Ten Things I Love About You (2 page)

“Annabel!”

Annabel snapped to attention. Louisa was addressing her with uncommon urgency, and she’d do well to listen.

“Annabel, this is important,” Louisa said.

Annabel nodded, and an unfamiliar feeling washed over her—maybe of gratitude, certainly of love. She’d only just got to know her cousin, but already there was a deep bond of affection, and she knew that Louisa would do everything in her power to keep Annabel from making an unhappy alliance.

Unfortunately, Louisa’s power was, in this capacity, limited. And she did not—no, she
could
not—understand the pressures of being the eldest daughter of an impoverished family.

“Listen to me,” Louisa implored. “Lord Newbury’s son died, oh, I think it must be a bit over a year ago. And he started looking for a wife before his son was cold in his grave.”

“Shouldn’t he have found one by now, then?”

Louisa shook her head. “He almost married Mariel Willingham.”

“Who?” Annabel blinked, trying to place the name.

“Exactly. You’ve never heard of her. She died.”

Annabel felt her eyebrows rise. It was really a rather emotionless delivery of such tragic news.

“Two days before the wedding she took a chill.”

“She died in only two days?” Annabel asked. It was a morbid question, but, well, she had to know.

“No. Lord Newbury insisted upon delaying the ceremony. He said it was for her welfare, that she was too ill to stand up in church, but everyone knew that he really just wanted to make sure she was healthy enough to bear him a son.”

“And then?”

“Well, and then she did die. She lingered for about a fortnight. It was really very sad. She was always very kind to me.” Louisa gave her head a little shake, then continued. “It was a near miss for Lord Newbury. If he’d married her, he would have had to go into mourning. As it was, he had already tried to wed scandalously soon after his son’s death. If Miss Willingham hadn’t died before the wedding, he’d have had another year of black.”

“How long did he wait before looking for someone else?” Annabel asked, dreading the answer.

“Not more than two weeks. Honestly, I don’t think he would have waited that long if he thought he could have got away with it.” Louisa looked about, her eyes falling on Annabel’s sherry. “I need some tea,” she said.

Annabel rose and rang for it, not wanting Louisa to break the narrative.

“After he returned to London,” Louisa said, “he began to court Lady Frances Sefton.”

“Sefton,” Annabel murmured. She knew that name but couldn’t quite place it.

“Yes,” Louisa said animatedly. “Exactly. Her father is the Earl of Brompton.” She leaned forward. “Lady Frances is the third of nine children.”

“Oh my.”

“Miss Willingham was the eldest of only four, but she …” Louisa trailed off, clearly unsure of how to phrase it politely.

“Was shaped like me?” Annabel offered.

Louisa nodded grimly.

Annabel gave a wry grimace. “I suppose he never looked twice in your direction.”

Louisa looked down at herself, all seven and a half stone of her. “Never.” And then, in a most uncharacteristic display of blasphemy, she added, “Thank
God.”

“What happened to Lady Frances?” Annabel asked.

“She eloped. With a
footman.”

“Good heavens. But she must have had a prior attachment, wouldn’t you think? One wouldn’t run off with a footman just to avoid marriage to an earl.”

“You don’t think so?”

“Well, no,” Annabel said. “It’s not at all practical.”

“I don’t think she was thinking about practicality. I think she was thinking about marriage to that … that …”

“I beseech you, do not finish that sentence.”

Louisa kindly complied.

“If one were going to avoid marriage to Lord Newbury,” Annabel continued, “I would think there must be better ways to do it than marrying a footman. Unless of course she was in love with the footman. That changes everything.”

“Well, it’s neither here nor there. She dashed off to Scotland and no one has heard from her. By then the season was over. I’m sure Lord Newbury has been looking for a bride ever since, but I would think it’s much easier during the season, when everyone is gathered together. Plus,” Louisa added, almost as an afterthought, “if he had been pursuing another lady, I’d hardly have heard about it. He lives in Hampshire.”

Whereas Louisa would have spent the entire winter in Scotland, shivering in her castle.

“And now he’s back,” Annabel stated.

“Yes, and now that he’s lost an entire year, he’ll want to find someone quickly.” Louisa looked over at her with a horrible expression—part pity, part resignation. “If he is interested in you, he’s not going to waste any time with a courtship.”

Annabel knew it was true, and she knew that if Lord Newbury did propose, she’d have a very difficult time refusing. Her grandparents had already indicated that they supported the match.
Her mother would have allowed her to refuse, but her mother was nearly a hundred miles away. And Annabel knew exactly the expression she’d see in her mother’s eyes as she assured her she didn’t have to marry the earl.

There would be love, but there would also be worry. There was always worry on her mother’s face lately. The first year after her father’s death there had been grief, but now there was only worry. Annabel thought that her mother was so worried about how to support her family that there was no longer any time for grief.

Lord Newbury would, if he did indeed wish to marry her, bring enough financial support to ease her mother’s burdens. He could pay her brothers’ tuitions. And provide dowries for her sisters.

Annabel would not consent to marry him unless he agreed to do so. In writing.

But she was getting ahead of herself. He had not asked to marry her. And she had not decided that she would say yes. Or had she?

The following morning

N
ewbury’s got his eye on a new one.”

Sebastian Grey opened one eye to look at his cousin Edward, who was sitting across from him, eating a pie-like substance that even from across the room smelled revolting. His head was pounding—too much champagne the night before—and he decided he liked the room better dark.

He closed his eye.

“I think he’s serious this time,” Edward said.

“He was serious the last three times,” Sebastian replied, directing the comment to the insides of his eyelids.

“Hmm, yes,” came Edward’s voice. “Bad luck
for him. Death, elopement, and what happened with the third?”

“Showed up at the altar with child.”

Edward chuckled. “Maybe he should have taken that one. At least he would have known she was fertile.”

“I suspect,” Sebastian replied, shifting his position to better accommodate his long legs on the sofa, “that even I am preferable to some other man’s bastard.” He gave up on trying to find a comfortable position and heaved both legs over the arm, letting his feet dangle over the side. “Difficult though it is to imagine.”

He thought about his uncle for a few moments, then attempted to thrust him from his mind. The Earl of Newbury always put him in a bad mood, and his head hurt enough already as it was. They’d always been at odds, uncle and nephew, but it hadn’t really mattered until a year and a half earlier, when Sebastian’s cousin Geoffrey had died. As soon as it had become apparent that Geoffrey’s widow was not increasing, and that Sebastian was the heir presumptive to the earldom, Newbury hurried himself off to London to search for a new bride, declaring that he would die before he allowed Sebastian to inherit.

The earl, apparently, had not noticed the logistical inconsistencies of such a statement.

Sebastian thus found himself in an odd and precarious position. If the earl could find a wife and sire another son—and, the Lord knew, he was trying—then Sebastian was nothing but another of London’s fashionable yet untitled gentlemen.
If, on the other hand, Newbury did not manage to reproduce, or worse, managed only daughters, then Sebastian would inherit four houses, heaps of money, and the eighth most ancient earldom in the land.

All of this meant that no one knew quite what to do with him. Was he the marriage mart’s grandest catch or just another fortune hunter? It was impossible to know.

It was all just too amusing. To Sebastian’s mind, at least.

No one wanted to take a chance that he might
not
become the earl, and so he was invited everywhere, always an excellent circumstance for a man who liked good food, good music, and good conversation. The debutantes flittered and fluttered around him, providing endless entertainment. And as for the more mature ladies—the ones who were free to take their pleasure where they chose …

Well, more often than not, they chose
him.
That he was beautiful was a boon. That he was an excellent lover was delicious. That he might eventually become the Earl of Newbury …

That made him irresistible.

At present, however, with his aching head and queasy stomach, Sebastian was feeling exceedingly resistible. Or if not that, then resistant. Aphrodite herself could descend from the ceiling, floating on a bloody clamshell, naked but for a few well-placed flowers, and he’d likely puke at her feet.

No, no, she ought to be completely naked. If he
was going to prove the existence of a goddess, right here in this room, she was damned well going to be naked.

He’d still puke on her feet, though.

He yawned, shifting his weight a little more onto his left hip. He wondered if he might fall asleep. He had not slept well the night before (champagne) or the night before that (nothing in particular), and his cousin’s sofa was as good a spot as any. The room wasn’t so bright as long as he kept his eyes closed, and the only sound was Edward’s chewing.

The chewing.

It was remarkable how loud it sounded, now that he’d stopped to think on it.

Not to mention the stench. Meat pie. Who ate meat pie in front of someone in his condition?

Sebastian let out a groan.

“Sorry?” Edward said.

“Your food,” Seb grunted.

“Do you want some?”

“God no.”

Sebastian kept his eyes closed, but he could practically hear his cousin give a shrug. There would be no tender mercies tossed in his direction this morning.

So Newbury was panting after another broodmare. Sebastian supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. Hell, he
wasn’t
surprised. It was just that—

It was just that—

Well, hell. He didn’t know what it was. But it wasn’t nothing.

“Who is it this time?” he asked, because it wasn’t as if he was
completely
uninterested.

There was a pause, presumably so that Edward could swallow his food, and then: “Vickers’s granddaughter.”

Sebastian considered that. Lord Vickers had several granddaughters. Which made sense, as he and Lady Vickers had had something approaching fifteen children of their own. “Well, good for her,” he grunted.

“Have you seen her?” Edward asked.

“Have you?” Seb countered. He’d arrived in town late for the season. If the girl was new this year, he wouldn’t know her.

“Country-bred, I’m told, and so fertile that birds sing when she draws near.”

Now
that
deserved an open eye. Two, as a matter of fact. “Birds,” Sebastian repeated in a flat voice. “Really.”

“I thought it was a clever turn of phrase,” Edward said, a touch defensively.

With a small groan, Sebastian heaved himself up into a sitting position. Well, something closer to a sitting position than he’d been in before. “And how, if the young lady is the snow-white virgin I’m sure Newbury insists upon, might one gauge her fecundity?”

Edward shrugged. “You can just tell. Her hips …” His hands made some sort of odd motion in the air, and his eyes began to acquire a glazed expression. “And her
breasts
…” At this he practically shuddered, and Sebastian wouldn’t have been surprised if the poor boy started to drool.

“Control yourself, Edward,” Sebastian said. “You are reclining on Olivia’s newly upholstered sofa, if you recall.”

Edward shot him a peevish look and went back to the food on his plate. They were sitting in the drawing room of Sir Harry and Lady Olivia Valentine, where the two men could frequently be found. Edward was Harry’s brother, and thus lived there. Sebastian had come over for breakfast. Harry’s cook had recently changed her recipe for coddled eggs, with delicious results. (More butter, Sebastian suspected; everything tasted better with more butter.) He hadn’t missed a breakfast at La Casa de Valentine for a week.

Besides, he liked the company.

Harry and Olivia—who, incidentally, were not Spanish; Sebastian simply enjoyed saying “La Casa de Valentine”—were off in the country for a fortnight, presumably in an attempt to escape Sebastian and Edward. The two men had immediately degenerated into their bachelor ways, sleeping past noon, bringing luncheon into the drawing room, and hanging a dartboard on the back of the door to the second guest bedroom.

Sebastian was currently ahead, fourteen games to three.

Sixteen games to one, actually. He’d felt sorry for Edward halfway through the tournament. And it
had
made things more interesting. It was harder to lose realistically than it was to win. But he’d managed. Edward hadn’t suspected a thing.

Game eighteen was to be held that evening. Sebastian would be there, of course. Really, he’d
all but moved in. He told himself it was because someone had to keep an eye on young Edward, but the truth was …

Seb gave his head a mental shake. That was truth enough.

He yawned. Lord, he was tired. He didn’t know why he’d had so much to drink the night before. It had been ages since he’d done so. But he had gone to bed early, and then he couldn’t sleep, and then he got up, but he couldn’t write because—

No because. That had been damned irritating. He just couldn’t write. The words hadn’t been there even though he’d left his poor heroine hiding under a bed. With the hero
in
the bed. It was to be his most risqué scene yet. One would think it’d be easy, just from the novelty of it.

But no. Miss Spencer was still under the bed and her Scotsman was still on it, and Sebastian was no closer to the end of chapter twelve than he’d been last week.

After two hours of sitting at his desk staring at a blank sheet of paper, he’d finally given up. He couldn’t sleep and he couldn’t write, and so more out of spite than anything else he’d got back up, dressed, and headed out to his club.

There had been champagne. Someone had been celebrating something, and it would have been rude not to join in. There had been several very pretty girls, too, although why they had been at the club, Sebastian wasn’t quite sure.

Or maybe they hadn’t been at the club. Had he gone somewhere else afterward?

Good Lord, he was getting too old for this nonsense.

“Maybe she’ll say no,” Edward said. Seemingly out of nowhere.

“Eh?”

“The Vickers girl. Maybe she’ll say no to Newbury.”

Sebastian sat back, pressing his fingers into his temples. “She won’t say no.”

“I thought you didn’t know her.”

“I don’t. But Vickers will want the match with Newbury. They’re friends, and Newbury has money. Unless the girl has an extremely indulgent father, she’ll have to do what her grandfather says. Oh, wait.” He arched his brows, the accompanying furrow in his forehead meant to jog his currently sluggish mind. “If she’s the Fenniwick girl she’ll say no.”

“How do you
know
all this?”

Seb shrugged. “I know things.” Mostly, he observed. It was remarkable what one could tell about another human being simply by watching. And listening. And acting so bloody charming that people tended to forget he had a brain.

Sebastian was rarely taken seriously, and he rather liked it that way.

“No, wait again,” he said, picturing a wispy little thing in his mind, so thin she disappeared when she turned sideways. “It can’t be the Fenniwick girl. She has no breasts.”

Edward finished off the last of his meat pie. The smell, unfortunately, did not immediately
dissipate. “I trust you do not speak from firsthand knowledge,” he said.

“I am an excellent judge of the female form, even from afar.” Sebastian glanced about the room, looking for something nonalcoholic to drink. Tea. Tea might help. His grandmother had always said it was the next best thing to vodka.

“Well,” Edward said, watching as Sebastian heaved himself off the sofa and crossed the room to ring for the butler, “if she accepts him, you’ve all but lost the earldom.”

Seb flopped back on the sofa. “It was never mine to begin with.”

“But it could be,” Edward said, leaning forward. “It could be yours. Me, I’m probably thirty-ninth in line for anything of note, but you … you could be Newbury.”

Sebastian pushed back the sour taste rising in his throat.
Newbury
was his uncle, huge and loud, with bad breath and a worse temper. It was difficult to imagine ever answering to the name. “Honestly, Edward,” he said, giving his cousin as frank a stare as he could muster, “I really don’t care one way or the other.”

“You can’t mean that.”

“And yet I do,” Seb murmured.

Edward stared at him as if he’d gone mad. Sebastian decided to respond to that by resuming his lengthwise position on the sofa. He closed his eyes, determined to keep them that way until the tea arrived. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t appreciate the accompanying conveniences,” he said, “but
I’ve lived thirty years without it, and twenty-nine without even the prospect of it.”

“Conveniences,” Edward repeated, apparently latching onto the word.
“Conveniences?”

Seb shrugged. “I would find the money extremely convenient.”

“Convenient,” Edward said with amazement. “Only you would call it convenient.”

Sebastian shrugged again and attempted to nap. He seemed to find most of his sleep this way, in little fits and bits, stolen on sofas, in chairs, anywhere, really, except for his own bed. But his mind proved stubborn, refusing to let go of this most recent gossip about his uncle.

He really
didn’t
care if he inherited the earldom. People tended to have difficulty believing this, but it was true. If his uncle married the Vickers girl and got a son off her … well, bully for him. So he wouldn’t get the title. Sebastian couldn’t be bothered to upset himself over the loss of something he’d never really had in the first place.

“Most people,” Sebastian said aloud, since it was only Edward in the room and he could sound like a bloviating buffoon with no consequences,
“know
if they are going to inherit an earldom. One is the heir apparent. Apparently, the heir. Unless someone manages to kill you first, you inherit.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“One could really rename the whole thing heir
obvious,”
Seb muttered.

“Do you always give vocabulary lessons when you’ve had too much to drink?”

“Whelp.” It was Seb’s favorite name for Edward, and as long as he kept it within the family, Edward didn’t seem to mind.

Edward chuckled.

“Monologue, interrupted,” Sebastian said, then continued: “With the heir presumptive, all is merely presumed.”

“Are you telling me something I don’t know?” Edward asked, not sarcastically. It was more of a query as to whether or not he needed to pay attention.

Sebastian ignored him. “One is
presumed
to be the heir, unless and of course, et cetera, et cetera, in my case, Newbury manages to foist himself on some poor young lady with fertile hips and large breasts.”

Edward sighed again.

“Shut
up,”
Seb said.

“If you saw them, you’d know what I mean.”

His tone was so full of lust that Sebastian had to open his eyes and look at him. “You need a woman.”

Edward shrugged. “Send one my way. I don’t mind your leavings.”