A Stolen Heart (27 page)

That thought brought Sebastian up short. Did he love Alexandra? It seemed absurd. She was willful, blunt and argumentative, not at all the way a woman was supposed to be. She was accustomed to doing exactly what she wanted and saying precisely what she thought. Most of the time he had known her, he had spent arguing with her or distrusting her. How could he possibly love her? Yet he knew that he did—now, at this moment, when he had completely wrecked any possibility of her returning his feelings, he knew that he was hopelessly in love with her.

“Dear God,” he breathed, stunned.

Alexandra glanced at him oddly. Sebastian looked as if he had been knocked in the head. The realization that they had some proof she might be the Countess’s granddaughter was surprising, but it seemed odd that Sebastian should be in such a state of shock. Perhaps he had realized that he might have to put up with Alexandra for a long time if she was the granddaughter of one of his dearest friends.

“You needn’t worry,” she told him crisply. “Even if I am the Countess’s granddaughter, I don’t plan to take up residence with her. I shall return to the United States. The family I know is there.”

She walked down the steps and climbed into the carriage without waiting for Sebastian’s help. Sebastian hurried after her.

“Then you plan still to return?” he asked as he sat in the seat across from her and the carriage moved away.

“As soon as my mother is able to. There is nothing for me here.”

“I am sure that the Countess will want you to remain,” Sebastian began carefully, wondering how he could persuade her to stay longer. He had to have time to figure out his emotions, to straighten out the mess he had made of his relationship with her. “Surely you cannot mean to break her heart by leaving her. She has lost so much already.”

Alexandra cast him a wary look. “Now you want me to be with the Countess? I thought you couldn’t wait for me to leave.”

“I didn’t know—” Sebastian began stiffly. “Dammit, woman, I do not want the Countess to be hurt. If you are her granddaughter, it will crush her if you leave.”

“I would visit her, of course, if she wanted me to.”

“I am sure she would want more than that.”

And you?
Alexandra thought.
What would you want from me?
All he could seem to talk about were the Countess’s feelings, when all
she
wanted to know was how Sebastian would feel if she left. But that was too bold a question, she realized, even for a blunt American.

So she said nothing, and they continued their journey in silence, each of them occupied with their own gloomy thoughts.

A
LEXANDRA TILTED HER PARASOL TO BLOCK
the sun and looked around at the rows of vehicles that lined the open field where the balloons lay. There were open curricles, landaus, barouches, heavy old-fashioned carriages, all full of ladies and gentlemen. Obviously the balloon ascension was quite a social event. There was as much visiting back and forth between the vehicles as there was interest in the balloons.

Alexandra looked at the field, littered by large baskets, or gondolas, each of them attached by ropes to huge, colorful balloons spread out limply on the grass. People scurried, performing various tasks around the inert balloons, ignoring those who had gathered to watch. Alexandra had not wished to come today, and she would have cried off if she had not thought it would be too rude at such late notice. She had spent the day before in a gloomy state, a condition not helped by the fact that she had heard nothing from Sebastian all day. She had told herself that it was absurd to expect to see or hear from him every day, as if there were some sort of agreement between them. But she could not keep from hoping that he might come to call this afternoon. It had been difficult to force herself to smile and go with Nicola and Penelope when they came. But now, she could not help but feel a stirring of interest as she watched the proceedings.

“Look!” Nicola’s voice was low but charged with emotion.

“What?” Alexandra glanced around the field, expecting to see something happening among the balloons. She turned to her companion in the open landau and saw that Nicola was looking not at the field, but down the line of vehicles to an elegant, high-sprung curricle that had just arrived.

A well-built man was maneuvering the vehicle, not very expertly, into place. Beside him sat a woman in a rose-pink dress, a dashing straw hat, upturned on one side, on her head. In her dainty gloved hand she held a parasol, which she tilted to keep the sun from her face. She smiled languidly at her companion and leaned over, her hand on his arm, to murmur something to him.

“Lady Pencross!” Alexandra exclaimed softly.

“Mother says that she is a disgrace to her sex and her station.” Penelope, on the other side of Alexandra, spoke. “Of course, Mother is apt to say that about a lot of people.”

“She’s right about Lady Pencross. One would never guess to look at her that her husband is dying in Yorkshire.”

“Look!” Penelope gripped Alexandra’s arm, her fingers digging in in her excitement. “There is Bucky.” Alexandra turned to look at the girl. Her face was glowing. “Lord Buckminster, I mean. I knew he would come today. And Sebastian is with him. Oh, dear, I hope he does not see Lady Pencross.”

Alexandra followed Penelope’s gaze, her pulse quickening. Lord Buckminster had just arrived in his curricle, and he and Sebastian were climbing from the high seat. Sebastian took off his hat as he turned to say something to Buckminster, and the sun glinted off his dark brown hair, warming it with reddish highlights. He was dressed simply, as always, but the elegant cut of his fawn trousers and dark coat emphasized the muscular lines of his legs and the breadth of his shoulders. He was, Alexandra thought, with a little catch in her breath, a man to whom few could compare. How had that Pencross woman been able to give him up for the sake of her husband’s wealth?

He turned and spotted Alexandra and her companions in their landau, the flexible top pushed back, accordianlike, to allow them to see and be seen. A smile spread across his face, lighting his features, and Alexandra felt a corresponding lightening in her chest. He said something to his companion, and the two men started through the rows of vehicles toward them.

“Nicola. Penelope.” Sebastian bowed toward the women, his eyes going past the others to Alexandra. “Alexandra.” His eyes searched her face, and Alexandra felt herself warming under his gaze. “It is a pleasure to see you here.”

Alexandra blushed. His words were commonplace enough, and she wondered if she was foolish to feel that they had special meaning.

The five of them chatted for a few moments, talking of commonplaces such as the weather and the balloons and a party that lay a few days ahead. After a time, Sebastian, who had worked his way around to stand beside Alexandra, inclined his head toward her and murmured, “Perhaps you’d care to stroll along the balloons and watch them being filled?”

He gestured toward the behemoth creatures, beginning to swell as the fires were lit and hot air directed into them. Alexandra smiled and nodded. “That sounds very nice.”

He offered her his arm, and they walked away from the others, moving down the line in front of the carriages where they could see better. Workers scurried around the balloons, busily filling them with air and getting them prepared. It was interesting enough, but Alexandra’s attention was scarcely on the activity. She was too aware of Sebastian close beside her, of his arm beneath her hand. She glanced at him, looking at his smooth cheek and the fall of his hair against his temple, the firm line of his jaw and chin. Why did he have to be so damned appealing? She thought about returning to America, and her heart was heavy in her chest. All the things she enjoyed there seemed suddenly bland and unappealing—work, her hobbies, the much quieter social round of parties.

“Alexandra…” Sebastian’s voice jerked her from her reverie.

“Yes?” She shifted her parasol to the other shoulder so that she could see his face better. He was frowning, looking in front of him rather than at her, and she realized, with a sinking sensation, that he had maneuvered her away from the others in order to talk to her, not because he had wanted to be alone with her. She braced herself for another argument.

“I must apologize to you.”

“What?” Alexandra gaped at him. That was the last thing she had expected him to say.

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “A rare event, I grant you, but you needn’t look quite so astonished. I admit when I am wrong.”

“Rare as that is?” Alexandra said lightly, and Sebastian’s smile grew larger.

“Yes. Rare as that is. I would like to say that it was only out of my concern for the Countess, but, to be truthful, I allowed certain mistakes in my past to color my thinking. I too easily believed Lady Ursula when she questioned your motives in being friendly to me. When I saw you meeting someone outside Exmoor’s house, it fanned the flames of my suspicion. I did not give you the benefit of the doubt, and when you would not explain why you were there, I believed the worst. I can see now that I have wronged you. I cannot expect you to forgive me, for I have said some unforgivable things, but—”

Alexandra was not sure how she would have answered him, for her heart seemed suddenly to be in her throat and her thoughts were a scattered mess, but she was not to find out, for at that moment, a low, melodious woman’s voice interrupted them.

“Hallo, Thorpe. Such a surprise to see you here.”

Sebastian stiffened and slowly turned. Alexandra, with some irritation, turned, too. Lady Pencross stood a few feet from them. Alexandra cast a sideways glance at Sebastian to see how he was taking this meeting with his former love.

His face betrayed nothing except a certain wariness. “Lady Pencross. I must say, I am even more surprised to find you at such an event. I would have thought you had little interest in scientific advances.”

The woman shrugged and made a charming moue of distaste. “Duncan assured me that it would be fascinating. I shall have to take him to task for that later.”

“I’m sure,” Sebastian commented dryly. He sketched a small bow in her direction. “If you will excuse us, we were on our way to—”

“That suits me perfectly,” Lady Pencross interjected smoothly. “I was about to take a stroll myself.” She shifted her parasol to the other shoulder and drew closer to Sebastian.

Alexandra sighed inwardly. The woman had made it socially difficult to do anything except allow her to walk with them. Sebastian, however, seemed to have few qualms about committing social solecisms.

“I did not ask you to accompany us,” he said bluntly.

Lady Pencross stiffened at the blatant insult, and her eyes flashed. But she quickly brought her expression under control and said in her silky voice, “Still mad at me, Sebastian?” She smiled in a slow, sensual way. “Fourteen years is a long time to keep a flame going.”

“Madam,” Sebastian began in a clipped voice, “the only feeling I have for you is profound indifference.”

He turned and started away, but Lady Pencross grabbed Alexandra’s arm and jerked her back. Her eyes blazed into Alexandra’s. “Do you think that you can catch him? Don’t be naïve. He’s toying with you, as he has toyed with every woman he’s been with since me. I am the only woman Sebastian ever loved—or ever will love. If I wanted him back, he’d come—just like that!” She snapped her fingers contemptuously.

Sebastian made an angry noise and started toward Lady Pencross, but Alexandra spoke quickly, forestalling him. “I should not brag if I were you, my lady, about the fact that you threw away a man who loved you because you preferred money. You made your choice long ago, and you can’t get back what you despised. If you think that you could ever get a man like Lord Thorpe back after what you did to him, you obviously do not know him, no matter how many times you were in his bed. Now, good day, my lady, and I would suggest that you not humiliate yourself by following us any farther.”

Alexandra glanced significantly at the people in the carriages around them, who had fallen silent and were avidly watching the scene before them. Sebastian, who had been looking thunderous, had to smile at the look on Lady Pencross’s face as she realized that a large number of her acquaintances had witnessed Alexandra giving her a set down. Embarrassment quickly turned to rage, however, and she glared at Alexandra in a way that would have made a lesser woman quail.

“You will be sorry for this,” she hissed and stalked to her carriage.

“I appear to have made an enemy,” Alexandra said lightly as she turned to Sebastian. They resumed walking. “It seems to be a habit of mine.”

“She is not a pleasant enemy to have.”

“I suspected as much. However, I’m too occupied with my present enemy to worry overmuch about her.”

They walked to the end of the line of balloons, where a blue-and-white-striped one lay. Two men worked busily at filling it, while a third man, with a wild shock of white hair and a beard, spent his time shouting directions. There were few spectators this far down.

“I presume someone must have informed you of my youthful infatuation with Barbara,” Sebastian commented, looking at the balloon rather than at her.

“Something of it.”

“Funny, how easy it is to fool oneself into believing that a person is one way or another just because you want them to be. I never saw her selfishness or her mean spirit until the end. I told her about my plan, that we would run away to India, escape her husband and my family and all of disapproving Society. We would live in blissful love.” A smile twisted his lips. “She told me that blissful love would purchase no dresses or jewelry for her, and that she would rather die than leave the social rounds of London for the wilds of India. The only women there, she said, were the dowdy wives of soldiers and merchants. I could not believe it at first. I argued with her. I believed, foolishly, that she was simply nervous and scared at the prospect of breaking with her past life. So I assured her that our love would make up for whatever discomforts we might have.”

He paused. “She told me that it had been no grand love that had made her cuckold her husband, as I had thought. It had been merely an affair with a boy who took her fancy—an affair in a string of others. I didn’t believe it. I raged at her. That is when she told me that she was growing tired of me, even without the dreadful prospect of going to India. She had, it seemed, already found a lover to replace me.”

“Sebastian! Oh, no!”

He nodded and turned toward her, his mouth twisting into a cynical smile. “The man who replaced me was the Earl of Exmoor.”

Alexandra drew in her breath sharply. “That is why you dislike him so!”

“Yes. Although, God knows, it could have been any one of a dozen other men. Barbara does not like to be alone. It broke my heart—for a time, at least. But it wasn’t really Barbara that I cried for—it was all my pitiful, broken illusions.”

“I’m sorry,” Alexandra said inadequately. She wanted to put her arms around him and hold him close to her, to stroke his hair and assure him that she would banish all thoughts of Barbara and her betrayal. Of course, it was far too public a place to do something like that. However, she was not sure whether Sebastian would wish it, even if they were alone. He had apologized to her for what he had thought about her, but he had not said that he had any feelings for her, any desire. She could not help but remember the way he had rejected her that night at his house.

Sebastian shrugged. “It was a long time ago. It’s all over now.” He glanced toward their carriage. “I suppose we had better return. Else it will set tongues to wagging.”

“I find that tongues wag easily here.”

They returned to the carriage, where the servants had laid out the picnic luncheon they had brought. They ate while the slow process of filling the balloons continued. Gradually, all over the field, the balloons swelled and then began to lift from the ground.

Thorpe went off with Lord Buckminster to talk to a friend, and one of Lady Ursula’s acquaintances came over to talk to Penelope. Alexandra soon grew bored with the inconsequential chatter about people she did not know, and she decided to take a closer look at the balloons, which were floating above their baskets.