Stephanie Laurens - The promise in a kiss

Helena read the last words through a scarlet haze. Her hands shook as she refolded the note, then crammed it into the tiny pocket in her gown. She had to pause for an instant, draw breath, fight down her fury. Hold it in until she could let it loose on he who had provoked it.

“You must excuse me.” To her ears, her voice sounded strained, but none of her self-engrossed cavaliers seemed to notice. “I must return to Madame Thierry.”

“We’ll escort you there,” Lord Marsh proclaimed.

“No—I beg you, do not put yourselves to the trouble. Madame is only just inside the ballroom.” Her tone commanding, Helena swept them with an assured glance.

They fell in with her wishes, murmuring their adieus, bowing over her hand—and forgetting her the minute she left them, she had not a doubt.

She reached the front hall without drawing undue attention. A footman directed her to the anteroom, down a short corridor away from the noise. She paused in the shadows of the corridor; eyes fixed on the door, she tweaked the note from her pocket, flicked it open, then she drew in a breath, gathered her fury about her, opened the door, and swept in.

The small room was dimly lit; a lamp burning low on a side table and the crackling fire were the only sources of light. Two armchairs flanked the fire; Sebastian rose from one, languidly, moving with his customary commanding grace.

“Good evening,mignonne. ” The smile on his lips as he straightened was mildly, paternalistically, triumphant.

Helena shut the door behind her, heard the lock fall with a click.“How dare you?”

She stepped forward, saw the smile fade from Sebastian’s face as the light reached hers. “Howdare you send me this?” She thrust the hand holding the note at him. Her voice quavered with sheer fury. “You think to entertain yourself by pursuing me, yet I have told you from the first that I will not be yours, my lord.” She let her eyes flash, let her tone lash, let her polite mask fall entirely. She stalked forward. “As you find it so difficult to accept my decision, my steadfast rejection of you, let me tell you why I am here in London, and why you willnever advance your cause with me.”

With every word she felt stronger; her temper coalesced, hardened, infused her tone as she stopped two yards from him.

“I was sent to England to seek a husband—that you know. The reason I agreed to do so was to escape the clutches of my guardian, a powerful man of wealth, breeding, inflexible will, and unceasing ambition. Tell me, Your Grace, does that description sound familiar?”

She arched a brow at him, her expression contemptuous, coldly furious. “I am determined to use this opportunity to escape men such as my guardian, men such as yourself, men who think nothing—nothing!—of using a woman’s emotions to manipulate her into doing as they wish.”

His expression had lost all hint of animation.“Mignonne—”

“Do not call me that!”She flung the injunction at him, flung her hands in the air. “I am notyours ! Not yours to command, not yours to play with like a pawn on some chessboard!” She flourished his note again. “Without thinking, without in any way considering my feelings, on discovering yourself thwarted you reached for a pen and invoked guilt and fear so I would do as you wished. So that you would triumph.”

Sebastian tried to speak, but she cut him off with a violent slash of her hand.

“No! This time you will hear me out—and this time you will listen. Men like you—you are elegant, wealthy, powerful, and the reason you are so is because you are so adept at bending all around you to your will. And how do you accomplish that? By manipulation! It is second nature to you. You turn to manipulation with the same degree of thought you give to breathing. You cannot help yourself. Just look at how you ‘manage’ your sister—and I’m quite sure you tell yourself it’s for her own good, just as my guardian doubtless tells himself that all his machinations are indeed ultimately for my good, too.”

Sebastian held his tongue. Her anger burned, an almost visible flame. She reined it in, drew herself up. Her gaze remained steady on his.

“I have had half a lifetime of such managing, such manipulation—I will not suffer more. In your case, like my guardian, manipulating others—especially women—is part of your nature. It is part of who you are. You are helpless to change it. And the last man on earth I would consider as my consort is a man so steeped in the very characteristic I wish to flee.”

She flung his note at him; reflexively, he caught it.

“Never dare send me such a summons again.”

Her voice vibrated with fury and contempt; her eyes blazed with the same emotions.

“I do not wish to hear from you nor see you ever again, Your Grace.”

She swung on her heel and swept to the door. Sebastian watched as she opened it, went out; the door shut behind her.

He looked down at the note in his hand. With two fingers, he opened it, smoothed it. Reread it.

Then he crumpled it. With one flick, he sent it flying into the fire. The flames flared for an instant, then subsided.

Sebastian considered them, then turned and strode for the door.

Tstarted raining during the night and continued through the dawn, a steady, relentless downpour that left the streets awash and the skies a leaden gray.

Sebastian spent the morning at home attending to estate business, then essayed forth to White’s for lunch—for distraction. But the conversation was as desultory as the weather; he returned to Grosvenor Square in midafternoon.

“Do you wish for anything, my lord?” Webster, his butler, shook water from his cloak, then handed it to a waiting footman.

“No.” Sebastian considered the library door; he started toward it. “If anyone should call, I don’t wish to be disturbed.”

“Indeed, Your Grace.”

A footman opened the door; Sebastian crossed the threshold, then paused. The door closed behind him. He grimaced, and headed for the sideboard.

Two minutes later, a brandy balloon liberally supplied with amber liquid in one hand, he sank into the leather armchair before the fire and stretched his damp shoes toward the blaze. He sipped, let the brandy and the fire warm him and chase away the chill that was only partly due to the weather.

Helena—whatwas he to do about her?

He’d understood very well all she’d accused him of; the unfortunate fact was that all she’d said was true. He couldn’t deny it. There seemed little point in pretending that skillful manipulation wasn’t, at base, a large part of his power, a large part of the arsenal men such as he—ex-warrior conquerors—used in these more civilized times. If given a choice, most people would rather accept his manipulation than face him over a battlefield.

“Most people,” most unfortunately, did not include females reared to be the wives and queens of warrior conquerors.

She, in fact, was too much like him.

And, very clearly—very obviously to his highly attuned senses—she’d been subjected to her guardian’s manipulations for too long, too consistently, too much against her unexpectedly strong will.

He could understand far better than most that enforced submission to another’s will, especially coupled with awareness of the means of ensuring such submission—an awareness of the manipulation practiced on her—would have grated on Helena’s proud and stubborn soul. Would ultimately have become unbearable. Her will was a tangible thing, not to be underestimated—as he’d discovered last night.

Spoiled by ladies who would at the most have pouted at his strategy, then allowed him to cheer them up, he’d been completely unprepared for Helena’s fury. Her revelations, however, were what had given him pause.

They were what had him here, taking refuge in brandy and silence, hoping some solution would spontaneously emerge. As things stood . . .

He could hardly pretend he was not what he was, and if she’d set her stubborn mind against all liaisons with men such as he, if she could not bear to be the wife of a man such as he . . . what, indeed, could he do?

ther than brood. The occupation was unfamiliar. He didn’t appreciate the hold she had on his mind, on his senses, on his thoughts, let alone his dreams.

Somewhere along the line, simple pursuit had transmuted to obsession, a state with which he’d had until now no serious acquaintance. His previous conquests, predatory though they might have been, had never really mattered.

Despite her eminently clearly stated position, he couldn’t turn away and let Helena go. Simply let her disappear from his life.

Accept defeat.

Allow her to go through life never knowing what it would be like to scale the heights with him.

He watched her through the crowd at Lady Devonshire’s drum and inwardly shook his head. At himself. If Helena heard his last thought, she’d have his entrails for garters, yet . . . it was, underneath all else, how he felt.

Her life would be so much less if she didn’t live it to the full—and she would never do that other than at the side of, in her terms, a powerful man. If he didn’t make some push to rescript her thinking—to introduce the notion of compromise into her disdainfully dismissive mind, the idea that compromise with him might have bonuses beyond what she’d yet experienced—then she looked set to throw her scintillating self away on some mild and unsuspecting nobleman.

Her interest in Were and his ilk was now explained, the reason for her uninterest in him patently clear. She was as adept at manipulation as he was; she’d have Were, or any like him, in the palm of her small hand. She was determined no longer to be a puppet; to ensure that, she intended being the one who pulled the strings.

With him, that would never work.

With Lord Chomley, who she was currently charming, it might.

Keeping his expression impassive while gritting his teeth was not easy. Engaging in the usual social discourse while his attention remained riveted six yards away was, however, well within his abilities. Lady Carstairs had not yet realized he’d heard not one word of her story.

Helena touched Lord Chomley’s sleeve and spoke to him; his lordship flushed, bowed extravagantly, then turned toward the refreshment room.

Sebastian refocused on Lady Carstairs. “I’ve just seen my brother. I must catch him. Do excuse me.”

He bowed; her ladyship, thrilled that he’d remained listening for so long, released him with a smile.

Merging with the crowd, he circled to come up behind Helena, who was standing, waiting, by the side of the room.“Mignonne,” he murmured, taking her hand as he stepped around her, “I would like a word with you.”

She’d jumped, stiffened. Now she looked haughtily at him as he bowed, then she bobbed a curtsy and tugged. He hesitated but let her fingers go without kissing them. She straightened and looked past him, head high.

“I have no wish whatever to speak with you, Your Grace.”

Sebastian sighed. “You cannot avoid me forever,mignonne .”

“Luckily, you will repair to your estates shortly and be gone from my life.”

He couldn’t stop his voice from hardening. “While you may believe you’ve had the last word, there’s more that must be said between us, and of some of that you are as yet unaware.”

She considered, then shifted her gaze to meet his eyes. “I do not trust you, my lord.”

He inclined his head. “That I understand.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Of what nature are these things of which I am ‘as yet unaware’?”

“They’re not the sort of things it would be wise to discuss in a crowded ballroom,mignonne .”

“I see.” She nodded, her gaze going beyond him. “In that case, I do not believe wehave anything to discuss, Your Grace. I will not, not for any reason, go apart with you.”

On the words, her brilliant smile lit her face. “Ah, my lord—what perfect timing. His Grace was about to retreat.”

Swallowing that word—retreat be damned—ruthlessly suppressing his reaction to the flash of fire in her green eyes, Sebastian exchanged bows with Chomley, returning with a glass of orgeat, then turned back to Helena and reached for her hand. She was forced to extend it.

“Mademoiselle la comtesse.” With exquisite grace, he bowed and pressed his lips to her knuckles. He caught her gaze as he straightened. “Until later,mignonne .”