“Maybe she just didn’t like the look of you?” Benedict gave a wicked chuckle.
Seb eyed the window longingly. He’d pay Georgie for the repairs. “She was interested,” he growled.
He knew how to read women. He’d seen the answering spark of interest, of fascination in her eyes. Her enthusiastic reaction to his kiss hadn’t been feigned either. He was sure that if they hadn’t been interrupted, he could have kissed away her reservations, taken her upstairs, and enjoyed several delightful hours making love to her. Both of them would have left the encounter sated and content. He knew how to please his partners. It was a matter of personal pride. Now things were left unfinished between them and it… bothered him.
“Maybe she’s happily married?” Alex said.
Seb shook his head. “She wasn’t wearing a wedding band. And she didn’t know how to kiss.”
He’d found her artless enthusiasm utterly delightful.
Ben and Alex shared another raised-eyebrow look at the revelation that he’d kissed her.
“A widow, then?”
“Wouldn’t have been introduced asMissBrown,” Seb finished.
They all sat in contemplative silence for a moment.
“I should have offered more,” Seb muttered.
Alex let out a sigh. “There you go, thinking money can solve every problem.”
“It usually does. Admit it. Life’s a great deal easier now that the three of us have it.”
“So cynical,” Alex tutted.
“She’s not theonlywoman who ever turned him down,” Benedict said suddenly. “Don’t you remember, Alex? There was that girl, years ago, when we’d just come down from university? What was her name? The silly one with black hair. From Norfolk.”
“Julia Cowes,” Seb supplied wearily.
Trust Benedict to drag up that sorry farce. He’d been all of nineteen, young and relatively innocent, intoxicated by his first taste of London and foolishly convinced he was in love. He’d quickly learned his lesson.
Alex snapped his fingers. “That was it! The fair Julia. At one point I thought you were on the verge of asking for her hand.”
“Her hand wasn’t the only thing she wanted to give me,” Seb said dryly. “It was also her father’s crippling mortgages and her brother’s impressive gambling debts. As soon as she found out I was only a second son, untitled, and penniless to boot, she dropped me like a hot brick. I thank her for showing me just how mercenary the ladies of thetoncan be.”
“A salutary lesson,” Alex murmured.
“She came to see me last month, actually,” Seb said. “She married old Skeffington while we were away in Portugal.”
Benedict frowned. “Isn’t he at least sixty?”
“He is. But as rich as Midas, which made him an attractive prospect, at least financially. Julia thought I’d be interested in an affair, seeing as her husband was so often away from home.”
Benedict rolled his eyes. “Please tell me you refused.”
“Of course. No married women, ever.”
“I’d never cheat on Emmy,” Alex said fervently.
“And I wouldn’t cheat on Georgie,” Benedict added. “And not only because she’d have me shipped off to the Arctic if I were unfaithful. I don’twantto sleep with anyone but her.”
Sebastien shook his head, pretending to be disgusted by their post-marriage monogamy.
In truth, Ben and Alex’s marriages were two of the few happy ones he’d ever encountered. They’d both been fortunate enough to make a love match. They not only desired their partners in a physical sense, but they’d also found an inner compatibility that bound them together, one of shared humor and values.
Seb’s own family was the antithesis of that, a sordid tangle of infidelity and scandal. It was the worst kept secret in thetonthat his father hadn’t been married to his mother at the time of his conception. The duke’s first wife, Lady Sarah, had died giving birth to his older half-brother Geoffrey. Seb was the result of an affair the duke had had with a volatile Italian Contessa, Maria Wolff, herself already a young widow.
