The Dangerous Viscount (18 page)

Her hostess looked out the window at leaden skies and fallen leaves blowing about the lawn. “Are you sure? But if you need exercise I will go with you.”

“There’s no need for you to get chilled. I won’t go beyond the gardens.”

Before Juliana could argue, Sebastian stood up. “I would like to keep you company, Lady Fanshawe, if you will allow me.”

Her sensible resolution flew out of the window.
What better way to gauge Sebastian’s feelings for her, and hers for him, than to spend time together? Which was why, half an hour later, she found herself walking through the shrubbery with him, talking about books.

“How’s the pursuit of Katherine Parr going?”

“The owner is still a little coy but I believe he’s ready to surrender.”

“So you should have the lady in hand soon. I do trust she won’t prove disappointing.”

“I shall be disappointed only if I fail to win her.”

“Once you have her I am sure you will provide her with a good home.”

Sebastian had to admit that talking with Diana was much more exhilarating than discussing the same subjects with his male friends. She had a sweet, mischievous wit that made him want to smile, even when the subject was perfectly serious, and inspired him to respond in kind. This, he realized in a flash of enlightenment, was flirting. Another new experience courtesy of Diana Fanshawe.

Somehow the conversation came around to earlier English monarchs, and thence to her family. “I believe I heard somewhere they go back to the Normans,” he said.

“The first Montrose came over with the Conqueror. My brothers are named for the first kings: William, William Rufus, Henry I, and Stephen.”

“And you all use the shortened form of your names as nicknames?”

“Well, Will doesn’t object and Step’s the youngest so no one would care if he did. Rufus doesn’t mind being called Ru if he’s in the right mood. But no one
calls Henry ‘Hen’ twice. Will claims he decided to become a doctor so he can learn how to cause the greatest pain.”

Sebastian found the Montrose family fascinating. “Your father must be very proud of his ancestry.”

“Not really.” She placed a hand on his arm, leaned in confidentially, and looked up at him. “To tell you the truth, I think my parents were pleased to come up with a formula so they wouldn’t have to keep thinking of names.”

He lowered his head, so their lips were but a few inches apart. “I can see,” he said gravely, “that naming six children could be fatiguing.”

“Exhausting,” she agreed, her mouth curved in a smile that sent a sensation straight to his groin. They gazed at each other foolishly for moment or two. “Is Sebastian a family name? Or were you named for the saint with all the arrows stuck in his body?”

They’d been conducting a very enjoyable flirtation but, as usual, when Diana raised the subject of his family Sebastian withdrew. Without outright avoiding the subject, his answer was barely informative. “I was named for my father.”

Diana refused to give up. “How old were you when he died?”

“Five.”

“So young. You must have missed him.”

“He was a virtual stranger to me.” His voice took on a bitter tinge. “The great military hero.”

“Was he killed in battle?” she asked, assuming his father must have served abroad.

“Nothing so honorable. As a matter of fact he was defenestrated in Piccadilly.”

She clapped a hand over her mouth. “A defenestration? I thought that was something that happened in history books, and only ever in Prague. Someone pushed him out of a window?”

“He wasn’t pushed, he fell. He wagered he could drink a whole bottle of brandy while standing on the sill of a third-floor window. He lost.”

She didn’t for a minute credit this careless dismissal of his father’s demise. She wound her arm around his. “That’s a terrible story. What a tragedy for you and your mother.”

“As I said, I hardly knew him. He was, as Tarquin would put it, a fashionable father. In fact both my parents were highly fashionable. Darlings of the
ton.
Major Sebastian Iverley of His Highness the Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment and his beautiful wife, Lady Corinna. No invitation list was complete without them.”

“And your mother? When did she go to Italy?”

“A little later.”

Without shaking off her arm he placed some distance between them and, not for the first time, shied away from the subject of his surviving parent. How had the son of what sounded like a brilliant social couple become the shabby inarticulate man he’d been until recently? And which was the true Sebastian Iverley, the interesting reclusive bookworm or the strangely disappointing fashionable viscount? She really wanted to find out.

“Enough about me,” he said, his lips curving though she couldn’t tell if the smile reached his eyes. “How did you and your sister avoid royal names and become Roman goddesses instead? Shouldn’t
you have been Matilda, for England’s first reigning queen?”

Recognizing that the moment for confidences had passed, she answered in similar vein. “I am glad to have been spared that. Min always says she’s relieved not to have been named for Bloody Mary, but I secretly think she would have enjoyed it. It seems my father took one look at me and pronounced me his little goddess. Probably because I’m the only one of his children who looks like him. All the others are beauties like Mama.”

Sebastian stopped abruptly and swung around to face her. A gust of wind wrapped the skirt of her pelisse around her bottom, and blew a chill around her ankles. As she looked up at him she hunched her shoulders into her fox fur collar and buried her hands in the matching muff. Sebastian seemed unaffected by the breeze disturbing his long topcoat. He removed his spectacles, tucked them into his pocket and looked intently at her face.

“You
are
beautiful.”

Diana felt a little warmer. It was the first time she’d ever received a compliment from him. And he uttered it in the gruff voice that recalled the way he’d been at Mandeville, the old Iverley, not the smooth-talking viscount.

“How can you tell without glasses?”

“I don’t need them to see up close,” he said softly, moving nearer until there were but inches between them. She looked into his eyes, deep, gray, intense and felt she was gazing into his soul.

“I love your mouth,” he murmured. He removed his glove and his skin was firm and a little rough as
he traced the bow of her upper lip with his forefinger. “So perfectly shaped here. And smooth and rounded like a ripe fruit here.” The edge of his thumb stroked the length of her lower lip.

The wind and the chill, damp atmosphere receded and it might have been summer. His breath felt warm on her cheek. Her lips parted in anticipation. He was going to kiss her again.

“Hey! Diana!” the voice came from some distance.

Sebastian raised his head and said something unrepeatable. “No one in history has been cursed with a cousin as inconvenient as mine,” he said, swinging around and stepping to the side so that three feet of air separated them.

“Richard II might disagree with you,” Diana replied in a slightly wobbly voice. “Wasn’t it his cousin who drove him from the throne?”

“This is not the moment to display your knowledge of English history.” He sounded as irritated as she felt.

“I don’t see why not. Blake will be with us any moment and I don’t think we can return to our previous topic.”

Sebastian grunted which, under the circumstances, Diana found forgivable, even pleasing.

“James II was deposed, too,” she remarked.

“By his son-in-law.”

“So he was. What about Edward II?”

Sebastian thrust his hand into his pocket to retrieve his spectacles and put them back on. “I don’t remember and I don’t damn well care.”

Blake strode across the field toward them, gun over
arm and a spaniel at his heels. Long before he reached conversing distance she could read the displeasure on his face.

“Blake!” she called. “We’re discussing annoying cousins in history. Can you remember how Edward II lost his throne?”

“Certainly not.”

“I remember,” Sebastian said. “Not who did it but how. I know it hurt.”

Diana bit her lip, having realized she perhaps should not have raised the subject of this particular monarch. Poor Edward had been executed by means of a red-hot iron plunged up his fundament.

Blake’s frown melted into a pained grimace. “Ouch. Was he
that
one?” And for a fraction of a second the cousins put aside their rivalry in favor of an exchange of masculine empathy.

But not for long. “I’m about as interested in Edward II as I am in that German printer Lady Chase keeps talking about,” Blake said. “I thought you were going to spend the morning looking at books.” His remark was addressed to Diana but he glowered at Sebastian as he spoke.

“Diana decided to come for a walk with me instead,” Sebastian said. He folded his arms and rocked back on his heels with a self-satisfied air. It was the first time in many weeks he’d used her Christian name.

“Lady Fanshawe,”
Blake said, “generally prefers to take her exercise on horseback. But I suppose she accommodated your limitations by agreeing to go on foot.”

“Diana
may be as skilled a huntress as her namesake, but I think I’m up to the challenge of matching her pace.”

“Even a goddess like
Lady Fanshawe
needs the escort and protection of a competent horseman.”

Diana was aware of two facts. The first, less important though mildly surprising, was that Blake had heard of the goddess Diana. The second was that Blake and Sebastian teetered on the brink of physical combat. The latter hadn’t moved but she knew his relaxed air was a pose. His eyes seemed to blaze through the glass of his spectacles. By contrast Blake’s body tilted forward, equally still but coiled for attack. Diana eyed the shotgun slung casually over his arm. Country-bred, she knew a serious sportsman like Blake wouldn’t point it at another human under any circumstance. Yet the atmosphere between the cousins was so thick the presence of the weapon made her nervous.

“You’re both talking utter nonsense,” she said in a burst of irritation. “If I want to ride I can do so perfectly well without an escort.” She glared at Blake, not remotely impressed by his jealousy.

She swung around to look at Sebastian, who stood beside her and was scarcely less annoying. “And I can walk quite well by myself, too.” She would have demonstrated the truth of her statement by stalking back to the house, had Sebastian not arrested her by grabbing her arm. He did not, however, address her.

“Mounted, on foot, or in a carriage, I am more than capable of protecting Diana,” he said.

“Prove it!” Blake said.

“I rather thought I had. A little matter of driving off a highwayman.”

Blake’s teeth ground audibly. “There’s a neatish course around the Markley Estate. I challenge you to a race.”

Sebastian uncoiled from his stance of exaggerated relaxation. “What horses?” he asked. “The mount I brought is a road horse, lots of stamina but no jumper. What’s in the stable here?”

“No need to bother Chase. I have my hunters with me, fresh and recovered from the journey by now. You may take your choice. I can beat you whatever you’re riding.”

“Done.”

“Good,” Blake growled. “Let’s settle the matter once and for all.”

Diana didn’t know exactly what “the matter” was. She was part of it, yes, but the rivalry between Blake and Sebastian was older and deeper than one for her favors. She was fairly certain this race—just like a pair of men to come up with such an ridiculous method of solving their differences—was not going to settle anything, once
or
for all.

H
e had to hand it to Blakeney: his cousin knew how to pick a horse. Warrior, a coal black miracle of muscles and sinew with the endurance of a prizefighter and the heart of Satan, soared over the penultimate jump. Sebastian wondered if he could persuade Blake to sell him the beast.

Probably not. Without Warrior Sebastian wouldn’t have a chance in the race. Even with him, his probability of winning was slender. Though Blake only led by a couple of lengths, his mount was faster on the flat than Warrior, whose strength lay in the ability to jump anything. Only one fence remained, at the end of a long grassy avenue.

“Come on, boy,” Sebastian urged. Warrior had no need of the crop. The great horse had thrown his heart into every obstacle once he discovered Sebastian could master him. And now he was ready to pursue and defeat his owner, streaking ahead of them on his stablemate.

Sebastian had to admit that his despised cousin was a superb horseman, perhaps the best he’d ever seen. Even with the superior mount he couldn’t match the speed and skill with which Blake steered the bay
around the course, finding the shortest path, never missing an opportunity to shave a few seconds off the journey, to cut into the lead Warrior and Sebastian built up in the early stages. He’d finally passed them and since then his advantage had gradually and inexorably increased.

Sebastian told himself he had nothing to be ashamed of. Blake had expected him to fall at the first fence. In mastering Warrior he’d shown his cousin that he was no longer a bespectacled grinder but a man capable of challenging the best.

A lump of mud thrown up by the leading horse landed on his cheek. He looked ahead to the arrogant ease of Blake’s perfect seat. It was all so damned easy for his cousin, the golden-haired wonder, born to strawberry leaves and adulation. He had everything he wanted and deserved none of it.

Well, Blake wasn’t going to win this race. And he most definitely wasn’t going to win Diana Fanshawe.

He gave Warrior just a touch of the crop. “Let’s go, old fellow.”

“As far as I can tell they’re neck and neck.” Tarquin Compton, the tallest of the company even without the advantage of sitting on the biggest denizen of the Markley Abbey stable, had seen the competitors emerge from the trees. “By God!”

“What’s happening?” Diana and Minerva spoke together. The two of them had ridden out with Compton and Chase to stand level with the final fence, a few hundred yards from the finish line.