvet and gold damask. At its center, a broad bed stood upon a raised dais beneath a canopy of wine-colored silk, its sheets turned down in deliberate invitation.

Incense smoldered in pierced silver burners. Sage threaded through amber, sandalwood, and something lushly sweet, perhaps crushed fig or warmed honey, until each breath tasted faintly of temptation. Beyond half-drawn curtains came the whisper of silk against skin, a woman’s hushed laugh, and the muted clink of crystal.

It was a chamber fashioned to loosen restraint one exquisite thread at a time. Tonight, an easel waited before the dais, its blank canvas pale within all that red and gold, while brushes, pigments, and a carefully placed chair awaited the artist who would immortalize the evening’s excess. Rebecca had invited Sebastian to participate in what she called her pièce de résistance, an orgy composed as carefully as a history painting.

He had declined.

Once, such a room would have stirred appetite before he crossed its threshold. Now the women drifting through the adjoining chambers, lovely and languid in the candlelight, awakened nothing. Their laughter rose and fell around him like music heard from another house. He remained untouched by it, a hollow likeness of the man who had once belonged effortlessly to this world.

Darcy had undone him.

No softer truth remained with which to deceive himself. Her taste haunted every glass he lifted. Her warmth returned whenever he closed his eyes. He heard her unguarded laughter in quiet rooms and remembered the luminous intelligence of her gaze whenever another woman attempted to hold his attention.

Even here, amid every calculated enticement Aphrodite possessed, desire had narrowed to one woman and become inseparable from tenderness, fury, admiration, and loss. His gaze fell to his wrist. The crescent marks left by her teeth had faded to pale shadows, yet he traced them with his thumb as though they were the last proof that she had once touched him without restraint. Want tightened low in his body, immediate and aching, but grief followed so closely that he could no longer distinguish one from the other.

He swallowed whisky. The heat burned down his throat and settled uselessly in his belly.

She had not yet appeared.

Only two nights had passed since the ball, yet the sight of her remained painfully vivid: Darcy in burnished gold, proud even beneath his mother’s cruelty, her eyes wounded when they met his. Seeing her had been like placing water against the lips of a man dying of thirst, only to tear the cup away before he could drink.

He had done the tearing.

The knowledge sat within him like a blade.

The door opened upon a spill of brighter light and masculine laughter. Several gentlemen entered, shedding the restraint of the world outside with their cloaks and gloves. Among them was the Duke of Basil, whose untroubled expression belonged to a man entirely satisfied with his place in the world.

Sebastian lifted one brow. “Does your wife know you are here?”

The duke’s smile deepened as he glanced toward the doorway. “Perfectly.”

Sebastian followed his gaze.