Page 28 of Runaway Countess (Those Wild Whitbys #2)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“ A double engagement!”

Sebastian was sweating, panting, and filthy from the waist down, having made his escape from Mr Smythe via a series of increasingly uncomfortable escapades culminating in climbing onto a farmer’s cart and hitching a lift among the cabbages. He had paid for his passage by promising the farmer that Whitby Manor would serve cabbage soup at every meal until Christmas. He had, at one point, been forced to crawl underneath a fence.

The last thing he expected was that his mother would be thrilled to see him. Yet there she was, flinging her arms about his battered and cabbage-stained shoulders, and announcing that she was the luckiest mother alive, for not one but two of her beloved children were soon to be wed.

Sebastian made an effort to hold his mother at a distance, given that she was wearing one of her loveliest day dresses, and presumably his father would not be able to satisfy the bill for its repair should it be damaged by cabbage juice and mud.

“I… I am very glad to find you so happy,” he said. “Is Miss Cartwright in the drawing room?”

On his chaotic journey home, he’d had no idea whether Jenny and Elspeth would make it to Whitby Manor. He had been half-expecting to find either that Mr Smythe had given up the hunt and arrived there himself to demand vengeance, or that Beeston had made good on his threat and burned the place to the ground.

“To think that only days ago, I was ready to give up all hope!” sighed Mrs Whitby, dabbing at her cheek with a handkerchief. “And – who is Miss Cartwright, dear? I do not believe anybody by that name has stopped by. Lady Lewis is here, of course, and –” She wrinkled her nose. “Goodness me, what happened to your clothes? Is that the shirt you were wearing yesterday? My word, so it is! I recognise that stain on the cuff. Really, Sebastian, you must make yourself presentable before you join us.” She steered him swiftly towards the staircase, waving down the butler as they went. “Simmons! Simmons, do send up someone to assist Captain Whitby. I know we are short on valets, but there must be at least one footman who knows how to fold a cravat –”

“Mother,” said Sebastian. “If you have not met Miss Cartwright, then whose engagement –”

“Sebastian! There you are.” Cassandra marched across the hall and caught him by the arm before he could finish his question. “Come with me.” She looked him over and wrinkled her nose, which was rich, given how strongly she smelled of hay. “Hugo will help you straighten up.”

“Cassandra,” said Mrs Whitby, looking stern, “if Kendrick is here, then you should be within sight of a chaperone at all times. A proper chaperone!”

“Mother,” said Sebastian, with absolute sincerity, “I give you my word that I would rather die than let Hugo Kendrick kiss my sister.”

Mrs Whitby fretted in the doorway for a moment longer, but the sound of several ladies laughing one of Lady Lewis’s jokes drew her irresistibly back to her duties as hostess.

“Behave yourselves!” she hissed before plastering a beaming smile on her face and sailing back into the drawing room.

Cassie dragged him to the library a trifle faster than his exhausted legs could bear. “Miss Cartwright seems a pleasant girl,” she said. Sebastian let out a groan of relief.

“She’s safe? And Miss Smythe, too?”

“If ‘safe’ includes being fished out of a fountain, then yes, I suppose she is, and Hugo says you owe him a rather enormous favour.”

In the library, where the day before he had left a shattered mirror and the shards of a broken friendship, were the people he most needed to see in all the world.

Lucius was sitting at the desk, leaning back in his chair and laughing at Kendrick, who was reading aloud from a book of poetry with great dramatic flair. In the armchair beside them, face flushed with laughter, dressed in a simple muslin gown that looked like one of Evelina’s, was Jenny.

She looked perfectly at ease. She was as fresh and bright as though she’d done nothing more that morning other than dress for a pleasant day’s visiting. The very sight of her unleashed the glow of sunlight upon the room, upon the faces of his family, and in Sebastian’s thundering heart.

“Jenny,” he said, rushing forwards.

Kendrick shut his book with a snap. “Ho! Here’s our Romeo.”

“Hush, my lord. Let him breathe a moment.” Jenny rose to her feet and caught Sebastian’s hands in her own. A clean, fresh scent rose from her – chamomile soap and clean cotton. She must even have had time to bathe. Sebastian had never felt more of a lout, in his filthy clothes and his exhausted state.

“You’re safe,” he breathed.

“You can thank me for that,” said Kendrick.

“They have all taken very good care of me,” said Jenny. She already seemed perfectly at home with his family, exchanging easy smiles with Kendrick and Lucius as though they were old friends.

Lucius had folded a letter from the desk into a paper dart. Just as Sebastian went to embrace Jenny, he threw it expertly so that it jabbed Sebastian in the ear. “I know you and Cass like to outdo one another,” said Lucius, “but I didn’t think you’d go so far as to plot simultaneous scandals.”

“Sorry, Cass,” said Sebastian, giving his twin a wry grin. “I’ve rather stolen your thunder. Were you looking forward to being the talk of Appleby?”

Cass did not return his smile. “Yesterday was quite enough fuss to last me a lifetime. But Sebastian, it isn’t only you –”

The library door opened with a dramatic flourish. Evie danced in, steering Elspeth Smythe ahead of her by the shoulders. Elspeth was pink-cheeked and freshly washed, her hair dried and styled into a neat chignon, and her dress – one of Georgiana’s, no doubt, given all the frills and embellishments – a very flattering shade of pink.

“Here we are! A half-drowned damsel in distress no longer,” said Evie, presenting Elspeth to the group with a beaming smile. “I wish I could take credit for the transformation, but Miss Smythe is a naturally elegant subject. She even made the pondweed look fashionable.”

Lucius and Kendrick greeted her with deep bows. Elspeth blushed red.

“May we pretend that we are now meeting for the first time?” she asked shyly. “I’m mortified to think of the first impression you had of me earlier. I do not usually douse myself in dirty water before making my morning calls.”

Lucius grinned. “As you wish, Miss Smythe, although I was quite looking forward to the chance to teach my brother a lesson for dropping you into that fountain.”

“But it was perfectly dashing of him!” Elspeth protested. “It was all part of the process of rescuing Jenny.”

“I thought I rescued you,” said Kendrick, feigning injury. Cassandra patted his arm.

“Now, now, Hugo. You will soon be an old married man. Your days of rescuing damsels are at an end.”

Sebastian kissed Elspeth’s hand, which Evie had encased in a sleek silk glove. “I am extremely glad to see you in such good spirits, Miss Smythe. Your good opinion means to world to me.” He cast a glance back at Jenny, who was smiling. “I’d defy your father a thousand times over before I’d risk asking for Jenny’s hand without your approval.”

“Well, this is all very cosy, for an elopement,” said Evie, “but we are all – Miss Smythe and Miss Cartwright excepted – anxiously awaited in the drawing room. And we’d better get everything straightened out beforehand.”

“There’s nothing to straighten,” said Sebastian boldly. He held out his hand to Jenny, who took it without hesitation. “I will simply announce our engagement. Provided Cass and Kendrick really don’t mind.”

There was a silence that lasted a moment too long.

“You haven’t told him?” Evie demanded. “Miss Smythe has undergone a transformation worthy of a fairy tale, and in that time the lot of you have simply been – what? Joshing each other around? Really!”

“I’ve been getting to it,” said Cass through a tight jaw.

Sebastian began to feel uneasy, but Jenny intervened with a little nod of her head and a look of intense practicality that reminded him of the time he had returned to his insalubrious lodgings to find them cleansed, cleared and smelling of blossoms.

“ I will tell him,” she said. “Sebastian, do you recall what you told me of Lord Beeston the day we met?”

Sebastian frowned, trying to see what she was getting at. “That he… had blue eyes?”

“That he was honourable, and courageous, and smart,” said Jenny. She fixed him with an intent gaze. “You were not lying to me, I know. If you truly thought he’d make a cruel husband, you’d never have tried to convince me to marry him, regardless of what you owed him.”

“Yes, I do recall,” said Sebastian. Jenny gave a brief nod of satisfaction.

“Then bear that in mind, please, when I tell you that Lord Beeston is now formally engaged to Miss Georgiana.”

There was another long silence.

Sebastian felt as though his mind had detached from his body and was pinwheeling away through empty space. Jenny had spoken words that all lined up together to form a sentence, true, but none of them actually made any sense.

Beeston wanted to marry Jenny, not Georgie. Beeston needed a wealthy bride. He knew all too well that Georgie was anything but.

And of all the Whitby siblings, with their various charms and quirks, Georgiana was the one who invited romantic attention wherever she went. She was beautiful; she was flirtatious; she was young. The only reason, as her letters described in disconcerting detail, that she had not been snapped up last Season was that she had found no particular beau above the hordes to display any sort of merit.

She could have any man she chose.

Why the devil would she accept him ?

But sailing above all that, far more important than the confusion or the concern or the fear that Georgie, the baby, the girl he remembered best as a chubby little cherub begging sweetmeats from her siblings, was making a terrible mistake…

Yes, far more important than any of that was the question of how Jenny wanted him to respond.

“Georgie… and Beeston,” he repeated, faintly hoping that the exertion of the morning had caused him to finally lose his wits.

“Yes,” said Jenny.

Sebastian was on his feet, without knowing exactly how. “He’s doing it to punish me,” he growled. Jenny took a breath.

“I know your friendship is important to him, Sebastian, but I doubt that you are quite as important as all that.”

“Friendship?” asked Kendrick, who was watching Sebastian as though he were a lion who might or might not be about to leap the walls of his enclosure. “I thought you hated each other.”

“It is a… complicated friendship,” said Jenny.

Sebastian turned to her, a powerful energy rising within him, and lacking anywhere to place his distress. “It’s an insult to you! How dare he, so soon after –?”

This met with an immediate chorus of rebuttals from his siblings, Miss Smythe, and Jenny herself.

Sebastian paced across to his father’s desk, clenched his fists and set them on the leather desktop. Lucius and Kendrick backed away, wary, as from experience, they might well be. Even Cass didn’t stay close.

Jenny, on the other hand, stood up from her chair and came to stand at his back.

“None of us really understand how this has come about,” she said. “But the fact remains that Georgiana has made her decision. Your parents are relieved. Your sister will be a countess. And he is your friend, Sebastian, whether you care to admit it or not. You both owe each other a great deal. So I am asking you, as a favour to me…” He turned around then, managing to look her in the eye. “Please come into the drawing room and congratulate them as a good friend ought. Any concerns you have can be talked over in private. Later . For your family’s sake – for mine, too – set aside your misgivings and be happy.” Her lip trembled. Sebastian’s heart nearly broke at the sight. “It ought to be a happy day,” she said, almost pleading. “Oughtn’t it? Everybody settled so nicely. Can you be glad for them, as you are for us?”

“I am,” said Sebastian, immediately. Jenny made a face. Apparently he was not quite convincing. “Well, no, I am not. I am concerned, and confused, and I have several pressing questions for Beeston, but…” He straightened himself up and gave a firm nod. “It sounds as though congratulations are in order all round.”

The tension in the air palpably decreased. Cass gave a sigh of relief – an unnecessarily loud one, Sebastian thought, but he chose not to mention it.

“Come along!” she said, linking one arm through Kendrick’s and another through Jenny’s. “Mother was practically weeping with joy at the prospect of informing Lady Lewis she’d made two more matches for us this summer. Imagine her triumph when we tell her it is three.”

“Yes,” remarked Evie, falling into step with them with every appearance of genuine amusement. “And only your poor spinster sister remaining!”

“I can still put a bullet past Lord Henry’s ear,” said Sebastian. “If you think it’ll help.”

“No duelling,” Jenny reminded him.

Evie cut Sebastian a haughty glare. “I can’t imagine why I’d need you to do that. I’ve always been the best shot in the family.” Elspeth had gone pink with alarm. Evie gave her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, Miss Smythe. I reserve my bullets for those who really wound me. No mere gentleman could ever be worthy.”

As they crossed the hallway, Sebastian found himself flanked by Kendrick and Lucius, both of them eyeing him warily.

“Try to keep calm, you two,” he said, eyes fixed forwards. “This is a joyous occasion, and, as you can see, I am experiencing intense feelings of joy.”

He strode into the drawing room before either of them could voice any words to the contrary.

It was quite a crowd for a wet summer’s morning. Four of his mother’s closest friends and rivals, fellow matriarchs of the county, were drinking tea and pretending to nibble at dainty biscuits, each of them smiling in a way that suggested perhaps they were not completely thrilled by Mrs Whitby’s good fortune. Harriet Whitby did not seem to have noticed. She was practically glowing with triumph, one hand resting proudly on Georgiana’s shoulder as though she were a prize calf on display at the county fair. Sebastian had not fully realised until that moment how much the strain and worry of the past few months had wrought a toll on his mother. Now that it was lifted, she looked half the age she’d been yesterday.

In the corner by the bookshelf, leaning a little on his cane to offset the wooden leg, stood Beeston. He was speaking quietly to Sir Bertram Lewis, but Sebastian drew his eyes at once. Beeston hardly moved. Only his head cocked a little, as though to invite whatever fresh chaos would now ensue.

“Good morning!” Sebastian’s greeting rang out bright as the morning sunlight. He bowed to his mother’s friends, stopping to kiss Lady Lewis’s hand, and set his hands on Georgiana’s shoulders to admire her a moment before planting a smacking kiss on each of her cheeks. “Georgiana! My dearest little sister. I am so pleased for you.” He let her go before she could respond and crossed the room, offering his hand to Beeston.

“Allow me to welcome you to the family,” he said.